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Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

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  • Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

    Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

    By SETH MYDANSMARCH 22, 2015

    SINGAPORE — Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father and first prime minister of Singapore who transformed that tiny island outpost into one of the wealthiest and least corrupt countries in Asia, died on Monday morning. He was 91.

    “The prime minister is deeply grieved to announce the passing of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister of Singapore,” a statement posted on the prime minister’s official website said. “Mr. Lee passed away peacefully at the Singapore General Hospital today at 3:18 am.”

    Mr. Lee was prime minister from 1959, when Singapore gained full self-government from the British, until 1990, when he stepped down. Late into his life he remained the dominant personality and driving force in what he called a First World oasis in a Third World region.

    The nation, reflected the man: efficient, unsentimental, incorrupt, inventive, forward-looking and pragmatic.

    “We are ideology-free,” Mr. Lee said in an interview with The New York Times in 2007, stating what had become, in effect, Singapore’s ideology. “Does it work? If it works, let’s try it. If it’s fine, let’s continue it. If it doesn’t work, toss it out, try another one.”

    His leadership was sometimes criticized for suppressing freedom, but the formula succeeded. Singapore became an international business and financial center admired for its efficiency and low level of corruption.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/wo...ies-at-91.html

  • #2
    God Bless, Sir.
    Chimo

    Comment


    • #3
      Respect, one tough SOB.
      He saw what was necessary and got it done.
      For Gallifrey! For Victory! For the end of time itself!!

      Comment


      • #4
        I have mixed feelings on his death - while he ultimately achieved a good outcome for the nation, they were not without sacrifices. I shall avoid passing further comments.

        Comment


        • #5
          The man who presided over the most successful socialist one-party system ever seen.
          RIP.
          Trust me?
          I'm an economist!

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by DOR View Post
            The man who presided over the most successful socialist one-party system ever seen.
            RIP.
            Correction. The man who presided over the most successful CITY-STATE system ever seen. He did great work for a CITY-STATE but let's not carry away that his methods can be translated to a larger system.
            Chimo

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
              Correction. The man who presided over the most successful CITY-STATE system ever seen. He did great work for a CITY-STATE but let's not carry away that his methods can be translated to a larger system.
              He was a tyrant but at least he made everybody prosperous.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Blademaster View Post
                He was a tyrant but at least he made everybody prosperous.
                I said I wouldn't pass any more comments, but many of the economic policies were not made by him - Goh Keng Swee was the real person behind the scenes. He, as Prime Minister took the glory instead. Yes, he did a fairly good job. But people attribute too much of Singapore's success to him and now it has become mainstream media.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
                  Correction. The man who presided over the most successful CITY-STATE system ever seen. He did great work for a CITY-STATE but let's not carry away that his methods can be translated to a larger system.
                  Sir,
                  The size of his geography was important, but my point was that he presided over a socialist one-party system.
                  Trust me?
                  I'm an economist!

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    A look at Lee Kuan Yew and the 'malaria-infested backwater' myth

                    Singapore made incredible strides under Mr. Lee, who was laid to rest today. But it was also well ahead of many of its Asian peers at independence.
                    By Dan Murphy, Staff writer March 29, 2015

                    Jeanette Tan/AP
                    View Caption

                    Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew was laid to rest today amid pomp and an almost unprecedented outpouring of grief in the city-state he helped turn into an economic powerhouse.

                    About 10 percent of the population have filtered through Parliament House where he's been laying in state for the past four days - many waiting for 5 hours and more - and attendees at his funeral today included Henry Kissinger and Bill Clinton, as well as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

                    Singapore's accomplishments under his leadership were deep and lasting. As I wrote the day he passed:
                    Recommended: Could you pass a US citizenship test? Find out.

                    While no Jeffersonian democrat, Lee got results. Singapore's GDP per capita was $516 in 1965 and today it's $55,000. For comparison, US GDP per capita in 1965 was $3,800; now it's $53,000. Life expectancy has increased from 67 years to 82 years, making Singapore now the fourth longest-lived country in the world, behind Japan, Switzerland and San Marino.

                    Singapore's government-owned container port is the second busiest in the world, after Shanghai. The country has not only been economically transformed, but physically. Landfill has extended Singapore's territory into the surrounding equatorial sea. Beach Road, home to the famous Raffles Hotel, is no longer anywhere near the beach.

                    Lee's successful approach, a highly-managed capitalist economy coupled with a sort of benevolent authoritarianism, drew many admirers, particularly among single-party states and dictatorships. Long before China emerged as an alternative to liberal capitalism, Singapore was offered as a model for countries eager to improve their economic performance without giving up political control.

                    But Singapore's financial success has also been overstated, at least in the sense that its relatively-privileged position at the time of full independence in 1965 has often been either ignored - or completely misstated. .

                    Take Reuters' obituary on Mr. Lee, which said that he had overseen "the island's transformation from a malaria-infested backwater." No, he didn't. Not to take anything away from Lee and Singapore's accomplishments, but there's been a lot of mythmaking around Singapore's success. The iron-fisted, development above-all-else else approach that Lee crafted helped guide Singapore to the heights. But it was already a good way up the hill when he started, as Cornell's Tom Pepinsky pointed out last week (the graphs in that post are worth the click.)

                    At independence, Singapore was already a middle income country, thanks to its thriving port, legacy of transparent and predictable law under the British, and position on the Straits of Malacca, surrounded by commodity producing giants like Malaysia and Indonesia and manufacturing giants like Japan, South Korea, and not too long after, China.

                    GDP per capita in 1965 dwarfed that of Indonesia and China, and was far ahead of Malaysia, with which Singapore was joined for its first two years of independence. By the early 1970s, Singapore was already ahead of the UK in per capita GDP. As Mr. Pepinsky writes: "That Singapore has progressed tremendously since independence is true, but not a story of turning the “Third World” into the first. If anything, it is a story of how to escape the middle income trap." (From Third World to First: The Singapore Story is the title of Lee's memoirs).

                    This British government promotional video of Singapore in 1957, though not the whole truth, speaks to the "Malaria-infested backwater" myth.
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                    Or take this piece in The Economist last week, which begins: "When it started life as an independent, separate country in 1965, Singapore’s prospects did not look good. Tiny and underdeveloped, it had no natural resources and a population of relatively recent immigrants with little shared history."

                    Natural resources? The history of Asia since WWII is that there's little correlation between natural blessings and economic success. Indonesia, blessed with oil, gas, copper, timber, coal and copper, has lagged. Resource rich Myanmar has likewise suffered. Meanwhile the economies that have vaulted into the ranks of the global heavyweights - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore among them - were all resource-poor. Sure, the tiny Sultanate of Brunei is rich - a monarchy with 400,000 people that has oil coming out of its ears - but it is an exception that proves the rule.

                    Make no mistake. Singapore and Lee's accomplishments were tremendous for such a tiny country. And while his personality remains stamped on the city, his rule wasn't personalized. His legacy is one of efficient institutions that have steered Singapore to some of its greatest economic successes since he stepped back from day-to-day involvement in political affairs in 2004.

                    Some of his legacies aren't exactly positive.

                    His political ruthlessness was also spoken of with affection at his funeral, His protege Goh Chok Tong, who succeeded Lee as prime minister until his son Lee Hsein Loong was deemed seasoned enough to take the reins, approvingly spoke of how "to those he believed were out to destroy Singapore, he put on his knuckle-dusters" in his eulogy.

                    For much of his political career there was little distance between "out to destroy Singapore" and "disagrees with Lee." The task going forward will be whether the tight control on political competition that has served Singapore for 5 decades can be replaced with something approaching a real democracy.
                    A look at Lee Kuan Yew and the 'malaria-infested backwater' myth - CSMonitor.com
                    To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
                      Correction. The man who presided over the most successful CITY-STATE system ever seen. He did great work for a CITY-STATE but let's not carry away that his methods can be translated to a larger system.
                      Heh, even Indira thought that too

                      Don't want to take away anything from his achievements, he was a visionary, grandson of a coolie that improved the lives of his people by capitalising on Singapore's strategic location.

                      Originally posted by Blademaster View Post
                      He was a tyrant but at least he made everybody prosperous.
                      Similar could be said about ROK & ROC too. Dictatorships until recently with no pretenses.

                      Korea only started elections in the 90's and Taiwan a decade after. Korea in 1960 was more poor than Pakistan. There is a story that Korea sent a delegation to Pakistan to understand city planning at the time. Things have changed a lot since.
                      Last edited by Double Edge; 30 Mar 15,, 00:51.

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
                        There is a story that Korea sent a delegation to Pakistan to understand city planning at the time. Things have changed a lot since.
                        What?....there not a single planned city in Pakistan!!! (expect for Islamabad of course and it did not exist in the old days.)

                        Cheers!...on the rocks!!

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by lemontree View Post
                          What?....there not a single planned city in Pakistan!!! (expect for Islamabad of course and it did not exist in the old days.)
                          South Korean city planners used to visit Karachi to learn how to run a city. In the 50s & 60s Pakistan was considered a suceesful model. One trivia point (11:20) in an otherwise interesting talk by the prof TV Paul from McGill.

                          Comes from his book talk.

                          Korean military insisted on 100% literacy and we see that result today.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
                            South Korean city planners used to visit Karachi to learn how to run a city.
                            Total irony when one reads it today. Karachi is a literal 'active warzone' now with no-go areas for the police and military

                            anyway, back to topic. We have general elections coming up this year - would be interesting to see how LKY's party does this time around..

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