Editor's Pick

ON 3 JUNE 1959, Lee Kuan Yew, the general secretary of the People’s Action Party, is congratulated by supporters after winning the first general election in Singapore following the institution of self-government. The PAP won 43 out of the 51 legislative seats, with Lee being sworn in, two days later, as prime minister. He would not relinquish the post until 1990, and the PAP still holds a supermajority in the legislature.

In 1946, following the end of Japanese occupation, the British dissolved the Straits Settlements, a colony comprising Singapore, Penang and Malacca. While the latter two joined the new Malayan Union, Singapore was hived off into a separate colony. Two years later, the colonial authorities instituted a legislative council, with a majority of seats held by nominated members. An all-party delegation to London held negotiations, in 1957, for a constitution that devolved most powers, barring internal security, to a fully elected legislative assembly.

For the 1959 election, 13 parties fielded 194 candidates, with around half a million people voting. It was primarily a contest between two leftist parties: the PAP, which controlled the city council and several trade unions, and the Singapore People’s Alliance, the successor to the Labour Front government that had ushered in the new constitution. During the campaign, the PAP relentlessly highlighted the LF’s corruption. Meanwhile the SPA, with the support of the English press, accused the PAP of being an agent of international communism that would demolish civil liberties and force Singaporeans into labour camps.

Lee insisted that his party envisaged “a democratic socialist Malaya” and opposed “reactionaries” such as Syngman Rhee of South Korea and Chiang Kai-shek of Taiwan. In 1963, however, he initiated Operation Coldstore, incarcerating without trial over a hundred people suspected of communist sympathies. The PAP gradually turned conservative, quitting the Socialist International, in 1971, after threats of expulsion over human-rights violations.