A Ray of Sunshine

On a faraway island there lives a young king with so much money that he doesn't know--quite--what to do. He is Omar Ali Saifuddin, 37, the benevolent Sultan of Brunei. A British protectorate, his small realm (2,226 sq.mi.; pop. 41,000) lies on the northwest coast of Borneo, and its money--about $25 million a year--comes mostly from oil. Last summer Omar Ali Saifuddin decreed an ambitious welfare program costing $33 million (TIME, Aug. 31). But there was still a surplus. So the young Sultan cast a philanthropic eye on Malaya, a neighboring, blood-related British protectorate, which was bravely mopping up Communist guerrillas and was hard up for money owing to falling tin and rubber prices.

Last week Sultan Omar offered to lend the Malay Federation government a sum of about $14 million, as a gesture of friendship to a country which, he said, was "fighting our war against Communism as well as theirs." Said a prominent citizen of Kuala Lumpur, Malaya's capital: "A ray of sunshine out of an overcast sky." Unfortunately, Omar's generous loan will not come near covering Malaya's 1954 deficit, now estimated at more than $50 million.

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