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The book, which has a print run of 30,000, will be available at leading
bookstores after the launch on Sept 8 at $39.90 a copy before GST. THE man was a key player in the formative years of the People's Action Party (PAP).
He had been with the party almost from the start and was privy to many of its goings-on.
So it was natural that Straits Times writers Sonny Yap, Richard Lim
and Leong Weng Kam identified him as a key player they must interview
when they started work on a book on the PAP.
Unfortunately, the retired politician was known for being reticent
and guarded, and for keeping his views to himself since he left
politics in the 1980s.
The team's initial overtures were rebuffed. It took more than six
months of effort before he agreed to speak, Mr Yap, 59, tells Insight.
Every now and then, the writers would call up a contact who knew him
personally, and the reply would be that he was still pondering over it.
Then one day, they had a lucky break. He asked for their list of questions.
But it was followed by months of silence.
'In the meantime, whenever we interviewed or met anyone who knew the
subject, we would ask them to intercede on our behalf, to convince him
that we had no hidden agenda, that the book was not another exercise in
PAP propaganda, that we would be fair, objective and balanced,' says Mr
Yap.
Finally, one night, a contact called to say the subject would like to meet Mr Yap for lunch. That was the breakthrough.
'It was a getting-to-know-you session in which I tried my best to win his confidence,' recalls Mr Yap.
'After that, the first interview was arranged, and we went on for
three more interviews and several lunch discussions where he warmly
opened up on his role in the PAP. Thanks to his inputs, Men In White is
so much more complete, balanced and richer,' he says.
Persuaded by Goh Chok Tong
IT WAS not just that key player - plus many others who played a part
in the PAP's colourful past - who needed to be cajoled, convinced and
won over.
Mr Yap himself had to be persuaded - by then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong - to work on the book.
He had said no when asked by then-Straits Times editor Leslie Fong.
'I didn't want to wind up my journalistic career by doing a PAP
propaganda book,' says Mr Yap, who has more than 30 years of experience
in journalism.
He was with New Nation, the defunct afternoon tabloid, from 1971 to 1982, before moving to The Straits Times.
Over tea at the Istana, Mr Goh assured him the book would be a
Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) publication, and was meant to fill a
void in Singapore's history for the younger generation.
'He assured me I would have editorial autonomy over the project, and
the PAP would be involved only in rendering research assistance,'
recounts Mr Yap.
He said yes.
Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew also repeatedly stressed to the writers
throughout the book project, when they interviewed him, that the book
was their version of the PAP story, and not the party's.
'Indeed, confidence-building and convincing people that the book was
not PAP propaganda were the prerequisites to clinching many of the
interviews,' Mr Yap tells Insight.
'Whether they were former PAP or non-PAP players, we knew we had to
overcome their initial reactions of scepticism, if not cynicism, doubt,
suspicion, belligerence and, occasionally, outright hostility.'
Several former PAP politicians, who were still embittered over how
they were unceremoniously dropped, said it was pointless to talk about
the past and that they wanted to move on.
One former PAP stalwart, who helped to rebuild the party during the
big split of 1961, slammed down the phone on the writers, saying he had
nothing more to do with the party.
In 1961, leftist elements broke away from the party and formed
Barisan Sosialis. They included 35 out of 51 branches, and 19 out of 23
branch secretaries.
There were also former party members who gave scraps of information
on the phone, and said they would give a fuller account when they met
the writers.
But they never responded again to them.
Some agreed to an interview but did not turn up at the arranged time and place.
Others were extremely cautious, and insisted that every quote used in the book had to be checked back with them.
Getting former leftists to agree to interviews was even more challenging, says Mr Yap.
'They assumed that we were engaged in yet another exercise to deify the PAP and demonise the opposition.'
Some asked the writers: 'Do you know we had been detained by the PAP
Government for many years? Why should we help you do a book on the PAP?'
Others asked if the writers were intelligence agents trying to pry more information out of them to use against them.
Some demanded to know whether the team would print what they said.
'Some questioned our questions, some questioned the premises underpinning our questions,' recalls Mr Yap.
'How do you define a communist?' and 'Why do you describe so-and-so as a leftist?' were but two questions they encountered.
Yet others took issue with the writers' knowledge and ability to do the book.
Mr Yap remembers being ushered into the home of a former Barisan
Sosialis official, who gestured to a long table with books on Marx,
Engels and Lenin, rows of Hansard volumes which carried the verbatim
proceedings of legislative assembly sessions in the 1960s, and stacks
of speeches and documents.
Seeking out former leftists
'HE SAID rather sternly, 'You can't possibly be qualified to write
the PAP story until you have read all these. If you don't read them,
how can you grasp the context of my replies to your questions?'' Mr Yap
recounts the conversation.
Another former prominent leftist and political detainee grilled him for 45 minutes before beginning the interview.
It turns out he wanted to check Mr Yap's knowledge of Singapore politics and discern his leanings and biases.
The interviewee said he had dumped every book on the PAP into the
dustbin because whenever he gave interviews to the authors, he found
the information given was used to vilify him and the leftist movement.
Mr Leong, 55, was also able to draw out former Mandarin-speaking
leftists in Singapore and abroad, with his command of the Chinese
language.
A big help was a series of articles on former politicians from the
early years, he says. Called Life After Politics, the series was done
shortly before he started on the book. For the series, Mr Leong spoke
to a number of former leftists and won their trust and confidence with
his balanced portrayals of their life experiences.
Many of them put in a good word for him and helped him locate
several left-wing leaders of the PAP who had either quietly retired
here or had fled Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s.
'Often, one interview would lead to another,' he recalls.
Slowly, insights unfolded on key developments in the party's history, like the plots by leftists to seize control.
Former Barisan Sosialis leader Fong Swee Suan gave the team the
names of people who were deported and are now living in Hong Kong.
Mr Leong also spent a week tracking down and interviewing former
leftists and members of the Malayan Communist Party in the peace
villages in southern Thailand.
He travelled with Straits Times executive photographer Wong Kwai Chow, 56.
The interviews were an eye-opener, he says.
The experience of a key leftist in exile there, Mr Chan Sun Wing, a
former top aide to Mr Lee Kuan Yew, forms the prologue of the book.
Mr Leong also met former teenage Chinese schoolgirls in pigtails, who were part of the leftist movement here.
'After more than 50 years, those I met in 2003 were frail (some could hardly walk), and in their 60s and 70s.
'One of them told me she was the daughter of a rich businessman in
Singapore, living in a big mansion with servants at home and ate very
good food every day. But she gave up all that to join the leftist
movement, and went underground when security officers were after her,'
he recounts.
She, with many others, escaped to Indonesia and later joined her
compatriots as armed guerillas in jungles along the Malaysian-Thai
border.
Says Mr Leong: 'They were young and innocent and idealistic, and for that they paid a very high price.
'To this day, they do not think it was wrong,' he adds.
Mr Cheong Yip Seng, former editor-in-chief of SPH's English and
Malay Newspapers Division, who oversaw much of the work on the book,
says he was very pleased that many of the left-wing leaders agreed,
some after much persuasion, to be interviewed.
'Nobody has told a non-partisan story of the PAP. It was long overdue,' he says.
'Here was a chance to get a version of the history from the defeated
faction of the PAP, the radical left who came so close to winning. If
we did not reach out to them, their voices would have been suppressed
forever,' he adds.
'By any yardstick, it was a gripping tale. I had lived through part
of that history as a journalist and know it had all the ingredients of
a thriller,' he says.
Mr Cheong also sees the book as a way to reach out to younger
Singaporeans. 'My sense is that they have only a vague idea of how
Singapore got here,' he adds.
The book began life in two parts. Mr Yap and Mr Leong worked on
telling the story of the party's early years, while Mr Lim explained
how the party consolidated its hold on Singapore.
As the book neared completion, they decided to add a third part to examine the party's longevity.
'I was sad we were not able to reach a few, including Mr Lim Chin Siong. He had died before we started,' says Mr Cheong.
Mr Fang Chuang Pi, who led the communist underground in Singapore at
the time, died in Hat Yai, Thailand, in 2004 before the team could
reach him.
Ong Eng Guan stays mum
THERE were also a handful of party stalwarts who resolutely declined to be interviewed.
Among them was the first mayor of Singapore, Mr Ong Eng Guan.
Mr Leong visited his office to speak to him, and managed only to put
in a word with his wife who said she would get him to call back.
He never did.
Many key players, however, shared their stories willingly, and
extended their help and assistance in recommending and persuading
former comrades to speak.
They helped the writers to get in touch with past players lost in the mist of time, and gave them access to their memorabilia.
'At their age, they knew that if they didn't give their side of the story, it would pass into eternal oblivion,' notes Mr Yap.
But one major challenge was that many of the subjects interviewed were in their 70s, 80s and even 90s.
Their memories were fading, if not failing. As a result, the writers
had to fill in the blanks and counter-check what the subjects said
against other accounts and research.
'Often, we had to jolt their memories. Some asked for newspaper clippings to help them refresh their memories,' recalls Mr Yap.
'We were often confronted with conflicting and contradictory
accounts, and trying to reconcile them posed a tremendous challenge for
the team.'
They had to cross-check recollections and details with other interviews, news reports and records.
But notes of their early eventful meetings could not be located with
any of the founding members or with the party headquarters. The notes
could have been destroyed to avoid them falling into the hands of the
Special Branch, misplaced when the party headquarters moved, or taken
away by defectors when the party split.
The lack of records left the writers, in some cases, with no way of
ascertaining whose version was right, such as how the founders came up
with the party logo.
So, they opted to reflect the various individuals' views on the matter and left it at that.
Still, the authors say the book would have been harder to write if
it were done, say, 10 years earlier. In this case, the distance of time
helped.
'Former leftists may not have opened up earlier,' says Mr Leong.
Even as the writers were busy arranging interviews, the team of
researchers led by former Straits Times journalist Leong Ching, 40, was
hard at work.
They trawled the National Archives and the archives of unions and
universities, tracked down people the writers wanted to interview, and
hunted down odd pieces of information for close to four years. They
also combed through Malay- and Chinese-language newspapers which
reported on the PAP's internal struggles.
Others on the research team were Ms Goh Sue Lin and Ms Tan Mui Ling,
both 29, graduates from the National University of Singapore who also
helped to provide translations of Chinese reports.
Veteran journalist Sia Boon So, who is fluent in English, Chinese
and Malay, was also on the team and translated many Malay newspaper
reports.
Berita Harian and Tamil Murasu journalists also helped in explaining Malay and Tamil materials.
Ms Leong notes that there were some disappointments - such as when
the families of key players declined to give the team access to their
taped interviews deposited with the National Archives.
As a younger Singaporean, she felt that the climate of political
awakening in the 1950s and 1960s made the process of research exciting.
'I spent hours in the dark halls of the oral history department,
listening to the voices and reading the transcripts of men long dead,
describing their dreams and passions, and their version of what
happened,' she says.
'Politics in those days was literally a matter of life and death - and many lost their lives in the struggle,' she says.
Ms Leong, a PhD candidate at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public
Policy, adds: 'It has been said that history is written by the victors.
Actually, in the course of doing the research for this book, I realise
that history is written by those who take the trouble and have the
resources and the will to strive for a more perfect understanding.
'Working towards providing a complete version of history is not
possible, but I believe the resources SPH put into this book make this
as close as possible to any historically accurate version now or in
future,' she says.
Ms Leong notes that while the early years of the party were rich in
stories, its later years were nearer what people would treasure and
remember.
'What makes a good story doesn't always make good public policy,' she quips.
Changes after 1984 election
MR LIM, 60, admits he had an easier task persuading people to talk, as many PAP leaders and MPs were forthcoming.
PAP ministers, in particular MM Lee, Senior Minister Goh and Prime
Minister Lee Hsien Loong gave a considerable amount of their time in
several interviews with the writers.
Mr Lim worked on the chapters which looked at the years when the party was firmly in control.
At times, politicians shared bits of information that had never been made public.
The challenge, he notes, was trying to make the narrative nearly as exciting as the chapters on the party's early years.
It helped that the party gave him access to its confidential
post-mortem report of the 1984 General Election, which marked a turning
point in the PAP's post-independence history.
'It was a no-holds-barred report,' says Mr Lim, who saw in it a
blueprint for the PAP's subsequent direction towards a more
consultative style.
At that election, the PAP saw a steep plunge in support: It garnered
64.8 per cent of the vote, a plunge of 12.8 per cent from the 1980
election.
Two opposition candidates - Mr J.B. Jeyaretnam in Anson and Mr Chiam
See Tong in Potong Pasir - were victorious and the PAP lost the
political dominance it had enjoyed since 1968.
'We tempted fate,' the party said in the report, which was made
public for the first time for the book. 'Had it not been for the
tremendous depth of support which PAP enjoyed, we would have been voted
out of office,' it said.
The Government had rolled out one controversial policy after another
in that election year - from steps to favour graduate mothers to a
report that proposed raising the retirement age from 55 to 60, then 65
and consequently pushing back the age when people could withdraw their
Central Provident Fund savings.
The post-mortem was put together by a team set up by then-assistant
secretary-general Goh Chok Tong, and chaired by Mr Ong Teng Cheong who
went on to become second deputy prime minister and elected president.
The report was written up by Mr Lee Hsien Loong, who was a first-time candidate.
It made recommendations on what the party should do to rebuild the
support it had enjoyed, and these proposals were reflected in many of
the changes to the PAP's style in the late 1980s to early 1990s.
The party had to revamp its image, engage people emotionally, and
stop harping on the quality of its candidates as this reinforced the
perception that its super-achievers were too removed from the ground.
But it also had to accept that 'the opposition is here to stay' -
and the party should try to maintain a large and stable majority rather
than eliminate the opposition altogether.
'Instant rapport' with white outfits
AS THE interviews progressed, Straits Times verbatim reporters Gavin
Chua, Simon Tan and Serene Ng rendered the taped voices, accents and
intonations into ready-to-use transcripts.
Over several years, they produced hundreds of transcripts.
The writers decided to use their reportorial techniques and go for a 'voices approach'.
They would speak to as many people as possible who were involved in the PAP and reflect their views and versions of events.
Mr Yap and Mr Leong worked on telling the story of the party's early
years, while Mr Lim would narrate the later years and explain how the
party consolidated its position.
By August 2006, drafts for these two parts of the book were
completed and ready to go, but Mr Cheong decided to bring the story up
to date by including recent developments, including the general
election that year.
A decision was made to do a second book on PAP governance - to trace
the origins, evolution and implementation of the key principles
underpinning the party's rule of Singapore.
But this idea was scrapped, and replaced by a third part on PAP governance and survival.
At the same time, updates and revisions were made to the earlier parts, and the writers had to do their own research.
They also settled on Men In White as the title.
Mr Yap recounts how at the PAP's inauguration at Victoria Memorial
Hall on Nov 21, 1954, many members of the audience were taken aback by
the sight of the party's founding members and convenors striding
onstage in white open-necked shirts and cotton trousers.
They had expected to see them in ties and suits. 'That struck an
instant rapport with the people, as one interviewee told me,' he says,
adding that the party whites have since been a defining element of the
PAP till today.
The drafts were completed late last year, and the final okay was
given for each and every page in June before the book went to press
this month.
Mr Cheong, who guided the team, was glad the writers produced many gripping inside stories.
'The PAP was also generous with its time, and their leaders spent many hours with the team,' he adds.
Says the book's editor, Ms Lee Mei Lin of publishing company
Marshall Cavendish which was involved in the production and design of
the book: 'Editing the book was worth every minute because there was
new information to read about and much to discover all over again.'
Says Straits Times editor Han Fook Kwang: 'It wasn't difficult supervising this project.
'The material was compelling and the writers were very seasoned. My
job was to move the project along, make sure there were no large gaps
in the story and act as a sounding board for the writers to bounce off
their ideas.'
Adds Mr Han: 'We usually think of the PAP in organisational terms, how effective it is as a party and what its ideology was.
'But if you read the book, you'll find that it's mainly about people
who believed in what they were fighting for - both for and against the
PAP leadership - and were not afraid to step forward because they
wanted a better future for Singapore.'
The writers captured this spirit, and the process of chronicling it is best reflected in their acknowledgements in the book.
They said: 'It was indeed the ride of a lifetime.'
zakirh@sph.com.sg | 
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