8/20/2009

The return of LKY

LKY was in his robust best yesterday in Parliament. He stood up reluctantly to demolish a motion by Viswa Sadasivan calling for more equality among the races. LKY's position is that the Malays were the indigenous people of the land and were protected under Article 152 of the Constitution. Their special privilege and position cannot be removed by equality for all races. He was like a young man, full of fire in his belly despite his age. He stamped his authority and made it very clear that he is still in charge, that he is the boss. And when a difficult situation arises, he will be there. And this is bad. By his strong and persistent presence in Parliament, he has exposed a whopping big hole in the succession formula. Did any of the minister see the dangerous trend that Viswa was pointing? And is there anyone that can stand up and defend the position as robustly as he did, establishing himself as the boss man, to be able to speak in full authority and with that kind of forcefulness of a true leader? My view is that LKY should stay in the background and let the young ministers to take charge and fight their own battle, to be their own men. And he will do them a great favour by not rushing to battle as the point man. He cannot be around forever and it is better that the new leaders establish themselves fast while he is still around to avoid creating a kind of vacuum through the lack of a tested and accepted leader securely in place, one who can speak in authority and people will listen, like listening to him. Many people can see this problem. Unfortunately many wise men will choose to remain reticent and pretend that everything is going just fine.

12 comments:

Joe90 said...

It seems to me the more LKY shoots off his mouth in public, the more he embarrasses himself and his party. His deeming of the ideal of "a democratic society based on justice and equality" as merely an aspiration and not one of the fundamental tenets upon which this nation is built, is not only a grave insult to the intelligence of all patriotic Singaporeans but also an extremely grave denigration of the ideals of his friend and colleague, the late Rajaratnam who crafted the National Pledge! Oh how soon we forget!
If the PAP knows what is good for them, they should drop MM from standing in the next GE as it is clear this increasingly irrelevant old fart is becoming more of a liability rather than an asset to his party.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

hi Joe90, welcome to the blog.

i was reading a few other blogs and the comments on lky were very negative. he is a man that had done all he could in his life time. better for him to go and enjoy life and sing 'My Way'.

would someone tell him to move on and let the new team to do it their way?

Anonymous said...

Actually, LKY made a good point about equality - if all were treated equally, then there would not have been special privileges given to minorities to help them catch up with the rest.

Equality, then, is a double-edged sword. We cannot choose to see the good side and ignore the other - that is selective equality.

Anonymous said...

I would also like to add, that as a single, equality to me means no special privileges for married couples such as buying direct from HDB.

As for discrimination, they have forgotten singles have been discriminated against too.

So, we should think twice about what we are asking for.

Anonymous said...

Cannot let go lah! Because of his son.

Of course it is an embarrassment to the other PAP MPs, but sadly embarrassment is not in their vocabulary.

Look at Ma of Taiwan. I feel sorry for him, apologising on TV so many times for his slow reaction to the Typhoon and taking full responsibility. I have full respect for him.

I wish we have such people here who takes personal responsibility for mistakes. But alas, it is a futile wish.

Anonymous said...

If MM Lee declared right in your face that he will rise from the grave if he 'senses' trouble for SIN; You think he will keep quiet when alive ? Fat hope !

HE WILL MAKE SURE OTHER WILL SHUP UP AND SIT DOWN EVEN WITH HIS LAST BREATH !

He makes sure that his reputation, for good or for bad, will remain in history for some time.

patriot

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

what i would like to see is for the current A team to strike out completely on their own without lky. only then can they feel comfortable to do their own things and the people can feel confident of their leadership. they need to build their trust and bond with the people on their own merits.

staying in the shadow of lky is bad.

Anonymous said...

The younger ones are afraid to open their mouths to disagree. The not so young ones will, in their last term, attempt a little more strenous exercise by uttering some form of disagreement, since it is their swan song so they must show a little wayang lah!

How can such a stiffling system ever throw up a leader?

IMAGOD said...

I wonder if he's a vampire?

Zed said...

So they say, all people are equal, but some people are more equal than others.

Anonymous said...

Insightful Comments in TOC: LKY Sould Retire Gracefully Now

Steve Wu on August 21st, 2009 1.31 am

It looks like the Old Man is showing his age. He had the date for the US Declaration of Independence wrong even while reading it from the prepared text. You may review this episode in Part 1 (around 5:30 in the video). It’s 1976, 1977, back to 1976 while it should have been 1776 all along.

Of course, the MSM graciously provided the written text of the speech as it was intended (not a verbatim transcript) http://www.asiaone.com/News/the%2BStraits%2BTimes/Story/A1Story20090820-162122.html .

The point is this. No one expects him to be a historian. However, that he has gotten things muddled up by a margin of more than 220 years without realizing it. It points to a more serious problem.

Not long ago, he claimed to have read a letter from the president of IBA praising the judiciary of Singapore when such a letter did not exist. More recently, he claimed credit for ExxonMobil’s investment as a direct result of meeting with the senior executives but ExxonMobil quickly denied that.

These episodes may not be unrelated. It is unsurprising if he is rapidly losing memory and not completely lucid at his age. The 3-million-dollar question is if he is still mentally fit to hold office.

“He (NMP Viswa) will know Indians are not equal. Brahmins will not be in Sinda. It is the non-Brahmins who are in Sinda.”

Regardless of his age, his racist and class-conscious views are still very dangerous today as they were in the past.

chekhovian said...
This comment has been removed by the author.