志异 Draft by Drama box July 2014 (english) | Page 44

it covered sensitive stories like
national service and the poor in
society. The quarrel was made
public and the Herald published a
famous cartoon by Morgan Chua
and printed it on the front page. A
tank driven by then Prime Minister
Lee Kuan Yew is about to crush a
helpless baby that represents the
Herald. A week later, the paper was
shut down.
So one either has to draw nonthreatening humourous cartoons or
draw cartoons about international
politics, but not local issues. That
was what Koeh Sia Yong did in 1979
when he was invited by Nanyang
Siang Pau to contribute cartoons
to its editorial pages. Having been
an artist-activist in the late 1950s
and 1960s, he knew the winds
had shifted. In the 1970s, Chinese
newspaper executives, journalists
and theatre practitioners like Kuo
Pao Kun were detained. Koeh only
drew political cartoons about other
countries and foreign affairs.
Koeh’s sensing was right as the
early 1980s saw the tightening of
the press conditions and further
consolidation of the newspapers
in Singapore. In 1982, a top civil
servant, S.R. Nathan, was sent in
column three – ct lim

to be the Executive Chairman of
The Straits Times (Nathan would
later become the President of
Singapore). In 1983, Nanyang Siang
Pau and Sin Chew Jit Poh were
merged to become Lianhe Zaobao.
In 1984, the Singapore Press
Holdings was formed to manage
The Straits Times and Lianhe
Zaobao. Koeh only drew cartoons
for one year in 1979. He retired
from the world of advertising and
commercials in the early 1990s to
be a full-time artist.
Koeh’s life story as an artist and
cartoonist reflects the disjuncture
in the story of political commentary
and cartooning in Singapore.
There is a clear break in the history
of political cartooning in 1961
when The Straits Times stopped
publishing cartoons about local
politics for many years