most of the conditions that David Marshall had earlier rejected, which had led to the failure of the talks in 1956. A fresh round of elections would be held in May 1959, this time for full internal self-government. The PAP won convincingly, with 43 out of the 51 seats at the polls. With this victory, Lim Chin Siong and his fellow PAP colleagues who were imprisoned were released on 4 June 1959, just a few days after a hastily held CEC elections. Internal party strife After Lim Chin Siong's release, he was appointed political secretary to Finance Minister Goh Keng Swee. The PAP central executive committee rules had by then been changed such that only "cadre" members appointed by the party executive could participate in committee elections, ensuring that there would not be a takeover similar to the one in 1957. 1961 Hong Lim by-election Although the "communist" faction had been frozen out of ever taking over the PAP, other problems had begun to arise internally. Ong Eng Guan, the former Mayor of the City Council, presented a set of "16 Resolutions" to revisit some issues previously explored by Lim Chin Siong's faction of the PAP: abolishing the PPSO, revising the Constitution, and changing the method of selecting cadre members. Although Ong's 16 Resolutions originated from the left-wing faction led by Lim Chin Siong, that faction had only reluctantly asked the PAP leadership to clarify its position on them, as they still thought that the party with Lee Kuan Yew at the helm was a better alternative than Ong. However, Lee took the stance taken by the left-wing PAP members as a lack of confidence in his leadership. This issue caused a rift between the "moderate" PAP members (led by Lee) and the "left-wing" faction (led by Lim). Ong was then expelled, and he resigned his Legislative Assembly seat to challenge the government to a by-election in Hong Lim in April 1961, where he won 73.3% of the vote. This was despite the fact that Lee Kuan Yew had made a secret alliance with Fong Chong Pik, the leader of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), to get the CPM cadres to support the PAP in the by-election. Merger issue The British had earlier tabled a proposition to merge the Malaya, Singapore, and North Borneo territories into a single sovereign country, calling it "the Grand Design". However, Tunku Abdul Rahman,