41 - Past Cures As Present Addictions

Summary

A dialogue about something as serious as regime change in Malaysia must examine at least two vast subjects.

Firstly, a thorough and open discussion about the historical conditions under which the Federation of Malaya, and then Malaysia, was constructed is vital to any deep and practical understanding of the strengths and failings of the political structure as it exists today.

Political solutions in times of inevitable change – as was the case in the region in the 1940s and 1950s – are about settlements between those wishing to cut losses and those seeking to maximize benefit. Those less able to make their voices heard were, simply put, left unheard. In such times, negotiations happen under threat, stress and duress; and the solution is a mixture of ad hoc measures and meticulous planning; and a blend of concession and conflict.

In Malaya in the decade after 1945, major actors included shell-shocked British colonial masters recently returned to a scene they did not and could not recognise; the Malayan communists; emergent independence movements stretching from far left to far right led by leaders surprised at their own daring and intoxicated by their apparent historical role; the sultans and rajas, and many more.

The main issues were: The Cold War; the status of the sultanates; the status of immigrants; the nature of the emerging country; the future of British power; and the timing of the transfer of power and to whom. Equally important and often forgotten is the role ideas coming out of neighbouring Indonesia played, and the impact that momentous political events happening in the former Dutch colony – especially the republican revolt in culturally related eastern Sumatra which culminated in the summary execution of aristocrats and others – had on the course of events on the peninsula.

Cutting losses for the British meant giving up the ill-fated Malayan Union almost as soon as it was announced, for fear of a social revolution also taking place in Malaya at a time when the Cold War was heating up. This, the British could not afford.

With the Federation of Malaya in place – an agreement between the British and the Malay leadership, which was highly conservative and supportive of the status quo in comparison to the Malayan Union – the war with the communists could be effectively fought.