Never too soon to look ahead, says Lee

Never too soon to look ahead, says Lee

September 3, 2007

Climate change is just one of the big issues that the former prime minister is confronting, writes Wayne Arnold in Singapore.

LEE KUAN YEW, who turned a malarial island into a modern financial centre with a first-world skyline, is again peering into this city state's future, this time with an idea to seal it off with dykes against the rising tides of global warming.

"Let's start thinking about it now," Mr Lee, 83, said in what could be the motto for a lifetime of nation building. Ever since Singapore's difficult birth in 1965, when it separated from Malaysia, the country has struggled to stay alive in a sea of economic and political forces beyond its control.

"If the water goes up by three, four, five metres, what will happen to us?" he said. "Half of Singapore will disappear."

For all his success, Mr Lee, who led Singapore for 31 years until he stepped down in 1990, remains on the alert for perils that may exist only on the distant horizon: the rising role of China in the region, the buffeting of the world economy, even climate change.

His creation, modern Singapore, is an economic powerhouse with one of the world's highest per capita incomes and high-quality schools, health care and public services that have made it a magnet for global labour.

Foreigners make up roughly a fifth of its 4.5 million residents.

"To understand Singapore," he said, "you've got to start off with an improbable story: It should not exist." It is a nation with almost no natural resources, without a common culture - a fractured mix of Chinese, Malays and Indians, relying on wits to stay afloat and prosper.

"We have survived so far, 42 years," he said. "Will we survive for another 42? It depends upon world conditions. It doesn't depend on us alone."

This sense of vulnerability is Mr Lee's answer to his critics, to those who say Singapore is too tightly controlled, that it leashes the press, suppresses free speech, curtails democracy, and tramples on dissidents.

"The answer lies in our genesis," he said. "To survive, we have to do these things.

"Although what you see today - the superstructure of a modern city - the base is a very narrow one and could easily disintegrate."

When asked if he felt he might have gone too far in crushing his opponents, sometimes with ruinous lawsuits, sometimes with long jail terms, he said: "No, I don't think so. I never killed them. I never destroyed them. Politically, they destroyed themselves."

One of his concerns was that the US had become so preoccupied with the Middle East it was failing to look ahead and plan in this part of the world. "Without this draining of energy, attention and resources for Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, there would have been deep thinking about the long-term trends - working out possible options that the US could exercise to change the direction of long-term trends more in its favour," Mr Lee said.

As the US focuses on the Middle East, the Chinese were busy refining their policies and building the foundations of more co-operative long-term relationships in Asia. "They are making strategic decisions on their relations with the region," he said. And this is where tiny Singapore sees itself as a model for China, the world's most-populous country. "They've got to be like us," Mr Lee said, "with a very keen sense of what is possible, and what is not."

Twice every year, he said, Chinese ministers meet Singaporean ministers to learn from their experience. Fifty Chinese mayors visit every three months for courses in city management.

Singapore's secret, Mr Lee said, was that it is "ideology free". It possessed an unsentimental pragmatism that infused the workings of the country as if it were in itself an ideology, he said. When considering an approach to an issue, he said, the question is: "Does it work? Let's try it, and if it does work, fine, let's continue it. If it doesn't work, toss it out, try another one."

Even on social issues on which he has tended to seem inflexible, Mr Lee sounded almost mellow.
"I think we have to go in whatever direction world conditions dictate if we are to survive and to be part of this modern world," he said. "If we are not connected to this modern world, we are dead. We'll go back to the fishing village we once were."

At the same time the Government must protect the less affluent, less educated people from information that might upset or confuse them, he said. These were people "who are not finding it so comfortable to suddenly find the world changed, their world, their sense of place, their sense of position in society".

They were the ones who had to be pulled into the future as he sought to make Singapore "a first-world oasis in a Third World region".

"We built up the infrastructure," he said. "The difficult part was getting the people to change their habits so that they behaved more like First World citizens, not like Third World citizens spitting and littering all over the place."

So Singapore embarked on what Mr Lee called "campaigns to do this, campaigns to do that". Do not chew gum. Do not throw garbage from rooftops. Speak good English. Smile. Perform spontaneous acts of kindness.

Paradoxically, he said, if Singapore had not been so poor it might never have transformed itself and prospered as it has. His warnings about vulnerability and collapse are a constant theme to persuade his people to accept limits on their freedoms.

"Supposing we had oil and gas, do you think I could get the people to do this?" Mr Lee said. "No. If I had oil and gas, I'd have a different people, with different motivations and expectations. It's because we don't have oil and gas … that this progress comes from their efforts. So please do it and do it well."