SINGAPORE: A recent tweet thread admiring what Lee Kuan Yew, the city-state’s founding Prime Minister, achieved in Singapore went viral, reaching nearly 18 million views after it was posted on Monday (Oct 25).
In his initial tweet, Oscar Hoole, the leadership and business strategist behind The Success Script Newsletter, traced “modern Asia’s greatest success” to “ONE man’s ruthless vision.”
He provided a mini history lesson, writing that Singapore had been forced out of Malaysia in 1965, and calling the city-state “a tiny island of 2M people living in slums” without an army, resources, and fresh water at the time.
Noting the odds against Lee Kuan Yew’s success, which included hostile neighbours and race riots, he outlined not only the steps Mr Lee took but also his mindset, which he characterized as “We’ll survive. We’ll grow. And we’ll show them all.”
According to the post author, among the notable steps Mr Lee took were building the strongest military in Southeast Asia, followed by instituting English as the main language, and ensuring zero corruption, racial integration, and mandatory savings for all employees.
He went on to praise Mr Lee’s housing policy as “radical,” especially as ethnic enclaves were disallowed, and called his economic strategy “genius,” noting that multinational companies were invited to set up in Singapore.
“Global trade transformed everything,” he added, also noting the revolution in Singapore’s education system, which focused on technology and engineering and encouraged Singaporeans who wanted to study overseas to do so. Additionally, teachers are paid well in Singapore.
He added that “Merit became everything” before listing the results, which include a jump in the GDP from $1,500 to $22,000 per person, from 75 per cent living in slums to 90 per cent owning their homes, and a jump in literacy from 50 per cent to 95 per cent.
He added that at present, Singapore has the third highest GDP per capita globally, the world’s best education system, the most expensive real estate in Asia, and he touted its living standards as higher than in the United Kingdom and the United States.
For Mr Hoole, Mr Lee proved that “Sometimes the hardest choices create the greatest results” by following this blueprint:
1. Survival before ideology
2. Pragmatism over politics
3. Merit above all
4. Zero tolerance for corruption
He further praised Mr Lee for taking Singapore “from the third world to first in ONE generation.”
While many agreed with the points Mr Hoole made, some wrote that Singapore’s success may not be replicable elsewhere, especially in larger countries.
Others said that it’s a misconception that Mr Lee had pulled it off by himself.
“Truth is that it was strong core team (led by LKY) that executed to perfection and had loads of luck,” one commenter wrote.
Another cited the contributions of Dr Goh Keng Swee and S Rajaratnam./TISG
Read also: Elon Musk praises Lee Kuan Yew as “brilliant” in response to blog post about Changi Airport