Lee Kuan Yew
Terence Lee
In a teary speech where he struggled at times to gain composure, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong bade farewell to his father Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding patriarch.
The elder statesman was a figure of rare quality. He was a deft leader and politician who melded charisma with brute force, a paradoxical rebel who demanded complete obedience from his subjects. He was the pragmatic chief architect who did what he thought was right for Singapore. He stood up to critics and in some cases, ruthlessly silenced them.
Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy will be scrutinized and picked apart for decades to come. Everything rests on Singapore, a country that many regard as the model for the world.
He stands tall as our founder-in-chief. Like many founding stories, Singapore as a sovereign nation was only formed out of desperate necessity. Lee firmly believed in merger with Malaysia and that Singapore could never survive as an independent country.
However, the economic fruits of the merger never came to pass. The Malaysian government blocked attempts to give Singaporean investors tax-free status. It kept Singapore out of politics while demanding that it pay a tax, a prospect it rejected. “There could be no taxation without representation,” he told Malaysia’s then Prime Minister.
In retrospect, separation from Malaysia was the best outcome. But even he wasn’t so sure then. It was Goh Keng Swee, who eventually became Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister, that led the movement within the People’s Action Party (PAP) to advocate a divorce.
Lee was firmly in the other camp, but eventually came round to Goh’s view that separation was the best way out. He built a team smart enough to convince him of his error. Soon, they engineered a plan that would either see Malaysia bend to the PAP’s ideal of a meritocratic system and the destruction of race-based politics, or result in Singapore’s extrication from the Malaysian albatross.
Lee embarked on nation-building with renewed vigor, fashioning from the ground up a society built on his ideals. Singapore was a startup, a fragmented society without a common purpose that needed to be nimble against turbulent global geo-politics. Lee embarked on the experiment of building a city-state just 50 kilometers across. He invoked drastic measures, famously saying:
I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbor is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.
Lee’s politics were suited to the knuckle duster era where racial riots were rampant, where terrorist bombings were a threat, and Singapore’s future was uncertain.
Today’s Singapore is different: it’s a known quantity, a success story, a gleaming city making its mark on the world stage. It’s also a city ripe for reinvention.
There’s the danger of extracting the wrong lessons from Lee Kuan Yew’s life work. Too many people are happy with the status quo, defending his politics rather than his spirit. The byproduct of his policies is that Singapore has become stigmatized as a nation of obedient drones. But his governance has also instilled in us a culture of excellence, an insatiable quest for being best at and kiasu in everything - and that includes innovation and creativity.
This spirit defines Singapore. It’s a compass that will set the nation’s course for this century. The ship is sailing - Singapore is remaking itself as an innovation hub. It’s an ambitious plan befitting of his legacy.
The state may be in the driving seat once again, but the dynamics must change for true remodeling to take root. The citizenry must play a bigger role, and as far as innovation is concerned, every homegrown enterprise must carry the burden. The future of Singapore lies in every citizen’s ability to challenge conventional thinking, stay adaptable, and possess, as Lee said, “that iron in him [or her].”
Singapore is an eternal startup, and Lee Kuan Yew our first founder-in-chief.
In a teary speech where he struggled at times to gain composure, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong bade farewell to his father Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding patriarch.
The elder statesman was a figure of rare quality. He was a deft leader and politician who melded charisma with brute force, a paradoxical rebel who demanded complete obedience from his subjects. He was the pragmatic chief architect who did what he thought was right for Singapore. He stood up to critics and in some cases, ruthlessly silenced them.
Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy will be scrutinized and picked apart for decades to come. Everything rests on Singapore, a country that many regard as the model for the world.
He stands tall as our founder-in-chief. Like many founding stories, Singapore as a sovereign nation was only formed out of desperate necessity. Lee firmly believed in merger with Malaysia and that Singapore could never survive as an independent country.
However, the economic fruits of the merger never came to pass. The Malaysian government blocked attempts to give Singaporean investors tax-free status. It kept Singapore out of politics while demanding that it pay a tax, a prospect it rejected. “There could be no taxation without representation,” he told Malaysia’s then Prime Minister.
In retrospect, separation from Malaysia was the best outcome. But even he wasn’t so sure then. It was Goh Keng Swee, who eventually became Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister, that led the movement within the People’s Action Party (PAP) to advocate a divorce.
Lee was firmly in the other camp, but eventually came round to Goh’s view that separation was the best way out. He built a team smart enough to convince him of his error. Soon, they engineered a plan that would either see Malaysia bend to the PAP’s ideal of a meritocratic system and the destruction of race-based politics, or result in Singapore’s extrication from the Malaysian albatross.
Lee embarked on nation-building with renewed vigor, fashioning from the ground up a society built on his ideals. Singapore was a startup, a fragmented society without a common purpose that needed to be nimble against turbulent global geo-politics. Lee embarked on the experiment of building a city-state just 50 kilometers across. He invoked drastic measures, famously saying:
I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbor is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.
Lee’s politics were suited to the knuckle duster era where racial riots were rampant, where terrorist bombings were a threat, and Singapore’s future was uncertain.
Today’s Singapore is different: it’s a known quantity, a success story, a gleaming city making its mark on the world stage. It’s also a city ripe for reinvention.
There’s the danger of extracting the wrong lessons from Lee Kuan Yew’s life work. Too many people are happy with the status quo, defending his politics rather than his spirit. The byproduct of his policies is that Singapore has become stigmatized as a nation of obedient drones. But his governance has also instilled in us a culture of excellence, an insatiable quest for being best at and kiasu in everything - and that includes innovation and creativity.
This spirit defines Singapore. It’s a compass that will set the nation’s course for this century. The ship is sailing - Singapore is remaking itself as an innovation hub. It’s an ambitious plan befitting of his legacy.
The state may be in the driving seat once again, but the dynamics must change for true remodeling to take root. The citizenry must play a bigger role, and as far as innovation is concerned, every homegrown enterprise must carry the burden. The future of Singapore lies in every citizen’s ability to challenge conventional thinking, stay adaptable, and possess, as Lee said, “that iron in him [or her].”
Singapore is an eternal startup, and Lee Kuan Yew our first founder-in-chief.