Seriously, does anyone need to go
''all out to defame our
government'' - when without our own voluntary efforts, the
Government will do a disservice to themselves, and by their own
initiatives ?
All the past or present acts of any government are open for review
and research by anyone interested in studying and understanding the
Political Leadership that makes headlines with either controversial
or positively successful policies.
Here are some extracts from the research by some foreign fans of MM
LKY:-
Lee Kuan Yew: Race, Culture and
Genes
by Michael D. BarrDepartment of History,
University of QueenslandJournal of Contemporary Asia v29, n2
(1999)
"Three women were brought to the Singapore General
Hospital, each in the same condition and needing a blood
transfusion. The first, a Southeast Asian was given the transfusion
but died a few hours later. The second, a South Asian was also
given a transfusion but died a few days later. The third, an East
Asian, was given a transfusion and survived. That is the X factor
in development."
Lee Kuan Yew at the University of Singapore 27 December 1967, as
reported by Chandra Muzaffar in his letter to the author. 14
August, 1996.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Understanding any aspect of Lee Kuan Yew's career requires a
syncretic approach. but fully understanding his racial views
stretches holistic analysis to new limits. Lee's views on race have
been a matter of much private, but little published comment. This
now changes with the publication of his authorised biography, Lee
Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas, (7) in which Lee speaks about race
with unprecedented candour. Upon close inspection, Lee's racial
beliefs prove not to be an aberration or idiosyncrasy in his
thinking, but the consummation of his world view and his political
thought.
Until the late 1990s, Lee rarely allowed his public record to be
sullied by any explicit statement that could be construed as
racist, though on occasions he has come close to doing so. He has,
for instance, argued that there are links between economic
performance and race.
In 1993, Lee wrote an article for The Economist in which he
speculated on the state of the world in the twenty-first century,
with special emphasis on Asia. (8 ) Lee put his own views into the
mouth of a fictional Chinese Singaporean, Wang Chang, who then
discussed his views with his friend, Ali Alkaff.
Lee painted a picture of a prosperous twenty-first century East
Asian industrial belt consisting of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong
and coastal China, while South and South East Asia (except for
Singapore) languished by comparison. Singapore, although
geographically part Of South East Asia, was economically on a par
with the more prosperous East Asian region. (9) In the subsequent
"discussion" of these predictions, "Wang Chang" made it clear that
race was a factor in his assessment, since he based his forecasting
"on a people's culture, heredity and organisational strengths."
(10)
A few years earlier, Lee used his 1989 National Day Rally address
to defend the Government's programme of encouraging Chinese
immigration from Hong Kong on the basis that the birth rate of
Singapore's Chinese is lower than that of the Indians and
Malays.
The numerical preponderance of the Chinese must be maintained, said
Lee, "or there will be a shift in the economy, both the economic
performance and the political backdrop which makes that economic
performance possible." (11)
Lee enumerated several reasons why maintaining the Chinese
proportion of the population at current levels was necessary for
economic prosperity - including the "culture" and "nature" of the
Chinese.
Without a hint of irony, Lee also took the opportunity to assure
Malays that they need not fear Hong Kong immigrants taking their
jobs because the immigrants will all be high income earners.
In 1977 Lee treated Parliament to a four hour post-election victory
speech which could best be described as "uninhibited."
In this speech, Lee told the multi-racial chamber, "I understand
the Englishman. He knows deep in his heart that he is superior to
the Welshman and the Scotsman.... Deep here, I am a Chinaman."
(12)
In recent times, Lee has not only been more forthright about his
racial views but he has also confirmed that he held them at least
as early as the beginning of the 1970s.
In October 1989, in an interview with Malaysia's New Straits Times
Lee revealed that after he read Mahathir Mohamad's The Malay,
Dilemma (13) in 1971 in 1971 or 1972, he found himself "in
agreement with three-quarters of his analysis of the problem" of
the economic and educational under-performance of the Malays. (14)
According to Lee and Mahathir, the problem was both cultural and
genetic. (15) Lee noted with approval that Mahathir's views were
the "result of his medical training, and... he was not likely to
change them."
While Lee has been moderately circumspect in most of his public
statements on race, there have been rare occasions on which he has
shown less discretion than usual. The earliest such documented
occasion was on 27 December 1967, when Lee addressed a meeting at
the University of Singapore. (17) After his speech there was a
question and answer session, in which a question was asked about
"the most important factor, the X-factor, in development." (18 )
Two members of the audience have given the author independent and
almost identical accounts of Lee's answer. According to Chandra
Muzaffar, Lee responded in these terms:
"Three women were brought to the Singapore General Hospital, each
in the same condition and each needing a blood transfusion. The
first, a Southeast Asian was given the transfusion but died a few
hours later. The second, a South Asian was also given a transfusion
but died a few days later. The third, an East Asian, was given a
transfusion and survived. That is the X factor in development."
(19)
Each listener took the Southeast Asian to be a Malay or perhaps a
member of one of the aboriginal races of the region. Each of them
took the South Asian woman to be an Indian, and the East Asian who
survived was Chinese, or perhaps Japanese or Korean.
Lee revealed in this speech, as reported by Chandra Muzaffar a
perception of a racial hierarchy of Asians, in which the Chinese
and other East Asians are at the top, Malays and other Southeast
Asians are at the bottom, and Indians and other South Asians are in
between.
On this occasion Lee made no attempt to disguise his views on race
with discussion of related factors, such as culture. He was
talking about the inherent, genetic, strength and weakness of the
different races.
continue
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