That time, there is also not much high educated cambridge lawyer
around but a lots of kampong/village peoples, the only thing I
admired him is that he took his opportunity well, in 50s,
when in collectiveness, he joined force with many parties,
including the communist party, on a common goal to remove
the British and gain independency after India got
theirs in 1949.
And I believe in the 50s, he already secretly planned his
move at his oxley rise house, because he is a opportunist who pre
plan his move before anyone can see it. And in the 60s, in removed
all his brothers in arm who fought and championed singapore with
him.
Politics is not about technology, it is about power struggling,
sabotaging and do the impossible to become possible, it can be as
sweet as sugar and also as dirtiest as the shit house. I would said
he is a good politician, because he practiced whatever is mentioned
above, however and sadly and narrowly, most see the sweetener side
of it.
I doubt Harry wanted to get rid of the british. I think
what he wanted was to be in political power. He never fought for
the cause of independence of Singapore from Britain. That is why he
suppressed the role played by the chinese dialect groups in
fighting imperialism and colonialism.
The lost
history of Lee Kuan Yew
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)
LKY’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://asiancorrespondent.com/7341/is-lee-kuan-yew-more-interested-in-power-money-or-altruism/
The May 13 Generation was the first belonging to the
immigrant communities from China to grapple with the issues of
being Malayan/Singaporean, breaking irrevocably with the received
wisdoms of their elders, and in a political climate where their
explorations were deemed to be subversive.
This
book comprises the recollections penned by the participants of the
era of the 1950s, where their generation was in the forefront of
the anti-colonial movement, and the work of
academic researchers who have examined the historical framework and
context of the period, as well as how it has been made to fit in to
the country's mainstream history.
The researchers have also examined the students'
cultural expressions, whether it is in art, drama, dance or
literature and found to be socially engaged, and grappling with the
question of who they were as a people. The cultural explorations of
that period have been forgotten or repudiated. It is
revealing just how this amnesia and silence has become so set. It
is also impossible to imagine the demands that age had put on this
generation of youths.
http://www.selectbooks.com.sg/getTitle.aspx?SBNum=051670
History of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism
movement against the british in Singapore is largely suppressed by
the PAP regime.
For the simple reason that Harry Lee Kuan Yew worked
with the british to suppress the movement.
many
English-educated Babas re-emphasised their allegiance to the
British Empire and were afraid that full
independence might harm their still privileged
position, the vast majority of
Chinese-educated Chinese were vehemently anti-colonial and
anti-imperialist.
A HIGHER CLASS OF CHINESE
AS "sons of the soil", the Straits Chinese British Association's
Straits Chinese defended their citizenship (or subjecthood) rights
against the China-born Chinese and those first-generation
Singapore-born Chinese who had a dual loyalty.
The chasm between
the Babas and the sinkehs (literally "guests", or recent immigrants
from China) may also be illustrated by the typical occupations of
the China-born Chinese which self-conscious Babas would have
shunned...
http://www.asiawind.com/pub/forum/fhakka/mhonarc/msg01319.html
The key to understand Singapore politics and Singapore history from
1945 onwards is this:
The answer lies in a historical division
in Singapore's Chinese community between the babas and the
sinkeh. The sinkeh, comprising the majority of the
city-state's population, were the recent immigrants from China, or
whose parents were born in China. They spoke Chinese, lived like
Chinese and considered themselves overseas Chinese. In Indonesia,
such Chinese were called the totok.
The babas, on the other hand, also known as Straits
Chinese, were Chinese more in name than practice. They were the
descendants of the very early Chinese immigrants (Hokkiens from the
Fujian province) to the straits settlements of Malaya (Penang,
Singapore and Malacca). They assimilated with both the local Malays
and the colonising British, whom they especially admired.
The babas
developed their own culture, cuisine and language - Malay liberally
sprinkled with Hokkien.
The sinkeh were the traders, the coolies and the
shophouse owners. The babas became the lawyers, the civil servants
and the politicians; they attended the local English-language
schools run in the tradition of the UK's public schools, and Oxford
and Cambridge. If the sinkeh received an overseas education at all,
it was in Nanking or another university in China. Although the
sinkeh dominated Singapore's population, it was the babas who
dominated public decision-making. In effect, a baba minority
captured sinkeh Singapore, and that minority's attitudes were more
those of Victorian England than China.
It was the babas who were the framers of Singapore's
rules and institutions. Many of Singapore's most prominent Chinese
have had baba backgrounds. Lee Kuan Yew, who became prime
minister of Singapore aged just 35, is the most obvious example. He
claims a Hakka heritage, although his upbringing was that of a
baba: at home, he spoke English with his parents and baba Malay to
his grandparents. "Mandarin was totally alien to me and unconnected
with my life," Lee said of his childhood.
For Lee, Chineseness was an acquired skill and later a
political necessity. He was not brought up as a Chinese with a
focus on China, but as a baba who looked to England. He followed
the conventional career path of a baba and went to London to study
law. And so Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore became Harry Lee of
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. His father had given him and two of
his brothers English, as well as Chinese, names. Did Lee run
Singapore as a piece of Asia mired in Chinese ways? No. He ran it
in a manner to which a British colonial administrator would have
aspired.
http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/648273/
answer lies in a historical division
in Singapore's Chinese community between the babas and the
sinkeh.
Lee
Kuan Yew, who became prime minister of Singapore aged just 35, is
the most obvious example.
He
claims a Hakka heritage, although his upbringing was that of a
baba: at home, he spoke English with his parents and baba Malay to
his grandparents. "Mandarin was totally alien to me and unconnected
with my life," Lee said of his childhood.
If you don't know that Harry Lee Kuan Yew is a hakka
peranakan and that he is opposed to the dialect chinese in
Singapore, you will understand nothing about Singapore
politics.
If you understand that Harry Lee Kuan Yew is a
hakka peranakan and that he is opposed to the dialect chinese in
Singapore, you will understand everything about Singapore
politics.
That is the key that opens the door to understanding
Singapore politics.
