I
go through the news at least twice a day every day. For those who
frequent this blog, I am sure that it will not surprise you when I
say that I have tailored my newsfeed to focus on news stories that
are focused on business, finance, and economics.
However,
I saw a news story pop up the other day, the kind that doesn't
usually appear on my newsfeed, which grabbed my attention.
At
age 91, Lee Kuan
Yew has certainly lived a long life, and it is only natural that
sooner or later, death comes for saints and sinners alike. And just this morning, I saw that he has finally passed away. No one lives forever, and though his passing was expected, I still feel a deep sense of sadness knowing that he is gone.
I
was fifteen years old when I first read Alex
Josey's book Lee Kuan Yew: The Critical Years (1971-1978)
in my school's library. As I read about the political challenges that
Lee Kuan Yew had to face – striving to have Singapore become
accepted and then eventually being expelled from the Malaysian
Federation, the conflict with the communists, the delicate balancing
act that was needed to ensure Singapore's multicultural population
did not devolve into ethnic strife, the establishment of an
institutional and legal order that were needed to transform Singapore
from a former backwater colony to a developed nation – my respect
and admiration for him knew no bounds.
It was right around the time when the conflagration that came to be known as the Asian Economic Crisis engulfed so many lives when I first read about Lee Kuan Yew. Although Brunei, the country where I was living at the time, was not considered as one of the countries that was directly affected by the crisis, when the indirect effects of the crisis merged with Brunei's own internal problems at the time – which involved a playboy prince who had misspent billions of the country's money to maintain a hedonist lifestyle (see here, here, here, and here) – Brunei's economy went into a tailspin.
As I compared him to other Asian leaders who were in power at the time, many of them now disgraced and/or forgotten, I felt bitterly angry that there wasn't anyone else who possessed the
determination, the vision, the self-confidence, and the intelligence
that Lee Kuan Yew possessed. I thought that Lee Kuan Yew was a giant
among men and that he was the kind of leader that Park
Chung-hee could have been; the kind of leader that world leaders
ought to emulate.
Then
for many years after that, I had stopped thinking of Lee Kuan Yew, until now.
The simple reason for it was that despite the ravaging effects of the Asian Economic Crisis and Amadeo's implosion, life still went on. I went on to graduate
from high school, went on to college and then graduated from college
as well, learned and experienced new things, gotten jobs, quit jobs,
paid bills, accumulated debt, went through personal hardships,
overcame some of them, and learned to adapt to those that I could not
overcome. Life has a way of moving on, it seems, and making us forget even things that we once
held most dear.
I
rejected Lee Kuan Yew's tribal
notion of “Asian
Values” – the implication that “Western-style” democracy
is somehow not applicable to Asian nations because of the particular
sets of culture that Asians are born and raised in. I rejected the
notion that culture determines an entire people's societal structure
into perpetuity.
The
United States' military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and its
subsequent failures to “impose democracy” on those societies
might have somewhat exonerated Lee Kuan Yew's belief that cultural
differences could cause an imposition of democracy on those societies
to become a failure.
However,
comparing Asian countries – such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan,
Hong
Kong, and Singapore, which have developed their economies, social
structures, and their political values since the 1950s – to Iraq
which had been ruled by a fascist dictator and to Afghanistan that
had been ruled by the Taliban for decades
is a clear attempt at academic dishonesty. As the former countries' economies transformed from
labor-intensive economies to capital-intensive economies to
technology-intensive economies, people's priorities, thoughts,
beliefs, and political views have changed.
The
idea that people's culture is static is wrong. And it is clear that Lee Kuan Yew could not have failed to have known that. In other words, his notion of “Asian Values” was no more than a bald-faced attempt at retaining his own hold on power.
However, Lee Kuan Yew's most lasting legacy, which
will last into the future long after he is gone, is that he was the intellectual
voice behind the foisting of authoritarian capitalism. He succeeded where Park Chung-hee failed. Unsurprisingly,
Singapore has long been China's source of inspiration in its plans to
develop its political structure as well as its socio-economic
engineering programs (see here,
here,
here,
and here).
Considering
China's economic might, it is possible that the authoritarian capitalism that Lee Kuan Yew advocated and championed will define the twenty-first century as much as liberal capitalism
defined the twentieth century, which would seemingly nullify
Francis
Fukuyama's theories in his book, The End of History.
If Lee Kuan Yew's version of capitalism replaces the liberal form of capitalism
in much of the world's zeitgeist, which I think it could, the social changes
it could bring to the world will be enormous, in both good and
terrible ways.
It
has been many years since I thought that Lee Kuan Yew was the kind of
leader that world leaders ought to emulate. As I said earlier, I
stopped believing that a long time ago. Now, I
have lost all faith in the benefits of concentrated
political power even if it is in the hands of wise and benevolent leaders of whom I know none.
Although I now stand firmly against many things that Lee Kuan Yew stood for despite my youthful dalliances with authoritarianism, I am still grieving now that Lee Kuan Yew has breathed his last. Although I have
come to stand opposed to his leadership style and philosophy, and dearly hope that his legacy will not be as widespread as I fear it will be, what no
one can deny is that he was still an intellectual giant among men who
had achieved more than most can even dream. Though perhaps not
goodness, he has certainly achieved greatness and immortality in his
own right. As Richard
Nixon once said, had Lee Kuan Yew “lived in another time and
another place, he might have attained the world stature of a
Churchill,
a Disraeli,
or a Gladstone.”
Though I am grieving his passing, I do not grieve the authoritarian that he became. Rather, I am grieving the man that he could have been – an intellectual titan who
might have attained the world stature of a Locke,
a Jefferson,
or a Tocqueville
– a man who, above all else, might have used his staggering and formidable intelligence to champion the cause of freedom and
liberty.
