The next day, I made my most important speech in the federal parliament to a hostile and tense audience, including a large number of Malay MPs who had been fed daily with anti-PAP, anti-Lee Kuan Yew and anti-Chinese propaganda by the Utusan over the past year. I moved an amendment to express regret that the king’s address did not reassure the nation that it would continue to progress in accordance with its democratic constitution towards a Malaysian Malaysia. I quoted from it: “We are also facing threats from within the country.” I hoped the Tunku would explain the meaning of this passage. I gave him this firm assurance: “We have a vested interest in constitutionalism and in loyalty because we know – and we knew before we joined Malaysia – that if we are patient, if we are firm, this constitution must mean a Malaysian nation emerges.”

But Dr Mahathir’s speech implied that this could never happen. I quoted what he had said the day before about the Chinese in Singapore: “They have never known Malay rule and couldn’t bear the idea that the people they have so long kept under their heels should now be in a position to rule them.” To rule them? I drew a distinction between political equality and the special rights for the economic and social uplift of the Malays. I accepted the special rights, but if the other peoples of Malaysia were denied political equality with the Malays, we would not need Sukarno and Confrontation to crush us. Waving a copy of the Malaysian constitution in my right hand, I said, “Once you throw this into the fire and say ‘be done with it’, that means you do it for a long time; and history is a long, relentless process.” I said Albar wanted us to secede and leave our friends in Sarawak, Sabah, Penang, Malacca and other parts of Malaysia to UMNO’s tender mercies; we would not oblige.

I demolished the accusation that we were pro-Chinese. If we advocated a Chinese Malaysia, we could not attract majority support, as the Chinese were only 42 per cent of the population. If I had been going around saying about the Chinese what Albar had said about being a Malay – “wherever I am, I am a Chinese” – where would that have led us? On the contrary, I kept on reminding people, “I am a Malaysian, I am learning Bahasa Kebangsaan (the national language) and I accept Article 153 of the constitution (on the special rights of the Malays).”

Having reached the most sensitive part of my speech, in which I would expose the inadequacy of UMNO’s policies, I decided to speak in Malay. Although my Malay was not as good as my English, I was fluent compared with other non-Malay MPs. I said that while I accepted Malay as the sole official language, I did not see how it could raise the economic position of the people. Would it mean that the produce of the Malay farmer would increase in price, that he would get better prices? Would he get improved facilities from the government? I added that if the Alliance did not have real answers to current economic problems, it should not stifle the opposition. Because we had an alternative, and it would work: “In ten years we will breed a generation of Malays, educated and with an understanding of the techniques of science and modern industrial management”.

It was at this point that I quoted what Dr Mahathir said earlier in the debate:

“‘It is, of course, necessary to emphasise that there are two types of Chinese … the MCA supporters to be found mainly where Chinese have for generations lived and worked amidst the Malays and other indigenous people, and the insular, selfish and arrogant type of which Mr Lee is a good example. This latter type live in a purely Chinese environment where Malays only exist at syce level… They have in most instances never crossed the Causeway. They are in fact overseas Chinese first, seeing China as the centre of the world and Malaysia as a very poor second.’”

I continued, “What does that mean, Mr Speaker, sir? They were not words uttered in haste, they were scripted, prepared and dutifully read out, and if we are to draw the implications from that, the answer is quite simple: that Malaysia will not be a Malaysian nation. I say, say so, let us know it now.”

As for the Malays “only existing at syce level”, I said that the Tunku had frequently said in public and in private that the Chinese were rich and the Malays poor, but I used some simple examples to highlight a few points, still speaking in Malay. Special rights and Malay as the national language were not the answer to this economic problem. If out of four and a half million Malays and another three-quarters of a million Ibans, Kadazans and others, we made 0.3 per cent of them company shareholders, would we solve the problem of Malay poverty?

“How does the Malay in the kampong find his way out into this modernised civil society? By becoming servants of the 0.3 per cent who would have the money to hire them to clean their shoes, open their motorcar doors? … Of course there are Chinese millionaires in big cars and big houses. Is it the answer to make a few Malay millionaires with big cars and big houses? How does telling a Malay bus driver that he should support the party of his Malay director (UMNO) and the Chinese bus conductor to join another party of his Chinese director (MCA) – how does that improve the standards of the Malay bus driver and the Chinese bus conductor who are both workers in the same company?

“If we delude people into believing that they are poor because there are no Malay rights or because opposition members oppose Malay rights, where are we going to end up? You let people in the kampongs believe that they are poor because we don’t speak Malay, because the government does not write in Malay, so he expects a miracle to take place in 1967 (the year Malay would become the national and sole official language). The moment we all start speaking Malay, he is going to have an uplift in the standard of living, and if it doesn’t happen, what happens then? … Meanwhile, whenever there is a failure of economic, social and educational policies, you come back and say, oh, these wicked Chinese, Indians and others opposing Malay rights. They don’t oppose Malay rights. They, the Malays, have the right as Malaysian citizens to go up to the level of training and education that the more competitive societies, the non-Malay society, has produced. That is what must be done, isn’t it? Not to feed them with this obscurantist doctrine that all they have got to do is to get Malay rights for a few special Malays and their problem has been resolved. …”

Such arguments put in down-to-earth social and economic terms, and in Malay, had never been heard before in the Malaysian political debate. The PAP had brought crucial, sensitive issues into the open in a rational way to expose the shallowness of UMNO’s political argument, that because Malay leaders (mostly the aristocrats and educated elite) worked together with Chinese leaders (mostly the successful merchants) and Indian leaders (mostly the professionals), all would be well.

It was the most significant speech I had ever made in Malay, and I made it to an audience of Malay MPs, many of whom represented rural areas, and to a strangers’ gallery, which was packed with more Malays. I had spoken without a script, and for that reason it had all the more impact. As I spoke, there was a stunned silence. The air was electric.

Twenty-five years later, on the anniversary of Singapore’s independence, Eddie said of me in an interview: “He spoke for about half an hour. There must have been about 500 or so in the House and in the gallery but you could hear a pin drop. I think if they could have cheered, they would have. Looking back, I think that was the moment when the Tunku and his colleagues felt it was better to have Singapore and Mr Lee out.”

My Malay cabinet colleague, Othman Wok, was in the chamber. He recalled: “The chamber was very quiet and nobody stirred. The ministers of the central government sunk down so low in their seats that only their foreheads could be seen over the desk in front of them. The backbenchers were spellbound. They could understand every word. That was the turning point. They perceived Lee as a dangerous man who could one day be the prime minister of Malaysia.”

I had no such illusions. Malaysia would not have a Chinese prime minister for a very, very long time.

The Malays present did not expect me, the supposed anti-Malay Chinese chauvinist out to destroy the Malay race, to speak in Malay with no trace of a Chinese dialect accent that most Chinese would have. I had been born and bred in Singapore, speaking the language from childhood. I could trace my ancestors for three generations in Singapore. They had made as big a contribution to the country as any Malay in the chamber. And I was on their side, not against them. I wanted to improve their lot.

The Tunku and Razak looked most unhappy. I was meeting them on their own Malay ground and competing for support peacefully with arguments in an open debate. I was not rattled by their strident, shrill and even hysterical cries of abuse and denigration. I could hold my own. If allowed to go on, I might begin to win over some Malays. They could see that among the MPs wearing the Haji skullcaps of those who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, heads were nodding in agreement when I pointed out that simply having Malay as the national language would not improve their economic lot. They needed practical programmes directed in the fields of agriculture and education.

The speech aroused such unease among the Alliance leaders and MPs that, contrary to standing orders, the Speaker ruled I could not reply to arguments made against it. It was a backhanded tribute to my effectiveness in Malay. Instead, he called on Razak, in place of the Tunku, to wind up the debate. Razak launched into a long spiel of accusations: I was out to create chaos and trouble and hoped to emerge as the leader who could save the country. I was an expert in creating situations that did not exist. I twisted facts and cast doubts in the minds of people. I planned to split the country into two – “one Malay Malaysia, and one Lee Kuan Yew’s Malaysia”. Razak was at his most bitter when he concluded, “The gulf that divides the PAP and the Alliance is now clear. PAP means Partition and Perish.”

I had not expected my speech to play so crucial a part in the Tunku’s decision to get Singapore out of Malaysia. Twelve years later, 1977, in his book Looking Back, the Tunku wrote, “The straw that broke the camel’s back, however, was a speech Mr Lee Kuan Yew made in Parliament, when he moved an amendment to ‘the motion to thank the King for his speech in May, 1965’. He brought up many issues which disturbed the equilibrium of even the most tolerant Members of the House.” He sent me a copy of the book, inscribed:

“Mr Lee Kuan Yew

“The friend who had worked so hard to found Malaysia and even harder to break it up.

Kindest regards
Tunku Abdul Rahman
26.5.77”

Five years later, in 1982, the Tunku told the author of a book on Singapore, “He (Lee Kuan Yew) would think himself as legitimate as I was to be the leader of Malaya because he speaks Malay better than I do.” I did not speak Malay better than the Tunku. Even if I did, I was still not a Malay and could not be the leader of Malaysia. But when he heard me that day in parliament, he realised that I was getting my message through to his own backbenchers. That was unacceptable.