World Says Farewell To Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew

Tom Burroughes

24 March 2015

Lee Kuan Yew, the former leader of Singapore who passed away yesterday at the age of 91, leaves a legacy that is rightly envied and emulated across the globe.

Lee’s achievements are considerable. When the architect Sir Christopher Wren asked what memorial he wished for, he said: “Look around you”. And Lee could have said the same. Anyone who has travelled to and spent time in the marvellous city of Singapore only has to take in the breathtaking sights of this city to get some measure of Lee’s track record. He led Singapore from 1959 to 1990, leaving the city-state at the time of his retirement as a first-world nation, able to rival such financial hubs as London, New York, Hong Kong and Zurich.

And it is important, at a time when the world appears more unstable in some respects than it has for a while, to stop and take stock of what this man achieved. The world’s largest wealth manager, UBS, has given a good overview: “Mr Lee became Singapore's first elected prime minister in 1959 and stepped down from his position in 1990, making him one of the 20th century's longest serving leaders. His was a career with remarkably few missteps. Mr Lee won public support for a merger with Malaysia in 1963, believing at the time that it would offer security to an island lacking raw material reserves, inhibited by a small market and limited supplies of fresh water. But after the union broke up in 1965, the policies his government adopted proved that such limitations were no barrier to economic progress.

“As Singapore embraced an outward-oriented growth strategy, among the few developing countries at that time to break away from the shackles of import-substitution, GDP growth rose nearly 8 per cent per annum between 1965 and 1990. Mr Lee helped carve out a role for Singapore, building on its historical trading port role to quickly establish its credential as a regional hub for logistics and transport, contract manufacturing, and later as a financial centre and an intellectual buffer state,” UBS said.

And the Zurich-listed lender, which like many of its peers does business in Singapore, continued: “In barely one generation, this island city-state had been transformed from a resource-poor colonial outpost to a thriving metropolis and one of Asia's most advanced and admired economies.”

Today, Singapore stands among the top five most competitive economies and a most livable city globally. In 2014, as UBS notes, the city-state leapfrogged several global cities to clinch the third spot in PricewaterhouseCoopers' “Cities of Opportunity” index, and has one of the world's highest levels of GDP per capita, which at $55,000 has grown about 100-fold since independence in 1965.

This is all a far cry from a malaria-infested swampland that had once been the lot of this jurisdiction – a place that became a vital British naval base and port which was captured by Japanese forces in the Second World War. Its post-war rebirth, rather like the ascent of its rival, Hong Kong, after 1945 is nothing short of miraculous.

Of course, the departure of such a man requires one to ask about Singapore’s future, and of course there are many lessons that other jurisdictions may want to learn from its recent past. It is a jurisdiction known for its tough policy against certain forms of crime and not always a darling of civil libertarians. While now is not the time to dwell on the fine print of policy and strategy, one clear lesson to be taken away surely is that any country wishing to be successful economically requires a strong commitment to the rule of law, respect for property rights and contract and a commitment to honest governance.

On behalf of WealthBriefingAsia and its sister publications, I extend my condolences to the family, friends and former colleagues of this remarkable person.