Lee Kuan Yew..taken from ASIA ONLINE

ASIA ONLINE


Singapore's first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, 82, now Minister Mentor, is seen by some as the greatest impediment to genuine democracy in Singapore.
Photo: Reuters

WHEN will Lee Kuan Yew die? Sadly, that is the question now on the minds of many Singaporeans. At 82, Lee retains a cabinet post, with the title Minister Mentor, continues to dominate the Government and shows no sign of quitting. But many believe that although he has done much for Singapore, he is now the greatest impediment to reform, and that little can change until after he is gone.

Last week, Lee admonished the younger generation for not fully supporting the People's Action Party at the elections the weekend before. It's a usual claim: young Singaporeans are insufficiently grateful for all that the older PAP leaders have done for them in developing the economy. It's as if a country's progress should be measured only by material comfort. The problem for Lee is that young people in other developed countries have money and freedom of expression. But in Singapore, all they have is money. Young Singaporeans are beginning to see that a gilded cage is a cage, nonetheless.

To combat this growing restiveness, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong — Lee's son — talks of political regeneration in his efforts to make the PAP appeal to younger people. But it's the same old tricks, if last week's elections are anything to go by. The ruling PAP won two-thirds of the votes. The real surprise is that it didn't win by more, given all the petty restrictions designed to head off opposition.

The PAP faced two main opposition parties: the Singapore Democratic Party and the Workers' Party. The SDP's leadership was hit with a series of defamation writs from the two Lees soon after the elections were called. It managed to win one of the two seats not won by the PAP.

The Workers' Party won the other seat. James Gomez, one of its leading candidates, blamed the elections department for losing one of his required polling forms at the start of the campaign. He moderately chastised a member of the department's staff for the apparent loss. But it turned out he had put the form in his brief case and had left the building without lodging it. He claimed this was an oversight — he was distracted — and he publicly apologised. But the PAP accused him of attempting to set up the elections commission.

The incident dominated the nine-day campaign. The Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, other ministers and the Government-controlled media raised it repeatedly. The highly litigious Lee Kuan Yew publicly labelled Gomez a liar.