Bulletin Spring‧Summer 2001

CITATIONS Lee Kuan Yew Lee Kuan Yew was b om in Singapore in 1923 to young parents, a father just 20, a mother 16 ， whose marriage was arranged the previous year by their parents. I n The Singapore Story, Senior Minister Lee surmises , 'Both families must have thought it an excellent match, for they later married my father's younger sister to my mother's younger brother.’ Lee Kuan Yew's own long and successful marriage, however, was arranged by nobody but Lee Kuan Yew and his beloved wife Choo themselves — and they kept it secret for some time. I am convinced that this was a good legal decision, a wise family move, and a masterly piece of romantic realism. A t the end of the second volume of his brilliantly written memoirs, From Third World to First, the Senior Minister remembers himself as a boy of six riding on a bullock-cart 'enjoying a hilariously bumpy ride on a dirt track to my grandfather's rubber estate. Fifty years later I flew in a supersonic Concorde from London to New York in three hours. Technology has changed my world.' The same technology and Mr. Lee have changed our world, too: wily pragmatism, realism, and grasp of the key consequences o f modern conditions have enabled h i m and his trusted colleagues to make progress a constant in the lives of his fellow Singaporeans. The policies tried and tested in the political crucible or the laboratory of Singapore have changed a third world base for the British into a contemporary first world city state. His influence in the region, in ASEAN, and in the minds of some Western leaders ， has been constructive. How did the boy in the bullock-cart become the man we honour here today? An answer as fascinating as it is thorough, he has already given us in his two-volume memoirs. These are so well-written and give such insight into Mr . Lee and the workings of governments in an international setting, that they are masterly examples of their genre and have already earned a high place in the growing canon o f new literatures in English. The short answer to my question is that he attended Telok Kurau English School, then Raffles Institution, then Raffles College. Surprisingly, he survived the severities of the Japanese war-time occupation of Singapore; less surprisingly, his formidable intellect survived honing into a double first (starred) in Law at Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge; he then spent a year in London to be called as a barrister at the Middle Temple; back in Singapore, he practised law and later became a partner in the firm, as well as being an honorary legal adviser to a number of trade unions . Seeing the need for a developed political system to replace British colonial rule, he was a founder-member of the People's Action Party (PAP) — now Singapore's dominant political party. He negotiated his way through the political turmoil of the period in Singapore and neighbouring Malaya, with which, as it became Malaysia, he advocated and achieved integration; he then faced the realities of the times and, w i t h some fear but no trembling, led Singapore to independence and rapidly increasing prosperity. Through successive elections his party has kept power, making him one of the longest serving prime ministers in the Chinese University Bulletin Spring • Summer 2001 38