Brunei
A correspondent writes :
THE troubles in Brunei should not have come as such a great surprise. It is early to unravel all the contributing trends—local nationalisms, Communist infiltration, winds of change from Indonesia and the Philippines and the not un- natural industrial unrest in the great Meni oilfield—but an underlying restiveness in the territories has been apparent for ten years at least.
The present Sultan is hardly obscurantist. He has not only showered public works, schools and the most magnificent of mosques upon his tiny territory, but has often stood forward as the champion of its new-found nationalism; for in- stance, in exacting from Whitehall the unpre- cedented gesture of a Constitution written in Malay. But in an Asia increasingly averse to monarchy, the present form of Protectorate has seemed steadily more of an anachronism to those young people whom the last Governor of North Borneo called 'the only force that counts in South-East Asia today'; of whom he wrote, 'To nothing that our trained mature adminis- trators say will they listen any longer.'
There is a bitter split among generations which transcends all groups, European, Eurasian, Dyak, Chinese and Malay, all over Brunei and the two British territories, Sarawak and North Borneo, that border it. To ardent youth it seems and is bound to seem increasingly galling to be used SO paternally by governments and foreign in- terests, especially in the context of socialist Indonesia to the south and the nationalist Philippines to the east.
The concentration of a large labour force in the Men i oilfield, from which there is no exit by sea or land (there are no roads and the harbour is barred by sandbanks), has been an invitation to extremism, especially with the social and racial hierarchy that governs an arti- ficial society where, as someone expressed it, 'We have the jungle behind us, the sea in front of us and a foreign employer on top of us.'
Conditions of employment are not harsh. There have certainly been mischief-makers. Still, in the future it might be policy to take more
account of the feelings of young, under- privileged, politically conscious Borneo and at least to seem to give it more say in the shaping of its destinies, whether in tying it up with a doubtfully workable Federation of 'Malaysia,' with most 'Malaysians' living outside it, or in the allocation of its fabulous mineral wealth. Quite a lot of water has been flowing down the Baram river lately.
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