I’m very determined. If I decide that something is worth doing, then I’ll put my heart and soul to it.
The whole ground can be against me, but if I know it is right, I’ll do it. That’s the business of a leader.
Singapore did not have a grassland climate in which rain fell gently from the skies. Instead, being part of an equatorial region, it experienced torrential rainfall that would wash off the topsoil and with it the vital nutrients necessary for strong plant growth. In an equatorial forest, with tall big trees forming a canopy, the rain water drips down. But in Singapore, where the trees had been chopped down, it would all come down in a big wash.
I sent them on missions all along the Equator and the tropical, subtropical zones, looking for new types of trees, plants, creepers and so on.
For him, the object of the exercise was not all about smelling roses. In the end it was about keeping Singapore ahead of the competition. A well kept garden, he would say, is a daily effort, and would demonstrate to outsiders the people’s ability to organize and to be systematic.
The great Asian revolutionaries — Mao, Nehru, Sukarno, and HCM — earned their rightful place in history but failed to build on their revolutionary zeal. Lee’s place is, of course, smaller. But he has been able to achieve what they could not, which was not only to destroy the old system but also to create a new and more successful one.
What mattered to him was whether a thing works or not, with practice providing the best test. If it had been tried out elsewhere, he would want to know what the experience had bene. If it had not, he was willing to try it out if it was worthwhile doing so. This was a constant refrain in his speeches and interviews. There was no grand theory to explain the world according to Lee.
He had started off as a student in England believing that wealth generation was a natural product of labor, and that the difference between a good society and a bad one was in how the fruits of that labor were distributed. But when he saw how costly such a system was to maintain, and the practical consequences of subsidizing a man for the rest of his life, whether for health care or public housing, he made the switch in Singapore. If a man did not own his home but rented it from the state, why would he look after it properly? If medical service were free, would it not lead to an unsustainable system and a bottomless pit?
If there was one golden thread in Lee’s approach, it was his constant striving to seek results, not in proving a theory right.
Second was his doggedness to achieve those results, never losing sight of his objectives, and relentlessly clearing all obstacles in the way.
I would say that I’m very determined when I set out to do something. First, I’ve got to decide whether something is worth doing. If it’s not worth doing, well, I’m not prepared to spend the time over it, to make the effort. Then I just coast along, it doesn’t matter whether it succeeds or doesn’t succeed, it’s of no consequence.
But if I decide that something is worth doing, then I’ll put my heart and soul into it. I’ll give everything I’ve got to make it succeed. So I would put my strength, determination and willingness to see my objective to its conclusion. Whether I can succeed or not, that’s another matter — but I will give everything I’ve got to make sure it succeeds. If you have decided something is worth doing, you’ve got to remove all obstacles to get there.
The American media had debased public respect for their leaders and had played a key part in changing social customs and mores, not necessarily for the better.
I’ve never been over concerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think a leader who is, is a weak leader. If you are concerned with whether your rating will go up or down, then you are not a leader. You are just catching the wind, you will go where the wind is blowing. And that’s not what I am in this for.
Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless. When I say something, to make it easier for me to govern, I have to be taken very seriously. So when I say “please don’t do that,” you do it, I have to punish you because I was not joking when I said that. And when I punish, it’s to punish publicly. And people will know the next time, if you want to do that when he said “no, don’t do it,” you must be prepared for a brutal encounter.
My job is to persuade my flock, my people, that that’s the right way. And sometimes it may be necessary not to tell them all the facts because you will scare them.
What the crowd thinks of me from time to time, I consider totally irrelevant.
The whole ground can be against, but if I know this is right, I set out to do it, and I am quite sure, given time, as events unfold, I will win over the ground. My job as a leader is to make sure that before the next elections, enough has developed and disclosed itself to the people to make it possible for me to swing them around. That’s the business of a leader — not to follow the crowd. That’s a washout. The country will go down the drain.
But a leader without the vision, the idea to strive to improve things, is no good. Then you’ll just stay put, you won’t progress.
You must read. It’s one way of getting information. But you’ve got to read what’s relevant, not only what you’re interested in.
You must not overlook the importance of discussions with knowledgeable people. I would say that is much more productive than absorbing or running through masses of documents. Because in a short exchange, you can abstract from somebody who has immense knowledge and experience the essence of what he had gained. In a 1-hour exchange over dinner with some people who are knowledgeable in certain fields, you get the hang of a particular problem.
But more than reading, it’s a frame of mind, it’s an interest in the things around you that matters, and taking note of the happenings in other countries.
You can read about it, but it’s irrelevant if you don’t relate it to yourself or Singapore’s problems, which I constantly do.
He is in the oil business. He did not predict this. So we cannot be discouraged. In our way forward, things will happen which will offer us opportunities, which we will seize and can hold only if we remain alert, and on the ball, and competitive. In other words, finally, what matters is the quality of your manpower or quality of the teamwork behind the managers and your infrastructure.
If you want a soft life, better not get into this.
So I led a pretty disciplined life; if the worst came to the worst, I could survive. I can live quite frugally if I need to. It became a way of remolding my life in a direction or in a way which would withstand a sharp attack on it.
He said to me, “Make your name at the law first and make your fortune, then go into politics,” which was what people of his generation did. That was conventional wisdom. You make a name at the law, you make your fortune, then you go into Congress politics, as in India.
My great advantage was I have a wife who could be a sole breadwinner and bring the children up. That was my insurance policy. Without such a wife, I would have been hard-pressed. To be fair, I was able to make these decisions because I had this fallback position, I was insured.
But what I cannot understand to this day is why Marcos looted the place clean. What was the point of it? I find that not understandable. He ate very frugally. His clothes were not $20K. So why?
I can only believe that, as young people, they were deprived and hungry. And they imagined that iff you have all this wealth, you will be very happy. And having got started, they believe that they can make their children and grandchildren happy, which is a fallacy. They are building up unhappiness.
Lee’s determination to do what he considers the right thing and the strength of his convictions has meant that he has had to make many unpopular decisions.
“In many cases it cannot be helped. I don’t consciously go out to make enemies of people. But when we are on opposite sides, we have to fight. You fight for your cause, I fight for mine, it cannot be helped. But you shouldn’t extend that beyond the person involved.”
Being a politician has also made him more wary of people, especially those who might use their relationship with him for their own game.
“I’ve got used to that and I think I’m pretty sensitive in discerning who’s on the level and who’s wanting to get something out of me. One of the qualities that you need to have to last as a leader is you must be good at that, otherwise you get taken for a ride. You must be able to smell people out.”
Lee acknowledges that if Singapore had been under another person, the manner in which the country was run would probably have been quite different.
Why should I go and undertake this job and spend my whole life pushing this for a lot of people for whom nothing is good enough? I would seriously think of other jobs.
Given this kind of a Singapore, I’d ask myself: What they need is a real setback and then they’ll understand how damn fortunate they are. Then they will learn. Let the setback take place first, then I’ll enter politics.
I had a job to do. I had come to the conclusion by about ’76 that my most important job was to get a team that could carry on the work, otherwise we would fail. We filled some bright PhDs. They couldn’t do it. You need more than a capacity to write treatise or argue logically. You need practical minds, tough characters who will push a policy through.
I said the most decisive leader was Tony Tan. He would say yes or no and he would stick to it. Goh Chok Tong would try to please you. If he sits back and talks to his Cabinet, then he comes out with a firm position, after long discussion. But if you engage him in a press conference, you might get him to make some concessions.
You will never get Tony Tan to do that. You won’t get me to do that. You can talk to me till the cows come home; if I have decided that this is no go, it is no go. You may be unhappy, but I am quite convinced, after 6 months, maybe after 6 years, you will know that I was right.
It’s not by accident that we go here. Every possible thing that could have gone wrong, we had tried to pre-empt. That’s how we got here, that’s why we have substantial reserves. Because if we don’t have reserves, the moment we run into trouble, who will lend you money when you’ve got no gold mines or oil fields? We’ve got nothing. All we have is this functioning organism which requires brains, specialized skills put together in a very intricate form, with inputs from many nations and their experts in financial services, manufacturing, tourism, all sorts of economic activities put together. It’s not easy to replicate.
I would not dismiss religion as so much superstition. The communists have failed in stamping out religion because it is part of human nature.
It is a question of faith which, in the case of the communists, had nothing to do with God. It is a question of faith, the belief that something is right and they’re going to do it. So if you ask me, what is my faith, I’ll say, well, I believe certain things are worth doing and let’s do it.
Ask a man in his 70s like me what is happiness, and I would say a certain serenity of mind, a certain satisfaction with having done things which were worth doing and in not having more than one’s normal share of tragedies.
All I can say is, I did my best. This was the job I undertook, I did my best and I could not have done more in the circumstances. What people think of it, I have to leave to them. It is of no great consequence. What is of consequence is, I did my best.
In 1907, 227K Chinese immigrants landed in Singapore. 1909: 152K. 1911: 270K.
There were 3 choices for a profession: medicine, law, engineering.
And some ran gambling farms in the New World and Great World. And millions of Japanese dollars were won and lost each night. They collected the money, shared it with, I suppose, whoever were in charge: the Japanese Kempeitai and the government or generals or whatever. Then they bought properties. In that way they became very wealthy at the end of the war because the property transactions were recognized. But the notes were not.
I saw Britain and I saw the British people as they were. And while I met nothing but consideration and a certain benevolence from people at the top, at the bottom, when I had to deal with landladies and the shopkeepers and so on, it was pretty rough. They treated you as colonials and I resented that. Here in Singapore, you didn’t come across the white man so much. He was in a superior position. But there you are in a superior position meeting white men and white women in an inferior position socially. They have to serve you and so on in the shops. And I saw no reason why they should be governing me; they’re not superior.
In a security sweep, the government detains 35 communists including 5 members of the newly elected PAP CEC and 11 PAP branch officials. Lee and his colleagues took the opportunity to consolidate their strength by creating a cadre system within the party. Only cadres were allowed to vote for the CEC. In turn, only the CEC could approve cadre membership. Thus Lee and his largely English educated colleagues were able to retain leadership of the party even though most o fits ordinary members were Chinese educated.
That’s the first thing I learnt about the Japanese. If you wan to succeed, that is the kind of society you have to be. Whatever you can do, do to the best of your ability. They have succeeded.
Whereas if you go to India, you’ll find sadhus, holy men, people who adjure the world, who go around giving land away or begging from the rich to give to the poor. It’s a totally different culture. There’s the sort of Gandhi saintliness. It’s not the model in China. In China, the model is either Three Kingdoms or Water Margin, the kind of hero who forms a robber band and kills off wealthy people. You don’t go begging from the wealthy to give to the poor. You just kill the wealthy and take from them.
So it is a completely different philosophy to guide a man in life. The Indians have a more tolerant and forgiving approach to life. More next-worldly. If you do good, then in the next world you’ll get rewarded.
At one time, he contended that as much as 80% of his was due to nature.
I think you must have something in you to be a “have” nation. You must want. That is the crucial thing. Before you have, you must want to have. And to want to have means to be able to first, to perceive what it is what you want; secondly, to discipline and organize yourself in order to possess the things you want — the industrial sinews or our modern economic base; and thirdly, the grit and the stamina, which means culturally mutations in the way of life in large parts of the tropical areas of the world where the human being has never found it necessary to work in the summer, harvest before the autumn, and save it up for the winter.
I think Asia can be very clearly demarcated into several distinct parts — East Asia is one: it has got a different tempo of its own. So have South Asia and Southeast.
Could other societies repeat their experience by emulating the economic policies they had adopted, as had been suggested by a 1994 WB report on the East Asian economies? Lee thought not. Unless the necessary values — hard work, thrift, an emphasis on education — were present, simply emulating the economic policies would not suffice to take others down the East Asian road to material progress.
But the WB report’s conclusions are part of the culture of American and, by extension, of international institutions. It had to present its findings in a bland and universalizable way, which I find unsatisfying because it doesn’t grapple with the real problems. It makes the hopeful assumption that all men are equal, that people all over the world are the same. They are not.
Genes cannot be created, right? But the culture you can tinker. It’s slow to change, but it can be changed — by experience — otherwise human beings will not survive. If a certain habit does not help survival, well, you must quickly unlearn that habit.
Singapore Chinese on the whole considered the acquisition of wealth to be one of the most important aims in lie, and almost an end in itself; they are indefatigable workers and keen businessmen. Singapore Malays, on the othe hand, attached great importance to easy and graceful living.
You don’t have to offend people because they are not as good as you. I mean I’m not as smart as an Israeli or many Chinese for that matter .But that doesn’t mean that I’m not to be treated as equal in my rights as a human being.
The danger is very real and very present because parents who have go through a hard life give their children what they’d missed — comfort, all the sweets, all the toys, all the jeans and fancy shoes which they wish they had had when they were young. That breeds a certain attitude of mind in the young which is not very good for them.
Nothing, in this regard, was more important than preserving the family as the most basic and fundamental unit of society. A society able to do so would find half its problems solved, and would not require government, with its unwieldy bureaucracy and its tendency to succumb to corruption and lobby groups, to intervene. Indeed, he would place blame for much of the social ills of the West on the breakup of the family unit.
By and large, it’s a problem still at the top. Only the highly educated have that degree of bi-culturism where they are more Western than Eastern. At the middle and in the lower ranges, it’s still very much an Asian society. The Western habits, songs, dances, whether it’s a disco or Swing Singapore, their dress styles or their fast foods, that’s just a veneer. But if it seeps down, if we are not conscious of what is happening and we allow this process to go on unchecked, and it seeps down, then I believe we have a bigger problem to deal with, where the middle ranges will also be more Western than Asian.
I would hate to believe that the poor, ragged, undernourished Chinese coolie and the equally ragged Malay peon and driver and Indian laborer had the inner strength to build today’s Singapore, and their children with all the nice clothes, well-fed, all the vitamins, all the calories, protein, careful dental care, careful medical checks, PT, well-ventilated homes, they lost that inner drive.
Well, it’s part of the law, and it will be enforced if anybody breaches it. But if you ask the human rights groups, that’s a violation of human rights, we should allow everybody to do what they like. Free speech and free conversions, then you’ll have an enlightened society. I do not accept that as the happy conclusion or outcome.
In all these new Asiatic states, it is the returned students who have led the fight for independence.
Returned students in any British colony fall broadly into 2 classes:
- The rich man’s son
- The impecunious government scholar
The first, on returning home, finds himself better equipped to be a bigger and more efficient capitalist entrepreneur. The second finds himself linked up with the colonial administrative system, given positions second only to the Englishman, who must necessarily in a colonial system always be at the top. But they will be better off than their fellow Asiatics who have not been to England. Hence both groups, on returning to Malaya, find themselves a part of the vested interests of the country, both somewhat reluctant to dislodge the system under which they enjoy these advantages.
These men and women, if left frustrated and underprivileged in Malaya, would turn their energies to the overthrow of a system where they are not given the opportunity to attain what they feel is their rightful due from society.
Empires never last forever. Either the master and subject races finally merge into one unified society as in Britain, where the Welsh and Scots, once English-dominated, now form part of one political society, enjoying equal rights with the English. Or the empire ends with the subject races violently resisting and finally emerging as a separate national and political entity as in the case of the Irish Republic, India, Pakistan and Indonesia. The indefinite continuance of the subjugation of one race over another is only possible where the subject race is inherently, both mentally and physically, inferior.
How far these governments can counter the appeal and force of communism will depend on how far they are bold enough to carry out social reforms in the teeth of their own vested interests.
We, the returned students, would be the type of leaders that the British would find relatively the more acceptable. For if the choice lies, as in fact it does, between a communist republic of Malaya, and a Malaya within the British Commonwealth, led by the people who despite their opposition to imperialism still share certain ideals in common with the Commonwealth, there is little doubt which alternative the British will find the lesser evil.
The 2nd is the development of a united political front that will be strong enough without resorting to armed force, to demand a transfer of power.
For whatever the rights and wrongs of communism, no one can deny its tremendous appeal to the masses.
A Tory government determined, like the French government in Indochina, to thwart the nationalist aspirations of the people will send all moderate nationalists over to the communists — and this indeed is what has happened in Indochina.
We have no personal future apart from your future. Your joys and your sorrows are ours. We share the same future be it good, indifferent, or bad. And so it is our duty to see that it is a bright and cheerful future.
It is not possible to have lengthy discussions with them because to them, you read this book and everything is in this book. They were not profound thinkers. You cannot carry on a philosophical discussion with an active communist cadre. He thinks you’re a buffoon, you’re wasting time.
One of the most important lessons I think we have to learn, and learn very quickly, is that when people emerge to independence they don’t necessarily emerge from decadence to progress. It often happens that things get worse and there is no doubt about it, that if you allow your social organization to sag, it will take an awfully long time to hold the thing together again to make sense. And it is easy for it to sag.
The tragedy about the 1-man-1-vote system is that it is often easier to raise the bid, not knowing or, even worse, knowing full well that you will never be able to fulfill your promises. And the highest bidder usually wins. In all new countries, the electorate is inexperienced, unsophisticated.
Authority has got to be exercised. And when authority is not backed by position, prestige or usage, then it has to defend actively against challenge. But let me explain this. I went to India, that is a different composition. Authority there is not challenged. Mr Nehru is there. He is there and has been there almost as long as the Himalayas. Nobody doubts that he is going to be there as long as he lives. And that immediately produces a stiffening effect on the population, on the civil service, on the administration, the people. There is the old boy, he is going to be there, never mind all that shouting going on, everybody knows he is the man to trust.
Men’s minds turn to revolution when things are getting worse, not when things are getting better. That is fundamental. What we want to do here is to make things get better.
At the end of our tenure of office, it is our intention that there should be more equality of opportunity for education and advancement. To fulfill this intention will require a tremendous expenditure of the national revenue on education, expenditure which cannot be made unless there is an expansion of the whole economy. And if there his one overriding problem which we must resolve, it is that of creating sufficient expansion in the economy: (1) to provide the jobs for a growing population, and (2) to provide the revenue to educate the younger half of that growing population.
It is laid down that no Member shall have the right to participate as a representative of the people unless he swears this oath.
And don’t be too kind. If you want to be kind to your people, to our people, then you have got to be firm; and at times, stern to the who have a duty to perform, to see that the duty is performed.
I don’t want 2nd-raters and the 3rd-raters in and 1st-class men out-fighting us, because that is a stupid way of running the country. I want 1st-class men prosecuting. I don’t mind a 1st-class man defending, because if you got a 1st-class men prosecuting and a good officer who has prepared his Investigation Papers, you will get a conviction.
I think you must have something in you to be a “have” nation. You must want. That is the crucial thing. Before you have, you must want to have.
New countries can choose either this laissez-faire system of the West and allow complete free play and competition between TV stations, dailies and weeklies, or follow the closed and controlled system of communist countries, or some intermediate point between the two, depending on the level of education and sophistication of their peoples and the political traditions and style of the governments. But in practice, new countries, particularly the smaller ones, cannot altogether insulate themselves from outside news and views.
On the other hand, in several new countries in Asia, every election is an exercise in auctioning the country’s nonexistent reserves and future production.
The mass media can create a mood in which people become keen to acquire the knowledge, skills and disciplines of advanced countries. Without these, we can never hope to raise the standards of living of our people.
If they are to develop, people in the new countries cannot afford to imitate the fads and fetishes of the contemporary West.
I used to believe that when Singaporeans become more sophisticated, with higher standards of education, these problems will diminish. But watching Belfast, Brussels and Montreal, rioting over religion and language, I wonder whether such phenomena can ever disappear.
In the growing contest for maritime supremacy of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, the great powers are prepared to spend time and money to influence Singaporeans toward policies more to their advantage. They play it long and cool. Foreign agencies from to time use local proxies to set up or buy into newspapers, make political gains by shaping opinions and attitudes.
My colleagues and I have the responsibility to neutralize their intentions. In such a situation, freedom of the press, freedom of the news media, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of the integrity of Singapore, and to the primary purposes of an elected government.
I do not want to be dogmatic. If we were 30M and not 3M, I think the system would work differently because the number of people available to form a Cabinet would multiply by 10. Or if we were 300M people, then it will multiply by 100. Then if you have so many people, although you may run a good system, it is still possible somebody outside there, some maverick, can get together a comparable group and can challenge you. And in a moment of unhappiness, the people will vote the other way.
I could have put into a 5-page note what I am going to tell you. But it will not have the same impact. The spoken word is always stronger, more emotive, and commands attention. The written word requires a practiced, educated mind to extract nuances of meaning.
Dr. Goh gives every officer whom he thinks is promising a whose minutes or papers are deficient in clarity, a paperback edition of Complete Plain Words.
Human beings are never moved by written words. It is the spoken word that arouses them to action.
When I was a law student I learned that every word, every sentence, has 3 possible meanings: what the speaker intends it to mean, what the hearer understands it to mean, and what it is commonly understood to mean.
Well, then say so. But somebody wanted to impress me by dressing up his ideas in many important words. Next time impress me with the simple way you get your ideas across to me.
The written English we want is clean, clear prose. I choose my words carefully — not elegant, not stylish, just clean, clear prose. It means simplifying, polishing and tightening.
Remember: That which is written without much effort is seldom read with much pleasure. The more the pleasure, you can assume, as a rule of thumb, the greater the effort.
My experience is that attending courses helps but not as much as lessons tailored for you. You have written a memo. Somebody runs through it and points out your errors: “You could have said it this way.” “This is an error.” “This can be broken into 2 sentences.” In other words, superiors and peers and even subordinates who spot errors should be encouraged to point them out.
But there was no sparkle in their pages. The contrast in Hazard was dazzling. From the undergraduate paper, the Harvard Crimson, to the Boston Globe to the NYT to the Washington Post, every page crackled with novel ideas smartly presented. Powerful minds had ordered those words. Ideas had been thought out and dressed in clean, clear prose. They were from the best train minds of an English-speaking population of 220M.
The better educated the woman is, the less children she has. Ironically she has the greater resources to provide her children with a better environment, nurturing and care.
The government has concentrated on better health, education and housing to improve performance through better environment. Parents must be made to do their part in family nurturing which is only possible in small families.
Our most valuable asset is in the ability to of our people. Yet we are frittering away this asset through the unintended consequences of changes in our education policy and equal career opportunities for women. This has affected their traditional role as mothers.
Finally, I decided that Shell had the best system of them all, and the government switched from 40 attributes to 3, which they called “helicopter qualities,” which they have implemented and they are able to judge their executives worldwide and grade them for helicopter qualities. What are they? Powers of analysis; logical grasp of the facts; concentration on the basic points, extracting the principles. You score high marks in mathematics, you’ve got it. But that’s not enough. There are brilliant mathematicians but they make poor executives. They must have a sense of reality of what is possible. But if you are just realistic, you become pedestrian, plebeian, you will fail. Therefore you must be able to soar above the reality and say, “This is also possible” — a sense of imagination.
Then Shell has evolved certain other attributes — leadership and dynamism — a natural ability that drives a person on and drives the people around him to make the effort.
One corporate chief who was head of a think-tank passed a scathing judgement on British Cabinet ministers — that of the 20-odd Cabinet ministers, he doubted if 3 would be CEOs of British corporations.
It started off with the Korean War in the 1950s when the US built up Japan. Then the Vietnam War — the US had to source their supplies from Southeast Asia. From Japan, the industrialization went to Korea, to Taiwan, to HK, to Singapore. The Plaza Agreement in 1985 pushed up the yen so the Japanese had to relocate their industries at the lower end. Then the Americans put pressure on the Koreans and on the Taiwanese and on us and pushed our currency up, so we in turn had to relocate. And now there is a web of cross-investments right across the Pacific, the western end. Unless we are fools and start going to war with each other, we are all going to boom.
This is a demanding electorate. Everybody strives to get up to the highest he can of the education ladder. And he wants somebody who is better than him to represent him. He doesn’t want somebody he can talk down to.
Every contractor has an elaborate supervisory system. He has his relatives. He has his trusted “kepalas.” They hin turn have each gan and they know each person in that group and each person has got to produce results to deserve the pay. Now if I hire them all, including the “kepalas” who don’t know each other, you’ll be lucky if you get half a flat for where you would have a flat. All these ties of kinship and personal obligations ensured success.
There is a price to be paid for hypocrisy. Ministers deal with billions of dollars in contracts. It is so easy.
It is crucial when you have tranquil Singapore that you recognize that politics demands that extra of a person, a commitment to people and to ideals. You are not just doing a job. This is a vocation; not unlike the priesthood. You must feel for the people, you must want to change society and make lives better.
If this salary formula can draw out higher quality men into politics, whatever their motivations, I say, let’s have them. It’s better than the opposition we now have. If we can get in opposition people of the calibre of the Nominated MPs, I say Singapore is better off. At least I respect them. I can join in the argument. The only one that I find worth listening to is Mr Low Thia Chiang. The others, I switch off.
That is the core of the question. Can you have a good government without good men in charge of government? American liberals believe you can, that you can have a good system of government proper separation of powers between the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary, plus checks and balances between them, regular tussles between Congress and the White House, and between the House Of Representatives and the Senate in the US, and there will be good government even if weak or not so good men win elections and take charge. That’s their belief.
My experience in Asia has led me to a different conclusion. To get good government, you must have good men in charge of government. I have observed in the last 40 years that even with a poor system of government, but with good strong men in charge, people get passable government with decent progress.
On the other hand, I have seen many ideal systems of government fail. Britain and France between them wrote over 80 constitutions for their different colonies. Nothing wrong with the constitution, with the institutions and the checks and the balances. But the societies did not have the leaders who could work those institutions, nor the men who respected the institutions. Furthermore, the esteem, the habits of obedience to a person because of his office, not because of his person, is something that takes generations to build into a people. But the leaders who inherited these constitutions were not equal to the job and their countries failed and their system collapsed in riots, in coups and in revolution. So every time I hear people criticizing us. When we are successful, they say we are sterile. When you are not successful, they say look at the slums, look at the degradation, look at the filth. These are the wiseacres. We have got to live with the consequences of our actions and we are responsible for our own people and we take the right decisions for them.
But what is it we are arguing about? The government today — ministers, Cabinet ministers, parliamentary secretaries, political secretaries, everybody — cost $17M a year. That’s the cost, working a GDP of nearly $90B growing at 8%, which is $6B a year. You have wrong men here, it’s a disaster.
I think the best metaphor of simile for a PM is really a conductor; in other words, he’s got to know something about each instrument; what sounds they make, where they come in. When I started my job I didn’t, but I had to learn it quickly — home affairs, finance. You have to have stability. You have to have an economy going. You’ve got to have labor relations, education, national development, housing, the whole lot. You must know how to deploy your resources, not just money, but manpower. So at any one time a certain sector is the most important one and I send my best minister and my best permanent secretary to support him to make sure that that sector succeeds.
And he’s got to decide how he rewards them. Now he needs people in his team who are goal-scorers. Any team, to win, must have sharpshooters. In other words, in government, you must have ideas, you must create new concepts, build new institutions and be innovators and not simply followers of orthodoxy.
“Right, let’s try EDB and sell Singapore to America, to Europe, to Japan as a manufacturing center.” Nobody had an EDB in the world. We formed one.
And we put in our brightest and our best. You want to know why you’ve got good jobs, why you are doing well? Because every year I allowed Dr Goh to have his pick.
This is not administration, doing a job. This is entrepreneurship on the political stage, on a national scale. We changed the complexion of Singapore.
I make no apologies for collecting the most talented team I could find. Without them, none of you would be enjoying life today in Singapore, including the reporters up there. I say this without any compunction. Who pays for all this? A Singapore economy which has been so finely tuned that it is able to take advantage of every opportunity that comes out.
I was determined that before the soldier fights for Singapore he must have something to fight for. Each family must own their home. So I set out right from the word go against any opposition from any quarter to build up the CPF.
The next day, Mr. LKY delivered one of his last major speeches in Parliament and took it upon himself to “bring the House back to earth.” He argued that equality of men is an aspiration rather than the reality.
We explicitly state in our Constitution a duty on behalf of the Government not to treat everybody as equal.
It is not reality, it is not practical, it will lead to grave and irreparable damage if we work on that principle. So this was an aspiration.
Nowhere does it say that the blacks would be differently treated. But the blacks did not get the vote until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. An enormous riot took place and eventually President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act, and it took many more decades before the southern states, which kept the blacks in their position, allowed the registration of black voters and subsequently even after that, to allow black students to go into white schools.
It was 200 years before an exceptional half-black American became president.
The way that Singapore has made progress is by a realistic step-by-step forward approach.
It may take us centuries before we get to a similar position as the Americans. They go to wars — the blacks and the whites.
In WW1, they did not carry arms, they carried the ammo, they were not given the honor to fight.
In WW2, they went back, they were ex-GIs — those who could make it to university were given the GI grants — but they went back to their black ghettos and they stayed there. And today there are still black ghettos.
Up to 1911, the hereditary noblemen in the House of Lords had as much power as the people’s representatives in the House of Commons. Women got the vote only in 1928. And extra votes for Oxbridge University graduates and businessmen were abolished only in 1948.
The US declared independence in 1776. In 1788 the constitution gave the vote only to the who paid property tax or poll tax, which meant the well-to-do.
Equalite, fratemite, and égalité in 1789 did not succeed as a democracy until the 20th century.
Is it any wonder then that so many Third World countries, former colonies that have received democratic institutions fashioned after US, British, French, Belgian, Dutch, Portuguese constitutions were not able to make these constitutions work without radically altering their nature, like converting themselves into one-party systems? What the UK, US, and France took 200 years to evolve, these new countries, without the economic, educational and social preconditions, were expected to work upon independence, when during all the years of colonial tutelage there were no elections and no democratic government.
The existence of a civic society is a precondition for success in democratic government. What is a civic society? It is a society with the whole series of institutions between family and state to which citizens belong, independent voluntary associations, religious institutions, trade unions, professional organizations, movements to promote specific common interests, whether the Green movement, or the gun lobby, or anti-smoking, and so on.
Neither country has a background for democratic government. There are no habits in the people for dissension or disagreement within a restrained and peaceful context. Murders and violence are part of every Filipino election. The lawlessness that is in Sind province, the shootings with heavy weapons and automatics between warring Sindhis, Muhajirs, Pashtuns in Karachi bear witness to the absence of a civic society.
As an Asian of Chinese cultural background, my values are for a government which is honest, effective and efficient in protecting its people, and allowing opportunities for all to advance themselves in a stable and orderly society, where they can live a good life and raise their children to do better than themselves. In other words:
- People are well cared for, their food, housing, employment, health.
- There is order and justice under the rule of law, and not the capricious, arbitrariness of individual rulers. There is no discrimination between peoples, regardless of race, language, religion. No great extremes of wealth.
- As much personal freedom as possible but without infringing on the freedom of others.
- Growth in the economy and progress in society.
- Good and ever improving education.
- High moral standards of rulers and of the people.
- Good physical infrastructure, facilities for recreation, music, culture and the arts; spiritual and religious freedoms, and a full intellectual life.
All can immediately see that the developed and educated peoples of the world will be swamped by the undeveloped and uneducated, and that no progress will be possible. Indeed, if the UK and US had given universal suffrage to their peoples in the 19th cent, then economic and social progress might well have been less rapid.
The weakness of democracy is that the assumption that all men are equal and capable of equal contribution to the common good is flawed. This is a dilemma. Do we insist on ideals when they do not fit into practical realities of the world as we know it? Or do we compromise and adjust to realities?
Placed in HK, where the only outlet for his energies would be the pursuit of wealth, he must have acquired a different set of values and have set himself different goals in life.
My HK twin might have wanted to rebel against the British, but he would have found himself frustrated. He would then set out to make money, a useful activity, and exciting for the successful.
How much of that was in his nature, how much of that was due to his nurture, the culture of the Japanese and their tradition of fatalism and unremitting effort to rebuild after each earthquake, each typhoon, each tidal wave, I shall never know.