Lee Kuan Yew – the _

[1354] Of a first world oasis in a third world region

Did you miss that interview IHT had with Lee Kuan Yew?

IHT: This system, machinery of government here in Singapore is looked on as a model all over the world. Are you confident that it can survive indefinitely or does it face problems that some companies face? For example, when they try to expand, they start to lose their edge. They start to lose their competitiveness.

Lee Kuan Yew: Well, I cannot say that we will not lose it. If we lose it, then we’re done in. We go back to where we started, right?

We knew that if we were just like our neighbors, we would die. Because we’ve got nothing to offer against what they have to offer. So we had to produce something which is different and better than what they have. It’s incorrupt. It’s efficient. It’s meritocratic. It works.

The system works regardless of your race, language or religion because otherwise we’d have divisions. We are pragmatists. We don’t stick to any ideology. Does it work? Let’s try it and if it does work, fine, let’s continue it. If it doesn’t work, toss it out, try another one. We are not enamored with any ideology.

Let the historians and the Ph.D. students work out their doctrines. I’m not interested in theories per se.

IHT: But a lot of these reflect your personality – the force of your personality.

Lee Kuan Yew: No, no. A lot of it is the result of the problems we face and a team of us – I wasn’t a loner. I had some very powerful minds working with me. And we sat down and thought through our options. Take this matter of getting MNCs [multinational corporations] to come here when the developing world expert economists said, “No, MNCs are exploiters.”

I went to America. This was a happenstance . . . What were the Americans doing? They were exporting their manufacturing capabilities . . . That’s what I wanted. That’s how it started.

I said O.K., let’s make this a first world oasis in a third world region. So not only will they come here to set up plants and manufacture, they will also come here and from here explore the region.

What do we need to attract them? First class infrastructure. Where do we get it from? We had the savings from our Central Provident Fund. We had some loans from the World Bank.

We built up the infrastructure. The difficult part was getting the people to change their habits so that they behaved more like first world citizens, not like third world citizens spitting and littering all over the place.

That was the difficult part. So, we had campaigns to do this, campaigns to do that. We said, “Look, if you don’t do this, you won’t get the jobs. You must make this place like the countries they came from. Then, they are comfortable. Then they’ll do business here. Then, you’ll have a job. Then, you’ll have homes, schools, hospitals, etc.” That’s a long process. [Excerpts from an interview with Lee Kuan Yew. International Herald Tribune. August 29 2007]

I would love to hear what the touchy nationalists would have to say.

As for me, the hot hot hot aftertaste still lingers and so, my brain is not working.

[643] Of Singapore, Malaysian Malaysia and what if

About fourty years ago, in the Malaysian Parliament, in Malay, by Lee Kuan Yew:

How does the Malay in the kampong find his way out into this modernised civil society? By becoming servants of the 0.3 per cent who would have the money to hire them to clean their shoe, open their motorcar doors? … Of course there are Chinese millionaires in big cars and big houses. Is it the answer to make a few Malay millionaires with big cars and big houses? How does telling a Malay bus driver that he should support the party of his Malay director (UMNO) and the Chinese bus conductor to join another party of his Chinese director (MCA) – how does that improve the standards of the Malay bus driver and the Chinese bus conductor who are both workers in the same company?

If we delude people into believing that they are poor because there are no Malay rights or because opposition members oppose Malay rights, where are we going to end up? You let people in the kampongs believe that they are poor because we don’t speak Malay, because the government does not write in Malay, so he expects a miracle to take place in 1967 (the year Malay would become the national and sole official language). The moment we all start speaking Malay, he is going to have an uplift in the standard of living, and if doesn’t happen, what happens then?

Meanwhile, whenever there is a failure of economic, social and educational policies, you come back and say, oh, these wicked Chinese, Indian and others opposing Malay rights. They don’t oppose Malay rights. They, the Malay, have the right as Malaysian citizens to go up to the level of training and education that the more competitive societies, the non-Malay society, has produced. That is what must be done, isn’t it? Not to feed them with this obscurantist doctrine that all they have got to do is to get Malay rights for the few special Malays and their problem has been resolved. …

I’m finally done with Lee Kuan Yew’s The Singapore Story and I enjoyed it, especially the last few chapters. The book however leaves me behind a few questions. What if we had stayed true to the Federation? What if Singapore were still a Malaysian state? I can’t help but wonder, could Malaysian Malaysia be a reality today if Singapore weren’t expelled from the Federation?

I think yes.

Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action Party (PAP), given time and if Singapore weren’t expelled from the Federation, would have outmaneuvered the Alliance. Perhaps, given the competition, United Malays National Organization (UMNO) would have turned into United Malaysians National Organization, as Onn Jaafar had envisioned earlier.

Yet, UMNO, seeing that possibility, acted quickly and put their interest first, Malaysia’s second. They expelled Singapore instead to secure their monopoly of power.

Yes, if Singapore were still part of Malaysia, I truly believe we would have a Malaysian Malaysia by now.