Many people have hailed Lee Kuan Yew as a great first-world
leader.
How true is this compliment? Can we compare his greatness to
leaders like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Churchill, Deng
Xiao Peng.
Apparently he has succeeded in the initial years in creating basic
infrastructure, education and political stability as a base.
Apart from the initial success what else has he achieved ? Has he
succeeded in transforming the economy to a resilient economy which
can sustain the ups and downs in various other economies?
Is the present economic performance due to general world recovery
and property play or IR. If he is a great leader then he must have
solved certain problems faced by the people. Has he done so?
Has he succeeded in winning over the people and motivated them to
take an active part in nation building to bring the economy to the
first world or has he used only his political power over his
opponents or critics to get what he wanted for himself or his
party?
The above-stated are pertinent questions to be asked and answered
if we want to arrive at a logical and objective conclusion.
Now let us start answering some of these questions. Are the people
under his leadership over the past 40 years enjoying higher wages
and higher standards of living or are they suffering from lower or
dropping wages and prospect of losing their basic rights and jobs
to foreigners. Are the people enjoying good government and
happy.
It appears that from his own admission his starting point has been
people are prone to riots, rebellions and needed to be controlled
and the media has to come under rigid government control in order
to avoid media getting into mischiefs.
It appeared that his solution is to clamp down on dissent by using
the power afforded by democracy as machinery to get his way to
survive politically and override on people's wishes and needs and
to serve his and his own party interests.
He was highly motivated to bring about development at any costs to
the people. So he ruled with great determination using all the
scholars and elites as his instrument to maintain political control
and to stay in power.
To him in order to succeed he has to avoid welfarism so he made all
departments to be self-sufficient and resorted to taxing and
recouping all costs and profiteering to create surpluses which he
regarded as his own success.
The common men are not part of his solution. He would charge the
highest fees called affordable fees from housing to transportation
to utility and medical care to avoid spending on taxes so taxes get
accumulated as surpluses for the state.
Despite making all the sacrifices over the years in paying the
highest direct and indirect taxes to support the government which
is enjoying all the power and highest rewards at the expense of the
people, the wishes and aspirations of the people are often
overruled or ignored.
MM Lee has not been able therefore to motivate the people with such
a governing philosophy treating people as targets to suppress or
tax so many citizens have voted with their feet and migrated to
other less stressful countries.
Yet Lee continues to claim success of his brand of leadership which
looks rather fragile which lead finally to his having to resort to
hypocrisy and justifications to sing his own songs of
success.
There is no sign of arrival of a value-adding technology-driven
economy talked about for years precisely because of lack of
talents, motivation or creativity due to wrong individualistic and
egoistic anti-people and anti-teamwork system of governing.
He was able to get his way all because as a trained lawyer he was
able play with legalistic wrangling of laws to stay in power but
people essentially are suffering due to lack of motivation to
participate in greater entrepreneurship or value venture to
maximise their potential.
For one who claimed to be successful to use power to get what he
wants we do not know whether he can be really be judged to be that
successful or great.
