Chee Soon Juan: Lee Kuan Yew was right; we need innovative & critical thinking to meet complex changes going forward

Opposition leader Chee Soon Juan attended the commencement at the National University of Singapore for his daughter’s graduation recently. 

In a Facebook post on Saturday (July 9), he wrote that he agreed with founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who was quoted in the commencement programme notes, that innovative and critical thinking are needed in order to meet complex changes going forward.

“I hope that Singaporeans will continue to seek out an education that nurtures them to think critically and innovatively to meet the diverse and complex challenges ahead,” Mr Lee had said.

However, Dr Chee, who heads Singapore Democratic Party, added that “phrases like ‘innovative and critical thinking‘ are just buzzwords dropped here and there every now and then to placate restless minds and keep up appearances.”

And while he wrote that it was “Good to see all the young faces beaming with pride and expectation,” he also criticised NUS as an “institution dominated and domesticated” by the ruling People’s Action Party.

He wrote that the ceremony was “everything one would expect of academia’s highest traditions… except when you scratch the surface.”

“There you’ll find the sad spectacle of an institution dominated and domesticated by the PAP,” Dr Chee also wrote, adding that the list of chancellors deputy chancellors is full of PAP notables, including “Devan Nair, former PAP MP; S Jayakumar, former PAP minister; SR Nathan, former intelligence officer; Tony Tan, former PAP deputy prime minister; Ong Teng Cheong, former PAP minister; and Halimah Yaacob, former PAP MP.”

Dr Chee also commented that the China Daily Prize given to graduates is “the same China Daly owned by the Chinese Communist Party that insists that the Tiananmen massacre in 1989 is a myth.”

He added that the NUS is not “a hotbed for innovative and critical thinking.”

The opposition leader also mentioned a very personal reason for criticising the university “my sacking in 1993 after I joined the SDP.”

“Little has changed,” he added.

“I remember the time when I visited campus to talk to students, I was quickly confronted by a phalanx of police and security officers, and warned to leave or face arrest…

Lee Kuan Yew was right; we need innovative and critical thinking to meet complex changes going forward. But it’s one thing to say words and quite another to put them into practice. Therein lies the danger for this nation.”

/TISG

Chee Soon Juan invites cleaners & security guards to his café for lunch