Looking for an Angel

With his development scheme, Deputy Premier Tun Abdul Razak is conducting his own Johnson-style "assault on poverty," which among other things has opened 200,000 acres of new farmland to 30,000 settlers. Since its founding in 1963, Malaysia has raised the G.N.P. of its 9.2 million people by an annual average of 7% .

Still, Malaysia is by no means free from troubles. In the isthmus near Thailand hide some 600 Communist guerrillas, leftovers from the Communist-inspired civil war that ended in 1960. Others are clustered along the border in Borneo and sometimes fight alongside Indonesian raiders, who apparently have still not got the message that konfrontasi has ended.

The federation itself is fragile. Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman knitted four former British colonies into a multiracial, multiculture conglomerate. But he has been less successful in holding his creation together. Fearful that Singapore's industrious Chinese might overshadow his own easygoing Malays, Abdul Rahman last year expelled the island state from the federation.

Unifying Influence. The Tunku has also provoked bitterness in the Borneo states of Sarawak and Sabah, where the inhabitants, chiefly Chinese and reformed headhunters of the Dyak and Iban tribes, resent his insistence on Malay supremacy. Fanning the resentment is a constitutional clause that calls for Malay to become the federation's sole official language by 1967. The Borneo states might break away except for one important consideration: the development aid that the Tunku's government dispenses. That, of course, is the major reason why Malaysians feel that they must find someone to pick up the tab that Britain no longer wants. The source.....