Constitutional Problems of Malaysia

Abstract

PROBLEMS of getting constituted may perhaps be ranked among a country's constitutional problems. Malaysia had its share of antenatal complications. First, there was the task, undertaken by the local government, of selling to the electorate of Singapore the desirability of mergingwith the Federation of Malaya. This ended, so far as overt political formalities were concerned, with a referendum in August 1962 in which the voters were compelled to choose one of three modes of merger: as a State on special terms negotiated by the Singapore Government, as a State on equal terms with the original eleven States of the Federation or as a State on terms not less favourable than those to be settled later for the Borneo territories. The only method of objecting to the merger on principle, voting being compulsory, was to drop a spoilt paper in the ballot box. 1 Some people did this, but 70 per cent, voted for the Singapore Government's proposals. Thus did the Singaporeans* who are mostly of Chinese extraction, demonstrate their readiness to be subsumed into a polity where official policy is to grant special privileges to Malayans of the Malay community. Secondly, the Borneo territories had to be persuaded. After a favourable fact-finding survey by the Cobbold Commission and favourable elections, after an armed rebellion in Brunei, after much negotiation in various places and after a United Nations inquiry, Brunei stayed out and Sarawak and North Borneo (now renamed Sabah) joined in. Thus was the influx of Chinese Singaporeans counterbalanced by non-Chinese Borneans. 1 t This is the text of a lecture delivered in the Middle Temple Hall on March 16, 1964, under the auspices of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.