BG Lee readies Singapore for the future challenges

BG Lee readies Singapore for the future challenges

SINGAPORE (JP): With a general election in a year or so,
Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is already being portrayed
by the Singapore media as the next prime minister.

BG Lee, as the retired Army brigadier general is popularly
called, is already comfortable with the designation, as is
apparent in various recent media interviews, including one on
Saturday with a group of visiting Indonesian journalists.

The son of Singapore's first prime minister Lee Kwan Yew
retired from the Singapore Armed Forces in 1984 to begin his
political career with the People's Action Party. He was elected
member of parliament in 1984, 1988, 1991 and 1997.

He has been deputy prime minister to Prime Minister Goh Chok
Tong since 1990, with responsibilities including economic and
civil matters, and since 1998, chairman of the Monetary
Authorities of Singapore.

Following is an excerpt of the interview.

Are you likely to relax freedom of expression in Singapore?

You can say anything you like, you can publish anything you
like, make any speech you like, write any book you like. There is
nothing to stop you. What people will ask is, why is it then that
you have legal cases when you get defamed. But freedom of
expression has never extended to defame and to tell lies in any
country.

In terms of the framework (freedom of expression), it is
there. In terms of the actual practice, people are discussing a
much wider range of issues now than they did 10 years ago. You
read the newspapers, and you can look at the Internet chatside,
newsgroups. There's nothing which is taboo or unmentionable. But
if you talk rubbish or you say something that is untrue, then we
will hold you to account. But that's when the debate takes place.

Wouldn't the Internet give Singaporeans more information than
simply that provided by the Singaporean media?

In the past they were not getting information just limited to
local sources, because the BBC has had an FM station here for
many years. You can listen to the BBC if you don't believe in TCS
or RCS. All the magazines circulate in Singapore, you can read
the Economist, Times or Newsweek, Kompas, whatever, it's all
available here. And people travel, half of Singaporeans leave
their country every year. If you want to try and make them
ignorant, that is not possible. I don't think we start off from
the point of view that we have denied it. What we have now with
the Internet, more than one third of households are connected,
anybody can get anything he wants, whether all of that is useful
or true information is another matter. But it's all there.

With Singaporeans getting exposed to all sorts of information,
do you find the Internet a threat?

I don't think being exposed to information is a threat.
Eventually people have to decide whom to trust, what to believe.
If on a newsgroup somebody says something ridiculous and puts a
pseudonym there, are you likely to believe that? But if it is
published on a reputable website, that's different. Then there is
somebody signed as a columnist, somebody is taking
responsibility. I read it seriously because I know that this is a
source which I can depend on. The Internet will not change. I
look for news on the Internet. That's the first thing I read
every morning. I don't go for soc.culture.Singapore to see who's
put the latest blurb there because it is uninformative. I look
for Channel News Asia or International Herald Tribune, or
Bloomberg, or AsiaOne. It tells me something useful about what's
going on in the world. I think a lot of people will do that.

How would you describe Singaporean values?

It's very difficult to crystallize a philosophy or a whole way
of life which society takes many generations to develop. We made
one effort some 10 to 15 years ago and we developed what we call
"shared values" -- that puts society above self, family as a
basic building block, consensus rather than contention and so on.
We made five items and we put it down and called them shared
values.

You're talking about the three different communities with an
inherited set of cultures and customs and attitudes towards life,
which have served them well for a long time and have evolved as
times passed, from generation to generation. For the Chinese you
call them Confucianism values, for the Malays they have their
tradition and customs and adat, and for the Indians also. They
are not all the same. They're different but they have these
strands that tie their society together. We want to keep these,
modify them because the situation changes into the next
generation. At the same time there are certain national norms,
ethos, by which Singaporeans accept as a way of doing things. We
focus on meritocracy, we emphasize openness, we give everybody
full equal opportunities.

Can you elaborate on the phrase Every Singaporean Matters?

We want everybody to give his best. It's the complement of
meritocracy. Because our system says we go on merit, so at every
level, you compete. And the best person goes up, the most
capable, and you test him, if he's capable then we promote him.

We try to put the most capable person to each job. But if our
people then conclude that only the few winners count, and there
rest don't matter and are not valued, then a lot of people who
are not winners or not top winners will lose interest and opt out
and say "why, I don't matter to you, I'm not valued, I'm not a
CEO, I'm not the best, so why do I want to participate?" But if
you want to be able to operate the whole system, you can't just
have a few hundred bosses, you must have the whole society
engaged, involved, and feeling that they have some role to play.

We want our people to have that mind-set. To participate, you
count. You may be just the typist or the clerk, but you have an
idea on how to do your job better. Let's have the benefit of
that. We're one society with so many individuals.

Singapore follows neither the capitalist nor the socialist
system. What is your system?

We try to be an economy which is run on market principles, but
at the same time there are certain social safety nets to make
sure that all Singaporeans are looked after, to make sure that
there's a sense of community and nationhood.

We don't guarantee any job, we don't fix prices, we run as
many things as we can on market principles, many pieces of the
government have been divided up, these ones we have to operate
commercially, so our radio station and TV stations or our refuse
collection, even agencies like the tax department have to operate
autonomously so that they can be efficient.

But what we do do, in addition to individual competitions, is
make sure that certain basics are provided for everybody: free
education, and assistance for them to buy apartments.

So you start off with some chips. If you start off with no
chips, then you can't join the game, then it's very difficult.
Why should someone be part of this game? Our chips is that if
you're a citizen, you can buy an apartment, it's not for free,
but it's subsidized. And if you work hard, and the country grows,
the value of the apartment will go up and your asset will
appreciate.

You have a stake and you'll fight for it because there's a
national service army and we have to defend Singapore and the
soldiers must feel that they have something to work for, to
defend. They're not soldiers for a living, they are soldiers
because they're doing national service.

What is the main challenge for the Southeast Asia region?

If you look back, for 30 years with president Soeharto in
Indonesia, we had a very stable region. Indonesia was a very
major factor in this stability. He focused on economic
development, established cordial relationships with the other
countries in ASEAN. He enabled all the countries to focus on
economic development and not on tension or conflict.

Now it's changed. You cannot go back. You're not going to have
another Pak Harto. You're going to go forward. We hope that you
(Indonesia) will stabilize and you will develop again on a steady
growth path and will be able to establish that kind of relations
with the rest of Southeast Asia so that the rest of us can grow.
You are the single biggest factor here, your population the
largest, and strategically you carry the most weight.

Has your political career been difficult or made easy by the
fact that you're the son of prime minister Lee Kwan Yew?

It's a challenge. If somebody else came in, they would just be
looked at on their own merits. When I came in, they would ask how
I compare with my father. That's quite a difficult comparison to
have made. I think after some time people get to know you and
they assess you as yourself and they know whether you are
standing on your own feet or not, or as a patung, they will check
if there's a tape recorder inside somewhere which is playing out.

I think people know me, I've been in politics since 1984.

There's a certain mutual understanding and confidence. I know
my electorate, they know what they can expect of me. And I've
worked over the years in the defense and trade industry, now in
the financial sector and the monetary authority, also as a deputy
to Prime Minister Mr. Goh Chok Tong, coordinate the ministers and
sell his policies and present and refine his proposals. I think I
made a reasonable contribution. If you look forward to what can I
do, it depends on whether people have confidence in me and
whether I have the support of the members of parliament and the
population. If so, then it is my duty to do what is necessary.

It's not really a job interview. I would like this, these are
my qualifications, here's my CV, please choose me. If you take it
like that, then I think you will probably fail. To be a prime
minister is more than a job, you to have see it as a
responsibility, are you the best person to fill it. If so, then
you'd better do it, if not you better let somebody else.

Do you talk politics with your father Lee Kwan Yew?

Sometimes we discuss politics. Openly. It cannot be on a
kawan-kawan (conversational) basis because I'll have to maintain
my relations with the rest of the Cabinet. So does he. If people
think the two of us have something private being arranged, we
would have great difficulty with the other ministers.

Among the ministers we have a smaller group in whom we have
more intensive, informal discussions more frequently. The senior
minister is one of them, I'm one of them, and then there are five
or six others.

Do you get tips from Mr. Lee Kwan Yew?

I suppose he gives me some suggestions. He gives the other
ministers suggestions too. But, how shall I put it: You can have
Jack Nicklaus as your pro, but you may not win.

What preparations are you making as the future prime minister?

I'm just busy doing my job now. I have enough to do. I think
we can worry about that in due course. (emb)