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Lee Kuan Yew: A rebel, his cause
AM Hendropriyono , Jakarta | Fri, 10/10/2008 10:48 AM | Opinion
Singapore's founding father, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, turned 85 on Sept. 16 amid a flurry of media attention over the city state's control of the foreign media. Two separate cases have been making the news in recent days.
First, the Singapore Attorney General filed contempt charges earlier this month against the Asian edition of The Wall Street Journal and two of its editors over editorials and a letter by a leading opposition party figure. The Attorney General claims that the paper tarnished the country's judiciary by accusing judges of being biased.
Second, on Sept. 24 the Singapore High Court ruled that the Hong Kong-based monthly magazine Far Eastern Economic Review and its editor had defamed Lee and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, by hinting they were corrupt.
Singapore has often clashed with the press. There is a long and growing list of foreign publications that have faced legal sanctions for extending their coverage to domestic Singaporean politics. In virtually all these cases to date, they have been forced to pay fines, issue apologies and often have their circulation curtailed.
Although Singapore admittedly sets the bar for acceptable criticism very low, Minister Mentor Lee has long contended that the Western press has had its targets set on Singapore because they disagreed with the country's model of governance. This may well be true, as Singapore certainly pushes political values that hardly seem born of the European or American precedents.
Lee, for one thing, made it clear from the start that he did not believe market liberalism needed to go hand in hand with liberal democracy. Ironically, The Wall Street Journal proves this point on an annual basis with its Index of Economic Freedom. In the 2008 edition of this tome, which the Journal copublishes along with The Heritage Foundation, Singapore holds the runner-up slot (closely behind Hong Kong) as the freest economy in the world.
In fact, when ranked against 161 other countries or territories, Singapore received the highest rating when it came to monetary freedom, investment freedom, freedom from corruption, and enforcement of property rights.
These gains, of course, have not been matched with similar latitude with regard to freedom of expression or free speech. Lee has made no apology for this, arguing that such limits are needed for peace and stability, which in turn are necessary to attract investors.
I agree with Lee's point: Freedom of speech, especially in developing nations, should have rational limits to guard against provocations that can all too often cause society to reach flashpoint at lighting speed.
Over the course of his career, Lee made it clear that he is predisposed against direct elections. To paraphrase the minister mentor, such direct polling often amounts to little more than a beauty contest, with popularity too often eclipsing true ability. This is all the more true during today's age of sound bites and the 24-hour news cycle.
That Lee would forge this rather unconventional course is keeping with his character. After all, he has made a career of bucking the system and not adhering to common wisdom. Yet in rebelling against what many see as international norms, few can argue with his success in navigating Singapore's path to the First World.
This is all the more amazing given what few advantages Singapore boasted when it split from Malaysia in 1965. The city state had virtually no natural resources, for instance. Even water would need to be an imported commodity. Too, it had a tiny population, meaning it could never offer economies of scale for products destined for its home market. And it had an ethnically fractured society split three ways, with shifting demographics threatening to make the majority a plurality.
But where most would see a weak hand, Lee saw advantage. Its small population became a showplace for efficiency. With this efficiency, Singapore's leaders proved nimble, staying several steps ahead of their more plodding neighbors.
Granted, Singapore's city state status makes parts of its development model rather unique. But what has worked for Singapore under Lee's direction, and the direction of his successors, intuitively should have applications elsewhere.
If one could suppress the runaway levels of corruption, open its economy and properly harness its oil reserves, who is to say that a small nation like Equatorial Guinea could not conceivably become Singapore's equivalent in West Africa? And what if Timor Leste were to take pages from the Singapore playbook and play up the free trade and investment angle? Or Cambodia?
The writer is a retired army general abd is a former member of the Indonesian Cabinet under Soeharto, Habibie and Megawati Soekarnoputri.
