QUESTION: HOW IS MALAYSIA & HISTORY DISHONOURED?
“To its creators Merdeka was never a project to found a political order of dubious legitimacy.
Those whose actions suggest otherwise dishonour Malaysia and its history.”
Is this correct statement to make about Malayan and Borneo/Kalimantan history?
IS HISTORY “SQUEAKY CLEAN” ?
The writer writer’s view is based on mistaken assumption at best that “Malaysia” and its history started “squeaky clean”.
History is never “squeaky clean”. The history of “Malaysia” well illustrates this point.
Malaysia itself was created through armed force by the British after suppressing the anti-Malaysia Brunei uprising of Dec 8 1962 and forcibly annexing Sabah and Sarawak into Malayan neo-colonial rule. Malaysia was born through death and blood shed of those who resisted the British neo-colonial plan. It was not squeaky clean but dirty.
Malaysia was entirely a neo-colonial creation of the British/Malayan regimes to defend British colonial interests in the 1960s against the background of local independence struggles. The “Malaysia Plan” was a plan to politically consolidate the 3 former British Borneo/Kalimantan colonies under the rule of the puppet Malayan regime installed in power in Malaya in 1957 for the same reason.
Typically the British installed their Parliamentary system but as it turned out in so many former British colonies this system became dominated by political parties installed by the British after suppressing the peoples’ movements for independence.
This installation took place under 2 sets of circumstances. In Malaya the Communist Party of Malaya (the CPM) aided by the British had fought the anti-Japanese war and at the end of the war the CPM was the main armed force in control of Malaya.
THE MALAYAN INDEPENDENCE STRUGGLE
The CPM at this stage made the historic and strategic error of not declaring Malayan independence and thought it could work for a peaceful resolution by allowing the British to return to Malaya. This was the end of the CPM as the British through its appointed successors under UMNO’s Tunku Abdul Rahman basically pushed the CPM in a corner in the Baling Talks by demanding the CPM surrender.
The CPM had demanded participation in a democratic election (which it would likely have won) in preparation for independence but was rejected by the British side. Malayan history was thrown into the chaos of a anti-British liberation cum civil war lasting from 1948 to 1987. The CPM fought valiantly but it had lost both the political advantage and the armed resistance.
If the British and UMNO had been genuine about peace talks and prepared to allow CPM participation in the independence talks and elections the history of parliamentary democracy in Malaya would certainly have been more squeaky clean.
Thus on 31 August 1957, the UMNO regime having shown its true reactionary nature was installed in power by the British. The Malayan poet laureate Samad said UMNO did not win “Malayan independence” but was handed power by the British.
THE NORTH KALIMANTAN INDEPENDENCE STRUGGLE
The struggle for independence in the former British colonies of Brunei Sabah and Sarawak was for their own national independence without Malaya or Singapore.
In the 1960s when the British announced their “Malaysia Plan” through their mouth piece Tunku Abdul (hence became the self-proclaimed “Father of Malaysia”) the North Borneon anti-colonial political forces immediately opposed this as a neo-colonial scheme to cheat the people of their independence. They demanded a unitary state of North Kalimantan comprising the 3 Borneo colonies.
The 1962 anti-Malaysia Brunei Uprising and the independence resistance war in Sarawak till 1990 attested to the people’s desire for real independence from foreign rule.
Thus in this fashion history has been dishonoured by the British and their Malayan puppets.