http://www.singapolitics.sg/views/after-watershed-election-paradoxes-perils-promises
After a watershed election: Paradoxes, Perils, Promises
Posted on Aug 27, 2012 10:39 AM Updated: Aug 27, 2012 10:40 AM
The following is a lecture given by Ms Lim at NUSS on 22 August 2012. The event was organized by the NUSS Graduate Club
For nearly 20 years now, I have been writing commentaries and giving talks, on various aspects of the Singapore political situation, and all of them, without exception, have been underlain by one common, unquestioned assumption – the powerful influence of Mr Lee Kuan Yew. Mr Lee has been aptly compared to the huge banyan tree, and his colleagues to the little saplings allowed to grow in its shade. To the outside world, his name is synonymous with Singapore.
It was inevitable that at some point I would be tempted to pull together all these separate allusions to Mr Lee, and come up with a single, comprehensive narrative, with Mr Lee as the focal point of interest. And the most fitting time to share this narrative is now. For this is a crucial period in Singapore’s development, a time of great uncertainty and change, brought about by the unprecedented events of the General Election of 2011 (GE 2011), which events can, arguably, be traced to Mr Lee. For the most bitterly contentious issues in the election leading to the worst ever performance of the PAP, were none other than those policies that he had most stoutly defended and promoted, namely, those related to the enormous ministerial salaries, and the liberal employment of foreign workers.
The rejection of these policies was by extension a rejection of Mr Lee. This astonishing, never-before-seen hostility against the most prominent leader in Singapore, has ushered in a somewhat awkward transition which, for the purposes of this presentation, I will call a post-Lee Kuan Yew era, although Mr Lee is still around. A post-LKY era is used here not in the literal but in the ironic sense, not in the temporal but the experiential sense, to refer to the present,when Mr Lee is still around to witness and be daily reminded of possibly the most painful fact of his political career – that he was, in effect, the biggest casualty in GE 2011.
Immediately after the election, the Prime Minister announced that Mr Lee had decided to resign as Minister Mentor( together with Senior Minister Mr Goh Chok Tong) In view of Mr Lee’s earlier ebullient optimism , the decision must have been a most reluctant and anguished one.
It is quite clear that currently the Prime Minister and his team are grappling with a colossal task: how to strike the right balance between the need, on the one hand, to divest the old model of those elements no longer acceptable to the people, and the desire, on the other, to preserve its core principles of hard work, discipline, competence, moral integrity and incorruptibility.
But whatever the extent of Mr Lee’s fall, no evaluation of him will be complete without due acknowledgement of his very real achievements. Indeed, his brilliant success in making Singapore what it is today is unreservedly acknowledged by both his admirers and detractors, and is extensively documented.
Beyond all these considerations, even his severest critics will have to agree that here indeed was a man of extraordinary conviction, boldness, strength and purposefulness. To this laudatory list, I would like to add one more shining attribute – selflessness. I believe that Mr Lee’s commitment to the well-being of his country was completely devoid of any self-interest, vainglory or personal cultishness, a quality rare enough when seen against the megalomania of so many world leaders bent on having magnificent monuments put up for them.
The unavoidable and, to me, dismaying truth about Lee’s brilliance, genius and vision is that, somewhere along the way, he allowed it to harden into inflexibility, intolerance and vindictiveness. Because his knuckleduster approach had worked so well in the early years of his rule when he gave order to a young Singapore beset by threats from all sides - from Communist sympathizers, communalists, racist newspaper editors, intransigent trade unionists, rioting students, triads and gangsters - he had come to believe that it should work for all time, under all circumstances. His vision had narrowed into a singularly monolithic, undifferentiated one, trapping him in a time warp.
It also gave him a sense of his infallibility, which had two distinct consequences. Firstly, it blinded him to his own faults while amplifying those of others. Secondly, it gave a particularly vicious quality to the way he treated all those who dared to oppose him openly. Indeed, his hatred of his political opponents was so intense that he had no qualms about incarcerating them for years, even decades, bankrupting them or forcing them to flee into permanent exile. In short, his vision had taken on a dark side that had no place for those human qualities that we normally like to associate with even our sternest leaders, qualities such as empathy, magnanimity and humility. Mr Lee had become his own worst enemy, his own nemesis.
A man of intense pride, he is unlikely ever to have this perspective of himself, and to his dying day will probably regret that his people for whom he had worked so hard for so long , never appreciated him, never understood the depth of his commitment to them, when he declared, famously, that even when dead and inside his coffin, if he sensed a problem out there, he would up and solve it for them.
We are indeed in the midst of one of the most exciting times in Singapore’s history, a time fraught with paradoxes, perils and promises, brought about by a general election that has been described as a watershed, a sea change, a transformation, not least because it ended the era of Lee Kuan Yew. Mr Lee’s legacy is so mixed that at one end of the spectrum of response, there will be pure admiration and adulation, and at the other, undisguised opprobrium and distaste. But whatever the emotions he elicits, whatever the controversies that swirl around him, it will be generally agreed that for a man of his stature and impact, neither the present nor the future holds an equal.
After a watershed election: Paradoxes, Perils, Promises
Posted on Aug 27, 2012 10:39 AM Updated: Aug 27, 2012 10:40 AM
The following is a lecture given by Ms Lim at NUSS on 22 August 2012. The event was organized by the NUSS Graduate Club
For nearly 20 years now, I have been writing commentaries and giving talks, on various aspects of the Singapore political situation, and all of them, without exception, have been underlain by one common, unquestioned assumption – the powerful influence of Mr Lee Kuan Yew. Mr Lee has been aptly compared to the huge banyan tree, and his colleagues to the little saplings allowed to grow in its shade. To the outside world, his name is synonymous with Singapore.
It was inevitable that at some point I would be tempted to pull together all these separate allusions to Mr Lee, and come up with a single, comprehensive narrative, with Mr Lee as the focal point of interest. And the most fitting time to share this narrative is now. For this is a crucial period in Singapore’s development, a time of great uncertainty and change, brought about by the unprecedented events of the General Election of 2011 (GE 2011), which events can, arguably, be traced to Mr Lee. For the most bitterly contentious issues in the election leading to the worst ever performance of the PAP, were none other than those policies that he had most stoutly defended and promoted, namely, those related to the enormous ministerial salaries, and the liberal employment of foreign workers.
The rejection of these policies was by extension a rejection of Mr Lee. This astonishing, never-before-seen hostility against the most prominent leader in Singapore, has ushered in a somewhat awkward transition which, for the purposes of this presentation, I will call a post-Lee Kuan Yew era, although Mr Lee is still around. A post-LKY era is used here not in the literal but in the ironic sense, not in the temporal but the experiential sense, to refer to the present,when Mr Lee is still around to witness and be daily reminded of possibly the most painful fact of his political career – that he was, in effect, the biggest casualty in GE 2011.
Immediately after the election, the Prime Minister announced that Mr Lee had decided to resign as Minister Mentor( together with Senior Minister Mr Goh Chok Tong) In view of Mr Lee’s earlier ebullient optimism , the decision must have been a most reluctant and anguished one.
It is quite clear that currently the Prime Minister and his team are grappling with a colossal task: how to strike the right balance between the need, on the one hand, to divest the old model of those elements no longer acceptable to the people, and the desire, on the other, to preserve its core principles of hard work, discipline, competence, moral integrity and incorruptibility.
But whatever the extent of Mr Lee’s fall, no evaluation of him will be complete without due acknowledgement of his very real achievements. Indeed, his brilliant success in making Singapore what it is today is unreservedly acknowledged by both his admirers and detractors, and is extensively documented.
Beyond all these considerations, even his severest critics will have to agree that here indeed was a man of extraordinary conviction, boldness, strength and purposefulness. To this laudatory list, I would like to add one more shining attribute – selflessness. I believe that Mr Lee’s commitment to the well-being of his country was completely devoid of any self-interest, vainglory or personal cultishness, a quality rare enough when seen against the megalomania of so many world leaders bent on having magnificent monuments put up for them.
The unavoidable and, to me, dismaying truth about Lee’s brilliance, genius and vision is that, somewhere along the way, he allowed it to harden into inflexibility, intolerance and vindictiveness. Because his knuckleduster approach had worked so well in the early years of his rule when he gave order to a young Singapore beset by threats from all sides - from Communist sympathizers, communalists, racist newspaper editors, intransigent trade unionists, rioting students, triads and gangsters - he had come to believe that it should work for all time, under all circumstances. His vision had narrowed into a singularly monolithic, undifferentiated one, trapping him in a time warp.
It also gave him a sense of his infallibility, which had two distinct consequences. Firstly, it blinded him to his own faults while amplifying those of others. Secondly, it gave a particularly vicious quality to the way he treated all those who dared to oppose him openly. Indeed, his hatred of his political opponents was so intense that he had no qualms about incarcerating them for years, even decades, bankrupting them or forcing them to flee into permanent exile. In short, his vision had taken on a dark side that had no place for those human qualities that we normally like to associate with even our sternest leaders, qualities such as empathy, magnanimity and humility. Mr Lee had become his own worst enemy, his own nemesis.
A man of intense pride, he is unlikely ever to have this perspective of himself, and to his dying day will probably regret that his people for whom he had worked so hard for so long , never appreciated him, never understood the depth of his commitment to them, when he declared, famously, that even when dead and inside his coffin, if he sensed a problem out there, he would up and solve it for them.
We are indeed in the midst of one of the most exciting times in Singapore’s history, a time fraught with paradoxes, perils and promises, brought about by a general election that has been described as a watershed, a sea change, a transformation, not least because it ended the era of Lee Kuan Yew. Mr Lee’s legacy is so mixed that at one end of the spectrum of response, there will be pure admiration and adulation, and at the other, undisguised opprobrium and distaste. But whatever the emotions he elicits, whatever the controversies that swirl around him, it will be generally agreed that for a man of his stature and impact, neither the present nor the future holds an equal.
