When asked, “do you need to nail every lie to protect your reputation at all cost?”, LKY said: -
“Put that question to the new leaders. I defended my position tooth and nail. I succeeded. I fought against the media in Singapore and internationally. I won because I’ve persuasive powers. I can speak to the people over the blather of the media...”
“So when I say I’m going to fix that guy, he will be fixed. Let’s make no bones about it. I carry my own hatchet. If you take liberties with me, I’ll deal with you. I look after myself because when you enter a blind alley with the communists, only one person comes out alive...”
With the recent announcement by HSK, I wonder, who amongst the 4G carries his own hatchet? And what kind of hatchet is it, blunt or sharpened? Or, is it a plowshare that they each carries together as a team, planting the seed, nurturing and growing, and harvesting also together as a team?
It’s a foregone conclusion that PAP under the ironclad leadership of the first generation is long gone. LKY said: “So, I’m not afraid of going into an alley with anybody, let alone the foreign press. What can they do to me? Can they influence my votes? They can’t.”
That is one man vs the press world and that same man will go at it alone if he had to. That is the rugged individual that is LKY.
Now, with the 4G, principally made up of CCS, OYK, Lawrence and Desmond, it is uncertain whether they will be going into the alley alone. More likely, they will go in and out as a team. As they’d said, it is a first-among-equal team, for there is no LKY-type in such a set up.
It is undeniable that our leaders are a product of their time and circumstances. LKY and his lieutenants had their demons to fight.
LKY had the communists. He said this about his greatest fear for Singapore, “I think a leadership and a people that have forgotten, that have lost their bearings and do not understand the constraints that we face. Small base, highly organised, very competent people, compete for international confidence, an ability to engage the big countries. We lose that, we’re down. And we can go down very rapidly.”
Goh Keng Swee himself worked in the Japanese Tax Department during WWII. At that time, food was scarce and they had to make ends meet with food ration and running a modest tobacco business, exchanging luxuries then like tinned sardines, alcohol and cigarettes with the utmost secrecy.
As for EW Barker, in June 1944, he was with the anti-malaria unit and had to trek up to work with a medical unit 160 km behind the Japanese frontline, in camps along the Siam-Burma Railway (known also as the Death Railway, where 16,000 POWs had died building it).
But, each of them came out of it different. They carried with them their own distinct personalities, and however you stretch them, they ultimately “regress to the means” or return to who they were at the core.
We have one who had armed himself with his own hatchet and was not to be trifled with. We have another who was a practical man, not bound by distracting dogmas. GKS once said: “Let me confess at the outset that I am a specialist by inclination, training and experience and not a happy generalist who can take a broader, even philosophical view of human affairs.”
He added: “My interest centres on how developing countries can lift their populations out of the wretched poverty which (it has) been their misfortune to endure. More recently, I had been concerned with how acquisition and spread of knowledge can contribute to a successful outcome.”
As for EW Barker, a Permanent Secretary for National Development, Benny Lim, once described him as follows: “Barker was not a natural politican - he lacked raw political ambition and the consuming passion of the ideologically driven. He was a natural leader - in sports, in school.”
“He also had a first-rate mind...He was a Renaissance gentleman and a human being comfortable in his own skin - no chip on the shoulder, nothing to prove and not one to seek out the political limelight.”
Both GKS and EW Barker retired from politics early, that is, 1984 and 1988 respectively. Like Benny said, they step out of the political limelight because once the job is done, they know it’s time to go.
As for LKY, Singapore had always been his lifelong commitment. She was an ongoing concern for him, till the end of his life. And he was right when he made this observation: -
“Each generation faces different milieu, a different backdrop, a different set of problems. If you don’t have the conviction that you want to do this because you feel strongly you want to do something for the people, don’t do it.” Mind you, LKY did say this, “At the end of the day, what have I got? A successful Singapore. What have I given up? My life.”
The truth is, at times, we become reluctant leaders, assuming the role more out of obligation than conviction, because we just do not share the same intensity of passion that some leaders have or possessed. That is quite common, even understandable, and I guess HSK saw that hatchet lying there, lifted it up for a while, and then felt it did not cut it for him.
It should be noted that politics works on a different level as compared to running a family, a company or a town council. Morality and ethics work at different levels too. It is more nuanced than the million of voters would want to believe or subscribe to. It is much more than just ticking the desired square and dropping it into the ballot box. It ends there for voters, but it’s just the beginning of the furnace of fire for a politician leader.
Just as not all lies are born equal, not all actions of a leader can be benchmarked against a fixed moral standard. Different situations call for different measures, not all of them pleases everyone, or even gel with certain moral expectation.
For example, domestic violence within a home, in public or in the community is an offence. But a war president is often praised for his decision, even though more may die from it. Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb, though some had deem it wholly unnecessary, was hailed by others for making a tough decision with courage and resolute.
Max Weber himself distinguished the ethics of conviction, which refuses to tolerate injustice, similar to what Martin Luther once said, “Here I stand; I can do no other,” and ethics of responsibility, which must focus primarily on results. And Max Weber had also forewarned leaders who always have in mind the pursuit of purity in politics. He said: “Whoever seeks the salvation of his own soul and the rescue of souls, does not do so by means of politics.”
In the end, HSK, like EW Barker and GSK, knew his political journey towards the premiership has to end here and now to make way for others. Seen in that light, he may be considered as a reluctant leader, one who is no doubt competent, even persistent, but not convicted enough to take up that so-called hatchet-arming top job.
Yes, he had made a u-turn, and it has been disappointing because every decision comes with consequences, especially at that level. In other words, legitimate expectations come with every decision made. But I guess it is all about damage control, and HSK knew it is better now than later - for himself and for the nation as a whole. It would be far worse when you change positions midstream, especially in such rapid waters on an uncharted route.
After all said, here’s how I end this Sunday reflection and LKY’s words would be apt.
“I have no regrets. I have spent my life, so much of it, building this country. There’s nothing more that I need to do. I can’t worry about the fourth generation leadership except to advise the current ministers to get a team in because they need time to develop the new leaders. They can’t just take a course in leadership for six months. They have to work together and understand this is the way it can work in Singapore. So there’s no glitch when the leadership transition takes place.”
Let’s hope that this time, the leadership transition would take place without any more glitches, to elect a leader with enough conviction to carry us through as one nation. Not necessary one who carries his own hatchet, but at least one who is not afraid at times to go first into a dark alley alone, because even a fish swimming in the ocean has only one head leading its body, which is diligently supporting from behind.
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