From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

Part III
Winding Up

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41. Passing the Baton
When I reflected on the predicament of Suharto in 1998, when he was forced to
resign and hand power over to a vice-president he considered inadequate to
succeed him, I was glad that I had resigned as prime minister in November 1990.
I was still in command of the political situation and of a humming economy. I
was physically still vigorous. But had I not stood down, I might have found
myself trapped in the financial crisis, with my faculties less acute and my energy
levels down. Instead, for the past nine years I helped to ease the way for my
successor, Goh Chok Tong, and his team of younger ministers to take full charge
of the Singapore government. Prime Minister Goh retained me in his cabinet as
senior minister. Without the pressures of daily decision-making, I was able to
reflect on the bigger and longer-term issues and contribute towards more
rounded solutions.
My experience of developments in Asia has led me to conclude that we need
good men to have good government. However good the system of government,
bad leaders will bring harm to their people. On the other hand, I have seen
several societies well-governed in spite of poor systems of government, because
good, strong leaders were in charge. I have also seen so many of the over 80
constitutions drafted by Britain and France for their former colonies come to
grief, and not because of flaws in the constitutions. It was simply that the pre-
conditions for a democratic system of government did not exist. None of these
countries had a civic society with an educated electorate. Nor did their people
have the cultural tradition of acceptance of the authority of a person because of
his office. These traditions take generations to inculcate in a people. In a new
country where loyalties are to tribal leaders, they must be honest and not self-
serving or the country is likely to fail whatever the constitutional safeguards.
And because the leaders who inherited these constitutions were not strong
enough, their countries went down in riots, coups and revolution.
The single decisive factor that made for Singapore’s development was the
ability of its ministers and the high quality of the civil servants who supported

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them. Whenever I had a lesser minister in charge, I invariably had to push and
prod him, and later to review problems and clear roadblocks for him. The end
result was never what could have been achieved. When I had the right man in
charge, a burden was off my shoulders. I needed only to make clear the
objectives to be achieved, the time-frame within which he must try to do it, and
he would find a way to get it done.
It was Singapore’s good fortune that we had, for a small, developing country,
a fair share of talent, because our own had been reinforced by the talented men
and women who came here for their education, and stayed on for employment or
business opportunities. Because of our relentless and unceasing search for talent
both at home and abroad to make up for the small families of the well-educated,
Singapore has been able to keep up its performance. Our greatest task was to
find the people to replace my ageing ministers and myself.
My colleagues and I had started to search for younger men as possible
successors in the 1960s. We could not find them among the political activists
who joined the PAP, so we scouted for able, dynamic, dependable and hard-
driving people wherever they were to be found. In the 1968 general elections, we
fielded several PhDs, bright minds, teachers at the universities, professionals
including lawyers, doctors and even top administrators as candidates. In by-
elections in 1970 and 1972, we fielded several more. We soon discovered that
they needed to have other qualities besides a disciplined mind able to marshal
facts and figures, write a thesis for a PhD or be a professional. Leadership is
more than just ability. It is a combination of courage, determination,
commitment, character and ability that makes people willing to follow a leader.
We needed people who were activists with good judgement and interpersonal
skills. The search became more urgent at each subsequent election because I
could see that my colleagues were visibly slowing down.
One day in 1974 Hon Sui Sen, then our finance minister, told me that he
hoped I would let him stand down at the next general elections. He was feeling
his age. I was astonished. He was only 60. How could I let him go? Who would
do his job? Over lunch, just the two of us, this conversation had more impact on
me than any other exchange I have ever had. He said investors had been
confident because they were comfortable with the ministers in charge, especially
with me. But they could see that he was getting on and were looking beyond and
behind him to see who would replace him. They could not see a younger
minister with the potential to be minister for finance. I had many more years to
go, but he did not think he could carry on for much longer. He had met many

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CEOs of American corporations. They had to retire at 65. Several years before a
CEO’s retirement, he had to put before the board one or more candidates for
them to choose one as his successor. I resolved that I must not be found wanting
in this respect, and that I must place Singapore in competent hands before I
retired.
To do this I had to find and get into office a group of men to provide
Singapore with effective and creative leadership. Had I left it to chance,
depending on activists coming forward to join us, I would never have succeeded.
We set out to recruit the best into government. The problem was to persuade
them to enter politics, get themselves elected and learn how to move and win
people over to their side. It was a slow and difficult process with a high attrition
rate. Successful, capable professionals and executives are not natural political
leaders, able to argue, cajole and demolish the arguments of opponents at mass
rallies, on television and in Parliament.
To see how wide the net must be cast for talent, I had only to remember that
the best ministers in my early cabinets were not born in Singapore. Three-
quarters of them had come from outside Singapore. The net that brought in my
generation of leaders was thrown in a big sea that stretched from South China
across Malaysia, to South India and Ceylon. Now we were fishing in a small
pond and getting fewer big fish.
For years my colleagues and I had assumed that in the ordinary political
process, activists from universities, trade unions and party branches would throw
up the men who could carry on our work. By 1968 we recognised this was not
going to happen. The original team had been thrown up by the traumatic events
of World War II, Japanese occupation and the communist insurgency. The weak,
the timid and the irresolute were eliminated by natural process. By surviving
they proved they could stay on top of the opposition and govern. Their
convictions pitted them against the British, and later the communists and the
Malayan Malay Ultras. During repeated crises, we had forged deep and abiding
bonds between ourselves and the people. These bonds endured. Our final task
was to find worthy successors. Mao tried to solve this problem of suitable
successors by arranging a Cultural Revolution as a substitute for the Long
March. It was not possible for us to simulate a Japanese invasion and
occupation, and the subsequent struggle for independence. Our solution was to
look for men with the right character, ability and motivation, and hope that when
they encountered the inevitable crises, they would emerge tested as leaders.
The general elections of 1968 were a political landmark with 18 new

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candidates out of 58. We won all the seats and improved the quality of our MPs
and ministers. Over 40 per cent were university-educated either in English or
Chinese, while 55 per cent had secondary or higher secondary education. Those
without much education were trade unionists who had left school early because
their families were too poor. The loyalists who had been with us from the
difficult early days had to give way to fresh talent when I made promotions to
office. At a meeting of MPs in April, soon after the elections, I compared the