Lee Kuan Yew’s 100th anniversary
September 18th, 2023 | 
Author: 
16 Sept 2023. That’s LKY’s 100th anniversary. Great leaders come and go in the flow of history. They come bringing their own force of reckoning in the specific context of their time, with different personalities, but largely determined, strong will, and carrying their own hatchet.
LKY has his own hatchet. He once said: “if you take liberties with me, I’ll deal with you. I look after myself because when you enter a blind alley with the communists, only one person comes out alive and I have come out alive.”
Well, that’s true. He came out alive and did what leaders of history often do; they transformed society. They are a force to reckon with because, in the words of LKY, “reasonable men adapt; unreasonable men change the world.”
You can say that that unreasonable stance is what made LKY, in particular, and the other founding fathers, Dr Goh, Rajaratnam, Kim San, and Barker, in general, the formidable architects of Singapore today. No one can deny that this little kampong dot has evolved through empowering vision and unwavering determination into a bonfire lighting up Asia and the other parts of the Western World too.
Sure, you can expect an unreasonable man to stumble and fall. Tommy Koh wrote: “”Although Mr Lee was nominally a Buddhist, he was not a follower of the Goddess of Mercy, but of the “God of no mercy.””
Leaders are fallible beings too, not matter how history reveres them when they commemorate their passing. In any eulogy, you can expect only glowing and heart-warming memories of the rigid body lying in the casket.
In Tommy’s view, some of the most important mistakes are the merger with Malaya, imposing a quota on women in medical school, giving priority to the children of graduate mothers for admission to primary school, and even pegging ministerial salary to the top earners of the private sector. Save for the merger and salary pegged, the other policies were eventually dropped. I guess they were some detours made on the way to building a harmonious and prosperous Singapore?
However much we resist, we are a product of our time. We work or operate within the perimeters of what is set for us in terms of the state of knowledge, the economy, the social culture, and technology at that time. At times, even for those most unreasonable, so to speak, swimming against the tides can cause us to go under for a while, and lose our bearings. This happens to the best of us.
Yet, while the man has his flaws, Tommy wrote: “Mr Lee Kuan Yew was a great man. Without him as our founding prime minister, we probably won’t have the Singapore of today. But he was not perfect and some of his decisions are questionable. We do him a disfavour if we are to build, posthumously, a personality cult around his legacy.”
LKY knew this intimately. He demonstrated rare humility in this aspect, although he is viscerally feared in many others. It is a paradoxical mix. The kind where reason synergises with unreason, and serpents blend with doves (Matt 10:16). “During his lifetime, he forbade the display of his portraits and sculptures in public places. He didn’t want the airport or other important infrastructure to be named after him, Tommy wrote.
You can say many things about LKY, and he had his share of fiery critics, in particular, people who had been steamrolled by his tough stand. Maybe some parts of his closet are darker than others. But I guess his beloved partner of more than 60 years gave the most fair, if not profound, description of him.
Choo was asked in her husband’s 80th birthday in 2003, what was the most misunderstood thing about him. She replied: ““I read somewhere that “few elder statesmen can command as much respect and condemnation simultaneously as Lee.” I will leave it to these writers to argue which one has most misunderstood Kuan Yew.””
When souls are intertwined, through the hammerings on the anvil to shape them, they tend to share the same opinions. Likewise, LKY was asked, “how would you like history to judge you?” He replied, “I’m dead by then. There’ll be different voices, different standpoints but I stand by my record. I did some sharp and hard things to get things right. Maybe some people disapproved of it. Too harsh, but a lot was at stake and I wanted the place to succeed, that’s all. At the end of the day, what have I got? A successful Singapore. What have I given up? My life.”
Well, one thing you can’t fault him, his life’s work and dedication for a country he believed in, from the start to the end, with all his heart and soul. He was a fierce realist and a no-nonsense pragmatist. He laid down the rules, followed it to a tee, and never looked back.
He was a man who had no regrets. He did say, “What is there to regret?……Do I regret going into Malaysia? No. I believe we had to try…I made the decisions given the circumstances, given the knowledge that I was able to obtain at that time, and I picked the choice that would give me the greatest latitude if it should fail, to find another way out. What’s finished is done.”
I believe it is precisely in our imperfections that we get to transform ourselves and our society. In that brokenness, we find the opportunity to change or heal. Maybe we should count it all joy then?
Anyway, what is there to change in a perfect world? Even the toilet flush knows when to half or full flush, right? And in the wisdom of IKEA, life needs a lot of unpackaging, reading of the manual, and assembling, often reassembling.
We struggle with our flaws, and once we experience an enduring breakthrough within, we then witness that corresponding change in our surroundings. And at the end of the day, when we have assembled it all, and when the pieces are put back into the box, we can then look back and say, “What’s finished is done.”
While we are a product of our time, I believe LKY rose up to the occasion. He swam against the tides, to do what he felt needs to be done. Maybe politics and governance for him was like a warfare, and a journey far from home. But he had given his life for Singapore, and I believe he might do it all over again, following the same rules and principles. It was a journey of no regrets.
LKY was a stoic leader by all counts. He has taken things as they come, and dealt with them there and then. This is exactly the same way he and Choo dealt with issues between them. “We faced them and sorted them out. We did not dodge or bury them.” This is the stoicism of getting things done, come what may.
Let me end with what Marcus Aurelius once said, when asked about life, its meaning, and its length.
“Yes. This will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine. So make your exit with grace – the same grace shown to you.”
I trust LKY has made that same exit. It is a grace of not taking no for an answer. A grace that finished the job, by following this stoic dictum in life, “Do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.”
Michael Han
* The author was a Director at Han & Lu Law Chambers and blogs on Facebook.
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You are a real ass kisser. Harry & Georgina who was technically his older sister, their children, grandchildren, relatives and cronies have benefited tremendously from his tenure. Harry did not give his life for Sinkapor. He did it for himself and his family.
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LKY left behind a $ink-A-Poor legacy after he helped build with 1G during his term as PM.
After PeanutGoh incoporati$ed Sg,many sgs gradually got impoverished.
With jobs robbed from them via the daft FT POLICY,more and more sgs have since become the NEW POOR.
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Well, no one is perfect and the same goes for Kayu. PM in his 30s he was idealistic at that age and had a dream, a vision. He succeeded but along the way there were also a lot problems. Say what you want about him be it good or bad but he is now gone forever.
One extremely negative thing about him that gets mentioned online frequently is his arrogance. We have seen it a lot from the things he said about a malay gun battalion commander (he never said sorry if you have noticed since he is arrogant and arrogant people never apologise) to his now infamous repent comment to Aljunied which the newspaper would not like to remind its readers about frequently to no one’s surprise.
Another thing about him was his insecurity. Despite not being PM anymore he was in parliament until his dying day. He simply could not trust Goh and his own good for nothing son to be boss, he needed to be around in some capacity instead of enjoying retirement like old people do.
So now they want to celebrate his 100th. Let them lah since it’s all they have of their founder. Be prepared for the 2025 GE as it’s his 10th anniversary too. The usual montage of videos and speeches by him will be used extensively once the election is announced. They desperately need another sympathy election like in 2015, they cannot accept that their vote share keeps plummeting like nobody’s business since it would mean either a coalition government established or, horror of horrors, they being wiped out in parliament and biding adios to their obscene salaries.
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How can anyone have any respect for a man who imprisoned people for thirty years without the due process of the LAW. The writer who is/was a lawyer himself does not seem to identify with the human rights violation of LKY. A leader who destroyed families of Opposition members claiming it was for the well being of the State is a liar. He is demonic and those who support him are lying to themselves and have a dark side that identifies with him. The PAP govt. only worked well with GKS, TCC, LKS and Rajaratnam. Once the 1G left the govt. LKY began the process of bringing in his son to make him the next PM. The beginnings of a dictatorship and authoritarian system was put in place and remains until today. The plot to pay themselves the highest salaries in the world and selling themselves as the best is practised until today. It is legal corruption and it is the worst theft that a govt. has done. No where in the world has a govt. so successfully stolen from the people. It continues till today. Human Rights should be of the utmost importance to us. By saying that LKY achieved the development of Singapore with the West praising the transformation is justifying his demonic acts. There is no one who is dispensable. It includes LKY. Did the State need him or did he need the State to ride on to showcase his “success,” story that people buy. He rode on many people’s back and destroyed them in the process. If we celebrate LKY, we condone the wrong that has been done to the Opposition members and also to present day Singaporeans who have a dictator as a PM and all policies implemented is not for the well being of the State but to keep its party and cronies in power. It is evilnes in visualization!
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A quote attributed to Gandhi is the most relevant explanation to the answer of the question “what does utopia look like”. When asked what he thought about the overpopulation and poverty of his country, his reply was, “The world is big enough to satisfy everyone’s needs, but will always be too small to satisfy everyone’s GREED”.
LKY’s utopian vision somehow tenaciously survives, but only to provide a conception of progress and the uncomfortable reminder that the ‘MEANS’ to achieve such ends eluded the defining, predominant values of his leadership. The worm in the apple is the ‘silencing’ required to construct and maintain it in face of the opposition and vast predominance of ‘language subversion’ and ‘demonization’ of ineptitude of others.
Sorry, Mr. Han, but your analysis seems woefully inadequate and misleading. Can’t there be discussion about his ‘MEANS’ of amassing powers for himself & family whereby we eradicate some glaring evil–WITHOUT—-disagreeing about the evil to be eradicated? But I am loath to dismiss those smug self-satisfied persons–who’d made their peace with an status quo–content to reap whatever they could–bask in the sunshine, so to speak—-morally and intellectually inert.
It is, in fact, the denial that the 85% can ever have an earthly utopia or ‘chased that rainbow and found a pot of gold’ – but it was an article to trigger a lot of thought about how success – and failure – are defined and WHO does the defining. I fear we’re mired in a semantic slough. Well at least we know who the author is voting for.
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I don’t understand why it is a 100-year anniversary He already died 8 years ago. Can a dead person ages after death? Shouldn’t it be 8 anniversary of his death?
When a living person celebrating his/her anniversary, people wish him/her “happy birthday”.
Do we celebrate a dead person anniversary?
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Why the man is extremly difficult to dismantle is because he appeared to be “righteous” in his lifetime of works or contribution to the nation.
Every top banana, big enchilada, headliners and experts are often floored by his brilliant argument and sagacious delivery.
They are all impressed by the gloss(prestige,prosperity, wealth and power)over substance because they were mostly partakers, hence gratitude, of his creation.
But in his last days he sought help in meditation to ease his troubled soul or sought peace for his soul.
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world( wealth,reverence and glory) and to forfeit his soul?
Being a man of the law, his ministry is one of death(law of SIN).
Unfortunately, the dove(symbol of peace) does not rest on such a man, the founder or father of nation.
The nation needs to be reborn of water and spirit or perish.
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He should have outsourced the writing of his memoirs to you.
Because you knew him even better than he understood himself.
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“To see and listen to the wick*d is already the beginning of wickedness. The man of noble mind seeks to achieve the good in others and not their evil. The little-minded man is the reverse of this.”
-Confucius 300 BC
He sent the valiant natural aristocrats who designed and built this country; packed them all into “retirement” … to construct his elitist self-entitled Sinchiapor Incorporated…. the rest is His-story…..
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LKY was a ruthless dictator who was guilty of so much inhumanity which can never be justified or forgiven as a means to whatever the end was. Perhaps he knew it and it was possibly the reason he was adamant about not having any monument or even leaving his house behind when he was gone. They would be open for defilement and destruction if his dark deeds were to become common and widespread public knowledge.
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Some of the late Mr Lee’s actions and policies are clearly debatable, he is not a saint and cannot expected to be perfect, he is just a human being with feelings. He, like all of us, has love and hate.
It is sad that he destroyed some lives and livelihoods during his reign, but then, politics is a dirty game. A Saint can never be in politics.
For what is worth, overall he has done more good for the people than the current generation of LEEders.
My 1.5 cents.
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@TRE Tech
You are wrong, it is due to him that we have the present ruling party, free riding on the population. He paved the way for them, using tertiary education as guise against actual performance. He was a great salesman and succeeded in his sale of his son to us.
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Maybe ministers should declare networths before and after tenure.
Was DR Goh Keng Swee as wealthy as Mr Lee or even Lim Kim San?
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”Kim Il Sung was a Korean politician and the founder of North Korea. He ruled the country from the country’s establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. Afterwards, he was declared its eternal president.
Let us make him the Eternal PM; give him the title Eternal Oxymandias PM.
Like what NKorea did.
We will become NKorea very soon if Sheeporeans do not wake up.
Brainwashing, as practised by NK, has been going on for 60 years.
Or pinkie can let his daddy RIP.
For once try to achieve something on his own instead of further brainwashing sheeporeans.
For those that know their history, and not brainwashed–
It was Winsemius/GKS economic duet that build this country.
Oxymandias LKY was the political commissar that took all the credit because the Duet was not interested in the glory.
Nor interested in putting their family in the ”business’
Nor getting very very rich.
Ask yourself—what does a freshly graduated 34 year old lawyer know about building a country, or development economics???
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Hmmm…Interesting how the active social Darwinism of ‘eugenics’ took place under LKY’s watch. The old Social Darwinist adage “the survival of the fittest” is interpreted to mean something like “the survival of the most educated”. Graduate mothers are given ‘incentives & privileges’ to procreate. Non-graduates, STOP at 2 or ‘penalties’ for subsequent births.
The critics of social Darwinism, the few here and the many elsewhere who gleefully provide fatuous cheers for the cruel, the selfish, the greedy. But the animal kingdom teaches a different lesson. Tigers are strong, smart and physically strong. Against practically any other animal, tigers prevail in a fight. But they are becoming extinct so rapidly that the species may not exist outside of zoos in a couple of generations.
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Honestly, we know nothing about NKorea brainwashing. You are clearly brainwashed by western media.
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@ Brainwashed
China uses the term re-education. Does that help you? No gpvt. can stay in power for 58 years without changing the subjects in School. Why do you think the emphasis is on Maths and the Mother Tongue to gain entry into A levels or university? Why not allow entry on a total aggregate of all subjects? As a result many in Singapore do not have critical thinking skills and do not ask the whys, when, whom, where etc before making decisions. 70 over percentage voted in a PAP President, do you think anyone of the 70% asked the question as to why we need a President not connected to the PAP?
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This column contains a lot worth thinking hard about, more than I can address in a few brief comments. To summarize; it’s all about the ‘founding of our own nation’, nicely done by a tiny bunch of elitists, and accepted by a population almost entirely uneducated. The most powerful and accurate assessments I can give – on the State of “affairs” in this ‘Little Red Dot’.
‘Critical thinking’ usually leads to challenging orthodoxy and the conservative value structure of assumptions and norms this government operates on. To quote from Santana: “those who will not learn from the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.” And from Edna St. Vincent Millay; “Life isn’t one damn thing after another; It’s the same damn thing over and over again.”
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@TRE Tech
I have to agree with you on MR LKY’s great contributions to Sg and sgs.
Without Mr LKY,Dr Goh KS may not be able to get his ideas implemented so well.
And,without DR GOH,LKY might not be able to do that much for Sg and sgs.
It was perfect combination,a classic duet.
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There is so much political drama every day–real issues get lost in the noise. I think that this current round of totalitarian ideology/propaganda/theatrics (showing in CNA & Netflix) is brilliant. Hannah Arendt wrote, “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” Otherwise, we are no better than those who “never make up their minds.” If you believe that one is in fact, evil, then the banality of his evil is clear. He is motivated only by personal wealth accumulation and self aggrandizement. There is nothing more banal.
We need Hannah Arendt over our shoulders to reclaim the ability to keep truth alive in the midst of the spin that substitutes for reality in this era. It is self-evident. If nearly 75% of our “citizens” see nothing wrong, then there is no longer any purpose in “reaching out” to them. One uncle recently interviewed by CNA on what he thinks about the recent public transport fare hikes, said: “if government don’t hike the COL here then they would have to subsidize us from their own pockets”. I rest my case. Btw, just out today, COE is hitting $150,000.
Ha ha ha
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So you are admitting you are brainwashed by Eastern Media?
If you read something you do not agree with , it does not mean it comes from Western Media.
Unless you are brainwashed by Russian Trolls or CCP or NKoreans.—because the WEST is their enemy.
As for NKorean propaganda —they have been ruled by 3 generations of Kims—go do your own reading about NKorea and learn some thinking skill.
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7 Stoic ways to escape the RAT RACE
https://youtu.be/vdrvn5mjzBU?si=i0tpK8rUzy-Zt9QI
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