Big Fish In A Small Pond ?

Hantu Laut

This is the man that took a tiny crime-stricken tropical backwater island to become the most successful modern nation and an economic miracle no less in less than four decades of his regime.

Despite lack of natural resources Singapore became a financial and industrial powerhouse.A success story, a feat, that many world leaders could only dream about.

I have read almost every book written on Lee Kuan Yew, from the obscured James Minchin's "No Man Is An Island" to his two-volume memoirs and the latest book written on him by American columnist Tom Plate.

"One of the asymmetries of history" wrote Henry Kissinger of him. Kissinger's one time boss Richard Nixon was even more flattering and said had Lee lived in another time and another place, he might had attained the stature of a Churchill,Disraeli or a Gladstone.

Profoundly true but water under the bridge now.Few leaders could have attained what Lee had with a tiny nation that had no natural resources except the richness and diversity of its human capital.

In 1965 Singapore ranked the same economically with Chile, Argentina and Mexico, today its per capita GDP is 6 times more than those countries.Even more amazing the per capita GDP is higher than its former colonial master and richer than the purportedly richest nation on earth.The per capita is higher than Britain and the United States.

Talk about the success story of Singapore many Malaysians would not wonder in amazement . "Oh! It's a small country, easier to manage" some would say.True in a way but untrue in many ways.

Smallness will not guarantee success if you have rotten leadership, bad governance and run-away corruptions.That's where Singapore succeed and where other more resourceful countries failed.It persisted in zero tolerance for anomalies.

Obviously, Lee is a big fish in a small pond and he is not letting go of his lost opportunity to govern a bigger land mass......being kicked out of Malaysia as reflected in his regret and disappointment here.

Lee, no doubt is an accomplished leader, a great statesman, an intellectual with achievements unequalled in this modern era.All those do not necessary help smarten his views of hindsight.

His lamentation that Malaysia, if had been kept intact, would have benefited from what Singapore had achieved today in term of racial harmony and equality is just his pipe dream.

As Mahathir said in sarcasm of him as being "A big frog in a small pond" in Tom Plate's "Conversation With Lee Kuan Yew" comments by world leaders.

Keeping Singapore and hard-nosed Lee in Malaysia would have been genocidal and ended in unimaginable disaster. It would be Singapore wanting to leave Malaysia then when the Malays refused to concede political powers to the Chinese whom would have been same in numbers or in the majority. It's a sure recipe for disaster and Tungku Abdul Rahman was wise when he took the decision to expel Singapore to save the nation from ending up in violence and bloodshed. There would not be any Malaysia.There would not be a bigger pond for Lee to swim in. Sabah and Sarawak would have joined Singapore in breaking up the nation.

That's what the most probable scenario would have been.

Of course, I do not expect everyone to agree with my hypothesis.

Where No Man Is An Island

Days of Reflection for Man Who Defined Singapore

New York Times

By SETH MYDANS

Published: September 10, 2010

“SO, when is the last leaf falling?” asked Lee Kuan Yew, the man who made Singapore in his own stern and unsentimental image, nearing his 87th birthday and contemplating age, infirmity and loss.

“I can feel the gradual decline of energy and vitality,” said Mr. Lee, whose “Singapore model” of economic growth and tight social control made him one of the most influential political figures of Asia. “And I mean generally, every year, when you know you are not on the same level as last year. But that’s life.”

In a long, unusually reflective interview last week, he talked about the aches and pains of age and the solace of meditation, about his struggle to build a thriving nation on this resource-poor island, and his concern that the next generation might take his achievements for granted and let them slip away.

He was dressed informally in a windbreaker and running shoes in his big, bright office, still sharp of mind but visibly older and a little stooped, no longer in day-to-day control but, for as long as he lives, the dominant figure of the nation he created.

But in these final years, he said, his life has been darkened by the illness of his wife and companion of 61 years, bedridden and mute after a series of strokes.

“I try to busy myself,” he said, “but from time to time in idle moments, my mind goes back to the happy days we were up and about together.” Agnostic and pragmatic in his approach to life, he spoke with something like envy of people who find strength and solace in religion. “How do I comfort myself?” he asked. “Well, I say, ‘Life is just like that.’ ”

“What is next, I do not know,” he said. “Nobody has ever come back.”

The prime minister of Singapore from its founding in 1965 until he stepped aside in 1990, Mr. Lee built what he called “a first-world oasis in a third-world region” — praised for the efficiency and incorruptibility of his rule but accused by human rights groups of limiting political freedoms and intimidating opponents through libel suits.

His title now is minister mentor, a powerful presence within the current government led by his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. The question that hovers over Singapore today is how long and in what form his model may endure once he is gone.

Always physically vigorous, Mr. Lee combats the decline of age with a regimen of swimming, cycling and massage and, perhaps more important, an hour-by-hour daily schedule of meetings, speeches and conferences both in Singapore and overseas. “I know if I rest, I’ll slide downhill fast,” he said. When, after an hour, talk shifted from introspection to geopolitics, the years seemed to slip away and he grew vigorous and forceful, his worldview still wide ranging, detailed and commanding.

And yet, he said, he sometimes takes an oblique look at these struggles against age and sees what he calls “the absurdity of it.”

“I’m reaching 87, trying to keep fit, presenting a vigorous figure, and it’s an effort, and is it worth the effort?” he said. “I laugh at myself trying to keep a bold front. It’s become my habit. I just carry on.”

HIS most difficult moments come at the end of each day, he said, as he sits by the bedside of his wife, Kwa Geok Choo, 89, who has been unable to move or speak for more than two years. She had been by his side, a confidante and counselor, since they were law students in London.

“She understands when I talk to her, which I do every night,” he said. “She keeps awake for me; I tell her about my day’s work, read her favorite poems.” He opened a big spreadsheet to show his reading list, books by Jane Austen, Rudyard Kipling and Lewis Carroll as well as the sonnets of Shakespeare.

Lately, he said, he had been looking at Christian marriage vows and was drawn to the words: “To love, to hold and to cherish, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse till death do us part.”

“I told her, ‘I would try and keep you company for as long as I can.’ That’s life. She understood.” But he also said: “I’m not sure who’s going first, whether she or me.”

At night, hearing the sounds of his wife’s discomfort in the next room, he said, he calms himself with 20 minutes of meditation, reciting a mantra he was taught by a Christian friend: “Ma-Ra-Na-Tha.”

The phrase, which is Aramaic, comes at the end of St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, and can be translated in several ways. Mr. Lee said that he was told it means “Come to me, O Lord Jesus,” and that although he is not a believer, he finds the sounds soothing.

“The problem is to keep the monkey mind from running off into all kinds of thoughts,” he said. “A certain tranquillity settles over you. The day’s pressures and worries are pushed out. Then there’s less problem sleeping.”

He brushed aside the words of a prominent Singaporean writer and social critic, Catherine Lim, who described him as having “an authoritarian, no-nonsense manner that has little use for sentiment.”

“She’s a novelist!” he cried. “Therefore, she simplifies a person’s character,” making what he called a “graphic caricature of me.” “But is anybody that simple or simplistic?”

The stress of his wife’s illness is constant, he said, harder on him than stresses he faced for years in the political arena. But repeatedly, in looking back over his life, he returns to his moment of greatest anguish, the expulsion of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965, when he wept in public.

That trauma presented him with the challenge that has defined his life, the creation and development of a stable and prosperous nation, always on guard against conflict within its mixed population of Chinese, Malays and Indians. Read more.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 11, 2010

An earlier version of this article contained a picture caption that misspelled Mr. Lee's name. He is Lee Kuan Yew, not Lee Kuan Kew.

Beware Of Greek Bearing Gifts

Hantu Laut

Read the news below and you would know what I mean.

Nowadays, crooks and evil doers are getting more sophisticated with their modus operandi. Step up your guard when people you hardly know become overly nice to you.More often than not, they either need something from you or they want to use you for something.

BANTING: He is known as Banting’s very own philanthropist and a perfect gentleman. To many others, he was simply a conman.

This was the reactions received on the Datuk, who along with his brother and six others, are being investigated for the quadruple murders which have shaken this sleepy town.

The Datuk’s immediate neighbour in Jalan Cempaka Wangi in Taman Cempaka, identified only as Kak Ana, 45, said he looked pious and acknowledged her every time he saw her outside the house.

“On several occasions, he asked me to prepare him a rendang dish, knowing that I operate a food stall.”

Kak Ana is renting one of the Datuk’s semi-detached houses in the neighbourhood.

“He stays alone here with his brother. His wife and two children stay in Puchong as the kids are in an international school.

“They come back only during the weekends.”

She was in a state of disbelief over the news surrounding the Datuk.

She said she was away in Muar, Johor, for Hari Raya and was shocked when she returned yesterday and saw his photograph in the newspapers.

“I am still shocked,” said Kak Ana.

Kuala Langat member of parliament Abdullah Sani Abdul Hamid, who has approached the Datuk for advice over a land matter for the construction of temple, said the suspect portrayed himself as a “man for the community”.

“I am truly disappointed. He should be contributing to the community, not get involved in such activities.

“It is shocking that such a thing had taken place in a serene town like Banting.”

The Datuk’s law firm was also sealed yesterday afternoon by police as investigations into his activities intensified.

A random interview with several people in Banting revealed they were all shocked at the gruesome murders and could not believe that they involved a well-known lawyer who was known for his charitable deeds.

Another resident, who declined to be named, said he had approached the Datuk when a family approached him for help over a cheating case involving a loan shark.

“When I contacted the Datuk, he told me to meet him at his firm, but I did not as I wanted the family concerned to lodge a police report.”

He claimed that the family was threatened by the loan shark at the lawyer’s office.

He also said the Datuk was known to take up cases, mainly involving land issues, which were rejected by other lawyers.

V. Paramasivam, a representative of the Indian community, said that he could not digest the fact that a man of such stature was involved in such a heinous crime.

“If the allegations are true, then he has brought shame to his profession and to the Indian community.”

Amir Hasan Haris, a representative for the Malay community of Kuala Langat, said the peaceful atmosphere in the town had been shattered.

“Banting is now in the limelight for all the wrong reasons,” he said, adding that he was thankful police had been quick in solving the crime.

NST.

Sosilawati:Did She Takes The Wrong Turn?

Hantu Laut

Greed has no bounds for some people, be it corruptions, thievery, blatant robbery and worst, cold-blooded murder that can send shivers down our spines how greed can turn humans into worse than animals.

Animal kill for food, human kill for greed and glory.

Avarice and covetousness had always been part of human failings.All religions tell us that greed in whatever form is sinful.

In Christianity, pride or hubris is the original and the deadliest of the seven deadly sins which is believed to be the ultimate source from which the others arise. Sosilawati, must have been victim of greed and covetousness.

Seedy lawyers aplenty, those who had not the wit of true legal eagle, scuppered by stupidity and greed, unable to compete, eventually resort to crimes to fill their inadequacies.

A sad end to such beautiful lives because of human greed.

You may have seen the movie "The Wrong Turn" but with a different twist.Human savages killed humans out of insanity.

In Sosilawati case, the educated and cultured savages lured and kill her and her friends out of greed.

Let's hope the police do not bungle this case and leave no stone unturned to solve this most heinous crime.