The Press: Press Lord Without Portfolio

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The Republic of Singapore, under its first and only Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, has become an island of democracy, stability and prosperity in Southeast Asia. Lately, however, Statesman Lee has been making some unstatesmanlike moves against the press.

Early this month, Lee jailed four top staff members of the 131,000-circulation Nanyang Siang Pan (Commercial Daily News), one of the island's largest Chinese-language dailies. He said the paper had been "glamorizing Communism and stirring up Chinese chauvinism." The four men, arrested under internal security regulations, have not yet been charged with any specific violation of the law. They have been denied access to an attorney and are still in jail; no trial has been scheduled.

Five days after the arrests, Lee announced that the Eastern Sun, a pro-government English-language tabloid, had received $1.3 million in financing from Chinese Communist agents. Lee claimed that the Communists had allowed the Sun (circ. 6,000) to pursue an anti-Communist editorial policy to deflect immediate suspicion and give China a foothold in Singapore. When the Sun's publisher, Aw Kow, refused to deny the financing charge, the entire editorial staff resigned and the paper folded. Unlike the Nanyang Siang Pan editors, however, Aw Kow has been neither charged with a crime nor jailed.

Raw Power. Lee's actions, some Singaporeans believe, were motivated by his sensitivity to the racial balance in the republic. Three-fourths of Singapore's 2.1 million citizens are Chinese, the rest Malays, Indians and Pakistanis. A fervid believer in the merits of Western-style education, the Cambridge-educated Prime Minister had been under fire from Nanyang Siang Pan for allegedly downgrading Chinese language and culture in the schools.

The ethnic issue does not, however, explain the plight of Lee's latest victim. Still in its first year of publication, the lively English-language Singapore Herald (circ. 16,000) has been critical of Lee on many issues, including a ban on press coverage for the rehearsal of a military parade, where many onlookers took pictures.

Last week Lee called in the still-functioning press to watch some raw political power at work. Flanked by profusely perspiring Hendrik Kwant, manager of a local Chase Manhattan Bank branch, Lee smilingly announced that the bank is foreclosing on a $311,000 loan to the Herald. Lee has also pressured the paper's principal backer, Hong Kong Businesswoman Sally Aw Sian, to prevent her from putting in new financing, without which the paper may stop publication this week. The bland-uncritical Straits Times and its afternoon paper, the New Nation, will be the only English-language dailies left; there are nine more Chinese-and other-language dailies.

Lee's justification for his offensive against the press: "I think that in every democratic country freedom is limited. If you say you want complete freedom in an emergent country, I can give you two examples: one is India, another is Ceylon. Both countries are now in chaos." The dying Herald replied in a frontpage editorial that Lee had "erred beyond caution . . . we ask only to be able to tell the truth and to have the right to live with dignity."