This Lee Kuan Yew is really a first class liar.
I have to admit defeat in front of Lee Kuan Yew.
I can't lie and act as well as him.
"I saw Britain and I saw the British people as they were. And
whilst I met nothing but consideration and a certain benevolence
from people at the top, at the bottom, when I had to deal with
landladies and the shopkeepers and so on, it was pretty rough.
"They treated you as colonials and I resented that. Here in
Singapore, you didn't come across the white man so much. He was in
a superior position.
"But there you are in a superior position meeting white men and
white women in an inferior position, socially, I mean. They have to
serve you and so on in the shops.
And I saw no
reason why they should be governing me. They're not superior. I
decided, when I got back, I was going to put an end to
this."
http://angeleong.tripod.com/leeky2.html
After his education in Britain, Lee
Kuan Yew returned to Singapore in 1949 to practise as a lawyer in
the law firm Laycock and
Ong.
He became the honorary legal adviser for several trade unions after
being acquainted with their leaders (in 1951) and subsequently
caught the public eye in February 1952, when the Postal Workers
Union succeeded, with his guidance, in obtaining important
concessions from the colonial government.
According to his memoirs and this website,
Lee Kuan Yew then proceeded to form the PAP with the help of the
communists.
Yet
these sources conveniently neglect to mention Lee Kuan Yew's
involvement in the Singapore Progressive Party in the 1951
legislative elections.
In fact, Lee
acted as the election agent for his boss John Laycock, helping him
to manage his campaign and canvass on his
behalf. (See here and here for proof)
He had thus entered into politics even before he became involved in
the trade unions' dispute with the British. (Polling day for the
1951 legislative elections was on 10 April, we can assume that his
political activities with the SPP started months before that)
If I may
speculate, LKY
joined the SPP initially to build up his political career
there.
However when
the Rendel Constitution expanded the electoral
rolls to include all local-born
as voters, resulting in a significant increase in Chinese
voters, LKY decided to jump ship and formed the PAP in
1954 because he saw that the SPP lacked the support of
the Chinese working class. (So the next time LKY
condemns politicians who change political parties, you know where
he's coming from)
Yet the problem isn't solely that LKY jumped ship and didn't care
to tell anyone about his great experience in his
memoirs.
The bigger problem lies in the fact that LKY
supported the SPP despite the fact that it
was
A) pro-British in both its policies and
in its composition of members (mostly English-speaking upper class
professionals)
B) unsupportive of achieving independence (it
merely paid lip-service to the idea by declaring in October 1952,
its objective of Singapore achieving independence through a
Singapore-Malaya merger without setting a target
date)
Lee Kuan Yew's miraculous change of
heart on these issues when he joined the PAP
only demonstrates how the pursuit of power can
sometimes make one very flexible about their beliefs. Unfortunately
for us, this flexibility of LKY's did not extend to the area of
political freedoms.
http://us.asiancorrespondent.com/secret-blog/2009/09/is-lee-kuan-yew-more-interested-in.html
