SCMP: Lee Kuan Had Help With Singapore

yellowarse

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SCMP: Lee Kuan Yew Had Help With Singapore

This writer hit the nail on the head by calling out on old fart's taking all credit for building Singapore. Oh, and he couldn't avoid a dig at his purported role in advising Deng Xiaoping to modernize China. ;)



PUBLISHED : Monday, 30 March, 2015, 10:17pm


No man is an island: Lee Kuan Yew had help with Singapore

Jake van der Kamp
[email protected]


Visitors to a Lee Kuan Yew memorial exhibition at National Museum of Singapore
on March 25, 2015. Photo: Xinhua


D e mortuis nil nisi bonum, they say, and I largely agree. Say nothing but good about the dead.

But there has to be a limit to it or history would be nothing but a collection of rosy obituaries. Decency says one should wait until after the funeral and then a more objective retrospective is entirely seemly.

I have in mind the scene at the Pearly Gates as Lee Kuan Yew arrives. St Peter enters a check mark into his book, turns to him and says, "Block H, room 4523D. Pick up your keys from the porter."

"Wait a moment," says Mr Lee. "Don't I deserve a few words of praise for all that I have done for Singapore?"

"You do indeed," says St Peter. "But on earth you were already given every word of it. Next."

On a cruise through the Indonesian spice islands last week I chanced across a copy of Singapore's English language newspaper, The Straits Times. It opened to about 20 pages of fulsome tribute to Mr Lee with the little wider news squeezed in at the back.

He himself set the tone for this with his 1998 two volume auto-hagiography - The Singapore Story and From Third World to First - and he had a name for telling foreign politicians how to run their affairs while deeming it improper interference in Singapore's when the shoe was on the other foot.

The story has it that he once tried telling Deng Xiaoping how to run China and was told, "Thank you, Mr Lee, and when I become mayor of Shanghai I shall ask you for your advice." If the story is apocryphal it nonetheless rings true.

But let us give him his due. He claimed credit for Singapore's rise as a wealthy, racially harmonious, meritocratic state and fairly so. This is modern Singapore and he played the key role in it. And now let us pull a leaf or two from these laurels.

Singapore, like Hong Kong, prospers as a parasite economy feeding off its larger neighbours by providing them services, sometimes a little dubious, that they cannot or will not provide for themselves.

Mix in the commercial aptitude characteristic of all expatriate populations, Chinese in this case, add the second half of the 20th century's conditions of global prosperity, technology transfers and foreign investment and Mr Lee had a lot of help.
The success was, in fact, attributable to all Singaporeans. No man is an island.

Similarly, Singapore's racial harmony is indeed a great virtue but, having been forced into independence when its overwhelmingly Chinese character was seen as a threat to a Malayan union, Singapore has since never really come under critical racial strain. Mr Lee, however, also made much of thrift, hard work and family loyalty, among other traits, as being Asian values.

Am I therefore to believe that my own grandmothers in the Netherlands, whom I remember for all these values, possessed them by a non-European stroke of luck or that there is no respect for them in America?

The notion that they are specifically Asian is racist. These are human virtues.

As to Singapore's meritocratic nature, yes, in the matter of promotions within the civil service and ruling party undoubtedly so, but in commerce it is not quite such a collection of the best. A big difference from Hong Kong, for instance, is Singapore's heavy reliance on continuous infusions of foreign investment.

The bureaucrats' own investment record is generally poor. And whoever it was who called the English a nation of shopkeepers had certainly never visited Singapore.

I think our own Martin Lee Chu-ming made a worthwhile point in his summation of Mr Lee's record.

Here was a man whose tight control of the people he governed suggests that he did not really trust them. They may yet pay a price for this now that he has entirely left them to rely on their own devices.

Mr Lee was a man of great energy, initiative and determination at a time when Singapore needed just these strengths in a leader. But he arguably kept his fingers stuck in the pie too long. He might have served his people better with an earlier and fuller retirement of the Lee family from Singapore politics.

 
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Those Singaporeans that migrated to hong Kong and lived there for years and cried over lky's death and Singapore.I wonder why they choose to live in a country that so freely critises lky and Singapore.

Anyway what the article says is true,the reasons for singapore's economical success are a myriad and varied.most importantly we are a parasite economy and our community is made up of expat CHINESE.we are a race of highly commercially aptitude people and hardworking.
 
Anyway what the article says is true,the reasons for singapore's economical success are a myriad and varied.most importantly we are a parasite economy and our community is made up of expat CHINESE.we are a race of highly commercially aptitude people and hardworking.

The credit goes to 2 groups:

1. LKY's team of old guards: Toh Chin Chye, Devan Nair, Lim Kim San, Goh Keng Swee, S. Rajaratnam, Hon Swee Sen, Ong Pang Boon, and especially, Albert Winsemius.

2. The people of Singapore, especially the pioneer generation.

Economic development was GKS and Winsemius's legacy. HDB was Lim Kim San's baby. Toh Chin Chye saved old fart's life. Nair handled the unions and workers. Hon Sui Sen was finance.

Old fart knew nuts about finance and economy. He had visions, yes, a mental roadmap, but it was his comrades (who were his equals) who looked into the bolts and nuts. He was merely the spokesman and face of a remarkable and highly dedicated group of founding leaders.

He conveniently got rid of all his contemporaries but himself stayed on to ensure his son's ascension, and in his death managed to grab all the glory and credit for Singapore's success. Fuck him. The least Singaporeans should do ensure that our forefathers' legacy is not eaten away by the nepotism and cronyism instituted by old fart is to vote the PAP out​ in the next election.
 
the British gave LKY the capital ( what was left behind ) to develop and modernize Singapore. History shouldn't be distorted just to glorify LKY's legacy. LKY and PAP deserved the due credits for building up Singapore after independence, but without the British capital, LKY couldn't build the country from the colonial backwater to the first world nation in the short period of 30 years.
 
Sideswipe and yellowarse are right.
 
Old Bastard had a glib tongue (he was a trained lawyer before entering politics). And as with most matters in life, a persuasive glib tongue is all you need to gain an upper hand e.g. convince a nation that you're their messiah, getting them to buy your story, buy your product.
 
UNDP (the the Technical Proramme)'s Albert Winsemius was a key figure in the overall development plan.
 
hi there


1. what is sillyapore today is no work of just one man.
2. but by the contributions and efforts of thousands of unsung and forgotten heroes and individuals, past and present.
3. honest, including talented foreigners too.
 
the credit goes to USA and france. if France and USA have not fought the vietnam war and needed so much logistic support away from the arms of china, PSA and related shipping lines would not have benefitted a thriving trade for such a long time.

and credit goes to the East India Company for trafficking so much drugs and venturing to other forms.

credit goes to marcos and suharto and their cronies for parking their ill gotten cash here.
 
Re: SCMP: Lee Kuan Yew Had Help With Singapore

SCMP has substantial Malaysian shareholding.
 
Old Bastard had a glib tongue (he was a trained lawyer before entering politics). And as with most matters in life, a persuasive glib tongue is all you need to gain an upper hand e.g. convince a nation that you're their messiah, getting them to buy your story, buy your product.

As more things come to light, it appeared that he was really crazy over leaving the legacy - as the founder. I am beginning to understand why raffles institution, the oldest school, was the first to be torn down without hesitation. Why non of his descendants went to ri except lwl but only fro pre u. Why out of 3 females who had written controversial articles, 2 were doing well. I am looking forward to new spins on how caring his true self was, but for the sake of the nation, he had to sacrifice his image and do all those unpopular things. akan datang.
 
Hey guys please help me out. I keep hearing LKY sacrificed his entire life for Singapore, please tell me what and how he sacrificed his entire life for Singapore. Coming up with a lost will be great.

By the way is Arse Loong also sacrificing his life for us now?
 
Old Bastard had a glib tongue (he was a trained lawyer before entering politics). And as with most matters in life, a persuasive glib tongue is all you need to gain an upper hand e.g. convince a nation that you're their messiah, getting them to buy your story, buy your product.

Frankly I doubt his glib tongue alone was enough to do the job,he was a coward through and through,the reason for his success in Singapore and Singapore alone was he set out on a journey spanning decades,corrupting every corner of governance and civil service in Singapore with his twisted fingers and cronies and consolidating power.first the military,then the unions,then the courts of justice,the media,then the nation's coffers,the state corporations,the constitution,the board of education and housing until every inch of Singapore was under his corrupt twisted fingers.and then he could use Singapore as a platform to broadcast to the world of his "success"
 
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the rule of divide and conquer, a roman empire initiative. from a vicious mind. bipolar is an excuse for failure.
 
Re: SCMP: Lee Kuan Yew Had Help With Singapore

Lau Chee Bye is like Steve Jobs.

Sinkapore is like Apple.

Majority of Sinkies are like Apple fanboys a.k.a iDiots.

The parallels are uncanny.
 
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