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Lee Kuan Yew Dead at 91

Edward Campbell

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Media is reporting that Lee Kuan Yew has died at the age of 91.

He was a towering figure in Asia ~ he provided a socio-economic model of conservative democracy that will be the foundation for whatever success the Chinese Communists may have in this century.

Lee did not believe that Western liberal democracy was best suited for Asia ... he thought it could be made to work, could be adapted, but he thought there was a better model and he imposed it on Singapore.

The system protects the fundamental rights of everyone that John Locke and John Stuart Mill would recognize: life, liberty, property and conscience, and the system is firmly rooted in respect for the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.

Singapore has one of the most open and honest governments in the world (always in the top 10, usually in the top five in both categories) and one of the most efficient ... based on a small, highly professional, dedicated and honest civil service ... small because many so called "public services," while regulated, are provided by the private sector ... dedicated and honest because the civil servant are not drones, they are valued policy people and they are very well paid.

His counsel has been central to China since Deng Xiaoping; be sure that Xi Jinping will lead a large and very, very high powered delegation to his funeral. His influence will be felt long after we've forgotten all about Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton.
 
He was a central figure in Singapore and will be missed.In the US due to our insular education system few even know who he was.
 
Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from The Economist, is an interesting bit of strategic fallout from Lee Kuan Yew's policies:

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21647094-taiwans-president-makes-unprecedented-foreign-visit-singapore-friends-afar
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Friends from afar
Taiwan’s president makes an unprecedented foreign visit, to Singapore

Mar 24th 2015

ONE of the remarkable features of Singapore’s foreign policy under Lee Kuan Yew was the country’s ability to maintain close relations with Taiwan without jeopardising relations with China. As if wishing to underscore the point, Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, made an unprecedented visit to Singapore on March 24th to pay respects to Mr Lee a day after his death. It is extremely rare for a Taiwanese president to be admitted into a country that is not one of Taiwan’s dwindling number of formal diplomatic allies—22 at the last count. Upon his arrival in Singapore, Mr Ma was treated by Mr Lee’s family as a personal friend and invited to join the family wake. Then, a few hours later, he flew back to Taiwan. 

China insists that Taiwan is a renegade province with no right to conduct its own diplomacy. Since he was first elected president in 2008, Mr Ma has done nothing to rile China with freelance diplomatic moves. Until his flying visit to Singapore, he had visited no country that has diplomatic ties with China, other than stopovers in transit. Even after Mr Ma’s plane had taken off, his office would not confirm his trip, given the diplomatic sensitivities. Although couched as a personal visit, not a formal one, this is still a diplomatic coup for Taiwan.

Mr Ma did not want to push his luck. He will not attend Mr Lee’s funeral on March 29th and will therefore avoid embarrassing Chinese leaders bumping into him there. Still, his visit underscores the depth of relations between Taiwan and Singapore, says Andrew Yang, a former Taiwanese deputy defence minister. Even military ties are close. Singaporean soldiers still train in Taiwan under an agreement forged in the mid-1970s between Mr Lee and Chiang Ching-kuo, the island’s last dictator. The agreement was designed to allow soldiers from urban Singapore to conduct large military exercises in a country with a little more open space. Economic ties are also flourishing. Taiwan has signed free-trade deals with only two countries that also have diplomatic ties with China, and Singapore is one of them (the other is New Zealand).

China seems content with Singapore acting as something of a go-between with Taiwan. With Mr Lee as intermediary, in 1993 Singapore hosted the first direct talks between Taiwan and China since 1949. Mr Ma’s presidential website claims that Taiwan and its people are eternally grateful for Mr Lee’s contributions—not just to relations between Taiwan and Singapore, but also to relations across the Taiwan Strait.


My guess is that Xi Jinping will say nothing about this ... it is, indeed, something of a coup for President Ma, but he is smart enough to not push his luck and China will not display bad manners during the Lee family's mourning.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
My guess is that Xi Jinping will say nothing about this ... it is, indeed, something of a coup for President Ma, but he is smart enough to not push his luck and China will not display bad manners during the Lee family's mourning.

I agree.  Any sign of bad etiquette now would be disastrous for China from the other Asian countries, as it's a mourning period.
 
This opinion piece, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is the progressive/Laurentian Elite view of Lee Kuan Yew's legacy:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/lee-kuan-yew-gave-singapore-independence-and-the-world-a-bad-idea/article23610260/
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Lee Kuan Yew gave Singapore independence, and the world a bad idea

MARCUS GEE
The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Mar. 25 2015

Marcus Gee is Toronto columnist for The Globe and Mail. In 1981-82, he was stationed in Singapore as a correspondent for the regional newsmagazine Asiaweek.

Praise for Lee Kuan Yew, who died on Monday at the age of 91, is coming in from around the world. Just about everyone agrees he did marvels for his country, transforming Singapore from a swampy colonial port to an economic dynamo in the course of a generation. What he did for the world was less admirable.

His main contribution was to legitimize the idea that you can have progress without democracy, at least the kind with a robust opposition, critical press and changes of government. Mr. Lee was prime minister of his city-state for 31 straight years, brooking little dissent. His son, Lee Hsien Loong, is PM today, though he is considered smart and capable in his own right. Their People’s Action Party has held power since 1959.

“The exuberance of democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions which are inimical to development,” the senior Lee once said.

Strongmen around the world applauded. Gulf State sheiks celebrated him. Russia’s Vladimir Putin was a fan. A succession of Chinese leaders sought his advice. If he could raise his country to riches without all the fuss and bother of democratic politics, why couldn’t they?

Even Western democracies sometimes wondered if he might have a point when he said that rampant individualism and cranky special-interest politics were holding them back.

The kind of leader that Mr. Lee personified – stern, fatherly, morally upright, far-seeing, a good shepherd to his flock – has enormous appeal even in a democratic age. If such a leader can deliver the goods, many would say, well, then, who cares about a free press or a critical opposition?

The trouble is that the world produces very few such leaders. Mr. Lee was all but unique, an incorruptible strongman who really did put country above personal gain. The “Singapore model” is a direct product of his personality. It is hard to think of a place that bears its leader’s imprint so clearly.

A brilliant, London-educated lawyer, Mr. Lee led Singapore to independence and immediately set about remaking it in his own image: tough, disciplined, pragmatic, self-reliant. When he was prime minister, his officials and ministers all sounded like mini-Lees, with their clipped Singapore English and their no-nonsense talk about “the way we do things here.”

Mr. Lee opened the country to foreign trade and investment but held a choke hold on politics, keeping the media tamed and the tiny opposition cowed. There is no denying it: the formula worked. Singapore averaged 7 per cent annual growth for decades, eventually surpassing its old overlord, Britain, in per capita income. Its transit system is extensive, its roads immaculate (and tolled), its schools top-notch, its parks gorgeous.

Singapore is hardly a totalitarian state, though you may face a caning for vandalism or hanging for drug trafficking. Open elections are held. The ruling party even lost some ground in the last vote in 2011. Clean, green and perhaps a little bit dull, Singapore is a billboard for what is often called soft authoritarianism.

But the formula wouldn’t have worked without an essential ingredient: Mr. Lee himself. Just look around Singapore’s neighbourhood. Indonesia’s Suharto just next door advertised himself as a benign father of the nation. His regime collapsed under the weight of its corruption in 1998. Something similar happened to Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines in the 1980s.

Without the check of opposition, the scrutiny of a free media and the threat of being tossed out by the voters, most leaders descend along the familiar path to corruption and brutality. That Mr. Lee did not was a function of his character, not of the virtues of the Singapore model.

What calls itself benevolent dictatorship is usually a bust. China’s collective leadership has raised living standards, but at the price of enormous corruption and environmental destruction. Mr. Putin’s bare-chested rule is curdling into aggressive nationalism.

Most dictators don’t make the trains run on time. Far from being models of efficiency, authoritarian governments are usually disastrously inefficient, ridden with graft and – without any mechanism for an orderly transfer of power from one leader to another – prone to sudden collapse.

Mr. Lee’s government was the exception to the rule. His success, sad to say, is probably not transferable. He worked on a small canvas: an island nation of 5.5 million about the size of Toronto.

For better models of development, look to other Asian success stories. Taiwan and South Korea have graduated from authoritarianism to full-throated democracy without sacrificing any of their economic dynamism.

So praise Lee Kuan Yew, by all means. He deserves the accolades he is getting for making his country such a an unlikely success story. But don’t pretend he is a model. Strongman government without true democratic accountability usually ends in failure.


Mr Gee is a smart fellow and I'm fairly sure he knows he's stretching the facts to suit a meme ...

    "His main contribution was to legitimize the idea that you can have progress without democracy ..."
      That, even with the qualifications Mr Gee added, is arrant nonsense. Singapore is a democracy ... it's elections are at least as free and fair as any in the world.
      The opposition is weak because The People's Action Party, Mr Lee's party, very carefully serves the interests of the Chinese majority - the worst electoral result the PAP ever had as 60+% of the popular vote.
      Singapore does have very strict libel laws ~ largely unchanged from the ones that the UK left in force in the 1950s, Many Americans, Brits and Canadians (60 years later) find those laws, which Lee Kuan Yew did use against his
      political opponents, too strict but few can or would argue that they are dangerous. Not, perhaps, suitable for a liberal, Western society, but arguably, suitable for a conservative, Confucian one.

    "The kind of leader that Mr. Lee personified – stern, fatherly, morally upright, far-seeing, a good shepherd to his flock – has enormous appeal even in a democratic age. If such a leader can deliver the goods, many would say,
      well, then, who cares about a free press or a critical opposition? ... The trouble is that the world produces very few such leaders. Mr. Lee was all but unique, an incorruptible strongman who really did put country above personal gain."

      Very true. Lee Kuan Yew never held himself out as an example but he did offer his policies, which as Mr Gee suggests reflected him, to others are guidance. Many others, including Stephen Harper, Barak Obama and Xi Jinping
      should have listened more closely.

    "Singapore is hardly a totalitarian state, though you may face a caning for vandalism or hanging for drug trafficking. Open elections are held. The ruling party even lost some ground in the last vote in 2011. Clean, green and perhaps
      a little bit dull, Singapore is a billboard for what is often called soft authoritarianism ... But the formula wouldn’t have worked without an essential ingredient: Mr. Lee himself ... Without the check of opposition, the scrutiny of
      a free media and the threat of being tossed out by the voters, most leaders descend along the familiar path to corruption and brutality. That Mr. Lee did not was a function of his character, not of the virtues of the Singapore model."

      That's essentially true, but it overemphasizes Lee Kuan Yew himself and understates his policies and practices which, themselves, bore the mark of his personality.

    "Mr. Lee’s government was the exception to the rule. His success, sad to say, is probably not transferable. He worked on a small canvas: an island nation of 5.5 million about the size of Toronto ... For better models of development,
      look to other Asian success stories. Taiwan and South Korea have graduated from authoritarianism to full-throated democracy without sacrificing any of their economic dynamism."

      But Mr Gee ignores that fact, and it is a fact, that the Chinese Communist Party has, explicitly, publicly, rejected "full-throated [liberal, Western] democracy" and is seeking a 'better' model. The only place to look is Singapore and
      it provides two useful models: a workable "soft authoritarian democracy" and a leader for the ages.

The essential lessons from Lee Kuan Yew's model are:

    1. A nation's people are its most valuable resource; worth more than oil or gold or fertile plains;

    2. Equality of opportunity gives people a chance to contribute. Equality of outcomes (the progressive/Laurentian Elite's choice) is valueless, arguably even dangerous;

    3. Open, transparent, honest and efficient public administration is easy, simple and effective;

    4. The public administration should be focused on making policy and managing regulations ... most delivery is done most efficiently and effectively by the private sector (the armed forces and police and similar activities, where the
        full force of the state are applied, are notable exceptions to that general rule);

    5. Good government is a lot like gardening. The people are the soil; good, sound policies are the fertilizers; and the people's votes are the plump, succulent veggies and beautiful flowers that grow in the soil.

Mr Gee and the Laurentian Elites whose opinion he expresses are wrong. Lee Kuan Yew gave the world, including Canada, many, many good ideas.
 
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