by Andre Sanchez

Lee Kuan Yew was prime minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990, and when he resigned in 1990 he was then the longest serving prime minister of any country.  He was educated in England, graduating in law from Cambridge University.  He returned to Singapore and in 1954 founded the People’s Action Party of which he was Secretary-General until 1992.

His political attitudes were largely influenced by his experiences during the Japanese occupation of the Second World War, when he resolved to make Singapore free for ever from foreign rule. This became his desire, and he decided, in his own words that his country “should not be the pawn and playthings of foreign powers.”  It was a burning ambition that was to be realized earlier than he could possibly have imagined.

Elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1955, he was appointed his country’s first prime minister in 1959.  He was a tiger of a man that ruthlessly put down his opponents and anyone who stood in his way.   Under his leadership, Singapore joined Malaysia in 1963, then it withdrew and declared itself a republic in 1965, effectively becoming independent 23 years after its occupation by Japanese forces.

When Lee took over Singapore it was full of corruption, with a severe housing shortage and high unemployment.  He solved the corruption problem in a typically robust way through anti-corruption legislation and the formation of an agency to ensure its enforcement.  He embarked on an industrialization program to improve the employment figures, and also a low-cost housing program that multiplied the proportion of the population occupying state housing from 9% to 91% during his tenure.

Employment rapidly increased to 100% and the standard of living for the average Singaporean improved dramatically.  It was only due to the tenacity with which Lee Kuan Yew tackled these problems that all of this became possible.  A lesser man would have failed, but he took on everybody who opposed him and left them beaten.  He was a scrapper who did not recognize the word failure and can truly be called the father of modern Singapore.

He possessed the Chinese way of strict discipline and intolerance of political dissent, and encouraged investment and private enterprise.  He cooperated with communism when it suited him, but he was of a mildly anti-communist disposition. Under his tenure of office the transformation of Singapore was remarkable, and is today second only to Japan in average income per head of population.

Although he did so much for his country, Lee has been criticized for being autocratic, and it has been claimed that his economic success was won at the expense of civil liberties and an intolerance of opposition parties.  Political demonstrations, for example, were outlawed unless a police permit had been obtained, and the freedom of the pres was severely restricted.  However, Lee points to his results as justification.

He was known for suing his opponents and bankrupting then wherever possible, and of using the courts to settle personal disputes with political opponents.  Open debate was not his forte, and he never sought public consensus for his policies. 

He announced that he would retire when he turned 65 years old in 1988, but held onto office until he handed it over to Min Goh Chok Tong in 1990.  However, he retained a position in politics, and assumed the position of Senior Minister in an advisory capacity.  In 2004 he stood down from that position to take up a newly created position of Senior Mentor

It is doubtful that anybody else at the time could have pulled Singapore up by the bootstraps from the quagmire of corruption and decadence into which it had sunk , and the Singaporeans have much to thank Lee Kuan Yew for, even if they did not always agree with his methods.

Lee Kuan Yew was originally published at http://www.globallifenow.com