What did Lee Kuan Yew say when he was called a dictator?

An Interview with Lee Kuan Yew

By WILLIAM SAFIRE – Published: February 15, 1999

The New York Times logo

WASHINGTON— In blurbing the memoirs of the dictator of Singapore, President George Bush gushed: ”Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew is one of the brightest, ablest men I have ever met.” Baroness Thatcher: ”He was never wrong.” Henry Kissinger: ”One of the seminal figures of Asia.”

Despite this adulation, a vituperative right-wing calumniator regularly denounces Lee for using lapdog judges to silence internal opposition and intimidate journalists.

”’You call me a dictator,” Senior Minister Lee said when we recently met at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ”You are entitled to call me whatever you like, but that doesn’t make me one . . . do I need to be a dictator when I can win, hands down?”

He brought up the example of Chee Soon Juan, 36, a neuropsychologist who dared to run for Parliament. After being fired from his job and losing his home, Dr. Chee was arrested for breaching the Public Entertainment Act by trying to make a speech.

”There was this little fuss about a dissident,” said the dictator, ”who said, ‘I’m going to speak at Raffles Place,’ which is our business center, without a permit. So why didn’t we let him speak?

”I said the law has been on the statutes for the last 50 years. If everybody just turns up at a busy junction at lunchtime and makes a speech and runs around . . . there would be pandemonium. We are not that kind of society.”

Joseph Nye, head of Harvard’s Kennedy School, suggested that Singapore set aside a place like London’s old Hyde Park Corner, where people gathered to hear speakers sound off freely. Lee promises: ”We’ll probably do it.” That’ll be the day.




The dissident Chee was fined the equivalent of $800, refused to pay, spent a week in jail and faces further harassment. I asked: If not worried about opposition, why fine him at all?

”Because the laws are there, and he has complied with those laws for the last eight years. Since 1992 he has been campaigning. And now, because he has lost, and lost badly in an open, free election, one to one against one of our candidates, he’s had exposure on television, which was disastrous for him because he was caught out lying and fibbing and fabricating evidence on a health care paper. . . . So he gets a big splash in the Western press, because they want to beat me up. It’s all right; it doesn’t bother me.”

When dissidents say ”liar,” they are driven into exile; obviously a free press bothers him plenty. ”We do not own the [Singapore] press, as they do in Malaysia. Nobody is allowed to own more than 3 percent of the shares. The management of the press is in the hands of our four big banks.”

”And that makes all of them terrified of crossing you.”

”No. That makes them having a vested interest in stability and growth, and they support parties that will bring about stability and growth.”




Result: 80 of the 83 seats in Parliament are locked up by Lee’s party. Why does he fear political contests?

”There are seven or eight parties that contested the last elections. They lost because they cannot produce an alternative more attractive to the electorate than us. Look: Nobody in his right mind believes that we rigged elections.”

As one of the legion not in his right mind, I asked: How about free labor unions?

”Nothing to stop them from forming independent labor unions. But they can’t succeed, because the unions who are with us produce more results.”




About nepotism: ”Would your son be Deputy Prime Minister if he were not your son?” He snaps: ”If he were not my son, he would be the Prime Minister. He came up faster than any of the others, but I told him it would do him no good.” The scion must await his time.

The determinedly irreplaceable Lee Kuan Yew is the world’s most intelligent, and to some most likable, despot. In our hour’s talk, he offered insights about China to be reported in a future column, unless my publisher gets sued, bankrupted, jailed and flayed with a cane in the meantime.

”You are not a silly man and I don’t give you silly answers,” the Senior Minister said in parting. I’ll put all those answers on the Internet when I figure out how.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/15/opinion/essay-the-dictator-speaks.html

Literally he means - you sinkie, bend down, suck my cock

Strange interview

"You can call me whatever you like.....but after this my BAYEE SINGH will send you a letter then you will know what are the consequences"

He is the benign dictator...as many has said..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship

Source: Singapore Window

Requiem for an unbending Singaporean

OPINION March 26, 1999

Singapore's former president, C. V. Devan Nair, writes about opposition leader J. B. Jeyaretnam and his political party: the Workers' Party.

A SERIOUS threat of closure faces the Workers' Party led by Mr J. B. Jeyaretnam because of failure to pay the forbidding damages awarded against the Party by a court in Singapore. One hopes against hope that this might be avoided at the last minute. It is a slim hope. The world has come to assume, rightly or wrongly, that the political tactics used by the governing PAP against opposition politicians have for some time come to include suing their pants off, forcing them into bankruptcy and losing their seats in parliament as a result. Now the same device is resorted to against opposition political parties themselves, as registered institutions. The onus of proof is on the government of Singapore - not on global public opinion.

Nothing that smacks of opposition seems safe in Singapore any longer. Singaporeans must sooner or later come to realise the harsh truth that nobody in Singapore is truly saved unless ALL are SEEN to be saved. The post of no return has long passed for Singaporeans, and one fears they will perforce learn this lesson the hard way. In the ultimate analysis, this is probably best. The more painful the price paid to learn basic human lessons, the more firmly might they become embedded in the national fibre. A free Singapore will arise and justify the sacrifices and efforts of undaunted Singaporeans, now including the courageous Chee Soon Juan, who had immolated themselves on the altar of freedom. Phoenix-like, their dreams will rise once again from their ashes. Were this process not true, the world would have come to an end long ago.

It is just as well that I release this requiem now. If not timely yet, it will be soon enough. Here goes, for good or ill to myself:

Some months after I was kicked upstairs to the presidency of the republic of Singapore in October 1981, there was a by-election in the parliamentary constituency of Anson, which I had held prior to my ill-fated elevation. I had won that seat with a comfortable majority of some 80 percent of the votes cast. The PAP's candidate in the by-election was a relative unknown, while the Workers Party put up J.B Jeyaretnam. To the consternation of the PAP, Jeyaretnam won.

The day after the by-election verdict was declared, I had lunch with the Prime Minister. I was amazed at how he fretted and fumed like a caged fury. As I saw it, Jeyaretnam constituted no threat at all to the PAP whether in parliament or outside it. For one thing, despite Jeyas courage, he displayed a woeful lack of economics. He clearly never knew at any point of time how Singapore clicked economically. And it was as plain as a pikestaff to me that in five years of free performance in 'parliament against the likes of Dr Goh Keng Swee, Mr Lim Kim San et al, he would stand exposed in public for his abysmal ignorance of economics.

In truth, if I had to cope with J.B Jeyaretnam as a hostile delegate at regular National Trade Union Congress (NTUC) Delegates Conferences, I would have given him all the rope and more he wanted to hang himself with. And after free and open arguments over three days of conferencing, I would have beaten him hands down at the ballot box. I knew this, as did the workers. For they knew that in the colonial days, Jeyaretnam had never stood on a picket line. I had, not once but several times, not only stood on picket lines, but also bedded down for the night on the gravel with the workers whom I led.

I told all this to Kuan Yew. Nothing I said sank in. He fretted about a potential critical percentage drop in PAP votes across all the constituencies that could eventually bring the PAP government down, and he wouldn't stand for it. Only later did I realise that this was the moment that started his formidable brain box ticking away furiously at the fecund gerrymandering schemes he was to introduce later to ensure that all opposition parties would be put in a Gordion bind that would make it impossible for them to ever achieve control of parliament, unless an Alexander came along. Such a possibility appears impossible now, unless it takes the awesome shape of shattering geo-political circumstances already building up around Singapore.

Immediately, however, Kuan Yew's attention was concentrated on how he would deal with J.B Jeyaretnam in parliament. I was quite alarmed at some of the things he told me at that lunch. "Look," he said, "Jeyaretnam cant win the infighting. I'll tell you why. WE are in charge. Every government ministry and department is under our control. And in the infighting, he will go down for the count every time." And I will never forget his last words. "I will make him crawl on his bended knees, and beg for mercy."

Jeyaretnam was made of sterner stuff. To his eternal credit he never did crawl on bended knees, or ever begged for mercy. And it is to Lee Kuan Yew's eternal shame that Jeyaretnam will leave the political scene with his head held high, enjoying a martyrdom conferred on him by Lee. Lest I be misunderstood, let me state that Jeya more than deserves the crown of the martyr for his indomitable courage and dignity in the face of the vilest persecution.

Even greater human spirits than Jeyaretnam had refused to bend their knees to Lee Kuan Yew. It is my considered view that the greatest human being living in Singapore today is one who declined to surrender to the intimidation of prolonged incarceration and restrictions imposed on him without trial for a total period which exceeds that suffered by Nelson Mandela. And here was the mark of true greatness. He emerged from the experience like a god unembittered. His name is Chia Thye Poh. And it is Lee Kuan Yew who emerged from the episode as the knave and fool of his own mindless vindictiveness, while the real conqueror smiles benignly - unnoted, of course, by the local media. For only sound waves from the Istana Annexe are picked up and regurgitated by His Master¹s Voice.

There is no political justification for obliging the Workers' Party to close down. And not a shred of moral justification. What lies behind the move is among the most brazen vindictiveness ever shown in the political life of Singapore. It merely adds one more nail in the coffin of the PAP's reputation when the true history of the party will be exposed to the world, as it surely will be one day in the coming decades of the third millennium. As mankind accelerates to the abyss, the shining memories of the past will certainly not include Lee Kuan Yew and the department store dummies he boasts today as his acolytes. He clearly does not possess the foresight to avoid such a fate.

I gladly salute J.B. Jeyaretnam and the Worker's Party at this highly deserved requiem, even if I never once had shared their platform.

zeroo is the kind of IB who failed his English and GP.

How come zero posters looked the same as SDP posters?

http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread....e-other-than-Chee-Soon-Juan-quot&goto=newpost

tunadunsing said:

He is the benign dictator...as many has said..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship

Click to expand...

There is nothing benign about LKY.

We've seen what happens to people who oppose him. Maybe that's why so many are happy at the he is finally going up the lorry.

SINGAPORE FOR SINGAPOREANS
SINGAPORE NOT FOR FOREIGN TRASH BROUGHT IN DELIBERATELY BY PAPs TO DISPLACE SINGAPOREANS
FTs BROUGHT IN BY PAPs TO REDUCE THE MONEY SINGAPOREANS CAN TAKE HOME FOR THEIR FAMILIES
FTs BROUGHT IN TO DEVALUE SINGAPOREANS
PAPs THEN USING FUCKING WORDS LIKE RACISTS AND XENOPHOBES TO FURTHER KICK SINGAPOREANS IN THE TEETH
REMEMBER IT IS THE FUCKING PAPs THAT DELIBERATELY BROUGHT IN THE FTs
SO THAT LESS MONEY FOR SINGAPOREANS AND LESS MONEY TO FIGHT THE FUCKING PAPs

TO HAVE LESS JOBS AVAILABLE FOR SINGAPOREANS AS FTs WILL BE GIVEN THAT JOB PREFERENCE OVER SINGAPOREANS

PAP TIEWING AND FUCKING STINKIES FOR SMEAR OF SHIT ON SOLE OF SHOE LKY AND PAPs
A LUCRATIVE JOB FOR WHICH PAPs ARE PAID UNTIL THOSE FUCKERS CAN LAUGH ALL THE WAY TO THEIR BANKS AND BACK FROM THEIR BANKS


They continue to laugh all the way to their banks
And all the way back from their banks

HA HA HA HA
HEE HEE HEE HE HEEEE
HOO HO HOOO HO HO




Hang all those PAP bastards from piano wires, upside down or right way up.




Hang those PAP maggots cockroaches with piano wires from lamp posts to make them dance before it is too late and we have no more CPF to get back.
BBQ those PAP maggots cockroaches before it is too late and we have no more CPF to get back.
Cut a few more arseholes into those PAP maggots cockroaches to let out their shit before it is too late and we have no more CPF to get back.
Make those PAP maggots cockroaches eat joss sticks and candle wax before it is too late and we have no more CPF to get back.

PAP is finished.
The stinking glue and terror that hold PAP together is that old fart smear of shit on sole of shoe LKY. LKY is about to die in days or weeks.
LKY will never allow good decent people into the PAP and good decent people will not want to get into the PAP. Those in PAP are the most corrupt and moral degenerates and moral bankrupts and moral filths that are being presented to stinkaporeans as moral compasses.
None of those in PAP work for anyone but that smear of shit on sole of shoe LKY, to help him hold down Singaporeans to screw and fuck hundreds of BILLIONs from us all into smear of shit on sole of shoe LKY stinkapore sovereign funds.
Maggots and cockroaches are appointed as ministers in parliament
Kangaroos are frolicking in High Court instead of being allowed to wander and roam about in the Zoo
They are there in PAP because LKY know that they are a bunch of self serving greedy bastards and scrapings of scums of society. To call them maggots cockroaches will be to insult real maggots and real cockroaches.



WE ALL ARE NOW WAITING FOR THE DEATH OF LKY IN COMING DAYS OR WEEKS.
WE ALL WILL YUM SENG AND YUM SENG AND YUM SENG AGAIN AND AGAIN DANCING SINGING ON TABLE TOPS AND STREETS
WE THEN WILL SEE THOSE IN PAP WITH SHARPENED KNIVES HOOTING ARSEHLOON A DOZEN NEW ARSEHOLES AND THE DEATH OF THE ENTIRE LEE KWA CLAN
WE THEN WILL PICK UP PIANO WIRES AND HANG ALL THOSE REMAINING PAP AND THEIR COLLABORATORS FROM LAMP POSTS AND SEE THOSE BASTARDS AND BITCHES DANCE.
AND HAPPINESS WILL RETURN TO OUR LAND.
AND STINKAPORE WILL BECOME SINGAPORE ONCE MORE.

Without control of the press, the unions, the courts and the ISA, Old Fart would have been a failure.

His boasts are empty as it is clearly he a despot.

So soon, you are preparing the ground for him to be elevated as the Pope of Sinkapore?

winnipegjets said:

Without control of the press, the unions, the courts and the ISA, Old Fart would have been a failure.

His boasts are empty as it is clearly he a despot.

So soon, you are preparing the ground for him to be elevated as the Pope of Sinkapore?

Click to expand...

FUCK PAP, FUCK PAP, FUCK PAP.........
MAY PAPEES, CRONIES N FAMILIES BURN ETERNALLY IN HELLS.........
MAJULLAH SINGAPURA.........
GOD BLESS SINGAPORE..............
REMEMBER to

VOTE papees OUT



do yrself, yr forefathers and yr generations to come, a favor, a service and a long-awaited justice









iamhere says a lot about this:"The democracy shall cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those LEECHES who would not.”

tunadunsing said:

He is the benign dictator...as many has said..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship

Click to expand...

That's an oxymoron
Coined by lky apologists

steffychun said:

zeroo is the kind of IB who failed his English and GP.

Click to expand...

You flatter him....he studied up to monolingual primary 8....even VITB rejected him after that.....where got chance to touch GP?

Now his beloved PA sponsors him for night classes BEST and WISE