Singapore’s founding leaders could not be intimidated into compromising its interests, successors have not forgotten lesson: SM Lee

By the end of June 1965, the Tunku had decided that it would be best to “return Singapore to Lee Kuan Yew” instead.

It was this decision that led to talks between the Tunku’s deputy, Tun Razak, and Dr Goh from mid-July. 

Mr Lee Kuan Yew directed Mr E W Barker to draft the separation documents soon after that first meeting, and Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s aim was to strengthen Singapore’s position politically and compel the federal government to grant Singapore greater autonomy. 

He instructed Dr Goh to press for a looser constitutional rearrangement within Malaysia, and that separation would be an option only if Singapore could not get an agreement. 

But Dr Goh reported that Tun Razak wanted a “total hiving off”.

Until the very end, Mr Lee Kuan Yew was “ambivalent” and “quite torn” about the separation, said Mr Lee Hsien Loong.

He recalled that on Aug 3, six days before Singapore’s independence, he had been on holiday with his family at Cameron Highlands when his father received a call from Dr Goh.

“In those days, calls to Cameron Highlands had to go through operators, who mostly did not speak Chinese. So Dr Goh and Mr Lee spoke in Mandarin,” said Mr Lee Hsien Loong.

“I remember that phone call. I was in the room at Cluny Lodge, and my father took the call that afternoon.

“I heard him tell Dr Goh in Mandarin: ‘This is a huge decision, let me think about it’. I didn’t know then what it was about, but it became plain soon enough … this was less than a week before separation day.”

And even on Aug 7, after the agreement was settled, Mr Lee saw the Tunku again to ask if there could be a looser federation instead, or even a confederation, but the proposal was rejected.

“I remember sleeping that night … on the floor in the corner of my parents’ bedroom at Temasek House in Kuala Lumpur, before the family drove back to Singapore the next day,” said Mr Lee Hsien Loong. 

“My father got up repeatedly throughout the night to write notes to himself.

“This explains Mr Lee’s state of mind at separation, and why at the press conference on Aug 9 he broke down, and spoke about a moment of anguish.

“My mother said in her oral history that that was the closest he came to a nervous breakdown.”

Singapore was on its own, and the albatross had “finally loosed off our neck,” said Mr Lee Hsien Loong.

“As many historians have since characterised it, separation was a mutually negotiated outcome.”

And while separation was not Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s preferred outcome, he had gone to great lengths to persuade all his ministers to sign the Separation Agreement, so there was no Cabinet split, and independent Singapore started out with a strong, united leadership team.

“At the strategic level, it was the political pressure that Mr Lee orchestrated, the international stature that he had built up, and the courage and leadership that he showed, which compelled the Tunku to let Singapore go,” Mr Lee Hsien Loong said.