Modern Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, dies at 91
A man bows as he pays his respects to late former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew at Tanjong Pagar community club, in the constituency which Lee represented as Member of Parliament since 1955, in Singapore March 23, 2015. Photo: Reuters
Lee Kuan Yew, the autocratic founder of modern Singapore who died Monday, never shrank from expressing his views bluntly. He was known as much for his tough talk as a pithy turn of phrase in campaign speeches, press interviews and parliamentary debates. Here are some of his oft-quoted comments:
Everybody knows that in my bag I have a hatchet, and a very sharp one. You take me on, I take my hatchet, we meet in the cul-de-sac. That’s the way I had to survive in the past. That’s the way the communists tackled me. (Speaking about his harsh treatment of opposition politician J B Jeyaretnam in “Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas,” 1998)
I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters – who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think. (The Straits Times, April 20, 1987)
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