Lee Kuan Yew, together with his team in the first three decades of Singapore’s independence, pulled off a dramatic transformation of the former British colony into a world-class city and global financial centre.

Today, the island state boasts the world’s best international airport, a highly efficient public transportation system, two top universities, and the busiest transshipment port. Internationally, Singapore continues to punch above its weight despite its small size and population.

But to many Malaysians, especially those who lived through the early days of the merger in 1963 and the painful separation two years later, Lee was not just the ‘founding father’ of modern Singapore, for he was also arguably the ‘best’ leader that Malaysia never had.

Similarly, Lee had fended off one challenge after another in his political career, having overcome enormous difficulties within and without Singapore, yet the broken Malaysian dream represented the biggest failure and regret right until his passing this week.

The experience of being told bluntly to leave Malaysia haunted Lee throughout his life, which strengthened his determination to ensure Singapore’s success at all costs. Indeed, he was industrious, extraordinarily self-disciplined, terribly demanding as well as ruthless especially in dealing with political opponents and social activists, for a simple reason that he, a man full of pride and confidence, could not afford another failure in life.

Towards the later part of his political career, Lee could clearly see the marked differences between his country and his ‘former country’ Malaysia, and began to comment on Malaysian politics as if, paradoxically, he was still very much part of it.

That is understandable. After all, not many Singaporeans have gone through the unique process of first being British, Malaysian and then Singaporean, with a brief but traumatic Japanese intervention in between. Lee, therefore, is an important chapter in Malayan/Malaysian history, regardless of the effort by the Umno-dominant state to airbrush him out of our history book, or to paint him in a completely negative light.

Truth be told, our history teaching in school has never been fair to others who have played a key role in the path to Malaysian independence: Burhanuddin al-Helmy, Ahmad Boestamam, Chin Peng, Shamsiah Fakeh, Rashid Maidin, Abdullah CD ( right in photo ), to name a few.

In the same vein, the teaching of Singapore history almost always begins with the arrival of Stamford Raffles, as if the once prominent trading port by the name of Temasek never existed. Ironically, Temasek Holdings is held in high regard as it symbolises Singapore’s undisputed economic success and prestige as a nation state.

Achievements are not his alone

This is where I disagree strongly with Lee. He should rightly be credited with his farsightedness and economic management, but the achievements are not his alone, for they belong to his comrades - among them Singapore's first finance minister Goh Keng Swee and former deputy prime minister Ong Teng Cheong - the average Singaporeans and all those migrant workers, with easily 300,000 among them.

The import of cheap labour has saved the Singapore government large amounts of money that it would have had otherwise to spend on housing, education and health. Still, in rushing to attribute everything under the sun to one man’s alone, it shows only how the nation-building discourse in Singapore is so skewed in favour of Lee’s ideology.

Many Malayans/Malaysians/Singaporeans too have sacrificed politically for the island state. I need not repeat here how Lee has used draconian legislations such as the Internal Security Act to stifle dissent in a most unkind manner.

I once met the late Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam ( left ) on the busy Orchard Road as he was handing out leaflets on what went wrong in Singapore. We had a good chat about politics on both sides of the causeway, yet I could see most Singaporeans would shun him in no time. How on earth did the man who had spoken up for the poor and the downtrodden, only to be sued to bankruptcy by Lee, end up like a plague eagerly avoided by ordinary Singaporeans?

When Jeyaretnam passed away in 2008, Lee Hsien Loong issued a letter to the deceased’s family which sounds more like a defence of the government’s stand more than condolences. It truly puzzles me that, even in death, Jeyaretnam would not receive the due recognition although he, too, had sacrificed much of his life for politics and articulated a different political vision to his fellow Singaporeans within the legal parameters.

Having said that, I am of the view that, politically, Mahathir Mohamad had always been more tolerant of dissent as compared to Lee, until the Anwar Ibrahim debacle in 1998: police brutality, docile judges, the subservient mainstream media and, of course, the notorious mattress, you name it.

For someone who had been overshadowed by Lee economically and eager to portray himself as more benign than his nemesis at least in one aspect, ie. political tolerance, even this was not to be. Mahathir has since gone down in history as perhaps the more ruthless and shameless ‘benevolent dictator’ between the two.

If not for the atrocities that Mahathir committed against Anwar, I most probably would have evaluated him more favourably as compared to Lee’s merciless clampdown on dissent.

Lee deserves appropriate praise for his sheer determination and discipline that made him a tough act to follow, but one must also not lose sight of those whose loved ones were detained and tortured over a long period of time just because their political ideals ran counter to those held by Lee.

Which is why I have always cautioned members of the Malaysian opposition parties not to praise Lee excessively simply because if they were in the opposition movement in Singapore, it would be more than likely that most of them would find themselves bearing the brunt of Lee’s wrath and languishing in detention for years if not decades!

Too much myth around the man

There is also too much myth built around the man: rags to riches, fishing village to financial centre, etc, although it is clearly evident that Singapore was already a flourishing trading port with comprehensive infrastructure as bequeathed by the colonialists. What Lee and his comrades did was to improve on the fundamentals and make them suited for modern-day competition, for which the entire PAP government’s leadership is rightly credited.

As Lee’s era has come to an end, the most honourable thing for the PAP government to do is to acknowledge the political injustice that it has exacted on others - Teo Soh Lung ( right ) being one of them - over the past five decades and sue for reconciliation.

Those who were forced into exile, such as Tan Wah Piow, Tang Liang Hong, Francis Seow and many others should be allowed back to Singapore. Legal persecution against those who question the PAP policy such as Roy Nerng must stop, for there is no reason for a government that is internationally recognised as efficient, transparent and accountable to be frightened of its own shadows and tilting at windmills all the time.

A developed country it may be, Singapore has a lot more to do before it can become a great nation. The opportunity has already arrived although I am not entirely sure if the PAP leadership is ready to grab it.

Majulah Singapura.

JOSH HONG studied politics at London Metropolitan University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. A keen watcher of domestic and international politics, he longs for a day when Malaysians will learn and master the art of self-mockery, and enjoy life to the full in spite of politicians.