Growing up, history was one of my favourite subjects. The men and women in the history books were true heroes and heroines. Unimaginably better than the rest of us, esp. to a young kid in a small town.
I never imagined that I could be living in an era with not just one but several people who would figure prominently in the history books. Nelson Mandela for one. Lee Kuan Yew is the other... And I have even met him in the flesh.
History will remember him as the founding father of modern Singapore. And found Singapore he did. In his own image! No wonder the mourning by Singaporeans approached near deification levels.
He had a vision (formulated through a unique mixture of idealism and pragmatism) and pursued it to reality through a combination of uncompromising demand for results from his subordinates and brutal removal of any opposition that stood in the way of achieving his vision. Yes, he had been dictatorial but look at the result: a country whose GDP per capita has multiplied over 20 times in a mere 50 years. Can you imagine a Sudan or a Papua New Guinea (whose GDP is the same as Singapore's in 1960s) growing at that rate? That's the measure of his achievement! Sure, it's not entirely perfect: gini coefficient is high, there is a foreigner for every two citizens fraying the social bonds. That said, all of this has never been done in history before. So LKY not only belongs in the history books, he has rewritten history.
Historical figures are worth emulating. I am sure many a leader from Africa to Europe, and most certainly in Middle East and the rest of Asia are looking at his methods and justifying their own. A formula at last, they would declare. I am also sure all of them will NOT succeed. Because they would have missed three things about his formula.
1. LKY did not blindly pursue one political school of thought or other. He just did what he thought was right given the circumstances and was able to do so because he had the intellect to figure out the best way forward
2. LKY may have rode roughshod over his opponents but he had a team, a good team, to whom he remain open-minded towards and was capable of changing his mind and course correct
3. LKY was incorruptible and lived his life in a way that he was whiter-than-white
There you have it, he was not just clever, he was wise. He was not just wise, he proved that it's possible because he lived it himself.
We won't see another like him. I certainly won't. Not in my lifetime. Speaking of my lifetime, he did change my life, through the award of the ASEAN scholarship. I applied for it, got it, moved here and now live here. Thank you, Mr Lee Kuan Yew
Photo credit: unknown, taken from an image on the internet
