For Third World Leaders: Hope or Despair?

[Music] oh [Music] foreign so you [Music] [Music] [Music] i [Applause] good evening i'm joe nye dean of the kennedy school and it's my pleasure to welcome you all here this evening for the collins family lectureship uh the collins family has endowed a lectureship to bring the world's greatest leaders to the kennedy school so that we and harvard students can learn from them and to say a word about the collins family lectureship i'd like to introduce ambassador richard fisher who is representing the family richard is married to nancy collins daughter of the late texas congressman james m collins and much of his family including mrs collins torbert is here this evening richard is a graduate of harvard 1971 also an mba from stanford and has worked in the treasury department in private capital was a texas candidate for a senator and it currently is the deputy united states trade representative so he has extensive experience in government as well as the private sector and i'd like to ask richard to say a word briefly about the collins family vision for the lectureships richard fisher thank you joe on behalf of the collins family and the collins foundation of congressman collins widow d collins torbert and his son michael collins and daughter dorothy and dorothy weaver and on behalf of my wife nancy i want to welcome lee kuan yew as the first james m collins international fellow at the kennedy school of government the family designed this program to bring former heads of state to harvard so that they might listen to and document analyze and disseminate to students and to professors and citizens interested in government the lessons that great leaders have learned and put into practice mr senior minister congressman collins jim collins was a straight arrow he never became ostentatious or pretentious despite his wealth and his influence he was i know you will appreciate a man of conviction he knew what he believed in and he had the courage to stay the course even when it was politically unpopular defying all the odds he got himself elected to the 90th congress as a republican in a state where it was said that even a yellow dog could be elected to office if he ran as a democrat and so in 1968 he and another fellow the fellow's name was george herbert walker bush became the first tranche of republicans elected from texas to the united states congress and by the time jim collins left to congress 16 years later there were to be sure a handful of yellow dog democrats left in texas but mr collins was the dog catcher as was the republican party and his brand of fiscal rectitude and leadership became the touch tone which really has become the defining orientation for those that seek to lead the 20 million people that now populate the state of texas on the back of your recent book there is a review that says lee kuan yew transformed what was a poor decrepit colony into a shining rich modern metropolis all the time surrounded by hostile powers well the purpose of the collins fellowship is to remind students and faculty and citizens of this brilliant harvard community that there are indeed great statesmen among us that there are men and women who rise up from what some would consider the poor decrepit hostile environment of day-to-day politics to become true statesmen and exemplars for all of us to remind us that the politics of purpose and the politics of courage and the politics of consistency are worth striving for congressman collins would be proud to know mr senior minister that you are the first global leader to initiate this program and be on behalf of his family of his wife and of his children and of his friends i want to thank you for being here thank you very much thank you richard lee kuan yew is a very fitting person to be the first collins family lecturer when he became prime minister of singapore it was a relatively poor place there was some danger of ethnic turmoil indeed there had been riots today it is a rich and prosperous country and if the rest of the world could accomplish what singapore has accomplished the world would be a better and more prosperous place lee kuan yew started his education at raffles college in singapore and then went on to cambridge university and then to the middle temple became a barrister at law returning to singapore in 1950 practicing law in 1954 he became secretary general of the people's action party and in 1956 to 58 he negotiated singaporean independence with the british in 1959 he was sworn in as prime minister of singapore during his time as prime minister he built the finest infrastructure airport ports roads and communications network in the region he established a public housing system based on a profit fund savings pool that has given every singaporean citizen a tangible stake in the system and he has developed one of asia's best health and education systems in 1990 he stepped down as prime minister and became a senior minister in the government indeed he kept thinking about the future of singapore and looking forward and among his many efforts as he described recently in a bbc interview was to learn at age 70 about the internet and to help his country become the most wired state in asia he is a man who never stops thinking never stops looking ahead with larger visions his views are sought by respected senior statesman on all continents and he has written two volumes of memoirs the second now just published which is here from third world to first and we're delighted to welcome him to the kennedy school as the first college lecturer senior minister dean joseph nye collins family mr richard fisher ladies and gentlemen in february this year dean and i invited me to be the first visiting fellow of the collins family international fellowship founded in honor of the late congressman james collins from texas it's a program to highlight the careers of some of the world's most distinguished leaders so that these leaders may serve as role models for future generations of emerging leaders students of public policy scholars and practitioners that's in court i hesitated to accept feeling that perhaps it sent it to the wrong person my work was on a small frame of an island some 224 square miles at low tide not to be compared with the white canvas of other world leaders first question i ask in writing this speech other lessons on leadership it's easier to recognize a man who is already a leader than to identify one before he becomes a leader during my 40 years in office i've met many foreign leaders in government in the military and in business the characteristics they have in common were self-confidence breadth of mind the ability to see the woods for the trees and the ability to communicate i'm familiar with most of the first generation of anti-colonial leaders to which i belong they all had strong nationalist anti-colonial convictions and wanted to prove that their people or their peoples could measure up to their former rulers unhappily many third world leaders who had successfully demolished the old order failed to build a new one because building a new order demanded different and more complex capabilities decision making in economics to achieve the highest returns on capital was not their faulty they could enthuse their followers to keep up the fight against the old regime and they had oversimplified what needed to be done after the colonizers have handed over power many leaders actually believed their own rhetoric that once they were rid of the exploiters there would be wealth of plenty to go around and the economic models that they admired were socialists why did these leaders follow the wrong model were they ignorant on the contrary many like michael manley the late prime minister of jamaica they were highly intelligent men and he was a graduate of distinguished of a distinguished institution the london school of economics but they admired the early independence heroes nehru sokarno mao zedong none of these early freedom fighters believed that wealth was something that had to be created by entrepreneurs people who raised capital organized workers to produce goods and services that others wanted and would pay for because their prices were competitive they all believed that there were shortcuts to prosperity and they thought the best way was by state intervention this was a mistake that otherwise well-intentioned leaders like julius nerari of tanzania made he was a good honest christian but held doctrinal ideas on how to modernize tanzania his policies were ill-suited for a small-scale african agricultural economy and both julius nireire and kenneth calendar of zambia failed to develop their economies on the other hand jomo kenyatta and his successor daniel arab moye of kenya made that country more prosperous in spite of considerable corruption what was the difference it lay in the intervention and state policies of the first two compared to the free market policies of kenya i've been asked time and again how was it that my colleagues and i avoided falling into this trap before i answer this question let me start by explaining how i became politicized the first turning point of my life was world war ii the way the british was routed by the japanese before the war broke out our british rulers feared that the asians would panic if bombs and shells fell upon them when the bombs and shells actually came it was the british bosses who were shocked and packed their families off the chinese indian and malay subjects stoically bore their sufferings that aura of overwhelming superiority with which the british held us in troll was broken never to be restored another turning point was the experience of the brutality and cruelty of our japanese conquerors they had portrayed themselves as liberators of fellow asians from the white man but they left us in no doubt that they were the new masters of the so-called greater east asia co-prosperity sphere and to punish the chinese in singapore for supporting the nationalist government of china with donations to fight japanese aggression within the first 15 days of their conquest of singapore they picked off at random 50 000 to 100 000 chinese youth out of concentration centers and machine gun them on the on the beaches i had first-hand experience of japanese militarism when a japanese platoon was decided to build themselves in my home my family had fled to the countryside and it was four days of hell i was roughed up slapped made to kneel down by a sentry kicked in the chest sense falling because i did not know that i had to bow to him to cross the bridge i felt that the dark ages had descended upon us and i watched 80 000 dejected british indian or australian troops marched into captivity in 48 hours many of my friends shared this harrowing experience we asked ourselves why what right had the japanese to do this to us why did the british not fight the japanese more ferociously to defend us when the british came back after three and a half years after the bombs in nagasaki hiroshima and nagasaki the communists who had organized the resistance in the jungles of malaya attempted to grab power as as theirs as of right but i feared them as much as i feared the japanese as a result many nationalists like me were born after the war my contemporaries and i gathered in london we were studying in various universities in england and there was ferment in the air india had got its independence and 47. so had pakistan burma salon why not malaya which then included singapore the british cut off singapore from there as they prepared to give independence to the malays in malaya they wanted to keep singapore as one link in a chain of naval bases from portsmouth to gibraltar to suez to aiden to singapore to sydney but after the british lost suez in 1956 they agreed to let us rejoin malaya by then it was too late the malay majority was not prepared to treat the chinese indian and other ethnic groups as equal citizens when they became as numerous as the malays what were my motivations first to get rid of colonialism and be independent this got us involved in a fight against the communists who were well ahead of us in the struggle against the british later we rejoined malaya and had to fight the malay extremists who wanted to dominate other ethnic groups in malaysia in malaysia as a result in less than two years of federation singapore was asked to leave and we had to agree because the alternative was bloodshed which the malaysian prime minister abdulrahman warned us so suddenly in august 1965 we had to create a nation out of a motley collection of chinese indians malays and others who had come to singapore to seek a better life but not to be a nation how did we escape choosing the wrong model well we were helped by the examples of failed policies in many new countries india pakistan salon burma and indonesia had gained their independence in the 1940s ghana and nigeria in the 1950s by 1965 they were not thriving india's prime minister jawaharlal nehru had imbibed socialist theories from his generation of british philosophers economists and political scientists when he was a student at cambridge a powerful factor then was the example of the british under clement athlete whose naval government had set out to equalize opportunities and results their policies led to the nationalization of key industries iron and coal steel males petrochemicals synthetic fiber plants all became state enterprises so did the railways the buses and all manner of transportation for more than four decades india made the same car in 1950 morris oxford in a state-run factory they called it the hindustan no one checked the bottom line for rates of return on capital profit was a dirty word associated with a capitalist now let me confess that in my student days up at cambridge in the 1940s after world war ii i was convinced that britain's welfare state was the highest form of civilized society and in my teen years i was a great admirer of pandit nero but i could see that he had adopted the wrong model by the 1960s but he had set india on the path of a planned economy with concentration on heavy industries and his successes carried on with these policies until prime minister nara singham rao began to change course late in the mid 1990s but there was another compelling reason for pragmatic solutions in 1965 when we became independent indonesia under presence ocarina a great auditor was waging an undeclared war low intensity which he called confrontassi an indonesian word for confrontation against singapore and malaysia and in malaysia the tunku the prime minister wanted to bypass singapore as malaysia's commercial outlet we could not afford to risk our future on theories we had a daunting task to create a new economy not one so dependent on entrepreneur trade with our neighbors and independence brought worries for our future not euphoria we were no longer the commercial administrative or military center of the british empire and southeast asia the british were departing the odds were against our survival and we had to ensure our own existence which we had previously taken for granted our first preoccupation for survival which meant economic viability had to be solved next security i cast around for solutions we reached out first to hong kong and taiwan investors in textiles garments plastics and low value added products later a undp expert working in singapore described to me how israel had leapfrogged its neighbors neighbors who boycotted them and exported to europe and america fruits flowers many other things i thought to myself why not seek links with the developed countries get industrial investments from europe japan and america they came but far and few between then fortuitously china went into convulsion of the cultural revolution and it reached the crescendo in 1967. so computer companies like texas instruments hewlett packard national semiconductors they passed over taiwan and hong kong and we attracted them to singapore we had political stability industrial peace plus english as our working language pull factors 20 years later we had become a major manufacturer electronics computers and disk drives the leapfrog strategy succeeded i worked out another strategy the other side of the coin that was to create or to turn singapore a third world island into a first world oasis in a third world region so that entrepreneurs and their families from the first world would base themselves in singapore whilst they explored the region so we established up-to-date facilities in communications and transportation airport container port state-of-the-art telecoms and security personal and public security health standards to approximate first world and a living environment equal to the first world later we improved our cultural facilities museums symphony orchestras visiting artists the hardware part was easy getting people to change their habits to match first world infrastructure that they now had that was difficult slow and painful we made progress by a series of campaigns involving the whole population more courtesy stop spitting keep public lavatories clean not a minor item if you want the tourist trade to prosper and no chewing gum if you don't want your train doors not to close and no litter and no pickpockets one rewarding decision was to green up the island with trees palms shrubs creepers flowers to make singapore different we had rain the whole year around sunshine all we need to do was to plant them and trim them and we involved the whole population in planting and caring for them and we made progress and slowly our people are now acting more like a first world civic society although there's a long way to go they still have their telephones buzzing in concerts we had to do a u-turn to carry our people with us or we would fail in place of constant strife and agitation we had to convince workers and their union leaders that unless we had industrial peace and worker cooperation with management to improve productivity we would be overwhelmed by our unemployment the history of singapore after independence was one hard long slog to make ourselves relevant and useful to the world to add value to both foreign investments that we sought and those that we ourselves made with our savings our next major task was to establish security which had to be based on social cohesion of our many races religions languages and cultures all successor governments of colonial regimes have inherited this problem of multi-tribal multilingual multi-religious multicultural solidarity how to achieve it because without our cohesive people at peace with each other development was not possible our solution to the problem of a young nation was a policy of deliberate gradualism in all matters which involve race language culture and religion we have 77 chinese but from different parts of china speaking different and mutually unintelligible dialects 14 malay muslims from different parts of malaysia and indonesia eight percent indians from different parts of india speaking totally different languages the rest from europe and other parts of asia we needed a common language had we legislated for one there would have been trouble which one so we encouraged everyone to learn two languages english and the mother tongue english is no group's mother tongue so no one gained any advantage and we made it our working language we have not forced or pressure cooked a national identity we have refrained from suppressing ethnic cultures languages religions or their sense of separate identity we aimed for integration not assimilation another critical decision i made within a year of independence was to build a national service armed force if we did not have the ability to defend ourselves nobody not even our own people would have faith in our future foreign and u.n intervention would always come too late so we studied the swiss the swedes and the israelis the israelis offered help to build a system for totally national service armed force we now have a credible defense capability to produce results we need clean a clean government with an effective civil service and we had to shape the administration to produce an effective instrument of policy this required strong fair and just leaders with a moral strength to command the respect of the people unity in the core group of leaders ensured that we sent clear signals to our people and avoided confusion that would have arisen if the team had bickered and split leaders must have that sense of being trustees that they are only temporarily in charge of the destinies of their people and that their duty is not only to discharge this trust but also to pass it on to equally trustworthy and competent hands so luxurious living while our people were left in poverty and backwardness was out we ensured complete accountability and open separateness between personal assets and public funds corruption which has been a cancer in many societies had to be eradicated and constantly kept down a government voted into office needs an efficient honest administration staffed by officers recruited completely unmerited by a politically neutral body we had an impartial capable public service commission with the chairman and members who were shoed at assessing character promotions and rewards of scholarships must be made to the best candidates and they have to share nation building philosophy and the development goals of the political leaders they must also be adequately paid so that temptations would not be too difficult to resist once the political system has been corrupted right from the top from the very top to the lowest ranks of the bureaucracy the problem is almost impossible to solve without a revolution the cleansing and disinfecting has to start from the top and go downwards in a thorough and systematic way it was a long and laborious process that can be carried out only by a very strong group of leaders with a courage and moral authority derived from unquestioned integrity we just managed it and stopped it before it got out of control next we decided that the people should be stakeholders soon after separation i resolved to enable every household to own their own home if you're going to get a people to take national service seriously i could not ask other people's sons to fight and die for the properties of the wealthy so we worked out a personal savings scheme that allowed them to own an apartment painlessly through installments over 20 years today 95 percent of singaporean households are homeowners their value between 100 000 us to 400 000 u.s between a three-room to a five-room apartment without this home ownership we would have become like tokyo seoul or hong kong where the voters in the city are disaffected when they have to pay a large proportion of their salaries in rents in singapore they are voted for the return of the government in nine successive general elections they know who will keep the property values of their homes up policies must be pragmatic not dogmatic i learned early to ignore political correctness and to reject conventional wisdom when it did not accord with reality or my experience for example in the 1960s and 70s it was politically correct to be anti-american and anti-multinational the theory expounded by latin americans like raoul prabhesh was that multinationals would reduce them to dependencia and we did not accept this and we assiduously courted the mncs they had the capital the technology the know-how and the markets we decided it was the fastest way of learning on the job working for them and with them now i believe it will be equally mistaken to follow mindlessly the current politically correct and stridently advocated view that democracy is the precondition for economic development i know it's a heresy harvard came rich the theory goes that without democracy russia could not develop a free market russia could not develop a free market with or without democracy and it was not borne out by the experience of taiwan south korea or post open door china what a country needs for growth and progress is stability and good government one that is honest and effective and works for the benefit of the people good government should never be shackled by theories however attractive and logically elegant from the outset we decided that education was the key to our future and what language should we teach this was a sensitive and emotive issue involving the mother tongues and cultures of various races and i had to resist the pressure to make chinese the primary language although 77 of the people were chinese instead i made english the working language not the official language just the working language let's be practical and i allowed parents to choose between schools that taught in english and chinese or malay and tama or in chinese with english or malay in english and tamil in english it was their choice and in a few years parents realized that their children's future was best assured when they were competent in english in other words english as the first language and the mother tongue was a second language because even our chinese banks were switching to english we expanded schools built new technical institutes polytechnics and universities this proved decisive for our progress my final and most important decision was to prepare or rather to plan and prepare for succession and not leave it to chance after three successive successful elections in 10 years since we first won and took office in 59 my old god colleagues and i were troubled by the caliber of the young men that we had been able to induct they were the best of our political activists our supporters professionals academics with phds but they were not equal to the original team my original team had been thrown up by the upheavals of the second world war and were among the best of that generation those that didn't have it were knocked out by sheer elimination of events now we were not getting the best to volunteer to join us we had to identify potential leaders but how well some people are natural alphas activists in their school days are school prefects sport captains or presidents of college societies alphas usually are extroverse with high energy levels but as these school and college leaders grew older many did not measure up the valedictorian in school does not always make it after college few of those voted in college as most likely to succeed make it in the real world as they grow older they need other qualities to stay as leaders higher levels of intellectual ability a steady character judgment a decision-making capability that can win the confidence of those around them seven times from 1959 to 1990 before each election i had to select 20 to 30 candidates who are likely to make good as ministers but first as members of parliament and then some as ministers the easiest attribute to determine its intelligence performance and examinations iq tests set scores they give an indic a fair indication of analytical ability many that we feel that with phds failed as ministers they lacked something when i learned from american corporate leaders that they use psychometric tests to recruit and promote the executives i recall the epic flight of the three astronauts on apollo 13. if you remember their spaceship malfunctioned 3000 miles out in space any false move and they would never return to earth they remain calm collected throughout the ordeal and trusting their faith the men at ground control was instructions they followed meticulously i concluded that nasa's psychological tests on the ground had successfully eliminated those who were prone to panic in a crisis i decided in 1980 therefore to adopt their practice and i had psychological and psychometric tests to help us assess the character of candidates to weed out those who are not likely to succeed but they couldn't help us they couldn't tell us who was likely to succeed the prospect of failure forced us to talent spot after a high attrition rate at the beginning we improved our selection methods we threw candidates into the deep end of the pool to test their political skills finally i was concerned that the government machinery of the 31 years had been customized to suit my work style so i made a conscious effort in my last two years to make room for my successor so that he can reconfigure the arrangements so when a new god of men in their 40s and 50s took over in 1990 there was no crushing of gears and instead in the 1990s singapore has repeatedly been rated by transparency international in berlin among the top seven least corrupt countries in the world the least corrupt in asia and we have not become decadent and corrupt after 41 years in office the old gods set high standards because they were brought up that way the new gods have been able to maintain the self-discipline and integrity in the midst of growing affluence judiciary and the rule of law are rated by the world economic forum and the institute of management and development in geneva and perk which is a rating agency in hong kong as the best in asia it commands the respect of the people and of our investors and singapore is ranked by wef and imd as the second most competitive nation in the world after the united states they say i do not listen to my opponents i do when they are serious opponents we studied all those items where we were rated poorly and we set out to do better we practiced lifelong learning before it became a buzzword what were the basic strengths that made this possible a basic idealism and an integrity that drives the whole system but new forces are at work but present leaders grew up in a singapore that was stable and growing year by year people have got accustomed to the comforts of a modern affluent society and expect life to be better every year opinion polls are becoming a regular feature of public life leadership has been reduced to the shaping of a policy so that somehow it would be able to carry the majority and if not the majority then the priority in the hope that it will expand into a majority by the next election i view this with mixed feelings as a totally different way from what i used to do in the 1960s strikes demonstrations disorder and violence threatened our existence people faced dire choices leaders had to lead make bold decisions and act swiftly only later that i have to convince the people to support our decisions for example i had to carry out a campaign to win a referendum to take singapore into malaysia but when bloodshed threatened and the malaysian government wanted singapore to be out i did not indeed i could not hold a referendum and consult the people before i took them out that would have meant disaster i took the decision persuaded my cabinet colleagues to sign the separation agreement with me and embarked on independent singapore to build a more stable singapore i did not discuss nor ask our different races whether they like to live integrated together in new high-rises when we were building to replace the squatter hearts i knew what the answer was going to be they wanted to stay together but would that be good for us the british had allowed them to be segregated in malay villages chinese quarters and an indian enclave because it was easier to rule such groups of people separated by race language and religion we had to form a nation or try to so my colleagues and i decided that the people would ballot for their apartments and they would have chinese malays indians eurasians and others as their neighbors we did not seek their consent for the first few years they were not comfortable after 10 years it became a way of life we did the same in the schools children used to be segregated to malay chinese indian and english language schools slowly and gradually i persuaded parents to register their children for schools that use english and the mother tongue has a second language and when they did so their children graduated into the best jobs now we have schools with all races in mixed classrooms and integration has become a fact of life the business of government can be executed effectively only by people's representatives exercising their judgments based on their mandate the people had given me a mandate to join malaysia on fair terms when the prime minister was fearful of malaysia was fearful of a blood bar i exercised my judgment to separate without consulting the people so also racial integration and housing and schooling was part of my mandate given in elections every five years that i won the difference between the old god and the new god leaders are stark reflecting the differences between the old society and the new the old society was a revolutionary situation people felt that everything including their lives were at stake they trusted their leaders and gave us unstinting support it was an inspired generation that fought against great odds to succeed as an independent country the new society is secure comfortable confident many of the young believe that prosperity and stability to be theirs as of right and to consult them and that they must be consulted before any change is made which could affect them well this change is unavoidable but does it mean that leaders have to govern by the poles as in many developed societies however recent upheavals in indonesia have brutally reminded singaporeans of the volatility of their surroundings and alerted them to the dangers that lurk around them this may stop singaporeans from becoming too complacent and consumer-driven a society and remind them that they need to make that extra effort to achieve more than the ordinary many failures in the third world were the result of the leaders of the immediate post-independence period the 1960s to the 80s abiding by the theory then prevailing that socialism and state enterprises would hasten development their interventionist economic policies led to a misallocation of resources and increased opportunities for corruption that theory was demolished as a result of the collapse of the soviet union there is no reason why third world leaders cannot succeed in achieving growth and development if they can maintain social order educate their people maintain peace with their neighbors and gain the confidence of investors by holding the rule of law finally are great leaders born or are they the result of revolutionary situations from my experience i think is both but more because of circumstances mao zedong and then xiaoping were thrown out of a massive convulsion of four to 500 million chinese after a hundred years of decay and decline into warlordism and japanese occupation ma was the revolutionary who liberated china dung was the builder who saved china from imploding like the soviet union who was the greater leader mao autumn as leader of the chinese communist party in his fight to liberate china ma was unquestionably the unbeatable leader a genius at guerrilla warfare who defeated the japanese or helped to defeat the japanese and the nationalist government but was he the modernizer of china had he lived on or had woke offer his immediate successor stayed in charge china would have gone like the soviet union the party heavyweights brought back tongue a veteran of the long march and dung was not an ideologue like mao ever the realist with a keen sense of the basics of the economy he realized that the communist system was not delivering he opened up china economically in 1979 or late 78 kept a tight hold on political and social control of the country although the opening up faltered after tiananmen in 1989 he pushed the yen in 1992 while on a southern tour of quangtong province had done followed gorbachev in implementing both glasnost and perestroika in this at the same time china would have collapsed in chaos are there no great leaders of that caliber in china today surely there must be but present-day china requires a different kind of leader not creators of liberation armies but competent imaginative builders of the economy and flexible managers of the huge social and political changes that will flow from the opening up of china to the world the needs of a country vary from time to time china now has the prospect of becoming an advanced technological society in the next 50 years provided its leaders can manage the changes to its economy and its society more important they have to be courageous and skillful enough to adjust and change their political system to involve their better educated more articulate and assertive people 70 percent of whom will live in the cities and they will have to do all this without losing political stability similarly the difference in mood between america and europe both under threat in world war ii and the comfortable consumer societies of the 1990s this explains the absence of towering leaders winston churchill franklin roosevelt charles de gaulle harry truman dwight eisenhower secretary of state dean hassan they were strong leaders their people needed in times of crisis neville chamberlain gave way to churchill who promised them who promised the british people blood sweat and tears after nazi germany was defeated and the danger had passed they voted in clement atlas prime minister churchill's small mild looking deputy during the war similarly the de gaulle became the symbol of french resistance to a german occupied vichy france under martial pata he returned in triumph to paris in 1944 but went into retirement after he made two partially successful attempts or unsuccessful attempts to reorganize the government he was recalled from retirement and elected president in 1958 by the national assembly during a severe crisis over the stalemate of the algerian war when france was restored to prosperity the young wanted change and took to the streets the gaul resigned when he lost the referendum in 1969 security prosperity and the consumer society plus mass communications have made for a different kind of person getting elected as leader one who can present himself and his program in a polished way satellite television has allowed me to follow the american presidential campaign i'm amazed at the way media professionals can give a candidate a new image and transform him at least superficially into a different personality winning an election becomes in large measure a contest in packaging and advertising these new techniques have been so successful that europe has also bought into them a spin doctor now is a high income professional one in great demand from such a process i doubt if a churchill roosevelt or the call can emerge the difference between winston churchill and tony blair is the difference between their two societies one caught in a titanic struggle the other comfortable and secure facing no external threats reluctant to join europe or reluctant to join the euro or to have his custom way of life upset in a federal europe revolutionary situations throw up great leaders who demand blood sweat and tears comfortable circumstances produce leaders who promise people and even easier life whether they can deliver it or not but when the british felt that britain was slipping they voted for a conviction politician and margaret thatcher three times from 1979 to 1990. similarly when the americans feared that their country was becoming weak during the karti years when american diplomats were held as hostages in taheran and the soviet union menacingly invaded afghanistan they voted for ronald reagan for two terms germany defeated and divided after the war produced conrad einar germany recovered and became the economic engine of europe germans still felt threatened and vulnerable they voted four times for another conviction politician helmut kohl who for 16 years cooperated closely with america and establish strong bonds with france when the opportunity came with the fall of the berlin wall in november 1989 he seized the moment and by 1990 had reunified germany with germany reunited and the danger from russia diminished the people's mood changed in 1998 they voted coal out in favor of gerhard's shoulder germans wanted the change to a new media savvy generation of bill clinton's and tony blair this brings me to my last question can you teach a person to be a leader yes if that person has the primary attributes to be a leader then the lessons in leadership will help him develop his skills and become more effective a leader with fewer costly errors arno toynbee in his massive study of history argues that if the challenge is too great for a people they will fail however great the leader but that if there is no challenge our people will not achieve much fortunately for singapore the challenge was not beyond the capability of its leaders to draw the best out of the people if singapore has once again to face circumstances as daunting as those in the first decade of its existence both people and leaders must be able to rise to the occasion for the country to survive thank you thank you we now have time for questions there are four microphones two on the four here and two in the balcony and i would like people to identify themselves before they ask their question and where they are at harvard and also i'd like to remind you that questions are brief and end with a question mark we've had the one speech we'll have this evening and they also come one per customer so let me turn here um good evening uh senior minister lee my name is felicity spector and i work at the center for public leadership here at the kennedy school i'm also a television journalist from britain and it's in that aspect if you like as i ask my question when you were an opposition member of the malay parliament in 1964 you passionately defended the idea of a free press and you said if your ideas and your views cannot stand the challenge of criticism then they are too fragile and not sturdy enough to last why then as the leader of singapore did you react to restrict uh the freedom of the press and of opponents within parliament and do you think this has stopped singapore from becoming a first world civic society in the fullest sense of the meaning circumstances change and create new situations and the individual must react to it rhetoric is part of the business of leadership he did he did but even as i said it in malaysia i knew that certain things were out of bounds in singapore when we had just separated and the malays were unhappy they felt betrayed and abandoned for issues of race language and religion to be raised in public would have been therefore i think there's something wrong with you you got the mic his mic is gone use mine it should be on okay fine i do not believe that we had suppressed or stifled the opposition and open debate is necessary for any democracy but there are certain areas which as i said at various times in the people's history are too sensitive for open discussion let me explain if in the 1960s i had raised the question of whether chinese should or should not be the national language i might have ended up in a riot so i quietly called up the chinese chamber of commerce and told them that if they wanted peace and quiet they should not be pressing for chinese as the national language because that will immediately stir up such a hornet's nest fear in the malays and the indians who wouldn't be able to master the language and would be at each other's throats now in the more relaxed circumstances of the 1990s or the year 2000 anybody can say what they like about language because the issue is quite clear parents have decided that that is the way to the future but even today if you have a free-for-all for religion we're going to end up in a real mess i brought a case against the far eastern economic review in 1989 where they had accused me of attacking the catholic church which is completely unfounded so a very aggressive british qc gave me two days in the witness box to say what's wrong i said to him that he could defend salman rashdi's book in england but that we had already decided to ban it before it became an issue was it wise i think it was what was the point of epicness unnecessary rumpus freedom of intellectual discussion when it was a matter that aroused enormous passion the muslims in singapore were not interested in what was in salman rushdie's book they were interested in the fatwa or the edict of the iranian ayatollah and that anybody who killed salman rushdie would get a reward and go to heaven so in that situation you begin to argue if you look at what's happening in the middle east i think much of the trouble really is that some things are not possible of civil discourse it arouses too much passion and emotion but as we become more affluent and comfortable and our ladies are more relaxed perhaps we can do this but then we have neighbors who are quite easily agitated by what we are saying in singapore so we have to be careful we are not britain with the french to worry about or the germans we have a different backdrop and we have to have a keen sense of survival my name is tushin wang i'm the current county school student my question is about the mainland china and taiwan relationship the so-called cross-street leadership i know you are you have a very good relationship with both leaders in beijing and the leaders in taiwan you recently visited taiwan and met and met the newly elected president chain shipping so my question is how do you envision uh the cross-street relationship and how how all the parties including the mainland china taiwan u.s and japan should take action to peacefully solve the problem i also know both president xian sami and the president chinchilla respect you very much so you met them regularly back me very much i mean respect you respect me sorry um respect you very much uh so yeah so in that sense how do you define your role in solving the cross relationship the problem are you from taiwan or the mainland from beijing from i'm from beijing we are from beijing [Applause] i am on record as saying that this is a very difficult issue one which could easily lead to an unfortunate conflict i have watched with growing concern the exchanges across the straits and i think at some time a decision has to be reached on the formula that will restart talks and reduce tensions that formula the paging has clearly defined as the one china principle taiwan believes that if it agrees to the one china principle then it's already in the box that it can't go anywhere else but one china my best interlocutor was professor lee wenzel the nobel prize winner the taiwanese nobel prize winner who's now collecting a cross-party consensus he said and i think he's right if you go by the voting figures that 70 percent of the people in taiwan do not want immediate reunification at the same time 70 percent of the people of taiwan also do not want independence because they would have grave consequences so what they would like is the status quo i asked him how long could the status quo last if during the status quo in the last 12 years former president litanghui moved from the one china to each his own explanation into the two-state theory and that if that went on to another four years it is not unlikely that the mainland would do something so he said and i repeated what he said to make sure that it's public knowledge that the one china issue cannot be avoided booker torpedo he said and that that one china can be the umbrella that will enable the status quo to remain non-confrontational so i'm waiting for him to collect his consensus and maybe some action will be taken but if not then i am not optimistic about the outcome i left slightly less pessimistic because i concluded that president trump's repealing was a different personality and character from president lee tangwei president lee tangwei is an ideologue he he believes he has a mission that he is moses and has the promised land that he must lead the taiwanese people too president trump's european has just won an election by a minority he has a big problem of getting his policies through because the legislative u.n is controlled by other parties and the elections next year is not likely to change that so he is preoccupied with political survival and not with dramatic earth-shaking moves that will convert taiwan into something different so i think that is room for less up less pessimism so i hope the mainland will be patient and maybe they will come to the same conclusion as i have that perhaps he will look for a way out to save his position with this party because the other two parties the kmt and the people's first party of james song that's about some 60-plus percent of the votes they are for going back to the 1992 consensus so there is already a majority for going back to that consensus thank you we have the next question on the left side of the balcony good evening my name is hector bladwell i'm a graduate student here at the kennedy school to me one of the most interesting things of your speech was the fact that you mentioned that for development to occur you had to change some of the the habits the the cultural traits the everyday things that people did in singapore and kind of like make it more seem like western societies although not assimilate and this has been promoted in many latin american countries where they're um where there are the most kind of democratic societies and there has been opposition to this and it has not been implemented because of that it has also been promoted in the middle east and so i'm wondering what is it about the society in singapore that facilitated uh the incorporation of the values that that you were promoting was there something inherent to society in singapore that facilitated this as opposed to another country are you latin american yes i'm from puerto rico but that's not latin america [Applause] no i culturally like it [Laughter] okay i accept your definition of yourself i i don't think i made myself clear we did not change the cultural habits the cultural beliefs or value systems of the people what we did was to change their overt behavior when we had a people living in shanty huts made of soap boxes and zinc roofs with a hole in the ground for water closet and no running water or electricity life is somewhat rough and ready now when you put them into high rises with lifts and running hot and cold and power all the other amenities of life you cannot behave the way you did when you lived in a shanty hut i'll give you a simple illustration i discussed it this morning but i think i might also tell you you might find this difficult to believe but having moved in there they know they got a water closet but they like to be a source of annoyance to their neighbors so they will urinate in the lifts so that everybody would be in convenience so to overcome this our housing authority devised a special mechanism that would make the lifts stop and you will be apprehended to defeat that they press the button they stand outside and peel [Laughter] to defeat that we install the camera so it's like mind warfare submarine mind anti-mind it goes to show just how tenacious people are in making a nuisance of themselves to other people why they get satisfaction out of this i will never understand [Laughter] but some things are more dangerous when they don't want an old piece of furniture and it's too big to go into the lift they just go to the veranda and toss it out and people have been killed on the pavement below so we now have a law which says if you do that it's a crime and you will go to jail and you will lose your flat and the next time you get housing you will be on the ground floor [Laughter] so you see how difficult it is to change people's habits but nevertheless we have made them stop spitting you know spitting is a great chinese tradition from time even memorial and if you go to china if you if you if i were in shenzhen or in hong kong i wouldn't try this campaign they'll just turn around and tell me our great grandfathers did this don't tell me to do different but in singapore having transplanted ourselves we then explain to them not only is it disgusting it will spread tuberculosis and so many other things and we educated the boys and girls in school had it on television then when we had confined it to a minority who hawk and spit into the street then we find them and punish them and i'm proud to say that when dunk shopping came to visit singapore in 1978 he was amazed that there was no spitting so i had provided for him a ming white and blue spittoon i absolutely did because when i went to the great hall of the people they had the spittoons and it's a great chinese culture to do this but when he found that nobody else in singapore did this he did not make use of it the next time i went to the great hall of the people the spittoons had disappeared so you see change can come about it takes time other side of the balcony me yeah i don't really have a question but since you've asked me i will go ahead no i don't know that's okay that's okay [Applause] we're just we're just doing questions good evening premiere you uh question i i'm indian by origin and you've done a remarkable job in singapore in a few a few decades how do you think india can improve in similar ways are you familiar and how do you think the same same things can happen within that country india has been a country that has enormous potential and for the last five decades have missed many opportunities to achieve its potential with the i.t it's beginning to emerge as a great player in the i.t software business i'm told it's because there's no ministry to regulate it so i was interested to watch your new minister for i.t being questioned i can't remember whether this cnbc or cnn or whatever but he vehemently and he was a very able debater he vehemently asserted that his job was to help the iit industry not to it that because it required 24 hours power he will ensure that there's enough power throughout india that power and telephones will be spread all over india so that full advantage can be taken of i.t well if he can do that and get his other ministers to do that and change the way the bureaucracy works india will achieve its potential i have some reservation because i've had several disappointments for example when your last or former prime minister lara singham rao met my prime minister a few years ago and said you have seven million foreign tourists come visit you why not bring them to india he said yes delighted so we put up a plan beautiful sketch plans of hotels that we will build tour coaches that we will bring but we needed an airline with landing rights and he agreed that singapore airlines will form a joint venture with tata and compete against air india and all these tourist destinations will be direct flights from singapore the minister for civil aviation says no this is a family heirloom minister was overruled the plan is gathering dust for the last five years now a new plan is out to sell air india up to 40 so singapore airlines is in discussions with tata to buy 40 i am tempted it's not my business but i was thinking of dropping a little note to the chairman of singapore airlines to say does 40 percent give us management control we are putting in let's say 20 of that 40 percent and will be run around by india management and air india unions where does it go so why not start a new airline but then you'll be back to the same old story so i don't know what's going to happen we try this will have to be the last question since we've now run out of our time good evening my name is pratana vong pivat i'm from from thailand currently a phd student at the fletcher school of law and diplomacy and i was impressed graduate school you're not in harvard they take courses here we're very closely related well i did i was impressed by your speech that how much you have shaped singapore to be one of the leading controlled countries and well you however did not really touch upon some problems in singapore and my question is how would you address some problems like the under population and the lack of working class or how do you concern about the encouragement of the government to try to encourage more birth rate and the unbalance of racial um ratio ratio that you try to keep i didn't catch the last few unbalance of the ratio rate the ratio imbalance that that is going to arise from the encouragement of government to try to increase birth rate in some some of the area or some of the arrests this is a very serious problem i'm not sure that the incentives are going to work our birth rates fertility rates have gone down from the 1970s where we were about 3.0 2.8 2.9 average per woman and now it's about 1.5 and for the educated woman is 1.4 for the uneducated it's about 1.6 1.7 the malays are just replacing themselves 2.1 2.2 the indians are not replacing themselves they are also around 1.8 1.9 so all these concessions will produce a minor spurt and then it'll tailor off we did that the last time in 1985 it moved upwards and it tailed off the problem is a very difficult one to solve it's got to do with changing lifestyles and changing values and a self-centered way of life why do i want to children it hampers my career development i i want to see the world i want both incomes to enable us to fulfill our lives and what's the prophet and two children well one may be good enough and we can concentrate everything on one uh they're also marrying later having trouble having children and i'm not sure we can reverse it because it's a worldwide trend the french have been partially successful it's got nothing to do with the racial imbalance the muslims are slightly above average 2.2 2.3 but they're not multiplying by all that number because they also trapped in this desire for higher quality of life travel more of the comforts of wealth and the consumer society fortunately we are a small population so we are selectively encouraging immigration from other parts of the world and not just from asia we recruit actively from all the universities in the world those who've come are mostly from asia but there are many who are from europe and they have also come to do work here of our population of 4 million 3 million are singaporeans 1 million are foreigners you might find this difficult to believe but we have an economy that requires workers 1 million of foreigners of them about 800 to 900 000 800 000 are unskilled and semi-skilled a hundred thousand are in the white collar class and a hundred thousand are managers and professionals and top executives of course like all countries we hope to draw in from the upper brackets because if we allow those from the lower brackets to come in we have one 1 billion indians and 1.3 million 3 billion chinese so four four million singaporeans will be swamped so we have to be a little careful we have created this oasis and oasis can be stifled so let's make sure that the spring water is flowing grass remains green and don't have too many goats eating up the grass may i try to persuade the senior minister to take a question i'm sorry we are now uh a good ten minutes after our our uh time so we cannot take more questions but i do hope you will join me in thanking senior minister lee kuan yew for his prime performance here tonight [Applause] [Applause] you [Applause] [Applause]

Channel: Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School

Views: 468,637

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Id: pCEYJFpwydw

Length: 97min 35sec (5855 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021