Below article defames LKY and his son LHL, saying that LHL is
part of a political dynasty. This is not true.
LHL is not part of any political dynasty or political family. He
is PM purely because of his own merits. That his father is LKY
plays no role whatsoever in him being PM.
All in the Family
By PHILIP BOWRING
HONG KONG — Are political dynasties good or bad?
Election time in the Philippines is a regular reminder of the roles
that feudal instincts and the family name play in that nation's
politics. Benigno Aquino, son of the late President Corazon Aquino,
is the front runner to succeed President Gloria Arroyo, daughter of
Diosdado Macapagal, a president in the 1960s.
Senate and Congressional contests will see family names of other
former presidents and those long prominent in provincial politics
and land-owning.
But the Philippines is not unique. Dynastic politics thrives across
Asia to an extent found in no other region apart from the Arabian
peninsula monarchies.
The list of Asian countries with governments headed by the
offspring or spouses of former leaders is striking: Pakistan has
Prime Minister Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto, herself
the daughter of the executed former leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Bangladesh has Sheikh Hasina, daughter of the murdered first prime
minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman . In Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib
Razak is the son of the second prime minister, Abdul Razak.
Singapore's Lee Hsien Loong is Lee Kuan Yew's son. In North Korea,
Kim Il-sung's son Kim Jong-il commands party, army and country and
waiting in the wings is his son Kim Jong-un.
In India, the widow Sonia Gandhi is the power behind the technocrat
prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and her son Rahul is showing
political promise and being groomed in the hope of leading the
Congress party and eventually filling the post of prime minister,
first occupied by his great grandfather Jawaharlal
Nehru.
In Japan, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is the scion of a
Kennedy-like political dynasty: His father was a foreign minister,
and his grandfather was a prime minister.
Indonesia's last president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, is the daughter
of its first, and family ties could well play in the next
presidential election when the incumbent, President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, must retire. In Myanmar, the durability of the
opposition to the military owes much to the name of Aung San Suu
Kyi's independence-hero father as well as to her
stoicism.
Thailand lacks obvious political dynasties but that is likely
because there is already a monarch. South Korea's rough and tumble
democracy would seem to leave little scope for dynasties but even
there, the political career of Park Chung Hee's daughter, Park Geun
Hye, has benefited much from her father's reputation.
With the exception of North Korea, Asian dynasties are a phenomenon
of countries that are more or less democratic.
In China, family connections help immensely but the party is still
a relatively meritocratic hierarchy. Vietnam is similar. In the
Philippines, it is easy to blame dynastic tendencies for the
nation's stark economic failures. But its problems go much deeper
into the social structure and the way the political system
entrenches a selfish elite. It is a symptom not the cause of the
malaise.
In India, the Gandhi name has been an important element in ensuring
that Congress remains a major national force at a time when the
growth of regional, caste and language based parties have added to
the problems of governing such a diverse country. In Bangladesh,
years of fierce rivalry between Sheikh Hasina, daughter of one
murdered president and widow of another, have been a debilitating
factor in democratic politics. But their parties needed their
family names to provide cohesion and without them there could have
been much more overt military intervention. Ms. Megawati was a poor
leader but just by being there helped the consolidation of the
post-Suharto democracy.
Dynasties can be stultifying too. In Malaysia, the ruling party was
once a grassroots organization where upstarts like former Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamad could flourish but over time it has
become a self-perpetuating patronage machine. Too many of the key
players are the offspring or relatives of former
leaders.
There are more fundamental problems, too. Most current Asian
dynasties trace themselves to the post-1945 political
transformation. In that sense they have become a crutch, reflecting
a failure to devise systems for the transfer of power to new names,
faces and ideas.
Dynasties are a poor commentary on the depth of democracy in their
countries. Without parties with a coherent organization and a set
of ideas, politics becomes about personalities alone and name
recognition more important than competence. Parties run by the
elite offspring of past heroes easily degenerate into self-serving
patronage systems.
So dynastic leadership in Asia's quasi-democracies can provide a
focus for nations, a glue for parties, an identity substitute in
countries that used to be run by kings and sultans. But it is more
a symptom of underlying problems than an example to be
followed.
