Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas

by Han Fook Kwang

  Lee Kuan Yew was fascinated too by the unfolding drama, but one aspect of it was of particular interest to him, and he would return to it several times later: how did NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) select those three men out of so many aspiring candidates? How did it know they had the greatest probability of remaining calm and collected throughout the ordeal, and to make the critical manoeuvres that mattered? What in the selection process showed they would not buckle under the severest test? In other words, how do you find such good men?

  “If we can test men, weed out the nervous and jittery, you can bank on your future in Singapore long after this government has stood down. We have got to find them. We have some of them. For any group of men, the final achievement is to see their creation bloom and flourish. They must be able to select, to judge, to impart what has been learned from experience and then say, ‘Now, the rest is up to you.’ There will be new problems but the basic factors are the same. The world is different, the economy is more complex and sophisticated, but what makes a society tick, what gives a people the flexibility, the cohesiveness, the thrust, the dynamism, always seeking new ways to overcome new problems or old problems – that’s as old as the beginning of man and the first tribes. That, I hope, will be the story of Singapore.”

  (National Day Rally speech, August 19, 1979)

  Lee being sworn in as Singapore’s Prime Minister in 1959. He and his Cabinet colleagues had been thrust into leadership by circumstances. Lee, however, believed that choosing leaders for the future could not be left to chance. They would have to be sought out, groomed and tested.

  A few good men

  If there is one starting point in Lee’s quest for good government it is that what is needed first and foremost are good men, with ability, integrity, commitment and that special quality which will make them keep their cool under fire. Nothing matters more than this seemingly self-evident truth which has received scant attention in the great tracts of political philosophy.

  Getting the system or the institutions right, of course, helps. But even a bad system can be made to work by a group of capable leaders. Few countries, however well endowed with natural resources or with time-tested institutions, will be able to last under a corrupt and inept leadership.

  “At the heart of the question is, what makes a good government? 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 with 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 those 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. …

  “Singapore must get some of its best in each year’s crop of graduates into government. When I say best, I don’t mean just academic results. His ‘O’ levels, ‘A’ levels, university degree will only tell you his powers of analysis. That is only one-third of the helicopter quality. You’ve then got to assess him for his sense of reality, his imagination, his quality of leadership, his dynamism. But most of all, his character and his motivation, because the smarter a man is, the more harm he will do society.”

  (Speech in Parliament on the White Paper on ministerial salaries, November 1, 1994; text of speech on page 331)

  Three Old Guards in hospital at the same time

  From left: Goh Keng Swee, Hon Sui Sen and S. Rajaratnam.

  “Ido not know how much time the Old Guards have. My senior colleagues and I are in our early and late 60s. Last October, three senior ministers were in hospital at the same time, in different parts of the world – one in New York and two in Singapore. Rajaratnam had a heart attack when he was at the UN. Goh Keng Swee was in SGH for treatment. Hon Sui Sen joined him after a heart attack. Sui Sen was recovering and was talking to Keng Swee before lunch. They were in adjoining rooms. After lunch Hon Sui Sen had a massive infarct. He died that same afternoon.

  “A skilful surgeon in London, through delicate additional plumbing to his heart, has given Rajaratnam a reprieve. Goh Keng Swee has got a remission. But he has given me notice that he is not standing for re-election. Rajaratnam too wants to stand down. Goh Keng Swee cannot be moved. I am trying to persuade Rajaratnam to go on for another term or at least half a term.

  “The amber lights are flashing. The practice of big American corporations is for the chief executive officer to step down at 65. I believe this is based on sound medical grounds. The chief executive officer has to ensure a smooth succession to secure the continuing progress of the enterprise. I have a duty to do the same for Singapore.”

  (National Day Rally speech, August 19, 1984)

  Borrowing a brigadier for Singapore

  Lee meeting officers of the Singapore Armed Forces, which was built from scratch in 1967.

  When a country has to borrow a brigadier from its neighbour to lead its army, it is in a serious situation. So small was the leadership pool in Singapore in 1965, not only in government but also in the military, the private sector and the civic organisations, that Lee said they could all fit into a Jumbo jet. And if it crashed, Singapore would disintegrate overnight.

  “We are now looking for a really good man to be general and commanding officer – and he is a very important person. He should be tough, he should be a man of integrity, he should be a man of action, and he should be a man of great intelligence and decisiveness. But at the time he was recruited, 20 years or 25 years ago, the British did not want such types.

  “We were trained, if at all, just to be corporals and privates – not to be generals. But today we need a general, and it is a job now to produce a general within the next three to five years. And one must be found. At the moment, we have a brigadier borrowed from the Malaysian Armed Forces. However grateful we are for their consideration in lending us their brigadier, I think it is much better all round for our amour propre and our sense of patriotism if we have our own general in charge.”

  (Speech at a seminar on communism and democracy, April 28, 1971; extracts on page 313)

  Stated so baldly, it seems obvious that it should be the first rule of any government. But why is there so little discussion either in the textbooks of political science or in the media about getting good men to serve in government? How does a country get its best and its brightest to govern? How does it ensure that only the most capable, the honest and the uncorrupt do so?

  And what sort of men should be attracted to leadership? What qualities are needed to govern effectively? Under what circumstances will the most capable and the most upright be thrown up and offer themselves for government? What system, if any, needs to be put in place to make sure that they will come forward, and not the dishonest, the corrupt and the self-serving?

  The conventional wisdom is that good men will come forward willy-nilly, that it is in the nature of human society that they will inevitably be found. History, a
fter all, is awash with great leaders who rose out of the most desperate of times and the most corrupt of systems. Liberal thinkers will argue that they will come forward but only in a liberal democratic system which allows them to express their political ideas freely, to actively advocate them to the people who should be free to choose or reject them in a free and fair election.

  In a free contest of ideas, and of their advocates, the best will, in time, prevail because the people will be able to distinguish the good from the rotten. All the important institutions, the legal system and the mass media should work to support the system. It is a powerful set of ideals that has inspired men through the years to live, to fight and certainly to die for them.

  But in practice, it has not quite worked out. In fact, according to Lee, in many instances, the outcome has been nothing short of disastrous. What happened in the newly independent countries of the 1940s and 1950s as one after another plunged into strife and turmoil has had a tremendous impact on him.

  “Having watched how things turned out with Lim Yew Hock and Marshall, we knew that they would fail. They had nobody of any competence. Marshall could make a speech, yes. But he had no idea what the government was supposed to do, what he had to achieve. He’s by training and by nature not a builder, he’s a speech-maker. And even if he wanted to build, who was there that he could rely on?

  “So we could see that it was going to fail and I could see what was happening in Ceylon. The system was supposed to work. I could see, watching Ceylon, watching India, watching Pakistan (they had just got their independence), watching Burma with their constitutions and their peoples – could we work our constitution?”

  As one of the first generation leaders who fought the colonial powers to gain independence for his country, Lee understood the forces and the motivation that had driven them to action. He knew only too well the force of circumstances and the uncertain temper of the times that had thrown up these men. What may surprise the modern reader is how early in Lee’s political career he came to this conclusion. The problem did not suddenly dawn on him in the twilight of his political career when succession became a pressing issue. When he spoke of it in 1966, barely one year into Singapore’s independence, almost the entire Old Guard leadership were relatively young and intact.

  Perhaps even more surprising is that in an interview made 30 years ago he had already identified one core aspect of the problem which in the 1990s received much attention – improving the incentives for young men and women to join the government.

  Getting the civil service to shape up

  Lee addressing government servants at the opening of the Political Study Centre in August 1959.

  One of Lee’s first tasks on becoming prime minister was to make sure the civil service would be an efficient and effective machine able to carry out the government’s plans. But to do this he first had to get civil servants to understand Singapore’s political goals, and more important, to understand that the game had changed considerably since the colonial days. Now the elected politicians and the civil servants were in it together and it would be their combined effort which would determine the quality of public service. And if the people were dissatisfied with it, they would boot out the government.

  “There were two broad sectors. One was the political goals which we had to achieve, independence through merger. That was separate, in that the civil service cannot make a difference. The other was improving life for people, how the administration or the officials dealt with the public, the kind of service they rendered, the kind of treatment people got at all these counters when they had to apply for permits or pay their fees, etc.

  “That’s a public relations exercise; you have to educate them to understand that this is an elected government. If you offend and antagonise people then they vote against the government. Whereas, with the colonial government they don’t care, you just please your boss and if the people don’t like it, they just lump it. So that’s the first change we required of them.

  “So we started the Political Study Centre to re-orientate their thinking, so that they understood why we felt it was urgent, why we felt the civil service must be politically focused before they can become effective.”

  Lee set out his thoughts on these issues when he opened the Political Study Centre on August 15, 1959, in a speech which called on civil servants to work with the government, regardless of their political beliefs. At stake was nothing less than the survival of the democratic system, he said.

  “… It is in our interest to show that under the system of ‘one-man-one-vote’ there can be an honest and efficient government which works through an efficient administration in the interests of the people. If we do not do our best, then we have only ourselves to blame when the people lose faith, not just in you, the public service, and in us, the democratic political leadership, but also in the democratic system of which you and I are working parts. And when they lose faith, then they will look for alternative forms of government. And let us never forget that the communists are only too ready to offer the people more drastic alternatives in social revolution than the democratic system of government. It is our duty to see that the people are never confronted with such an alternative of despair.”

  (Text of speech on page 317)

  “I would say the real problem now in Singapore politically – as different from the economics of it – is how do we, over the next ten years, allow a new generation to emerge to take over from us? This is important. We are not getting younger. We cannot go on forever. And you must allow sufficient free play on the ground for a new generation to emerge well in time to take over.

  “My problem is there are so many career opportunities now that unless we do something to make politics more attractive incentive-wise, your best men are going into executive and managerial careers. This will leave your second-best careerist … Any party faces it. They faced it all along Eastern Europe. The second generation communist is more of a careerist than an idealist. The first generation [communists] who were captured by Hitler and put in concentration camps all along – I have met them – they are all the first generation. They emerged naturally just as we emerged, and the process of selection was natural.

  “Either you felt strongly about the colonial system and you wanted a better society enough to take the risk of being locked up or being clobbered by the British and then of being shot and killed or murdered by the communists … Unless you feel strongly enough, you don’t emerge; you just subside beneath the broad mass.

  “It is not the same now. Everybody says, ‘Well, the country is running all right; three cheers to them. And I am after a good job.’ And there are many good jobs. This is the problem. And somehow, some device, some method, some system must be brought about to tap your best into political leadership. Otherwise, the country won’t tick.”

  (July 28, 1966 television interview with journalists)

  Not leaving it to chance

  How does a government get those bright young ones who will make the country tick and put in place a system to achieve this? This was a radical way of framing the problem for a newly emerging country but it would be typical of the Lee approach to governance. If there was a problem he thought would get in the way of the country’s well-being, he was determined to find a solution to it, even if it meant going against conventional wisdom. And what could be more important than finding good men to serve in government?

  He believed that the problem was especially acute for newly emerging countries; developed countries already had an established tradition for throwing up leaders. Yet it was the newly independent countries that cried out for capable leaders to solve their numerous and pressing problems.

  What happens when Lee presses a button and nothing happens?

  Lee was nothing if not a hands-on leader, especially in the early years. This quality, combined with his thoroughness in attending to important details, has been instrumental in developing a civil service that has been an effective machine in carrying out the
government’s programmes, and is now acknowledged as one of the best in the world. But it was not always like that. In the early days the bureaucratic top-down culture of the service made it haughty at the top and lackadaisical and unresponsive at the bottom.

  The PAP government sought to change all that. Lee’s penchant for pulling up officers for sloppy work or publicly dressing down an entire organisation is legendary, its effect on the service immediate and sobering. For some it must have seemed like a cold water shower, as when he caught a works brigade napping and hauled up those responsible the next day. Even ministers were not spared if caught wanting.

  Listening to this speech to senior civil servants at the Victoria Theatre on September 20, 1965, not a few ministers must have squirmed in their seats.

  “You know, I will not tolerate this. I went to a government bungalow the other day and I pressed the button and nothing happened. And I went to the kitchen and I told my son, ‘Press the button now’ and he pressed and nothing happened. And I wondered how it was. Succeeding families had been living there – prominent government ministers and officers – without that being put right. I just don’t understand. And the following day, all buttons worked.

  “Now, if I may explain that to you in a graphic way. When you have a button, there must be a purpose. When you click it, the light goes off. So that is what it is for. When you want the light on, you make sure you click it and it is on.

  “I have now, perforce – because I am travelling from place to place, looking after more than just my own ministry – to have a telephone in my car, which is something I dislike intensely. In my office, there is only one telephone, and I don’t like three telephones to be buzzing around. And I don’t allow them to buzz because it drives you crackers to have four, five telephones buzzing. And my telephone only shows one light and a dull thud, and at any one time, I talk to only one person, and I flick on and off at will, which chap is priority, which chap waits. But you know, every morning the driver has instructions to take that telephone and to test-dial it. I want to make sure that when I want it and I pick it up, it is working. And that is what I want this government to do.”