Lee Kwan yew the guru of Asian values is the architect of modern Singapore He was the first prime minister of Singapore (1959-1990). Born to a wealthy Chinese family on 16 September 1923, he studied at Cambridge, England, and was admitted to the English bar in 1950. After his return he became a popular nationalist leader, and in 1954 he formed the People''s Action Party. Lee was a member of the delegation that negotiated Singapore''s independence from the British in 1956-58. After his Party''s victory in the subsequent elections, he became prime minister in 1959. Lee brought Singapore into the Federation of Malaysia in 1963, but Malay fear of Chinese domination forced Singapore to withdraw in 1965. Under his increasingly restrictive rule, the city-state became a center of international trade and relative prosperity in Asia. He resigned as prime minister in November 1990, but retained his leadership of the ruling People''s Action Party.

The Japanese Occupation made Lee decide to become a politician, the communist battles turned him into a hardened politician, and separation from Malaysia provide the final drama which led to Singapore''s independence, and made Lee govern it systematically.

Lee Kwan Yew''s grandfather, Hon Leona, went to an English school and began a career as a pharmacist. His fortunes improved markedly when he joined Chinese shipping company, Heap Eng Mo Shipping Company, as a purser, making regular trips between Singapore and Indonesia. On one of these voyage. He met Kop Liam NICO in Smearing. They married and he brought her to Singapore. He moved up the company and eventually possessed power of attorney over the concerns of Sugar King Oleic Tong Ham. His fortunes rose with Oleo''s .By the time Kwan Yew was born, Hon Long was head of a wealthy family, though its fortunes suffered somewhat during the Depression of 1929- 32, As was the practice in those days, the marriage between Lee''s parents, Lee chin Kong and Chua Jim Neo, was an arranged one, Both came from successful middle-class families and were educated in English schools.

Lee''s maternal grandfather owned the former Kalong market, rubber estates at Chui chi and a row of house next to the present Thai embassy at Orchard Road. Those days successful Chinese businessmen working within the colonial system in Singapore were able to make vast fortunes mainly in trading and property development.

The Depression took its toll and both Lee''s grandfather''s wealth declined considerably. Lee''s father worked first as a storekeeper at Shell, the Anglo- Dutch oil giant, and was later put in charge of various depots in Johor Bahru, Stulang and Batu Pahat. But it was his mother, Jim Neo, to whom Lee attributes much of the family''s success in overcoming the financial difficulties. By then, the family had a house in Telok Kurau. For Lee and his three brothers and a sister, these were carefree days. But even though, by his own admission, he did not work very hard in school, he was always thereat the top of the class. The pace quickened somewhat after he enrolled at Raffles Institution; Lee emerged top Malayan boy in the Senior Cambridge examinations. His decision to become a lawyer, which would have a profound effect on his political activities later, came about from purely pragmatic considerations. "My father and mother had friends from their wealthier days who, after the slump, were still wealthy because they had professions, either doctors or lawyers. The doctors were people like Dr.Loh Ponn Lip, the father of Robert Loh. The Lawyer was Richard Lim Chuan Ho, who was the father of Arthur Lim, the eye surgeon. And then there was a chap called Philip Hoalim Senior. They did not become poor because they had professions. My father didn''t have a profession, so he became poor and he became a storekeeper. Their message, or I''d run the risk of a very precarious life, "Lee recapitulates.

There were three choices for a profession- medicine, law and engineering. Lee did not want to join the first two because one would have to work for a company or someone if one followed these lines. He decided to be a lawyer where one could be self employed.

These plans were shattered when Japanese forces landed at Kota Baru on the north-east coast of Malaya in the early hours of Dec 8, 1941. But the political education which followed would leave a lasting impression and change Lee''s life forever. They (the Japanese) were the masters. They swaggered around with big swords, they occupied all the big officers and the houses and the big cars and they gave the orders. So that determines who the authority is. Then, because they had the authority, they printed the money, they controlled the wealth of the country, the banks, they made the Chinese pay a $50- million tribute." Lee recalled bitterly.

Lee saw that people adjusted and they bowed, they ingratiated themselves because they had to live. Quietly, they cursed away behind the backs of the Japanese. But in the face of the Japanese, they appeared to submit and appeared to be docile. Observing this Lee learnt how power operated on people.
As time went on, food and medicine became short, Whisky, brandy, all the luxuries which could be kept in either bottles or tins- cigarettes, 555s in tins- became valuables. The people who traded with the Japanese, who pandered to their wishes, provided them with supplies, clothes, uniforms, whatever, bought these things and gave them to the officers were in favor. And some ran gambling farms in the New World and great World. And millions of Japanese dollars were won and lost each night. They collected the money, shared it with whoever were in charge the Japanese Kempeitai and the government or generals or whatever. They bought properties. They became very wealthy at the end of the war because the property transactions were recognized. But the notes were not.

Lee began to hate the Japanese. He did not want to learn the language. Instead he began to learn Chinese. After six months he could read Chinese fluently but the Katakana and the Henbane were alien to him. He finally registered at a Japanese school in Queen Street. After three months Lee got a job with his grand father''s old friend, a textile importer and exporter called Shimoda.

Lee worked there as a clerk, copy typist, copied the Japanese Kanji and so on. It was clerical work. But Lee saw how people had to live, they had to get rice, food, they had to feed their children. Therefore, they had to submit. It was here that Lee gained his first lesson on power and government and system and how human beings reacted. Years later Lee recalling the people and their reactions said "Some were heroic, maybe misguided, They listened to the radio, against the Japanese, they spread news, got captured by the Kempeitai, tortured. Some were just collaborates, did everything the Japanese wanted. And it was an education on human beings, human nature and human systems of government".

When the war ended, Lee had to decided between returning to Raffles College to work for the scholarship, which would fund his law studies in England or going there on his own steam. Britain, land of his colonial masters and the elicited from a subservient subject of a distant outpost, 11,000km away, the reverence it once undoubtedly deserved.

War- torn Britain of was a different proposition altogether. For Lee, the first few months were disorienting, hectic and miserable, Arriving in October, he was already late for college admission. But being first boy in the Senior Cambridge examinations for all Malaya helped. The dean of the Law faculty at the London School himself thrown into the rough and tumble of undergraduate life in the imperial capital, an experience he found thoroughly unpleasant.
With the help of some friends in Cambridge and a sympathetic Censor of Fitzwilliam House, he got himself admitted and moved to the university town Lee went on to distinguish himself in Cambridge, obtaining a rare double first. But though his top priority was his studies, something else much more intense was stirring in him.

It was in England that he began to seriously question the continued right of the British to govern Singapore. The Japanese Occupation had demonstrated in away nothing else could have done that the British were not a superior people with a god- given right to govern. What he saw of them during those four years in Britain convinced him even more all about this in their own newspapers. "Why should they run this place for your benefit? And when it comes tumbling down, "I''m the chap who suffers. That, I think, was the start of it all, recalled Lee.

"At that time, it was also the year following my stay in England and insurgency had started (in Malaya) and I had also seen the communist Malayan People''s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) marching on the streets. "I would say Japanese Occupation, one year here, seeing MPAJA and seeing the British trying to re-establish their administration, not very adept.....I mean the old mechanism had gone and the old habits of obedience and respect had also gone because people had seen them run away."

The Japanese packed up. Women and children. Those who could get away did. The local population was supposed to panic when the bombs fell, but they panicked more than the locals. Thus the old order gave way to new the old relationship no longer existed.

Lee saw Britain and he saw the British people as they were. And whilst he met nothing but consideration and a certain benevolence from people at the top, at the bottom, when he had to deal with landladies and the shopkeepers, it was pretty rough. They treated him as a colonial and Lee resented that. Lee resented that the white men and women in inferior position socially should be governing him. He decided to put an end to that.

As one of the first-generation leaders who fought the colonial powers to gain independence for his country, Lee understood the forces and the motivation that had driven them to action. He knew only too well the force of circumstances and the uncertain temper of the times that had thrown up these men. What May surprise the modern reader is how early in Lee''s political career he came to this conclusion. The problem did not suddenly dawn on him in the twilight of his political career, when succession became a pressing issue. When he spoke of it in 1966, barely one year into Singapore''s independence, almost the entire Old Guard leadership was relatively young and intact. Perhaps even more surprising is that in an interview 30 years ago, he had already identified one core aspect of the problem the incentives for young men and women to join the government, "I would say the real problem now in Singapore politically is as different from the economics of it is how do we, over the next 10 years, allow a new generation to emerge to take over from us? This is important. We are not getting younger. We cannot go on forever, and you must allow sufficient free play on the ground for a new generation to emerge well in time to take over, My problem is there are so many career opportunities now that unless we do something to make politics more attractive incentive- wise, your best men are going into executive and managerial careers. This will leave your second best careerist...." (July 1966)

Lee tackled these problems with the typical Lee approach to governance. He believed the problem was especially acute for newly- emerging nations, developed ones already had an established tradition for throwing up leaders, yet, it was the newly- independent countries that cried out for capable leaders to solve their numerous and pressing problems. "Being confronted with this problem myself, I have often asked: "How do we ensure succession? –not on the basis of "I Like A and therefore I groom A for leadership". Unless you want long periods of anarchy and chaos, you have to create a self- continuing- not a self-perpetuating- but a self continuing power structure." Lee''s wisdom and insight into the Kernel of the problem made him a successful leader.

Making Singapore a garden city was an obsession with him. As with the man who has been at Singapore''s helm for 38 years, 31 of which he served as prime minister, his approach to the problem has been typically hardheaded and pragmatic. For him, the object of the exercise was not all about smelling roses. In the end it was about keeping Singapore ahead of the competition. A well kept garden, he would say, is a daily effort, and would demonstrate to outsiders the people''s ability to organize and to be systematic. "The grass has got to be mown every other day, the trees have to be tended, the flowers in the garden have to be looked after so they know this place gives attention to details." When Lee Kuhn Yew decided to make Singapore a garden city, to soften the harshness of life in one of the world''s most densely populated countries, He did not write a memorandum to the environment minister or to the head of the agency responsible for parks and trees. He did not form a committee nor seek outside help to hire the best landscapists money could buy. For one thing. In the 1960s, when he was thinking of these matters, money was in short supply. In fact, having been unceremoniously booted out of Malaysia, the country''s economic survival was hanging in the balance. For another, there was no environment minister to speak of then, so low down in the list of priorities were these matters. When job had to be created and communists fought in the streets, only the birds were interest in flowers and trees.

Lee sought pragmatic solution to realize his dreams. Fertilizers would replenish the soil, and so began the task of making compost from rubbish dumps adding calcium, and lime where the ground was too acidic, Years later, when economic survival was no longer an issue and Singapore''s success was acknowledge worldwide, he was still working to make the garden city possible. When expressways and flyovers sprouted all over the island, he had officials look for plants which could survive below the flyovers where the sun seldom shone. And instead of having to water these plants regularly, which was costly, he got them to devise a way to channel water from the roads, after filtering it to get rid of the oil and grime from the traffic above.

The constant search for solutions would not end. When development intensified even further and the roads and flyovers became broader still, shutting out the light completely from the plants below, he did not give up. The road was split into two so there would be a gap in the middle with enough space for sunshine and rain to seep through and greenery and vegetation to thrive below. "I sent them on missions all along the Equator and the tropical, subtropical Zones, Looking for new types of trees, plants, creepers and so on. From Africa, the Caribbean, Latin, Middle, Central America, we''ve come back with new plants. It''s a very small sum. But if you get the place greened up, if you get all those creepers up, you take away the heat, you''ll have a different city," he said.

Today plainclothes security officers tread the narrow carpeted corridors of Lee Kuhn''s office, buzzing each other periodically over their walkie-talkies. In a brightly lit room, a Secretary works at her computer, one ear peeled to an intercom linking her to an adjoining office where Lee Kuhn Yew works. It is an L-shaped room with an attached bathroom.
It is free of personal paraphemalia. No family photographs decorate his table no personal mementoes line his walls. Lee sits behind a desk, his back to a computer. He is about 1.8 meters tall, and slim. His trousers, which are usually in light hues, are loose, and he tugs at the waistband frequently. He is at least 10 Kilograms lighters than when he was in his forties. His shirts are well- pressed though well-worn, and he wears a windbreaker, usually beige, when he is in the office.

At 74, his hair is white. The once wiry black mop has thinned considerably over the years, accentuating a broad, high forehead under which small, piercing eyes stare. His face is pink in tone, the skin mostly unlined, though tiny creases crisscross the skin on his eyelids. His nails are neatly trimmed. A low cabinet next to it is stacked with books and files. A wood- paneled wall camouflages the door to the room where his two secretaries work. A teak table for eight stands four meters from his desk, a jade dragon jar in the middle. Lee works in this office six days a week, from about 10 in the morning to 6.30.in the evening, when he puts his work aside for his daily exercise in the Astana grounds. He has been known to come back to the office on Sundays and public holidays.

Even in a private setting, he is a forceful personality. His facial expression Changes quickly and his hands often chop the air to emphasize a point, His voice rises and falls according to his emotions. He is quick to show impatience, and slow to smile, He has never suffered fools lightly. This is the man who has more than anyone else shaped the history of modern Singapore. Today, he stands an inspiration to the older generation as well as the new generation. He stands tall and straight an example worth emulating.