SINGAPORE – Founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew came closest to a nervous breakdown in the hours after announcing Singapore’s separation from Malaysia on Aug 9, 1965, according to a newly released oral history interview with his wife, Madam Kwa Geok Choo.
“He was upset after the thing (negotiations for separation) was over,” the late Madam Kwa said in the interview, recorded between 1981 and 1982. “I think where he had the nearest to a nervous breakdown was after it was over, after the press conference (on the afternoon of Aug 9) when we came back… Then he was very, very upset.”
The interview will be featured at
The Albatross File: Singapore’s Independence Declassified,
the capstone event for Singapore’s 60 years of independence.
Jointly developed by the National Library Board (NLB) and the Ministry of Digital Development and Information, the permanent exhibition will open to the public from Dec 8 at the National Library Building in Victoria Street.
The showcase is based on the upcoming book, The Albatross File: Inside Separation, which draws on papers that former deputy prime minister Goh Keng Swee kept in a file he code-named “Albatross”, alongside extensive oral history interviews with Singapore’s founding leaders.
The late Mr Lee, who had long believed in merger, had hoped for a looser federation rather than a complete break, even amid political tensions between the ruling parties of Singapore and Malaysia and the communal strains that led to the 1964 racial riots.
On Aug 7, 1965, after the separation agreement was already signed by the negotiating ministers at the home of Tun Abdul Razak, then Malaysia’s deputy prime minister, Mr Lee drove to the residence of then Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman to explore whether some “looser” form of association might be acceptable.
He was told: “There is no other way now.”
Mr Lee did not know Dr Goh had not pressed Tun Razak for a looser federation, but had proposed a separation instead. He realised this only in 1994, when he read Dr Goh’s oral history interview in preparation for his own 1998 memoirs, The Singapore Story.
Jointly developed by NLB and MDDI, the permanent exhibition will open to the public from Dec 8 at the National Library Building.
PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO
Up to the eve of the break from Malaysia on Aug 9, 1965, Singapore’s founding leaders were divided on the split.
