WHY MALAYSIA?
What motivated the federation’s first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj, to propose in 1961 that “it is inevitable that we should look ahead to this objective and think of a plan whereby these (five) territories can be brought closer together in political and economic co-operation’’?
The initiative apparently came from the wishes of Singapore’s leaders. David Marshall, Chief Minister of Singapore during the mid-1950s, was keen for a merger but the Tunku then was reluctant. Then in 1959, when Lee Kuan Yew of the People’s Action Party assumed the chief ministership, he too proposed a Malaya-Singapore merger for economic and political reasons. The Tunku’s initial reaction was at best lukewarm. As the political Left in Singapore gained momentum, however, the Tunku began to warm up to Lee’s persuasive arguments of merger.
Although the Tunku and his Malay colleagues in the United Malay National Organisation (Umno) did not want to have a Left-leaning Singapore as their neighbor, neither did they wish for a merger with Chinese-dominated Singapore that would mean upsetting the racial arithmetic in favor of the Chinese.
The Borneo territories then became imperative components in the wider federation scheme. Nearly 70% of the nearly 1.3 million inhabitants (1960 census) of North Borneo, Brunei and Sarawak comprised Malay-Muslims and non-Muslim indigenous peoples, the Borneo territories were viewed favorably as a counterweight to Singapore’s Chinese majority. The racial factor, however, was not then publicly emphasized.
This racial arithmetic, however, hinged on an assumption: “that in extreme racial issues the indigenous population of Borneo might choose to align themselves with the Malays (of Malaya), to whom they were racially akin, rather than to the Chinese”. But there was no guarantee that the Borneo indigenous would swing to the Malays in times of crisis.
Being politically less-sophisticated and naive, they could of course be manipulated and coerced or intimidated into aligning themselves with the Malayans.
Credits: Borneo Wiki
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