http://jaundicedlenses.blogspot.com/2005/07/devan-nair.html
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Devan Nair
Globe and Mail. Canada. March 29, 1999
BY Marcus Gee
IN the Singapore of the early 1980s, Lee Kuan Yew was the captain
and Devan Nair his loyal lieutenant. Mr Lee, independence leader,
then prime minister and now senior minister of the tiny Southeast
Asian city-state, laid down the law. Mr Nair followed it. As head
of the national trade union congress, then president of Singapore,
he loyally parroted the "LKY" line on the importance of social
order, the dangers of Western-style democracy and the evils of
littering.
Then, in 1985, came a shocking break. Mr Lee told Singapore's
parliament that Mr Nair had resigned because he was an alcoholic, a
charge Mr Nair now calls a baseless slur. Three years later, he
left Singapore for good after publicly quarrelling with Mr Lee over
the arrest of a well-known government critic. Then he dropped from
sight.
For the past few years, Mr Nair has been living quietly in
Hamilton, Ontario. He has given no interviews and made few public
statements. "I thought it was unseemly for a former president to go
whacky-whacking his country," he says.
Those days of silence are over Mr Nair has decided to speak out
against the continuing suppression of legitimate dissent in his
country. And so, last week, he sat down in the sun-lit drawing room
of a friend's house near Hamilton to talk about Lee Kuan Yew, how
they drew apart and what he thinks of Mr Lee's Singapore
today.
Now 75, Mr Nair is a compact man with a mischievous smile. Sipping
a glass of water, he speaks in a plummy baritone that commands
attention.
Mr Nair got to know his "captain" when the two were fighting to
free Singapore from British colonial rule in the 1950s. A teacher
whose father emigrated from India, Mr Nair taught Shakespeare while
he was a member of the Anti-British League, an irony he still
savours. When the British threw him in jail as a subversive,
holding him for a total of five years, Mr Lee was his lawyer.
The two remained close after Singapore won its freedom from
Britain. Together, they fought off an attempted communist takeover,
weathered Singapore's ejection from the neighbouring federation of
Malaysia and transformed their country from a run-down sea port to
an economic dynamo bristling with skyscrapers. "I supported him
because he was an eloquent champion of the dreams I had for
Singapore," Mr Nair says.
But as Singapore grew prosperous and stable and the communist
threat faded, Mr Nair began to have doubts about his captain's
iron-fisted methods. Perhaps sensing his ally's doubts, Mr Lee
asked Mr Nair to leave his power base as head of the trade union
congress and move into the presidential palace. As Mr Nair puts it,
"He kicked me upstairs."
Being president, he says now, was "the silliest job in the world.
All you had to do was cut ribbons." His frustration grew.
But before he could speak out, Mr Nair found himself at the centre
of a rumour-mongering campaign that labelled him a drinker and
womanizer. He says he was neither, and he suspects that Mr Lee had
government doctors slip him hallucinatory drugs to make him appear
befuddled. "Lee Kuan Yew decided: This man is going to be a threat,
so I'd better begin a total demolishment of his character. He's
very good at that."
A case in point: the recent battering of Singapore's most
determined dissident, J. B. Jeyaretnam. Singapore doesn't lock up
its critics any more; it sues them, instead. Mr Jeyaretnam has
faced countless libel suits from Mr Lee and other members of his
government. If the party doesn't pay the damages in the most recent
suit, the government hints it will ask the courts to shut it down,
a move that would oust Mr Jeyaretnam from parliament.
That, says Mr Nair, is an outrage. Mr Jeyaretnam has shown
"indomitable courage and dignity in the face of the vilest
persecution."
Why didn't Mr Nair challenge his leader at the time? That question
has haunted him ever since. "I was prone to hero worship and he was
our captain," he says, lowering his head. "Even when I began to
feel uneasy, loyalty to the captain superseded all other feelings.
That was my weakness."
Mr Nair is not bitter. He gives Mr Lee credit for making Singapore
a wealthy, stable place, an accomplishment in which he is proud to
have shared. But how much greater that accomplishment would be if
Singapore were a wealthy stable democracy. To him, Singapore today
is a soulless place whose only ideology is materialism. Whether he
could have changed that, Mr Nair wishes now he had spoken up
earlier.
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