In June 1961, there was a major rift amongst comrades over the question of merger. One month later in a vote of confidence in the Legislative Assembly, 13 of the PAP members abstained from supporting the government. These rebels were expelled from the party the next day. In less than a month, the defectors and their supporters announced the formation of the Barisan Sosialis. In terms of intellectual muscle, the BS compared favourably to the PAP. In area of organisation and grassroots strength, the BS was far superior. The only way to beat the BS was to use the communist bogeyman. It did not take much difficulty to brand the new party as a pro-communist party as most of these defectors, though not necessarily adherents of MCP, belonged to the left of the PAP. The only way to defeat the BS was to use force. Thus on 2nd February 1963, Operation Coldstore was launched and over 100 accused of being anti-national and being communists were arrested in an island-wide swoop. In one stroke, the Barisan, which was seen as likely to win the coming General Election, was decapitated and rendered impotent. What was essentially an internal split within the party became framed as a fight against the barbarians at the gate. The act of putting a label and arresting people without trial under the ISA subsequently became a convenient tool to deal with troublesome people. So the threat of Communism continued to be a reason to arrest the labelled Euro-communists and Marxist conspirators. The incarceration of “stupid novices” and “do-gooders” was made in the name of national security. Those “stupid novices” were planning to overthrow the government by force by cyclostyling pamphlets and staging a play about a Filipino maid.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 02:27:40 +0000
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