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Tag: Lee Kuan Yew

  • A Millenial’s View Of Singapore

    A Millenial’s View Of Singapore

    Millennials aren’t exactly celebrating his passing.

    In 2013, The Real Singapore posted an article written by Jeremy Sia, titled “More Young People are Looking Forward to LKY’s Death”. Sia quoted two people in his article, Edmund Tan, an undergraduate, and Muhammad Fadhil, a media consultant.

    Fadhil was quoted as saying that “any state funeral will just be a sham and that more people will be celebrating LKY’s death.” Tan, on the other hand, acknowledged LKY’s contributions, but suggested that our first Prime Minister “ought to be shot.”

    The article ends with Sia stating that “citizens will use the appropriate laws to send the old man and his PAP supporters to hell.”

    The thing is, is such a sweeping generalisation right?

    He did the right thing over what was popular

    Yes, in 2015, with the benefit of hindsight, we can criticize the policies and actions of Mr. Lee. And yes, some policies have turned out to be misjudged.

    For example, in 1984 the Graduate Mothers Scheme was introduced to encourage university graduates to procreate. The aim was to have a group of “smart” babies by giving female graduates preferential treatment in primary schools and other material benefits. Following a public outcry, the scheme was quietly rolled back in 1985.

    But, without considering the circumstances of the times or understanding the underlying motivations, to wish for the death of another is wrong and disrespectful, regardless of whether that another is the first Prime Minister of Singapore.

    Like many of my friends, I started Monday with the realisation that we had witnessed the end of an era; the passing of one of the last of the Old Guard. Mr. Lee was a man of conviction, and he did what he believed was right, instead of what was popular.

    Sia’s assumption that all young Singaporeans share his view is inaccurate. I did not look forward or hope for LKY’s passing.

    Vitriol, hate is spewed at all who suggest differently

    When one brave reader dared to post a comment contrary to the view of the author, he was vilified by other netizens with one stating that the brave reader had been brainwashed. When another tried to point out that that the abuse was harsh, another rebutted by hurling even more vulgarities, ending in sexual comments what can be described as verbal bullying.

    Tens of thousands of Singaporeans braved the long queues to pay their last respects to LKY at Parliament House. Many were from the older generation but a significant number were students and young people.

    The silent majority speaks

    Look at the amount of well-wishes pouring in from around the world and the number of homages being paid on social media.

    For the silent majority, I have this to say to the vocal minority: You are entitled to your own opinion. But cursing and swearing at a man who has offered nothing but his entire life to the service of others is to spit on history and rub mud over his legacy. If you cannot stand the man for what he has done, at the very least, respect him for what he tried to do.

    We, the young people, do solemnly declare that just because we are better educated and discerning, we are not as ignorant or ungrateful as many believe us to be.

    I, like some of us millennials, have not been celebrating the death of Lee Kuan Yew. And I dare anyone to prove otherwise.

     

    Source: http://mustsharenews.com

  • Watching My Country Mourn From Afar

    Watching My Country Mourn From Afar

    Watching the reaction to Lee Kuan Yew’s death from overseas has been a surreal and difficult experience.

    As a Singaporean journalist with the BBC, it’s been a privilege to cover many stories about my country over the years. But here was probably its biggest story, garnering the most global attention, that I was missing entirely as I spend two weeks working in London. I’ve had to watch the events of his death unfold, and my fellow Singaporeans grieving from afar.

    But my anguish isn’t just professional, it is also personal. As a Singaporean growing up in the 1970s and 80s under Lee Kuan Yew, the influence he had on my life and the lives of many millions of Singaporeans has been immense. The story has been told a million times, how with a tight grip on power, he and his team took a small third world country with limited natural resources and turned it one of the world’s wealthiest countries per capita in a generation.

    But what was it like growing up as that transformation took place?

    Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew thanks constituency after the election in Sept 1988

    Even as children, we were aware of the constant change, not just externally, with the nation’s skyline, its factories and rivers, but also internally. Campaigns spearheaded by Mr Lee’s government sought to micromanage our behaviour. From courtesy to anti-spitting campaigns, Singaporeans were taught from a young age how to be compliant.

    When we were older, we were told how many children we should have and even whom to marry. As graduates, you were encouraged to marry someone with the same level of education, to make real Mr Lee’s vision of social engineering and becoming a nation producing smarter babies.

    Watching the thousands throng the streets – first to show their respects to his coffin at Parliament House and then to watch his funeral motorcade go by in a tropical downpour – made me think at first that here at work was the same thing: compliance, from a nation so accustomed to doing as he said. The alternative often meant being sued, or thrown into detention without trial. Most Singaporeans traded up personal freedoms for economic success.

    Queues outside parliament in Singapore (25 March 2015)

    But here at work was something more. Tears and emotions were high, not just in Singapore but for the many Singaporeans living overseas. My extended family, many of whom have emigrated to the US and Canada, spent days debating his legacy on our family group on WhatsApp. If he was having that impact on them, years after they left their country, imagine what sort of influence his death still wielded on many millions more.

    It’s hard to put in words the effect he had. For many, including myself, it was a love-hate relationship. Love for the immense transformation his governance brought to Singapore. How it’s now admired as a nation to be emulated by giants such as India, which has Singapore building a new city for it, and China, which had President Xi Jinping dispatching generals to live there to study its model of governance. Being Singaporean makes me hold my orange-red passport proud at immigration lines worldwide.

    But hate for the way his executed the transformation, depriving many of free speech, a two-party state, their native Chinese dialects and, if you were a man, the freedom to wear your hair long, get out of military conscription and love a member of the same sex. And then there’s the ban on chewing gum that many foreigners seem to delight in pointing out.

    Mr Lee’s influence spanned well over the 31 years that he actually governed. As a senior minister and then “minister mentor” – titles he took after standing down as prime minister in 1990 – his counsel was regularly sought by Singapore’s next generation of leaders, including the current leader, his son, Lee Hsien Loong.

    Such a cult of personality has been built around Lee Kuan Yew’s intelligence and vision that continuing on as a successful nation almost seems impossible without him.

    It’s made me nervous about the Singapore I shall find when I return, stepping through the comfortable gates of Changi Airport in a little over a week’s time. A Singapore without Lee Kuan Yew.

     

    Source: www.bbc.com

  • The Lee Kuan Yew Conundrum

    The Lee Kuan Yew Conundrum

    Washington, D.C., is fast becoming an acronym for “Dysfunctional Capital.” Singapore, in contrast, has become the poster child for “the concept of good governance,” to quote the Financial Times’s obituary for the country’s longtime leader, Lee Kuan Yew, who was laid to rest on Sunday. For Americans in particular, this contrast presents a conundrum. On the one hand, Americans hold as a self-evident truth that their democracy is the best form of government. On the other hand, they see mounting evidence daily of Washington’s gridlock, corruption, and theatrical distractions, which makes their system seem incapable of addressing the country’s real challenges.

    In assessing the quality of national governance, international rankings often focus on three related baskets of indicators: first, a nation’s level of democracy and civic participation, and the degree to which citizens exercise political rights; second, the effectiveness of its government in facing issues, making policy choices, executing policy, and preventing corruption; and third, its performance in producing the results people want, including rising incomes, health, and safety.

    Let’s start with performance, since it is easiest to measure. As a Russian proverb declares, it is better to be healthy, wealthy, and safe than sick, poor, and insecure. Who can disagree? On these criteria, how has Singapore performed over the course of its first five decades versus the United States; or the Philippines (which the U.S. has been tutoring in democracy-building for a century); or Zimbabwe (an African analogue that declared independence from the United Kingdom just a few years after Singapore, and where dictator Robert Mugabe has been as dominant a national force as Lee Kuan Yew has been in Singapore)?

    Real GDP per Capita by Country: 1965-2013

    The table uses constant 2005 U.S. dollars. (World Bank)

    As the table above shows, over the past 50 years, real per-capita GDP in Singapore grew 12-fold. In current dollars, the average Singaporean’s income grew from $500 a year in 1965 to $55,000 today. Over that same period, real per-capita GDP in the United States and the Philippines doubled, and Zimbabwe’s actually dropped. When comparing the United States and Singapore, it is important to note that Singapore was essentially catching up to America. But what about economic performance in the 21st century? Over the past decade and a half, U.S. GDP has grown an average of less than 2 percent a year—while Singapore’s averaged nearly 6 percent. In the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Competitiveness Index, Singapore was ranked second overall, behind only Switzerland (the United States came in third). For the past seven years, Singapore has also been ranked the best place in the world to do business by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

    As for its healthcare services, Singapore’s infant-mortality rate has fallen from 27.3 deaths per 1,000 births in 1965 to only 2.2 in 2013. A child born in the United States has three times the chance of dying in infancy of one in Singapore. In the Philippines, 23 out of every 1,000 children born die in infancy. In Zimbabwe, 55. In 2012, Bloomberg Rankings judged Singapore the world’shealthiest country based on the full array of health metrics; the United States ranked 33rd, the Philippines 86th, and Zimbabwe 116th. Singapore also has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. A citizen is 24 times more likely to be murdered in the United States than in Singapore. And in 2012, less than 1 percent of Singaporeans reported that they struggled to afford food or shelter, by far the lowest percentage in the world.

    The second basket in assessing governance focuses on what experts call the effectiveness of the governmental process itself. Each year, the World Bank produces Governance Indicators metrics on government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption. Singapore leads the United States by a significant margin on each of these measures and is not even on the same level with the Philippines and Zimbabwe. Singapore’s widest lead over both the United States and comparable nations comes in the prevention of corruption and graft. Singapore scores in the top 10 while the United States ranks 20 countries lower on the list, with the Philippines and Zimbabwe in the bottom third. According to the 2014 Gallup World Poll, 85 percent of Americans see “widespread” corruption in their government, while only 8 percent of Singaporeans believe their government is corrupt.

    On democratic participation and personal liberties, Freedom House produces an annual report. In its 2014 ranking, the United States was among the freest countries in the world. Singapore scored in the bottom half, behind South Korea and the Philippines. It lost points mainly for Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action Party’s tight management of the political process. According to its report, “Singapore is not an electoral democracy. … Opposition campaigns have typically been hamstrung by a ban on political films and television programs, the threat of libel suits, strict regulations on political associations, and the PAP’s influence on the media and the courts.”

    The contrast between Singapore’s ranking in the first two categories, and the third, reminds us of a fundamental question of political philosophy: What is government for? Contemporary Western Europeans and Americans tend to answer that question by emphasizing political rights. But for Lee Kuan Yew, “the ultimate test of the value of a political system is whether it helps that society establish conditions that improve the standard of living for the majority of its people.” As one of his fellow Singaporeans, Calvin Cheng, wrote this past week in The Independent, “Freedom is being able to walk on the streets unmolested in the wee hours in the morning, to be able to leave one’s door open and not fear that one would be burgled. Freedom is the woman who can ride buses and trains alone; freedom is not having to avoid certain subway stations after night falls.” Lee Kuan Yew always insisted that the proof is in the pudding: rising incomes for the broad middle class, health, security, economic opportunity.

    To Western ears, the claim that an autocratic state can govern more effectively than a democratic one sounds heretical. History offers few examples of benevolent dictatorships that delivered the goods—or stayed benevolent for long. But in the case of Singapore, it is hard to deny that the nation Lee built has for five decades produced more wealth per capita, more health, and more security for ordinary citizens than any of his competitors.

    Thus Lee Kuan Yew leaves students and practitioners of government with a challenge. If Churchill was right in his judgment that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others, what about Singapore?

     

    Source: www.theatlantic.com

  • The Rehabilitation Of Lee Kuan Yew – A National Mourning And A Personal Journey

    The Rehabilitation Of Lee Kuan Yew – A National Mourning And A Personal Journey

    7.19pm, 29 March 2015 – playground – HDB estate – Choa Chu Kang.

    My son, 8 years old, is playing with his friends.

    My mind is elsewhere – Mandai crematorium.  LKY.  His life ended a week ago. By now, his flesh and bones would largely be ash. (Having gone to collect my mother-in-law’s ashes slightly over a year ago, I realise that not all of the bones turn to ash.)

    What an extraordinary life.

    The first Prime Minister of Singapore, one member of the extremely talented group of men, has made his final journey.  Lee Kuan Yew is no more.

    8.49pm, 29 March 2015 – back in my flat

    It has been a pretty exhausting day.  Soaked with emotion.  I can’t fully understand the feeling.   Some 12 days have passed since the announcement made by the Prime Minister’s Office on 17 March 2015 about LKY’s critical condition and 7 days since the announcement of his death.   I’ve been having mixed feelings about him and his death.   On 23 March 2015, when I woke up at 6am and looked at my phone, I discovered via Facebook posts that LKY had passed away.  A strange quiet feeling filled my mind.  It had not yet sunk in.

    How did I react?  Nothing.  No feeling.  The moment had arrived and I had no emotion to record.

    Just a few days earlier on Wednesday, 18th March 2015, I was asked via Facebook as to how I would react if LKY passed away.   This was my response:

    “Twenty to thirty years ago, there were a whole bunch of my friends that used to talk about opening table for just such an event.  And I would have gladly joined them in celebration even if it was just to drink coke.”

    To be precise, when I was pursuing my law degree, I remember having a CONVERSATION with some friends about local politics and one of them remarked about how we would react if LKY passed away.  All of us agreed, at that time (1993/1994), we would throw a party.  The image of Lee Kuan Yew that I had in my mind at that time was of a tyrant, a dictator and a person that had caused great anguish to the families of many Singaporeans for the sake of consolidating his own power.

    Many of my friends (who are in their late 40s now) felt a deep resentment for LKY at that time.  (Bearing in mind that most of my friends were my fellow law undergraduates, we were not a proper sample of the broader society. )

    We were not a generation that had experienced either the Japanese Occupation or British Rule.  We didn’t experience the merger in 1963 or the separation in 1965.  My generation was born soon after independence.   Perhaps the most significant political event experienced by us when we were politically conscious was Operation Spectrum in 1987.  I was 19.  Many of my friends were skeptical of the government’s story about the Marxist conspiracy.  Some things just did not gel.  I had a sense that this was either a case of over-reaction to the activities of social workers or a deliberate frame up to scare a new generation of voters that were beginning to swing towards the opposition.

    Starting from the 1981 Anson by-election, the voting pattern in Singapore started shifting.  The Worker’s Party led by JB Jeyaretnam and the Singapore Democratic Party led by Chiam See Tong were making inroads into the minds of the electorate.  I remember that Lee Kuan Yew had some words of scorn for younger voters that, according to him, did not understand how fast things can fall apart in Singapore.  At that time, the impression that I had was that Operation Spectrum was intended to instill a fresh sense of fear in the minds of Singaporeans.  It was a sense of fear that was beginning to disappear and the PAP was in danger of losing more seats.  (1980 GE – PAP’s popular vote = 77.77% with all seats to PAP,  1984 GE – PAP’s popular vote = 64.8% with WP and SDP capturing 2 seats.)

    To this day, the real motivations behind the 1987 arrests are unclear.  The last arrest and detention under the ISA was in 1979 and the 1987 arrests arrived after a 8 year non-use of the ISA.  To put it into perspective, from 1963 to 1979, there were arrests under the ISA every single year.  My parents were not very interested in politics and they had been PAP voters all the while.  Nevertheless, they would say on and off that I shouldn’t speak too much about politics because I will get arrested.  It was something that the general population had grown to expect.  Say something wrong about the PAP and you will get arrested. )

    I went to primary school in the 1970s and to secondary school from 1981.  During my school years, we didn’t learn about Hock Lee bus riots, racial riots, etc. that is so much a part of the curriculum these days.  The Singapore history that we read about included Sang Nila Utama and the founding of Singapore by Stamford Raffles and the growth of the sea port.  During those days, there was no active attempt at spelling out a national narrative through the education system.  We were, however, brought up to fear the authorities.

    Nevertheless, the general prosperity and stability and the relatively long disuse of the ISA was beginning to embolden more youths.  The 1987 arrests may well have been intended to put the brakes on the opposition’s ability to organize and the increasing support for the opposition.  (Despite the 1987 arrests, the downward TREND of the PAP’s popular vote continued in the 1988 and 1991 elections with the PAP hitting a low of 61% of the vote.  I suspect that the arrests actually made it worse for the PAP in terms of popularity.   New batches of voters were less afraid and more defiant when threatened.)

    I remember being very angry with LKY and his Cabinet ministers for what I perceived to be unjust imprisonment on trumped up charges.  Unlike today, PAP in those days wasn’t in an overdrive mode trying to educate people about the 1950s and the 1960s.  I wasn’t aware of Operation Coldstore, the Communist treat of the 1950s or the circumstances of the merger.  All I saw was the imprisonment of students, Catholic Church activists and lawyers.   False accusations, detentions without trial, total surveillance – we were living in an Orwellian nightmare.  (Over the years, reading and researching on the detentions, I have become more convinced that these were not Marxists conspirators.   Tharman Shanmugaratnam has gone on record and expressed doubts about the arrests and it appears the Dhanabalan’s Cabinet resignation was, in part, due to his disagreement over the arrests.  Ex-President Devan Nair also expressed his doubts about the Marxist conspiracy arrests. )

    The LKY that I grew to hate in the 1990s was a power-hungry man that maneuvered his old-guard leaders out of the way and arrested and detained political opponents and activists.   As CV Devan Nair had written in the forward to Francis Seow’s “To Catch a Tartar” in 1994:

    “Today every member of that superb team has been eased out of power and influence in the name of political self-renewal, while Lee himself has ensured that he presides, as Secretary-General of the ruling party, not as he once did, over equals who had elected him, but over a government cabinet and a judiciary made up entirely of his appointees or nominees.  In relation to old guard leaders, Lee had been no more than primus inter pares.  He had perforce to deal with equals, and they were fully capable of speaking their minds.”

    “To Catch a Tartar” is banned in Singapore.  The beauty of BOOKSbanned in Singapore is that they are easily available across the border in Malaysia.  I got to read Francis Seow’s ACCOUNT of the events surrounding the detentions in 1987 and 1988 as well as Francis Seow’s own detention.  Francis Seow was once the Solicitor General and at the time of his arrest and detention he was the President of the Law Society.  He stood for elections under the Workers’ Party banner and eventually escaped from Singapore when charges were brought against him for alleged Tax evasion.

    Whilst the Straits Times always presented the official narrative, there were ample opportunities to get hold of alternative sources of information if one tried hard enough.  Books that come to mind now include Christopher Tremevan’s “Political Economy of Social Control in Singapore”,  Seow’s “Media Enthralled”  and “Lee’s Lieutenants” which was a compilation of academic writings on the contributions of the old guard.

    And that’s the other matter.  Censorship: the banning of BOOKS, the restriction of the circulation of books and the defamation suits.  As a law student in the 1990s, what I was witnessing was totally at odds with the Constitutional values that I was learning about.  I encountered incidents of censorship of the arts.  Playwrights often came under the radar of the authorities because of the theme of their plays.  I used to follow the local arts scene closely in the 1990s and the heavy hand of the authorities was evident.

    I witnessed, first hand, the sleight of hand practiced by the media in the way they reported.  Some events that I attended at the SCWO and Substation were reported with a different slant from the actual event.  I understand fully what is meant by the phrase “nation-building” press.   Of course, as I came to fully understand the legislative framework under which the press operates, it was obvious as to how the state maintained that total control.

    Gerrymandering was another issue that really irked me.  The redrawing of electoral boundaries, the introduction of the GRCs and the political use of Town Councils as well as upgrading projects caused me to be a really angry young man.  I had nothing but hate for the PAP and, of course, LKY.  It was impossible to imagine that anybody else could have masterminded this.

    My mind is filled with impressions of injustice during the LKY years:  Hounding JBJ with lawsuits, convicting him and getting him disbarred and eventually removing appeals to the Privy Council after that Court produced a scathing judgment against the Singapore authorities in JBJ’s case.

    Between 1963 (Operation Coldstore) and 1987/88 (Operation Spectrum) there were 485 publicly verifiable arrests made under the Internal Security Act.  The Communist boogeyman was so effective in drumming up support for these arrests that the government was doing it with impunity.

    I was comfortable in using the word ‘dictator’ to refer to LKY.  Whilst these decisions would have been Cabinet decisions, somehow LKY always loomed large and I had the sense that he was probably the sole or main decision maker when it came to these arrests and detentions.

    Not many Singaporeans had the empathy to put themselves into the shoes of those wrongfully detained and to understand the suffering of the families of the detainees.  How does it feel to have your father imprisoned when you are very young and not to see him for a decade or two?  How do we wipe off the tears of the spouses?  How do we compensate for the lost years of those detainees’ lives?

    In deifying LKY after his death, many Singaporeans have gone overboard in painting a picture of the man beyond what he is.  I read one facebook post that referred to him as a Nelson Mandela.  If Mandela was a Singaporean, he would have arguably languished in prison longer than he did in South Africa.  In fact, we hold the record for having the longest serving political detainee in the world.

    I could go on and on about different aspects of the ‘LKY way’ that disturbed me, riled me up and caused me to hate the man.  It is safe to say that the word ‘hate’ can be used.  Would I have hastily compared him to a Hitler or a Stalin?  No.  His most extreme weapon was detention without trial.  There have been no reports of extra-judicial killings or disappearances in Singapore politics.  This dictator was also delivering the goods on the economic front.  He wasn’t focused on amassing wealth for himself at the expense of all others.  He was committed to the betterment of the overall society.  The term benevolent dictator has come to be used to refer to him.

    As LKY slowly went into the background as Minister Mentor, I started having less of that hatred against the man but, he still remained the symbol of repression.

    Over the last 7 days, some Singaporeans have expressed negative views against LKY and they have been taken to task as ‘ingrates’.  There was a letter written to the forum page urging Singaporeans to take negative commentators to task.  Police reports have been filed.   While I understand the need to be respectful at times like these, I can also understand the reason for the strong feelings held by LKY’s detractors.

    Strangely, despite all the hatred I had for the man in the 1990s, I found myself searching for a reaction  on that Monday morning when I woke up to the news of his death.  There was no emotion.  Not sad.  Not happy or rejoicing.  Neutral. Just neutral.

    THE REHABILITATION

    Over the years, as part of a personal, spiritual journey, I have come to value forgiveness.  In my personal life, being at the receiving end of a cheating wife in my first marriage, I experienced emotions bordering on depression.  In the end, forgiving her turned out to be the most healing experience.  I have, since then, made it a regular practice to let go of negative emotions that I may have had against particular individuals in my life.  Reconciliation through forgiveness heals the mind in a way that is difficult to explain.

    That forgiving attitude has made it easier for me to not hold a person’s past misdeeds against him.  When the PMO’s office announced on 17 March that LKY was critically ill, I started pondering about the man.  I wasn’t feeling anything in particular.  He’s already 91.  There was nothing that I had personally to really hold against him.  I was, in fact, somewhat disturbed by the fact that his family may be delaying the decision to take him off life support.  (He had made an Advanced Medical Directive and didn’t wish to be on life support.)  There was a little irony, I felt, in him being held captive in his body against his wish.  (To be fair, given the scarcity of information surrounding his condition, we are not sure when he was taken off life support.)

    On the morning of 21 March 2015, whilst meditating I got distracted by thoughts of him.  I found myself praying for him to have a quick painless death.  I was surprised at my own action.  I did It again on Sunday morning (22 March 2015).  I found myself rationalizing that whatever he may have done, I don’t need to hold It against him.  That’s his journey and his karma.  My position as a fellow travelling soul is to pray for and transfer merits to all souls.

    On 23 March, it finally happened.  In the morning, PM Lee addressed the nation and I watched it on Channel News Asia.  I felt sad for the first time.  It was clearly because I put myself in Lee Hsien Loong’s shoes and imagined how difficult it must be to announce the death of your own father to the world.  He had the burden of making the announcement as the Prime Minister of this country but he is also a son who had lost his father.  He was fighting back his tears as he spoke.  I felt myself getting a little teary-eyed.

    That night, I was contemplating on the bodily prison and the man-made prison.  LKY came to be trapped in his body in his final days.  Those that he imprisoned were trapped within concrete walls.  They are both prisons.  I posted this on Facebook:

    What does a prison look like?

    There are walls?

    Metal? Steel? Concrete?

    Bones? Flesh? Skin?

     

    Does it hurt to be locked in

    Behind bars?

    For words, thoughts and views?

    For age and ill health?

     

    How do loved ones weep

    For the ones imprisoned

    By the firm claws

    Of laws and death?

    A 7-day mourning period was announced on the morning of his passing and Channel News Asia went on overdrive.  Round the clock, non-stop special features in memory of LKY.  It went on and on and on ad nauseam.  By midweek, it was taking a toll on me.  Some of the documentaries were obviously part of a propaganda effort to whitewash history and to build an early electoral advantage for the party.

    Myths were now being created.  Singapore’s development was being presented as a one man show.  That fishing village to modern metropolis storyline was being peddled incessantly.  Whilst I did not rejoice at his death and even felt a little sad, I found the deification of LKY rather horrifying.

    Last week, if you consumed information through Channel News Asia and the Straits Times, you would have been presented with no alternative but to think that LKY single handedly introduced a housing policy, education policy, economic policy, etc.  The term Founding Father has been used.  I suspect that it will get stuck.

    This myth-making prompted me use the hashtag #notmyfather when I made some comments on facebook.  It wasn’t a popular thing to do last week.  Some (not most) people can be pretty aggressive when they are grieving.

    If, as a nation, we are going to use the term “Founding Father”, I believe that we would truly be ingrates not to include men like Goh Keng Swee, Toh Chin Chye, Lim Kim San, Rajaratnam, Ong Pang Boon, Ahmad Ibrahim, Othman Wok, EW Barker and Lee Khoon Chye.  I am sure that I am leaving out others.  But, these men stand out.  When it comes to the economy, one man stands out as a towering figure and it is not LKY.  It is Goh Keng Swee.  How about housing the nation?  Lim Kim San stands out.

    LKY has himself acknowledged that it wasn’t a one-man show:

    “How can we say who contributed more?  Without Dr Toh holding the fort in the PAP, we might never have held the Party together.  Without Lim Kim San putting up the buildings, the whole Party could have been smashed up and been washed out in September 1963.”

    LKY has also CREDITED Rajaratnam for being a strong proponent of multiculturalism and the PAP’s positioning on racial harmony was done largely through the writings and speeches of this man.  The first Cabinet of independent Singapore created a vision for Singapore on a collegiate basis.  This was not a Cabinet that operated in a fashion where there was Prime Ministerial dominance.

    If we are going to give an accolade to LKY as the founding father, it is important that this should be a SHARED honour with the other team members.

    Deva Nair:  “Lee Kuan Yew, let me acknowledge with pride, was the superb captain of a superb team, but like all the best captains at the end of the game, they come to believe that they have scored all the goals themselves.”

    What has happened is that last week’s myth making has taken it one step further.  LKY did not only score all the goals.  He was the only player on field.  That is clearly not true.  It is important that history is not adulterated like this simply because we want to give an over-the-top tribute to the man.

    Nobody should take away the CREDIT from the government of the 1960s to 1980s in improving Singapore economically.  However, we have to stop peddling the myth that Singapore was a fishing village in 1965.

    The nauseating propaganda was putting me off.

    And then the queues happened.  On Wednesday, I witnessed the crowds queuing up outside parliament with the line snaking all over the place.  Starting from Parliament House the queue stretched back over Cavenagh Bridge running along Circular Road and back over the Elgin Bridge and back under the bridge towards Clarke Quay, going over Coleman bridge and stretching back New Bridge road all the way up to Hong Lim Park.  It was overwhelming.  I was walking from my office at New Bridge road to Funan and was emotionally overwhelmed by the queue.  Walking along this mass of grieving Singaporeans suddenly stirred something in me.  This is not about LKY the man.  This is about LKY the idea.

    My countrymen were coming out to say their farewell to a man that in many ways had come to represent the Singapore story.  The rise of Singapore as an economic powerhouse in a short time frame after independence occurred through the sound leadership of some exceptional men assisted by able and efficient civil servants and supported by an army of citizens.  The hardworking men and women of Singapore that came to be ranked as the most productive workforce on the planet have always been the unsung heroes of the Singapore miracle.  These dedicated and uncompromisingly hardworking people had in LKY a symbol of themselves.  Somehow, I felt that what really drew most of us inexorably towards Parliament House last week was that our supreme symbol of ourselves had passed away.  An era in our National psyche has ended.  We have now moved into the truly post-LKY era.

    His death has provided us with a moment of catharsis.

    For sure, lifelong supporters of the PAP would have paid their respect to him and that should come as no surprise.  However, many of my friends that have been voting routinely for the opposition and even despised him in the 1990s have gone to Parliament House to pay their last respects.  This is bigger than LKY the man.  This is about a nation recognizing its identity.

    In Parliament, on 20 Aug 2009, LKY asked this rhetorical question:  “Are we a nation?”  He answered it himself:  “In transition”.

    Singaporeans in their hundreds of thousands have come out to express their grief, respect or gratitude.  The elderly, the young, the handicapped, the able bodied, Chinese, Malays, Indians, new citizens, businessmen, government officials, civil servants, office workers, blue collar workers – they have all come.  They seem to have answered that question.  Are we a nation? Yes we are!

    1.2 million people have paid their tribute.  A population that is usually averse to public displays of emotion was out in force.

    Singaporeans have often debated about our national identity.  We have often wondered what makes us Singaporean.  We end up picking up on trivial externalities like our love for food and our kiasu mentality.  Well, what really makes us special?  How about some things that LKY is himself lionized for? Efficient, incorrupt, hardworking, disciplined.

    Perhaps, the man does, to a large extent, represent who we are collectively (warts and all).

    On Friday, 27 March, I was feeling heavy-hearted and beginning to feel somewhat exhausted.  I had been voraciously consuming all the news on LKY’s passing: the outpouring of grief, the response of foreign dignitaries, the reports and opinion pieces of local and foreign journalists, pictures and online postings of facebook friends, etc.

    I was feeling conflicted.  I don’t do tears for dictators.

    Am I an ingrate for not expressing gratitude for the things we have as a nation today?  Have I not forgiven the man for the things that he had done to his political adversaries?

    I had a long CONVERSATION with my wife on the night of 27thMarch.  She had similar conflicts in her mind.  We clarified our emotions and I came to better understand myself.

    I don’t need to compromise my sense of what is morally right and wrong.  If I expressed some gratitude to the man, it doesn’t have to mean that I have agreed that nothing wrong has happened in our politics.  I can forgive a person and still insist today on higher moral standards in our politics.

    GRATITUDE

    What is there to be grateful about?

    Firstly, let me clarify that my gratitude here is not to one person but to the collective.  The first Cabinet, the Civil Servants and external advisers of that time and the hardworking people.  LKY, being the leader of that generation, represents more than just himself as a person.  My gratitude is to that collective as represented by and now symbolized by him.

    The most important thing that I have benefitted from in this country is education.  My father moved to Singapore in the 1950s.  His brother, my uncle, still lives in India.  I have first cousins that are pretty intelligent but don’t have a proper education beyond 8thstandard to 10th standard.  I am thankful to my parents for having decided to live in Singapore and thankful to God for the privilege of having been born in post-independence Singapore.

    After I got my PSLE results and did well enough to qualify for Raffles Institution, my parents were delighted.  My father was a school watchman.  There are not many post-colonial nations that provide for an educational system based entirely on merit.  Most of my friends at RI were not from RICH families.  There were, of course, some.  Predominantly, these were sons of cleaners, hawkers, road sweepers, junior civil servants and other low income parents.  It really did not matter.  We were received based on merit and not affiliation or donations.

    At the 188th Founder’s day celebration of RI, Lee Kuan Yew was the Guest-of-Honour.  He said the following:

    “188 years ago, Sir Stamford Raffles established RI to provide a sound education for the FUTURE leaders of the land. The school’s mission has not changed. RI has produced generations of leaders at all levels: in politics and government, the professions, academia, business, sports and the arts. Rafflesians must give back to the community, do their best for their own personal advancement and for the wider public good.

    RI must always remain a school that admits students on the basis of merit, and not on their parents’ status or wealth. They must be able, whatever their race or social backgrounds. RI also attracts bright students from other countries. This makes RI the leading school in Singapore. The ideals of Singaporeans and Rafflesians are meritocracy and multiculturalism, regardless of their race, religion or mother tongue.

    I am a beneficiary of that meritocratic system. Some of my fellow students came in big cars, like descendants of the Eu Tong Sen family; some in unpressed clothes from Chinatown on buses and bicycles. But our goal was to achieve excellence. From RI, I went on to Raffles College and, subsequently after the war, to Cambridge. But my formative years were from 1936 to 1940 at RI.”

    I can say quite safely that I too am a beneficiary of that meritocratic system.  (I’m aware that our brand of meritocracy has led to its own set of problems of elitism. That’s for us to remedy as we go along.)

    In developing Singapore’s post-independence education strategy, the Cabinet decided on nurturing that meritocracy.  I am thankful for that for I benefitted from it.

    When I doing my Bar in London, I remember being asked by a doctor from India whether my father was a lawyer.  My answer was, “He is a cleaner and I am proud of it.”  As a Singaporean, such a question was irrelevant to me.  Yet, I realized that for an Indian from India it was not easy to appreciate that a society could come without the kind of stratifications that exist in India.

    True it is that Singapore is not the only country that allows someone from a low-income family to get a good education and make something of himself.  But, this is where I have been born.  This is where I got the opportunities.  I am grateful to those that were responsible for laying a sound infrastructural foundation for me to get a good education.

    In my mind, I took some time to say:  Thank You.

    On 28th March 2015, I reached Choa Chu Kang after WORK.  I walked towards the LKY Tribute Centre.

    I lit a candle.  I bowed 3 times in front of his picture. I wrote a short thank you note addressed to the First Cabinet.

    I came back home with a sense of relief.

    THE STATE FUNERAL

    I watched the whole funeral ‘live’ on TV.

    The procession made it’s way from parliament house to The university cultural Centre at NUS. It passed key landmarks in Singapore. Memories of his mixed legacy flooded my mind.

    The eulogies were, at times touching and at other times veered towards propaganda.

    The Last Post – Never before did it have so much meaning for me. It was not just about letting a leader have his final rest. It was about laying the past to rest.

    This man has been too much a part of my system. My political consciousness has been, over the years, dominated by the things that happened in the LKY era.  That era is now over.

    It’s our turn now.  To build a FUTURE as we imagine it. We can build a gentler, kinder and more caring society. We can build a more open and transparent system of government.  We can build a more free society on our own terms.  We can move towards a society that is more tolerant of differing ideas and is able to debate vigorously and yet honour and respect each person’s individuality.

    The pledge was recited.

    We haven’t always lived up to it.  It is time we did.

    “We, the citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion, to build a democratic society based on justice and equality so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation.”

    The Anthem was played.

    I haven’t been much of a fan of patriotism but I can relate to the idea of a community that I’m part of and to which I have responsibilities.

    I cried.  I looked at my wife and she was crying.

    My son looked puzzle.  He asked why we were crying and pointed out that LKY was not family.

    We didn’t answer.

    I guess, we are All one family of humans.

    After all the elaborate drama of Living is done we go back to the elements.

    There’s a Tamil saying:

    Even a King that wears a glorious crown will in the end be no more than a fist of ash.

    I write to rehabilitate a memory.  I write to heal.

    It is time to move on.

     

    Source: https://article14blog.wordpress.com/

  • Focus On Lee Kuan Yew’s Achievements May Give Boost To PAP

    Focus On Lee Kuan Yew’s Achievements May Give Boost To PAP

    Over the past week, Hasanji Dhilawala has shed tears for a man he never met.

    “I am grateful to Lee Kuan Yew for the life he gave me,” said the 86-year-old, who wept in his wheelchair when he finally had a chance to be in the same room as Lee to thank him.

    “He was a leader who kept his promises. I am the envy of my relatives back in India,” said the grandfather of five, one of more than 400,000 Singaporeans who waited for hours this week to view Lee’s body as it lay in state.

    The bond that the older Singaporeans like Dhilawala had with the country’s first prime minister was a special one. They experienced political tumult but saw their standard of living rise dramatically in a generation, and through it all Lee Kuan Yew was their assured leader.

    Indeed, Lee has been such a constant that when he fell seriously ill last month and died last Monday at age 91, the most common question was whether the People’s Action Party (PAP) would decline without the man who had been its centre of gravity for 60 years. Even PAP leaders have readily admitted that nobody is likely to fill Lee’s shoes.

    Opposition watershed

    Speculation has swirled for years – receding into the background as he faded from public eye but resurfacing last week – that the PAP owed its longevity to Lee, and that it could fall apart without him. After a week of nationwide mourning, however, an intriguing new possibility has emerged: that the intense focus on his achievements and qualities could actually solidify support for his PAP.

    “If the election is next week, the PAP ‘sure win’,” said Mr Jason Ling, a 45-year-old sub-contractor, using the colloquial slang for “guaranteed victory”.

    General elections are only due in January 2017 but were widely expected to be called later this year or early next year in the afterglow of the republic’s 50th anniversary bash in August.

    Although the PAP has won every election decisively since independence, its share of the vote dipped significantly in the 1980s. After the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States, it bounced up to 75 per cent. But in the last election, in May 2011, it fell to a historic low of 60 per cent.

    That election also proved a watershed as the opposition crossed a psychological threshold – a group representation constituency (GRC) made up of multiple rather than single seats and long viewed as impregnable fell to the Workers’ Party. In one fell swoop, five seats were lost, including those of two ministers, one junior minister and one potential office holder.

    The PAP also lost two subsequent by-elections, with the result that seven out of 87 elected seats in parliament are now held by the opposition. In the guessing game for the next polls, pundits had predicted that one or two more GRCs and a few more single seats were well within the opposition’s reach.

    The Singapore Dream

    Over the past five years, politics in Singapore has become much more contentious as voters pressure the government over a fistful of issues, from the public housing shortfall, to fixing gaps in public transport and slowing the influx of foreign talent.

    The PAP has been assiduously adjusting policies. In the latest Budget, there were more handouts. Such moves and the feel-good SG50 celebrations, including generous anniversary giveaways, are seen as potentially paying dividends at the polls for the PAP.

    However, Lee’s sorrowful send-off may have an even greater impact on voters than the multimillion-dollar SG50 bash. The eulogies, including superlative tributes from abroad, appear to have focused people’s minds on some of the strong fundamentals of PAP governance.

    “Before he passed away, I was a little bit upset with the government, everything so expensive; my car payment every month makes me a little bit depressed,” said an insurance agent who would only give his name as Low.

    “But now after Mr Lee’s left us, maybe I give the PAP a chance. They are trying to be more generous and honestly speaking, this is a good government. His son [Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong] is working very hard.”

    Low, a father of one in his 30s, is the typical younger middle- income Singaporean who is believed to hold the crucial swing vote.

    Older Singaporeans are said to form the PAP’s loyal base. Dhilawala, for example, sees Singapore’s legendary progress reflected in his own life story. He immigrated from Mumbai, India, in 1952 with just two sets of clothes in his suitcase and 100 rupees in his pocket to work as a clerk with an uncle who paid for his passage.

    He lived in the office with six other men and rose to become a gunmetal supervisor, brought his wife from India, bought a three-room Housing Board flat and raised three children. One daughter is a lawyer, another runs an online business, and his son is an oil trader. He and his children now live in private housing and spend holidays abroad.

    Dhilawala’s life encapsulates the Singapore Dream, Act 1, when poor young migrants could land on its shores and build a life from scratch, own a home and place their children and grandchildren on a firm footing.

    Act 2 and 3 may not be as sweet a story. “After first-world status, what else can we achieve?” asked Chung Miao Ling, an IT worker in her 50s, one of the thousands of mourners for whom Lee’s passing provided a moment for introspection.

    But she is sold on Lee’s brand of governance. “His passing has reminded me all the more why we need good, capable leaders to get things done, not just those who can talk,” she said.

    A parting gift

    Before the last election, social media was dominated by government critics. The PAP has been encouraging its base to speak up. Last week, finally, the silent majority showed up in force and made plain their loyalties, say many commentators.

    They emerged in the long, 24-hour queues to file past Lee’s coffin, in the thousands of notes and mementoes at community halls all over the island, and in the hundreds of thousands who lined the streets bid their final farewell to Lee’s cortege yesterday.

    “These past few days, the silent majority showed where they stand, what type of government they like,” said a banker in his 50s.

    Lim May Yee, 43, a businesswoman who runs a financial consultancy said: “We need strong government now, more than ever, this is what this week has reminded us.”

    Lee’s passing appeared to help crystallise in Singaporeans’ minds the benefits of strong leadership and good governance. Lee was a pragmatist obsessed with improving Singaporeans’ security and quality of life.

    Over the past few days, they had a refresher course on the values that Lee extolled as they pored over his life story, listened to his speeches, and saw him in action when he got things done. In death, the ultimate persuader of the people appeared to have convinced them all over again.

    The bigger question is whether swing voters – mainly those who want the PAP to continue in power but with a much stronger opposition – have been similarly moved. Supporters like Chung believe this to be the case. “I believe Singaporeans will say thanks to Mr Lee by giving the party he founded the vote,” she said. “This is how we will say thank you.”

    But even if goodwill towards the old PAP is now at an all-time high, there is no guarantee that today’s PAP will be rewarded with a dividend or bounce at the polls. Supporters like Chung say that even the PAP base worries whether future party leaders will have what it takes, partly because the succession planning on who can take over from Lee’s son has not been clearly mapped out.

    Besides, many say that while the elder Lee’s style suited his times, it may not fit new realities. One new ineluctable reality is that in the internet age, people have shorter time horizons in their expectations of their leaders and the PAP needs to find that sweet spot of being able to deliver both the long- and immediate- term promises.

    What is clear is that the mourning crossed party lines. Singaporeans’ own personal stories of struggle and success, ambition and achievement came together as “nationally shared emotions”, said Professor David Chan, a Lee Kuan Yew fellow and professor of psychology at the Singapore Management University.

    Sociologist Tan Ern Ser said: “In death, he has become larger than life. To many, Lee Kuan Yew was Singapore and the PAP; hence, I believe the good things associated with Lee Kuan Yew and, in turn, the PAP will help to boost the ruling party’s electoral support.”

    Observers like Tan also note that the unusual nature of the events of the past week became rallies for the ruling party to reinforce its record. There were memorial services by various groups, from unions to big corporations, from grass-roots groups to the civil service. The events “have had the effect of a large, continuous political rally that are not accessible to opposition parties”, says Tan.

    “Perhaps, the events, recollections and emotions of the past week could be understood as LKY’s farewell gift to the PAP and Singapore.”

    If nothing else, he says, the Lee dividend could translate into this: “The memory and the messages and images will have a tremendous impact of how Singaporeans think about the past and the future of the nation.”

    The past week was about a re-dedication to the mission.

     

    This article, writtenby Zuraidah Ibrahim, appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as The Lee Kuan Yew dividend.

     

    Source: www.scmp.com