Toward Unity

In Malaya last week communist guerrillas still sowed death & destruction. Forty thousand British troops and a third of the Malaya Federation's budget were needed to hold down 5,000 jungle-wise Red terrorists. Yet Red destruction was more than matched by anti-Red construction. Rubber, tin and rice production stood at a record peak. More significant, the country's long antagonistic racial groups, the Malays and the Chinese, were closing ranks toward national unity.

Community of Interest. The federation includes almost equal numbers of Malays (2,500,000) and Chinese (2,000,000). The Malays are leisurely, pork-hating Moslems, the country's old settlers. The Chinese are industrious, pork-loving Confucianists, largely recent immigrants who now dominate the economy. After the war, the Malay nationalists insisted on limiting citizenship rights to some 10% of the Chinese. Such discrimination obviously undermined the country's chances of withstanding the Communist terror that broke out in June 1948.

Early in 1949 Britain's able Malcolm MacDonald, Commissioner-General for Southeast Asia, brought the federation's hostile racial leaders together in a Communities' Liaison Council. On the council was the influential head of the United Malay National Organization, spruce, bespectacled, British-educated Dato Onn bin Jafaar, 54, once a violent baiter of Chinese. Several months of round-table parleys, plus the mounting Communist threat, converted Dato Onn. He publicly proclaimed: "Malays must accept as full nationals those of other races who are prepared to give their all to the country."

Sharing of Power. Urging Malays to support an enlarged franchise for Chinese, Dato Onn told Chinese businessmen: "You must share your economic power if we are willing to share our political power." He proposed that 50% of the Chinese get suffrage now, the other half in 20 years jvhen they are more thoroughly assimilated. The Chinese agreed to teach the Malays business know-how, through Chinese-financed training programs, Chinese-Malay companies and cooperatives. They rallied to the idea of a "political-economic partnership in which Chinese do not hate Malays and Malays do their share of work." But Dato Onn ran into diehard opposition from his own U.M.N.O. He resigned from the organization, stepped up his barnstorming throughout the peninsula. The U.M.N.O. recently convened again, re-elected Dato Onn as head, endorsed his program. Last week legislation was under way in the Federation Legislative Council to widen the Chinese franchise.

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