At his residence in Penang, 1972

“It was clear to me as well as the police that in
the highly charged political atmosphere after the
police were forced to kill a Chinese political
party worker on May 4th, 1969, something was
bound to happen to threaten law and order because
of the resentment towards the Government by the
KL Chinese on the eve of the general election.
This was confirmed at this man’s funeral on the
9th May when the government faced the most
hostile crowd it had ever seen.

Therefore, when the opposition parties applied
for a police permit for a procession to celebrate
their success in the results of the general
election, I was adamant against it because the
police were convinced that this would lead to
trouble. I informed Tun Razak about this and he
seemed to agree.

Now, without my knowledge and actually “behind my
back”, there were certain political leaders in
high positions who were working to force me to
step down as a PM. I don’t want to go into
details but if they had come to me and said so I
would gladly have retired gracefully.

Unfortunately, they were apparently scheming and
trying to decide on the best way to force me to
resign. The occasion came when the question of
the police permit was to be approved.

Tun Razak and Harun Idris, the MB of the state of
Selangor, now felt that permission should be
given knowing fully well that there was a
likelihood of trouble. I suppose they felt that
when this happened they could then demand my
resignation.

To this day I find it very hard to believe that
Razak, whom I had known for so many years, would
agree to work against me in this way. Actually,
he was in my house as I was preparing to return
to Kedah and I overhead him speaking to Harun
over the phone saying that he would be willing to
approve the permit when I left. I really could
not believe what I was hearing and preferred to
think it was about some other permit. In any
case, as the Deputy Prime Minister in my absence
from KL, he would be the Acting PM and would
override my objection. Accordingly, when I was in
my home in Kedah, I heard over the radio that the
permit had been approved.

It seems as though the expected trouble was
anticipated and planned for by Harun and his UMNO
Youth. After the humiliating insults hurled by
the non-Malays, especially the Chinese, and after
the seeming loss of Malay political power to
them, they were clearly ready for some
retaliatory action. After meeting in large
numbers at Harun’s official residence in Jalan
Raja Muda near Kampong Bahru and hearing
inflammatory speeches by Harun and other leaders,
they prepared themselves by tying ribbon strips
on their foreheads and set out to kill Chinese.
The first hapless victims were two of them in a
van opposite Harun’s house who were innocently
watching the large gathering. Little did they
know that they would be killed on the spot.

The rest is history. I am sorry but I must end
this discussion now because it really pains me as
the Father of Merdeka to have to relive those
terrible moments. I have often wondered why God
made me live long enough to have witnessed my
beloved Malays and Chinese citizens killing each other.”