Then and Now II

To start with, as the leader of both the PAP and the Opposition, Lee Kuan Yew was obviously an ardent defender of democracy and workers’ rights. T.J.S. George recorded such an image in his books:

… a knight-errant of democracy and socialism… Lee could not have been … other than a champion of the oppressed. His time until then had been taken up in defence of workers and students, in opposition to colonialism. He was an advocate of popular causes, a progressive… a liberal whose conscience was sensitive to the slightest sign of injustice around him… Almost any speech he made in the Assembly between 1955 and 1959 could go straight into the liberal democrat’s bedside book-shelf.

A look at the Legislative recods of the time would illustrate Lee’s philosophical bent and also his open criticisms against the government on what he saw as its undemocratic practices. During the First Legislative Assembly sitting on 4 October 1956, this was what Lee charged of the government:

You take over the organisation … the government machinery, the instruments of policy, the administration, the police, broadcasting and all the ‘gimmicks’ of a modern colonial state. Then you use your machinery with the connivance and concurrence of you colonial masters against rival organisations… All you have to do is dissolve organisations and societies and banish or detain the key political workers in these societies… Then an intimidated Press … and the govenrment-controlled radio together can regularly sing your praises and slowly and steadily people are made to forget the evil things that have already been done. Or if these thigns are referred to again, they are conveniently distorted, and distorted with impunity, because there will be no opposition to contadict it… But if we say that we believe in democracy, if we say that the fabric of a democratic society is one which allows for the free play of ideas … then, in the name of all the gods … give that free play a chance to work within the constitutional framework…

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Although LKY had issues with the communist faction in his party, he said this of them:

They are not crooks or opportunists. These are men with great resolve, dedicated to the communist revolution … many are prepared to pay the price… in terms of personal freedom and sacrifice.

I think the quote captures how the clash of ideology is sometimes less of political opportunism but more of a dedicated belief in what works best