Thanks for sharing your experience. Fortunately, I did not have to live under such conditions except during army training in Taiwan. The bucket toilet was so smelly that rather than use it, I went to the bushes to do it. Better to have a few mosquito bites on my bum than to tolerate that foul smell.
However, I disagree that all these achievements can be attributed to one man. We would have done it in the global trend of modernisation with or without him.
From Wiki (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore):
"The first public housing built were in SIT Estates, usually located just outside the fringe of Downtown Singapore, such as Tiong Bahru in the Bukit Merah area. SIT estates also appeared in Queenstown such as the Princess Margaret Estate where construction began in
July 1952. In SIT's early plans for the Estate, the new town planning concept was evident with their plans to build housing estates around a commercial centre.
When the HDB took over in 1960, they fully adopted the new town planning concept on a large scale, building entire towns from scratch in locations all around Singapore. Queenstown thus became the HDB's model of its version of a New Town, and they developed this further in Toa Payoh which was the first town to be built entirely from the ground up by the HDB. ...."
So, public housing for the masses was something that was started by the British colonial administration. Even the new town concept originated with them. The civil servants that did it for the SIT Estates under the British were probably just transferred to the HDB which continued the good work that the British had started. The British couldn't finish what they had started because the colonised wanted independence. Would the PAP have been able to continue the public housing program if the British colonial administration did not leave them large financial reserves with which to do it, similar to what the British did when they left Hong Kong? Would our industrialisation have been so rapid if the retreating British military forces did not leave behind facilities which were the best in the region and could be easily converted to civilian use?
In Hong Kong, the British had more time to finish their good work. Here, public housing started in 1953, about the same time as Singapore and continued right through to 1997. Sure the Hongkies themselves took over and continued with the program after 1997, but did Tung Chee Hwa or any of the other Chief Executives try to claim credit for what the British had started?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Hong_Kong
Those same civil servants who did the SIT estates would have done what they are trained by the British to do, regardless of whether the government of the day was lead by the PAP or the BS.
Can't say anything about the triads, except that any government responsible to its electorate would have done it regardless of whether the majority party is PAP or BS. Besides, LKY alone can't do it, he needs a police force. If we need to thank anybody for the elimination of the triads, it is the police force of the mid to late 60s and its chiefs.
