19 - The Malaysian Dream

Summary

Raja's heart problems kept him out of action for more than two months. The heart attack took him and Piroska by surprise. Prior to this, his most serious ailment was acute laryngitis. While recuperating in hospital, he was straining at the leash. Unable to stay quietly on the sidelines during this crucial period, he continued to roll out speeches, which he asked others to deliver in his stead.

One speech at the second anniversary of the Kampong Glam community centre was a scorching diatribe against “reckless and destructive trouble-makers” out to create suspicion and disunity among the various races. He accused them of engaging in “loud talk and irresponsible acts, including hooliganism”. While he did not name them, it was clear he was referring to the pro-communists who continued to rage that the Chinese were being sold out to the Malays. He said: “These brainless men are but the tools of more ambitious politicians who, having failed to come to power by constitutional means, hope to come to power in the wake of racial violence.”

He called on the people to make sure that its multiracial harmony was maintained, and to make clear to the race-mongers that “we regard them with the aversion we feel for plague-carrying rats”. The more the people expressed their contempt for race-mongers, the less inclined would they be to spread their “dangerous and stupid racialist propaganda”, he insisted. Clearly, his harrowing brush with mortality had not mellowed him. As soon as his doctors cleared him for active work in early August, he flung himself back into the last-ditch battle for merger with increased ferocity.

He resumed his attendance at the weekly cabinet meeting on 14 August 1962. The focus was on the referendum for merger on 1 September 1962, and into this campaign, he would concentrate all his energies. The period leading up to merger was a fundamental turning point in the political history of Singapore and marked a crucial milestone in Raja's maturation as a politician.

On that day, the electorate would be asked to choose between three types of merger. First was the one proposed by the PAP government, second, the Barisan Sosialis, and third, the Singapore People's Alliance.