The creator of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, respected as one of Asia’s foremost statesmen abroad and feared as a ruthless authoritarian at home, died today at 91 of complications from pneumonia. He had been on life support for several days.
Becoming Singapore’s first prime minister in 1959 as the British colonials were leaving, he cast a shadow far beyond the tiny island republic that he ran with an iron hand, not just during the three decades he was in office, leaving in 1990, but remaining as a dominant presence in the administrations of Goh Chok Tong, who followed him, and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s present prime minister.
His domestic genius lay in creating a Singapore that was scrupulously free of conventional corruption. That was most notable in the 1986 suicide of Teh Cheang Wan, one of Lee’s closest comrades in the founding of the country, which left a federation with Malaysia in 1965 to stand alone. Teh killed himself after Lee refused to let his friendship get in the way of an investigation into allegations that Teh had accepted bribes.
The drive for honest government has made Singapore one of the few Asian nations in which there is little doubt that government decisions are corruption free, a valuable quality in attracting the foreign direct investment so crucial to the country’s success.
The creation of an independent Singapore was precipitated by what is regarded as Lee’s biggest failure, the expulsion of the city-state from the Federation of Malaysia, established in 1963 to join Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak to Malaya, which had been independent since 1957. Full story...
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Becoming Singapore’s first prime minister in 1959 as the British colonials were leaving, he cast a shadow far beyond the tiny island republic that he ran with an iron hand, not just during the three decades he was in office, leaving in 1990, but remaining as a dominant presence in the administrations of Goh Chok Tong, who followed him, and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s present prime minister.
His domestic genius lay in creating a Singapore that was scrupulously free of conventional corruption. That was most notable in the 1986 suicide of Teh Cheang Wan, one of Lee’s closest comrades in the founding of the country, which left a federation with Malaysia in 1965 to stand alone. Teh killed himself after Lee refused to let his friendship get in the way of an investigation into allegations that Teh had accepted bribes.
The drive for honest government has made Singapore one of the few Asian nations in which there is little doubt that government decisions are corruption free, a valuable quality in attracting the foreign direct investment so crucial to the country’s success.
The creation of an independent Singapore was precipitated by what is regarded as Lee’s biggest failure, the expulsion of the city-state from the Federation of Malaysia, established in 1963 to join Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak to Malaya, which had been independent since 1957. Full story...
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