SINGAPORE – Singapore has agreed to declassify and release documents in the “Albatross File” that were kept by one of the republic’s founding fathers about negotiations leading to Singapore’s separation from Malaysia, Bernama reported a minister saying.
Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information Dr Janil Puthucheary had informed Singapore’s Parliament today that the process of declassification began some time ago and took some time given the “complexity of the material”.
The files had been kept by Singapore’ late former deputy prime minister Dr Goh Keng Swee, who served between 1973 and 1985 and is widely recognised as one of the founding fathers of Singapore.
“A larger set of declassified Albatross documents will be released in a book on separation to be published later this year. This will include cabinet papers and Dr Goh’s notes of his conversations with Malaysian leaders,” said Puthucheary according to Bernama.
A report by Today Online, meanwhile, said that the Albatross file will shed light on the discussions that led to the Separation Agreement in August 1965, and will show a more “nuanced picture of events” that is contrary to the common perception that Singapore was “expelled” from Malaysia.
Goh, who retired from politics in 1984 and died in May 2020 at the age of 91, was reported to have said in 1980 when the Albatross File was first revealed, that the name, which means a large white ocean bird, as well as a metaphor for a continuing problem that makes success difficult, described Singapore’s situation with Malaysia.
“By that time, the great expectation that we foolishly had – that Malaysia would bring prosperity, common market, peace, harmony, all that – we were quickly disillusioned. And it became an albatross around our necks,” Today Online quoted him as saying in 1980.
Singapore joined in the formation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963. The negotiations for separation involved the republic’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and then-Malaysian prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman. Singapore finally left Malaysia on August 9, 1965.
Today Online also said some declassified documents on the separation will be published in a book later this year. Various parts of the Albatross file are already in the public sphere, in Lee’s memoirs and as exhibits at the National Museum of Singapore.
Putucheary had also told Parliament that the Singapore government was gradually revising records to be declassified.
“In total, some 68,000 file records have been declassified and made accessible to the public,” he said. – The Vibes, March 1, 2023
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