Important Books with a Tale to Tell Review of 'Comet in Our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History' & 'Dark Clouds at Dawn: A Political Memoir'
by Francis T Seow
Thus, these two books, Comet in Our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History (edited by Tan Jing Quee and Jomo. K.S., illustrated. 170 pp., IBSN 983-9602) and Said Zahari’s Dark Clouds at Dawn: A Political Memoir, (illustrated. 316 pp., IBSN 983-9602-13-6) make a belated albeit refreshing presence to correct the lopsided official history.
It is worth recalling that it was Lee Kuan Yew, then in political opposition, who first sought the favour and support of Lim Chin Siong, and, to a lesser degree, of Said Zahari, among others, in his quest for political control. They became his comrades with whom he ran, and later hunted, with the British colonial and Malaysian governments. Some would call it political astuteness but others would term it base treachery. Be that as it may, there is no doubt whatsoever Lee played a singular role behind the scenes in their subsequent incarceration by those governments, rationalizing their detention many years later by labelling them communists, communist sympathizers and such like, even though he knew they were not.
In this regard, the gross libel he allegedly practised on them was perpetuated by an uncritical news media — until the scales fell in 1971 as a result of his ham-fisted suppression of the print media. Some official records, but not all, have recently been declassified in London, enough to suggest that Lim Chin Siong — and his fellow detainees — were not as stridently red as Lee had painted them to be.
Given the increasing availability of those records and, as dissidents are emboldened to write their political memoirs, further light will be thrown onto, what some believed to be, Lee’s sinister role in the 1950s and 1960s, especially in the 1963 internal security exercise cynically-named Operation Cold Store, wherein he used the bogey of communism to prevail upon the British and Malayan governments to decimate the effective political opposition in one fell swoop by arbitrary arrests: a pretext which he still uses even after Singapore achieved independence.
Comet in Our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History is unfortunately not written by him, although Said Zahari — a former Utusan Melayu editor and long-time fellow political detainee — mentions a projected collaboration to write a joint memoir. It was, however, frustrated by Chin Siong’s sudden demise twenty-three days shy of his sixty-third birthday of a heart attack on 5 February 1996. The political climate was not then conducive for such literary endeavour: in any event, they would not have had easy access to research facilities and the publishing industry, which was — and still is — too intimidated to consider, let alone accept, any contrary publishing assignments.
Some essayists speak of Chin Siong’s emotional distress in prison. Like Said Zahari, he was placed in solitary confinement for inordinately long periods at a time, a sure prescription for depression. But, unlike Said Zahari, Chin Siong apparently suffered from high-blood pressure, whose adverse effects combined with periods of solitary confinement were allegedly further intensified by the psychotropic drugs specially prescribed him by the prison psychiatrist, which finally drove him to attempt suicide at the General Hospital.
It sparked off ugly rumours at the time that he was being deliberately done in by the authorities. However, Lee, in his self-serving memoirs, From Third World to First, put it down to the sudden realization that “Communism [had] failed him.” The explanation is not only cynical but facile — just as his statement simpliciter therein that, unlike his fellow detainees, Chin Siong was not banished from Singapore under Operation Cold Store. Lee failed to mention that Chin Siong is a Singapore citizen who could not by law be banished: it was thus no act of compassion.
Significantly, the self-same prison psychiatrist later committed suicide reviving knowing whispers that Chin Siong had apparently been over-prescribed medications against the former’s better judgment. However it may be, the last word on this topic has not been written.
Thus, when Chin Siong appeared before a triumphant Lee in his grandiose official residence at Sri Temasek to plead for his release to the United Kingdom “for studies,” he was not so much a “disillusioned” man, as Lee asserted, as a broken man. Long solitary confinement under torturous conditions and apparently generous prescriptions of psychotropic drugs had broken him.
No explanation is offered by any essayists as to why Chin Siong became instead a barrow-boy selling fruits and vegetables in London. For he was known to have a sharp intellect, amongst other accomplishments. Was it because he was so crushed in body and mind that it took him years to recuperate from his fearsome ordeal? Be that as it may, they never met again, but in a statement that pushes the outer edge of credibility, Lee however claimed they “... exchanged greetings in New Year cards.”
Even so, Chin Siong paid a high price for his relative freedom: in the egregious ISD — Internal Security Department — fashion, he had been psyched up to denounce his comrades, some of whom did not know of nor appreciate his physical and mental distress, including apparently the nefarious use of sleep deprivation. One can only surmise what indignities he was made to go through! It is in this context that the open letter allegedly written by Chin Siong to Dr. Lee Siew Choh, the Barisan Sosialis chairman, urging him and the Barisan faithful to abandon the good fight, must be read.
If experience is any guide, there is every reason to believe the letter was probably dictated and crafted by the ISD as a condition of his release. With his contrived exile to London, Lee removed the greatest political threat to him and his PAP government.
This book is a collection of reflective essays and tributes by Chin Siong’s former political colleagues and fellow detainees, friends and admirers who had known him during his life-time, among whom are Malaysian Professor of Anthropology Syed Husin Ali, Malaysian Academy of Sciences Vice President Dr. M. K. Rajakumar, and Malaysian poet laureate, Usman Awang. It, however, tends to be repetitious as the essays have not been edited with regard to one another.
It is a pity there are no contributions from C.V. Devan Nair — Chin Siong’s former political comrade and fellow detainee and, later, president of Singapore — and Dr. Lee Siew Choh, which would have lent even greater political heft to this slender volume.
However that may be, two very fine essays by British academic, Dr. T.N. Harper, and his Australian counterpart, Dr. Greg Poulgrain, give the book that extra edge, which for them alone makes the book recommendable, notwithstanding the editorial and printing limitations noted. By implication they call into question Lee's spin on those events in The Singapore Story, whose debut as his political memoirs was assisted by a legion of government personnel and staff from the Straits Times newspaper.
One small comment. Given the contents, the title is a misnomer: Lim Chin Siong was not a comet. He is a star in Singapore’s political firmament, and, as such, occupies a place in its political pantheon.
He also describes the roles inter se of Utusan Melayu’s several senior personnel, including that of its owner, Yusuf Ishak, who became the first local head of an independent Singapore, and his relations with A. Samad Ismail, the legendary pan-Malaysian journalist and nationalist, Othman Wok, a senior journalist who later became Singapore minister for social affairs, and a host of Malaysian political luminaries.
It focuses on his own arrest in Operation Cold Store, his long travails in detention, and his friendship with Chin Siong, among other detainees.
In a press conference at the 1971 Helsinki International Press Institute conference, Lee — to a question asked by a journalist — spun a convoluted tale of Said Zahari’s arrest and detention: that he was not arrested because of his journalistic work but as a communist: eight years into his detention, he was suddenly branded a communist.
Said Zahari exposes Lee’s position when he told Lord Goodman, Master of University College, Oxford, inquiring on behalf of International P.E.N., over his continued imprisonment that [his] detention was being maintained “only because you have — it is asserted — refused to renounce violence as a political instrument.” It was a wholly inaccurate assertion — a ploy which Lee repeatedly uses to deflect international criticisms of his arbitrary actions.
These books are written for an audience familiar with the personalities and the locales mentioned. The interchanging use of abbreviations, titles, names and nicknames can be confusing for readers approaching this subject cold. Both books have no indexes, and the latter, in particular, would have greatly benefitted with a glossary of names and designations of the dramatis personae, the political parties and organizations. But there is no excuse for misspelling the names of well-known persons, of which James Michener, the American novelist, is one example.
These are important books with a tale to tell which would have benefited from a stricter editorial pen and keener proof-readings. Be that as it may, these books cannot be neglected by any serious students of Singapore and Southeast Asia. They are published by Insan, Kuala Lumpur.
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Given Singapore’s rugged political history, there has, understandably, been a noticeable dearth of dissident literature. The reasons are not far to seek: political dissidents, especially those detained by the authorities, were inhibited by conditions of their release from associating with one another let alone writing biographies questioning their original detention. Singapore, a command society, does not encourage such lèse-majesté literature, and publishers — be they domestic or foreign — are slow to publish in this regard for fear of, among other possibilities, losing their printing or publishing licence.
The second book, Dark Clouds at Dawn: A Political Memoir , by Said Zahari, is important for several reasons: it provides a rare insight into the interferences in the editorial direction of Utusan Melayu, the leading pan-Malayan Malay newspaper, by UMNO — the United Malays National Organization — the principal partner in the Alliance government, which precipitated the unprecedented but consequential Utusan Melayu strike action not so much over pay or conditions of work but over those interferences, and its acquisition by UMNO to become the mouthpiece of the UMNO-MCA Alliance government. In the result, Said Zahari, a Singapore citizen, was banished to Singapore.