Old Soldier takes the final bow
By Maxwell Coopers, Free Malaysia Today
Old soldiers never die. They just fade away. – General Douglas MacArthur before the US House of Congress.
Like an old soldier who knew nothing but political combat all his life, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew announced that he was quitting the Cabinet led by his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Expectedly, news of the abrupt departure of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew – labelled as always by his abbreviated initials of LKY – and his one-time anointed heir Goh Chok Tong who himself, too, was Prime Minister between 1990 until 2004, rattled the tiny city-state.
“I just cannot believe, cannot believe it,” one respondent told the city-state’s Channel News Asia television station in the aftermath of the May 7 general election.
For the weary-hearted, the news was greeted with a mixture of ambivalence, apprehension and, in some quarters, relief.
Relief, because it was increasingly evident that Singaporeans are tiring of Kuan Yew; they even showed their displeasure when he said that residents in Aljunied Group Representation Council (GRC) would “repent” if they voted for the opposition Workers’ Party (WP).
But there is no denying the greatness of one of the world’s best-known statesmen.
Able administrator
Former Malaysian prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad once described him as “a remarkable intellectual and politician” and LKY never failed to live up to that billing.
In a book written by noted Singaporean writer, Cherian George, Kuan Yew reportedly was making decisions even in the dying minutes of his administration in 1990 before handing over the reins to Goh.
According to sources, Lee’s penchant for horticulture explains why Singapore emerged as the world’s first Garden City.
Yet for those who have known LKY – the martinet who suffers no fools and who sometimes exhibits an acerbic temper – his departure brings an end to an era where his dominant personality had towered over everything that is now Singapore.
But that is not to say that LKY is immensely popular.
A better description would be to say that he is respected, because he has ably administered a tiny city-state bereft of natural resources and took it to the frontiers of global commerce and international esteem.
LKY’s many clashes with his political rivals – the many defamation suits he brought against them, notably that of Malaysian-born JB Jeyaretnam – have perhaps etched him in history as one of the most formidable political opponents anybody in living memory can attest to.
New dawn
The Singapore public will not forget the invective LKY hurled at Jeyaretnam in a March 1986 parliamentary debate on the judiciary when he called the latter a “skunk”.
There were also the many scrapes he got himself into with the international press such as the “Far Eastern Economic Review”. Many have come out bruised, slapped with suits that ran into tens of thousands of dollars.
Yet, all said and done, nobody can fault LKY for bringing political and social stability to his nation albeit at the expense of human rights.
