Lee Kuan Yew
Lee Kuan Yew governed Singapore for thirty-one years and turned a port with no resources into one of the richest countries in the world. Born in 1923 into a Straits Chinese family, he studied at Raffles College, survived the Japanese occupation partly by working as a translator for their propaganda department, and took a double first in law at Cambridge. He returned as a trade union lawyer and co-founded the People's Action Party in 1954, allying with communist organisers to build a mass base and then destroying them once in office. He became prime minister in 1959 when Singapore obtained self-government, merged with Malaysia in 1963, and was expelled in 1965 after irreconcilable disputes over race policy — he wept on television announcing it, and the island became independent against its own wishes, with no hinterland, no water and no army. His programme was pragmatic and coercive in equal measure. He attracted multinational manufacturing with stability and low corruption, built public housing that eventually held over eighty per cent of the population as owner-occupiers, made English the common working language, imposed compulsory savings through the Central Provident Fund, and paid ministers salaries high enough to make bribery pointless. Per capita income rose from a few hundred dollars to among the highest anywhere. The political system was closed. Opposition politicians were bankrupted by defamation suits, detained without trial under the Internal Security Act, and the press was licensed. He defended this explicitly, arguing that Western liberal norms did not fit the society. He stood down in 1990, remained in cabinet until 2011, and died in 2015.
- Lived: 1923 CE – 2015 CE
- Nationality: Singaporean
- Roles: head_of_state, statesman
