Lee Kuan Yew, the statesman who transformed Singapore from a tiny
port island into a wealthy global hub, is dead. He was aged 91. He passed away peacefully at the Singapore General Hospital at 03:18 local time yesterday (19:18pm GMT).
The Cambridge-educated lawyer Lee Kuan Yew was hospitalised for severe pneumonia on February 15.
Highly respected as the architect of his country’s prosperity, he served as the city-state’s prime minister for 31 years, and continued to work in government until 2011.
Though criticised for his iron grip on power, the phenomenal rise of Singapore justifies his actions.
Credited with creating modern Singapore, Yew has been involved in the country’s politics since Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965.
The announcement of his death was made “with deep sorrow” by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Mr Yew’s son.
“The Prime Minister is deeply grieved to announce the passing of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the founding Prime Minister of Singapore,” his office said in a statement.
The statement added that funeral arrangements will be made later.
The man regarded as the father of Singapore will be remembered for many things, but most of all as the patriarch who oversaw the transformation of a sleepy port city into a thriving global metropolis within a single generation.
Reacting to the death of the late political sage, chairman of LEADERSHIP Group, Mr Sam Nda-Isaiah, said, “Lee Kuan Yew would be remembered as one of the greatest statesmen to have passed the surface of this earth. He has set a high standard for statecraft and we will ever remain grateful to him.”
The widely revered patriarch’s death is likely to cast a pall over preparations for the city-state’s 50th independence anniversary on August 9.
Prime Minister Loong also announced his father’s death on his Facebook page and was immediately flooded with messages of condolence.
“Great Man, Great Legacy. The world is poorer by his passing,” posted Kasise Ricky Peprah.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was “deeply saddened” by his death and offered his condolences.
“Lee Kuan Yew was a legendary figure in Asia, widely respected for his strong leadership and statesmanship,” a spokesman for Ban said in a statement.
Eugene Tan, associate professor of law at the Singapore Management University, said that Yew’s death “certainly marks the end of an era”, adding that “it raises the question of how Singapore is going to go from here”.
The late Yew was prime minister from 1959 when Singapore gained full self-government from Britain, until 1990 when he stepped down.
Late into his life, he remained the dominant personality and driving force in what he called a First World oasis in a Third World region.
The nation reflected the man: efficient, unsentimental, incorrupt, inventive, forward-looking and pragmatic.
“We are ideology-free,” Mr Yew said in an interview with The New York Times in 2007, stating what had become, in effect, Singapore’s ideology. “Does it work? If it works, let’s try it. If it’s fine, let’s continue it. If it doesn’t work, toss it out, try another one.”
The formula succeeded, and Singapore became an international business and financial centre admired for its efficiency and low level of corruption.
An election in 2011 marked the end of the Yew era, with a voter revolt against the ruling People’s Action Party. He resigned from the specially created post of minister mentor and stepped into the background as the nation began exploring the possibilities of a more engaging and less autocratic government.
Since Singapore separated from Malaysia 50 years ago— an event Mr Yew called his “moment of anguish,” he had seen himself in a never-ending struggle to overcome the nation’s lack of natural resources, a potentially hostile international environment and a volatile ethnic mix of Chinese, Malays and Indians.
“To understand Singapore and why it is what it is, you’ve got to start off with the fact that it’s not supposed to exist and cannot exist,” he said in the 2007 interview.
“To begin with, we don’t have the ingredients of a nation, the elementary factors: a homogeneous population, common language, common culture and common destiny. So, history is a long time. I’ve done my bit.”
His “Singapore model,” sometimes criticized as soft authoritarianism, included centralized power, clean government and economic liberalism along with suppression of political opposition and strict limits on free speech and public assembly, which created a climate of caution and self-censorship. The model has been admired and studied by leaders in Asia, including in China and beyond, as well as being the subject of countless academic case studies.
The commentator, Cherian George, described Mr Yew’s leadership as “a unique combination of charisma and fear.”
The Man Yew
Born into a middle-class family on September 16, 1923, when Singapore was still a British colony, Yew was one of five children. He excelled in academics from a young age, attending the prestigious Raffles Institution before studying law at Fitzwilliam College at Cambridge, where he graduated with double first-class honours.
Yew married Kwa Geok Choo, whom he described as his “intellectual equal” and “soulmate,” in a secret ceremony in 1947, when they were studying in the United Kingdom. After returning to Singapore in 1950, they married again before family and friends.
He rapidly began to look feeble after his wife of 63 years, Kwa Geok Choo, died in 2010, and has rarely appeared in public in the last two years.
In his last book “One Man’s View of the World”, published in 2013, he looked back at his remarkable career and concluded: “I am not given to making sense out of life – or coming up with some grand narrative on it – other than to measure it by what you think you want to do in life.
“As for me, I have done what I had wanted to, to the best of my ability. I am satisfied.”
Mr Yew was a master of “Asian values,” a concept in which the good of society took precedence over the rights of the individual and citizens ceded some autonomy in return for paternalistic rule.
Generally passive in political affairs, Singaporeans sometimes chide themselves as being overly preoccupied with a comfortable lifestyle, which they sum up as the “Five C’s” — cash, condo, car, credit card, country club.
In recent years, though, a confrontational world of political websites and blogs has given new voice to critics of Mr Yew and his system.
Even among people who knew little of Singapore, Mr Yew was famous for his national self-improvement campaigns, which urged people to do such things as smile, speak good English and flush the toilet, but never to spit, chew gum or throw garbage off balconies.
“They laughed, at us,” he said in the second volume of his memoirs, “From Third World to First: The Singapore Story 1965-2000.” “But I was confident that we would have the last laugh. We would have been a grosser, ruder, cruder society had we not made these efforts.” M
Yew developed a distinctive Singaporean mechanism of political control, filing libel suits that sometimes drove his opponents into bankruptcy and doing battle with critics in the foreign press. Several foreign publications, including The International Herald Tribune, which is now called The International New York Times, have apologised and paid fines to settle libel suits.
“His greatest legacy is making Singapore a developed country, showing that a former colony and an Asian country can do as well and in many ways better than many of the older Western-developed countries,” he told AFP.
Singapore’s Political-economy Under Yew
As prime minister, he was faced with numerous problems that mainly stemmed from the nation’s limited natural resources. Though he adopted the policies of non-alignment and neutrality for Singapore, the late leader did not take his country’s independence for granted. Apart from strengthening its military might, he brought in conscription.
He also encouraged foreign investment, developed the necessary infrastructure, ensured racial harmony, and eliminated corruption. During his three decades as prime minister, Singapore achieved a per capita income next only to Japan’s in East Asia, and emerged as a chief financial hub in the region.
On his watch, Singapore became a sea trade, air transport and financial hub as well as a high-tech industrial centre, prospering despite its compact size and lack of basic natural resources.
“I have to say his success is in taking advantage of Singapore’s natural assets, by which I particularly mean using its geography at the end of the Malay peninsula and on the end of the Malacca Strait,” said Michael Barr, an associate professor of international relations at Flinders University in Australia who wrote a book on Yew’s career.
On the diplomatic front, Yew’s counsel was often sought by Western leaders, particularly on China – which he identified early as a driver of world economic growth – as well as more volatile neighbours in Southeast Asia.
“It cannot be denied that Lee Kuan Yew gave Singapore an international profile completely disproportionate to the country’s size,” said Singapore-based political analyst, Derek da Cunha. “It could be argued that Singapore would probably have been an international irrelevancy if not for Yew.”
Yew’s death and his son’s expected retirement within the next couple of years would mark the end of an era.
The late prime minister co-founded the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has ruled Singapore since 1959 and led the newly born country when it was separated from Malaysia in 1965.
He stepped down as prime minister in 1990, handing power to Goh Chok Tong, but remained influential as senior minister in Goh’s cabinet and subsequently as “minister mentor” when his eldest son, Lee Hsien Loong, became prime minister in 2004.
Yew left the cabinet in 2011 and cut down his public appearances in recent months due to his age and declining health.
In all, he spent 52 years in government while presiding over Singapore’s rise as one of the globe’s leading financial centres and busiest ports, with GDP per capita ranked third in the world.
The Cambridge-educated lawyer Lee Kuan Yew was hospitalised for severe pneumonia on February 15.
Highly respected as the architect of his country’s prosperity, he served as the city-state’s prime minister for 31 years, and continued to work in government until 2011.
Though criticised for his iron grip on power, the phenomenal rise of Singapore justifies his actions.
Credited with creating modern Singapore, Yew has been involved in the country’s politics since Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965.
The announcement of his death was made “with deep sorrow” by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Mr Yew’s son.
“The Prime Minister is deeply grieved to announce the passing of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the founding Prime Minister of Singapore,” his office said in a statement.
The statement added that funeral arrangements will be made later.
The man regarded as the father of Singapore will be remembered for many things, but most of all as the patriarch who oversaw the transformation of a sleepy port city into a thriving global metropolis within a single generation.
Reacting to the death of the late political sage, chairman of LEADERSHIP Group, Mr Sam Nda-Isaiah, said, “Lee Kuan Yew would be remembered as one of the greatest statesmen to have passed the surface of this earth. He has set a high standard for statecraft and we will ever remain grateful to him.”
The widely revered patriarch’s death is likely to cast a pall over preparations for the city-state’s 50th independence anniversary on August 9.
Prime Minister Loong also announced his father’s death on his Facebook page and was immediately flooded with messages of condolence.
“Great Man, Great Legacy. The world is poorer by his passing,” posted Kasise Ricky Peprah.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was “deeply saddened” by his death and offered his condolences.
“Lee Kuan Yew was a legendary figure in Asia, widely respected for his strong leadership and statesmanship,” a spokesman for Ban said in a statement.
Eugene Tan, associate professor of law at the Singapore Management University, said that Yew’s death “certainly marks the end of an era”, adding that “it raises the question of how Singapore is going to go from here”.
The late Yew was prime minister from 1959 when Singapore gained full self-government from Britain, until 1990 when he stepped down.
Late into his life, he remained the dominant personality and driving force in what he called a First World oasis in a Third World region.
The nation reflected the man: efficient, unsentimental, incorrupt, inventive, forward-looking and pragmatic.
“We are ideology-free,” Mr Yew said in an interview with The New York Times in 2007, stating what had become, in effect, Singapore’s ideology. “Does it work? If it works, let’s try it. If it’s fine, let’s continue it. If it doesn’t work, toss it out, try another one.”
The formula succeeded, and Singapore became an international business and financial centre admired for its efficiency and low level of corruption.
An election in 2011 marked the end of the Yew era, with a voter revolt against the ruling People’s Action Party. He resigned from the specially created post of minister mentor and stepped into the background as the nation began exploring the possibilities of a more engaging and less autocratic government.
Since Singapore separated from Malaysia 50 years ago— an event Mr Yew called his “moment of anguish,” he had seen himself in a never-ending struggle to overcome the nation’s lack of natural resources, a potentially hostile international environment and a volatile ethnic mix of Chinese, Malays and Indians.
“To understand Singapore and why it is what it is, you’ve got to start off with the fact that it’s not supposed to exist and cannot exist,” he said in the 2007 interview.
“To begin with, we don’t have the ingredients of a nation, the elementary factors: a homogeneous population, common language, common culture and common destiny. So, history is a long time. I’ve done my bit.”
His “Singapore model,” sometimes criticized as soft authoritarianism, included centralized power, clean government and economic liberalism along with suppression of political opposition and strict limits on free speech and public assembly, which created a climate of caution and self-censorship. The model has been admired and studied by leaders in Asia, including in China and beyond, as well as being the subject of countless academic case studies.
The commentator, Cherian George, described Mr Yew’s leadership as “a unique combination of charisma and fear.”
The Man Yew
Born into a middle-class family on September 16, 1923, when Singapore was still a British colony, Yew was one of five children. He excelled in academics from a young age, attending the prestigious Raffles Institution before studying law at Fitzwilliam College at Cambridge, where he graduated with double first-class honours.
Yew married Kwa Geok Choo, whom he described as his “intellectual equal” and “soulmate,” in a secret ceremony in 1947, when they were studying in the United Kingdom. After returning to Singapore in 1950, they married again before family and friends.
He rapidly began to look feeble after his wife of 63 years, Kwa Geok Choo, died in 2010, and has rarely appeared in public in the last two years.
In his last book “One Man’s View of the World”, published in 2013, he looked back at his remarkable career and concluded: “I am not given to making sense out of life – or coming up with some grand narrative on it – other than to measure it by what you think you want to do in life.
“As for me, I have done what I had wanted to, to the best of my ability. I am satisfied.”
Mr Yew was a master of “Asian values,” a concept in which the good of society took precedence over the rights of the individual and citizens ceded some autonomy in return for paternalistic rule.
Generally passive in political affairs, Singaporeans sometimes chide themselves as being overly preoccupied with a comfortable lifestyle, which they sum up as the “Five C’s” — cash, condo, car, credit card, country club.
In recent years, though, a confrontational world of political websites and blogs has given new voice to critics of Mr Yew and his system.
Even among people who knew little of Singapore, Mr Yew was famous for his national self-improvement campaigns, which urged people to do such things as smile, speak good English and flush the toilet, but never to spit, chew gum or throw garbage off balconies.
“They laughed, at us,” he said in the second volume of his memoirs, “From Third World to First: The Singapore Story 1965-2000.” “But I was confident that we would have the last laugh. We would have been a grosser, ruder, cruder society had we not made these efforts.” M
Yew developed a distinctive Singaporean mechanism of political control, filing libel suits that sometimes drove his opponents into bankruptcy and doing battle with critics in the foreign press. Several foreign publications, including The International Herald Tribune, which is now called The International New York Times, have apologised and paid fines to settle libel suits.
“His greatest legacy is making Singapore a developed country, showing that a former colony and an Asian country can do as well and in many ways better than many of the older Western-developed countries,” he told AFP.
Singapore’s Political-economy Under Yew
As prime minister, he was faced with numerous problems that mainly stemmed from the nation’s limited natural resources. Though he adopted the policies of non-alignment and neutrality for Singapore, the late leader did not take his country’s independence for granted. Apart from strengthening its military might, he brought in conscription.
He also encouraged foreign investment, developed the necessary infrastructure, ensured racial harmony, and eliminated corruption. During his three decades as prime minister, Singapore achieved a per capita income next only to Japan’s in East Asia, and emerged as a chief financial hub in the region.
On his watch, Singapore became a sea trade, air transport and financial hub as well as a high-tech industrial centre, prospering despite its compact size and lack of basic natural resources.
“I have to say his success is in taking advantage of Singapore’s natural assets, by which I particularly mean using its geography at the end of the Malay peninsula and on the end of the Malacca Strait,” said Michael Barr, an associate professor of international relations at Flinders University in Australia who wrote a book on Yew’s career.
On the diplomatic front, Yew’s counsel was often sought by Western leaders, particularly on China – which he identified early as a driver of world economic growth – as well as more volatile neighbours in Southeast Asia.
“It cannot be denied that Lee Kuan Yew gave Singapore an international profile completely disproportionate to the country’s size,” said Singapore-based political analyst, Derek da Cunha. “It could be argued that Singapore would probably have been an international irrelevancy if not for Yew.”
Yew’s death and his son’s expected retirement within the next couple of years would mark the end of an era.
The late prime minister co-founded the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has ruled Singapore since 1959 and led the newly born country when it was separated from Malaysia in 1965.
He stepped down as prime minister in 1990, handing power to Goh Chok Tong, but remained influential as senior minister in Goh’s cabinet and subsequently as “minister mentor” when his eldest son, Lee Hsien Loong, became prime minister in 2004.
Yew left the cabinet in 2011 and cut down his public appearances in recent months due to his age and declining health.
In all, he spent 52 years in government while presiding over Singapore’s rise as one of the globe’s leading financial centres and busiest ports, with GDP per capita ranked third in the world.
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