Lee Kuan Yew: Tough founder of modern Singapore
1923-2015
LEE Kuan Yew, who has died aged 91, was the creator of modern Singapore and the outstanding Asian statesman of his generation.
Lee became prime minister of Singapore aged 35 in 1959, under the last British governorship, and remained in power until his retirement date more than 30 years later. He led the island state to independence as part of Malaysia in 1963, and as a nation in its own right two years later.
Throughout his premiership, he imposed his austere, incorruptible and often prickly persona on Singapore life. Stability and economic progress were, for him, unequivocally higher priorities than Western notions of freedom.
The result was the transformation of Singapore from a mosquito-ridden colonial trading post and military base to a proud and prosperous — if somewhat antiseptic — “Asian tiger”, with the ninth-highest per capita income in the world.
Lee Kuan Yew was born in Singapore on September 16 1923, into a family of Hakka Chinese descent. Lee’s father was a storekeeper for the Shell oil company, and later worked in a jewellery shop.
As a child he spoke English, Malay and Cantonese, and was educated almost entirely in English; while prime minister he applied himself to learning Mandarin and Hokkien as well.
He was educated at Raffles Institution, the forerunner of the University of Singapore. He was a student there at the time of the British capitulation to the Japanese in 1942.
The brutality of the Japanese was central to Lee’s political views. He was “determined to work for freedom from servitude and foreign domination”.
In September 1945, Lee was among the crowds that watched the Japanese surrender ceremony outside Singapore’s City Hall, and a year later he was at last able to leave for England to take up a place at the London School of Economics.
In his single term there, Lee fell briefly under the left-wing influence of Harold Laski — but he quickly moved to Cambridge. There he was much happier, all the more so because he was able to arrange a place at Girton for his fiancée, Kwa Geok Choo — who had been the only pupil at Raffles to outscore him, to his horror, in English and economics exams. Lee and Choo both took Firsts in law.
In June 1950, Lee and Choo were called to the bar by Middle Temple and in September, after returning to Singapore, they were officially married.
Lee made a name for himself not at the criminal bar but as a legal adviser to many of Singapore’s trade unions, notably during a strike by postal workers. In 1953, he also successfully defended a student journal against charges of sedition. By now he was at the heart of ferment against continuing British rule, and in 1954 — with the support of Tunku Abdul Rahman, who was to become Malaysia’s first prime minister — he and his cohorts announced the formation of the People’s Action Party, Lee’s power base for the rest of his life.
The party’s first manifesto called for independence for a unified Malaya and Singapore, the repeal of emergency legislation imposed by the British in response to Communist vi- olence in Malaya, and universal adult suffrage. In the elections for a new, partially representative legislative assembly in 1955, the party won three seats, including one for Lee.
By 1958, the British had cleared the way towards full self-government under a new constitution, and Lee was preparing his bid for power.
In the 1959 assembly elections, the party triumphed with 53% of the vote and 43 out of 51 seats. When its executive met to choose a prime minister, Lee won. He took office on June 3 1959.
Lee immediately established the tone of the domestic policies
Lee was never a tyrant. He believed in the rule of law, though he used it as a blunt instrument
that were to prevail. Ministers were ordered to be at their desks by 8am and civil servants were ordered to be more civil. Campaigns were launched against corruption and immorality, and newspapers were warned not to be subversive.
Lee made the British departure in 1971 the catalyst for a massive redevelopment that was the foundation of the modern Singapore economy.
In the consumer boom of the ’80s, glittering (and largely taxfree) shopping malls attracted millions of tourists.
Prosperity came at a price — the absence of anything resembling free political debate, and enforced obedience to Lee’s all- encompassing diktats on personal behaviour. Singaporeans were subject to fines for spitting, swearing and not flushing public lavatories. As for political opposition, Lee permitted it but made it as difficult as possible.
Yet Lee was never a tyrant. He believed in the rule of law, though he used it as a blunt instrument in merciless pursuit of his suspected enemies. His authoritarian instincts were mitigated by intellectual rigour, patent incorruptibility and a modest personal lifestyle.
Lee finally stood down as prime minister in November 1990, handing over to his loyal deputy, Goh Chok Tong. He stayed in the cabinet until 2011.
He also wrote two weighty volumes of memoirs, The Singapore Story.
World leaders continued to pay homage to him in old age. He in turn did not hold back from criticising his own successors or expressing himself trenchantly on the great issues of the day. In 1992 he subjected the new governor, Chris Patten, to a withering attack on his proposals for democratic reform. “I have never believed that democracy brings progress,” he said.
A vigorous and uncompromising presence on the world stage for half a century, Lee Kuan Yew commanded universal respect; in Singapore itself, respect turned in later years to genuine affection.
Lee’s wife, Choo, died in 2010. They had two sons and a daughter. Their elder son, Lee Hsien Loong, a Cambridge scholar and a former brigadier-general in the Singapore Armed Forces, succeeded Goh as Singapore’s prime minister in August 2004. —© The Daily Telegraph, London