The Rhetoric
“There is nothing to prevent you from pushing your propaganda, to push your programme out to the students or with the public at large…and if you can carry the ground, if you are right, you win. That’s democracy.”
– MM Lee Kuan Yew telling students to form political parties, Straits Times, Feb 1, 2005The Reality
“If you are a troublemaker…it’s our job to politically destroy you. Put it this way. As long as JB Jeyaratnam stands for what he stands for – a thoroughly destructive force – we will knock him. Everybody knows that in my bag I have a hatchet, and a very sharp one. You take me on, I take my hatchet, we meet in the cul-de-sac.”
– Lee Kuan Yew, The Man And His Ideas, 1997