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Lee Kuan Yew at 100: Taking Singapore beyond the LKY legacy
At first, he was the authoritarian leader whose “system” I loved to critique. Then I realised I was a product of that system.
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Taking Singapore beyond Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy, in order to secure the future, would be the best way to honour Mr Lee for his life work on Singapore.
PHOTO: ST FILE
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My first serious assignment as a political reporter in 1991 was to check out a new book about Singapore, which was not available in Singapore but was doing a roaring trade across the Causeway in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. It was an “own” story, which meant the idea came from me, and I had pitched it to my supervisors and obtained their permission to work on it.
I travelled to Johor on a short day trip and interviewed booksellers. I rang up book distributors and stores, and interviewed readers and commentators on the book. Titled Singapore: The Ultimate Island (Lee Kuan Yew’s Untold Story), by T. S. Selvan who was then living in Australia, the book had been published in late 1990. By the time I wrote the story, it had sold over 10,000 copies in Malaysia, mostly to Singaporeans, according to the book distributor and booksellers I spoke to in Malaysia then.
