What have I learnt today? Blogging about books, media, words, Singapore and the world today. The blog that was Blowin' in the Wind.
An amazing parallel runs through the political careers of Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of the Republic of Singapore, and Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first woman prime minister. Both began their political career at the same time and stepped down as prime minister on the same day.
Both laid down their office on November 28, 1990. Both were succeeded by their deputies: Goh Chok Tong became prime minister of Singapore, and John Major of Britain.Continue Reading
I am disappointed that the Straits Times did not give a full report of Lee Kuan Yew’s talk at the Standard Chartered Singapore Forum yesterday where he shared the stage with the former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.
The two reports on the Straits Times’ page 3 did not mention what he said when asked about China-India relations. You can see it in this video, shown on the Straits Times’ own website.
India does not have the same dynamism as China for many reasons, he said. “First, because they are not one nation, they are multiple nations.” India does not have “one cohesive core, as you have in China”.
The Singapore government is willing to trade off economic growth for social harmony, said DBS chief executive Piyush Gupta yesterday. Yes, the government’s new goal is sustainable growth, not high growth. And it comes at a cost.
Singapore’s mainstream media don’t want to sound alarmist. Maybe that’s why the Business Times says about the property market cooling measures: “The more dire estimates expect property prices to fall by up to 10 per cent …”
How did Singapore change from one of the happiest countries in the world to the unhappiest? “A recent Gallup report shows that Singapore’s wealthy population is the unhappiest — less happy than the populations of Iraq, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Syria,” reports CNN.
2011 Gallup poll
Yet only two years ago, in 2010, National Geographic published a book covering Singapore and Denmark as two of the happiest countries in the world—based on earlier Gallup polls.
Dan Buettner wrote in Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way:
Independent studies conducted between 2000 and 2009 reported higher levels of happiness in Singapore than in any other Asian nation. The World Values Survey found 95 per cent of the people in Singapore were very happy or quite happy. In 2005-2009 the Gallup organization interviewed a cross-section of people in each of more than 130 countries around the globe. Citizens were asked to rank their current circumstances on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the “best possible life”. Researchers asked Singaporeans if they felt well rested, treated with respect, experienced smiling or laughing, engaged in learning or interest, or felt enjoyment, and also about negative experiences, including physical pain, worrying, sadness, stress, depression or anger, to arrive at a measure of daily experiences. Singaporeans rated a 6.9, and only 2 per cent reported feeling depressed.
Lee Kuan Yew is quoted less often since he ceased to be Singapore’s Minister Mentor after the parliamentary elections in May last year when the opposition won six seats for the first time. But he can still speak and write with such authority. I read his letter on ministers’ salaries which appeared in Today newspaper. Those who claim Singapore ministers are overpaid – Lee Kuan Yew’s son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will be paid S$2.2 million ($1.7 million) a year and new ministers S$1.1 million after pay cuts – may not agree with the former Minister Mentor. But Lee Kuan is certainly right when he says:Continue Reading
Singapore Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s autobiography bears witness to how he felt about his wife, Madam Kwa Geok Choo, who died yesterday at the age of 89.
He recalled his angry outburst when the Americans could not send a medical specialist to treat his wife shortly after independence in 1965.
The incident is described in detail in his autobiography, From Third World To First.
Oh, God, Mrs Lee has passed away. She was 89. My heart goes out to Singapore’s Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. It’s such a tragedy. How will he cope? They have been married for more than 60 years.
Lee Kuan Yew and his wife
Here is actor Julian Glover reciting John Donne’s Death Be Not Proud, which ends:
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
(The full poem is at the end of this post.)
And here’s Mahalia Jackson singing Steal Away.
And here’s another great song: Johnny Cash singing I Walk the Line.
It’s a grievous loss for their son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, as well. But he has his wife, and may he have her forever.
But what of MM Lee, who lost his wife? I remember the New York Times article on September 10, where he talked about reading poems to his wife, Madam Kwa Geok Choo.
He just turned 87 on September 16. Please give him the strength to carry on.
I remember how the late President Nixon praised him and his wife when they visited America in 1973. You can read President Nixon’s compliments to them.
I wonder which of Shakespeare's sonnets Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew reads to his wife, Madam Kwa Geok Choo.
He reads her favourite poems to her as she lies bedridden and mute after a series of strokes, reports the New York Times.
My favourite is Sonnet 116:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love ’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
Lee told the New York Times he loved the words of the wedding vow: "To love, to hold and to cherish, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse till death do us part."
I saw this picture of the Lees, who have now been married for more than 60 years.
President Richard Nixon had fun recalling their courtship in this charming toast when they visited Washington in 1973. Nixon, who was 10 years older than Lee, began by complimenting Mrs Lee:
Singapore Elections Department map
There has never been an election contest in two of Singapore’s 23 constituencies. The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) has won a walkover in every election from Tanjong Pagar GRC and Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC.
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