SINGAPORE: The declassified documents cited in a recent documentary on Singapore’s independence are not new, Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo said on Friday (Sep 26), adding that the nature of historical accounts means that differing perspectives will always exist.
Mrs Teo was responding to questions raised by MP Gerald Giam in parliament whether historical accounts in official records and school textbooks will be updated in light of recently declassified documents on Singapore’s independence from Malaysia and if so, which accounts might be revised.
CNA last month released Separation: Declassified – 100 Days That Created A Nation, a two-part documentary revealing – through private letters, eyewitness accounts and once-secret documents – how fraught and close to violence Singapore’s independence was.
The documentary showed, among other revelations, how Singapore’s leaders concealed negotiations, even from the British, and how the legal paperwork for the separation was hammered out over midnight drinks.
Mr Giam (WP-Aljunied) also asked how the government will ensure a more nuanced understanding of that time period in the national narrative, and if a timeline for those updates could be provided.
“It is unclear what updates to historical accounts in official records and textbooks Mr Giam is seeking,” said Mrs Teo.
“The declassified materials he refers to are not new. The British and Australian documents were first disclosed in the early 1990s and have been available to scholars, journalists and others for close to 35 years now.”
She added that those documents, as well as other source material, were relied on by local historian Albert Lau in his definitive account of separation, A Moment Of Anguish: Singapore In Malaysia And The Politics Of Disengagement, which first appeared in 1998.
And in the same year, the first volume of founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s memoir, The Singapore Story, appeared.
Besides the already declassified British, Australian and New Zealand documents, Mr Lee also relied on his chief colleagues involved in the negotiations with Malaysia, in particular Dr Goh Keng Swee and Mr E.W. Barker, as well as his own oral history and contemporaneous notes.
“The very nature of historical accounts means that there are differing points of view,” said Mrs Teo. “For example, Mr E.W. Barker had called Singapore’s independence a ‘negotiated Separation’.
“Keen students of history have access to these materials and can form their own nuanced views,” she added.
