Singapore yesterday plunged into mourning and world leaders were united as they paid tribute to Singaporean founding father and former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀), the iron-fisted politician who forged a prosperous city-state out of unpromising beginnings.
His son, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍), issued a statement before dawn announcing the passing of his 91-year-old father at the Singapore General Hospital following a long illness.
He declared seven days of national mourning until the former leader is cremated on March 29.
Photo: EPA
“He fought for our independence, built a nation where there was none and made us proud to be Singaporeans. We won’t see another like him,” the prime minister said in an emotional televised address.
Lee Kuan Yew’s remains will first be taken to the Istana state complex for a two-day private family wake before lying in state at Parliament House.
Singaporeans, some teary-eyed, flocked to the Istana to leave personal tributes and sign a condolence board.
US President Barack Obama led world leaders in hailing Lee Kuan Yew, who turned a small territory lacking its own natural resources into a world player in finance, trading and shipping — all the while with a heavy political grip that was long decried by rights campaigners.
“He was a true giant of history, who will be remembered for generations to come as the father of modern Singapore and as one of the great strategists of Asian affairs,” Obama said in a statement.
China lauded Lee Kuan Yew’s “historic contributions” to their relationship after the Chinese Communist Party embarked on dramatic economic reforms from 1978.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) said Lee was “widely respected by the international community as a strategist and a statesman.”
Tributes also came in from a host of international leaders, including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the prime ministers of Malaysia, Britain, Japan and Australia.
Lee Kuan Yew, whose health rapidly deteriorated after his wife of 63 years, Kwa Geok Choo (柯玉芝), died in 2010, had been in hospital for nearly seven weeks with severe pneumonia.
Two years before he died, Lee Kuan Yew revealed that he had signed an advance medical directive instructing doctors not to use any life-sustaining treatment if he could not be resuscitated.
He served as prime minister from 1959, when colonial ruler Britain granted self-rule, to 1990, leading Singapore to independence in 1965 after a brief and stormy union with Malaysia.
Singapore now has one of the world’s highest per capita incomes and its residents enjoy near-universal home ownership, low crime rates and first-class infrastructure.
The opposition Workers’ Party, whose leaders were among those harried for years by Lee under his authoritarian rule, joined the rest of the nation of 5.5 million people in mourning him.
“His contributions to Singapore will be remembered for generations to come,” it said in a statement.
On the diplomatic front, Lee Kuan 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 neighbors in Southeast Asia.
“Lee Kuan Yew gave Singapore an international profile completely disproportionate to the country's size,” Singapore-based political analyst Derek da Cunha said.
However, the Cambridge-educated lawyer was also criticized for jailing political opponents and driving his critics to self-imposed exile or financial ruin as a result of costly libel suits.
Singapore strictly controls freedom of speech and assembly. While it has become more liberal in recent years, it still uses corporal punishment and ranks 150th in the annual press freedom ranking of Reporters Without Borders — below Russia and Zimbabwe, among others.
Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Robertson acknowledged Lee Kuan Yew’s economic legacy, but said “it also came at a significant cost for human rights.”
He said it might now be time for a national “conversation” on greater political liberalization.
Lee Kuan Yew stepped down in 1990 in favor of his deputy, Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who in turn handed the reins to the former leader's eldest son, Lee Hsien Loong, in 2004.
The People’s Action Party (PAP), which was co-founded by the elder Lee, has won every election since 1959 and currently holds 80 of the 87 seats in parliament.
Lee retired from advisory roles in government in 2011 after the PAP suffered its worst poll result since it came to power, getting only 60 percent of votes cast amid public anger over a large influx of immigrants, the rising cost of living, urban congestion and insufficient supply of public housing.
In his last book, One Man’s View of the World, published in 2013, Lee Kuan Yew looked back at his remarkable career and concluded: “As for me, I have done what I had wanted to, to the best of my ability. I am satisfied.”
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