Reflections

The Legacy of Lee Kuan Yew

Yang Razali Kassim, Mushahid Ali

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9789814723909
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Reflections: The Legacy of Lee Kuan Yew is a collection of essays reflecting on Singapore's first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew's immense contribution to nation-building and the idea of development. This includes its various models — from government and statecraft as well as leadership and governance, to economic development and the management of plural societies. The papers are written by a range of authors who had worked closely with, or for, or grew up, under Lee Kuan Yew.

Reflections: The Legacy of Lee Kuan Yew is a collection of essays reflecting on Singapore's first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew's immense contribution to nation-building and the idea of development. This includes its various models — from government and statecraft as well as leadership and governance, to economic development and the management of plural societies. The papers are written by a range of authors who had worked closely with, or for, or grew up, under Lee Kuan Yew.

Readership: Students in political science, public policy, leadership and governance, and management of plural societies, and general public.
Key Features:

• A timely series of reflections on Singapore's iconic leader Lee Kuan Yew by thinkers, scholars and researchers from different generations
• This book adds value to the growing collection of publications on Lee Kuan Yew's multifaceted and impressive legacy and contributions to Singapore
• Authors include prominent public intellectuals and academics, almost all associated, in their current or previous leadership or research capacities, with RSIS, an increasingly influential Asia-Pacific think tank which offers views and opinions that get heard and published

Chapter I

Lee Kuan Yew’s Leadership

History, Heritage and the Idea of Singapore

WANG GUNGWU

Reflections on Lee Kuan Yew: His Legacy on the Public Service

EDDIE TEO

The Three Lee Kuan Yews I Remember

CHAN HENG CHEE

The Man and His Dream

JOSEPH CHINYONG LIOW

The Sage and Giant from Southeast Asia

JUSUF WANANDI

The Engine That Was Too Big for the Boat

KUMAR RAMAKRISHNA

History, Heritage and the Idea of Singapore

By Wang Gungwu

Synopsis

Lee Kuan Yew’s success in transforming Singapore from a plural immigrant society into a multicultural nation rested on the core values that shaped him and the power systems that he chose to serve his political cause.

Commentary

IT IS not too early to think about Lee Kuan Yew’s place in history. The sense of loss that Singaporeans demonstrated when he lay in state was genuine and deep. The eulogies from all over the world testify to the impact of his achievements in the city–state that he led.

To many leaders in Asia, what he did was to provide remarkable answers to the problems of decolonisation and nation-building that the region experienced after the end of World War Two. Some might focus on his doing this with so small a country; others wonder what more he could have done if he had more land and people under his care.

Heritage and shifting realities

His success rested on his ability to understand his environment and the transformations it was encountering. It rested on the core values that shaped him and the power systems that he studied and eventually chose to serve his political cause. The former relates to his origins as someone descended from many generations of Chinese in Southeast Asia who had lived among a variety of people and under several different kinds of regimes. The latter draws on his personal capacity to learn from history and respond to shifting realities.

Chinese society frowned on the idea of leaving home and not returning. But, for centuries, many in southern China did so when conditions were favourable, although the majority of males who settled down with their local wives and descendants were by and large assimilated. However, there was one area that was exceptional — the territories around Batavia (Jakarta) and Malacca, where the Netherlands East Asia Company encouraged enterprising Chinese to organise themselves to help the Company trade with China.

Their communities expanded on both sides of the Straits of Malacca when the British arrived at the end of the 18^th and the beginning of the 19^th century. The locally-evolved organisations extended their activities to the settlements in Penang and Singapore. Their members adapted to the Anglo–Dutch as well as to the Malay worlds. They understood well the characteristics of the neighbouring lands and peoples and were well-prepared to become key players in the growing trade with China.

By the end of the 19^th century, their descendants were responding to the modernising changes in the region and were learning to appreciate the virtues of different kinds of political systems and the advantages of industrial capitalism.

This was also when new generations of elites in China were adjusting to the demands of Western imperial power and awakening to the need for national consciousness. They were also acquiring modern knowledge and sought the support of the Chinese overseas. This was a challenge to the distinctive Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. Did they have to choose between affirming their special relations with the Western colonial states that had been established or join their compatriots in supporting a new Chinese nation?

Making plural society a multicultural nation

Many Chinese who had long settled in the region were divided in their loyalties and remained undecided until the Japanese invasions. After 1945, it became clear that the era of Western empires was coming to an end. For most Chinese, the choice from now on was to identify with the new native nations or return to China. Only in British Malaya was there another option: the chance to make a plural society develop into a multicultural nation.

Coming from this settled Straits Chinese background, Lee Kuan Yew chose to build on that possibility. He had to do so in the midst of local nationalist hopes, a primarily Chinese communist revolution and an Anglo–American offensive against the spread of communism. All three forces held great dangers for the immigrant minorities in the region. A handful of men and women were keen to fight for the multicultural ideal and gambled on doing so on the island of Singapore.

There were also others who were prepared to take the same risks, but Lee Kuan Yew was exceptionally equipped to assess the forces of history and harness all that he could in order to establish this new state. He therefore led those who shared his faith, especially those who were committed locals like him. Together, they set out to defend their heritage and use every weapon they could find or forge to do so.

Singapore his only home

Lee Kuan Yew also had an unusual capacity to learn from history. Like many of his generation, he studied the imperial system that the British nation had created out of their commercial and industrial successes in Asia. He understood how their empires claimed universal omniscience while their national interests led them to export their core values. The British sought to transmit those values to the colonials they ruled over, much as the Romans did to the feudal states they left behind when their empire collapsed.

With decolonisation after 1945, they sought to extend their ideals to the new members of the Commonwealth of Nations. Lee Kuan Yew was encouraged by some features in that model to try to adapt them to shape the country that would eventually replace British Malaya.

He failed in Malaysia because his Malay counterparts in the Federation of Malaya wanted their own nation and were willing to accommodate their country’s Chinese and other minorities only to a limited degree. Thus he was left with a Singapore that had a population that was 75 per cent Chinese. He and his colleagues realised that they had to recalculate afresh the kind of political structure that such a country could have. For Lee Kuan Yew, his deep sense of Singapore as his only home helped him to contemplate the social and cultural mix that he must bring together in order for this state to survive in an intrinsically hostile neighbourhood.

He was local and his ancestors were embedded in the region. He was educated to adapt to a global maritime empire that had now become Anglo–American. His people were largely Chinese whom he could count on to draw on Chinese traditions if and when forced to stand together in the face of common dangers. He was confident that they were rational. He believed he could educate them to appreciate how enriching a plural society can be.

He thus sought to recapture their aspirations while inducing them to understand the necessity for the republic to be a multiracial and multilingual state. The unique conditions that the country faced called for decisive and innovative leadership that he was determined to provide at all costs.

A new global city–state

Lee Kuan Yew insisted that he was a pragmatist without an ideology. But his understanding of history gave him hope for a new kind of global city–state. Such a city has to be one that consists not only of generations of the local-born who call Singapore home but is also open to the in-migration of peoples who, no matter what their origins, could provide the skills it needs.

The composite state that he has left to his successors would have to be one that is nation in form but not narrowly bound the way the original European model was designed to be. It would have to be one that is better adapted to a resurgent Asia in which new notions of nation, region and transnational enterprise are now possible.

This is an exceptional time when options are still open. Lee Kuan Yew has left behind a vision of the future that is rooted in his past. This is a vision that he would expect his followers to go forward to realise.

Wang Gungwu is University Professor of the National University of Singapore, Chairman of the East Asian Institute, and former member of the Board of Governors of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. An earlier version of this article appeared in The Round Table, London (2015).

Reflections on Lee Kuan Yew: His Legacy on the Public Service

By Eddie Teo

Synopsis

Mr Lee Kuan Yew made the Public Service an efficient and honest institution, globally respected and second to none, which could work with the political leadership to ensure Singapore’s survival, sovereignty and independence.

With Mr and Mrs Lee Kuan Yew at the Perth Airport Lounge, 6 April 2007. Photo by courtesy of Eddie Teo.

Commentary

THERE IS much that Singapore and Singaporeans have to thank Mr Lee Kuan Yew for. Today, I wish to thank him for what he has done for the Public Service. He laid the foundation, and built the first few stories of an institution that is now globally respected, second to none, and the envy of many governments. By the time I joined in 1970, Mr Lee already had 11 years to shape the Public Service into one which he thought Singapore should have — an efficient and honest institution which could work closely with the politicians to ensure Singapore’s survival, sovereignty and independence.

Right from the start, Mr Lee was very clear that the Public Service should be cleaned up and turned into an incorruptible and meritocratic institution. As former president SR Nathan said, Mr Lee was not so much a visionary, as someone who had the uncanny ability to anticipate, prepare for, and solve problems, for the nation. He lived, thought, felt and breathed for Singapore, 24/7.

For Singapore’s survival and progress

He knew that for Singapore’s survival and continued progress, public servants had to be recruited and promoted on the basis of ability, not connections. Hence, he retained the Public Service Commission, but replaced promotion on seniority with promotion through merit. He wanted the service to have the best brains and to have a fair share of our top students. Knowing that character was as important as intellectual ability, and being fully aware of human fallibility, he beefed up the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) to ensure that once recruited, public servants remained straight and honest. It was only much later that he added the incentive of high public service salary.

Mr Lee firmly believed that to ensure his Government was incorruptible, anti-corruption laws had to apply to everyone, regardless of rank and position. Having watched how other newly-independent countries went downhill, Mr Lee realised that the best way for our public servants to imbibe the DNA of incorruptibility was for the political leaders themselves to stay clean. The then-Cabinet Secretary once told me that there was a salesman from a company selling executive jets who annually sought to interest Mr Lee in buying a jet for his official use. After several rejections, the salesman gave up. Like many of his older colleagues, Mr Lee lived simply, frugally and unostentatiously. And he never moved out of his Oxley Road home to a bigger mansion.

What working with Mr Lee was like

What was it like to work with Mr Lee? Many senior public servants feared him, and felt intimidated by him, given his piercing eyes, sharp questions and high expectations. When I first took over as Director, Security and Intelligence Division (SID), I was a green 31-year-old, untutored in how to relate to Mr Lee. Thirty-seven years later, I still recall our first telephone conversation. I do not remember the content of that conversation, but it must have been a criticism or query on a paper we had sent out, because Mr Lee made it a point to question every report SID put out for about a month, and less frequently after that. That was his way of testing you. When you passed the test, he eased off a little.

Everyone who worked for him would say how much they learned from him. For me, listening to the discussions he had with foreign visitors I brought to see him was a lesson in geopolitics which no university education or book could match. Many foreign visitors...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by Ong Keng Yong
• Preface by Yang Razali Kassim
• Introduction by Mushahid Ali
• Chapter I LEE KUAN YEW’S LEADERSHIP
• Chapter II LEE KUAN YEW AND FOREIGN POLICY
• Chapter III LEE KUAN YEW AND NATION-BUILDING: WHAT NEXT?
• Contributors
• About the Editors
• About RSIS