For the better part of 1961 and throughout 1962 the governments of Singapore and the Federation had preoccupied themselves with the settlement of the major political issues concerning merger, involving political representation in the Federal Government, citizenship and local autonomy in labour and education. The acceptance of the Singapore White Paper of 1961 and the successful referendum in Singapore endorsing the White Paper proposals for merger had removed the major obstacles to merger, and by the beginning of 1963, with the thorny issue of dual citizenship seemingly settled, it looked as if the target date for establishing merger by 31 August 1963 would be achieved easily. The remaining tasks were straightforward enough: both the Singapore and Federation governments simply had to work out the details of financial and tax arrangements that would be effected when Malaysia came into being. The negotiations in earnest on the financial arrangements started only in 1963, as previously, the two governments were trying to iron out the politically more sensitive issues of parliamentary representation and citizenship. However, as the planned date for the Malaysia agreement drew near, the nitty-gritty matters of tax collection and the sharing of revenues between state and centre came to the fore, leading to hard bargaining between the two governments. On a number of occasions, the disagreements over financial arrangements threatened the progress towards Malaysia. The nature of the disputes reflected the divergent aims and underlying assumptions which both the Singapore and the Federation governments adopted with regard to merger. As far as Malaya was concerned, merger was meant to solve a political-security problem: to allow Kuala Lumpur to exert direct control in Singapore and thereby nip the growing threat of communism there. The Tunku was thus satisfied that as long as he could do that without Singapore politics jeopardizing his Malayan political base he was quite happy to include Singapore within the Federation. Thus, according to Lee, “the bargain between [the Tunku] and [him] was: You be the New York, do exactly what you like; don't give me trouble in internal security and foreign affairs and defence, you be New York, don't worry”. With the big issues of citizenship and parliamentary representation in the bag, the Tunku was thus prepared to leave the bargaining of the non-political details to his advisors and ministers.