The Rhetoric
“Each of us as leaders in Singapore was offered a personal way out, a safe and comfortable future, if only we had agreed to leave politics and concentrate on making a good life instead of challenging an unfair political system. We did not cop out. We fought for our rights as a people and were expelled from Malaysia… Do you have the guts and gumption… to make Singapore succeed, or face the humiliation of failure, wishing we had never been ousted from Malaysia?”
– SM Lee Kuan Yew, in a speech to university students, urging committment to Singapore , Straits Times, Feb 19, 2003The Reality
“Youths scared to speak : Pre-U seminar students attribute passitivity to fear of government reprisals.”
– Straits Times, May 31, 2002“If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.”
– SM Lee Kuan Yew, ‘The Man And His Ideas’, 1997“Supposing I had been born in a different era, in ’73 or ’74 in Singapore, and I’m now 21, 22, what would I do? I would not be absorbed in wanting to change life in Singapore. I’m not responsible for Singapore.”
– SM Lee Kuan Yew, ‘The Man And His Ideas’, 1997SDP NewsWatch: Read the article ‘To stay or not to stay? That is the quitter’.