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Mr Lee Kuan Yew delivered his first speech in the 1959 Legislative
Assembly as Prime Minister at age 35. It was the first time that the Peoples
Action Party (PAP) had come to power, when previously it was an
opposition party. He attacks those who stood against the PAP and also the
civil servants who opposed to its policy changes, speaking of the
psychological malady of the civil service. He also assured voters that the
PAP stood with the masses and that party leaders remained dedicated to the
service of Singapore.

PM LEE KUAN YEWS FIRST SPEECH IN THE HOUSE AS PRIME

MINISTER AFTER THE 1959 GENERAL ELECTION

21 Jul 1959

1. Let me state - I mean no aspersion on this officer, but I put it forward as

an instance of the psychological malady of the civil service: a local officer today
is staying in a posh local hotel at considerable Government subsidy because
once upon a time there was a shortage of housing accommodation. Europeans
come and go on leave and therefore, pending being housed in Government
quarters, they squat in expensive hotels in town and the Singapore Government
subsidises it. And so it goes on, and local officers who, according to the rules
and regulations of the game, fit the bill also do these things. These are things
which should not be and cannot be and they will have to stop. But that in my
view is not altogether their fault. It was because the system allowed such things
to happen. Once the system allowed civil servants to spend their time not
busying themselves in the tuning up of the engine in the car to make it go better
and faster, but in looking out for spoils, naturally everybody joined in the sport.
Everybody wanted to get as much out of the service as they could, and very few
were interested in putting into the service as much as they could give.

2. Now, there are certain good features about the civil service which we
want to preserve. First, I would say that it is relatively a loyal service, There are
the few odd ones - the noisy, fatuous types - whose folly and stupidity will
ultimately catch up with them. But, by and large, they are loyal to the ideal that
the civil service should do its best to carry out and implement the policy of an
elected government.

3. Second, they are relatively incorrupt. Looking around South-East Asia, I

think we have reason to congratulate ourselves on the manner in which the last
elections were carried out, I am told that in Thailand, in the course of an election,
bombs get thrown into polling booths, I am told that in some of the islands to the
east of us, returning officers helped voters to write out the names of the
candidates whom they wanted to choose. I am told that in some other parts they

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put into the ballot boxes lots of votes for the candidate they wanted to see win
before the voting began. I would like to pay this tribute to our civil service -
apart from a few black sheep with whose activities the appropriate Government
departments will catch up in the course of time - they are relatively honest.

4. We have assured them of their future, as indeed it is the business of a

Government to ensure its cadres of their future. The Communists also do that.
They guarantee the livelihood of every worker of the Government - his life,
family and education - as long as the man is alive and perhaps even after he is
dead. And for that reason, we agreed to allow the Constitution to protect the
pension rights of our civil service. When they join the service, it is necessary for
them to know that, if they devote their whole life to the administration of the
State, at the end of it they can go out to pasture with reasonable comfort. But I
would like to remind them of this, that that guarantee is only worth anything if
the Constitution exists. Where a State is destroyed in the process of revolution,
the State that succeeds does not necessarily honour the obligations of the
precedent system. We have a vested interest to see that this State does not
collapse.

5. So to those who have a better nature, I say, "Play your part in the
building up of a more egalitarian society." History has given them a singularly
important role. By the process of elimination through Malayanisation, they have
filled up all the key positions of the apparatus of the State. And it is the business
of this State, if it is to survive to bridge the inequalities of the past, to bring
about the order and justice of a more equal society of the future.

6. To those who are only concerned with their personal interest, I say this:
If we lose this battle, they will also lose. For unless we are able to build through
the processes of a democratic system a more equal and just society, then all the
pensions and the pastures in the Constitution are gone.

7. We are fully aware of what we have inherited. Two of the Ministers of

this Government were members of the civil service. We know that we have got a
10-horse power engine to carry a ten-ton load. This is the real dilemma of this
Government - that the administration has got just as much as the best in the
service can put up, and that best, through no fault of theirs, is unequal to the
demands which our people have made upon the Government. It is our business
therefore to try, first, to supercharge the engine by adding the talent and skill -
both executive and managerial; by importing, if necessary, expert technical
knowledge and know - how. But the long-term objective is even more important,
that of building up an engine of more than 10-horse power.

8. The civil service is now open for competition to all streams of education
- English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil educated - and we will take from all the

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streams, the best of them all. There is nothing new in this either. We have
clearly told them what was coming, and I remember that in Fullerton Square in
the midst of an election campaign I told them of the future. I said then, and I say
now, that they must be prepared to compete on equal terms. A system in which
because the white man spoke English and therefore he liked best the near white
man who spoke English, and after that the local man who spoke English, cannot
be sustained in a situation where the boss has changed. The boss is no longer the
Secretary of State for the Colonies. The boss collectively are the miserable
hawkers and labourers, teachers, clerks - the people of Singapore. And once we
are committed to one man, one vote, regardless of colour, creed, wealth and
knowledge, then we are committed to a more just and equal society. I say to the
civil service and their present rather inept leaders who have begun what they
believe to be a revolutionary movement against the Government, that if nothing
else more catastrophic happens to them than the loss of allowances in the top
brackets of the civil service, and the fact that they have to face fiercer
competition from the non-English educated members of the service, then they
should go down on their bended knees and thank the gods that their souls have
been spared.

9. That brings me to the third theme - democracy as expounded by the

Member for Farrer Park. I want to preface my remarks with this reminder of the
past, that the English educated, because their avenue of information has been
confined to the English Press, have been unable to face up to the real issues that
the country is faced with. The English Press has played a diabolical role in the
last few years. They believe that the march of time can be stopped by scaring the
English-educated. Nobody really seriously believed that my Ministers and I
were a gang of lunatics. In fact, after we won, they took scrupulous pains to list
all the virtues that we possess, and which they already knew a long time ago.
But they systematically distorted and misrepresented the issues.

10. The only people who are prepared to face the facts are the people in the
leadership of the P.A.P. We pursued our line not for reasons of political
opportunism but because we believed it was the only way, the only sensible and
sane way, to prevent all that was good in the past from being destroyed by all
that was bad in the past. I would like to say that this is a government with long
memories. We do not pursue petty personal vendettas, but what we say as a
matter of policy we stand by.

11. Our first task, so far as the English-educated are concerned, is to pose the
issues to them so that they will see the stark realities of this situation. And I say
to the civil servants that what is at stake is not just their pay allowances, the
principle of collective bargaining and negotiation, or their pensions but what is
at stake is the survival of the democratic State. And the problem arises in this
way. As a result of the aberrations of past colonial governments, masses of

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people were allowed to come into this country to help provide cheap labour, to
exploit the national resources. All the immigrants fended for themselves, and it
is a credit to them that they did it so wonderfully. They provided their own
schools. They provided their own systems of education and upbringing. And
they provided their offspring with a complete set of cultural values which they
thought proper. And the misfortune we are faced with now is that there are
broadly four large linguistic and cultural groups with different sets of values. If
it was a question of one man one vote in the early days where only the
English educated voted, this problem would not arise. The problem arises in an
acute form when all the other language-groups vote. As far as Malaya and
Singapore are concerned, the bulk of the population are either Chinese or Malay
educated, and the bulk of the present leadership of both the Federation and
Singapore are English educated.

12. Sir, may I assure the Member for Farrer Park, two Ministers of the
Government side studied and took examinations in Constitutional Law and
Practice the Rule of Law, and both passed their examinations. Six of the nine
Ministers spent part of their education in colleges abroad, and are quite familiar
and conversant with the rules and principles, and the trappings and the forms of
the democratic system. But all the Ministers and Assemblymen. English-
educated, Chinese educated, Malay educated, Tamil educated, understand one
fundamental rule, and that is, if a thing is not made suitable for the people, that
thing is useless. And I put the issue as simply and plainly as this: that the mass
of the Chinese educated and the Malay educated and the Tamil educated and
even the English educated in this country have never read Dicey on the Rule of
Law, or Wade and Phillips, and have never heard about Hansard. If they decide
that the democratic system which they hear has come into being after
independence in the Federation and internal self-government in Singapore, does
not make any difference to their lives, if it only perpetuates the follies, the
stupidities, the inequalities, and the injustices of the past, then at the end of five
years, or maybe ten years, we have only ourselves to blame if they decide that
this system is unsuitable. And if we try to pay attention to forms and not to
substance, then surely we will fail.

13. Let me reduce to its barest essentials what we on this side of the House
believe to be the democratic system. It means a system where each man has as
much a right to live in this world as the next man, and where it is possible for
the majority of the people to bring about changes in the social order without
resort to force. Translated into political terms, it means giving one man one vote,
and allowing him to decide who should govern, and how they should govern for
a specified number of years. It means the right at the end of that specified
number of years again to pass judgment on that government and on others who
may present themselves for the mandate of the people.

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14. Let me tell the Member for Farrer Park that there is nothing which this
Government does that is undemocratic if it is within the framework of this
Constitution, and that is, on the hypothesis that this Constitution is democratic;
and I have not heard any of the Members on the other side say that this
Constitution is not democratic, let alone the old Progressive Party loyalist, the
Member for Farrer Park, But despite all the democratic forms and procedures
and the spirit which this Constitution tries to provide for democracy,
fundamentally it is not a democratic Constitution: because there is an over-
riding provision which gives the British raj the right to revoke it. I have not
heard the Member for Farrer Park complain against this. At the bottom of his
heart he is thinking that if anything goes wrong, well, what to do. He will be
rescued by the British raj. He is not complaining about this. That is the reason
why I say this: in his preoccupation with forms, the outward manifestations, the
robes and regalia of democracy, the rules and by-laws, he has forgotten the
fundamentals, and that is, the will of the people of the majority shall prevail, on
how they should be governed and by whom. And at periodic intervals they will
re-assert their right to decide.

15. I tell the Members opposite quite frankly that if you try to run the
undiluted, the British-styled democratic system in the context of South-East
Asia, you will collapse. It is not possible. I have not heard the Member for
Farrer Park nor the Member for Cairnhill say that the Preservation of Public
Security Ordinance is undemocratic. According to the book of rules of the
British type Constitutions, it is undemocratic. But if you pay just lip-service to
little by-rules, the frills of a democratic state, then you have no chance of
survival. You must try to translate into actual reality the basic objectives of a
democratic system within the conditions which exist in Singapore, in Malaya, in
the milieu of South-East Asia in revolt. In the whole history of South-East Asia,
there has never been an epoch where there is so much ferment and turmoil as
has taken place since 1945-a whole system of society crushed and crumpled up.
Many of our neighbours have yet to find the final form in which they will be
governed. Let me read this for the benefit of the Member for Farrer Park. I am
reading now from a very sober Sunday newspaper, The Observer of London,
from their correspondent in South-East Asia; 14th June, 1959, page 9, where it
says:

16. "The Lights Are All Going Out All Over Asia

17. For those who believe that political salvation lies only in political
democracy as it is understood in the West, the lights of Asia are one by one
waning and going out. Military leaders have taken effective power off the hands
of politicians in Pakistan, Thailand and Burma. Indonesia is on the brink of a
constitutional revolution designed to give President Soekarno and the Army the
real control of national affairs. In Laos the Conservative Prime Minister now

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enjoys special powers which reduce Parliament to a cypher. The general

elections which are due to be held in three different countries of South-East Asia
this year have been postponed."

18. Let me read out another passage:

19. "After the war nationalist movements gain momentum and the Asian
countries won or were granted their independence, but the humiliation did not
end there, Their new, often jerry-built imitations of Western democratic systems
were in too many cases exploited by opportunistic politicians, wrecked by
bureaucratic boneheads and plundered by the pocket-lines. Economies ran down
the hill, corruption and inefficiency poisoned national administrations, and the
result is chaos."

20. I say without any hesitation that if we have to make variations and
adaptations to the forms and trappings and the frills of a democratic system, we
shall do so, because the business of a government is to govern and we have the
mandate to govern. What is more, we had the courage to put down what we
intended to do and had a clear mandate on it, unlike Members on the opposite
side.

21. If we preoccupy ourselves with forms and procedures then we shall all
be wasting a great deal of time in the next five years, because some of the forms
and procedures which may have to be followed may not be in accordance with
the best traditions of Westminster or the British Government at Whitehall. But I
give you this assurance. That this is a Government which is fully aware of the
essentials of a democratic state, which it believes are worth preserving, and at
the same time is sufficiently knowledgeable of the realities of the situation to try
and make the system work in the context of South-East Asia. I would tell the
Members opposite this - more important than the dead letters of a Constitution
are the actors who bring it to life, If you have Mr Mak Pak Shee trying to play
Hamlet, or worse, Chew Swee Kee trying to play Shylock, then even
Shakespeare becomes a farce.

22. Finally, your system is as good as the best men who operate it. And let
us never forget that. For over thirty years, the only political Party that constantly
organised to get the best actors on its side was the Communist Party of Malaya.
And they recruited and trained them. The nationalist Parties did not emerge until
1945. If you want to play the democratic drama, then you must have the
dramatis personae to make it worthy of listening by the people to whom you are
presenting it. That is really the crux of the problem. I say, without the slightest
immodesty on the part of my colleagues and myself, that we are the only group
that has the coherence, drive and the convictions to build up something more
than ourselves a democratic, socialist movement within a revolutionary

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situation. The issue is as simple as this. If we do not continue recruiting as we

have done in the past five years, then we shall eventually wither and die, It is
only if we recruit and we grow in strength within the next five years that we can
face the world at the end of it, with the aplomb and assurance as befits a Party
which has dedicated itself to the interests of the mass of its people. And you can
only recruit if you convince those whom you intend to recruit that you are
recruiting for a worthwhile cause.

23. Let me draw one lesson for the Members on the other side. There is not
one single Member - apart from the U.M.N.O. Members who are representing a
portion of the Malay people - who represent the people. They represent a group
which is spent, lost and exhausted. Why have they got no Chinese-educated with
them? Because they are unable in their preoccupation with mayoral robes, rules
and procedures, to bring home the message that the democratic system can work
in the interest of the majority of the people, if there are men and women of
integrity, honesty, drive and purpose to make the system work.

24. I tell the Member for Tanglin this - that going to Sunday school once a
week to preach is no good. Go down and work for the people every day of the
week if you want to bring home to them the fact that the elected representatives
are worth electing, and that the system that elected representatives are working
is worth the keeping.

25. If the power of the State which we now control is used not to enrich the
lives of many of its people but to line the pockets of a few of the ruling
hierarchy, then verily we shall all perish.

26. In conclusion, Mr Speaker, Sir, may I say that the P.A.P. Government
had put its cards on the table before it assumed office. We did it over three
months of campaigning beginning from the famous day of 15th February at
Hong Lim. It was there the Deputy Prime Minister said things and set off a chain
reaction which finally ended with the routing of the rogues and scallywags that
used to haunt this Chamber. We have placed before the people the mandate that
we sought of them. We did not try to deceive anyone. We know exactly what is
expected of us because we have made these promises. Unlike the previous
Government, we gave no hostages to fortune. Plainly and simply, we took the
stand which we knew was necessary and in the interest of the survival of the
democratic state in order, first, to cleanse the system of the evils of the past, and
to retrieve some of the liberalism, the tolerance which were the good things we
should carry into the future.

27. I tell the Opposition this. They provide us, and I hope they will continue
to provide us in the next five years, with that vivid contrast which will throw up
the virtues of the P.A.P. into magnificence. But if we fail, let me tell them that

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this is not a constitutional position of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Democrats

and Republicans in America, or Tories and Labour in Britain. If we fail, and we
are unable to make the system work, it is not they who are going to come back.
They will be fleeing for their lives, because behind us there is no other
alternative which is prepared to work the democratic system. And therefore, in
the last analysis, if we fail then brute force returns.

28. I am sure no one in this House nor any one in the country would want
this to happen. And therefore, I say to all those who wish us ill, that if we fail,
woe betide them. But to those who wish us well, I give this message. This is a
Government consisting of people who put their ideas, their ideals and the
welfare of their people above themselves, This is a Party which has the courage
of its convictions, which is prepared to pursue what it believes to be right in the
interest of the people without deviating for opportunist reasons.

29. This will be an era which will light up the dark pages of the history of
Singapore, post 1945. If we succeed, as we intend to, in building a climate not
only of national solidarity but a climate in which the ordinary people begin to
believe that institutions of Government in the country are run by people who are
loved and revered because they are working for the mass of the people, then we
will have done a service, not only to ourselves, our Party and our movement, but
we will also have done a service to the democratic socialist movement. Until the
advent of the P.A.P. no group proclaiming the democratic socialist cause ever
struck roots in the mass of the people. Let me say, Mr Speaker, Sir, judge us not
in the next five years by the standards of the British House of Commons and the
British Government in Whitehall. Judge our performance in the context of our
objectives and the realities of our situation, and at the end of five years you will
certainly not find us wanting in courage, in skill, and in sincerity.

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