Selective History

In his speech to the PAP activists at their party conference on Sunday, Lee Hsien Loong certainly airbrushed history when he said, "It was this very principle of equal opportunity and meritocracy that Singapore left Malaysia." The hard truth, be it from Toh Chin Chye or Goh Keng Swee, will tell you that Singapore was turfed out of Malaysia. Both will agree with James Minchin, who wrote in his book "No Man Is An Island", that "careful research makes it hard to avoid laying much of the blame at Lee's feet".

From late 1963 to the fateful day of separation of Singapore from Malaysia, he recorded, there was no stopping the deterioration of relations between Lee and the Tunku and their respective confidants. The timeless prose of Mohamad Haji Salleh provides rare insight of the difference of views:

DO NOT SAY

do not say my people are lazy
because you do not know.
you are only a critic, an looker.
you cannot know or judge,
passing the kampong in your car,
staring at the economic data.

do not think my people are weak
because they are gentle,
because they do not build skyscrapers.
have you ever worked in a ladang,
or danced the ronggeng?
can you sing the dondang sayang?
do not think that we have only music
because we love life.

do not write that we have no literature, culture,
have you ever listened to the sajak or pantun
stayed a night at the bangsawan?
have you read the epic shairs
or the theological theses?
how many times have you wondered about history in the blade
and ancestry in the middle of the keris.
or felt the pattern of the songket?
have you lived in a kampong?

do not condemn us as poor
because we have very few banks.
see, here the richness of our people,
the brimful hearts that do not grab or grapple.
we collect humanity from sun and rain and man,
transcending the business and the money.

do not tell us how to live
or organise such nice associations and bodies.
our society was an entity
before the advent of political philosophy.

do no say -
because you do not know.

MOHAMAD HAJI SALLEH