Who Are We?

 It’s my National Day today and I spent the better part of the morning watching the parade, which thanks to Covid-19 was substantially subdued but never the less well executed and then the afternoon was spent catching up with old friends that I hadn’t seen for a while. It didn’t occur to me that I would have a topic to write about for National Day.

It was only later in the evening when I was browsing through a friend’s Facebook page that I stumbled on a recording of Lee Kuan Yew reading out the proclamation of our independence that it occurred to me that there was something that needed to be said about National Day. The recording can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/mr-lee-kuan-yews-reading-of-the-proclamation-of-independence-kicks-off-national-day?&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=addtoany&__FB_PRIVATE_TRACKING__=%7B%22loggedout_browser_id%22%3A%227b78fa7e0adc941009a232db0164e11461e0e48f%22%7D&fbclid=IwAR1cFSx0yujyS0hjjJIKWOdngXUzEIbKLZWi7s3ZRb6roI4yzIWf3MFR6PE

I don’t want to demean the efforts of those who marched in the parade and I am thankful for having a public holiday every August 9 but I do feel that National Day in Singapore tends to obscure one crucial fact – namely the fact that Singapore was not supposed to be a nation let alone a successful one.

If you watch enough of our National Day messages, you’re bound to get the impression that Singapore was a swamp that was dragged into being the successful ultra-modern metropolis that it is today by an all knowing and all seeing sage.

While Mr. Lee Kuan Yew was well known for his intellect and much of the success that is Singapore is due to his vision and execution, the official version isn’t quite accurate. OK, in fairness, every country does pump itself up on its national day but the problem with the official version of history is that it becomes something of an excuse for official high handedness. Whenever I’ve said something about the government being like that or that, I’ve had people from developed countries tell me off for being ungrateful to the all wise and all-knowing sage that set the tone for this country.

The first truth is that Singapore wasn’t quite the shit hole that the PAP government makes it out to be. While we had little in the way of natural resources or a hinterland, we had a port, which was the very reason why Raffles took interest what we call Singapore in the very first place.

The second truth is that Lee Kuan Yew was not exactly all knowing. He was in his early days the ideal leader for a democratic society. He recognized the genius in others (they in return recognized that the key to survival was not having eyes on his job) and letting them get on with it. One of my first shocks was his admission during the funeral of his old colleague, S. Rajaratnam in 2006, that there were, in his words “furious” debates. I grew up thinking that the old man never tolerated dissent. The key to success was this simple, he took care of the politics and allowed Rajaratnam, who was more ideological to get on with building symbols like our pledge and Goh Keng Swee, a pragmatist with a heart for the people, to get on with building the institutions such as our military and education system. Dr. Goh was in turn smart enough to listen to the likes of Dr. Winsemius, the Dutch Economist who led the United Nations Mission to Singapore.

The most important point is the fact that Lee Kuan Yew’s greatest success, namely the prosperous Singapore that we know today, came from his greatest failure, namely our ejection from the Malayan Federation. In his book, Lee Kuan Yew describes an “Independent Singapore” as a “Ridiculous Notion,” and what he fought for was a “Malaysian Malaysia.” The late Mr. Lee was an early champion of “Merdeka Malaysia.” The people of what we call Singapore, our British overlords who were planning to get out of the place and the Federal Government in KL didn’t want Singapore to be part of the Federation of Malaysia and yet, he somehow made it happen.

Again, this is not to take away anything from the man and how the nation that has given me so much was built up. What I am saying is let us look at the real success story and celebrate that instead.

Singapore was not a swamp that was brought into the modern age by a perfect sage. Our nation was built by a very clever man (and admittedly ruthless one) who knew how to read the situations not just on the ground but also in the larger nations around him. He was a man who respected talent in individuals and allowed them to challenge his views and when a consensus was reached, he gave them his backing. More importantly, he was a man who knew how to bounce back from failure.

My hope for a National Day celebrated in the midst of a global pandemic is that we don’t get blinded by our success and instead we look to the reasons why we were successful. Mr. Lee’s ability to build a consensus and to back talented individuals and build from failure are the very traits that our society will need in order to continue being successful.