ABSTRACT
In 1965 Lee Kuan Yew – Singapore’s Founding Father and first Prime Minister – had what one writer describes as a ‘minor breakdown’.1 It happened after Singapore’s expulsion from the Federation of Malaysia, a political merger that Lee had hoped would build a common economic union and realize his vision of a ‘Malaysian Malaysia’ based on meritocracy rather than ethnic – Malay – preferences.2 The separation was for Lee personally and politically traumatic. He had broken down in tears at the press conference where he announced the news. The collapse of the merger left him ‘drained physically, emotionally and mentally’ and he had to seek six weeks’ retreat in government barracks in Changi to recover.3 But personal disappointment was not the only reason for his breakdown. In the preceding months, he had worked feverishly in negotiating with the sensitive Malay leadership in Kuala Lumpur to secure a viable future for the Chinese-dominated city-state. For a man given to emotional restraint and tough-mindedness, the separation of Singapore from the Federation nevertheless ‘opened the flood gates’ that had been walled up for years.4 He was, in his own words, ‘emotionally overstretched’ and ‘close to physical exhaustion’; and the separation ‘weighed [him] down with a heavy sense of guilt’ for having failed his supporters and allies.5 To help him sleep his
doctor had prescribed sedatives, and pep pills to keep awake to face the day. Taking these drugs in a condition of nervous exhaustion had a debilitating effect and left Lee in a dark and volatile mood:
Some in Lee’s circle . . . felt that commonsense advice had been neglected because of a pharmacological bias to his doctor’s training. The drugs had an innocuous enough effect when Lee could see his way through situations, but under the enormous strain of recent events their impact was curious and unpredictable. One moment Lee could be smiling, offering Tunku a brittle picture of acceptance, even some sort of pleasure. The next moment when he was near people with whom he could allow himself to relax – colleagues, selected foreign journalists, subordinates – he would burst into tears or pour forth a torrent of emotion-laden words, recollections, predictions.6
