MM Lee claims that he doesn’t care about what kind of legacy he leaves behind, but I don’t really believe him.

My legacy? I’ve never thought about it (Straits Times, 20 Oct)

WHEN a student asked him how he would like to be remembered in the future, the 86-year-old patriarch of Singapore said he had never given it any thought.

Instead, he preferred to remain focused on doing his job well, which was his motto in life.

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew was asked to reflect on his own legacy during the annual Kent Ridge Ministerial Forum yesterday at the National University of Singapore.

Mr Daniel Lim, a fourth-year student from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University, had asked MM Lee about one thing for which he wanted to be remembered, and how he would like to be remembered in the future.

Mr Lee’s reply: ‘In all honesty, I can tell you that I’ve never thought about that.

‘My job is to get what I’m doing done well. My motto in life is if you’ve decided to do something, then do it well, or don’t do it at all. So, whatever I do, I try to achieve and achieve at a high level.’

As for his reputation, said MM Lee, who was born on Sept 16, 1923, he would leave it to historians to decide.

He said: ‘Reputations are finally decided 20, 30, 40 years after you’re dead, when historians and students research your life, your work, the documents, the things you decided on.

‘And then there’s a revision as to what the man was worth.’

Giving an illustration, MM Lee compared the reputations of two late China leaders: Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

He described Mao as a great man who liberated China but nearly destroyed the country through the Cultural Revolution.

Deng, on the other hand, built China by opening the country’s doors to the world in December 1978, a month after he visited Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.

MM Lee said the three-day Singapore visit was a turning point for the China leader, who had previously thought of Singapore as an American lackey, but who found instead a prosperous city state that was clean and green, and in which everyone owned a flat.

Thus, when Deng was facing opposition to his economic reforms in 1992, he urged the Chinese provinces – during a tour of China’s southern region – to ‘learn from Singapore because it’s got good management and discipline’.

This led to the development of the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park, which marked its 15th anniversary this year, said MM Lee.

‘He (Deng) built China. If he had not reversed course, China would have been imploded just like the Soviet Union,’ noted Mr Lee.

Never thought about his reputation? Yeah right. What were all those defamation lawsuits about then. Or perhaps they really weren’t about his reputation as much as they were about crushing the opposition. 

And what’s that nonsense about leaving it to historians to decide. The last I heard, the historians were three journalists commissioned by MM Lee himself to write an account of his legacy — the PAP. The Untold Story of the Men In White. I wonder if this one even deserves a place among the history books. (Read our review here or other related articles)

If anything, I’ll say MM Lee is in self-denial, trying to pretend that he doesn’t care about his legacy because he knows that no one really likes authoritarian rule no matter how benevolent it was at first. It’s always about how it ends, and this man knows that.