Section B.―Arrangements for Commission's Visit
13. Arrangements had been made, before our arrival, for the members of the Commission to visit all five Divisions of Sarawak. The Commission held sittings in all but one of the Districts and saw representatives from the other. Details of the itinerary are contained in Appendix A and it is sufficient to record here that hearings were held at 20 different places over a total period of four weeks. This involved us in an extensive programme of travelling by air, river and road. Although it was not possible for us to reach the remoter areas, the flight to Long Akah on the Baram River and the journey by the M.V. Zahora up the Rejang River provided an opportunity for us to see something of conditions in the interior and to visit some longhouses.
14. Apart from one mishap caused by the weather, which did not seriously interfere with our programme, the arrangements went smoothly throughout. We recognise, however, that the Sarawak Government had provided us with the best and most rapid means of transport, including chartered aircraft and the use of the Governor's and other launches and river craft, and that it would not otherwise have been possible to carry out such a comprehensive tour in such a relatively short space of time. This question of difficulty of communications in Sarawak is an important one and one which in our opinion has a definite bearing on the problem which we were asked to examine.
15. The Sarawak Govenrment's Paper on Malaysia had been published early in January some six weeks before we arrived in Kuching. It had been translated into the major local languages, and instructions had been issued to Residents and to District officers that it should be distributed as widely as possible and every effort made to ensure that the implications of the proposals were understood. We were much impressed with the energy with which these instructions must have been carried out. The task was no easy one. Away from the towns, we have already drawn attention to the slow means transport and to the distances to be covered, but there was the further difficulty that a high proportion of the people in the interior are illiterate and that it takes time and perseverance to explain a complex subject to them. Inevitably there were some areas where knowledge of the Paper was slight; but with only a few weeks available between the issue of the Paper and the arrival of the Commission, it was remarkable, judging from the evidence given to us, how much had been achieved.
16. In the towns, the problem was a different one. The atmosphere since the idea of a Federation of Malaysia had first been mooted in May 1961 had been conducive to the intensification of political discussion and greater awakening of political consciousness The task of the Government's administrative staff was not so much to foster discussion of the proposals for a Federation of Malaysia as to endeavour to see that the public was not misled.
Section C.―Poiitical Developments and Racial Relations
17. Before proceeding with more detailed consideration of our findings, It may be useful to draw attention to a few of the more salient features of the situation as we have found it in Sarawak.
