But does Singapore want to make them happy, or to ensure that investors remain confident in this country?

The Minister Mentor posed this question to his Tanjong Pagar constituents at a Queenstown ward event last night - he was the guest of honour at its annual tree-planting day.

Speaking in Mandarin, he revealed how each week, he received one to two letters from Westerners wishing him well, and congratulating him on Singapore's 'extraordinary' success.

But this was not a sentiment that the Western media dared to repeat, he said. For their editors will then 'come down on them'.

'They want me to listen to them, have more democracy, more protests like Taiwan - that's a democracy.

'But you calculate yourself, do you want us to make them happy or to have the investors have confidence in us? Which is good for us?

'I think, where do they (the investors) put their money? If they think Singapore is a...chaotic country, we won't have such investments.

'So I hope that everyone will appreciate the benefits you have, and understand that if you want such a life, you need a capable government and administrators, and hardworking people.'

At the event yesterday, Mr Lee also shared his sentiments on Singapore's economic prospects in the next five to 10 years.

While the country is likely to face inflation and a recession, it will continue to grow, thanks to good government.

Before his speech, Mr Lee and the other MPs of Tanjong Pagar GRC planted a rukam sapling. They also presented a new coffee table book called 10-Stories, to mark Queenstown's 55th year. It is Singapore's oldest housing estate.

In it, past and present residents were interviewed.

One of them is Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong who, in 1962, at age 21, moved with his parents and siblings into a three-room flat in Commonwealth Drive. He stayed there for over two years.

SM Goh reminisced how he was amazed by its modern sanitation where 'you could just pull the flush and everything disappeared'.

'That was the most, to me, amazing thing because I never experienced it.'

The recollection of its construction by former HDB chairman Lim Kim San, who died in July last year, was also recorded. One day in the early 1960s, he arrived to inspect a new block in Margaret Drive. He took one look, and noticed something amiss.

'From outside, it appeared crooked to me,' he recalled. 'So I went back and told (then-HDB chief executive) Howe Yoon Chong about it. I said: 'Either my eyesight is bad or there is something wrong with that block of flats there.'

True enough, technicians found that it was leaning. 'And we made the contractor rebuild the whole thing,' said Mr Lim.