Chapter Fourteen

Summary

I was in the United States from August 1957 till December 1958. I returned to Malaya via Italy and arrived in Kuala Lumpur in January 1959. I had towards the end of 1958 written to Tunku of my decision to return and contest the Parliamentary Election of 1959. He agreed to my request. Although I returned to Malaya after only an absence of oneand- a-half years, I saw progress which could not have taken place if Malaya was still a colony. I was also quite pleased to note that although I had been away, my political stock in the party and the country was high.

The Tunku had decided on my return to go on leave, to work for the party to ensure that we won the forthcoming elections with a big majority. He assigned me to the Ministry of External Affairs where I decided that our foreign policy should pursue an independent line, by which I meant that our stand on international problems should not be influenced by the policies of other countries, big or small. I learned when I was at the United Nations — where in addition to being a member of the Commonwealth group, we belonged also to the Afro- Asian group — that the surest way to get into trouble was not to have a definite policy of our own on foreign issues because then we would be at the mercy of others. Although our policy of moderation in the United Nations did not get the approval of many members of the Afro-Asian group, we were respected because our policy was definite, logical, and consistent.

It was while I was Minister of External Affairs that I went to Jogjakarta to attend the Colombo Plan meeting. I met President Sukarno for the first (and only) time and heard him speak. What I saw of Indonesia then depressed me especially after I had discussions with Dr Subandrio on the Association of South Asia (ASA). He was interested only in bilateral economic arrangements in so far as his interest in economics (which was not very far) was concerned. He told me he did not care very much about the economy of Indonesia so long as the revolution remained unfinished.