Winner
Attempts to assess Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy, or to conceptualise what “post-Lee” means, balance two risks. On one hand, we may yet be too close for historical perspective, or to chart paths outside his shadow. On the other, such exercises presuppose a “great man” historiography which obscures as much as it illuminates.
Under Lee’s government, until today, autochthonous industries, like shipyards and real estate, exemplify state-led capitalism,[1] albeit at arms-length: what has even been termed crony capitalism.[2] Post-Separation, state-driven reliance on foreign capital and knowledge was vital in catalysing industrialisation, particularly in petrochemicals and electronics.[3] The considerable overlap between state actors and business, while arguably inevitable given resource constraints, has created a perception that the value created by Singaporeans is extracted for the benefit of an elite.
The state’s use of capitalism; highly-targeted, stratified immigration to adjust both labour supply and consumer demand; race-sensitive social engineering: the aim is always economic or social optimisation according to criteria determined by ‘the great and the good’, to which Singaporeans’ perceptions and preferences are seldom relevant. Indisputably, the economic and political paths Singapore trod, under Lee’s leadership, yielded results; possibly, those results were the most optimal.
Nonetheless there remains little-examined continuity between the colonialism that nurtured and economically optimised Singapore as a jewel of the Crown colonies, on one hand, and on the other, Lee’s authoritarianism that, applying many of colonialism’s lessons, pruned, weeded and economically optimised Singapore according to its own wisdom. Wholesale revolutionary overthrow of colonialism has, of course, always been a myth, but that is even truer in Singapore. It is timely to reckon with the colonial antecedents of Lee’s thought; and in that light, to consider anew if Merdeka means more than squeezing every drop of utility from these small islands.[4]
Utility and pragmatism were, of course, the watchwords of Lee’s premiership, and remain his successors’ heirlooms. No ideology, they proudly proclaim, except the good of Singapore and Singaporeans. The main difficulty with this is that few national-level political decisions can be taken by applying a single, ideology-free metric of objective utility. Affecting pure neutrality only obscures the judgments by which competing values are relativised or prioritised.
This difficulty was previously despatched by the aura of incorruptible heroism surrounding Lee and his Cabinet: their judgement was to be relied on as unfailingly trustworthy. As this heroic mythos wore thin, its successors emphasised instead their technocratic superiority: their governance was to be relied on as unerringly competent. The unifying thread was that since Lee’s government was pragmatically above the fray of competing values, it would have the correct or at least best answer— a supposition which assumes the existence of one such ‘best answer’. Differences of opinion, particularly on grounds of principle, were dismissed as irresponsible or dishonest.
The dark side of this heroic paradigm was the hatchet-swinging streetfighter persona Lee cultivated and partly passed to his successors. Bludgeonry campaigns against examples selected for the pillory have become a seasonal feature of Singapore’s political life.
From a rational perspective, such dominance displays are incomprehensible, with a government that has unfailingly been returned to power with majorities that democratic standards would consider landslides. But they are understandable as political mythopoeia, rather than threat elimination. Since Lee-style leadership professes a pragmatism which, ostensibly, uniquely laser-tracks the objective ‘greater good’, then by its internal logic, it cannot rationally debate different value systems, for that would be to acknowledge that rational, sincere perspectives on the greater good may diverge. Rather, different perspectives must be discredited and destroyed, not engaged as equals. Seen in that light, Lee’s knuckle-dusting bouts are not personality-driven aberrations, but congenital to his political legacy. Further, given Lee’s longevity in power, his personality’s sheer force and pervasiveness, this
pragmatism and the conceptual hole at its heart have been imbibed by two generations of Singaporeans, becoming a self-perpetuating cultural paradigm.
By any empirical measure, Lee’s government incontrovertibly produced tangible results. But the incoherence of political pragmatism as an ‘anti-ideological’ lodestar has only deepened as Singapore’s competing interests, generational divides and inequality disaggregated. Meanwhile, Singapore has outgrown, and Lee’s party has left behind, the halcyon heroism of the past national narratives which filled that gap; and the latter-day narrative of technocratic superiority, too, is showing strain. One such flashpoint which microcosmically illustrates these tensions is the looming expiry of public housing’s leaseholds— which, like so many other institutions defining contemporary Singapore’s social compact, owes its conception to Lee.[5]
With the crucible of wartime Occupation and the Malayan Emergency passing out of living memory, one hopes that we will put aside the comforting image (however subliminal) that Singapore’s unprecedented challenges are anything like a quiz to which correct answers are reposed in cleverer brains. Instead, we ought shoulder the collective responsibility for recognising that there is no ideology-free pragmatism or pure god’s-eye view.
A third aspect of Lee’s legacy is the exceptionalist national identity he contrasted against Singapore’s neighbours. Lee’s burnishing of this self-image was famously taken to the point of triggering diplomatic incidents.[6] Success propped by a self-image defined in contrast to one’s neighbours is not only fragile, but dangerously intransigent in such a small city-state whose fortunes are inextricably linked to others’. In particular, it has engendered false consciousness about the migrant labour which is the region’s most visceral contribution to Singapore’s success. An unfortunate thread underlying attitudes to migrant workers is the sense that they should be grateful to be in Singapore. That such assumptions parallel Lee’s thought, contrasting Singapore with its neighbours, is illustrated by his doomsday scenario of “incompetent government”: that Singaporean “women will become maids in other people’s countries, foreign workers.”[7]
Migrant labour in Singapore is a microcosm of deeper questions in Lee’s wake: does human dignity transcend freedom merely to choose the least of several evils? How should such evils be relatively weighted— only materially and quantitatively; or do any qualitative or even metaphysical criteria, such as human rights and freedoms, figure? What of the cognitive dissonance of referencing our labour emigration as yardstick for catastrophe, yet satisfaction with our treatment of labour immigrants? Contemplating these necessitates acknowledging the darker underbelly of ‘success’ built on the backs of migrant workers: something not easily accommodated by Lee’s worldview.
The most pervasive element of Lee’s legacy, and a corollary of Lee’s relentless comparison with the neighbours, is the constant sense of barely-averted crisis, staved off by his government. Cynically, this fear-mongering may be viewed as a political strategy; doubtless it has been successful if so. But deeper than political stratagems, these fears have taken root in Singaporeans’ collective psyche, spawning entire lexica of ‘kiasu’.
The perpetual sense of crisis and competition such fear created gave effect to Lee’s social engineering ideas: that the competitive struggle for survival advanced the strong and motivated progress. This unending struggle presents a benign face as “meritocracy”, by which Lee meant that competition justly advances, in political and social rank, those deserving on grounds of merit. What goes unsaid, but just barely, is that this means those falling behind equally deserve it.
Even less acknowledged is the reality that “merit” is not a spontaneously self-generated quality of atomised individuals, but often means tangible, heritable quantities. Thus meritocracy legitimises unequal accretion of social and economic advantages, which eventually attains a self-perpetuating momentum. Without constant correction of its natural course, meritocracy’s much-vaunted equality of opportunity is self-undermining. As a means of populating the leadership, meritocracy is said to secure Singapore’s future by ensuring the rule of the best. As a tool of social engineering, more importantly, it maintains order by anointing society’s hierarchy with the nobility of a moral narrative.
Concluding that meritocratic inequality ultimately bears fruit as eugenics is doubtless distasteful. But Lee’s embrace of this corollary was evident enough from, for example, the Graduate Mothers policy:[8] the entire premise and purpose of which was to capitalise on and accelerate accumulation of inequality. Singaporeans unequivocally rejected that: one of the few policies Lee proposed that were dropped, in his lifetime, due to popular reaction.
Singaporeans may hope to look yet deeper at this broader legacy of his which has become so deeply part of Singapore, for better or worse: not only meritocracy as its bright edge, but the iceberg beneath, of fear-driven competitiveness inculcated early in education and reinforced constantly. We should at least consider whether a more forgiving, egalitarian way is open to our society: one that mitigates and softens Darwinian competition, rather than sharpens it as Lee sought to do.
The boast that Singapore itself is Lee’s monument[9] is justified in some ways— including less glorious ones. Fundamental to his leadership were the comforting myths of Singaporean exceptionalism, and that ‘pragmatism’ could produce the correct answers to the country’s increasingly complex problems. Alongside these myths were the more visible economic achievements, built on the reality of Lee’s state-led capitalism, which, like the colonial-era model albeit with obvious tactical differences, optimised Singapore as a hub for extracting, concentrating and capitalising on resources originating elsewhere; as well as, more innovatively, realising the relative value of Singapore’s few resources, especially real estate. Holding Singapore’s economic reality and political ecology together was the cultivated sense of unending crisis and competition, sometimes dressed as the secular religion of meritocracy.
While these narratives were accepted to support Singapore’s political order, they have proved increasingly inadequate today. Widely it is understood, and tacitly accepted, that some of our moralistic national narratives are akin to Aesop’s fables. Singaporeans’ awareness of this explains the self-censorship, the keen sensitivity to ‘OB markers’, and the political fatalism (distinct from apathy). Extrapolating the ideological lodestar, if any, of pragmatism; questioning whether meritocracy is converging with aristocracy: such talk, that of civil society, is pushed to the fringes of civilised society; seen as irresponsible, ungrateful or just embarrassing. Self- and peer-censorship is thanks not only to the ‘hard’ training of the seasonal ritual scapegoating, but also the ‘soft’ catechesis of extolling Singapore’s exceptional pragmatism and the wisdom of meritocracy.
While the academically elite among younger Singaporeans hone their knowledge and skills in critically interrogating differing value systems, these remain academic exercises lacking personal stakes. Rather, such astute observers hold themselves above the fray of competing ideologies, with the godlike ability to eschew individual loyalties and biases: since to be political, in pragmatic Singapore, is traditionally synonymous with irresponsibility. This too symptomises the stunting engendered by the pragmatic paradigm, since well-developed perspectives would be forthright about one’s value commitments, metrics of utility, and their ideological or personal provenance.
What can and should be hoped for by all Singaporeans, as Lee’s towering figure passes into history, is to truly perceive and understand each other, unmediated by our nation-building narratives. That they conceal more than illuminate is already known, but seldom openly discussed. Ventilating them is necessary to progress.
Geopolitical tensions nearby; the public housing leasehold crisis that potentially pits different generations against each other; looming ecological catastrophe in the face of increasing infrastructure needs— these are a few of the many challenges facing Singapore that defy the right answer. Rather, shared responsibility for the choice of an answer, for the consequences of each such choice, should be openly acknowledged and confronted. That requires each choice’s biases, assumptions and prioritisations be transparent.
To say that Lee left Singapore, at his tenure’s end, in the best position to navigate the future’s challenges, would be airbrushing reality. His remarkable achievements came with their price in deepening weaknesses in less visible areas. What becomes of a society whose creation myth, continually reinforced, is of the unending competitive struggle to escape the wolf at the door? What does that do to the fabric of our mutual relationships? There can be no easy answers to such existential questions. It is to the credit of Lee that Singapore largely avoided resolving existential questions at the muzzle of a gun. It is to the credit of all who call this unlikely city-state home that, looking ahead, their answers will unlikely be one man’s vision, but can and hopefully will become what we make of them together.
[1] Bruenig, Matt, 2018, “How Capitalist Is Singapore Really?”, People’s Policy Project, 9 March 2018 <https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/09/how-capitalist-is-singapore-really/>.
[2] Lim, Linda, 2023, “What to make of Singapore’s high ‘crony capitalism’ ranking”, Academia SG, 12 May 2023 <https://www.academia.sg/academic-views/singapore-crony-capitalism-index-ranking/>.
[3] Ramirez, CD and Tan, LH, 2003, “Singapore, Inc. Versus the Private Sector: Are Government-Linked Companies Different?”, IMF Working Paper, IMF Institute; Shome, A, 2009, “Singapore’s State-Guided Entrepreneurship: A Model for Transitional Economies?”, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 11, 1 (June 2009): 318-36.
[4] bin Tajudeen, Imran , “MERDEKA!!! Singapore’s Merdeka Talks of 1956,1957, and 1958, and Merdeka proclamations before 1965” , Our Stories, Singapura Stories <https://singapurastories.com/merdekasingapores-merdeka-talks-of-1956-and-1957-and-merdekaproclamations-of-1959-1962-and-1963/>.
[5] Purves, Andrew, 2023, “Singapore’s Imminent Expiration of Land Leases: From Growth and Equality to Discontent and Inequality?” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tesg.12547>.
[6] ‘Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew replies to Malaysian PM’, The Star, 30 September 2006
<https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2006/09/30/singapores-lee-kuan-yew-replies-to-malaysian-pm>.
[7] Lee Kuan Yew, speaking in Canberra, 4 April 2007; quoted extensively.
[8] Lee Kuan Yew, National Day Rally Speech, 14 August 1983.
[9] “The wise man of the East”, The Economist, 26 March 2015 <https://www.economist.com/leaders/2015/03/26/the-wise-man-of-theeast>.
MARUAH Singapore 