Lee Kwan Yew – A visionary?
opposition men in government. The seventh one was driven to bankruptcy by the legal courts, illegally controlled by the powers that be, for insisting there was need "for more freedom in parliament."
Media has been curtailed as a diffident media is deemed inimical to progress. Freedom of speech and the press in Singapore is best described by their absence. Human rights is a jocular principle nicely phrased but a wall flower on the dance floor.
For instance, if one behaves awkwardly in public, the Singaporean police can summarily arrest him for urine testing for possible drug usage; in many other countries that's called illegal detention without formal charges or warrants of arrest.
Yet, for all that, Singapore is a rocking success for personal wellbeing and corporate stability in an island where all the institutions work with clock-like efficiency and corruption is hated like the memories of Hitler and the Nazis.
Despite the lack of natural resources – land ,minerals, fauna – the rocky island of Singapore excels because they zeroed in on what LKY , the intellectual, finds attractive - the so-called "knowledge-based" industries like "logistics management, financial services and bio-sciences."
They give universal education in the city state and send their best minds as scholars abroad and make sure they come back and serve Singaporeans even as the city state offers the best rates to attract the brightest minds from the other regions.
Multinationals often set their regional hubs in the city state because there is a prevalence of the "rule of law." Compare that, for instance, with PH’s notoriously "for- sale" justice where its own president once called the country's judges "hoodlums in robe."
The LKY Vision had worked for Singapore. He believed in a balance between "market and government intervention. " The market welcomed massive government intervention in Singapore because market efficiency results when "there is a high quality of political leadership, pragmatism, meritocracy and social conformism" That does not exactly sound like the Philippines.
Strong man tactics of leadership worked in Singapore but destroyed the Philippines. Why? Lee Kwan Yew admitted that, though he made mistakes, all of his acts were driven by noble goals.
But on the other hand a man named Ferdinand Marcos became PH’s dictator for many years 19721985 and robbed the nation blind, -at times hostaging the Filipinos with chains behind their backs while his cronies, bureaucrat capitalists and military goons pillaged the industries. Meantime , the facetious announced, the First Lady, went into the "mining industry" naming all industries as "mine, mine and mine." The country became one of Asia's economic basket case.
And so goes the tale of two Asian leaders. The one made the other – Lee Kwan Yew- look like a Real Visionary. The Asian strongman died, at 91 years old, last week. What a loss.
*** ( Bingo Dejaresco , a former banker, is a financial consultant, media practitioner and political strategist. His views are his personally and do not necessarily reflect those of FINEX. He can be reached at dejarescobingo@yahoo.com)