Will Lee’s city state slip into anarchy?

THE first time I visited Singapore was as a child in the late ’60s, not long after it had left the Malaysian Federation. It seemed like a vibrant “foreign” place dominated by some old colonial buildings, such as the Raffles Hotel, and lots of exotic landmarks such as Change Alley, which was packed with tiny stores where you could buy anything in the world at “the best price” from noisy hawkers.

In-between the throngs of Chinese, Malays and Indians were tourists and US soldiers. The latter were a constant reminder of the turmoil in Asia and the brutal war that was playing out in Vietnam, a few hundred kilometres north of Singapore. Some kilometres away from the small business centre of the city state were the kampongs, villages of singlestoreyed zinc-roofed houses, often on stilts, where the majority of Singapore’s residents lived without electricity or water.

The next time I visited Singapore was in the late ’70s, when I spent a few years living between Malaysia and Singapore, ostensibly working on an undergraduate thesis on development economics. It was still exotic and still vibrant, but there were fewer old colonial buildings, and huge highrise blocks of flats more appropriate for land-starved Singapore had replaced most of the kampongs. There was growing evidence of the discipline so central to the rule of Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action Party. My brother, who had shoulder-length hair, was always served last in the post office, which was amusing; not being allowed to drive into the city centre during rush hour without a permit seemed a great idea because it kept traffic flowing.

In the late ’70s, there were already whispers of discontent about Lee’s intolerance of challenges to his leadership style; trade unions and other political groupings faced severe restrictions. And there were stories of how some of the millions of people who were moved out of their kampongs and put into high-rise buildings couldn’t cope and jumped out of the windows of their new flats, now so far from the ground.

The last time I visited Singapore was in 1997, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis. Just minutes from Changi Airport and it seemed I’d travelled into a time and place in the future. It was all unrecognisable except for Padang Cricket Ground, Raffles and Chinatown, all of which had been refurbished and preserved in a desperate but unsuccessful attempt to retain some character.

Not only had the architects of high-rise buildings got the upper hand, so had the disciplinarians. Having had many Singaporean friends over the years, I couldn’t quite make out why they needed such constant reminding not to urinate in lifts, spit, chew gum and to always flush the toilet. Were these citizens forever on the verge of anarchy?

And now, of course, the big question is what will happen to this man-made state in the aftermath of the death of that Man. Will the anarchic streak prevail or will a highly disciplined nation become ever richer?

The circumstances around Singapore’s birth and early development are so unusual that there are few general lessons to be learnt from it. By all accounts, Lee was a remarkable man: intelligent, driven and incorruptible. He had a vision and he created a city state to fit that vision. But he could not have done so without a population that overwhelmingly shared his vision. For the thousands who balked at being forced out of their kampongs, there were millions who saw it as necessary. For the tens of thousands who felt oppressed, there were millions who saw the one vision as the only option.

In the ’60s, Singapore was predominantly populated by first- or second-generation immigrants. The majority had fled life-threatening turmoil in China, others from grim prospects in India and still others had drifted down from Malaysia. The one thing they all had in common was that they had little sense of entitlement; what they wanted most was an opportunity to eke out a living. Western luxuries such as democracy could come later.

“Later” may have arrived. But now Western democracy is looking a little threadbare.