Meet the green general who cleaned up the little red dot

LEE EK TIENG: THE GREEN GENERAL OF LEE KUAN YEW By Samantha Boh, Pearl Lee and Matthew Gan Non-fiction/The Nutgraf Books/ Paperback/193 pages/$32.11

- Clement Yong

Home-grown publisher The Nutgraf has a knack for making the dry history of Singapore's civil service sexy.

In 2022, it latched onto the "eight immortals" in Chinese mythology as a moniker to describe the country's eight pioneer civil servants. The Last Fools: The Eight Immortals Of Lee Kuan Yew was a catchy, romanticised label for those in the business of prosaic administration, easily penetrating popular consciousness and launching one of Nutgraf's most famous bestsellers.

Now, it has landed on another buzzy title - The Green General Of Lee Kuan Yew, specifically relating to one of the eight, Mr Lee Ek Tieng. A man with a disposition who faded into the background - "like clear water quietly reflecting the sky" - Mr Lee is not the dominant personality one imagines when thinking about Singapore's iron-ored founding fathers.

The authors here pitch him as a Lao Tzu-esque figure, adaptable, without complaint and confident enough to delegate duties to those whom he willingly confessed had more expertise. These were traits that guaranteed his legacy as a neglected but pivotal figure in Singapore's history.

Mr Lee died on April 6, 2025, at the age of 91. One of Singapore's most understated top civil servants in its formative years, he took on critical roles such as permanent secretary of the Ministry of the Environment, chairman of the Public Utilities Board, group managing director of GIC and head of the civil service before he retired in 2000.

He was also deputy chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), among the many hats he was instructed, or volunteered, to don.