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Their names are prefixed by the titles of Tengku or Raja and they trace their lineage back to the Sultanates of Singapore and Johor.

They are related, by historical ties if not by blood, to many of the royal houses of Malaysia, and the now defunct royal houses of Riau and Lingga. These are the residents of Istana Kampong Glam, the last bastion or royalty in the very modern metropolis of Singapore.

The residents, some of them belonging to 27 families, are the descendants of Sultan Hussain Syah ( ruled 1819-1835), the 16^th Sultan of Johor and Singapore.

Royalty’s unhappiest over the Singapore Government proposed plan of converting the palace into a Malay Heritage Cenre. By Thanam Vissvanaathan (New Straits Times (Malaysia)

The palace found itself in the eye of a storm in early May 1999 when the Singapore Government has proposed converting the palace into a Malay Heritage Centre.

The move to ‘evict’ them has come as a shock to most members of the family. They claim they have an ancestral right to live there, and have vowed to fight the eviction notice tooth-and-nail.

However, since Singapore traces its existence to its 1819 founding by Sir Stamford Raffles, few Singaporeans will probably understand or sympathise with the family’s desire to cling on to the estate.

A virtual puppet of the British colonial powers, it was Sultan Hussain who in 1819 concluded a treaty with Sir Stamford Raffles, allowing the setting up of a British settlement in Singapore. It was the first step which ultimately led to the acquisition of Singapore by the British from Johor.

The sultanate’s hold on power was precarious at best by the time Sultan Hussain’s heir, the weak and financially incompetent Sultan Ali (ruled 1835-1855) succeeded the throne.

In the final decades of the last century, Sultan Ali would set off a chain of events that eventually led to the dis-establishment of his family’s claim to the throne of Johor and Singapore, in exchange for considerable financial settlement. (He remains reviled by his Kampong Glam descendants till this day for the deed.)

Yet even in death, Sultan Ali managed to stir up a hornet’s nest, when he named as his heir not his eldest son Tengku Alam, who was born of his eldest royal wife, but the 11-year-old Tengku Mahmud, the son of his third wife, a commoner. As the nomination of the child had not been ordained in accordance with Malay customs, Sultan Ali’s three wives took to court the dispute over the rights to the Kampong Glam estate.

In 1897, the court ruled that none of the families had the right to claim the estate, and in 1905, Kampong Glam technically reverted to the state. The British did, however, provide an allowance for the descendants, by enacting the Sultan Hussain Ordinance 1904. and the family was allowed to continue living in the palace.

Plans for Malay Heritage Centre ready by August 2000.

The final draft of the proposal to transform the Istana Kampong Glam into the Malay Heritage Centre , will be carried out by The Malay Heritage Foundation.

The traditional seat of Malay royalty in Singapore, the Istana Kampong Glam is located at 10,000-sqm site at Sultan Gate. Together with the adjacent Bendahara House, it was earmarked for restoration in early 1999.

The Government will pay for the historic buildings to be restored before they are handed over to the foundation, which will set up and run the heritage centre.

The foundation’s plan include:

Housing a cultural museum in the main Istana building, while a smaller museum and a proposed restaurant can be set up at the Bendahara House.

Facilities for the staging of cultural performances on the Istana’s compound are also being considered.

A proposed drive to recruit volunteers as "Friends of the Malay Heritage Centre", to help plan and execute activities once the centre comes up.

The payment scheme was changed because the number of beneficiaries has increased but the income from the estate has shrunk and they had been sharing just $29,231 a year.

Giving an update on the revised payment scheme, Law and Foreign Affairs Minister, Professor S. Jayakumar, said that 64 of the 79 beneficiaries had accepted the lump sum payment offer. The new scheme , he added, would cost the Government some $6 million.

It will cost another $1.5 million in benefits to resettle the palace’s occupants. He assured the House that the resettlement payments and benefits were enough for the occupants to meet initial payments for Housing Board flats. 122 out of 170, have accepted the resettlement package and have moved out, or are in the process of doing so.

On 29^th September 1999, 26 people who live at the Istana Kampong Glam were charged with occupying state land illegally. The Land Office summoned 17 men and nine women to court under the State Lands Encroachments Act. Four of them pleaded guilty to unlawful occupation of the property, another two said that they intended to vacate the place. One was not present in court, and nine others were represented by a lawyer. Another 10 of the accused told the court that they were claiming trial.

On 27^th October, during the pre-trial conference, the Government managed to get seven of the 25 illegal occupants, to agree to vacate the estate. Three errant occupiers of the former State lands, comprising a main two-story building and other temporary structures at Sultan Gate near North Bridge Road, decided to move out.

District Judge Lim Kwe Huat issued warrants of dispossession against the three occupants who admitted the summonses under the State Lands Encroachment Act.

Mr. L Devadasan

The trial of the alleged illegal State land occupiers at the former Istana Kampong Glam in Sultan Gate begins on the 10 November 1999. Of the total 26 summonses issued, seven have so far admitted infringing the State Lands Encroachment Act, and had since move out.