“I’m not saying that everything I did was right, but everything I did was for an honourable purpose,” said Lee Kuan Yew in an interview with The New York Times back in 2010, examining his past and coming to terms with his mortality.
As one of the world’s most respected political minds who engineered the nation into the affluent global hub it is today, Lee’s achievements was as widely acclaimed as it was considerably criticized, as he fiercely safeguarded both his personal reputation and the well-being of the city he developed with an iron-fisted, authoritarian slant to democracy.
Throughout his life, he had an uneasy relationship with the media, and wielded the power of the courts should they tiptoe into dissent and slander with libel suits.
However, like what the various international media are writing about in their obit for the former statesman, there was no dispute that his authoritarian inclinations ensured the stability of Singapore and its highly regarded economic stature on the world’s stage.
AFP
“The Cambridge-educated lawyer set Singapore on a path that has seen average incomes rise 100 times, with investments across the globe, a widely respected civil service and world-class infrastructure.
But he was criticised for his iron-fisted rule, forcing several opposition politicians into bankruptcy or exile, and once invoked Machiavelli in declaring: “If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.”
Lee’s political career spanned 30 years as premier and 20 years as senior government adviser.
But in his last years, he was a shadow of his old self as his health deteriorated following his beloved wife’s death in October 2010.
He remained revered by many but also became the target of scathing attacks in social media as some Singaporeans began to muster the courage to speak out against him and the political and social model he had bequeathed.
His impact, through his policies and via his son, current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, is likely to be felt for years to come.”
The Guardian
“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.”
The New York Times
“Late into his life he remained the dominant personality and driving force in what he called a First World oasis in a Third World region.
The nation, reflected the man: efficient, unsentimental, incorrupt, inventive, forward-looking and pragmatic.
“We are ideology-free,” Mr. Lee said in an interview with The New York Times in 2007, stating what had become, in effect, Singapore’s ideology. “Does it work? If it works, let’s try it. If it’s fine, let’s continue it. If it doesn’t work, toss it out, try another one.”
His leadership was sometimes criticized for suppressing freedom, but the formula succeeded. Singapore became an international business and financial center admired for its efficiency and low level of corruption.”
The Economist
Singapore’s prosperity and orderliness won admirers East and West, and came to be viewed as a kind of model.
Mr Lee’s political views, however, were controversial. Decrying the decadence and welfarism which he thought had sapped the strength of countries such as Britain, he supported tough laws and punishments, making Singapore orderly, clean and disciplined. He was quick to use British-era legislation, including a draconian Internal Security Act, to quell anything that smacked of subversion. Defamation suits were used to tame the press and, on occasion, bankrupt his critics. The current prime minister is his son, Lee Hsien Loong, ensuring continuity of a sort.
The elder Mr Lee left the cabinet in 2011, after the PAP’s worst-ever general-election performance. It still won 60% of the vote, but there was growing resentment at the high levels of immigration—a consequence of Singaporean women’s very low fertility rates. After the election, although he retained his seat in parliament, Mr Lee looked visibly frail. Yet he was so towering a figure in Singapore’s half-century history that many of its people will find his passing an unnerving moment.”
Wall Street Journal
“Mr. Lee’s core principles—including a focus on clean and efficient government, business-friendly economic policies, and social order—helped attract massive investment and many of the world’s biggest companies to Singapore after he became prime minister in 1959, catapulting living standards to First World status from Third World levels in hardly more than a generation.
Leaders of other countries rushed to copy his model, with some success, though they often fell short because they didn’t rein in corruption or were governing states too big to manage as easily.
Along the way, Singapore, now one of the world’s richest nations, drew criticism from rights groups that said it attained its developed-world living standards without adopting full Western-style democracy or some of the freedoms taken for granted in Western societies.”
BBC
“And while there were many affectionate comments from well-wishers, there was still some fear of this extraordinary leader, who has dominated Singapore for the whole of its independent existence, and once threatened to rise from the grave if he saw things happening that he did not like.
For all of its impressive successes, this is still a country with Lee Kuan Yew’s imprint visible everywhere. He was unapologetic about the repressive measures he used to impose order, and unapologetic about believing his prescriptions alone were the right ones. No-one is quite sure what direction Singapore will now take without him.”
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