The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew

One odd thing about them though, was that when they abandoned communism, as some young Chinese middle school student leaders did, they often became extremely avaricious to make up for lost time. They seemed to feel that they had been robbed of the best years of their lives and had to make up for what they had missed. It was a preview of what I was to see later in China and Vietnam. When the revolution did not deliver utopia and the economy reverted to the free market, cadres, with the power to issue licences or with access to goods and services at official prices, were the first to be corrupt and exploit the masses.

My education in the unfairness and absurdities of human existence was completed by what I saw happening in the immediate aftermath of the war. If three and a half years of Japanese occupation had earned me my degree in the realities of life, the first year in liberated Singapore was my postgraduate course.

textbook in the world on how to build a nation

preceding tension could have been avoided if the Tunku and the Malays had shown some reasonable flexibilit

must not get involved in our internal affairs. Americans did in Vietnam and look what a mess they made o

we always acted constitutionally and hence were difficult to fix.

UMNO had developed to a fine art the practice of accommodating Chinese or Indian ministers in Malaya who proved troublesom

Singapore ministers were not pleasure-loving, nor did they seek to enrich themselves.

gradual reduction of the privileges of the Malays as they progressed

Ismail who understood and sympathised most with what I wanted to d