The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew

by Lee Kuan Yew

next day, the Utusan carried a story quoting the Menteri Besar of Selangor, headlined “Lee Kuan Yew is the enemy of the people of Malaya”, and another Malay paper, the Berita Harian, reported that the Menteri Besar of Perak had labelled me “the most dangerous threat to the security of the country.” They were working things up to fever pitch. The attacks reached a climax when Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad, an UMNO MP (later, prime minister of Malaysia), denounced the PAP in the federal parliament as “pro-Chinese, communist-oriented and positively anti-Malay”, saying Singapore had retained multilingualism while paying only lip-service to the national language, and that “In some police stations, Chinese is the official language, and statements are taken in Chinese.” The national language schools, he said, were the worst-treated on the island, and until very recently had been given only the most primitive facilities.