Tommy Koh’s new book reveals he was asked to run for UN secretary-general and for president

SINGAPORE – It is one of the more stirring clips: first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew addressing a joint session of the US Congress in 1985, his final words bringing his audience to their feet.

But such a moment of international recognition would not even have been fathomed had it not been for the “craziness” of then Ambassador to the US Tommy Koh.

His wild idea to secure an invitation for Mr Lee was stonewalled by the US State Department and was seen as a pipe dream by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) back home.

Yet, in response to Mr Lee’s letter that he did not deserve the honour, Professor Koh simply replied: Let the Americans decide.

At his MFA office, Prof Koh recalls the circumstances: “My own colleagues at the embassy refused to support me. They said, ‘You are crazy. Nobody asked you to do this.’

“At the time, I was travelling quite a bit with Lee Kuan Yew, and he kept talking to me about the need for him to step aside because he didn’t want power concentrated in the individual. I thought I should do something to honour him.”

The humility of the plain-spoken diplomat means even this milestone episode is quickly skimmed over in 1½ pages in his new autobiography, Tommy Koh: The Extraordinary Life Of An Ordinary Man.

After all, Singapore’s longest-serving diplomat – the Republic’s first ambassador to the United Nations at 30 years old and now still ambassador-at-large at 88 – has much to account for.

In language so sparse that his wife, in reading a first draft he had completed in two months, had “quite a negative response because it was so boring”, Prof Koh narrates an extraordinary life that took him from diplomatic work to founding chairman of the National Arts Council (NAC), and on to drafting the ASEAN Charter and serving as chief negotiator of the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement.

Even his wife, married to him for 58 years, was surprised at just how much he had worked. Nineteen ninety-eight was the most ridiculous year: He was commuting between MFA, NAC and the Institute of Policy Studies, where he held roles, while chairing the preparatory committee for the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil and negotiating the existential issue of diplomatic relations with China, which belatedly recognised Singapore in 1990.

How, then, can he characterise himself as an ordinary man after taking on this superhuman load? Prof Koh says: “I used to tell my American friends that I’m the Singapore version of Forrest Gump, because luck has a lot to do with it.

“I remember one time the great Dr Goh Keng Swee was asked: ‘If you had a choice to be born clever or born lucky, what would you prefer?’ He said, ‘I want to be born lucky.’ Because opportunity comes.”

There is some truth to this modesty. His first big break as the youngest ambassador to the UN in 1968 – “A disruption. My dream was to spend my life as an academic and legal warrior for justice,” he corrects – came in part because he alone in the country had experience with the international body.

While studying at Harvard Law School in the 1960s, he was spurred by Dr Martin Luther King’s speech to spend his summer volunteering in a black neighbourhood – “partly so that I could lose my fear, to live with them”.

His university adviser then leaned on this expansive impulse to suggest he apply to be a UN intern, where he met the people who would welcome him back with open arms four years later.

But there was also the question of temperament, with first minister for foreign affairs S. Rajaratnam recommending him because he had a reputation for fair-mindedness. While working as former chief minister David Marshall’s law pupil in 1961 and 1962, he filed proceedings against then PM Lee for a comment he made about strikers.

During the battle of merger, he was outspoken about the impossibility of the union and was later proven right. Prof Koh says: “I think Raja knew that even though I’m sometimes a critic of the Government, I was not anti-Singapore. In fact, I’m a very loyal son of the country. I have no political agenda.”

He credits his success to a natural instinct to make friends, though he will not let this stand in the way of his – and Singapore’s – convictions. At the UN, he condemned Vietnam for invading Cambodia in 1978 – a position others in ASEAN were initially reticent about but eventually rallied around. He also condemned the Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

But, more importantly, Prof Koh says, he convinced Singapore to let him speak in the Security Council against the US when many US allies chose to stay mum over its attack on Grenada in 1983. In this context, Washington’s invitation to Mr Lee to speak to Congress two years later is all the more surprising.

“I guess I’m more legally minded than many of my colleagues who are not legally educated,” Prof Koh says. “So I take the (UN) Charter seriously. I take international law seriously. If I had not spoken out, I would only be a hypocrite.”

A running theme in his book is that important people would approach him for jobs that he would inevitably try, but fail, to turn down, only to then excel beyond all expectations.

The exceptions are notable. The first is the chairman of the Speak Good English campaign, because he was not against Singlish, he says. The other two are shockers, buried almost as footnotes: Prof Koh reveals he was asked by two of Singapore’s leaders to consider running for president. He was also twice requested by the US to run for the post of UN secretary-general – a position to date held by only nine men.

Asked why he did not pursue this opportunity to put Singapore on the global stage, Prof Koh says his wife, who had sacrificed her medical career for his work, had advised him not to.

Instead, he redirects attention to Singapore’s second prime minister Goh Chok Tong, who was also asked by former US president George W. Bush to put his hat into the ring for UN secretary-general.

Prof Koh says: “He would have been elected, but he said: ‘No, I’m not a diplomat.’ That was a missed opportunity.”

He relates how Mr Goh, then Prime Minister, had insisted on personally visiting then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi when he was being boycotted after anti-Muslim riots in 2002. Mr Modi, who is now India’s Prime Minister, never forgot and still calls Mr Goh his guru.

“Mr Goh said, ‘A person only remembers you when you visit them when they have no friends. When they have plenty of friends, you’re irrelevant’,” says Prof Koh.

He adds: “In his folksy way, he is a deep thinker, a natural-born diplomat, but he felt he would be leaving his comfort zone.”

Prof Koh’s life’s work has taught him patience, but it has made him no less of a dreamer. As chairman of the NAC, he raised museum-going from 500,000 visitors annually to three million in nine years. Under his watch, cornerstone institutions like the National Gallery Singapore, the Asian Civilisations Museum and Peranakan Museum were set up.

It is a spirit he wants to pass on with this book, written at the instigation of his wife after he was hospitalised for two weeks with pneumonia in January, so that his grandchildren could learn about him.

One chapter he kicks himself for not writing is one pertaining to books – a lifelong love for Prof Koh, which he has prepared bullet points on a postcard to talk to this journalist about.

On why he continues to make public statements about issues when many former public servants go quiet, the relaxed patron to so many matters of Singapore big and small simply says with his iconic slack-jawed smile: “I am not retired.”