Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s Founding Father, Dies at 91

[Shotgunner51]

 

[cnleio]

Before Kuan Yew, Singapore is the most prosperous state in SE Asia. Without him, we are still going to be numero uno in SE Asia. But will we reach this level of wealth is still debatable but we are definitely going to be sucessful with him or without him around.

HK governor brag their sleep in their job euphemism as "laissez faire". HK got even better.

Sorry, in human history there's no "IF" !!!

 

[Lux de Veritas]

I respect your viewpoints toward Lee.
But still, without his strong administration, Singapore will be just like some loser countries in the developing world.
Of course, Singapore will be making even bigger progress. However, without the foundation his team has laid, Singapore is going nowhere.

I personally dislike Mao, what he has done was unforgivable.
But without the industrial foundation before 1980, there would be no post-1980 development. 3 decades later, my city Wuhan still benefits from it, Wuhan Steel, Wuhan's shipyards, Wuhan's education, Wuhan's transportation. That's some points where a lot of members here misread about China, merely attributing all China's development today to post-1980 era. Even before 1980, China's major index was much better than India（illiteracy rate,life expectancy, power generation, sanitation facilities, etc).

Without Mao, China may not emerge though I dislike him.

Sorry, in human history there's no "IF" !!!

Without Lee, Singapore was the most prosperous state in SE Asia, from 1819 to 1959.

 

[AndrewJin]

Without Mao, China may not emerge though I dislike him.


Without Lee, Singapore was the most prosperous state in SE Asia, from 1819 to 1959.

Without him, Singapore might have been good, but like TODAY?

 

[Lux de Veritas]

Without him, Singapore might have been good, but like TODAY?

That is debatable. We may not be have that much wealth, but we will still be no 1 in SE Asia.

 

[Pangu]

That is debatable. We may not be have that much wealth, but we will still be no 1 in SE Asia.

Have you consider without Lee, SG could have gotton a worst leader & lead you guys down the drain?

Whatever misgiving you & others have towards him, he did bring SG to the headline pages of newspapers, not some irrelevant news in some small column. Lets give him the respect & mourn him as one of the world's most capable stateman, one who brought with him unique foresight in world affairs & leadership style of strenght & substance. His passing is indeed a great lost for Singapore & the world.

 

[Azizam]

Lee Kuan Yew.. The epitome of the benevolent dictator.. A great leader ? Yes, Statesman ? No imho

R.I.P

Why the blind worship of democracy? What matters is under his time per capita income went from 1000 USD to 30.000 USD. Without him Singapore would have been forcefully included in Malay under Malaysian apartheid policies.

 

[Yizhi]

Chinese leaders extend condolences over passing away of former Singaporean PM
2015-03-23

BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli and Foreign Minister Wang Yi respectively expressed their condolences on Monday over the death of former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

In a message of condolences sent to incumbent Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong on Monday, Li, on behalf of the Chinese government and people, and in his own name, expressed deep grief to the Singaporean government and people over the death of Lee Kuan Yew, and showed profound sympathy to Lee Hsien Loong and his family.

Lee Kuan Yew and an older generation of Chinese leaders jointly opened the door for China-Singapore friendly cooperation, and his contribution to China-Singapore relations and China's reform and opening-up will definitely go down in history, Li said.

As a universally recognized strategist and statesman, and Singapore's founding father and farther of development, as well as an important founder of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Lee Kuan Yew made extraordinary contribution to peace and development in the region, the Chinese premier said.

As Singapore is an important and friendly neighbor of China, China is willing to make concerted efforts with Singapore to carry forward the tradition of friendship jointly created and meticulously fostered by leaders of past several generations of the two countries, in a bid to push forward China-Singapore relations of friendly cooperation, he added.

In a separate message of condolences sent to Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean on Monday, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli called Lee Kuan Yew a founder of China-Singapore relations and an old friend of the Chinese people, who made outstanding contribution to promoting China-Singapore cooperation.

China is willing to work with Singapore to inherit and carry forward the China-Singapore tradition of friendship, bring into full play the role of the China-Singapore bilateral cooperation mechanism, and maintain the sound momentum of cooperation, to promote China-Singapore relations toward greater development, Zhang said.

Also on Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi sent a message to his Singaporean counterpart K. Shanmugam, expressing his deep grief on the passing away of Lee Kuan Yew.

Lee Kuan Yew, as a founder and helmsman of China-Singapore relations, made great contribution to the healthy and rapid development of bilateral relations, Wang said.

Lee died early Monday at the age of 91.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Lee inspired so many Chinese policy makers who then view Singapore as the role model of urban planning. we have lost a great soul today...

 

[AndrewJin]

That is debatable. We may not be have that much wealth, but we will still be no 1 in SE Asia.

That's the goal, being no.1 in SE Asia? That's Chinese wisdom?
And being no.1 before independence equalled no.1 after 2 decades?

 

[Azizam]

 

[Kesang]

Demographics of Singapore - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
View attachment 206009

The whole immigration is designed in favor of Indians, while short changing Malays. The PRC is no longer coming as they found not much wage arbiration between Singapore and cities like Shanghai.

Those PRC who come now are not top calibre.

Meanwhile, India being a slump see Singapore as heaven.

2%. That sounds very significant increase.

 

[Gibbs]

Why the blind worship of democracy? What matters is under his time per capita income went from 1000 USD to 30.000 USD. Without him Singapore would have been forcefully included in Malay under Malaysian apartheid policies.

I dont.. Infact i admire his vision and governance.. But i was stating the obvious.. The benevolent dictator, The man of his time and the architect of a global success story..

Excerpts from: "From Third World To First - The Singapore Story:
1965-2000"

"Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew"

My first visit to Sri Lanka was in April 1956 on my way to London.
That same year, Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike won the election
as leader of the new Sri Lanka Freedom Party and became prime minister.

He had promised to make Sinhalese the national 1anguage and Buddhism the
national religion. He was a brown "pukka sahib" English-educated and born a
Christian; he had decided on nativism and converted to Buddhism, and
had become a champion of the Sinhalese language. It was the start of the
unraveling of Ceylon. A dapper little man, well-dressed and articulate,
Bandaranaike was elated at having obtained an election mandate from
the Sinhalese majority to make Ceylon a more nativist society. It was a
reaction against the "Brown Sahib" society - the political elite who
on inheriting power had modeled themselves on the British, including their lifestyle.

Sir John Kotelawala, the prime minister whom Bandaranaike
succeeded, went horse riding every morning. Bandaranaike did not
seem troubled that the Jaffna Tamils and other minorities would be at a
disadvantage now that Sinhalese was the national language, or by the
unease of the Hindu Tamils, the Muslim Moors and the Christian Burghers
(descendants of Dutch and natives) at the elevated status of Buddhism as the
national religion. He had been president of the Oxford Union and
spoke as if he was still in the Oxford Union debating society. I was
surprised when, three years later, he was assassinated by a Buddhist monk. I
thought it ironic that a Buddhist monk, dissatisfied with the country's slow
rate of progress in making Buddhism the national religion, should have done it.

In the election that followed, his widow, Sirimavo Bandaranaike,
became prime minister on the sympathy vote. She proved to be a less voluble
but much tougher leader. When I met her in Ceylon in August 1970, she
was a determined woman who believed in the non-aligned ideology. Ceylon
favoured the withdrawal of all US troops from South Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia, and a Nuclear-Weapons Free Zone in the Indian Ocean, free of big
powerconflicts.

As a younger man, I patiently explained my different
foreign policy objectives, that Singapore would be gravely threatened if
South Vietnam were to fall into the hands of the communists, threatening
Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. The insurgency would spread into
Malaysia, with serious consequences for Singapore. We could not subscribe to
this high-minded ideology when it had serious consequences for our future.

Other great powers in the region, China and Japan, would in time expand
their naval build-up.

Ceylon was Britain's model Commonwealth country. It had been
carefully prepared for independence. After the war, it was a good
middle-size country with fewer than 10 million people. It had a relatively good standard
of education, with 2 universities of high quality, a civil service
largely of locals, and experience in representative government starting with
city council elections in the 1930s.

When Ceylon gained independence in 1948, it was the classic model of
gradual evolution to independence.

Alas it did not work out. During my visits over the years, I watched
a promising country go to waste. One-man-one-vote did not solve a
basic problem. The majority of some 8 million Sinhalese could always
outvote the 2 million Jaffna Tamils who had been disadvantaged by the switch
from English to Sinhalese as the official language. From having no
official religion, the Sinhalese made Buddhism their national religion. As
Hindus, the Tamils felt dispossessed.

In Oct 1966, on my way back from a prime ministers' conference in
London, I visited Colombo to meet Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake. He was
a gentle if resigned and fatalistic elderly man.
At dinner, a wise and sad-looking elderly Sinhalese explained that
what had happened was inevitable with popular elections. The Sinhalese
wanted to be the dominant race; they wanted to take over from the British as
managers in the tea and coconut plantations, and from the Tamils who were
the senior civil servants. They had to go through this tragedy of making
Sinhalese the official language for which they had paid dearly, translating
everything from English into Sinhalese and Tamil, a slow and unwieldy process.

The universities taught in three languages: Sinhalese to the majority,
Tamil to the Jaffna Tamils, and English to the Burghers. At the
university in Kandy I had asked the vice-chancellor how three different
engineers educated in three languages collaborated in building one bridge.

He was Burgher, and wore a Cambridge university tie so that I would
recognise he had a proper PhD. He replied, "That, sir, is a political
question for the ministers to answer!" I asked about the books. He replied that
basic textbooks were translated from English into Sinhalese and Tamil,
always three to four editions late by the time they were printed.

The tea plantations were in a deplorable condition. The locals who
had been promoted were not as good supervisors as their British predecessors.

Without strict discipline, the tea pluckers were picking not only
young shoots but also full-grown leaves which would not brew good tea.

Their coconut plantations had also suffered. It was said the old
Sinhalese, the price people had to pay to learn how to run the country.

I did not visit Ceylon for many years, not until I had met their
newly elected prime minister, Junius Richard Jayewardene, in 1978 at a
CHOGRM (British Commonwealth Conference) in Sydney.

In 1972 Prime Minister Mrs.Bandaranaike had already changed the country's name,
Ceylon, to Sri Lanka, and made it a republic.

The changes did not improve the fortunes of the country. Its tea is still sold as "Ceylon" tea.

Like Solomon Bandaranaike, Jayewardene was born a Christian,
converted to Buddhism and embraced nativism to identify himself with the people.

In his 70-odd years, he had been through the ups and downs of
politics, more downs than ups, and become philosophical in his acceptance of
lowered targets. He wanted to move away from Sri Lanka's socialist policies
that had bankrupted it. After meeting me in Sydney, he came to
Singapore, he said, to involve us in its development. I was impressed by
his practical approach and was persuaded to visit Sri Lanka in April1978. He
said he would offer autonomy to the Tamils in Jaffna. I did not realise
that he could not give way on the supremacy of the Sinhalese over the
Tamils, which was to lead to civil war in 1983 and destroy any hope of a
prosperous Sri Lanka for many years, if not generations.

He had some weaknesses. He wanted to start an airline because he
believed it was a symbol of progress. Singapore Airlines (voted as the Best
Airline Year 2000 in the Fortune Magazine's recent issue) employed a good

Sri Lankan captain. Would I release him? Of course, but how could an
airline pilot run an airline? He wanted Singapore Airlines to help. We did.

I advised him that an airline should not be his priority because it
required too many talented and good administrators to get an airline off
the ground when he needed them for irrigation, agriculture, housing,
industrial promotion and development, and so many other projects. An
airline was a glamour project, not of great value for developing Sri Lanka. But
he insisted. So we helped him launch it in six months, seconding 80 of
Singapore Airlines' staff for periods from three months to two
years, helping them through our worldwide sales representation, setting
overseas offices, training staff, developing training centres and so on.

But there was no sound top management. When the pilot, now chairman of the
new airline, decided to buy two second-hand aircraft against advice, we
decided to withdraw. Faced with a five-fold expansion of capacity,
negative cash flow, lack of trained staff, unreliable services and
insufficient passengers, it was bound to fail. And it did.

It was flattering to have Sri Lanka model their country after Singapore.
They started a housing programme in 1982 based on ours, but there
was no adequate financing. They set up a free trade zone only slightly
smaller area than the area of Singapore which might have taken off but for
the Tamil Tigers whose terrorist tactics scared investors away.

The greatest mistake Jayewardene made was over the distribution of
reclaimed land in the dry zone. With foreign aid, he revived an
ancient irrigation scheme based on "tanks" (reservoirs), which could store
water from the wet side of the mountains. Unfortunately, he gave there
claimed land to the Sinhalese, not the Tamils who had historically been the
farmers of this dry zone. Dispossessed and squeezed, they launched the Tamil
Tigers. Jayewardene's private secretary, a Jaffna Tamil loyal to him
told me this was a crucial mistake. The war that followed caused 50,000
deaths and even more casualties, with many leaders assassinated. After more
than 15 years, it shows no sign of abating.

Jayewardene retired in 1988, a tired man. He had run out of solutions.

Ranasinghe Premadasa, who succeeded him, was a Sinhalese chauvinist.
He wanted the Indian troops out of the country, which was not sensible.

They were doing a nasty job for Sri Lanka. When the Indian troops left,
he was in a worse position. He tried to negotiate with the Tamil Tigers and
failed. He was not willing to give enough away.

I met him on several occasions in Singapore after he became
president and tried to convince him that this conflict could not be solved
by force of arms. A political solution was the only way, one considered fair by
the Jaffna Tamils and the rest of the world; then the Tamil United
Liberation Front, the moderate constitutional wing of the Tamil home rule
movement, could not reject it. I argued that his objective must be to
deprive the terrorists of popular support by offering the Tamils autonomy to
govern them through the ballot box. He was convinced he could destroy them.

In 1991 and 1992 he sent the Sri Lankan army to fight major battles
against the Tamil Tigers. They did not succeed. In 1993, at a May Day
Parade, a suicide bomber approached him in a street procession. He and many
others died. His successor, Mrs. Bandaranaike's daughter, President
Chandrika Kumaratunga, tried negotiation and war. She recaptured the Jaffna
peninsula but did not destroy the Tamil Tigers. The fighting goes on.

It is sad that the country whose ancient name Serendip has given the English
language the word "serendipity" is now the epitome of conflict, pain, sorrow and hopelessness.

Alas.. If only Sri Lankans learn from their past

 

[AndrewJin]

Chinese leaders extend condolences over passing away of former Singaporean PM
2015-03-23

BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli and Foreign Minister Wang Yi respectively expressed their condolences on Monday over the death of former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

In a message of condolences sent to incumbent Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong on Monday, Li, on behalf of the Chinese government and people, and in his own name, expressed deep grief to the Singaporean government and people over the death of Lee Kuan Yew, and showed profound sympathy to Lee Hsien Loong and his family.

Lee Kuan Yew and an older generation of Chinese leaders jointly opened the door for China-Singapore friendly cooperation, and his contribution to China-Singapore relations and China's reform and opening-up will definitely go down in history, Li said.

As a universally recognized strategist and statesman, and Singapore's founding father and farther of development, as well as an important founder of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Lee Kuan Yew made extraordinary contribution to peace and development in the region, the Chinese premier said.

As Singapore is an important and friendly neighbor of China, China is willing to make concerted efforts with Singapore to carry forward the tradition of friendship jointly created and meticulously fostered by leaders of past several generations of the two countries, in a bid to push forward China-Singapore relations of friendly cooperation, he added.

In a separate message of condolences sent to Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean on Monday, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli called Lee Kuan Yew a founder of China-Singapore relations and an old friend of the Chinese people, who made outstanding contribution to promoting China-Singapore cooperation.

China is willing to work with Singapore to inherit and carry forward the China-Singapore tradition of friendship, bring into full play the role of the China-Singapore bilateral cooperation mechanism, and maintain the sound momentum of cooperation, to promote China-Singapore relations toward greater development, Zhang said.

Also on Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi sent a message to his Singaporean counterpart K. Shanmugam, expressing his deep grief on the passing away of Lee Kuan Yew.

Lee Kuan Yew, as a founder and helmsman of China-Singapore relations, made great contribution to the healthy and rapid development of bilateral relations, Wang said.

Lee died early Monday at the age of 91.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Lee inspired so many Chinese policy makers who then view Singapore as the role model of urban planning. we have lost a great soul today...

Singapore is alway a best model of Chinese world.
That's why people in ROC & PRC like this country.

I dont.. Infact i admire his vision and governance.. But i was stating the obvious.. The benevolent dictator, The man of his time and the architect of a global success story..

Excerpts from: "From Third World To First - The Singapore Story:
1965-2000"

"Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew"

My first visit to Sri Lanka was in April 1956 on my way to London.
That same year, Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike won the election
as leader of the new Sri Lanka Freedom Party and became prime minister.

He had promised to make Sinhalese the national 1anguage and Buddhism the
national religion. He was a brown "pukka sahib" English-educated and born a
Christian; he had decided on nativism and converted to Buddhism, and
had become a champion of the Sinhalese language. It was the start of the
unraveling of Ceylon. A dapper little man, well-dressed and articulate,
Bandaranaike was elated at having obtained an election mandate from
the Sinhalese majority to make Ceylon a more nativist society. It was a
reaction against the "Brown Sahib" society - the political elite who
on inheriting power had modeled themselves on the British, including their lifestyle.

Sir John Kotelawala, the prime minister whom Bandaranaike
succeeded, went horse riding every morning. Bandaranaike did not
seem troubled that the Jaffna Tamils and other minorities would be at a
disadvantage now that Sinhalese was the national language, or by the
unease of the Hindu Tamils, the Muslim Moors and the Christian Burghers
(descendants of Dutch and natives) at the elevated status of Buddhism as the
national religion. He had been president of the Oxford Union and
spoke as if he was still in the Oxford Union debating society. I was
surprised when, three years later, he was assassinated by a Buddhist monk. I
thought it ironic that a Buddhist monk, dissatisfied with the country's slow
rate of progress in making Buddhism the national religion, should have done it.

In the election that followed, his widow, Sirimavo Bandaranaike,
became prime minister on the sympathy vote. She proved to be a less voluble
but much tougher leader. When I met her in Ceylon in August 1970, she
was a determined woman who believed in the non-aligned ideology. Ceylon
favoured the withdrawal of all US troops from South Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia, and a Nuclear-Weapons Free Zone in the Indian Ocean, free of big
powerconflicts.

As a younger man, I patiently explained my different
foreign policy objectives, that Singapore would be gravely threatened if
South Vietnam were to fall into the hands of the communists, threatening
Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. The insurgency would spread into
Malaysia, with serious consequences for Singapore. We could not subscribe to
this high-minded ideology when it had serious consequences for our future.

Other great powers in the region, China and Japan, would in time expand
their naval build-up.

Ceylon was Britain's model Commonwealth country. It had been
carefully prepared for independence. After the war, it was a good
middle-size country with fewer than 10 million people. It had a relatively good standard
of education, with 2 universities of high quality, a civil service
largely of locals, and experience in representative government starting with
city council elections in the 1930s.

When Ceylon gained independence in 1948, it was the classic model of
gradual evolution to independence.

Alas it did not work out. During my visits over the years, I watched
a promising country go to waste. One-man-one-vote did not solve a
basic problem. The majority of some 8 million Sinhalese could always
outvote the 2 million Jaffna Tamils who had been disadvantaged by the switch
from English to Sinhalese as the official language. From having no
official religion, the Sinhalese made Buddhism their national religion. As
Hindus, the Tamils felt dispossessed.

In Oct 1966, on my way back from a prime ministers' conference in
London, I visited Colombo to meet Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake. He was
a gentle if resigned and fatalistic elderly man.
At dinner, a wise and sad-looking elderly Sinhalese explained that
what had happened was inevitable with popular elections. The Sinhalese
wanted to be the dominant race; they wanted to take over from the British as
managers in the tea and coconut plantations, and from the Tamils who were
the senior civil servants. They had to go through this tragedy of making
Sinhalese the official language for which they had paid dearly, translating
everything from English into Sinhalese and Tamil, a slow and unwieldy process.

The universities taught in three languages: Sinhalese to the majority,
Tamil to the Jaffna Tamils, and English to the Burghers. At the
university in Kandy I had asked the vice-chancellor how three different
engineers educated in three languages collaborated in building one bridge.

He was Burgher, and wore a Cambridge university tie so that I would
recognise he had a proper PhD. He replied, "That, sir, is a political
question for the ministers to answer!" I asked about the books. He replied that
basic textbooks were translated from English into Sinhalese and Tamil,
always three to four editions late by the time they were printed.

The tea plantations were in a deplorable condition. The locals who
had been promoted were not as good supervisors as their British predecessors.

Without strict discipline, the tea pluckers were picking not only
young shoots but also full-grown leaves which would not brew good tea.

Their coconut plantations had also suffered. It was said the old
Sinhalese, the price people had to pay to learn how to run the country.

I did not visit Ceylon for many years, not until I had met their
newly elected prime minister, Junius Richard Jayewardene, in 1978 at a
CHOGRM (British Commonwealth Conference) in Sydney.

In 1972 Prime Minister Mrs.Bandaranaike had already changed the country's name,
Ceylon, to Sri Lanka, and made it a republic.

The changes did not improve the fortunes of the country. Its tea is still sold as "Ceylon" tea.

Like Solomon Bandaranaike, Jayewardene was born a Christian,
converted to Buddhism and embraced nativism to identify himself with the people.

In his 70-odd years, he had been through the ups and downs of
politics, more downs than ups, and become philosophical in his acceptance of
lowered targets. He wanted to move away from Sri Lanka's socialist policies
that had bankrupted it. After meeting me in Sydney, he came to
Singapore, he said, to involve us in its development. I was impressed by
his practical approach and was persuaded to visit Sri Lanka in April1978. He
said he would offer autonomy to the Tamils in Jaffna. I did not realise
that he could not give way on the supremacy of the Sinhalese over the
Tamils, which was to lead to civil war in 1983 and destroy any hope of a
prosperous Sri Lanka for many years, if not generations.

He had some weaknesses. He wanted to start an airline because he
believed it was a symbol of progress. Singapore Airlines (voted as the Best
Airline Year 2000 in the Fortune Magazine's recent issue) employed a good

Sri Lankan captain. Would I release him? Of course, but how could an
airline pilot run an airline? He wanted Singapore Airlines to help. We did.

I advised him that an airline should not be his priority because it
required too many talented and good administrators to get an airline off
the ground when he needed them for irrigation, agriculture, housing,
industrial promotion and development, and so many other projects. An
airline was a glamour project, not of great value for developing Sri Lanka. But
he insisted. So we helped him launch it in six months, seconding 80 of
Singapore Airlines' staff for periods from three months to two
years, helping them through our worldwide sales representation, setting
overseas offices, training staff, developing training centres and so on.

But there was no sound top management. When the pilot, now chairman of the
new airline, decided to buy two second-hand aircraft against advice, we
decided to withdraw. Faced with a five-fold expansion of capacity,
negative cash flow, lack of trained staff, unreliable services and
insufficient passengers, it was bound to fail. And it did.

It was flattering to have Sri Lanka model their country after Singapore.
They started a housing programme in 1982 based on ours, but there
was no adequate financing. They set up a free trade zone only slightly
smaller area than the area of Singapore which might have taken off but for
the Tamil Tigers whose terrorist tactics scared investors away.

The greatest mistake Jayewardene made was over the distribution of
reclaimed land in the dry zone. With foreign aid, he revived an
ancient irrigation scheme based on "tanks" (reservoirs), which could store
water from the wet side of the mountains. Unfortunately, he gave there
claimed land to the Sinhalese, not the Tamils who had historically been the
farmers of this dry zone. Dispossessed and squeezed, they launched the Tamil
Tigers. Jayewardene's private secretary, a Jaffna Tamil loyal to him
told me this was a crucial mistake. The war that followed caused 50,000
deaths and even more casualties, with many leaders assassinated. After more
than 15 years, it shows no sign of abating.

Jayewardene retired in 1988, a tired man. He had run out of solutions.

Ranasinghe Premadasa, who succeeded him, was a Sinhalese chauvinist.
He wanted the Indian troops out of the country, which was not sensible.

They were doing a nasty job for Sri Lanka. When the Indian troops left,
he was in a worse position. He tried to negotiate with the Tamil Tigers and
failed. He was not willing to give enough away.

I met him on several occasions in Singapore after he became
president and tried to convince him that this conflict could not be solved
by force of arms. A political solution was the only way, one considered fair by
the Jaffna Tamils and the rest of the world; then the Tamil United
Liberation Front, the moderate constitutional wing of the Tamil home rule
movement, could not reject it. I argued that his objective must be to
deprive the terrorists of popular support by offering the Tamils autonomy to
govern them through the ballot box. He was convinced he could destroy them.

In 1991 and 1992 he sent the Sri Lankan army to fight major battles
against the Tamil Tigers. They did not succeed. In 1993, at a May Day
Parade, a suicide bomber approached him in a street procession. He and many
others died. His successor, Mrs. Bandaranaike's daughter, President
Chandrika Kumaratunga, tried negotiation and war. She recaptured the Jaffna
peninsula but did not destroy the Tamil Tigers. The fighting goes on.

It is sad that the country whose ancient name Serendip has given the English
language the word "serendipity" is now the epitome of conflict, pain, sorrow and hopelessness.

Alas.. If only Sri Lankans learn from their past

A benevolent dictator, better than any democracy's leaders around the world today.

 

[Gibbs]

Singapore is alway a best model of Chinese world.
That's why people in ROC & PRC like this country.


A benevolent dictator, better than any democracy's leaders around the world today.

Yes but this is what distinguished him from other dictators of those almost Tiger economies of Asia.. You can add Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka to this list.. And i quote

"Noting this unusual willingness to relinquish power, Time magazine wrote in 91: "What really sets this complex man apart from Asia's other nation-builders is what he didn't do: he did not become corrupt, and he did not stay in power too long. Mao, Suharto, Marcos and Ne Win left their countries on the verge of ruin with no obvious successor. Lee left Singapore with a per capita GDP of $14000,

Just proves that one glove does not fit all

 

[AndrewJin]

Yes but this is what distinguished him from other dictators of those almost Tiger economies of Asia.. You can add Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka to this list.. And i quote

"Noting this unusual willingness to relinquish power, Time magazine wrote in 91: "What really sets this complex man apart from Asia's other nation-builders is what he didn't do: he did not become corrupt, and he did not stay in power too long. Mao, Suharto, Marcos and Ne Win left their countries on the verge of ruin with no obvious successor. Lee left Singapore with a per capita GDP of $14000,

Just proves that one glove does not fit all

Tiger economies of Asia? The names you have quoted were not from tigers!
one glove does not fit all.
True, universal law to any ideology.
If westerners really think so, the world is not so chaotic and brutal as what it is now.