The economic and political goliaths of Singapore

The once powerful and invincible Lee Kuan Yew is finally gone, after suffering for 46 agonising days hooked to a mechanical ventilator in the Singapore General Hospital, wrote Mr Yoong Siew Wah  in his Singapore Recalcitrant blog.

"The Chinese believe that how well a person dies reflects on his or her kindness or cruelty in his or her life," he wrote while asking whether it was the passing of a Titan. He said it would depend on which side of the political spectrum one stands.

He said PAP diehards and mesmerised aficionados will of course hail him as a great man who has brought Singapore from a third-world backwater to its first world status today.

" Is this an honest assessment ?" he asked.

In actual fact, Yoong, Singapore's former Internal Security Department Director (1971-1974) and before that the director of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB), said Lee Kuan Yew merely provided the figurehead leadership and without the indispensable expertise and monumental efforts of PAP pioneers like Dr Goh Keng Swee, S. Rajaratnam, Hon Sui Sen and the eminent United Nations Economic Advisor Albert Winsemius, the much vaunted Lee Kuan Yew would have been reduced to a nonentity.

"These economic and political goliaths, especially Albert Winsemius, helped build Singapore to what it is today. This has been the narrative among discerning Singaporeans," he added.