Lee Kuan Yew was born in 1923, he ruled Singapore from the beginning of Singapore as an independent country since 1959, until stepping down in 1990. He has remained as an influential politician in Singapore since.

Family Background

In his memoirs, Lee mentions that he was a fourth-generation Chinese Singaporean. Lee was strongly influenced by British culture, because his grandfather gave him an English educatcation when he was a child.

Political Life

Lee was educated at Telok Kurau Primary School, Raffles Institution, and Raffles College. His university education was delayed because of Japan occupied Singapore from 1942 till 1945 during the World War II. After the war, he studied law and economics in the United Kingdom, and worked as a lawyer when he returned to Singapore.

After returning to Singapore, Lee put himself into politics and became the spot in the government in 1959. Lee began to seek international recognition of the Singapore's Independence. Because of Singapore had never had a specific culture or common language, all those were came with immigrants, therefore Lee tried to create a common Singaporean identity between the 1970s to 1980s.

During Lee’s post-independence administration, Singapore was deeply felt with threats from multiple sources. He declared a policy of neutrality and non-alignment. As British pull out the army force from Singapore and Malaysia, Lee soon after introduced national service which is a programs that can made up a reserve force in a short term of period. Later, Singapore was able to establish strong military relations with other Asian countries.

In 1961, Singapore became more attractive to foreign investments, while offered attractive tax, highly skilled and low paid work force, modern infrastructure airport, ports, roads and the strong community network. The Singapore Tourist Promotion Board was set up to promote tourism that would create many jobs in the service industry.

As Singapore is the multicultural nations and Malay, Chinese and Tamil are used by the same time; Lee designated English as the official language of the workplace and the common language among the different races.

Legendary Accomplishments

Lee’s successes in Singapore are legendary:

·         Turning the economy from manufacturing to high-tech,

·         Transforming the infrastructure of the country to a modern-day exemplar,

·         Nearly eliminating crime and unemployment,

·         Creating one of Asia’s foremost health care and educational systems.

·         Created a cleanest ‘garden city’ in the world.

Today, the average income in Singapore is higher than in England. Singapore is the busiest port in the world and the third-largest oil refinery, also Singapore is playing a role as the global center of manufacturing and service industry, all in such a tiny country almost totally lacking in natural resources.

Lee’s Presidential Leadership

Lee has un-Asian personality of forthright and confrontational. He lives by the conflict theory of management: you either dominate or are dominated. He experienced being dominated, first by British colonization and later by the often-brutal Japanese occupation in World War II. When he came to power, he became the dominator.

Lee understands the nature of leadership and how this related to the needs, desires and aspirations of his people. With that he concludes that Singapore and other Asian nations required firm leadership to produce essential social and political stability. His style of ruling was ‘soft-authoritarian’ with notable heart for law and order. He is firm on his principles during his course of leadership. He once remarked that if he found any thing that stops him in the way of a policy or goal he thought needed to be achieved, he would definitely clean the way out.

Lee has shown that the visionary of a leader and his determination is extremely important in leading the country towards sustainable development.