Raja's education was distinguished not so much by what he learnt in school, but what he learnt, in spite of it. At the age of eight, his parents sent him to the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus in Seremban. His mother believed that nuns were gentler teachers than Brothers who believed that “sparing the rod spoiled a male child”.

Six months later, however, the Mother Superior wrote to his parents to ask that Raja be transferred to St Paul's Institution, a missionary boys’ school run by the La Salle Christian Brothers. That was how the scrappy-looking boy with the unruly hair ended up at St Paul's in Paul Street on 6 June 1923. Raja was to spend about 10 years of his most formative years at this leading mission school.

In the school, amidst its Gothic arcades, Raja the schoolboy revelled in the newfound freedom to explore new beliefs and practices, different from the natal religious tradition of his family’s. The ideas which first absorbed him came from the Biblical texts which he studied as part of his religious knowledge subject in his secondary years. “I was fascinated by the Bible,” he said. Its teachings were novel to him. They had structure, lyrical beauty, and most of all, Enlightenment values which appealed to his budding moral sensitivities — all men are equal; all men, whatever their station, can be saved.

He spent many joyful hours reading the King James version of the Bible and committing the stories to memory. Among his favourite ones were those that concerned Moses, who led the Israelites for 40 years in the desert to reach the Promised Land, and little David who beat the giant Goliath with a sling and a pebble. He read and reread them so many times that, years later, he could recite whole passages and entire stories from memory.

The young Raja proceeded to excel in religious knowledge. It turned out to be his highest-scoring subject in both the Junior Cambridge and Senior Cambridge exams. He also discovered he had a flair for the English language. His teachers encouraged him by giving him public commendations for his essays.

Raja's heart problems kept him out of action for more than two months. The heart attack took him and Piroska by surprise. Prior to this, his most serious ailment was acute laryngitis. While recuperating in hospital, he was straining at the leash. Unable to stay quietly on the sidelines during this crucial period, he continued to roll out speeches, which he asked others to deliver in his stead.

One speech at the second anniversary of the Kampong Glam community centre was a scorching diatribe against “reckless and destructive trouble-makers” out to create suspicion and disunity among the various races. He accused them of engaging in “loud talk and irresponsible acts, including hooliganism”. While he did not name them, it was clear he was referring to the pro-communists who continued to rage that the Chinese were being sold out to the Malays. He said: “These brainless men are but the tools of more ambitious politicians who, having failed to come to power by constitutional means, hope to come to power in the wake of racial violence.”

He called on the people to make sure that its multiracial harmony was maintained, and to make clear to the race-mongers that “we regard them with the aversion we feel for plague-carrying rats”. The more the people expressed their contempt for race-mongers, the less inclined would they be to spread their “dangerous and stupid racialist propaganda”, he insisted.

Clearly, his harrowing brush with mortality had not mellowed him. As soon as his doctors cleared him for active work in early August, he flung himself back into the last-ditch battle for merger with increased ferocity.

He resumed his attendance at the weekly cabinet meeting on 14 August 1962. The focus was on the referendum for merger on 1 September 1962, and into this campaign, he would concentrate all his energies. The period leading up to merger was a fundamental turning point in the political history of Singapore and marked a crucial milestone in Raja's maturation as a politician.

Raja pored over the map of the imagined Malaysia as a suitor might gaze at the photograph of his intended beloved. These days, he could think of little else but Malaysia. He traced its contours. The island of Borneo lies to the east of Singapore. The southern section of the island, Kalimantan, was part of Sukarno's Indonesia. Above it sat the states of Sarawak, Brunei, and Sabah — the three North Borneo territories invited to give up their colonial status to join Malaya and Singapore in matrimony to form the union of Malaysia. But as in love, nothing was certain.

Raja was concerned about the reluctance shown by the North Borneo territories to the Malaysia plan. These territories, covered mostly in jungle, were fearful of being subjected to the control of Malaya, which they regarded as a foreign power. Relatively backward in their development, they were particularly apprehensive that their people — especially their indigenous groups — would be subjugated by Malay dominance under the pro-Malay government in Kuala Lumpur. Their suspicions posed more than a hitch: Should they refuse to join Malaysia, Singapore would be left in a lurch. For the Tunku would almost certainly walk away from merger with Singapore on its own.

Unwilling to submit Singapore's fate to the impersonal forces of history, Raja set out to woo North Borneo to embrace Malaysia. The effort would take all his ardour and ingenuity. His opportunity came when Singapore hosted the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) on 21 July 1961. As leader of the Singapore delegation, he called on his reservoir of diplomatic charm to persuade the leaders in the Borneo territories to view Malaysia in a more positive light.

He spent much time with the likes of Donald Stephens, a Kadazan Eurasian proprietor and editor of the Sabah Times and founding leader of the newly-formed United National Kadazan Organisation (UNKO), and Ong Kee Hui, chairman of the Chinesedominated Sarawak United People's Party (SUPP). He built a good rapport with them.

Behind closed doors, Raja assured them that Singapore would stand up to any unfair pressure on them, and that they would not be bulldozed into Malaysia.

The first major political crisis in government which tested Raja's mettle came not from the pro-communist figures who had given the leadership so much strain earlier, but from an unexpected quarter — his non-communist cabinet colleague Ong Eng Guan.

This was the accountant whom Raja had introduced to the PAP as a promising leader, and later supported as the rabble-rousing PAP mayor of the city council, even when the other top leaders in the PAP disapproved of Ong's melodramatic antics. Raja also put up patiently with Ong's faults when, as minister for national development, he paid more attention to building a personal empire for himself than public housing for the people.

Raja's benevolence towards Ong was in sharp contrast to Goh's reaction to the man. The finance minister had taken such an intense dislike to Ong that they were not even on speaking terms. But, as Ong would find out, there was a limit to Raja's tolerance.

The major breakpoint in Raja's attitude to his friend came when he discovered Ong's conspiracy to take over as prime minister in 1960. He had a robust contempt for Ong's attempts to split the cabinet and play one minister against another in his power grab. Ong regarded Lee and Goh as his chief nemeses, but believed that Raja, being his long-time friend, would be open to his overtures. Ong was mistaken.

In a fragment found among his private papers, Raja observed acidly that Ong “came into conflict with his Ministerial colleagues and the party because of his belief that he had been cheated out of the Prime Ministership. This suspicion was totally unfounded because those of us who knew him intimately never even entertained the idea of him as Prime Minister”. They were only too aware of his weaknesses, Raja added contemptuously. In trying to manipulate the culture minister, Ong had underestimated Raja's political acumen as well as his loyalty to the party and to Lee. Beneath Raja's mild and friendly demeanour lurked a tough and shrewd character — much-needed traits in any party leader.

This biography of S. Rajaratnam is a valuable record of the life of an exceptional man who made a great contribution to Singapore.

Raja was always fighting for the underdog. The first time I met him was in 1952. I was representing the Postal and Telecommunications Uniformed Staff Union; negotiations with the Chief Secretary had failed and the postmen decided to strike.

Raja wrote powerful stories and editorials in the Singapore Standard to support the postmen's strike. He felt they were unjustly treated. He acidly highlighted the highly paid expatriate officers who had just given themselves a hefty increase in their expatriate allowance, but were miserly towards these hardworking postmen.

The postmen won public support. After two weeks, the government made concessions. This successful strike changed the course of events in Singapore.

Raja's outstanding quality was his fighting spirit when on a righteous cause. After the pro-communist PAP Assemblymen, all of whom were Chinese-educated, split to form Barisan Sosialis, they pummelled us day after day in press statements and at mass rallies, all reported in full by Chinese-owned newspapers. Many Chinese reporters were their sympathisers. Raja tirelessly rebutted them point by point day after day. I felt weary having to issue rebuttals to absurd accusations. Ever the pamphleteer, Raja never allowed them to go unanswered.

He won the support of the English-educated by his wit in his trenchant dismissals. I still remember him at his typewriter with a cigarette in his mouth, tapping away.

We were close friends bonded by fighting difficult battles together. He always gave me a boost of energy to carry on the ceaseless counter barrage against the Communist United Front whose objective was to weary its opponents and reduce their energy and spirits. His vibrant and indignant response was like a cup of ginseng tea for me, reinvigorating me by his infectious optimism. In his affectionate way, he would say, “Harry, they cannot win. We must not allow them to win and ruin Singapore.”

He had indomitable courage. When UMNO ultras tried to intimidate us during our two years in Malaysia, he was not cowed. He and Toh Chin Chye, the chairman of the People's Action Party (PAP), proposed the formation of the Malaysian Solidarity Convention, to which the party's Central Executive Committee agreed.

12 May 1955. Black Thursday. Raja was working late in his Straits Times office, when all hell broke on the streets outside. A mob was parading around a bleeding Chinese student, strapped onto a wooden door.

The boy had been hit by a stray shot fired by a policeman hours ago during a riot which had turned violent. But instead of rushing him to the nearby hospital, the mob carried his body around town, with stops for the press to take photographs as evidence of police brutality. By the time they took the boy to the hospital late at night, he was dead.

Raja related later: “Our reporters told me that they got the impression the mob wanted the boy to die, because they wanted a martyr.” He was shocked at their ruthlessness. He was even more shocked that the street violence arose out of strikes instigated by his fellow PAP founders, Fong Swee Suan and Lim Chin Siong. This was not what the PAP, as he had envisaged it, stood for or wanted to be known for.

While Fong and Chin Siong would later protest that they did not start the riots, that it was the prevailing “social conditions” which led to it, their actions indicated that they were more than ready to use revolutionary methods in their struggle.

Earlier in April, they had instigated strikes of the bus companies, notably the Hock Lee Bus Company. Strikers blocked the entrances to the Hock Lee Depot to stop buses from moving out, bringing the island's transport system to a standstill. The ensuing confrontation in May with the police erupted into a riot with four people killed and 31 injured. In a show of support to their comrades, 20 busloads of Chinese students moved into the area. They overturned vehicles and set them on fire. They clenched their fists and hollered communist slogans. It was amidst such chaos, which continued through the night, that the boy was shot.

Hyped up in a frenzied state, the students and unionists continued to run riot over the ensuing days, sparking off more strikes and sit-ins all over the island. Soon, communist-controlled Chinese cultural organisations also entered the fray. From then on, Singapore was a cauldron of strikes and conflict as the Middle Road group of union leaders incited thousands of workers and students to rage against the government and employers.

With Piroska by his side, Raja showed a readiness to engage imaginatively with the new realities and exigencies of life. He was by now beginning to look for openings to supplement his income through freelance writing and sale of short stories to the literary magazines that were so popular at the time.

While he was still hazy about his calling, he was greatly attracted to the purposeful world of political writing. His friends already active in the field were more than willing to provide the contacts and opportunities.

Chief among them was his charismatic journalist-cum-politician friend, Michael Foot. According to Raja, it was this crusading leftwing journalist who first encouraged him to write for several publications in London.

Foot, who first contested the election under the Labour Party in 1935 at the age of 22, wrote for various leftist publications — the New Statesman, the Daily Herald, and Tribune — and achieved notoriety in 1940 by co-writing the bestseller, Guilty Men attacking the appeasement policies of the Chamberlain government. He became even more controversial as the protege of the right-wing press baron and politician Lord Beaverbrook when he worked for his newspapers, the Evening Standard and the Daily Express, turning them into the voice of intellectual populism.

Raja cut his teeth in journalism by working for Beaverbrook's flagship newspaper, the Daily Express. Beaverbrook, who was minister for aircraft production (1940–41), minister of supply (1941–42), minister of war production (1942), believed in the power of the press and used it mightily to flay his political foes.

Eager for more action, Raja also freelanced for the left-wing cooperative paper Reynolds News, which was highly politicised as part of the labour press. He also wrote for some of Padmore's publications, which pleaded the cause of socialism and liberty. The experience and contacts he gained through his stints gave him a feel of the seductive power of political journalism.

The rudderless trajectory of his professional development took another decisive turn when he ventured into the literary world of fiction. It was a new and challenging area for him; not every writer could make a success of it.

In the cabinet, Raja stood out as an epitome of robust optimism tempered with the grim recognition of the challenges ahead and the resolve to face them squarely. In the first few years, his courage to meet adversaries head-on, his swiftness of mind and clarity in explaining ideas established him as one of the most valued men in the cabinet.

All members of the cabinet, except Ahmad Ibrahim, had higher educational qualifications than Raja, but when it came to intellectual argument, few could equal him. Yong Nyuk Lin, the education minister at the time, called him the “brain”. His colleagues also appreciated his calm and unflappable demeanour. Yong recalled later: “Goh Keng Swee would say ‘buzz off ‘, but Raja was smiling, easy-going, no matter how trying the circumstances. If Lee Kuan Yew had harsh words, Raja would just smile and smooth things.”

Certainly, Raja's standing with the prime minister was not in doubt. Lee said in later years that in the first cabinet, those he considered his intellectual equals were Raja and Goh. Having worked closely with Raja on political strategy since 1952, Lee was the first in the cabinet to appreciate his talent with ideas and their public presentation. As Lee said later, “on political feel, on presentation on how to get people on our side, how to keep a multiracial country together, I couldn't find a better man. He believed firmly in it”.

Compared with his colleagues, Raja was the more street-savvy and polished, if also the more disorganised, political operator. In public communications, Raja's advantage, which the other cabinet ministers lacked, was his decade-long experience in journalism, in both print and broadcast.

From the first day, the prime minister and the other ministers turned to him for help to publicise their policies and to personally draft their press statements and sometimes, even speeches. His intray was constantly overflowing with such requests.

One typical assignment: In a cabinet meeting on 5 October 1959, Raja was asked to rewrite a draft statement from the minister for home affairs, Ong Pang Boon, “in simple language”. Another: In a memo to Raja on 12 June 1961, Goh complained about the draft press statement attempted by his Treasury staff on the upcoming property tax — it was “absolutely no good” — and asked Raja's ideas on “how the subject should be approached and along what lines the press statement should be made”.

The Pessimist and the Optimist were arguing about what it took to make a nation. The Pessimist said: “All we have are Malays, Chinese, Indians, Eurasians, Arabs, Ceylonese and the rest. They have one reason for living in the same place…They come to trade — and when their purpose here is served, they retreat each into their own exclusive world. How can such a hotchpotch of races become a nation?”

The Optimist was upbeat. He quoted a poem from Daniel Defoe which drew attention in an irreverent manner to the mixed ancestry of the British people. The Optimist emphasised: “Saxons — Celts — Romans — Normans — Danes. And the French who today consider themselves Cimbri, Gauls, Iberians, Latins and Germans. And the Germans — for all the screaming of Hitler about racial purity — are composed of Lapps and Finns, Slavs and Mongols. There's no such thing as a pure race. So all this talk of racial purity is nonsense.”

This conversation was part of a series of broadcast plays titled Nation in the Making written by Sinnathamby Rajaratnam, then a newspaper journalist and a freelance radio scriptwriter. It was aired over Radio Malaya in 1957, two years before the People's Action Party came into power in 1959.

It was a conversation that he had played and replayed in his mind for years since he was a young adult, and which he would conduct with the country for the rest of his life. Strains of it continue to echo in Singapore and many other multicultural societies seeking to forge a nation.

Raja personified the Optimist in Singapore. He believed in the ability of Singapore to create a nation out of its disparate peoples. For him, it was an act of will and of faith. A man of towering vision, he was one of the most inspiring political leaders ever to walk on this island. Without him, Singapore's pledge would not be the imaginative leap that it was, written in 1966 during one of the country's darkest periods after the trauma of two racial riots in 1964. Defying the evidence before his eyes, he imagined a nation pulsating as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion, and embedded this vision into the national pledge.

Eager to usher in a new day for Malayan politics, Raja became a zealous evangelist for the radical left-wing party. As part of his mission, he travelled to Kuala Lumpur to spread news of the party to his friends and contacts in the Malayan capital.

Yap Chin Kwee, then a journalist in the Kuala Lumpur-based newspaper The Straits Times, recalled Raja's efforts before the PAP was formed: “Raja was trying to impress on us the path to selfgovernment and that we could kick the British out. He talked about a new anti-colonial movement in Singapore fighting for independence, about how the winds of change were coming.”

Raja hit a sensitive nerve in Yap, who would become Tunku's political secretary from 1961 to 1970. Being close to the Malay political elite, Yap was suspicious of the PAP's intentions and their implications for the entrenched parties in Malaya. Yap concluded: “He was trying to get support for the coming of Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Keng Swee and to establish a beachhead for the PAP in the Federation.” He would monitor closely Raja's initiatives in Kuala Lumpur over the years. Yap observed disapprovingly: “Before and after PAP was formed, Raja did the groundwork for the PAP in the Federation.”

To Raja, however, there was nothing sinister about his message; he was being consistent. He genuinely believed in the union of both territories and in the constructive role that the PAP could play to make this happen, together with the established political parties in the Federation which sought independence for Malaya.

Yap thought Raja lacked a sensitive feel for Malayan politics. “First, he was an Indian,” said Yap, “and, second, he didn't understand the Malays”. Yap's subsequent remarks revealed another, more visceral, reason for his antipathy. He said: “Raja wanted to talk down to us. You think we want to take it? The Malays did not like this sort of attitude.”

The attitude that Yap was referring to was Raja's intellectual and debating style which revelled in robust argument. His erudite allusions and polysyllabic flourishes might have earned him plaudits as a newspaper columnist, but, among some circles in KL, his too cleverby- half attitude smacked of condescension. To feed their political animus further, what Raja was preaching — socialism and equality — was considered hostile to their entrenched interests.

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

INTRODUCTION

On 4 October 1956, the newly created state of Israel attempted to entice Malaysia to recognize its statehood by offering its own recognition of Malaysia a year before the latter's independence. An Israeli representative only known as Sharett had flown to Bangkok to meet Malaysia's first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman (henceforth, Tunku), in an effort to lobby Malaysia through the British, to open a consulate in Kuala Lumpur. On 26 August 1957, a few days before Malaysia officially gained its independence, Israel's President Ben Gurion sent Tunku a telegram, stating that they would support Malaysia's bid to be an official member of the United Nations. It was hoped that Malaysia would respond positively to this, and that it would foster diplomatic relations between the two countries.

However, this did not happen. At a meeting in Sydney on 10 November 1959, Tunku explained to Israeli cabinet minister Moshe Yovel that Malaysia could not recognize the state of Israel as it would be impossible to overcome the opposing voices from the Islamic party and Islamic NGOs. It was later additionally stated on 20 June 1960 that Malaysia would never recognize Israel for fear of rejection by the Arab states and other Islamic countries in general.

Israel's efforts to establish diplomatic ties met with greater resistance as the years passed. On 13 November 1966, Israel attacked Samoat, a remote village in Jordan. This was met with anger by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the Islamic party Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS). In fact, the attack only served to strengthen an already-existing campaign organized by the influential UMNO Women's leader, Aisha Ghani, who on 21 December 1965 lobbied that Malaysians should not be allowed to visit Israel (Abadi 2004, p. 402).

As Abadi explained, further attacks, such as the Sabra and Shatilla massacres in 1982, made it impossible for Israel to be considered a diplomatic partner. Yet, in 1994, it seemed the tides had turned:

Introduction

When the Marawi crisis broke out on 23 May 2017, it set off a mass evacuation of Marawi residents to Iligan City and its immediate environs. By mid-June, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) was shaping into an alarming humanitarian crisis, with many residents from towns neighbouring Marawi evacuating. The displacement data as of 18 June 2017 placed the IDP figures at 338,536, with only 17,891 (5.28 per cent) housed in formal evacuation centres (NDRRMC 2017a). Caught flat-footed by the scale of the Marawi evacuees pouring into their jurisdiction, local governments were not ready to set up evacuation centres to host the displaced. While local government units have arrangements to address disaster- and emergency-related evacuations for their constituents, there are no protocols for hosting those coming in from adjoining municipalities. Thus, Marawi evacuees sought shelter among relatives if they could not find rentals. By April 2018, home-based IDPs tracked by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) were dispersed in eight regions (DSWDDROMIC 2018). One of the issues exposed by the Marawi crisis was the need to take a more coordinated, civil society-oriented approach to support the mental health needs of those affected by conflict and humanitarian crises.

Since 2010, the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) for Republic Act 10121 or the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act have required the Department of Health (DOH), the lead agency tasked to address post-disaster health, to address public mental health concerns (Official Gazette 2010). Since the law was promulgated, succeeding disasters forced the DOH to constantly adjust its policies and lines of coordination in an attempt to find the perfect fit. However, while the public mental health approach in humanitarian settings is advised (Szabo 2015), the DOH remains inadequately staffed for emergency mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) services. It relies mainly on the Department of Education (DepEd) and DSWD, United Nations (UN) agencies and international non-government organizations (INGOs) to deliver MHPSS in times of emergency and disaster situations. Local MHPSS clusters consistently fail to harness the resources of many home-grown organizations. It was not until after the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan tragedy in Eastern Visayas that the public health sector and its partner INGOs admitted to needing the help of other stakeholders, especially those that can employ more indigenous methods that may be more culturally appropriate (Asia- Europe Meeting 2014).

Former president Rodrigo Duterte often spoke in hyperbole. “Shoot me”, he dared soldiers during a speech in an army base if he overstays his six-year term. To ride a jet ski and plant the Philippine flag was his response when asked about his strategy for disputed territories with China. “I will eat them alive”, he said in a speech in Vientiane, threatening Islamic State fighters that captured the city of Marawi. He just needs salt and vinegar, he added.

Over the years, observers have become familiar with Duterte's rhetorical style. The former Philippine president is a melodramatic performer, the quintessential celebrity politician befitting from the televisual age (Pertierra 2017). His vocabulary is meant to shock and amuse. His words are not meant to be taken literally.

But it is different when it comes to his war on drugs. In the first month after Duterte was elected president in May 2016, there were 581 documented cases of summary executions. This figure covers those killed in police operations and shot by unidentified gunmen (ABSCBN News 2018). The death toll increased as the Philippine National Police (PNP) officially rolled out its anti-narcotics campaign, resulting in over 7,000 deaths in its first seven months (Rappler 2016). Duterte's claim that the war on drugs would be bloody differs from his other pronouncements. This statement was not an exaggeration.

Duterte's drug war proved popular, with polling data revealing 77 per cent of Filipinos finding it “satisfactory” (SWS 2017d). Duterte himself enjoyed a “very good” net satisfaction rating of +66 a year into his term and stayed at that level throughout his presidency (SWS 2017c, 2022). The Philippines has embraced a strongman, so the story goes. By electing Duterte, Filipinos have forged a new social contract where they are willing to give up some of their liberties for the sake of the common good.

But there is danger in perpetuating a single story. Such a narrative about the drug war is not inaccurate but incomplete (Adichie 2016). Behind the coherent narrative of popular support for the president and the drug war are multilayered narratives of contestation, which challenge (1) the truths perpetuated by the state, (2) the politics that legitimize the drug war, and (3) the ethics of justifying the bloodbath. This chapter focuses on these angles of contestation. We aim to expose the different meanings associated with the drug war and prompt reflections for democratic practice.