Great Expectations- MM LKY’s visit to Pahang.

Together with thousands of other private citizens, I would like to extend my warmest regards to Minister Mentor Lee Kuan yew for taking time to visit Pahang. I understand he will be in Pahang next week on the 15^th of June. I have read in the past that Mr Lee was a frequent visitor to the hill stations in Pahang- either Cameron Highlands or Fraser's Hill. I am sure Mr Lee has fond memories of these places.

What can Mr Lee see in Pahang? He will see only opportunities for the Pahang people to progress. Mr Lee will also see the borderless possibilities to plan for progress for Singapore companies. Provided of course there is leadership.

Which brings us nicely to a brief discussion on the question of leadership.

The primary purpose of leadership is to helm social transformation. According to Mr Lee there are 3 basic essentials for successful transformation. We need an effective and determined leadership, an administration which is efficient and social discipline. These appeared to be recurring themes, sort of guiding principles behind the success of society. Leadership that honours and rewards hard work, provide strong and determined leadership, enlightened economic policies and a culture that encouraged thrift and learning.

As we are aware, Mr Lee is less concerned with being loved than with being respected. A leader who is not respected will not be able to motivate the people to work with him.

Mr Lee's ideas on leadership are seminal. Let us for example, examined the ideas concerning leadership succession which are particularly instructive.

Very early on, Mr Lee Kuan Yew grappled with the issue of leadership succession. One of the vexatious issues of leadership is how do you choose your successor? The answer to this question can also be generalised to how do you select leaders in general? How do you choose those people with the drive, verve, intelligence, analytical powers, imaginations and are practical and realistic?

Lee Kuan Yew is conscious of the need to reject a pants off the seat approach typified normally by the way leaders are chosen on the basis of being liked/disliked by the supreme leader. A is chosen because he is liked or B is rejected because he is not liked. Then you have a system of leadership choice that doesn't extend beyond an individual's likes and dislikes. What kind of system does this create? It creates a self perpetuating system of leadership. Leaders are chosen because they are perhaps the most servile and malleable of the lot. But because, the choosing principle rests on a very slender and unstable principle, such a system is seen as leading eventually to disappointment.

Pak Lah was probably chosen on the assumptions that he would be servile and malleable. He turned out to be the direct opposite to what Dr Mahathir would have wanted and preferred. In other words, we are supposed to get a leader who should have been exceedingly compliant. And because he was chosen on the basis of he was more likeable then, UMNO was handed its worse defeat in its history. It was also due to the fact that actually we wanted to have a self perpetuating leadership system.

To Lee Kuan Yew, it is better to have a self continuing system which suggests independence from personal preferences. Such a system is committed more to goals, driven by shared ideals. This is the more ideal and progressive leadership system.

Effective and efficient administration.

Undoubtedly much of Singapore's success is attributable to the extraordinary leadership of Lee Kuan Yew- determined, driven and disciplined leadership. This writing is but a ripple to the vast ocean of literature narrating and explaining the leadership of Lee Kuan Yew. Accordingly, it will not do anything more than a casual treatment.

The other significant contributor to the success of Singapore is of course the civil service. We have not heard much about the civil service perhaps because of the ethos of civil service professionalism. In the early years for example, the Singapore civil service was described as a sort of priesthood. The analogy was made by the other grey eminence of Singapore- the owlish Goh Keng Swee. It was both an exclusive fraternity and practitioner of vows of silence and confidentiality.

I hope this ethos of civil serve professionalism is not lost on our own civil service. Nowadays, we have seen too many transgressions and adventurous incursions into the world of politics by civil servants. They are basically implementers and not policy makers. If they want to go into politics, resign and enter.

There is a chapter in the book, Lee Kuan Yew- the Man and His Ideas about the role government. Chapter four of that book is titled The Secret of good government.

Thus according to Mr Lee to get a good government you must have good men in charge of government. One civil service luminary who lends credence to this observation is a man named Mr Ngiam Tong Dow. Mr Ngiam joined the Singapore civil service in 1959 after graduating with First Class Honours in Economics from the then University of Malaya in Singapore. After spending 40 years in economic development of Singapore- he is convinced that the most important condition for success is good Government. A good government is one lead by able, honest, selfless men and women. A Mandarin and the Making of Public Policy-Reflections b Ngiam Tong Dow.