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mantaman0a 's review for:
The Singapore Story (Student Edition): Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew
by Lee Kuan Yew
This is not THE Singapore Story. It is the political story of one man's life. In other words, it is a percentage of a fraction of a decimal of a massive iceberg of the Singaporean past. It has no right to arrogate upon itself the status of speaking for ALL Singaporeans. For this, the book's publishers, editors, and author himself should be called out for their conceit.
I feared this would be a tiresome slog, and near the middle, when Lee goes into the byzantine intricacies of "fighting the communists", the whole momentum of the narrative slows down to a painful crawl, in part because Singaporean historiography ('both' sides) has granulated this episode: of the communists, the Barisan, and the events leading up to Operation Coldstore, into a spectacularly boring drag. The so-called 'counternarratives' of this period actually reinforce the agony. Make no mistake: this part is FUCKING boring.
But the pace picks up again when Singapore moves into Malaysia, and Lee shows us butthurt Malay ultranationalists determined to fix the PAP, and to bring this upstart little state to heel. I'm not saying this because i'm a Pappie dog. History shows us how a threatened UMNO would deploy similar tactics again in Kuala Lumpur in 1969, this time sending in the police to fire into Chinese shophouses. Reading the 1964 Singapore race riots with 1969 in mind one cannot help but feel a sense of ominous foreshadowing. Curiously, Lee makes no mention nor connection of what was to come later as far as this is concerned - understandably so, but some context helps to corroborate what he's saying here. And while Lee is careful to hedge his words where the Tunku is concerned, the impression that emerges from this account is a weak, unsavoury mafia boss with his coterie of yes-men, which Lee, Goh Keng Swee, Rajaratnam, and Toh Chin Chye refused to be party too.
The evidence checks out, more or less, to this casual reader of Singaporean history. Lee's claim that Malaysia's ultra-nationalists were stoking racist sentiments to divide and conquer corroborates with what was to come in 1969, and then again through Mahathir's rhetoric. Even the Malaysia of today shows you how ethnonationalists still occupy the prime ground. The Malaysian Solidarity Convention was quite an epic attempt to fight UMNO's communal strategy, and i can't help but wonder how things would have panned out if Separation hadnt happened; if martial law in Malaysia hadnt been declared in 1969. I think the Tunku and UMNO were right to fear what was to come had they allowed a Malaysian Malaysia to flower and bud. So many roads not taken; not just the ones lazy pseudo-historians like to whine about wrt LiM cHiN sIonG and teH bArISAn s0cIaLiS fiGhTing 4 deMocraCY.
Once you realise how dead set against Separation the British were, the fact that Malaysian and Singaporean leaders had pulled this off entirely without their knowledge was pretty epic too. I think in the ebb and froth of everything else, this crazy achievement got sidelined. But how often do you hear of a colonial power completely blindsided by the plans of its two successor states, which it was still trying to paternistically guide? Lee wasn't wrong to say they'd pulled a "bloodless coup" from under the British noses.
Ending the book at Separation was a good choice. I came away feeling with a much better understanding of why Lee and his crew were so resolute, so determined to go it on their own, and why Separation was such a "moment of anguish" for him. The Malaysian Experiment had failed, and failed horribly; the events of Kuala Lumpur 1969 would later reinforce that. Better Singapore would go it alone, than parley with the greedy, the flabby, the ones in it for themselves (Tan Siew Sin also emerges as a villain; i wonder what GKS or Tan himself had to say about this). A perfect example of why divorce is sometimes better for all parties involved.
I still disagree with the incredibly misleading title of this book, though its subtitle is accurate. I think as a memoir of Lee Kuan Yew, it's pretty solid: decently-paced, and relatively lucid, if painfully and blinkeredly political. Lee writes clearly, but in a weirdly staccato register that is tiresome to read for too long. 'Machiavellian' would not be an unfair description of the persona in this book, but i think that word has overly negative connotations - it's clear that this is a man with an incredibly sharp political acumen, a sense of political theatre, and how his actions would be perceived and played out. I think the other amazing thing is the fact that in addition to this political-sense, Lee would later show he was an excellent administrator too.
Overall, a decent Singapore Story. But not THE definitive one by a long shot. Lee and his publishers and editors cannot claim to represent the stories of the hundreds of thousands of other Singaporeans who lived through that time period.
So this is one man's story of one aspect of his life. And while this aspect may have shaped independent Singapore in the years to come, it cannot even tell the stories from the perspectives of other political leaders of the period, let alone the millions whose lives were irrevocably changed in a thousand different ways by the decisions him and his colleagues made.
I would have given this book 2 stars for its arrogant title and its political tunnel-vision. But the Malaysian part of the story, and the conclusion, raised it up in my standing a little more.
I feared this would be a tiresome slog, and near the middle, when Lee goes into the byzantine intricacies of "fighting the communists", the whole momentum of the narrative slows down to a painful crawl, in part because Singaporean historiography ('both' sides) has granulated this episode: of the communists, the Barisan, and the events leading up to Operation Coldstore, into a spectacularly boring drag. The so-called 'counternarratives' of this period actually reinforce the agony. Make no mistake: this part is FUCKING boring.
But the pace picks up again when Singapore moves into Malaysia, and Lee shows us butthurt Malay ultranationalists determined to fix the PAP, and to bring this upstart little state to heel. I'm not saying this because i'm a Pappie dog. History shows us how a threatened UMNO would deploy similar tactics again in Kuala Lumpur in 1969, this time sending in the police to fire into Chinese shophouses. Reading the 1964 Singapore race riots with 1969 in mind one cannot help but feel a sense of ominous foreshadowing. Curiously, Lee makes no mention nor connection of what was to come later as far as this is concerned - understandably so, but some context helps to corroborate what he's saying here. And while Lee is careful to hedge his words where the Tunku is concerned, the impression that emerges from this account is a weak, unsavoury mafia boss with his coterie of yes-men, which Lee, Goh Keng Swee, Rajaratnam, and Toh Chin Chye refused to be party too.
The evidence checks out, more or less, to this casual reader of Singaporean history. Lee's claim that Malaysia's ultra-nationalists were stoking racist sentiments to divide and conquer corroborates with what was to come in 1969, and then again through Mahathir's rhetoric. Even the Malaysia of today shows you how ethnonationalists still occupy the prime ground. The Malaysian Solidarity Convention was quite an epic attempt to fight UMNO's communal strategy, and i can't help but wonder how things would have panned out if Separation hadnt happened; if martial law in Malaysia hadnt been declared in 1969. I think the Tunku and UMNO were right to fear what was to come had they allowed a Malaysian Malaysia to flower and bud. So many roads not taken; not just the ones lazy pseudo-historians like to whine about wrt LiM cHiN sIonG and teH bArISAn s0cIaLiS fiGhTing 4 deMocraCY.
Once you realise how dead set against Separation the British were, the fact that Malaysian and Singaporean leaders had pulled this off entirely without their knowledge was pretty epic too. I think in the ebb and froth of everything else, this crazy achievement got sidelined. But how often do you hear of a colonial power completely blindsided by the plans of its two successor states, which it was still trying to paternistically guide? Lee wasn't wrong to say they'd pulled a "bloodless coup" from under the British noses.
Ending the book at Separation was a good choice. I came away feeling with a much better understanding of why Lee and his crew were so resolute, so determined to go it on their own, and why Separation was such a "moment of anguish" for him. The Malaysian Experiment had failed, and failed horribly; the events of Kuala Lumpur 1969 would later reinforce that. Better Singapore would go it alone, than parley with the greedy, the flabby, the ones in it for themselves (Tan Siew Sin also emerges as a villain; i wonder what GKS or Tan himself had to say about this). A perfect example of why divorce is sometimes better for all parties involved.
I still disagree with the incredibly misleading title of this book, though its subtitle is accurate. I think as a memoir of Lee Kuan Yew, it's pretty solid: decently-paced, and relatively lucid, if painfully and blinkeredly political. Lee writes clearly, but in a weirdly staccato register that is tiresome to read for too long. 'Machiavellian' would not be an unfair description of the persona in this book, but i think that word has overly negative connotations - it's clear that this is a man with an incredibly sharp political acumen, a sense of political theatre, and how his actions would be perceived and played out. I think the other amazing thing is the fact that in addition to this political-sense, Lee would later show he was an excellent administrator too.
Overall, a decent Singapore Story. But not THE definitive one by a long shot. Lee and his publishers and editors cannot claim to represent the stories of the hundreds of thousands of other Singaporeans who lived through that time period.
So this is one man's story of one aspect of his life. And while this aspect may have shaped independent Singapore in the years to come, it cannot even tell the stories from the perspectives of other political leaders of the period, let alone the millions whose lives were irrevocably changed in a thousand different ways by the decisions him and his colleagues made.
I would have given this book 2 stars for its arrogant title and its political tunnel-vision. But the Malaysian part of the story, and the conclusion, raised it up in my standing a little more.