The Tengku's Landslide

It is standard operating procedure in Southeast Asia for a nation to win independence, fall into economic and political chaos and, finally, take desperate refuge in military rule that is usually efficient and honest but still dictatorship. Last week, after two years of freedom, the Federation of Malaya was proving a happy democratic exception to the rule. In the independent nation's first general election, contending parties wooed the voters with posters, sound trucks, leaflets dropped from planes.

The leader of the heavily favored Alliance Party, Tengku (Prince) Abdul Rahman, 56, quit his job as Prime Minister four months ago to barnstorm throughout all eleven states of the federation by motorboat and car. Cambridge-educated and a descendant of ancient Mongol conquerors of Malaya, he plumped for more education and economic development, said, "I was truly astounded by the ignorance in some places." Before upcountry pagodas and in front of east coast mosques, he greeted crowds by crying Merdeka (freedom) and arguing commonsensically that "there is too much talk about differences of race, religion and class rather than about our similarities," appealed to citizens of Malay, Chinese and Indian stock "to sink our differences and speak about what is good for the country as a whole." His political rivals had narrower aims. The Pan-Malayan Islamic Party dreams of bringing Malaya into a "Greater Indonesia." Two small leftist parties formed a Socialist front and advocated the expropriation of all foreign holdings in the nation.

Abdul Rahman's campaigning was aided by Malaya's flourishing economy. The federation produces almost a third of the world's natural rubber and tin; its per capita income ($350) is the highest in Asia, and it boasts one telephone for every 100 persons (U.S. ratio: one for every 2 1/2). With the ten-year-old Communist insurrection spluttering into oblivion in the northern jungles and with the nation's rice crop the largest in its history, voters swarmed to the polls last week on foot, and by car, boat, pedicab and elephant. The result: a landslide victory for Tengku Abdul Rahman, whose Alliance Party captured 73 seats in Parliament, nearly three-fourths of all those contested.

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