Singapore's Minister Mentor

The last issue of TIME dated 12 December features an exclusive interview with Lee Kuan Yew. Among the 10 pages, I found a few lines a real must-read highlight. They concern how Lee sees the notion of democracy being non-applicable in Singapore and how he sees China as a nation of rising threat.

He considers the misuse and the excess of democracy exercised in some places "has tempered steady economic progress and the betterment of the life chances of ordinary folk". The example cited is the Philippines where chaos has been evident in the marketplace of ideas. He keeps saying that he welcomes dissenting voices if they are persuasive and constructive. Then when asked why he does not allow oppposition forces, freedom of speech and so on, he compares Singaporeans with Americans.

"Americans can have a marketplace of ideas. For example, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was a box-office hit. Americans enjoyed their President being mocked and satirized. But the majority voted for Bush in November 2004. When we have a large enough educated population like America, able to make independent judgments, we will loosen up. But even without the cacophony, all ideas are accessible in the media and the Internet."

What a hypocritical remark! Everyone who reads about world affairs knows that average US citizens, especially those who don't live along the coastal regions and in the very urbanised states care about what is featured on TV as games shows and soap opera. That explains why the documentary programmes like 60 Minutes Plus and 20/20 are never their choices. Most of these so-called educated population blindly supported Bush for the war against Iraq as the duty of the world police who aim at maintaining law and order all over the world without any selfish cause.

He responds to the question of whether the over-reliance of Singaporeans on the government has something to do with the lack of freedom granted to the citizens by confusing TIME's readers with the egg-and-chicken philosophical answer.

"Should I have fostered more free enterprise, more do-it-yourself? Yes. But free enterprise was not working [for us] because we did not have enough entrepreneurs."

"Hong Kong started with successful businessmen from mainland China, after '49. They were the business élite of the coastal regions. They were not just merchants. They knew how to run a shipping line, how to start a textile factory, run a bank and so on. We had traders, not manufacturers. Why did we [the government] start a shipping line? Because we didn't have a Y.K. Pao or a C.Y. Tung as in Hong Kong. The same with Singapore Airlines, and so with an iron and steel mill. How do we get out of these companies now? To get out, we've got to find a buyer who can provide the management to take over. We produced the bright officers who are good at numbers and who learned on the job. They did a great job. We don't want to do that anymore. If SIA can be run by some corporate group, we want to get out of it. But who in Singapore? Have we got a Li Ka-shing?"

Excuse me, isn't it because Hong Kong is a place where free flow of ideas is allowed, where citizens enjoy freedom of press and freedom of speech to certain extent that attributes to the degradation of morality(I mean the covers of the gossipy magazines are 100% pornographic)? Lee blames the excessive government intervention for a lack of qualified managerial people. Given that no perfect market information plus obstruction of free ideas, how could able people be more open-minded enough to embrace changes?

A GOOD point he raises in the interview:

He comments on the dangerous rise of China as a world power and an Asian leading power due to the idea of patriotism built in the youngsters' mind deliberately by the communist regime, which is a threat to the neighbouring countries and even the whole world. He cited incidents like how the Chinese expressed their anti-Japanese feelings in an aggressive manner and how his son and Singapore were defamed as traitors on China's Internet chatrooms upon his son's visit to Taiwan last year.

Yes, he has made a very good point. Though Japan's Government refuses to do what the Germans did, Chinese people should deal with the internation relations diplomatically if China really wants to be respected as a modern nation of the new century and if China still wants to be a host of various international functions like the upcoming Olympic event.

For those who are interested in the full report, please refer to:http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501051212/index.html