This is reprinted from my
first blog site, which now seems to be defunct.
I suppose no discussion of Singapore would be complete without mention of Lee Kuan Yew. As the first prime minister of Singapore, and indeed the unwitting prime mover toward its independence, Lee is very much the father of modern Singapore.
That was not his original goal, however, and the declaration of independence by Lee on 9 August 1965 was a moment in which he seemed to consider himself a failure. In his memoirs
, he speaks of the embarrassment he felt over his emotional display at the press conference announcing Singaporean independence. He broke down in front of the cameras and had to take a 20 minute recess to regain his composure before continuing.
You see, Lee had hopes for a united Federation of Malaysia. And after just two short years, there was a public “divorce” between Singapore and Malaysia. Divorce is the image Lee uses to describe the separation in his memoirs, but it was also carried out as such, metaphorically, in the political arena of the day. During the morning hours of 9 August 1965, an announcement of the separation was read three times in the Malaysian courts, representative of the practice of a man divorcing his wife under the Muslim legal system, where, once the announcement has been made three times, it is impossible for the couple to reconcile. With this three-fold announcement in Malaysia, the separation of the two nations was made permanent, irreversible.
Lee has since earned a reputation as a hard-nosed, iron-fisted, patriarchal ruler of Singapore. And that reputation is deserved, in many ways. And yet he remains well-loved by Singaporeans. That, too, is deserved in many ways.
When Lee unexpectedly became the father of a young, struggling nation, it wasn’t the shiny, clean, thriving world-class city you see today. Many of my friends here tell me how different it was back in those days. There were potential race riots, and great divisions along racial and religious lines. Communist takeover was a very realistic threat, considering what was happening in the region at the time. There were opium dens on every corner, rats running rampant in open drains. It was not the “clean and green” image of Singapore that we know today.
But Lee cleaned the place up. He was a very strong personality in a period when the nation desperately needed leadership. He brought a huge measure of wealth and stability into the country, and into the lives of individual Singaporeans. In a period where race and religion had caused a division between two nations (that was the cause of the breakup of the Malaysian Federation into two separate nations, Singapore and Malaysia), Singapore was able to achieve racial and religious harmony, and today it is perhaps one of the best integrated places I have ever seen.
And all of this came about, to some degree, simply because it was enforced. Policy was set by Lee and his top advisors, and compliance was expected at every level. Non-compliance was met with swift and sure retribution — often through the pocket book (yes, it is a fine city), and less frequently by more severe means. (Though it is not very common, a sort of forced exile has not been unheard of over the past 40 years of Singapore’s nationhood.)
For most of us Americans, Lee’s domineering micromanaging of the country is not something we welcome or admire. The unquestioning compliance of that generation of Singaporeans, their seeming disinterest in politics, is something we can’t quite understand.
But the fact is, what Lee did worked. This is a changed place, and in a very short time. This blog is getting a little too long to discuss the morality of evaluating a thing strictly by its pragmatic value, but the fact is, it is hard to argue with the results of what Lee has achieved, whatever we may think of the methods.
From Third World to First: The Singapore Story, 1965-2000
Keeping My Mandarin Alive: Lee Kuan Yew’s Language Learning Experience
