PACE OF LIFE IN SINGAPORE BY TODAY ONLINE
It is no secret that Singapore is a fast-paced society, with Singaporeans striving to get ahead of one another. Children as young as three years old are scheduled back-to-back “enrichment” activities. Adults evidently do not fare any better, with people in Singapore found to sleep the least and working among the longest hours in the world.
Not only does working longer hours result in less leisure time, but Singapore’s prosperity has also compelled people to maximise the utility of their leisure time, resulting in a “harried leisure class”. Maintaining this frantic pace of life not only exerts a toll on Singaporeans’ physical and mental well-being, but also has broader social and economic ramifications.
Singapore’s attempt at being productive has led to Singaporeans having one of the longest work weeks in the world. Long working hours might have made sense in a manufacturing economy where the value of output produced by each worker is limited by the speed of production; and where each worker needs to be physically present to perform his or her tasks.
In contrast, today’s knowledge work transcends the boundaries of space and time. One could gain insights from a casual conversation with a colleague from another industry, draw inspiration from how nature solves complex problems during a trail run, or discover a creative way to resolve a workplace dispute in the midst of resolving an argument between kids at the playground.
For knowledge workers, transition periods — times for rest, recuperation, introspection, fostering relationships and developing personal interests — contribute to, rather than detract from, productivity.
Maintaining the routines, work practices and assumptions of a manufacturing economy are detrimental to the quality of knowledge work, and damage Singapore’s transformation into more of a knowledge economy.
Exposing children to this frantic pace can also stymie Singapore’s transformation into a knowledge economy. Filling a child’s schedule with “enrichment” activities, to give him or her an edge in school, reinforces the perception of being trapped in a race. This perception discourages experimentation, discovery and learning from trial and error, in favour of uniform thought processes and reproducing scripted responses.
While uniformity is prized in a manufacturing economy that values a predictable workforce, such traits are less valued in a knowledge economy that deals with complexity, ambiguity and unpredictability.
If this frantic pace in Singaporean children’s lives persists and becomes more pervasive, I am concerned that the nation will have a workforce skilled at performing production work in the knowledge economy, but will still lack visionaries, creative thinkers and collaborators — the main drivers of a knowledge economy.
Resistance to slowing down
Maintaining a simplistically fast pace is clearly unsustainable for Singaporeans. Yet, the idea of slowing down will raise eyebrows. Such a reaction is expected; the virtues of speed are embedded in Singaporeans’ national consciousness, as evident from the narrative of Singapore’s successful transformation from a sleepy fishing village to a modern metropolis.
The belief is that speed allows for economic and social advancement, while slowness threatens Singapore’s sovereignty, especially given the nation’s size and scarce natural resources.
While a slow pace of life might translate into slower economic growth in manufacturing economies, this change is needed to be successful in a knowledge economy. For Singapore to be competitive and “fast” in a knowledge economy, Singaporeans will need to slow down their pace of life.
This paradoxical idea — of the parts in a system moving at a different pace from the system itself — is evident in competitive swimming. The next time you watch a race, pay attention to the tempo of the swimmer’s limbs in relation to the speed of the body’s movement through the water. You will notice that the fastest swimmers are not the ones with the quickest tempo, but the ones who cover the most distance per stroke.
Being efficient conserves energy, allowing the swimmer to finish the race strongly. In the final lap of the race, the synchrony between the tempo of the limbs and the body’s movement through the water will be evident for the fastest swimmer, while the slower swimmers can be seen flailing their arms and making big splashes with little forward movement.
Similarly, one would have to be mindful that a packed, frenetic lifestyle is not mistaken for being productive in a knowledge economy.
Productive slowing down
While Singapore has been focused on building capabilities and a culture around speed, I see the next big challenge for Singaporeans as grappling with productive slowing down in order to thrive as a knowledge economy.
What does it mean to productively slow down? I shall discuss this idea in the context of people’s mindsets and work routines. Productive slowing down entails a shift in mindset from a competitive orientation to an artistic one.
With a competitive orientation, life events are perceived as a race that creates winners and losers. These “races” are zero-sum games in which a single champion prevails and is distinguished from the rest of the pack.
In contrast, with an artistic orientation, life events are perceived as opportunities for expression and discovery. Instead of focusing on winning, an artistic orientation focuses on the authenticity of expression.
In an examination, these orientations manifest as the difference between an emphasis on scoring the highest versus an emphasis on applying one’s best effort to prepare for the exam.
In the choice of occupation, a competitive orientation influences one to make decisions based on external rewards such as pay, whereas decisions influenced by an artistic orientation place greater emphasis on fulfilment and other forms of intrinsic reward.
Adopting an artistic orientation allows people to slow down by reducing the compulsion to pack their schedules with “strategic” activities that are purported to give them an edge over the competition. Instead, activities are fuelled by one’s interests and natural curiosity, and completed at his or her pace.
Thus, the difference between competitive and artistic orientations lies not in productivity, but in the source of motivation.
Productive slowing down also involves creatively reconfiguring work routines to protect transition periods. Singaporeans’ strong work ethic has led them to prioritise production goals over temporal boundaries.
These priorities have led to longer hours at work at the expense of transition periods. Productive slowing down involves protecting these periods from “work time”.
To be clear, I am not advocating for reduced workloads, but for reconfiguring the flow and allocation of work to protect these transition periods that are vital to performing knowledge work.
The cold wind of intolerance, authoritarianism, and nationalism is blowing across America and Europe. The unexpected rise of Trump as the presumptive Republican nominee in the United States and the recent political stirrings in Europe are oddly built of the same cloth. Intolerance of non-citizens, the belief that present governments have subordinated their countries best interests for outsiders, and the need for new leaders, whose view of their countries best interests seems to call for an upending of the joint efforts to build a collective defense system like NATO and an economic union like the EU. They are united in their belief that each individual country should do what’s best for their sovereignty, rather than build co-operative relations between countries.
The recent Austrian presidential election is a telling example. Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party of Austria may have lost the election by a small differential (which is still being challenged and there are claims of voter fraud), but his message was disturbing in the ways to that of Donald Trump. Norbet’s message is in effect “Make Austria Great Again.” He calls for closed borders in particular to Muslims, complains of the trade deals made with the EU just as Trump complains of the trade deals America has made and wants to stop all Muslims from entering US for an undefined time. Throughout Europe such factors as the plight of the refugees seeking shelter from war and the lack of economic opportunities are giving rise to right wing parties that are in effect a new form of authoritarian nationalism. Trump wants to build a wall to stop Mexicans from emigrating.
Today, European countries are literally seeking to build armed detention camps to contain the refugees. They are even considering paying Turkey to take back the refugees, that pass through to Greece. But now even the deal between the EU and Turkey is falling apart, due to Turkey has turning into an authoritarian state under President Erdogan. The EU is demanding that Turkey allows free speech, stops arresting journalists and taking over newspapers that are not pro Erdogan. Turkey is no longer a free society. The country has endorsed this new spreading version of authoritarian Nationalism. A German far right wing neo-Nazi party (NPD) and the nationalist alternate for Germany party (AFD) have been steadily increasing in popularity. Their platforms are more than anti-immigrant. They were opposed to the welfare reforms, upset about the rescue of Greece, and share with Trump the lack of trust of their own government officials.
The vote in Britain, pending on June 23rd, on whether it should exit the EU also has elements of this nationalistic trend seen in America with Trump, and also in main land Europe with the rise of the above mentioned nationalism . The principal in Britain, Germany, Turkey and the Austrian elections is straightforward. A large group of British citizens feels that as EU members they are being subject to rules and regulations that unfairly cost British people too much, providing very little benefit in return. Sounds familiar? It is the same type of nationalism Trump has to the economic trade deals America has made with a variety of countries. It is the same nationalistic thinking the Turkish - Eu deal will fail and it is the same Nationalistic theme causing the surprising success of the Austrian extreme right wing party.
The consequences of this spreading Nationalism cannot end well. Building walls, promoting fear instead of compassion for emigrants, rethinking membership in the European Union, and putting disproportionate emphasis on self-interest trade can only lead to a less safe and less friendly international community. For America, the clearest proof that this trend cannot end well is demonstrated by the fact that Trump sees nothing wrong with Japan or South Korea having their own nuclear arsenal. It is in his nationalistic view that it is not in America’s best interest to continue the present arrangement of protecting other countries. Nationalism makes international cooperation difficult and can as history shown cause war.
In his speech accepting the Republican nomination for president, Donald Trump said (my emphasis):
[O]ur plan will put America First. Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo. As long as we are led by politicians who will not put America First, then we can be assured that other nations will not treat America with respect.
Trump’s insistence that we put “America First” hardly sounds harmful or irrational on its face. To be proud and protective of one’s country sounds like something good, even inevitable. Americans are, after all, Americans. Who else would we put first?
But nationalism — a passionate investment in one’s country over and above others — is neither good nor neutral. Here are some reasons why it’s dangerous:
Nationalism Is a Form of In-Group/Out-Group Thinking: It encourages the kind of “us” vs. “them” attitude that drives sports fandom, making people irrationally committed to one team. When the team wins, they feel victorious (even though they just watched), and they feel pleasure in others’ defeat. As George Orwell put it: “A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige … his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations.”
Committed to Winning at All Costs, With Power-Seeking and Superiority as the Only Real Goal, Nationalists Feel Justified in Hurting the People of Other Countries: Selfishness and a will to power — instead of morality, mutual benefit, or long-term stability — becomes the driving force of foreign policy. Broken agreements, violence, indifference to suffering, and other harms to countries and their peoples destabilize global politics. As the Washington Post wrote in its unprecedented editorial board opinion on Trump: “The consequences to global security could be disastrous.”
Nationalism Contributes to Internal Fragmentation and Instability: It requires that we decide who is and isn’t truly part of the nation, encouraging exclusionary, prejudiced attitudes and policies toward anyone within our borders who is identified as part of “them.” Trump has been clearly marking the boundaries of the real America for his entire campaign, excluding Mexican Americans, Muslims, African Americans, immigrants, and possibly even women. As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tweetedon the night of Trump’s acceptance speech:
A Nationalist Leader Will Have to Lie and Distort History in Order to Maintain the Illusion of Superiority: A nationalist regime requires a post-truth politics, one that makes facts irrelevant in favor of emotional appeals. As Dr. Ali Mohammed Naqvi explained: “To glorify itself, nationalism generally resorts to suppositions, exaggerations, fallacious reasonings, scorn and inadmissible self-praise, and worst of all, it engages in the distortion of history, model-making and fable-writing. Historical facts are twisted to imaginary myths as it fears historical and social realism.”
Thoughtful and Responsive Governance Interferes With Self-Glorification; Internal Reflection and External Criticism Must Be Squashed: Nationalist leaders attack and disempower anyone who questions the nationalist program and aim to destroy social movements. After Trump’s acceptance speech, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullers responded: “He … threaten[ed] the vast majority of this country with imprisonment, deportation and a culture of abject fear.” Anyone who isn’t on board, especially if they are designated as a “them,” must be silenced.
When Americans say “America is the greatest country on Earth,” that’s nationalism. When other countries are framed as competitors instead of allies and potential allies, that’s nationalism. When people say “America first,” expressing a willfulness to cause pain and suffering to citizens of other countries if it is good for America, that’s nationalism. And that’s dangerous. It’s committing to one’s country’s preeminence and doing whatever it takes, however immoral, unlawful, or destructive, to further that goal.
As first prime minister of Singapore, serving for three decades until 1990, and a continuing cabinet presence for the two that followed, Lee Kuan Yew, who has died aged 91, was a man whose story reflected his times. A relentless nation-builder like Tito, an instantly identifiable symbol like Haile Selassie, Lee also had a third dimension, especially in western eyes – statesman, philosopher king, embodiment of the wisdom of the east.
Lee’s role in and articulation of events from the Pacific war and the Japanese occupation of Singapore till leaving politics completely in 2011 made him a pivotal figure of the modern world. To many he became the embodiment of the orderly transition of a region from western dominance to neo-Confucian success. Yet experience had taught him to be a pessimist, which drove him to work harder, to be more ruthless.
Lee himself may not have changed the world outside little Singapore very much. Indeed, his greatest apparent achievement, the creation of a viable independent state, was the outcome of his biggest failure – Singapore’s expulsion from the Federation of Malaysia in 1965, two years after the organisation’s inception. His first vision of Singapore’s future, as part of a multicultural Malaysia, may prove in time to have been the correct one, but he can be at least partly judged by the achievement of his second vision for Singapore, the prosperous, prickly and obsessively hygienic city state.
He did not create modern Singapore’s prosperity. The city state thrived naturally in a region of economic growth and rapid development of world trade. However, he certainly created the image of the state in his own likeness.
Being liked was not part of his agenda. A combination of high intelligence and unswervable determination were Lee’s characteristics, and he transferred them, at least superficially, to modern Singapore. Without him, it may in time go a different way, more reflective of its multiracial background and potentially precarious existence. But while he was alive few dared think, let alone put forward, alternative visions.
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Lee has been described as many things. To Chinese, particularly during his days fighting Chinese chauvinism in the name of a multiracial Singapore identity, the Cambridge-educated lawyer brought up to believe in English education if not in British institutions, Lee was a “banana” – yellow on the outside, white inside. However, later in life, as Chinese identity and Confucian attitudes emphasising education, discipline and hierarchy became more important, he would be criticised for presenting himself as a fount of wisdom, a convincing articulator of modern Asia to western audiences, while actually behaving with all the intolerance of a Chinese emperor. At his worst, he could combine imperial hauteur with extraordinarily petty spite, relishing the destruction of irritating but unthreatening critics. At his best, he had an incisive mind and clear political judgment. For an avowed elitist, he had a remarkable ability to talk to a crowd.
Born in Singapore, Lee was the eldest son of Lee Chin Koon and Chua Jim Neo, members of a comfortably off but not rich Straits Chinese family. The Straits Chinese were those who had been settled in the region for many years, losing much of their Chinese identity both to the language and institutions of their British rulers, and to the Malays, their neighbours whose tongue was the lingua franca of south-east Asia.
The young Harry, as Yew was known in the English-language environment of the time, came first in Malaya in the Senior Cambridge exams (the equivalent of A-levels) of 1939 and was destined to go to Britain to study law. But the second world war intervened and he had to go to the local Raffles College instead, where he acquired some basic economics, and met his future wife, Kwa Geok Choo. The delay in going to Britain was but a minor inconvenience compared with the sudden and humiliating British surrender of Singapore in February 1942. Lee described his own initial humiliation at the hands of Japanese troops as “the single most important event of my life”.
Little is known of his actual role during the occupation, other than that he learned Japanese (he had a remarkable facility for languages), worked for Domei, the Japanese news agency, and may in the latter days of the war been of help to the British. The obscurity with which this period has been shrouded subsequently gave rise to much speculation about his relationships with the British and the Japanese. But he saw enough of British failures not to want to ape them, and enough of Japanese brutality – mostly directed against the recent migrant Chinese than against the more compromising Straits Chinese – to resent them. As he later wrote, he emerged from the war “determined that no one – neither the Japanese nor the British – had the right to push and kick us around”.
Lee Kuan Yew climbing up the steps at the city council chambers following the People’s Action party’s win in the national elections in Singapore in 1959, the year the country achieved independence. Photograph: Reuters TV/Reuters
Combining drive with connections, he got himself to Britain in 1946 to study at the London School of Economics. But deciding he needed to aim higher, he talked his way into Fitzwilliam Hall, Cambridge, and graduated in 1949 with a starred first in law. His wife-to-be, whom he married the following year, also got a first.
It was also during this time that he began to develop ambitions beyond returning home to a prosperous legal career. He recognised that the British could not recreate the comfortable, colonial Singapore of prewar days. Nationalism, socialism and communism were in the air. In a speech in 1950 to the Malayan Forum in London, he said: “The choice lies between a communist republic of Malaya and a Malaya within the British Commonwealth led by people who, despite their opposition to imperialism, still share certain ideals in common with the Commonwealth ... if we [the returning students] do not give leadership, it will come from the other ranks of society.” Malaya, he noted prophetically, could be either “another Palestine or another Switzerland”.
Even before returning to Singapore, Lee had identified the strands necessary to make a successful politician with the aim of securing an independent, non-communist Malaya. The first was a commitment to greater social justice and income distribution. This was part of the ethos of the time, both in Britain, where Lee was involved with the Labour party, and with such exemplars of independence and social democracy as Nehru’s India. But it was also necessary politics. Lee believed that without a commitment to both anti-imperialism and socialism, radicals would win control of the freedom struggle.
The other element in Lee’s equation was multiracialism, which he saw as necessary to prevent Malaya from dissolving into war between two nationalisms, a Chinese one which was communist in sympathy and a Malay one which tended to be exclusive and feudal.
Back in Singapore, Lee the lawyer and Lee the politician were soon inseparable as he took up the cases of trade unionists, radicals and nationalists. Being from the British-educated Chinese elite, he had to work all the harder at being a leader to dialect-speaking Chinese and Indian union firebrands. His energy and application were prodigious, and he added fluency in Mandarin and Hokkien and passable Malay and even Tamil to his roster of languages.
He was the driving force behind the creation of the People’s Action party (PAP) in 1954, including within it people sympathetic to the communist insurgency, then at its height in the Malayan peninsular. The PAP adhered to constitutionalism while Lee acted for those detained under the Internal Security Act.
Lee’s fortunes as a politician benefitted from his bravura courtroom performances. It was this very success with juries that made him critical of the jury system. Judges were less easily swayed by emotion, and were appointed by the government. Once in power, Lee abolished juries.
Despite his advocacy on behalf of leftists and nationalists, there were those who believed he connived to ensure that the left faction did not get the upper hand in the PAP. The party, which had been seen as the main agent of constitutional development in Singapore, swept aside more conservative forces to win the 1959 election by a large margin. Lee became chief minister of a self-governing state within the Commonwealth, promoting social reform but retaining political detention without trial.
His principal objective became to achieve, in co-operation with the Malayan prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, independence through merger with a somewhat suspicious Malaya – which had been independent since 1957 – plus the territories of Sarawak and Sabah to form Malaysia. The PAP was divided on this and other issues and formally split in 1961, the left faction forming the Barisan Sosialis. However, the merger proposal was approved in a referendum.
Lee further solidified his position by mass detentions, including those of prominent Barisan leaders. Though he justified the detentions by reference to the lingering communist threat and Indonesia’s avowed opposition to Malaysia, they came to symbolise Lee’s authoritarian tendencies. With the Barisan decapitated, he won the 1963 election and the Barisan never recovered.
Lee Kuan Yew, right, and his wife, Kwa Geok Choo, second left, posing with the Japanese Emperor Hirohito and his wife Empress Nagako, in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo in 1968. Photograph: AP
While unification made sense to the moderate majority of Singaporeans and Malayans, it soon ran into problems. Chief among them was the reluctance of the hyperactive Lee to play second fiddle to a Kuala Lumpur-based federal government led by the relaxed, aristocratic tunku, or prince. Lee insisted on the PAP trying to win seats in the peninsula itself, in the process setting itself up as the party more likely to protect Chinese interests than the Malaysian Chinese Association, the conservative Chinese element of the tunku’s ruling alliance. Lee made speeches which many regarded as racially inflammatory. Some Malays wanted him arrested. In the end, the tunku decided in August 1965 that the only way out was for Singapore to leave the federation.
One vision had failed. Now Lee redoubled his efforts to create a new vision – of a republic of Singapore with its own identity and national interests that could hold its own among potentially hostile neighbours. Malaysia and Singapore still needed each other. The Indonesian policy of confrontation ended with the downfall of Sukarno in 1966. However, times were difficult, exacerbated by British military withdrawal, which created additional problems of finding jobs for a rapidly expanding population.
The first 10 years after the expulsion from Malaysia saw Lee forge the society that is modern Singapore. It could have been done differently. Colonial Hong Kong, so similar in many ways, prospered as well without the guidance of a “philosopher king” or a “Moses”, as Lee was to be later described. Nonetheless, Lee was very much in charge of the new Singapore and thus deserves the credit, and the blame.
The ingredients included a dominant role for the state. This combined aspects of social democracy, for example in major efforts to improve health and public housing, with “the mandarins know best” attitudes to social and economic activity.
Foreign capital was relied upon to create jobs. This was a pragmatic recognition from the beginning that Singapore lacked the capital and knowhow to create industries. Meanwhile its entrepot role was, by definition, dependent on the services it could provide to foreigners.
Nationalism was fostered too, which meant infusing an opportunistic, multiracial commercial hub with a Singapore identity, sense of pride, citizenship and separateness. It meant having strong armed forces, a Swiss-style national service and international assertiveness.
For Lee, western notions of liberal democracy, free association, independent trade unions, juries and other aspects of the separation of powers might have proved an obstacle to achieving these nation-building goals. Yet he was well aware that the British had left behind some democratic expectations, and in order to compete economically, Singapore had to present itself to the outside world as a reasonably open as well as competently run state.
Some government intervention in the economy was simply pragmatic. But much of it had political overtones. The state, for example, created what is now the largest commercial bank, the Development Bank of Singapore, though there was never any lack of private ones. Its forced savings scheme was a colonial-eraprovident fund that was used to generate savings that helped give Singapore the best infrastructure in Asia. The scheme gave the government control over far more money than it needed, thus enabling it to dictate not only the pattern of investment but housing and consumer spending. The nation amassed huge foreign reserves, which underpinned its growth, reflected in a currency that was as strong as the German mark.
Emphasis on education, especially in science, helped Singapore develop as a base for multinationals. Lee’s government was very successful in identifying and fostering growth industries, whether it was the Asiadollar money market in the late 60s, oil exploration, production and refinery services in the 70s, or electronics in the 90s. However, critics – and even some government loyalists – noted a decline in the entrepreneurial spirit. Educated Singaporeans did not create enterprises: they went to work, very efficiently, for ones already created by foreigners, or the government. The administration was both extraordinarily pedantic and uncorrupt. Yet part of Singapore’s prosperity rested on it providing a safe haven for money made corruptly in neighbouring countries, smuggling or drug trafficking.
Intellectually, Lee recognised the importance of money-making. Money brought power. Yet he exhibited the kind of distaste for businessmen common among Chinese mandarins, socialists and intellectuals. Thus Singapore’s indigenous capitalists were kept on a short leash. From time to time prominent examples were made of “misbehaviour”.
Lee Kuan Yew thanking voters in his parliamentary constituency in 1988. Photograph: Soon Tan Ah/AP
For all its potential shortcomings, for all its dependence on the growth of neighbours, the rise of Japan and latterly of China, the reality is that for four decades from 1970 Singapore delivered economic growth rates almost as good as any in booming east Asia. There have been few hiccups. Thanks to the prosperity of its oil-producing neighbours, Singapore rode the oil crises easily. The mid-80s recession necessitated some minor policy adjustments, but generally, once the mould had been established, Singapore’s economic progress was as unruffled as its politics.
Internationally, Lee played a key role in the development of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean). At first he had been somewhat suspicious, fearing it could become a vehicle for Indonesian domination, or an expression of pan-Malay identity. However, he soon embraced it as an anti-communist buffer which linked countries with formal ties to the US (Thailand and Philippines) to the anti-communist but “neutral” Indonesia and Malaysia. Anti-communism cemented Singapore’s ties with the US when it badly needed implied protection as well as investment. With ties to Washington and Beijing, Lee helped to ensure that Asean participated fully in the cold war to force Vietnam out of Cambodia.
In practice, politics seldom stood in the way of business opportunities. After all, Singapore was commerce (not ideology) in action. But once the Soviet empire had collapsed, foreign policy emphasis changed to a wholehearted pursuit of economic goals. Again, Singapore was quick to see the advantages of turning Asean attention to trade, providing a new raison d’etre for the group. Freer trade was not just good for Singapore but for the region’s ethnic Chinese business community, many of whom saw Singapore as their spiritual home and salted away profits there.
In social as in economic affairs, Lee tried to shape society to an extent attempted perhaps only by Mao Zedong in recent times. What began in the early years as a voluntary family-planning campaign ended up with the state trying to influence marriage choices and “enhance” Singapore’s genetic quality by encouraging graduates to reproduce among themselves. Myriad rules, taxes, incentives and exhortations confronted the citizen. The result was an orderly society, but only marginally freer of crime than Hong Kong. It was a society where people were afraid to speak out. Lee the great debater was now the winner by default, whether in parliament or the courts.
While continuing with parliamentary elections, Lee muzzled the press, international as well as local, and stamped hard on opponents of the PAP. Opposition politicians were hounded by legal actions – often for libel, which Lee invariably won – and bankrupted. Social workers were branded as communists and detained till they confessed, often after coercive treatment.
Quite why Lee, revered as the father of the nation, found it necessary to use such sledgehammers was not clear. In the 50s, the communists were real and ruthless. But as time went on, real threats vanished. Yet the unrelenting ambition did not, and Lee was unable to change his self-image as a political streetfighter, the gang boss who forever had to prove his ruthlessness. Beyond that, he had a sense of insecurity about the future of Singapore after he was gone. Partly this was a sense that society would go soft with success, or, like the Malays, surrender to the easy languor of the tropics. The younger generation knew only success and the cultivation of wealth.
He, with his recollections of Japanese occupation, the expulsion from Malaysia, the potential threat from Indonesia, always imagined the worst. Singapore could not afford gentlemanly disagreements or real debates. The leaders led, and that was it.
Increasingly, there was only one leader. Comrades from the heroic anti-colonial days retired, drifted away or were pushed out – in the case of President Devan Nair in 1985, after a humiliating allegation of alcoholism that he contested. New blood was brought into the PAP, but increasingly it became a tightknit elite. It retained an effective command structure but the mass base eroded.
The so-called second generation had no real political experience but was full of intellectual accomplishment. Goh Chok Tong, who succeeded Lee as prime minister in 1990, was a competent and well-liked bureaucrat, but Lee remained in cabinet as senior minister. In 2004, Lee’s eldest son, Lee Hsien Loong, became prime minister, and his father “minister mentor”. He resigned from that cabinet position in May 2011 following an electoral setback when the PAP share of the vote fell to its lowest level since independence. He then took no further part in public life.
Lee Kuan Yew sharing a toast with Queen Elizabeth II during a state banquet in Singapore in 2006, by which time he was a ‘minister mentor’ in the cabinet. Photograph: Jonathan Drake/AP
Goh had been unable to deliver the “kinder, gentler” Singapore that had been expected. The force of Lee’s personality, the moral authority that he commanded, left him the arbiter of anything he cared about. Like a Mao in miniature, he seemed both to enjoy and have contempt for the adulation that surrounded him. Never a tolerant man, he began to show some of the symptoms of age. International acclaim added to his convictions of his own brilliance and righteousness.
Some saw excesses of personal power, not just in his treatment of opponents but in the rapid promotion of his sons. The Singapore courts silenced a string of suggestions of dynastic politics.
With Goh and Hsien Loong minding day-to-day affairs, Lee was free to devote his energies to the world. He saw in the economic success of east Asia the triumph of “Confucian values”: discipline, order, respect for education and authority over western values of individualism, liberalism and democracy. He even succeeded for a while in promoting Singapore as the centre of “Asian values”. Lee was especially heartened by China’s economic success, defended its political repression and criticised Taiwan’s new-found democracy. China’s success fitted not only with his own philosophy but with the increasing emphasis in Singapore on its predominantly Chinese, as distinct from multiracial, character.
Ethnic prejudice lurked just under Lee’s image of technocratic rationalism. He combined assumptions about Chinese cultural supremacy with belief in genetic theories which influenced social policy in Singapore. But if Lee’s actions were sometimes driven by gut instinct, his head was more often the winner, particularly in international affairs. He could set aside his underlying distaste for America, with its crude culture and populist politics, and his Chinese ethnic sentiments to deliver masterly analyses of regional and global affairs. Only occasionally did he let prejudices get in the way of Singapore’s national interest – which, he clearly saw, lay with keeping US forces in the region.
Perhaps only he could succeed in making oppressive Singapore the main Asian critic of the US commitment to human rights and personal freedoms while ensuring that Singapore remained a key to the strategic plans of American military and multinationals alike.
Mostly – though not always – he could guard his tongue sufficiently to keep his Malay neighbours co-operative. His sheer length of service gave him a regional prestige that only Suharto could match, and his successors would not inherit. Suharto, with 180 million people and a vast archipelago to rule, had a big stage, while Lee gave every sign of regarding Singapore – with a population of 5 million in 700 square kilometres – as far too small for his talents.
Indeed, it was far too small. Its size accounted for his obsession that its every detail, down to choice of roadside trees, fit with his plans or prejudices, as well as his eagerness to advise larger countries on how to run their affairs.
Because of his background and early life, he could operate and dominate in many different milieus, but was totally at home in none of them. That perhaps accounted for his ruthlessness. He had permanent interests, not permanent friends. In sum, always a leader rather than a fullower, he set his own agenda.
Kwa Geok Choo died in October 2010, and Lee is survived by their two sons and a daughter. Lee Hsien Loong continues to be prime minister; his brother, Lee Hsien Yang, is chairman of the civil aviation authority; and their sister, Dr Lee Wei Ling, is director of the national neuroscience institute.
•Lee Kuan Yew, statesman, born 16 September 1923; died 23 March 2015
When journalist Dennis Bloodworth in 1989 described Mr Lee Kuan Yew as “bloody-minded and ruthless with his adversaries. He stomps them into the ground”, he was using metaphors no less graphic and remorseless than ones Mr Lee was wont to use about himself.
As he famously said in a book interview: “Everybody knows that in my bag I have a hatchet, and a very sharp one. You take me on, I take my hatchet, we meet in the cul-de-sac. That’s the way I had to survive in the past. That’s the way the communists tackled me.”
It was in the rough-and-dirty politicking of pre-Independence Singapore that this Cambridge-trained lawyer learnt to be a tough street-fighter, taking on the British, the communalists in Malaysia and the pro-communists, people who were “utterly ruthless”, in his words. And that was the style with which he took on his later adversaries, or potential adversaries — be they unionists, the media or political opponents.
“Anyone who takes me on needs to put on knuckle-dusters,” he once said. Indeed, in many instances, he saw his own foes as foes also of the long-term good of Singapore – and he was determined that nothing should undermine all that had been achieved.
As he thundered at a 1980 General Election rally: “You unscramble this – the confidence, the organisation upon which Singapore thrives – and you’ve had it. And let there be no mistakes about this – whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him or give it up!
