Singapore's Test of Self-Government

...The fault lies rather with the imperfections of journalism: If no news is good news to the ordinary citizen, bad news is good news for the foreign correspondent...

...In the private sector, work has begun on 13 industrial projects representing a total investment of $35 million...

...in a bid to create better conditions for investment, has imposed severe political and industrial restraints on the very workers who carried Lee to power...

...A related question is whether such a movement, if it develops, will be understood and accommodated, or misinterpreted and resisted...

...The political riots of 1956...

...in the event of a conflict, the British bases in Singapore will be as untenable as...

...If the PAP succeeds in expanding the economy to provide jobs for the workers and revenue for the social services, there should be no constitutional crisis...

...Third...

...Singapore will undoubtedly remain a willing member of the free world...

...These questions will, of course, be a little hysterical and attempts to press them will certainly fail...

...Singapore already has 50.000 unemployed and new workers are coming on the market at the rate of 30-40,000 a year...

...at his discretion, suspend the constitution...

...The World Bank has also shown interest in Singapore's development and will shortly be sending out a team of experts to survey the situation...

...If Britain won't let us accept Soviet aid...

...So the prospects of growth in the public sector, while far from perfect, are at least reasonably bright...

...if not a hotbed of Communism, at least a very warm and promising bed...

...and the big political question of the immediate future is whether this debate will crystallize into a strong movement...

...The test is all the more crucial since the PAP...

...This is in addition to the $322.6 million which the Government must find in the next five years to finance such developmental projects as creating industrial sites, expanding power output, improving communications and providing education and other social services...

...why can't we kick out the British...

...Its million-and-a-half people live entirely on the fruits of trade as middlemen between its neighbors and the West...

...While this again falls considerably short of what is needed, it is nonetheless a promising start...

...by Britain...

...if economic expansion goes forward smoothly and steadily...

...The limitations on Singapore's freedom are therefore considerable, and it is clearly possible to work for the removal or modification of these restrictions without being either pro-Communist or anti-Western...

...If the economy stagnates, however, and standards of living drastically decline, both the PAP and the constitution are likely to fall into discredit, creating a dangerous political situation...

...Singapore's present constitution provides for what is called internal self-government...

...by the way, are proscribed) can never hope to capture power and, even if by some miracle they did, they could be brought to their knees in very short order...

...in spite of these restraints, there are no economic dividends, the disillusionment of the workers will be all the more keen and their reaction all the more energetic...

...Not a single one—let alone all three— of these conditions can possibly be fulfilled in the foreseeable future...

...Thus the Communists (who...

...This falls short of Capital investment is the key to Singapore's freedom TEST OF SELF-GOVERNMENT full independence in these principal respects:1) The British High Commissioner may...

...It has been estimated that a private capital investment on the order of $66.6 million a year is needed if living standards are to withstand the pressures of population increase...

...But if they should be raised, the battle for hearts and minds will probably have been lost and...

...Or, to put it in another way...

...No Red-tainted regime in Singapore could possible survive the pressures which Malaya could—and certainly would— exert upon it...

...First...

...If the volume of investment can be increased to the necessary level...

...the strident drama which led to the suspension of the City Council in 1959...

...Britain has undertaken to provide about $23.3 million for the first three years of the five-year plan and has promised to consider further assistance at the end of this period...

...Within a basically pro-Western, or at least non-anti-Western, frameyvork there is still a considerable degree of political free play...

...Presented out of context, embellished with graphic accounts of workers storming through the streets and students laying siege to schools, they cannot but create the impression that Singapore is...

...In a terrain that is flat, highly developed and completely unsuited to guerrilla resistance, these forces could put down any Communist-inspired uprising within 24 hours...

...the Guantanamo base in Cuba...

...Debate on this question of further constitutional advance is now taking place both inside and outside Lee Kuan Yew's ruling PAP...

...2) Britain retains control of foreign relations and external defense...

...Britain has three and the Federation of Malaya has one: thus it is possible for the British and Malayan members to combine to force the Singapore Government to adopt measures it may oppose...

...It possesses no raw materials and manufactures no goods...

...Non Singapore is very definitely an arena of the present great ideological struggle and Communism is certainly present...

...as long as it retains its present economic dependence upon the capitalist market...

...The answers to these questions depend heavily on the success with which the PAP is able to tackle Singapore's grave economic problems within the present constitutional framework...

...Singapore is the center of a formidable concentration of British military power, with a huge garrison, four military airfields and the biggest naval base in the Far East...

...Singapore can never go Communist FRANCIS T. K. WONG, editor of the Singapore Sunday Mail and President of the Singapore Union of Journalists...

...3) an Internal Security Council has the final say on all "matters of internal security which touch on external defense...

...is now a Nieman Fellow at Harvard...

...the mass arrests of trade unionists and students in 1957...

...This misconception—and a gross misconception it is—is one for which they are not to be blamed...

...Singapore's non-productive trade economy is viable only in terms of friendship with the West...

...Of the capital requirements in the public sector of the economy the Singapore Government can raise more than $200 million within the country—leaving about $200 million to be found abroad...

...But to assert that Singapore is safe from Communism is not to say that the political situation there has attained perfect equilibrium...

...Thus...

...the recent crisis within the ruling People's Action party (PAP)—these are the dramatic events by which Singapore is known abroad...

...the pre-conditions of a Communist victory in Singapore are: the removal of Britain's military forces, the overthrow of the Malayan regime, and the creation of a viable economy in the face of Western hostility...

...But a number of objective factors indicate that Singapore is the one country in Southeast Asia that is absolutely safe from Communism...

...The Singapore Government has three representatives on the Internal Security Council...

...If the expansion program fails for a lack of capital, however, and social distress increases at the galloping pace of which economists warn, then large numbers of people are bound to start asking themselves: "If the West won't or can't help us set up factories, why can't we turn to the Russians and the Chinese...

...Second, the Federation of Malaya, which is in a position to strangle Singapore economically (it is its biggest customer ) as well as physically (it controls the water supply) is militantly anti-Communist...