Tag: Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew – The True Leader Of Singapore And Southeast Asia

Lee Kuan Yew was sworn in as prime minister of Singapore on June 5, 1959, when Singapore then was a self-governing state within the British Commonwealth.

When the Federation of Malaysia was established in 1963, Lee ushered Singapore into the newly created Federation. His party, the People’s Action Party (PAP), was his strong political base after it overcame some internal problems.

In 1964, PAP (with 75 percent Chinese membership) took part in Malaysian national elections based on Lee’s decision. Lee’s belief in multiracialism apparently was viewed differently by the Malay politicians.

In August 1965, Lee was told by his Malaysian colleagues in the federal government that Singapore had to leave the federation.

An Australian journalist friend who covered the event remembered that Lee with tears on his face softly said to the few reporters present: “We are on our own now.” My friend also noted the determination in Lee’s voice. It is helpful to remember the context of that event, which made the situation faced by Lee and his colleagues challenging indeed.

Former president Sukarno who at that stage showed clear indications of megalomania considered the formation of the Federation of Malaysia as Great Britain’s imperialist stratagem to encircle the Republic of Indonesia because of his anti-Western attitude.

Sukarno declared what he referred to as Konfrontasi, or confrontation, which in reality was launching a series of military operations against Malaysia and the recently independent Singapore.

Lee was indeed very much relieved to see the gradual changes happening in Jakarta after the failed communist party coup on Oct. 1, 1965. Perhaps it took the same time for Lee to comprehend the actions of the newly emerging leader in Jakarta, gen. Soeharto, because of his unmilitaristic decisions.

He abolished the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), called for an end to all military operations against Malaysia and Singapore and reactivated Indonesia’s membership at the United Nations.

And as acting president since 1967, Soeharto made approaches to Western countries that were willing to provide economic aid to Indonesia, which slowly recovered from a chaotic economic mess with 600 percent inflation thanks to Sukarno’s revolutionary outbursts.

In other words, unintentionally, there was a parallel of action and purpose between Singapore’s Lee and Indonesia’s Soeharto. Lee was determined to transform Singapore as a modern state with a sophisticated economy. The end of Konfrontasi made his job easier. And Soeharto quietly made repairing Indonesia’s broken economy his top priority, along with providing basic necessities to the ordinary people that had suffered for so long.

Books have been written to describe the Singapore miracle that became the modern hub of Southeast Asia under the leadership of Lee. Indonesia and Singapore’s other neighbors benefit from the modern services that Singapore is able to provide so efficiently.

On the other hand, Singapore’s rapid modernization would have been difficult to achieve without political stability in Southeast Asia.

That’s why the establishment of the ASEAN on Aug. 8, 1967, in Bangkok was such an impressive political achievement.

The situation in 1967 was hardly conducive to promote regional cooperation. True, Konfrontasi was terminated. But there was still lingering suspicion among Indonesia’s neighbors. They were perhaps puzzled to see a military leader with so much combat experience pushing for regional cooperation.

It was Lee that from the outset, perhaps based on his fine political instinct, perceived Soeharto as a potential regional leader that would opt for regional cooperation and social economic development.

In August 1967, five foreign ministers gathered in Bangkok to discuss the need for regional cooperation. They were Adam Malik (Indonesia), Tun Abdul Razak (Malaysia), Narciso Ramos (the Philippines), S. Rajaratnam (Singapore) and Thanat Khoman (Thailand).

They were personalities with differing backgrounds and political views. Nevertheless, they were convinced that only a stable Southeast Asia, free from external interference, with their countries linked with each other in a regional organization would ensure the future of their respective countries.

Indonesian diplomats who were members of the Indonesian delegation told me about the hardworking Singapore delegation whose drafting skills in English was instrumental to produce the 1967 Bangkok declaration on the establishment of ASEAN.

It is not that difficult to speculate that prime minister Lee instructed his delegation that for the sake of Singapore’s future and the stability of Southeast Asia, the meeting must be successful. Only a stable and cooperating Southeast Asia would create a secure geopolitical environment to ensure Singapore’s progress.

Lee became convinced that Indonesia, under Soeharto’s leadership, would act constructively. After all, as the largest archipelago state, Indonesia too requires a stable Southeast Asia.

Considering the fluid situation in 1967 (it was the beginning of the third Vietnam War), one has to marvel reading the following paragraph as part of the Preamble of the ASEAN declaration in Bangkok, Aug. 8, 1967:

“Considering that the countries of Southeast Asia share a primary responsibility for strengthening the economic and social stability of the region and ensuring their peaceful and progressive development, and that they are determined to ensure their stability and security from external interference in any form or manifestation in order to preserve their national identities in accordance with the ideals and aspirations of their peoples.”

This paragraph encapsulates the ASEAN spirit. Lee’s farsightedness was instrumental that despite of all sorts of problems affecting the countries of Southeast Asia regional cooperation under the umbrella of ASEAN is still functioning.

Singaporeans should be proud to have a great statesman and a true leader such as the late Lee. We in Indonesia too acknowledge Bapak Lee Kuan Yew’s achievement as a true regional leader.
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The writer,Sabam Siagian, is a senior editor of The Jakarta Post. He interviewed the late Lee Kuan Yew several times.

Source: www.thejakartapost.com

March 25, 2015
Lee Kuan Yew’s Political Legacy – A Matter Of Trust

As Singaporeans mourn their charismatic leader Lee Kuan Yew (LKY), whose political acumen, drive and ideas defined the young nation and played a major role in its successful development, attention turns to assessment. Moments of transition always bring reflection, and this is especially the case with the passing of the man who both personified and defined Singapore. The fact that LKY has passed on in the pivotal year of the nation celebrating the country’s 50^th anniversary only serves to reinforce the need for review.

There is good reason to acknowledge the accolades of a man who has been labeled as one of Asia’s most influential leaders. Most of the media, especially in the government-linked media of Singapore, lay out these reasons well. LKY was a force to be reckoned with, a complex man who made no excuses in his views and was direct in stating his opinions. He trusted few, but chose to collaborate with those who shared his hard work ethic with talent and ideas to develop the busy port of Singapore into a safe dynamic cosmopolitan city-state. He will rightly be remembered for not only putting Singapore on the world map, but as a model that is admired and respected by many the world over.

LKY was a man who was respected, but importantly not loved by all. He used fear to stay in power. From the inception of Singapore’s independence – when it was expelled from Malaysia – the ideas of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘survival’ were used to justify decisions. He promoted the idea that Singapore had to have a strong armed forces, requiring national service in 1967, to protect itself as a nation surrounded by the perceived threat of its Malay neighbors. The enemies outside were matched by those inside, who had to be displaced and in some cases detained. Among the most controversial were the arrests of men labeled as communists in Operation Coldstore of 1963 and Operation Spectrum of 1987 (a.k.a. the ‘Marxist Conspiracy’) that targeted social activists who promoted greater social equality and were seen as challenging LKY’s People’s Action Party’s (PAP) authority. Two other round-ups occurred with Operation Pecah (Split) in 1966, which coincided with the year of the arrest of Dr. Chia Thye Poh who was held under detention and restriction until 1997, and the arrests of the ‘Eurocommunists’ in 1976-77. Many others from opposition politics, business to academia faced the wrath for challenging and questioning LKY, his PAP and the politicized decisions of its institutions, castigated in the government controlled media, removed from position, forced to live in exile and, in some cases, sued and bankrupted. In the relatively small city state, it did not take much to instill a political culture of fear by making a few examples.

A main point of contention goes that LKY sparred with Western critics over democracy and human rights, with LKY dismissing these ideas as not part of ‘Asia’s values.’ The debate was never about differences in values, but the justification of holding power in the hands of a few for nearly five decades. Singapore’s political model is at its foundation about the elites, with Lee, his family and loyalists at the core. In recent years, reports in Singapore have highlighted a growing trust deficit in the PAP government that LKY founded. The real deficit that defined LKY and became embedded within the party he molded is that he never fundamentally trusted his people.

The group that received the special focus of LKY’s distrust was the Malay population, who now comprise over 10% of the country’s population. Even as LKY matured as a politician, he continued to reinforce negative stereotypes of this community that rioted over their grievances in 1950, 1964 and 1969 when LKY was in his early years in power, and with whom he expressed hard judgments about their religion, Islam. This distrust was shaped in part by a worldview that was not only shaped by his early experiences in political life but had sharp racial cleavages, drew from eugenics and believed in a clear social order. Part of LKY’s outlook prioritized women as homemakers and disparaged single women who opted not to marry or follow a career – another group similar to Malays that faced discrimination within LKY’s Singapore.

In the heyday of Singapore’s economic miracle, the 1970s through the 1990s, the LKY PAP government worked to win over the trust of its people. It did so by providing for the basic welfare of its citizens, with an impressive housing program, affordable food prices, a living wage, job security, safety, education and opportunity. This involved hard work of LKY’s founding team of PAP cadre, as well as the sacrifice of ordinary Singaporeans. It also reflected the wise realization of LKY that fear was not enough to stay in power. There needed to be a healthy balance of deliverables. The LKY decades of economic growth translated into real rewards – at least through the 1980s.

Singapore’s trajectory of sharing the benefits of development has followed a pattern of diminishing returns, as the country now boasts the highest per capita of millionaires and is the world’s most expensive city, with a large number its citizens unable to save and afford the lifestyle promised in the nation’s early narrative. As much as LKY deserves credit for Singapore’s success, he also should be seen to be part of today’s shortcomings. Elitism has breed arrogance, and a distance between those in power and those governed. Most of the new leaders of the PAP have come from subsequent wealthy generations that do not fully understand the sacrifices of the country’s working poor – shocking in number – and the obstacles elderly and young people face in an era of high costs. Years of following the LKY’s example and being told that the PAP is made up of the ‘best and brightest’ has imbued a mindset of superiority, a lack of empathy, and frequent dismissal of difference in engagement with the public.

While LKY’s son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has worked to win over support, he has suffered consecutive drops of support in the two elections he has led since he assumed office, failing to match the 75% popular vote height of the predecessor Goh Chok Tong in 2001. Unlike in the information controlled era of his father, Lee Hsien Loong is not able to effectively censor and limit public discussions in today’s wired and connected Singapore. His recent expansion of social services and incentive packages that provide small sums for pensioners, modest support for health and childcare and tax reductions for the middle class are a drop in the bucket for the growing grievances and costs faced by ordinary citizens.

This has to do in part with the challenge Lee Hsien Loong faces in dealing with his father’s legacy. In 2007 LKY claimed that he governed without ideology. This was not quite true. The ideological foundation of LKY’s pragmatic tenure was materialism. This obsession with money, saving it and forcing the public to save it in rigid regulated ways, assuring that government funds were only given to those ‘worthy’ and loyal and defining the value of the performance of his government ministers by pegging their salaries to growth numbers comprised the lifeblood of LKY’s state. With annual ‘bonuses’ to perform, there is a focus on short-term gains rather than long-term investments. The irony is that it is not even clear how much money the government of Singapore and its linked companies actually have. Singapore is one of the few countries in the world that does not follow the International Monetary Fund guidelines on its budget reporting. It also does not transparently report losses in many of the financial accounts of the government linked companies (GLCs). Lee Hsien Loong has had to tackle head-on the ingrained pattern of limited government spending on social welfare and services, as he attempts to move away from his father’s restrictive parsimony and secretive mindset that originated from a lack of trust in people.

Lee Hsien Loong also has to address the problems of a government dominated economy. Singapore Inc. emerged out of the political economy LKY put in place, with the government and its linked companies controlling over half the country’s economy and undercutting almost all domestic business. LKY did not trust local capital, and did not want to strengthen an alternative power center to his own. As such, Singapore’s economy is not a genuinely competitive one. It favors big business, especially property developers, and those allied with government rather than independent entrepreneurs. Those in the system have apparently disproportionately benefited from it, although the exact amounts and assets remain unknown. The accumulated assets of individuals remain hidden as the estate tax was removed in 2008. What is known is that workers have limited rights in the LKY-shaped political economy. A recent example is the sexual harassment bill passed in parliament that excludes employer liability. The harsh response to the bus driver strike in 2012 is another. Much is made about the limited corruption of Singapore, but few appreciate that the country ranks high on theEconomist crony-capitalism index, an important outgrowth of the government dominance of the economy. The ties between companies and government are close, at times with government and family members on their boards and a revolving door that never really closes.

Singapore’s economy also favors foreigners. LKY was to start this trend, with the appeal to outsiders for capital rather than a focus on domestic business. Foreigners may have been easier to engage, as they could always be kicked out. Foreign investment has been extremely important in Singapore’s growth numbers initially in manufacturing and later in services. To maintain global competitiveness, keep wages low and maintain high growth numbers, Singapore also turned to foreign labor – cheap workers to staff their construction sectors and to work as domestic help and foreign talent to bring in ideas and the occasional sports medal. This prioritization of outsiders has fostered resentment. When LKY assumed office he worked to force a nation, but with his passing many in Singapore feel the government he left behind is working for others and undermining the fabric of the nation. The crowded trains, strain on services and displacement of Singaporeans in the job market and advancement have angered many, who now see LKY’s legacy as one that in fact left many Singaporeans vulnerable and worried about survival.

No one can take away LKY’s contributions. He lived a long meaningful life, and shaped the lives of all Singaporeans. This does not mean that there is agreement on what he left behind. Singapore now faces the challenge of moving beyond LKY’s ideas and shaping a more promising future for all of its citizens. An integral part of this dynamic will be moving away from fear, promoting more effective policies for inclusion in the economy and society and building trust. It starts with placing more trust in Singaporeans.

It is arguably the latter that is the hardest. LKY lived in an era where societies trusted their leaders. He was given the benefit of the doubt. The PAP remains a relatively closed institution, with the distrust of those not inside deeply embedded. Today in the age of social media and instant messaging there is not as much leeway to work behind closed doors. There is an urgent need to forge genuine dialogue, connectivity and understanding that moves beyond materialism, and reignites the sense of belonging that LKY forged in his early years.

Singapore today has become a more politically divided nation, with those who strongly defend LKY’s incumbent government, die-hard opponents and the majority in the middle. As the country marks its 50^th year it moves toward a different narrative, the task at hand is to forge a new Singapore story, one in which LKY is a valued part of its past, but not a constraint on the dreams and aspirations of Singaporeans’ future.

Bridget Welsh is a Senior Research Associate of the Center for East Asia Democratic Studies of the National Taiwan University where she conducts research on democracy and politics in Southeast Asia.

Source: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au

March 25, 2015
Singapore Inc: A Lee Kuan Yew Legacy

Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has made his prosperous little realm a nice place to do business. But it’s not much fun to live there.

This Fortune article first ran in the magazine in July 1974. We are running it again to mark the passing of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first and longest-serving prime minister, and the architect of the nation’s remarkable transformation.

Singapore, the smallest nation in Asia, occupies a 225-square-mile expanse of swampy, tropical islands—an area about the size of Trenton, New Jersey. The former British colony has almost no natural resources, except a superb harbor situated along the main shipping route from Europe to the Far East. And it has fewer people—2.2 million—than metropolitan St. Louis.

Yet the tiny city-state has swiftly seized a large place in the world economy. It is a thriving manufacturing center turning out ships, precision machinery, and electronic components. And it is fast becoming the Zurich of the East, an international haven for money and bankers. In nine years of full independence, the gross national product has nearly tripled—raising the average per capita income to a level exceeded in Asia only by that of Japan.

Singapore has achieved this dazzling growth by stretching its meager means and using some extraordinary techniques of statecraft. The country is run very much like a corporation. Striving above all for efficiency, the government coldly weighs every move, from school curriculums to foreign relations, against cost-effectiveness. The key criterion, as one top-rank official puts it, is always : “What good can we get out of it?”

Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, a fifty-year-old lawyer educated at Cambridge, calls himself a “democratic socialist.” But he shows more concern with rates of return (for both investors and the state) than with political dogma. In fact, Lee rules as though he were the autocratic chief executive of Singapore Inc.

Under his tight managerial control, nothing is long tolerated if it interferes with economic performance. Young men are prohibited from wearing modishly long hair, which the chairman regards as a symbol of the Western counterculture and a menace to the work ethic that he prizes. Lee keeps the country’s labor force cheap and disciplined by setting strict guidelines for both wage increases and working conditions. Since he has the political power to enforce his rules, factory wages, which are about one-fifth of those in the U.S., help to keep Singapore products internationally competitive.

Lee’s economic philosophy is stern and simple. “We do not expect something for nothing,” he says. In a characteristic jab at his less energetic Asian neighbors, he explains: “We haven’t got oil and minerals on which other people have to pay royalties. So we develop a different approach to life.” He calls it “the rugged society,” but it is really his own special blend of pragmatic socialism, freewheeling capitalism, and plain opportunism.

The Prime Minister has hitched the island to the global economy through multinational corporations, which supply needed capital, expertise, and export markets. Singapore ardently woos foreign business, a rare policy among countries that have only recently emerged from colonialism. Besides providing such familiar tax incentives as a five-year income-tax exemption for coveted corporations, the government often shares the cost of training workers and even puts up part of the capital for plants and equipment.

During the past five years, international manufacturers have responded by pouring in $1.2 billion of their own to start more than a hundred factories. About half the money has come from U.S. corporations. All together, 425 American companies now operate in Singapore. General Electric alone has seven plants assembling home appliances and components.

An avowedly nonaligned foreign policy makes Singapore useful—for a price—to nearly every trading nation. Soviet merchant ships as well as vessels of the U.S. Seventh Fleet patronize its efficient port and repair yards. Peking maintains a busy Bank of China branch, while within walking distance Taiwan runs an active trade office. Arab oil producers, which provide most of the crude for the refineries, are now being urged to invest in Singapore industries. And Lee’s government has entered into a joint venture with an Israeli concern that produces communication equipment, and has hired Israeli military advisers to shape Singapore’s fledgling armed forces. His country’s real protection against undue influence by any foreign power, says Lee, is to maintain a balance of investment by the U.S., Japan, and Western Europe.

Profits even from the postal service
The Prime Minister not only demands that government services operate smoothly and honestly, an uncommon achievement in the Orient, but also wants them to produce profits, if possible. Part of the police force is hired out through a state-owned company as guards for banks and factories. The government printing office accepts commercial work. The postal service proudly reported $7.5 million in earnings last year, partly because it charges the equivalent of 40 cents for airmail letters to America. (U.S. air postage to Singapore is just 26 cents.)

Sometimes this approach leads to what surely would be considered excess profits in other countries. A 3 percent sales tax on hotel and restaurant bills provides funds to promote tourism, but for the past several years a substantial portion of the take has been hoarded in bank accounts gathering interest for the state. Eventually, the tax proceeds are to be invested in an offshore resort island and a handicraft center, not merely to help tourism but also to make money.

Lee has also moved his government directly into business in a variety of ways. Its ever growing array of profitable enterprises includes shipyards, banks, hotels, an oil refinery, and even a small steel mill. All together, the government wholly owns about twenty sizable companies, and it holds substantial shares of about 100 others in every sector of the economy. Again, the main motive isn’t to implant socialism, but to make profits. As one cabinet minister explains: “We see opportunities, and we can make some money out of them. If a company doesn’t pay, we just let it go bankrupt.” An unprofitable charter airline, Sabre Air, was abruptly folded in 1972.

Management by mandarin
To run his fiefdom and its business holdings, Lee relies heavily on an elite cadre of about fifty senior civil servants. These modern mandarins, like the functionaries of ancient China, are selected on a merit basis and are ultimately accountable only to the ruler. But many are active in politics as members of Lee’s party, which holds all the seats in Parliament. At least one mandarin is usually assigned to the board of each corporation in which the government holds equity. Some sit on the boards of as many as a dozen companies.

The mandarins belittle their pervasive influence. “We’re bureaucrats, not managers,” insists J.Y.M. Pillay, a permanent secretary in the finance ministry, who is also chairman of Singapore Airlines and a board member of half a dozen other corporations. “We know how to read a balance sheet and mostly just keep a check on management.” Still, the mandarins are under considerable pressure from Lee to perform. Any head of a money-losing state company is bound to be replaced.

The government keeps secret the amounts the mandarins collect as directors’ fees from their private enterprises. But some Singapore academicians calculate that top performers get paid about $50,000 a year, including their perquisites and official salaries. The extra income, Lee claims, induces competent men to stay with the government.

The state’s moves into business increasingly intermingle private and public enterprises in joint ventures. Government-controlled companies not only have interlocking boards of directors, but also do more and more business with one another. A Singapore economist who has studied this trend detects the emergence of “something like a single national corporation.”

The managers of Singapore Inc. tend to treat local citizens somewhat like the employees of an old-fashioned company town. Grade schools seek to instill what are officially termed “correct attitudes” toward manual work by assigning students to sweep classrooms and clean toilets. Colleges have downgraded liberal arts to stress accounting and engineering, in line with business needs.

Public housing in high-rise apartments is provided for nearly half the population. Thanks to government subsidies, low-income workers pay only 13 percent of their salaries for rent, and many are encouraged to buy the apartments with part of the otherwise untouchable savings that they are forced to put into a national retirement fund. “It’s an all-embracing system,” explains a senior public-housing officer. “When people own homes, they aren’t likely to start revolutions, and they’ll see that nothing happens to disrupt their jobs.”

Lee and his associates are constantly lecturing on the virtues of hard work, thrift, and clean living. Appearing at routine meetings of civic and professional groups, they deliver uplifting sermons, which are invariably broadcast on radio and television. The Prime Minister repeatedly warns Singaporeans not to drop out, take drugs, or indulge in sexual promiscuity. Job-hopping is denounced as another deadly sin, along with such “vulgar displays” of affluence as marble floors, elaborate door chimes, and sports cars. Such homilies may sound quaintly Victorian to Westerners, but most Singapore citizens seem to take them seriously.

A legacy of struggle
The paternalistic society that Lee has shaped is largely a response to the difficulties of transforming the former British colonial outpost into a self-supporting nation. For nearly a century and a half, Singapore made its living largely from the foreign trade of neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia. Perched between them in the Malacca Strait, the city processed and shipped their rubber, copra, and other products; it also handled most of their imports. But nowadays the producers of raw materials increasingly do their own processing and trading, depriving Singapore of its traditional role.

Seeking a broader economic base, Lee merged his country with Malaysia in 1963. He hoped to make Singapore the commercial capital of a larger, mainly rural country. But Lee proved too independent to suit Malay leaders, and the federation split after two stormy years. Shortly after the breakup, Singapore met another serious setback. In 1966 the huge British military establishment—which had provided much of the island’s livelihood—began withdrawing, and now has all but vanished.

Thrust on his own, Lee had to devise new arrangements for Singapore’s survival. “It was the best thing that ever happened to us,” the Prime Minister says. “We didn’t get much chance to collect fat, and we’ve had to struggle.”

A fourth-generation Singaporean, son of a retired oil-company employee who now clerks in a jewelry store, Lee has thrived on struggle all his life. While achieving the highest honors at Cambridge, he acquired strong anti-colonial views, which brought warnings from the British the moment he returned home. In 1952, as a brash, ambitious attorney, he backed postal workers in an unprecedented strike against British authorities. He established himself as a public figure by successfully defending the editors of a student journal, which had supported the strike, against sedition charges.

His People’s Action party opportunistically teamed up with local Communists, who helped Lee get elected Prime Minister when the British granted local autonomy in 1959. Later on, he broke with his former comrades and jailed more than 100 of them to forestall a leftist take-over. “If they had won, I’d be dead,” he now says.

During fifteen years of uninterrupted rule, Lee has gradually changed from a street-brawling left-wing politician to an astute manager and unchallenged boss. He has gained the respect of Singaporeans by giving them clean, rigorous government that delivers solid results. One of the few Asian leaders untouched by personal scandal or corruption, Lee draws an annual salary of only $38,400. He and his wife, Kwa Geok Choo, who now runs his prospering law firm, live in modest style in their own wood-frame home.

A powerful combination of intellect and arrogance underpins the Prime Minister’s authority. Lee, who grew up speaking English, has patiently learned Malay, Tamil, and Mandarin Chinese so that he can deliver a speech with equal force in all the common languages of Singapore. Though personally cold and aloof, he takes pains to appear in public clad as a man of the people—that is, without a jacket or tie. But his ruthless techniques and frequent rudeness deprive him of popular affection. At a meeting with university students, Lee grew so impatient with a testy, long-winded question that he physically shoved aside the student who was presiding and took over himself.

In his zeal for achievement, Lee insistently shuns small talk. Any foreign visitor who begins by discussing the weather is likely to be dismissed at once. He regards concerts, movies, and novels as “time-wasting.” His only hobby is golf, which he considers healthy exercise. Lee abhors smoking so much that no one is allowed to smoke either in his presence or in a room he plans to enter. (One chain-smoking minister ducks outside cabinet meetings for a quick cigarette.) An old British hand who admires his accomplishments aptly describes Lee as “the most brilliant man around, albeit just a bit of a thug.”

Brain-picking at Harvard
Abroad, Lee’s thoughtful, forceful speeches on international affairs have won him a reputation as a regional statesman. Actually, he is unpopular with many other Asian leaders, who dislike his smug, undiplomatic manner, though they envy his accomplishments. The Prime Minister takes time every year or two to visit the U.S., where he quietly spends a couple of weeks at such universities as Harvard and Yale, picking the best available brains for ideas useful to Singapore. Among other notions, he has picked up some obsessive impressions of America. Though an admirer of U.S. technology, he deplores the new permissiveness, the weakening of family ties, and the lax discipline in the labor force. He seriously contends that the U.S. has lost five or six years of progress from “riotous, drug-induced madness.” If children of American businessmen in Singapore are caught smoking marijuana, Lee usually expels the whole family.

Despite his country’s striking success, Lee often talks and acts as if his island realm were threatened by unnamed enemies and economic disaster. To guard against potential threats to his power, he maintains a large force of secret police who watch his political opponents, tap many telephones, and even investigate all students applying for admission to a university.

There sometimes seems to be a slightly paranoid strain to Lee’s personality. He often erupts in rash actions. A few years ago, he wildly claimed that hostile foreigners were trying to subvert Singapore through local newspapers. So he abruptly closed down two papers and jailed four top executives of a third. He also threatened to eject the Chase Manhattan Bank for lending money to one of the papers. But Lee produced not a shred of hard evidence supporting his charges. “He runs scared and always creates a kind of purposeful tension,” observes a banker who knows Lee well. This is partly his way of keeping Singaporeans disciplined and hardworking.

In the Prime Minister’s closely guarded office, he actually sounds like a board chairman—and he nodded approvingly at the characterization. He is proud that his system “deliberately exposes civil servants to decision making based on corporate rewards and profitability.” His bureaucrats, Lee boasts, Have picked up business attitudes and “the sense of the percentage.”

Getting Rollei into the picture
These talents have been plainly evident in Singapore’s effort to attract international business. Hewlett-Packard is assembling sophisticated calculators “primarily because of the ease of doing business here,” says Tom Lauhon, the local managing director. “This government wanted us and was geared to help. Elsewhere in Asia we ran into a lot of red tape.”

On barren hills and swamps at the outskirts of the city, Lee’s government over the past twelve years has built the satellite town of Jurong, which in addition to housing and retail stores is crammed with 510 factories; another hundred will be completed this year. To attract foreign manufacturers, the authorities provide plant buildings at nineteen industrial parks scattered around Singapore.

Four years ago Lee decided that Rollei-Werke, Franke & Heidecke—the West German camera company famous for the Rolleiflex—would be a prime recruit. Rollei was seriously threatened by stiff Japanese competition and a labor shortage at home that made production costly. The Prime Minister flew to Braunschweig and personally made the sales pitch. Among other things, he promised that if Rollei moved its production to Singapore, no Japanese camera makers would be permitted to set up shop there. Naturally, said Lee, he would expect the company to allow some local participation in the venture.

Rollei succumbed to the pitch and invested $52 million of its own in five plants, which now employ 5,300 Singaporeans. Substantially lower labor costs have enabled the company to produce cheaper cameras and counter the Japanese in most foreign markets. Once operations went into the black, Lee’s regime added shares in Rollei to its bulging portfolio.

Ready to seize chances
Singapore goes to considerable lengths to snare key industries. Two small offshore islands were cleared not only of jungle, but also of resident fishermen and their family graves to make way for an Esso refinery and Mobil oil-storage tanks. Thanks to its obliging attitude and central location, the city-state has become the site of the principal refinery complex in the region. Shell, British Petroleum, and Amoco also process oil there, primarily for Japan and other Asian markets. By the end of this year, total refining capacity will exceed a million barrels a day—making Singapore the world’s third-largest oil-processing center, after Houston and Rotterdam.

The oil-exploration rush in nearby Indonesia has been beneficial for Singapore, which now supplies much of the equipment used in offshore drilling. The government itself has three logistical bases to service wildcatters with pipe, drilling mud, and other gear. And the island serves as headquarters for dozens of contractors participating in the search. “We’ve had a fair amount of luck in the events around us,” admits Deputy Prime Minister Goh Keng Swee. “They gave us chances, and we were ready to seize them.”

The Vietnam war and its aftermath gave the corporate state another opportunity to provide products and services. Initially, the conflict brought windfall sales of patrol boats, oil, and construction materials to the U.S. military in Saigon. More recently, Lockheed has established a service base in Singapore to repair American planes for South Vietnam.

In a broader sense, American military activities have also helped stimulate plant investment. The war effort not only brought inflation to the U.S. but focused attention on Southeast Asia, where American businessmen saw opportunities outside the battle zones. As Japanese rivals grabbed business away from them, U.S. electronics companies moved production to countries with lower labor costs. Among those that flocked to Singapore were National Semiconductor, Fairchild, and Teledyne. In the last few years, fast-climbing wages in Japan have prompted such major Japanese shipbuilders as IHI, Hitachi, and Mitsubishi to make the switch, too.

Money is a major export
To realize his grand design of making Singapore an international financial center, Lee shrewdly turned to the world’s most prestigious banks. His government has admitted virtually every big international bank, from New York’s First National City to Moscow’s Narodny, and has left them free of the numerous restraints that they face elsewhere in the Far East. So a towering new financial district is taking shape along the waterfront.

“We decided to open up the banking system to provide services that other countries don’t offer,” explains Michael Wong Pakshong, managing director of the government’s Monetary Authority. As a start, he broke up a cartel of established British and local banks that fixed rates on all transactions. “They’d sit on their bottoms waiting for captive customers,” complains Wong. “The newcomers actually went out to buy business with loan rates that were competitive. That made the others get busy fast.”

Singapore’s main growth in financial stature came after the government, at the urging of the Bank of America, decided in 1968 to allow banks to accept deposits in foreign currency. These funds, called Asian Dollars, are the Far Eastern equivalent of Eurodollars. The foreign-currency deposits now amount to $6.3 billion and are still rising rapidly. The money comes from corporations, other banks, and affluent individuals, including overseas Chinese seeking a haven beyond the reach of prying revenue officers. Singapore banks attract funds with rates comparable to those paid for Eurodollar deposits, plus two advantages that Hong Kong and Tokyo don’t offer: tax exemption for depositors and strict secrecy. (The Monetary Authority keeps track of the amounts on deposit but not the identities of depositors.)

Today money is a major Singapore export. The country’s hundred or so banks finance business and industry throughout Asia. Their aggressive push for loan customers has quickened the development of the whole region.

The state has pushed into banking, too, partly by flexing official muscle. At first, it invested public funds directly in shipyards and factories because local businessmen and bankers, accustomed to quick returns from trading, shied away from such ventures. In 1968 the government established the Development Bank of Singapore to back priority industries. Lee’s mandarins twisted private bankers’ arms to ante up about half of the $40-million paid-up capital. The government’s share was a portfolio of loans it had already made to local industries.

Once in business, D.B.S. gathered $260 million of working capital from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and—at concessional rates—the Singapore government. Today D.B.S. has grown into a commercial bank with profitable side ventures in computer services, real estate, ship and machinery leasing, and merchant banking. The government, of course, appoints the majority of board members, mainly mandarins who are top administrators of government agencies.

The D.B.S. building, a $25-million showpiece of the new financial district, covers one side of a city block, Naturally, the structure was also designed as a revenue earner and most of the space is rented to commercial banks. “D.B.S. is in competition with us,” complains one foreign banker, “but also insists on our support because it’s a government institution.”

D.B.S. is particularly effective as the banking arm of Singapore Inc. Having noted the success of oil refineries, the government-controlled bank invested in one. It has a one-third interest in a $50-million refinery established by Amoco and U.S.-based Oceanic Petroleum Co., which is owned by a group of Chinese-Americans. The bank supports Lee’s programs in many other ways. As a boost to urban renewal, a D.B.S. subsidiary is constructing an $18-million shopping center and office building. The government housing board is a big buyer of elevators, so the bank owns a minority interest in a new Japanese venture to fabricate them locally.

The bank’s official status greatly enhances its commercial operations. D.B.S. has little trouble finding depositors, for many other state enterprises with large cash flows keep accounts there. Foreign banks find it politic to include D.B.S. in large consortium loans, such as the $25 million that the Bank of Montreal organized recently for International Nickel to use in Indonesian mining. D.B.S. has also formed three separate joint-venture merchant banks with such prominent foreign partners as Sumitomo Bank and Morgan Guaranty. “It’s like marrying three wives,” says a D.B.S. officer. “Each provides something different.”

Penguins for the tourists
Thanks to the relentless pursuit of economic growth, Singapore today throbs with the clump of pile drivers and is clouded with dust blown from construction sites. Entire city blocks of ramshackle open-front shops are being replaced by high-rise apartments, office buildings, and shopping centers. The corporate state has also invested in four hotels and provided tax incentives for about seventy others. “Some of the hotel people weren’t too happy when we suddenly had 13,000 guest rooms and couldn’t fill them,” acknowledges a government official. “But we knew that those with money invested in hotels would work very hard to attract tourists.” For several years, surplus rooms plagued hotelmen, but recently occupancy rates have reached a profitable average of 70 percent.

Though Singapore has no notable scenic or historic sites, it draws a million foreign visitors a year, largely on the strength of man-made “tourist attractions.” The most notable include a bird park equipped with imported penguins and piped-in music, stores that offer duty-free Japanese radios and cameras, and those abundant hotels.

The campaign to attract more and more businesses has succeeded so well that Singapore now faces a labor shortage. Consequently, the government has brought in 100,000 Malaysian workers, who make up about a fifth of the labor force. In 1966, Lee was seeking whatever investment he could get because 72,000 Singaporeans were jobless. Today his policy is to discourage any expansion of garment making and simple assembly operations in favor of industries that require more skillful labor and use more capital per worker. For example, Lee’s government intends to invest in a $420-million petrochemical project that Sumitomo Chemical Co. has agreed to organize. And Lee hopes to form a joint venture with other multinational companies to construct a $400-million integrated steel mill.

As soon as Singapore moves on to such activities, says Lee, “we can slowly slough off our labor-intensive factories and get them to move into the countries around us—Malaysia and Indonesia.” Accordingly, he insists that “immigrant workers are just here for the time being.” Several government planners, however, doubt that Singapore can do without imported labor anytime soon. Lee’s own expansion plans are creating too many jobs, and his government leans heavily on Singaporeans to limit the size of their families through an array of financial disincentives such as progressively higher hospital fees for each successive baby.

No place for poets
Lee’s managerial approach to statecraft produces great economic progress at considerable social cost. He has built an industrious, clean, well-ordered but bland society. Government leaders see little need for poets, philosophers, or public dialogue. “We are more concerned with filling our rice bowls,” declares Toh Chin Chye, minister of science and technology. “Western political liberalism and economic discipline are hard to have at the same time.”

Not all Singaporeans share in their country’s economic progress, of course. No one goes hungry, but about a quarter of the population lives at a subsistence level. Even those who prosper most under the corporate state tend to resent its frequent intrusion in their lives. “They treat us like children,” complains a wealthy businessman. But openly challenging fundamental policies can land citizens in prison, indefinitely and without trial, under internal-security laws. Criminals who use or threaten violence are punished with both jail terms and flogging. Though he concedes that Singapore-style discipline is harsh by Western standards, Lee insists he can afford no slack.

For all its prosperity, the city-state is disquietingly sterile and seems to lack a soul or culture other than pursuit of profit. Even the poorest Asian countries produce a profusion of art, music, and folk literature, none of which has much place in Singapore life. One minister derisively describes the national creed as “money-theism.”

Lee provides an exceptional educational system and seeks to make his domain a “brain center” providing managerial and technical services throughout the Far East. In this he may be overreaching himself, for he discourages independent, creative thinking. His approach systematically stifles intellectual curiosity. As one American professor learned to his dismay, most Singapore law students don’t even read newspapers.

Many popular movies, songs, and publications are deemed dangerously corrupting influences. Whereas the very name Singapore once conveyed the promise of exotic pleasures, the present reality is so antiseptic that one current novel about the city, Paul Theroux’s Saint Jack, recounts the misfortunes of a pimp who can’t make a living there. Fleshly pleasures are surely no measure of national well-being, but Lee’s Singapore lacks humor and laughter too. As pressures mount, an increasing number of citizens commit suicide by jumping off the towering public apartments. Social workers are equally alarmed by a high rate of attempted suicides.

A yearning for culture
Despite all the money the government spends on subsidizing housing, the resulting environment leaves a great deal to be desired. Even at their nocturnal best, the housing projects are -ablaze with harsh fluorescent lights, and they are perpetually noisy and far too impersonal for many Asians. In the context of Lee’s tight little state, the apartments often seem to be, as one Western businessman says, “a glimpse of 1984 in concrete and steel.”

Lee, of course, has been forced by circumstance to stress discipline so Singapore could survive economically. The country’s volatile racial mix—ethnic Chinese, Malays, and Indians—makes firm direction essential to promote cooperative effort. Singapore is the only country in which overseas Chinese form a majority; they compose three-quarters of the population. The Chinese originally came more than a century ago seeking better opportunities, and the experience gave them and their descendants great drive. To his credit, Lee has carefully cultivated a multiracial society, not another China. He has encouraged the Malays and Indians, who tend to be more languid and leisurely because of their rural value system, to work hard, too.

Now that Singapore has achieved such enormous material success, Lee says that he is appalled by the lack of books, culture, and social graces among citizens. He talks of nurturing “a gracious society” without sacrificing the economic drive of his “rugged society.” But Lee faces a dilemma, for there is room to doubt whether his well-run state can add culture to its line of products and services. Perhaps Singaporeans will do it themselves if Lee fully realizes that he leads a country as well as a corporation—and relaxes his authoritarian ways. As Deputy Prime Minister Goh points out: “We can’t order people to like music or drama, even though our ministry of culture tries. It’s up to people to decide for themselves.”

Source: http://fortune.com

March 25, 2015
Lee Kuan Yew, The Leader Who Lasted

By the time of his death on Monday at age 91, Lee Kuan Yew had been out of the Western limelight long enough that some people may wonder why his passing deserves such notice.

I’d offer these reasons:

• A post-colonial leader who lasted. Fifty-five years ago, when a slew of former European colonies were gaining independence and other nations were taking modern form, the landscape was full of charismatic leaders. Kwame Nkrumah was president of Ghana. Jomo Kenyatta was in detention but would become the president of Kenya. Ben Bella led Algeria. Patrice Lumumba became (briefly) prime minister of Congo. Julius Nyerere was about to become prime minister of Tanganyika, which was about to become Tanzania. Nasser was president of Egypt and (briefly) of the United Arab Republic. Tunku Abdul Rahman was head of Malaya, which had not yet become Malaysia and at the time included Singapore. And on down a long line—including of course Mao Zedong, then a decade-plus into his control of China.

Within a few years most of them were gone, because of coups, corruption, assassination attempts or successes, or other challenges. But not Lee Kuan Yew. In 1960 he had already been elected prime minister of Singapore, which a few years later would separate from Malaya/Malaysia to become an independent state. He stayed in that role until 1990. The few early leaders who lasted as long as Lee Kuan Yew, notably Fidel Castro in Cuba and Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Cote d’Ivoire, increasingly shielded themselves from real democratic accountability. Lee Kuan Yew’s version of democracy for Singapore was a “guided” one, as I’ll mention below. But I can’t think of another figure from that era whose power and reputation were as durable.

• A practitioner and a theorist. The Western world knows its statesmen, nation-builders, and political leaders. Churchill, de Gaulle, and Mitterand. FDR and—whichever Americans you’d choose after that. And not just the Western world: Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping, Ho Chi Minh.

Then as a separate category we have the big thinkers. George Kennan or Hans Morgenthau for an earlier generation of Americans. Henry Kissinger, for better or worse, in this niche now.

Lee Kuan Yew is the rare person to come close to being recognized in both realms. (Richard Nixon aspired to this status, but that’s for another day.) While in office, he cultivated leaders from around the world who turned to him for his big-picture strategic guidance. At the moment I can’t think of any particular piercing insight he provided, which I don’t mean in a dismissive way. (Early and often he counseled Western leaders about the importance of coping with China, and also its possible menaces.) But time and again foreign leaders sought his judgment on big strategic questions, and outside scholars and journalists pored over his comments in interviews. Not many practicing politicians can present themselves simultaneously as geostrategists, and he managed to be taken that way.

• A man equipped and ready to debate the Western world on its own terms. Lee Kuan Yew’s original first name was Harry, and English was his native language. His renown in Singapore included the fact of his having earned a “double first” in law studies at Cambridge University and then having gone into legal practice in England.

Through Lee Kuan Yew’s era as leader of Singapore and in the decades since then, a remarkable trait of this tiny country’s political culture has been its willingness, even eagerness, to take on outside critics and prove, prove, prove why it is completely right to do things exactly the way it chooses to. Anyone in the international press who has worked in Southeast Asia, including me, is likely to have run afoul of official Singapore’s sensitivities at some point. When I was living in Malaysia in the late 1980s, I observed the beginning of a long-standing feud over press freedoms between William Safire, a former Nixon aide who was then an influential New York Times columnist, and Lee Kuan Yew’s government. (You can see a later ripple of the feud here.) I never was vouchsafed the opportunity to interview Lee Kuan Yew directly, but I saw him speak at many events in Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan, and I received starchy notes from Singaporean officialdom when I wrote anything they thought incorrect in any detail.

At the time, the thin-skinnedness of Lee’s government seemed noteworthy. (In their prime, they might well have served me with a libel action for the preceding sentence. Or at least submitted a 5,000-word letter to the editor with a demand that it be run with not a single word changed or cut.) But from a distance, the yet more remarkable fact is a non-Western state assuming that it could and should engage the world’s opinion machine on its own terms, in its own language, and in its own forms of debate. This really is something we have not seen anywhere but Singapore.

* * *

Lee Kuan Yew’s form of government had its clear strengths and limitations. When we would take trips to Singapore from our home further up the Malay peninsula in Kuala Lumpur, we would know that everything could be done more efficiently in Singapore, but that you would have to watch your step in various ways. It was and is the best possible version of an authoritarian guided democracy. Family ties have mattered a lot in Singapore: the current prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, is Lee Kuan Yew’s eldest son, and happened to become the youngest brigadier general in his country’s history at age 31. But an America that is contemplating a possible Bush-Clinton run for the presidency can’t act too shocked when meritocracy takes this form.

Lee Kuan Yew certainly changed history, and from my perspective he changed it mainly for the better. Fuller assessments will follow from more-informed sources (and see Matt Schiavenza’s assessment here), but on the occasion of his death that is the note I choose to strike.

Source: www.theatlantic.com

March 25, 2015
Lee Kuan Yew And His Red Box

Education Minister Heng Swee Keat has posted an essay about former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and his unwavering dedication to Singapore.

Citing the red box — a boxy briefcase that held what Mr Lee was working on at any one time — to showcase Mr Lee’s commitment to the Republic, Mr Heng, who was Mr Lee’s Principal Private Secretary from 1997 to 2000, wrote: “Mr Lee was well-known for keeping extremely alert to everything he saw and heard around him – when he noticed something wrong, like an ailing raintree, a note in the red box would follow.” Mr Heng described his personal experiences with Mr Lee, and shared anecdotes about Mr and Mrs Lee.

He ended off his essay saying: “This year, Singapore turns 50. Mr Lee would have turned 92 this September. Mr Lee entered the hospital on 5 February 2015. He continued to use his red box every day until 4 February 2015.”

Here is Mr Heng’s essay in full:

Mr Lee’s Red Box

by Minister Heng Swee Keat

Mr Lee Kuan Yew had a red box. When I worked as Mr Lee’s Principal Private Secretary, or PPS, a good part of my daily life revolved around the red box. Before Mr Lee came in to work each day, the locked red box would arrive first, at about 9am.

As far as the various officers who had worked with Mr Lee could remember, he had it for many, many years. It is a large, boxy briefcase, about 14cm wide. Red boxes came from the British government, whose ministers used them for transporting documents between Government offices. Our early ministers had red boxes, but Mr Lee is the only one I know who used his consistently through the years. When I started working for Mr Lee in 1997, it was the first time I saw a red box in use. It is called the red box, but it is more a deep wine colour, like the seats in the chamber in Parliament House.

This red box held whatever Mr Lee was working on at any one time. Through the years, it held his papers, speech drafts, letters, readings and a whole range of questions, reflections and observations. For example, in the years that he was working on his memoirs, the red box carried multiple early drafts back and forth between his home and the office, scribbled over with his and Mrs Lee’s notes.

For a long time, other regular items in Mr Lee’s red box were the cassette tapes that held his dictated instructions and thoughts for later transcription. Some years back, he switched to a digital recorder.

The red box carried a wide range of items. It could be communications with foreign leaders, observations about the financial crisis, instructions for the Istana grounds staff or even questions about some trees he had seen on the expressway. Mr Lee was well known for keeping extremely alert to everything he saw and heard around him. When he noticed something wrong, like an ailing rain tree, a note in the red box would follow.

We could never anticipate what Mr Lee would raise — it could be anything that was happening in Singapore or around the world. But we could be sure of this: It would always be about how events could affect Singapore and Singaporeans, and how we had to stay a step ahead. Inside the red box was always something about how we could create a better life for all.

We would get to work right away. Mr Lee’s secretaries would transcribe his dictated notes, while I followed up on instructions that required coordination across multiple government agencies. Our aim was to do as much as we could by the time Mr Lee came into the office later.

While we did this, Mr Lee would be working from home. For example, during the period when I worked with him (from 1997 to 2000), the Asian Financial Crisis ravaged many economies in our region and unleashed political changes. It was a tense period, as no one could tell how events would unfold. Often, I would get a call from him to check certain facts or arrange meetings with financial experts.

In the years that I worked for him, Mr Lee’s daily breakfast was a bowl of dou hua (soft bean curd) with no syrup. It was picked up and brought home in a tiffin carrier every morning, from a food centre near Mr Lee’s home. He washed it down with room temperature water. Mr Lee did not take coffee or tea at breakfast.

When Mr Lee came into the office, the work that had come earlier in the red box would be ready for his review and he would have a further set of instructions for our action.

From that point on, the work day would run its normal course. Mr Lee read the documents and papers, cleared his emails and received official calls by visitors. I was privileged to sit in on every meeting he conducted. He would later ask me what I thought of the meetings — it made me very attentive to every word that was said and I learnt much from him.

Evening was Mr Lee’s exercise time. Mr Lee had described his extensive and disciplined exercise regime elsewhere. It included the treadmill, rowing, swimming and walking — with his ears peeled to the evening news or his Mandarin practice tapes. He would sometimes take phone calls while exercising.

He was in his 70s then. In more recent years, being less stable on his feet, Mr Lee had a simpler exercise regime. But he continued to exercise. Since retiring as Minister Mentor in 2011, he had been more relaxed during his exercises. Instead of listening intently to the news or taking phone calls, he shared personal stories and joked with his staff.

While he exercised, those of us in the office would use that time to focus once again on the red box, to get ready all the day’s work for Mr Lee to take home with him in the evening. Based on the day’s events and instructions, I tried to get ready the materials that Mr Lee might need. It sometimes took longer than I expected and, occasionally, I had to ask the security officer to come back for the red box later.

While Mrs Lee was still alive, she would drop by the Istana at the end of the day to catch a few minutes together with Mr Lee, just to sit and look at the Istana trees that they both loved. They chatted about what many other old couples would talk about. They discussed what they should have for dinner or how their grandchildren were doing.

Then back home went Mr Lee, Mrs Lee and the red box. After dinner, the couple liked to take a long stroll. During his days as Prime Minister, while Mrs Lee strolled, Mr Lee liked to ride a bicycle. It was, in the words of those who saw it, “one of those old-man bicycles”. None of us who have worked at the Istana can remember him ever changing his bicycle. He did not use it in his later years as he became frail, but I believe the old-man bicycle is still around somewhere.

After his dinner and evening stroll, Mr Lee would get back to work. That was when he would open the red box and work his way through what we had put into it in the office.

Mr Lee’s study was converted out of his son’s old bedroom. His work table was a simple, old wooden table with a piece of clear glass placed over it. Slipped under the glass are family memorabilia, including a picture of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong from his National Service days. When Mrs Lee was around, she stayed up reading while Mr Lee worked. They liked to put on classical music while they stayed up.

In his days as Prime Minister, Mr Lee’s average bedtime was 3.30am. As Senior Minister and Minister Mentor, he went to sleep after 2am. If he had to travel for an official visit the next day, he might go to bed at 1am to 2am.

Deep into the night, while the rest of Singapore slept, it was common for Mr Lee to be in full work mode.

Before he went to bed, Mr Lee would put everything he had completed back in the red box, with clear pointers on what he wished for us to do in the office. The last thing he did each day was place the red box outside his study room. The next morning, the duty security team would pick up the red box, bring it to us waiting in the office and a new day would begin.

Let me share two other stories involving the red box.

In 1996, Mr Lee underwent balloon angioplasty to insert a stent. It was his second heart operation in two months, after an earlier operation to widen a coronary artery did not work. After the operation, he was put in the intensive care unit for observation. When he regained consciousness and could sit up in bed, he asked for his security team. The security officer hurried into the room to find out what was needed. Mr Lee asked: “Can you pass me the red box?”

Even at that point, Mr Lee’s first thought was to continue working. The security officer rushed the red box in and Mr Lee asked to be left to his work. The nurses told the security team that other patients of his age, in his condition, would just rest. Mr Lee was 72 at the time.

In 2010, Mr Lee was hospitalised again, this time for a chest infection. While he was in the hospital, Mrs Lee passed away. Mr Lee had spoken about his grief at Mrs Lee’s passing. As soon as he could, he left the hospital to attend the wake at Sri Temasek.

Mr Lee was under doctor’s orders to return to the hospital at the end of the night. But he asked his security team if they could take him to the Singapore River instead. It was late in the night and Mr Lee was in mourning. His security team hastened to give a bereaved husband a quiet moment to himself.

As he walked slowly along the bank of the Singapore River, the way he and Mrs Lee sometimes did when she was alive, he paused. He beckoned a security officer over. Then he pointed out some trash floating on the river and asked: “Can you take a photo of that? I’ll tell my PPS what to do about it tomorrow.” Photo taken, he returned to the hospital.

I was no longer Mr Lee’s PPS at the time. I had moved on to the Monetary Authority of Singapore to continue with the work to strengthen our financial regulatory system that Mr Lee had started in the late 1990s. But I can guess that Mr Lee probably had some feedback on keeping the Singapore River clean. I can also guess that the picture and the instructions were ferried in the red box the next morning to the office. Even as Mr Lee lay in the hospital. Even as Mrs Lee lay in state.

The security officers with Mr Lee were deeply touched. When I heard about these moments, I was also moved.

I have taken some time to describe Mr Lee’s red box. The reason is that, for me, it symbolises his unwavering dedication to Singapore so well. The diverse contents it held tell us much about the breadth of his concerns, from the very big to the very small; the daily routine of the red box tells us how his life revolved around making Singapore better, in ways big and small.

By the time I served Mr Lee, he was the Senior Minister. Yet, he continued to devote all his time to thinking about the future of Singapore. I could only imagine what he was like as Prime Minister. In policy and strategy terms, he was always driving himself, me and all our colleagues to think about what each trend and development meant for Singapore and how we should respond to them in order to secure Singapore’s well-being and success.

As his PPS, I saw the punishing pace of work that Mr Lee had set himself. I had a boss whose every thought and every action was for Singapore.

But it takes private moments like these to bring home just how entirely Mr Lee devoted his life to Singapore.

In fact, I think the best description comes from the security officer who was with Mr Lee both of those times. He was on Mr Lee’s team for almost 30 years. He said: “Mr Lee is always country, country, country. And country.”

This year, Singapore turns 50. Mr Lee would have turned 92 in September. He entered the hospital on Feb 5. He continued to use his red box every day until Feb 4.

Source: www.todayonline.com

March 25, 2015