How Lee Kuan Yew turned a small island into a global powerhouse

Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew (LKY), explained in a guest lecture at Harvard University in October 2000 how he confronted national challenges and transformed a fragmented, vulnerable island into a unified, prosperous state.

- By CHULA GOONASEKERA (ADMIN @SRILANKALEADS.COM)

He outlined the principles that guided his leadership, how he won nine consecutive elections from 1959, and how he planned a smooth transition to a younger generation. His central message was clear: pragmatism, not dogma, is the essential quality of successful leadership in a turbulent geopolitical environment.

This article seeks to inform the public—and also our own President, AKD—who today appears to be embracing elements of the same pragmatic approach. LKY’s lessons on governance, meritocracy, succession planning, and national cohesion remain strikingly relevant.

From Rejection to Nationhood

Singapore became an independent state in 1965, a multiracial society of Chinese, Malays, Indians, and others who had arrived seeking opportunity but not nationhood. LKY recognised early that unity required practicality. He made English the working language—not to favour any group, but to avoid giving advantage to one. Mother tongues were preserved, and integration was encouraged through mixed public housing allocated by ballot.

LKY insisted that zero tolerance for corruption was nonnegotiable. Good leaders, he argued, must make decisions that are right for the country even if they are unpopular at first. “Policies must be pragmatic, not dogmatic,” he warned, rejecting political correctness and conventional assumptions that ignored reality.

Why Stability Matters More Than Theory

LKY emphasised that stability and good governance—not ideology—drive development. He criticised political systems where media manipulation, imagebuilding, and spin overshadow competence. He argued that leaders like Churchill or Roosevelt could not emerge from election environments dominated by packaging rather than substance.

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