How Lee Kuan Yew Destroyed Singapore: Remember Operation Coldstore
Lee Kuan Yew should be remembered not for building Singapore, but for destroying it.
The typical story is that since Singapore’s Independence in 1965, Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP have significantly reduced poverty, homelessness and suffering in Singapore. But that interpretation can’t stand, if you don't ignore the fact that Lee Kuan Yew tortured and imprisoned opposition leader Lim Chin Siong, and over one hundred left-wing individuals. The series of arrests were known as ‘Operation Coldstore’.
For those who don’t know, in 1963, Lim Chin Siong was the leader of the Opposition party ‘Barisan Sosialis’. They were massively popular, and would very likely have won the general elections, and defeated Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP. If not for the fact that months before the elections, Lee Kuan Yew with no evidence at all, made up some lie that the Barisan Sosialis were violent communists trying to violently overthrow the government. And so the PAP arrested Lim Chin Siong, and over one hundred left-wing politicians, activists, educators etc. They imprisoned them without trial, for 10 to 30 years.
Because of the arrests, the Barisan Sosialis party was obviously severely weakened, and so the PAP won the next general elections. The PAP since has won every general election for the past 60 years, and has turned Singapore into a country that sucks slightly less than when it was ruled by British Colonial leaders.
However make no mistake, if Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP hadn’t cheated and arrested their political opponents, Singapore would very likely be better off right now if Lim Chin Siong and the Barisan Sosialis became Singapore’s Government
The left-Wing Barisan Sosialis party was for freedom of expression, labor unions and workers’ protections, and a more equal economic system that made healthcare and housing more affordable through higher taxes to the rich. Basically, many of the problems Singapore has right now: high cost of living largely because of expensive healthcare and housing, long exploitative work hours and work conditions, a culture of fear due to political opponents being imprisoned. All of that will be solved, if Lim Chin Siong had been in power and was the leader of Singapore instead of Lee Kuan Yew.
Now people will argue that’s a huge ‘what if’. We don’t know if the Barisan Sosialis would be as effective in economically managing Singapore. But going by Barisan’s capability, charisma, intelligence and policy-proposals, it’s very safe to assume that they not only would be as good, they’d be even better.
Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP never came up with anything particularly innovative or revolutionary in terms of economic management. They just used ideas that had already worked for successful countries at the time. The ‘economic miracle’ of Singapore transforming into a highly industrialised first-world country, was not that miraculous at all, considering all other Chinese countries from Hong Kong to Taiwan to China, experienced that same ‘economic miracle’ from the 1970s to the 2000s.
So under Barisan’ left-wing ideology, we’d basically have gotten a Singapore that is economically prosperous, without the authoritarianism. Singapore’s GDP probably wouldn’t be as high because there wouldn’t be as many exploitative greedy rich foreign companies having a larger presence in Singapore like we do now, but we’d likely still have just enough foreign investment and capital to be considered a prosperous nation. We’d at minimum be like Taiwan today: low cost of living, free and affordable healthcare, with civil liberties like freedom of speech and assembly, and less exploitative work hours with higher quality of life.
And Lee Kuan Yew stopped Singapore from being that, and what we’re left with now is a Singapore that is completely miserable and sucks ass. Ranking terribly worldwide in happiness and freedom.
Now the PAP dicksuckers would say well we should at least be appreciative because Lee Kuan Yew did make Singapore better than it was pre-independence. But no we shouldn’t. I’ll give an analogy:
Say we’re on an island with tons of starving Singaporeans. Lee Kuan Yew comes along, and offers ten loaves of bread. How nice of Lee Kuan Yew.
But then, Lim Chin Siong comes along, but he doesn’t just have 10 loaves of bread, he has 1000.
But Lee Kuan Yew, wants all the credit to himself of giving bread to starving Singaporeans. So he kills Lim Chin Siong, and destroys all of Lim Chin Siong’s 1000 bread.
And so now, all of the starving Singaporeans only knows about Lee Kuan Yew and how generous he was to offer the 10 loaves of bread.
Until of course they find out that Lee Kuan Yew killed Lim Chin Siong and destroyed those one thousand loaves of bread. In which case what the fuck, Lee Kuan Yew stopped far more starving Singaporeans from being saved.
And so this is the actual legacy of Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP. You cannot simply praise Lee Kuan Yew for making Singapore suck less, once you account for Operation Coldstore. Just like you can’t simply praise Lee Kuan Yew for offering 10 loaves of bread, when he destroyed the other 1000 loaves. Singapore would be better off if Lim Chin Siong was prime minister. So we can't celebrate the hundreds of thousands of lives Lee Kuan Yew saved, instead we have to condemn Lee Kuan Yew for the hundreds of thousands of lives he has ruined. Literally, if Lee Kuan Yew had not existed, if Goh Keng Swee had not existed, if the PAP had not existed, Singapore would be much better off today. We can’t even consider Lee Kuan Yew an imperfect leader, that still had a net positive. He was an evil dictator, that destroyed Singapore, plain and simple. Lee Kuan Yew is not a ‘benevolent dictator’. He’s a dictator, full stop.