MALAYSIA Sat,—The Spectator's views on Malaysia are tenable and may
prove correct. As, however, certain facts which conflict with the orthodox standpoint on Malaysian Federation have not been fully stated in any quarter I have seen, it would be well to weigh them before becoming quite so positive.
(i) United Malaysia may be 'a perfectly viable political policy' (how is something viable politi- cally?), but it was openly conceived, not as a viable policy, but as a way to outvote the electorate of Singapore.
(ii) The new Malaysia depends upon a Govern- ment in Malaya which was returned on a highly selective franchise and might well be hard put to it to maintain itself without the presence of large and costly British garrisons, which does not make it any more popular with its own peoples. (iii) None of the three Borneo territories con- sulted their electorate on the question. The only indication of opinion was the last free election in Brunei, in which the party opposed to the present Sultan and to 'Malaysia' won every seat.
The new Malaysia may become popular, but at present it is opposed by almost all the younger generation, the labour unions, the students and the junior officers whose influence is paramount in con- temporary Asia. It depends for its support on the wealthier and older elements—rather a weather- cock body, who were almost all pro-Japanese in the war years; and on the peasant population so far as it is not yet organised in the rubber-tappers' and tin-miners- unions. These have not, so far, proved very effective buttresses against any Asian wind of change.
Added to this is, of course, the doubtful wisdom of antagonising a more or less united and con- tiguous Indonesia of eighty millions for the sake of a distant and equally divided Malaya of eight millions. It would seem obvious to some of us who have lived lately in these countries that the more equitable solution would be to unite the three Borneo territories into one new country within the Commonwealth, as proposed by Mr. Azahari, leader of the recent revolt that needed British troops to suppress, and then leave it to the peoples of Borneo themselves to decide whether or not to federate with Malaya and Singapore.
It is certainly news to me that Indonesia has ever claimed North Borneo, or any part of it.
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