1 TEXT OF MR. LEE KUAN YEW'S SPEECH AT A MASS RALLY AT PETALING JAYA, KUALA LUMPUR, ON 11TH APRIL, 1964. The next nine years will be different from the last nine This is the last lap of the election campaign with two weeks to go before polling. Barring accidents, the mood of the people is unlikely to change and in fact the dye is already cast. Why Socialist Front had barracked the PAP One notable feature in this campaign is that the Socialist Front and their Communist cadres in the towns have barracked and tried to disorganise only PAP rallies in Penang, Malacca and Jinjang. They have never bothered with the MCA or any of the other parties. Unwittingly, by their actions they have added proof, if proof was needed, that they know the one party with programme, policy and intellectual content, to counter them and deflate their following, is the PAP. Having seen what has happened to Barisan Sosialis in Singapore, where they had their best trained cadres operating their best organised open front outfit, they are fearful of even allowing us to put our ideas across to the people. They would lky/1964/lky0411.doc 2 prefer the MCA to win as against the PAP knowing that the greed and ineptitude of the MCA will help swell dissatisfaction and build them support. So it was anti- Communists like Tun Lim Yew Hock who built up the strength of the Communist front organisations in Singapore. MCA prefer Socialist Front to win Ironically, on the other side, the MCA have revealed in their speeches a preference for Socialist Front as against the PAP. They prefer to let the Communists win. As Mr. Tan Siew Sin admitted in last Tuesday's papers, had the Barisan Sosialis won in Singapore, the people of Singapore knew that the Constitution would have been suspended and troops would have marched in, confirming what we have always said was their intention, i.e. to split the non- Communist vote, allowing Barisan Sosialis to win and then apply a simple surgical operation. Their anti-Communist expert is no less than Mr. Khaw Khai Boh, Director of Special Branch in the days of Tun Lim Yew Hock. He was reported in last Thursday's papers to have said that the PAP was a "neo-Communist Party" and "it had adopted Communist methods pandering to mass emotion as a means of controlling them". Here is an anti-Communist expert who condemns by implication competition against the Communists to win mass support and deny it to the lky/1964/lky0411.doc 3 Communists. Small wonder that the battle for hearts and minds never even started when he was Director of Special Branch in Singapore. Who will make and who will break Malaysia? UMNO must decide whether the threat to Malaysia are the Communist or the Chinese. If one were to take seriously the recent statements attributed to sober and responsible leaders in UMNO, doubts can arise as to whether these leaders consider the Communists and their united front organisations like the Socialist Front, to be a threat or the non-Communist socialist party, like the PAP, which can compete with the Communists and rally the urban population. It is alleged that we have made an appeal to Chinese communalism. Is this true? Is it the PAP or the Socialist Front that has plugged the line about the government killing Chinese education in these elections? Perhaps the MCA translators have not drawn the attention of UMNO leaders to the long diatribes issued by the Socialist Front on the Government' policy which they alleged have killed Chinese education. And it is other parties who have attacked Malay rights in the Constitution. lky/1964/lky0411.doc 4 Whatever our faults it is not communalism or chauvinism. In Singapore where the Malay vote is only 15%, we have honored Malay rights and give all Malays free education from primary to university level, something the Central Government cannot do. Our sin, it would appear, is to be able to muster a following in the urban areas which includes a large bulk of the Chinese. UMNO must distinguish between Chinese and Communists If some of the statements recently made had been printed at any other but election time, I would have been forced to conclude that a harmonious multi- racial society in Malaysia was not going to survive. From these statements, it would appear that it would better for the Chinese in the towns to be won over by a Communist group, like the Socialist Front disloyal to Malaysia, who can be dealt with summarily than to be won over by a non-Communist socialist party loyal to Malaysia like the PAP. And yet it is the PAP in these elections that has gone out of its way to explain realistically why Malay rights in the Constitution must be honoured if the Tunku's and Tun Razak's leadership is to continue to succeed, and why in fact it is wise for this generation to have a Malay as the Prime Minister of the country. Different problems in the next nine years lky/1964/lky0411.doc 5 However, election time is not the best time for balanced judicious statements. I am confident that there are men big enough to see the need for effective counters to our real long-term problems of Communist subversion by legal or illegal methods now complicated by the addition of Indonesian subversion on the Malay mass base. Quality of anti-Communist and non-Communist leadership must improve One recurring theme in the election speeches of many government leaders is that they must be voted back to power, otherwise disaster befalls the country. We all know that there is no alternative Malay leadership willing and capable of running a multi-racial society. However, we would have been happier to have heard what they intend to do in the next five years to meet the problems which will be so different from the last five years. One of these problems is the change in the quality of Communist leadership. Nine years ago in 1955, when the Tunku first assumed office as Chief Minister and then Prime Minister, the Communists were led by people who had not been educated beyond secondary school. Many were not even middle school graduates, having grown up in the movement which they joined as rubber tappers lky/1964/lky0411.doc 6 or manual workers. A new generation of Communist leaders is emerging, people educated in universities like Nanyang, Singapore, Malaya, and elsewhere abroad. They will no longer be simple bicycle shop mechanics. So too the leadership in UMNO and in the non-Communist parties like the PAP must improve to match higher intellects on the other side. One of the happier features in this election is the introduction amongst the UMNO candidates of a few of the younger intelligentsia, the professional man and the university graduate, men who could give added intellectual content for the programmes and policies of UMNO. Without this capacity to calculate and evaluate the new problems that we face and devise new solutions to meet these problems, we are in for serious trouble. 11th April, 1964. lky/1964/lky0411.doc.