Where will history place Lee Kuan Yew?
Tom Plate ; The author of Conversations with Lee Kuan
Yew in the Giants of Asia book series; His next book is The Fine Art of the
Interview; He is the distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at
Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles
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JAKARTA
POST, 24 Maret 2015
My differences of opinion with Lee Kuan Yew
(which included views about the future role of China’s Communist Party and
other matters, but no matter here) included one about the character of his
political genius. For that, as any fair-minded observer of the founding
father of bustling modern Singapore knew, was what he was.
But what was its nature?
Lee and his followers, which much of the time
included most of the people of Singapore, showed the world that economic
self-improvement had to have public policies grounded in best-practice
pragmatisms rather than in ideological schematics. It also required
hard-working citizens sharing the vision to get off the ground.
Whether your political system was
argumentative-parliamentarian, messy-democracy or shut-up authoritarian, the
people had to be brought along and had to believe in the leader’s way of
moving forward if they were to give it their best.
LKY, as he used to sign his private notes,
convinced people that his way — hard work, scientific public policy,
political-party monopoly, clean government and media as ally, not as
smarty-pants second-guesser — would work if given a chance. And it did.
In his own phraseology, Singapore went from
Third World to First in almost a generation’s time, never stopping for a
rest, much less to entertain a second guess or tolerate second-guessers.
I once offered him the formulation of the late
Isaiah Berlin, the great Oxford don who imagined political genius in the
manner of Tolstoy. The great ones were either “hedgehogs” (one giant idea
brainiacs) or “foxes” (a million clever approaches). Their political sense
was either multifaceted (the ultra-alert fox who knew a thousand ways to
survive) or the one-big-idea porcupine (with but a single survival move — yet
it was a prickly doozey!).
The wartime Winston Churchill with all his
many tricks was a fox; Albert Einstein, who could barely cross a street
without help, was nonetheless the hedgehog with his one world-changing idea.
LKY, only grudgingly accepting my Berlin-Tolstoy
dichotomy, insisted he was a fox, not a hedgehog: “You may call me a
‘utilitarian’ or whatever. I am interested in what works.”
He had a strong argument. Really good and
sophisticated governance requires a map of multiple routes to the future, not
to mention mature management of the present.
Critics belittled the result as a “nanny
state”, but not every nanny was as competent and diligent as this one. Little
Singapore’s journey also needed a team of like-minded colleagues and a
talented people, with a Confucian culture that could tolerate exceptionally
strong and singular leadership.
So I accepted his demurrer and had to face facts;
Einstein, after all, had worked more or less alone, not with a Cabinet full
of ministers and dozens of problems pressing daily. Besides, who would know
him better than himself? Perhaps only his late wife Choo understood what was
behind that iconic public face that at one hour could be so gruff and cold
and intimidating — and two hours later so charming and gracious and
reasonable.
I told him I marveled at how well Singaporeans
understood him, but he shook his head and snapped back: “They think they know
me, but they only know the public me.”
My sense is that, for all his writings and
interviews, and for all the media on him, he was right about that. So we
await the some future longish biography that gets to the real bones-and-flesh
human man behind the larger-than-life public figure.
For the interim version, I tried — probing him
with annoying questions about his sons, including the current well-performing
prime minister; his daughter, the brilliant medical professional; and of
course his late wife. And that did let in some light.
But when once asked whether there was anyone
alive who was like him, he answered without apology: “I do not know of any
person who is most like me.”
About that — again — he may very well have
been right, but if so, that helps make my case for awarding him hedgehog
honors despite everything. Sure, I’m stubborn about this, but let us note
that in one conversation he summoned up the notable figure Jean Monnet
(1888-1979), whom history reveres for his prophetic vision of European unity,
by way of a Common Market and European Union.
For this one singular contribution, Monnet
gets marked as a political hedgehog. So how is the Lee Kuan Yew a modern
Monnet, as I suspect history will say?
We will require more time to helicopter upward
for the illuminating panoramic view. But in my mind with each year in power
he grew into a composite figure, a dual icon of sorts where a modern-day
Plato (glowing with the vision of an ideal city-state run solely by the
virtuous) fused with a modern-day Machiavelli (calculating strategies to keep
the “soft-headed” utopian vision from getting its head chopped off).
To
govern in these fraught times, I am afraid to say it but you need to be both.
The political hedgehog in effect must have two sides to his political being.
As Machiavelli insisted, it was best if the leader was both feared and loved.
Because Lee Kuan Yew had it all, he became a
political giant of his time. Personally, over the decades, I met no one most
like him.
I wish his surviving family and relatives the
very best, and thank him for all the time he offered me — and for all the
wisdom and insights he gave me that I hope will never leave me. ●
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