Obituary:Mr. Lee Kuan Yew (2)

1. BBC (http://m.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32012346)
Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew dies at 91, 23 March 2015
Lee Kuan Yew, the statesman who transformed Singapore from a small port city into a wealthy global hub, has died at the age of 91.
The city-state's prime minister for 31 years, he was widely respected as the architect of Singapore's prosperity.
But he was criticised for his iron grip on power. Under him freedom of speech was tightly restricted and political opponents were targeted by the courts.
A state funeral will be held on 29 March, after a week of mourning.
In an emotional televised address, his son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong paid tribute to him.
"He fought for our independence, built a nation where there was none, and made us proud to be Singaporeans. We won't see another man like him."
Mr Lee oversaw Singapore's independence from Britain and separation from Malaysia. His death was announced early on Monday. He had been in hospital for several weeks with pneumonia and was on life support.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was "deeply saddened" by Mr Lee's death. US President Barack Obama described him as a "giant of history". The Chinese foreign ministry called him "a uniquely influential statesman in Asia".
'Lifetime of building'
In Singapore, a steady stream of people arrived at the hospital and the Istana, the prime minister's office, to offer their condolences.
A charismatic figure, Mr Lee co-founded the People's Action Party (PAP), which has governed Singapore since 1959, and was its first prime minister.
The Cambridge-educated lawyer led Singapore through merger with, and then separation from, Malaysia.
Speaking after the split in 1965, he pledged to build a meritocratic, multi-racial nation. But tiny Singapore - with no natural resources - needed a new economic model.
"We knew that if we were just like our neighbours, we would die," Mr Lee told the New York Times in 2007.
"We had to produce something which is different and better than what they have."

2. Malay Mail Online(http://www.themalaymailonline.com)
Obituary: Lee Kuan Yew, the benevolent dictator, 23 March 2015
by Boo Su-Lyn
KUALA LUMPUR, March 23 — The world can finally judge Lee Kuan Yew and determine if Singapore’s glittering skyscrapers were worth the price of democracy and chewing gum, although he wouldn’t have cared for such assessments anyway as it was he, and only he, who decided what was right for Singapore. Never mind what the people thought.
Lee, who transformed Singapore from a backwater to one of Asia’s richest nations in three decades of what some called dictatorial rule, died today at 91 in Singapore.
The first prime minister of Singapore, who was in office from 1959 to 1990, died in the Singapore General Hospital at 3.18am after being admitted for severe pneumonia.
When Singapore was expelled from Malaysia in 1965, two years after the federation was formed, Lee was left with a tiny city-state of migrants without a common language, culture or destiny, with no natural resources, surrounded by powerful neighbours like Indonesia and China.
“The basis of a nation just was not there,” Lee told the International Herald Tribune (IHT) in 2007.
He also had to contend with high unemployment, corruption and a housing shortage when he assumed office earlier in 1959.
At the helm of a nation-state in its infancy, Lee built Singapore after his own image - stern, disciplined and no-nonsense. He brooked no dissent and did not tolerate corruption.
He focused on running an efficient, pragmatic and meritocratic administration. Corporal punishment was used for even minor infractions like vandalism.
The People’s Action Party (PAP) government under Lee’s leadership industrialised Singapore, turned it into an exporter of finished goods and brought in foreign investment.
A low-cost public housing programme was implemented and Lee introduced serious measures to tackle graft by creating an enforcement agency that reported directly to him, besides revising government service salaries periodically and increasing the standard of living for workers.
Lee expanded education and made English the working language in Singapore, although the majority in the multi-racial country spoke Mandarin.
While he worried of the racial turmoil that could come with a monolingual policy favouring the majority Chinese community, it was his practical concerns that guided his decision since Singapore was trying to attract multinational corporations as a manufacturing hub.
“I’m a pragmatist and you can’t make a living with the Chinese language in Singapore,” Lee told National Geographic in 2009 after shutting down Chinese education.
He also boosted Singapore’s defence force and implemented an Israeli model of national service, where all 18-year-old men are required to train in the programme for two years.
Singapore spends a quarter of its annual budget on defence and is the fifth-largest importer of military hardware, according to an Al-Jazeera report last March.
Lee described himself as a street fighter. A knuckle duster who took on communists with “killer squads” and “Malay ultras” when Singapore was in Malaysia for two years. A tough and unyielding man feared by citizens. 

Lee was the longest-serving head of government in Asia and remained in government even after stepping down as prime minister in 1990. Although he had resigned as prime minister in 1990, he had remained in government for another two decades: first serving as senior minister and later as minister mentor.
He only fully retired from the Cabinet in 2011 after PAP’s worst electoral showing since independence.
Seth Mydans of the New York Times (NYT) told Lee in 2010 that a taxi driver had said, upon learning that he would interview Lee, it was safer not to ask Lee anything because someone would “follow” him.
Yet, despite Singapore’s success as a “first world oasis in a third world region”, Lee believed that the country was still fighting for survival and that everything could come undone very quickly. He had a paranoid fear of nebulous threats and constantly reminded his people about the country’s vulnerabilities and to be vigilant.
“Where are we? Are we in the Caribbean? Are we next to America like the Bahamas? Are we in the Mediterranean, like Malta, next to Italy? Are we like Hong Kong, next to China and therefore, will become part of China? We are in Southeast Asia, in the midst of a turbulent, volatile, unsettled region. Singapore is a superstructure built on what? On 700 square kilometres and a lot of smart ideas that have worked so far,” Lee said in a 2007 interview with US columnist Tom Plate and new-media expert Jeffrey Cole.
Crying at Singapore’s separation from Malaysia
The one time when the man known for his strictness and unsentimentality lost his composure in public was when Malaysia ejected Singapore.
In a press conference on August 9, 1965, where he announced Singapore’s independence and separation from the federation, a tearful Lee described it as a “moment of anguish”, his voice choked with emotion, pausing a few times as he spoke before finally asking for the recording to be stopped temporarily.
“For me, it is a moment of anguish because all my life... you see, the whole of my adult life... I have believed in Malaysian merger and the unity of these two territories.
You know, it’s a people, connected by geography, economics, and ties of kinship... Would you mind if we stop for a while?” he had said.
Singapore joined Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak in 1963 to form Malaysia.
At that time, the federation wanted to prevent the communist insurgency from taking root in Singapore.
Political and economical disputes between Singapore and the Malaysian government, however, soon arose. Tunku Abdul Rahman’s Alliance Party took part in Singapore’s 1963 general election but failed to win any seats. PAP retaliated by participating in Malaysia’s 1964 general election, in which it won one out of nine federal seats contested.
Tensions flared between the Alliance and the PAP that Lee co-founded. Umno called on the Malays in Singapore to demand for special rights, special occupancy in government housing projects and job quotas, as what was done in the peninsula.
Two bloody race riots broke out later in Singapore in July and September 1964 between the Malays and the Chinese, killing dozens of people.
In May 1965, Lee mobilised Malaysian opposition parties, including those from the peninsula and Borneo, to call for a “Malaysian Malaysia” that sought for equality between the Malays and non-Malays.
“The special and legitimate interests of different communities must be secured and promoted within the framework of the collective rights, interests and responsibilities of all races,” Lee was quoted saying by Dr Cheah Boon Kheng, retired history professor from Universiti Sains Malaysia, in local daily The Sun.
Umno leaders demanded Lee’s arrest for his criticism of Malay dominance in Malaysia, eventually leading to Tunku’s conclusion that Singapore could no longer remain in the federation for the sake of national security.
Malaysia and Singapore signed a separation agreement on August 7, 1965, and Lee wept two days later on national television.

Lee focused on building a meritocracy in multi-racial Singapore and strove for equality to harness talent that was the city-state’s only resource. He disagreed with the way Malaysia managed its multi-cultural, Malay-majority society through affirmative action policies.
“Our Malays are English-educated, they’re no longer like the Malays in Malaysia and you can see there are some still wearing headscarves but very modern looking,” he told NYT in 2010.
Lee said Malaysians saw Malaysia as a “Malay country” and was critical of how the Bumiputeras dominated Malaysia.
“So the Sultans, the Chief Justice and judges, generals, police commissioner, the whole hierarchy is Malay. All the big contracts for Malays. Malay is the language of the schools although it does not get them into modern knowledge. So the Chinese build and find their own independent schools to teach Chinese, the Tamils create their own Tamil schools, which do not get them jobs. It’s a most unhappy situation,” he said in the 2010 NYT interview.
He even said much of what was achieved in Singapore would be achieved in Malaysia if Tunku had kept Singapore in Malaysia and if Malaysia had accepted multiculturalism like Singapore.
A dictator?
Lee’s critics have often accused him of suppressing civil liberties and using libel suits to intimidate his political opponents into not running against him.
The opposition boycotted Parliament from 1966 onwards, leaving a Parliament completely dominated by the PAP until the ruling party lost a parliamentary seat in a 1981 by-election.
The watershed 2011 general election later saw the opposition Workers’ Party winning six parliamentary seats. Lee believed that democracy was secondary to discipline, development and good governance.
“What are our priorities? First, the welfare, the survival of the people.
Then, democratic norms and processes which from time to time we have to suspend,” Lee said at a 1986 National Day Rally.
He shied away from Western-style democracy, saying he had to amend the British system for multi-racial Singapore.
“Supposing I’d run their system here, Malays would vote for Muslims, Indians would vote for Indians, Chinese would vote for Chinese.
I would have a constant clash in my Parliament which cannot be resolved because the Chinese majority would always overrule them,” Lee told German magazine Spiegel in 2005.
He laughed off a journalist who called him a dictator, saying, with a touch of arrogance, that he did not have to be a dictator when he could win “hands down.”
“I can get a free vote and win. And there’s a long history why that is so. Because I have produced results, and the people know that I mean what I say and I have produced results,” Lee told NYT’s William Safire in 1999.
A different side
Lee, an agnostic, was indifferent to homosexuality. He was fine with gay people, but frowned on pride parades because he wanted to maintain social order.
“China has already allowed and recognised gays, so have Hong Kong and Taiwan. It’s a matter of time. But we have a part Muslim population, another part conservative older Chinese and Indians. So, let’s go slowly. It’s a pragmatic approach to maintain social cohesion,” he said.
Lee’s cold pragmatism, in line with his ambivalence about the divine, was devoid of romanticism and ideology. His Confucian values of obedience to authority and respect for social order underlined his policies on discipline above individual rights.
Yet, for all of Lee’s clinical logic, his favourite book was Don Quixote, a Spanish classic about the adventures of a man bent on chivalry and romanticism in pursuing unrealistic ideals.
He also practised meditation, in which he repeated a Catholic mantra “Ma Ra Na Ta” for 20 minutes, which means “Come to me oh Lord Jesus”, though he was an agnostic.
When his wife Kwa Geok Choo was bedridden in 2008 from a stroke for two years before her death, he used to read her favourite poems to her and tell her about his day.
Besides keeping fit through swimming and cycling, Lee stopped drinking tea because his doctors told him it was a diuretic. Since he didn’t like coffee as it gave him a “sour stomach”, he turned to warm water. Cold water reduces one’s resistance to colds and coughs, he told NYT in 2010.
Lee remained a fighter to the end. He didn’t care what his critics thought of him. The final verdict would not be in his obituaries, he said.
He admitted that not everything he did was right; he had to do “nasty things” like detaining people without trial, but it was all for the greater good, he insisted.
Lee had built the foundation for a thriving Singapore from nothing and turned the country into Asia’s financial centre, a developed country in a Third World region. But he also realised that his time of fighting communists and extremists had passed and that it was a new world now. He called for a “fresh clean slate” when he retired from Cabinet in 2011.
Younger voters who grew up in Singapore’s concrete jungle now worry about the cost of living amid a widening income gap and resent the country’s liberal immigration policy that PAP had long introduced to support its flourishing economy.
The government could no longer quell dissent due to the growth of social media, unlike Lee’s days when information was tightly controlled in a muzzled press. It remains to be seen whether his successors can adapt to Singapore’s new age, free from Lee’s prevailing influence over the past 50 years.
“Even from my sick bed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel something is going wrong, I will get up,” Lee once said in 1988.

3. National Review Online(http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415871)
Lee Kuan Yew’s Greatest Accomplishment May Not Have Been Singapore’s Economic Success

by Reihan Salam
24 March 2015

It’s easy to forget that the gleaming Singapore of 2015 was once a tinderbox of interethnic hatred that, in the 1950s and 60s, erupted in a series of race riots. In the summer of 1964, for instance, just months before Singapore was essentially expelled from the newly established Federation of Malaysia, a street fight broke out between Malay and Chinese young men, which in turn sparked a broader conflagration that led to 23 deaths and many more injuries. To understand modern Singapore — its strengths as well as its flaws — it is absolutely essential to understand that its founding generation feared nothing more than a renewal of this kind of violence.

Lee Kuan Yew’s death this Sunday has brought widespread, and well-deserved, praise for his central role Singapore’s astonishing and almost uninterrupted economic rise over the past 50 years. No one even bothers to dispute Lee’s success in this regard, and for good reason. In 2013, Singapore’s GDP per capita (PPP) stood at $76,860 in 2013, compared with $53,750 for the United States or, for a closer analogue, $54,270 for Hong Kong. Yet Lee’s success in forging a stable multiethnic polity in Southeast Asia, where racist pogroms remain a looming threat, is arguably his more impressive feat. Singapore is not a paradise, as Singaporeans will happily tell you. What’s striking, however, is that the average Singaporean’s gripes, in a city-state with four official languages and three major ethnic groups — Chinese, Malay, and Indian — that haven’t gotten along historically and generally don’t get along anywhere else, aren’t really about race. Housing is obscenely expensive, despite the government’s unique and in its own way very admirable public housing program. But one doesn’t get the impression that members of Singapore’s South Asian or Malay minorities feel shortchanged by local housing policies. High immigration levels are resented by locals, who hate the congestion it seems to exacerbate. Yet Singaporeans aren’t generally concerned about the racial dimension of immigration. They’re more likely to have a problem with mid-skilled Chinese immigrants who compete with them for service jobs or with high-flying European and American expats than with, say, the low-skilled Bangladeshis who work back-breaking jobs in construction. And yes, Singapore is now rich enough that it is home to a cottage industry of academics who complain about income inequality. They’re joined by a growing number of ordinary Singaporeans, particularly those young enough to have no memory of when their country was poor. Yet no one argues that Singapore’s inequality problem is first and foremost a racial problem. It’s true that Malay Singaporeans are more likely to be disciplined in school or to have run-ins with the law than members of the Chinese majority, and they tend to have lower household incomes. Nevertheless, local Malays are generally confident that they’re treated fairly. This is a bigger deal than you might think. In Malaysia, Malay resentment of the country’s more affluent Chinese minority is a festering problem to this day, which has led many of that country’s best and brightest to emigrate. And as recently as 1998, Indonesia saw a terrifying outbreak of anti-Chinese violence. There is no other country in Southeast Asia where minorities feel so safe and secure.

None of this would have been possible had Singapore fallen under Communist rule. When Lee was first elected Singapore’s premier in 1959, when the city was still a British colonial possession, he was a socialist lawyer who devoted himself equally to the causes of independence and trade unionism. In his early years in office, he found himself locked in a fierce struggle with many of his former left-wing allies, whom he accused of Communist sympathies. Incipient Communism could have become a serious source of conflict within Singapore, or worse, as neighboring Malaya and Indonesia faced very real Communist insurgencies, which often took on a racial cast. The Malayan Communist Party was dominated by the Chinese minority while anti-Communist forces were heavily Malay. In Indonesia, long-simmering anti-Chinese resentment was built first on the perception that the local Chinese communities were more affluent than the native population, which later fed (somewhat ironically) accusations that Chinese Indonesians constituted a disloyal Fifth Column that wished to impose their godless Communism on the Muslim masses.

To this day, historians debate whether or not Singapore faced a real Communist threat, or if Lee had connived with British officials and local governors to invent the threat in order to consolidate his political power. One thing we can safely say is that, had Communist movements succeeded in the wider region, it is very hard to imagine Singapore surviving as a non-Communist redoubt. The city was as vulnerable to hostile neighbors as West Berlin, if not more so, and those who judge Lee’s hawkish stance harshly would do well to keep that in mind. If anything, Lee’s abandonment of his socialist roots and his embrace of free-market policies was less a decision made on conviction than a reflection of his pragmatic desire to strengthen and to unite his vulnerable country. Lee went on to serve as Singapore’s prime minister uninterrupted from independence until 1990. Though there is no question
that he enjoyed wide support, he also kept careful control of the media and engineered an electoral system that limited the reach of his political opponents. Early on, this hardly made Lee look especially despotic: Until the so-called “third wave” of democratization in the 1980s, multi-party democracies in East Asia were rare and short-lived. But as Taiwan and South Korea liberalized, Singapore came to look like more of an outlier. Lee stood out in his willingness to defend his brand of illiberalism.

Since Lee stepped down as premier, however, Singapore has opened up quite a bit. The dominance of Lee’s People’s Action Party is slowly eroding, and many Singaporeans, including many PAP members, expect that the country will have a non-PAP government in the not-too-distant future. Moreover, the PAP has responded to the growing strength of the political Left by curbing immigration (in Singapore considered a left-wing cause) and expanding the welfare state. Though Singapore still has state-controlled media entities that shrink from criticizing the government as you might expect, the country is ever more open to critical voices, both from abroad and at home. These last vestiges of authoritarianism are increasingly seen as an embarrassment by young Singaporeans, and it’s hard to imagine that they won’t soon fade away.

The notion of Singapore as a repressive dictatorship is, in other words, badly dated. It is becoming more and more like other affluent market democracies, for better or for worse. What Lee’s critics don’t seem to appreciate is that for all his curmudgeonly illiberalism, his rule paved the way for Singapore to become the more messy, rambunctious democracy we’re starting to see today. Had he not vigorously opposed Communism and carefully kept a lid on racial nationalism, things might have turned out very differently.
・Reihan Salam is executive editor of National Review.

4.Free Malaysia Today(http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com)
Quotable quotes from Lee Kuan Yew, 23 March 2015
"There is an end to everything and I want mine to come as quickly and painlessly as possible, not with me incapacitated, half in coma in bed and with a tube going into my nostrils and down to my stomach."
SINGAPORE: Here are some notable quotes from Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, who died Monday at the age of 91.
On Japan defeating colonial power Britain to occupy Singapore in 1942:
“The dark ages had descended on us. It was brutal, cruel. In looking back, I think it was the biggest single political education of my life because, for three and a half years, I saw the meaning of power and how power and politics and government went together, and I also understood how people trapped in a power situation responded because they had to live. One day the British were there, immovable, complete masters; next day, the Japanese, whom we derided, mocked as short, stunted people with short-sighted squint eyes.”
After World War II when the British were trying to reestablish control:
“… the old mechanisms had gone and the old habits of obedience and respect (for the British) had also gone because people had seen them run away (from the Japanese) … they packed up.
“We were supposed, the local population was supposed to panic when the bombs fell, but we found they panicked more than we did. So it was no longer the old relationship.”
As a law student in Britain:
“Here in Singapore, you didn’t come across the white man so much. He was in a superior position. But there you are (in Britain) in a superior position meeting white men and white women in an inferior position, socially, I mean. They have to serve you and so on in the shops. And I saw no reason why they should be governing me; they’re not superior. I decided when I got back, I was going to put an end to this.”
On opinion polls:
“I have never been overconcerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think a leader who is, is a weak leader. If you are concerned with whether your rating will go up or down, then you are not a leader. You are just catching the wind … you will go where the wind is blowing. And that’s not what I am in this for.”
As a leader and admirer of the 16th century Italian political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli:
“Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.”
On his iron-fisted governing style:
“Anybody who decides to take me on needs to put on knuckle-dusters. If you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try. There is no way you can govern a Chinese society.”
On his political opponents:
“If you are a troublemaker… it’s our job to politically destroy you… Everybody knows that in my bag I have a hatchet, and a very sharp one. You take me on, I take my hatchet, we meet in the cul-de-sac.”
On democracy:
“You take a poll of any people. What is it they want? The right to write an editorial as you like? They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools.”
On justice:
“We have to lock up people, without trial, whether they are communists, whether they are language chauvinists, whether they are religious extremists. If you don’t do that, the country would be in ruins.”
On his policy of matching male and female university graduates to produce smart babies:
“If you don’t include your women graduates in your breeding pool and leave them on the shelf, you would end up a more stupid society… So what happens? There will be less bright people to support dumb people in the next generation. That’s a problem.”
On criticisms over the high pay of cabinet ministers and senior civil servants:
“You know, the cure for all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government. You get that alternative and you’ll never put Singapore together again: Humpty Dumpty cannot be put together again… and your asset values will be in peril, your security will be at risk and our women will become maids in other people’s countries, foreign workers.”
On religion:
“I wouldn’t call myself an atheist. I neither deny nor accept that there is a God. So I do not laugh at people who believe in God. But I do not necessarily believe in God — nor deny that there could be one.”
On his wife of 63 years, Kwa Geok Choo, who died in October 2010:
“Without her, I would be a different man, with a different life… I should find solace in her 89 years of a life well lived. But at this moment of the final parting, my heart is heavy with sorrow and grief.”
On death:
“There is an end to everything and I want mine to come as quickly and painlessly as possible, not with me incapacitated, half in coma in bed and with a tube going into my nostrils and down to my stomach.”
On rising up from his grave if something goes wrong in Singapore:
“Even from my sickbed, even if you are going to lower me to the grave and I feel that something is going wrong, I will get up.”

• AFP

5.Economist(http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21646869)
The wise man of the East
Lee Kuan Yew made Singapore a paragon of development; but authoritarians draw the wrong lessons from his success
22 March 2015
IF YOU seek his monument: look around Singapore. Prosperous, orderly, clean, efficient and honestly governed, it is not the work of Lee Kuan Yew alone. But even his severest critics would agree that Mr Lee, who died early on March 23rd (Singapore time) at the age of 91, played an enormous part. Singapore’s leader from before “self-government” from Britain in 1959, he was prime minister until 1990, and retired in stages, leaving the cabinet only in 2011, and remaining a member of parliament until his death. Under him Singapore, with no natural resources, has become one of the world’s richest countries. Many admirers look to it as a model, and Mr Lee as a sage. He did indeed have much to teach the world; but some, especially in China, draw the wrong lesson: that authoritarianism works.
Part of Mr Lee’s influence stemmed from his role as a clear-eyed, blunt-speaking geostrategist. He was an astute observer of the defining contest of our era—China’s emergence and how America reacts to it. He was also a respected interpreter of each to the other, and an important voice, with unique access in both countries, arguing for continued American engagement in Asia and for Chinese tolerance of it.
His international status, however, derived from his achievements at home. He got many things right, especially in his choice of economic managers. They kept government small, the economy open and regulation simple, transparent and effective. Singapore often heads the World Bank’s “ease of doing business” rankings. It has deftly exploited those advantages that made it a successful entrepot as early the 14th century: a fine natural harbour and strategic position on the Malacca Strait, through which an estimated 40% or world maritime trade now passes. Foreign investment has poured in.
Pyongyang with broadband
Political stability and social order were part of the attraction. With a big ethnic-Chinese majority but sizeable Malay and Indian minorities, Singapore suffered race riots in the 1960s. Since then ethnic harmony has been preserved: by quotas in public housing that enforce integration; by tight restrictions on inflammatory speech; and by harsh penalties for lawbreaking (including both corporal and capital punishment). Conservative policies have been accompanied by strict social control. Strikes and other forms of protest have been extremely rare. Social policies are illiberal—homosexual acts, for example, remain illegal.
Throughout, Mr Lee’s own People’s Action Party (PAP) has had a vice-like grip on power. The political system is based on the Westminster model inherited from Britain, but subtly modified to prevent the emergence of a serious opposition party. The mainstream press was tamed. Constituency boundaries are manipulated, and the introduction of group constituencies, ostensibly to ensure minority representation in parliament, is a further hurdle for small opposition parties. It also magnifies the distortions of a first-past-the-post system. In the most recent general election in 2011, the PAP won 60% of the votes, but more than 90% of the seats. Mr Lee and other leaders have also used defamation suits to defend their reputations. Opposition leaders have found themselves bankrupt.
Critics mock Singapore for being like North Korea or as “Disneyland with the death penalty”, as William Gibson described it in 1993. However, Mr Lee’s defenders argue that the restrictions are a small price to pay for stability and prosperity. GDP figures do not lie: Mr Lee’s policies have worked. Singapore is a thriving city-state. Unlike North Korea or Disneyland, it offers a real challenge to the liberal notion that growth, prosperity and freedom should and do go together.
China’s leaders, especially, are fascinated by Singapore’s style of one-party rule. They see flaws in “Western-style democracy”: its short-termism; its disregard for non-voters such as children and foreigners; and its habit of throwing up unqualified leaders. Mr Lee’s “meritocracy” promises a solution.
But four peculiarities of Singapore make it look like an anomaly. First is its size. It is a city with a foreign policy, which means it has a cohesion that vast, diverse countries cannot match. Second, this cohesion is reinforced by the turbulent circumstances of its birth. After a painful divorce from Malaysia in 1965, the government has never let Singaporeans forget that a Chinese-majority island, surrounded by Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia, would always be vulnerable. Geography is third. Singapore has flourished in part because of the failings of the rest of its region. Rather as Hong Kong’s prosperity was based on being Chinese but not entirely part of China, so Singapore is in South-East Asia, but not of it.
Only one Lee Kuan Yew
However, the most important reason for Singapore’s singular experience is Mr Lee himself. Incorruptible himself, he kept government unusually clean. He ensured that Singapore pays its ministers and civil servants high salaries. Under today’s prime minister, his son Lee Hsien Loong, the bureaucracy has remained orderly and clean. Unlike many other independence leaders, Mr Lee designed a system to outlast him. Singapore’s government claims it has faced enough electoral competition to keep it honest but not so much that there was a high risk of losing power. So it has been able to eschew populism and take decisions in the country’s long-term interests.
But in most countries, probity requires checks, balances and an opposition that is not always condemned as unpatriotic. In China, for example, Xi Jinping, two years into an anti-corruption campaign, shows no sign of winning the battle. Across much of the developing world, those in opposition are treated as traitors whether their criticisms make sense or not.
Even in Singapore the model may not outlast its creator for long. Singaporeans are having few children and ageing fast, so the government faces demands for more generous social-welfare provisions. And growth has become dependent on high levels of immigration, angering natives who feel the influx is suppressing their wages and making it impossible to get a seat on the tube. That balance between competition and inevitable re-election is shifting uncomfortably. The Singapore model may prove unsustainable even in Singapore.
(End)