Truth Will Tell

Burhan Gafoor, Singapore's High Commissioner to Australia, is the latest to join the league of revisionist historians. But apparently somebody else is guiding his penmanship. "We have put together an account using evidence from the British archives as well as CPM sources, which confirm that Mr Lee Kuan Yew told the truth," admitted prime minister Lee Hsien Loong in his Facebook post on Saturday (Dec 20).

Gafoor/Lee wrote:
"Chin Peng has confirmed that the Barisan was under the CPM’s influence. He cagily disagreed that the CPM “controlled” the Barisan, but admitted: “We certainly influenced them”. He did not elaborate on how the CPM “influenced” the Barisan or who were the CPM’s proxies in its Central Executive Committee, but he confirmed that communists were among those who joined the party."

You can have a heyday with the semantics over "control" and influence". But there's no uncertainty about collaboration with the enemy. The following paragraphs, in the original bold text, from pages 54 and 55 of "The Battle For Merger" book speak volumes about the duplicity of one character:

"YOU MAY ASK: If the Communists are such a danger to our society, why did we work with Lim and his Communist friends in one anti-colonial united front?"

"We came to the conclusion that we had better forget the differences between our ultimate objectives and work together for our immediate common objective, the destruction of the British. Whether you wanted a democratic Malaya or a Communist Malaya, you had first to get rid of the British."

"But we never forgot that once the British were out of the way, there would be trouble between us and the Communists as to what kind of Malaya we wanted to have in place of the old British colonial Malaya."

The man who saw no qualms about working for the Japanese invaders during the occupation of Singapore - transcribing Allied wire reports for the Japanese spying on Allied radio stations and writing down what they were reporting in the Hodobu office (報道部), a Japanese propaganda department - also had no compunction working side by side with the Communists when he saw personal benefit. Meanwhile, others had to go to jail for merely keeping company with the Reds.  It does make one wonder, in retrospect, if merger with Malaysia was really about the survival of Singapore, or just an over extended power play for Tungku Abdul Rahman's job. That could explain the crocodile tears, or warning journalists not to photograph him with a smile.

Colonel Jessup (played by Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men") may bellow "You Can't Handle The Truth”, but that was an old movie. In the internet age, only the deceitful fear the glare of the unvarnished facts.