The Magic Word

The Malayan jungle, for seven years a field of battle with Communist terrorists, was invaded by a strange new company last week. Instead of armored cars, mobile units rolled into the kampongs (villages) with films of hip-swinging dancing girls to draw the crowds; instead of riflemen, sweating, sport-shirted politicians arrived by bicycle, canoe and on foot over the jungle trails; instead of new orders and restrictions, catchy tunes and the magic word merdeka (independence) blared from truck-and boat-borne public-address systems; instead of police inter rogators, teams of European and Asian officials were passing out booklets in four languages entitled, "What Must I Do on Polling Day?"

The British in Malaya were engaged in a momentous experiment: they were offering the people of Malaya parliamentary democracy, a measure of self-government now, and its seemingly inevitable consequence, independence in due time. Every citizen over the age of 21 was entitled to vote, and 1,250,000 out of the eligible 1,600,000 registered to do so. The response was greatest among the Malays, much less among the native-born Chinese, who almost equal the Malays numerically now and, because of a higher birth rate, expect to outnumber them in a few years. For the 52 available seats in the Legislative Council there were 129 candidates, most of them Malays. But Chinese interest in the general election was not entirely lacking. The principal backers of the powerful Alliance Party are wealthy Chinese businessmen, although the party is largely made up of Malays. When the returns came in, the Alliance Party won 51 of the 52 seats, overwhelming the opposition Negara Party, a Malay group antagonistic to the Chinese.

The Legislative Council, in addition to its newly elected members, includes 47 members appointed by the British. But as a popularly elected body, the Alliance Party will have a far more powerful voice than that of the British appointees. President of the Alliance Party and certain to be chief minister in the new government is Prince Abdul Rahman, known as the Tengku (meaning prince in Malayan), a son of the Sultan of Kedah, a dynasty founded centuries ago by a Mongol chieftain who was shipwrecked on the Malayan coast. Tengku's mother was the daughter of a Siamese chieftain.

The Tengku was educated in England, and returning there in 1947 for a belated law degree, managed to get named as a corespondent in an English divorce case, a feat which did him no harm with his electorate. The Tengku stumped the country tirelessly on foot and by car, preaching the Alliance Party's program of complete independence in four years, and the "Malayanizing" of the public services, i.e., kicking out the British officials. But the British are not unduly worried. For all his talk, the Tengku stands for a conservative capitalist economy and the encouragement of foreign investment.

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