SINGAPORE: Bold Experiment

In the boldest of all its colonial experiments, Britain has conferred autonomy on the famed imperial base of Singapore. The island is as strategically important as ever for Britain’s Southeast Asia trade. It is essential to defense of Britain’s still far-flung Eastern outposts. Nonetheless, the British government is turning over full powers of internal self-government to the island’s inhabitants, four-fifths of whom are Chinese and therefore bound by ties of blood and language, at least, to the giant Communist Chinese republic to the north. In the old days only British subjects—which automatically included everyone born in Singapore—could cast a vote. Under the new constitution voting is compulsory for all, and the ballot is thrown open to hundreds of thousands of Chinese born outside Singapore, most of whom are unable to speak English. In the new Parliament, in fact, English will cease to be the official language and members may debate in English, Malay, Mandarin Chinese or the Tamil language of India.

For nine weeks Singapore’s tropical nights have been loud with the sounds of political campaigning, bright with electric signs spelling out two messages: “You must vote” and “Your vote is secret.” Last week, in elections for the first government of the State of Singapore, the left-wing People’s Action Party swept 43 of the 51 seats. Chief Minister Lim Yew Hock, 44, the able young trade unionist who established peace in the island after the bloody 1955 riots by jailing half a dozen leaders of the P.A.P.’s Communist wing, failed utterly in last-minute efforts to unite the moderate and right-wing parties in a “grand coalition to stop the rampaging P.A.P.”

Fight the Whites. Leader of the victorious P.A.P.—and Prime Minister-elect —is fiery Secretary General Lee Kuan Yew, 36. A wealthy, golf-playing Singapore Chinese of the third generation, who gained a prized “double first” in law at Cambridge University, Lee campaigned in shirtsleeves to “restore the dignity” of Asians and to “fight against the white man.” He saluted his election triumph as “the liberation of the poor.” His party’s first act, he said early in the campaign, would be to release the Communist-liners now in custody. He also demanded eventual closing of Britain’s huge military base, though this, he made clear, must follow a merger with the neighboring independent Federation of Malaya, and would take perhaps “five, ten, 15 or 20 years.” When the British-owned Straits Times threatened to move across Singapore’s causeway to Malaya to fight P.A.P. better, Lee shouted: “Any newspaper that tries to sour up relations between Malaya and Singapore after May 30 will go in for subversion. We will put in any editor, subeditor or reporter who goes along this line, and keep him in.”

Shed the Reds. Despite such outbursts, the British are convinced they can work with Lee—or at least that they have to. “I am a non-Communist,” he proclaims, and before the campaign ended, speaking more moderately than at the start, he asserted that the worst threat to the new state of Singapore might come from Communist guerrillas trying to sneak over from the Malayan jungles. The British, who will retain control of Singapore’s defenses and foreign affairs, are resigned to the political necessity of releasing the imprisoned P.A.P. Communist-liners. But Singapore is no longer so fearful of their oratory and intrigue: news from “back home” about the People’s communes and the shock of Tibet have done much to diminish Peking’s prestige among overseas Chinese.