The man has moved on at 3.18 a.m. 23 March 2015 at the ripe old age of 91.
As with all great political leaders, many will be singing his praises while some will speak not so favourably about him. This is especially so if the people who were 'victimised' by his iron-fisted rules in running the Little Red Dot called Singapore over the last 50 years, or the 1st 30-40 years when he was the Prime Minister (PM).
For me, it can only be real if there are some unfavourable comments about any great man and woman instead of all good and great praises.
For me, the good he has done are:
1. a great visionary with principles of running a multi-racial, multi-lingual and multi-religious country like: keep strict boundaries for anyone to speak ill of another race/language/religion, planned integration of housing different races in the mass HDB public flat estates with strict quotas, refusal to have ghettos in such public housing estates!, leveraging multinational countries to push Singapore to the higher technologies in both hardware and human capital, cleaning up of the filthy Singapore River, strict enforcement of 'no union trouble' policy, and able to hold together a first class team of dedicated and capable colleagues and a hardworking and obedient populace at the beginning;
2. a ruthless streak about him that is perfectly understandable during the turbulent time of nation building. The need for iron-fisted policies and execution was necessary. The roughing up of SOME minority was necessary. YET, after the nation has gained some form of stability, some of his trademark decisiveness in pursuing any dissenting opposition political persons can be viewed as overly aggressive and unnecessary. e.g. Tang Liang Hong incident was one that puzzled quite a few though there was this 'Chinese chauvinism' theory been thrown around then;
3. much credit to him for admitting some policy mistakes like: execution of the bilingualism, the supremacy theory of the 'smart marrying the smart will produce smart or smarter offspring', etc. Yet, some detractors also faulted him for not changing tags on: 'You need to pay high wages to attract the ablest to government and prevent corruption', 'meritocracy that perhaps have been twisted a bit', etc.
If I have to score him hypothetically, it will be stellar for his first 7.5/9 stellar and the 'debatable' for his final 1.5/9 life.
Rest in peace and may he be reunited with his true love, Mrs Lee, in Heaven or anywhere he believes they should be since he did say he does not believe in Heaven.
As with all great political leaders, many will be singing his praises while some will speak not so favourably about him. This is especially so if the people who were 'victimised' by his iron-fisted rules in running the Little Red Dot called Singapore over the last 50 years, or the 1st 30-40 years when he was the Prime Minister (PM).
For me, it can only be real if there are some unfavourable comments about any great man and woman instead of all good and great praises.
For me, the good he has done are:
1. a great visionary with principles of running a multi-racial, multi-lingual and multi-religious country like: keep strict boundaries for anyone to speak ill of another race/language/religion, planned integration of housing different races in the mass HDB public flat estates with strict quotas, refusal to have ghettos in such public housing estates!, leveraging multinational countries to push Singapore to the higher technologies in both hardware and human capital, cleaning up of the filthy Singapore River, strict enforcement of 'no union trouble' policy, and able to hold together a first class team of dedicated and capable colleagues and a hardworking and obedient populace at the beginning;
2. a ruthless streak about him that is perfectly understandable during the turbulent time of nation building. The need for iron-fisted policies and execution was necessary. The roughing up of SOME minority was necessary. YET, after the nation has gained some form of stability, some of his trademark decisiveness in pursuing any dissenting opposition political persons can be viewed as overly aggressive and unnecessary. e.g. Tang Liang Hong incident was one that puzzled quite a few though there was this 'Chinese chauvinism' theory been thrown around then;
3. much credit to him for admitting some policy mistakes like: execution of the bilingualism, the supremacy theory of the 'smart marrying the smart will produce smart or smarter offspring', etc. Yet, some detractors also faulted him for not changing tags on: 'You need to pay high wages to attract the ablest to government and prevent corruption', 'meritocracy that perhaps have been twisted a bit', etc.
If I have to score him hypothetically, it will be stellar for his first 7.5/9 stellar and the 'debatable' for his final 1.5/9 life.
Rest in peace and may he be reunited with his true love, Mrs Lee, in Heaven or anywhere he believes they should be since he did say he does not believe in Heaven.
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