Federating Malaysia—A Continuous and Troubled Process

By OOI KEE BENG

Editorial for Penang Monthly, April 2014.

PM’s cover story this month is about East Malaysia, and how unknown a territory it has always been to Malaysians on the peninsula. To start with, we need to remind ourselves of how troubled the beginnings of the Federation of Malaya actually were—and I don’t only mean the Indonesian decision to initiate undeclared war against the new polity.

The situation in the region in the two decades following the end of the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia, was fragile whichever way you look at it—states were emerging without clear ideas about what nations they would represent or craft or about what territorial borders for that matter; and international communism was seriously challenging the world order in the wake of the failure by Germany, Italy and Japan to do the same.

Furthermore, the old colonial powers were in hasty retreat from the region, and were therefore fully focused on political and military rear-guard actions. America had just inherited the front position where the western world was concerned.

That is the larger picture.

The influence that global conflicts and late-colonial expediencies had on Malaysia’s constitution and history was undeniably great. However, local political, legal and notional factors impacting the nature of the new federation turn out to have left more traumatic aftereffects than regional events like the Konfrontasi or the Vietnam War have done.

Despite the close proximity and the common history, Singapore fitted quite uncomfortably into Malaya at that point. Its unionist movement and labour laws were much more developed than on the peninsular mainland; the largely Chinese population on the island outnumbered all over communities taken together by 875,000; and the two education systems were politically incompatible.

As we know, the split between the Federation of Malaysia and Singapore came in 1965 after two years of mutual enmity; and with fear of civil war in the air. Sabah and Sarawak stayed within the Federation till today.

Unlike Singapore, the states in Borneo were underpopulated and undeveloped territories, and politically underdeveloped in 1963; and when they co-founded the Federation were granted a huge overrepresentation in parliamentary seats. Singapore’s 1,750,000 persons gave it 15 members of parliament while Sabah and Sarawak together, with a population of about 850,000 would have 40. Malaya would have 104 representatives.

A racial game of numbers was obviously being played as well, stamping ethnicity deeper into the federation’s DNA.

By most accounts, the East Malaysian states were “not ready for independence”, and given the global political climate then, the powerful stakeholders thought it best to stake a claim an early over the huge expanse of land. As Tengku Abdul Rahman Putra, Malaysia’s first Prime Minister, noted:

“Time is not on our side. The important aspect of the Malaysian ideal, as I see it, is that it will enable the Borneo territories to transform their present colonial status to self-government for themselves and absolute independence in Malaya simultaneously, and baulk the Communist attempt to capture these territories.”

There was to his mind, a grave need to absorb Sabah and Sarawak in order to nurture them towards political maturity.

The case of Brunei is another convoluted story where an armed revolt was staged by A.M. Azahari, who wished for the uniting of Sabah, Brunei and Sarawak under one sultan.

These are all just part of an exciting story about colonial withdrawal from a region where nation-states were a conceptual import.

In the search for self-understanding and inspiration for enlightened policies, Malaysians—East and West—would do well to learn more about their own history.

OOI KEE BENG
* Main reference: R.S. Milne: “Malaysia: A New Federation in the Making”, pp. 76-82. In Asian Survey. Vol. 3, No. 2. A Survey of Asia in 1962: Part II (Feb, 1963). University of California Press.