Lee Kuan Yew, the first and longest serving Prime Minister of Singapore, is credited with transforming a tiny trading outpost into one of Asia’s most prosperous societies
Singapore has been plunged into mourning following the death of its founding father Lee Kuan Yew at the age of 91.
Mr Lee, who had been in hospital sine February 5, died at 3.18am on Monday morning. The government declared a period of seven days national mourning that will end on March 29 when a state funeral is held.
“I’m grieved beyond words at the passing of Mr Lee Kuan Yew,” Lee Hsien Loong, his son and Singapore’s current Prime Minister, said in a tearful televised address. “I know we all feel the same way.”
“The first of our founding fathers is no more,” he added. “He made us proud to be Singaporeans.”
Grievers left flowers and messages outside Singapore General Hospital, where Mr Lee had spent his final days. One local newspaper published a 44-page special edition marking his death and celebrating his life.
As Singapore mourned, world leaders paid tribute to the influential and pragmatic politician behind the city-state’s remarkable transformation.
“He was a true giant of history who will be remembered for generations to come as the father of modern Singapore and as one the great strategists of Asian affairs,” said Barack Obama, the US president.
“Lee Kuan Yew personally shaped Singapore in a way that few people have any nation,” said David Cameron, the British Prime Minister. “He made his country into one of the great success stories of our modern world. That Singapore is today a prosperous, secure and successful country is a monument to his decades of remarkable public service.”
Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, described Mr Lee as “one of the most extraordinary leaders of modern times”. “He was a genuine political giant,” he said.
Xi Jinping, China’s president, said Mr Lee had been an “old friend of the Chinese people”.
Lee Kuan Yew, who studied law at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, is credited with turning a tiny trading outpost into a leading global financial centre and one of Asia’s most prosperous societies.
Born in 1923, he founded the People’s Action Party (PAP) and led the former British colony for 31 years from 1959 to 1990. He continued to play an active role in Singaporean politics until poor health forced him to withdraw from public life earlier this year.
Tributes on Singaporean television focused on Mr Lee’s efforts to help the poor through government housing projects and how he had turned an impoverished port into a skyscraper studded metropolis.
Singapore was “the only city in the world without slums,” a report by Singapore’s Channel News Asia claimed.
Critics attacked Mr Lee for Singapore’s curtailment of freedom of speech and civil liberties. “The government still punishes speech and peaceful actions that it deems a threat to public order, especially on matters of ethnicity and religion,” said a Human Rights Watch report last year.
However, few dispute that Mr Lee’s “Singapore Model”, widely viewed as a mildly authoritarian style of governance, has paid off.
“A lot of policies were not popular,” Ee Ye Lin, a lawyer, told Channel News Asia on Monday. “But in the grander scheme of things, things turned out how they should have.”
A website called “Remembering Lee Kuan Yew” was set up to offer information on where tributes to be paid to the late politician.
