David Saul Marshall

David Saul Marshall (* 12. May 1908 in Singapore ; † 12. December 1995 ) was a Singaporean politician , from 1955 to 1956, the first Chief Minister of the former British crown colony Singapore and later a well-known critic of the regime of the authoritarian governments of the People's Action Party (PAP).

Life

Captivity and promotion to Chief Minister

Marshall, from a Orthodox Jewish native family, made during the Second World War, his military service in the British colonial army and had after his capture by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1942 as forced laborers in the coal mines of Hokkaido work.

After the end of World War II, he began his political career in Singapore in the early 1950s during the aspirations for sovereignty from the United Kingdom. He was one of the founders of the Socialist Labor Front and, after the new constitution came into force in April 1955, he was elected a member of the Legislative Assembly, in which he represented the Cairnhill constituency until 1959 .

On April 6, 1955, he formed a center-left government made up of the Labor Front , the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the Malayan Chinese Association , becoming the Crown Colony's first chief minister. After an unsuccessful mission in London to negotiate Singapore's independence in late 1955, he accused the British government of offering "Christmas pudding with arsenic sauce" to Singapore. After a second failed mission over the sovereignty talks, he resigned as Chief Minister on June 8, 1956 and was replaced by Lim Yew Hock .

Critic of the regime and ambassador

In 1957, Marshall founded the Workers' Party , which, however, was defeated in the elections. After Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew 's election victory of the authoritarian People's Action Party (PAP) on June 5, 1959, he was a consistent and unequivocal critic of his repressive government policy. While recognizing the PAP's economic progress, he condemned the lack of humanity in Lee Kuan Yew's government. Between 1961 and 1963 he was a member of parliament for the Anson constituency and took an active part in political life until 1972.

Later, however, he was appointed to the diplomatic service by Prime Minister Lee , appointed ambassador to France in 1978 and held this post until 1993. At the same time, he was Singapore's ambassador to Portugal and Spain between 1981 and 1993 and most recently to Switzerland from 1990 to 1993 .

After his return, he took up his outspoken criticism of the government of Lee Kuan Yew's successor Goh Chok Tong . In 1994 he was one of the few citizens of Singapore who publicly criticized the conviction of the American teenager Michael Fay to beat a stick for vandalism .

literature

• David S. Marshall , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 08/1996 of February 12, 1996, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Biography on rulers.org