LKY visits Malaysia – not for nostalgia
June 4th, 2009 | 
Author: From The Malaysian Insider
Lee Kuan Yew — the father of modern Singapore — will visit Malaysia next week, touring several states and meeting with a number of Malaysian leaders and senior journalists in what has been billed as a trip down memory lane.
But there is nothing nostalgic about the trip for the longest-serving Singapore prime minister, senior minister and now minister mentor. He has been at the helm of Singapore since 1959, brought Singapore to form Malaysia and cried when it had to go independent in 1965.
His week-long visit is packed with meetings from the start in Kuala Lumpur where he meets MCA president Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat on Monday.
A day later, he will meet Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Umno vice-presidents and Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim. And some editors of major Malaysian media.
Kuan Yew then moves to Ipoh to meet Perak Ruler Sultan Azlan Shah and Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Zambry Abdul Kadir despite the political impasse in the silver state. His trip continues to Penang where he will pay a visit to Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and other leaders of the DAP, an off-shoot of his People’s Action Party (PAP) after Singapore left the federation in 1965.
The octogenarian will then cross the peninsula to the Malay heartland and meet Kelantan Mentri Besar Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat and the Kelantan regent.
It will be his first face-to-face meeting with Nik Aziz, the PAS spiritual leader and Kelantan mentri besar for the past 19 years. It is a recognition by Singapore of the growing importance of the Islamist party in Malaysia.
Kuan Yew will also pay a courtesy call on Pahang’s Sultan Ahmad Shah and the Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Adnan Yaakob.
Lightweight tourism for old times’ sake it is not.
What is clear is that Kuan Yew wants to feel the pulse of the country that became Malaysia on his 40th birthday in 1963 and figure out if the political landscape will be altered drastically after the next general elections.
The unprecedented win by the opposition pact in Election 2008 where Islamists and secularists came together on a common platform to capture four more states and break Barisan Nasional’s two-thirds parliamentary majority was clearly a shock to Singapore which has only known PAP rule since independence.
Much of that victory has been credited with a younger population and politicians who are savvier in connecting with them, using the Internet to overcome the mass and mainstream media controlled by the government. Much the same as in Singapore.
And since Election 2008, Singapore politicians have been wondering whether the strong showing by the Pakatan Rakyat is sustainable or whether Umno will be able to recover lost ground and triumph in the next polls.
So what happens in Malaysia is very important for Singapore, which is sandwiched between two Asean giants Malaysia and Indonesia, and has been derisively called a little red dot by some Malaysian leaders.
And of utmost importance to Kuan Yew whose pessimism about Singapore survival after being asked to leave Malaysia fuelled his determination to turn the city-state without any natural resources into one of the most developed port and financial hubs in the world.
He is someone that Malaysia can learn from. The only thing is, Lee Kuan Yew is in Malaysia to learn, for his country’s future.
Source: The Malaysian Insider
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12 Responses to “LKY visits Malaysia – not for nostalgia”
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He dared not go M’sia when Mahathir was the PM!
malaysia should juz detain lky under their ISA. singaporeans will support them!
Why is he not meeting up with Anwar Ibrahim? Is it because Anwar is friends with Chee Soon Juan?
teochew way of saying….you sit where place is cool!
Read this: “Singapore Democrats meet Anwar Ibrahim’s daughter”
http://www.sgpolitics.net/?p=1020
对人讲人话
对鬼讲鬼话
I think maybe he will try to be Devil’s advocate when he meet their PM. Probably tell him that the Mongolian beauty has spoken to him in his dreams and he knows everything.
So don’t try to be funny like the other MM.
He is also there to buy Selamat back
The oldfart is buying insurance and goodwill for the spineless son in case he kicks the bucket. Najib with the help of Mahathir will surely test spineless. Mas Selamat would have opened their eyes to the fact our so called state-of-the-art hardware means little with numbskulls at the helm.
truly..having selamat there,malaysia is holding a trumph card. it will be give me a straight causeway or no selamat for you!
better to be there though..at least WKS need not face under toilet escape detainee
The article totally discredited LKY in a very subtle manner, saying that he has to visit up north in order for sg to survive when we are doing so well.
This trip is going to make his visit quite awkward as most malaysians know the real person that he is…
This should be the task of the PM instead.
fuck najib.
JUNE 20 — I begin with a confession. I may be fairly described as a dyed in the wool admirer of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s Minister Mentor.
I am pleased that his recent visit to our country went well. He was received and treated as an honoured visitor, in the grand palaces and everywhere else he went, as well he should, because Lee undoubtedly played an important and historic role in the creation of Malaysia as a political entity. That is a historical fact.
I am glad that Lee gave Mahathir a wide berth. It would have left a bad taste in the mouth if he had asked to meet the bitter old man of Malaysian politics. Mahathir could have been relied upon to be obnoxious and boorish as only Mahathir knows how.
His reference to Lee as the little emperor from a small Middle Kingdom is vintage Mahathir, dripping with venom and uncharitable innuendoes.
The man, Mahathir I mean, is a total disgrace to the Malay sense of gracious hospitality and traditional decorum. I suppose the kindest thing to do is to ignore Mahathir and let him continue to entertain the sad fantasy that he is an indispensable part of our country’s process of governance.
Lee Kuan Yew is far from perfect. His record on human rights and media freedom is well-documented, and there is not a great deal to choose between his and ours. We should wipe off that feeling of smugness.
On balance, though, Lee runs a tight ship and Singapore’s pre-eminent position as a modern, affluent and corruption-free society owes entirely to his vision and his determination. What he has achieved for his country in the face of the hopelessly impossible challenges says a great deal about his single-minded devotion to public duty in the public interest. Enriching himself or his family has never been part of his game plan.
He has never wavered in his belief right at the outset that corruption, humanity’s greatest curse, was not going to be a feature of Singapore’s governance model. His administration is both clean and efficient, and Singapore’s economy is among the most competitive in the world.
Judged against most indicators, Singapore is among the top global performers.
While we wallow in corruption and are daily buffeted by one financial scam after another, the ‘Little Red Dot’ – the highly-offensive name former President Habibi of Indonesia gave Singapore – continues to notch one accolade after another. Singapore has shown that size does not matter.
I am often asked the reason for my being such a loyal Lee Kuan Yew fan. It goes a long way. As I have said, he is not without a blemish or two, but no man has done more to curb corruption in public life as Lee, to the eternal gratitude of his people who are well served by a corruption-free civil service and political leadership.
The benefits for Singapore have been enormous in reputational terms. Investors know that their investments are safer in Singapore than in many other jurisdictions because Singapore operates a justice system that is incorruptible.
Singapore has succeeded in curbing corruption to a degree that is rarely achieved elsewhere in Asia, except possibly Hong Kong. Singapore does not need a bloated anti-corruption bureaucracy such as we have with our ineffectual Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) that is a drain on public funds.
But what Singapore has in large measure is political will riding on the shoulders of a remarkable leader whose abhorrence for corruption takes on an almost messianic crusade. When we think of Singapore before Lee Kuan Yew, what comes to mind was a country that was a corrupt colonial backwater, filthy, ugly and smelly, not unlike Hong Kong at that time in its history.
Today, Singapore has shown the world that by confronting corruption decisively, and by putting in place systems and policies specifically to make unethical public behaviour a high-risk and low-return business, a country will become competitive which is the name of the game in the globalised economy.
How do we fare by comparison?
The government, in spite of protestations to the contrary, tolerates corruption in all its manifestations. I am not just talking about money changing hands. That is bribery, but equally insidious is bending the rules and exploiting loopholes with a view to defrauding the nation’s coffers.
The Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal is a case in point, and yet we are being told to move on without any of the perpetrators being called to account for their part in this multi-billion ringgit swindle. The government must do its duty in ensuring that those responsible are brought to justice.
A scandal of this order of magnitude even for a country such as ours that is so used to living cheek by jowl with grand corruption on a daily basis beggars the imagination. We wait with bated breath to see what Najib will do in this case. Or is he no different from Mahathir and Badawi?
Through sheer force of character, and leading by example, Lee Kuan Yew has been able to make a difference to the lives of his people. Singapore is able today to punch way above its weight. It is a respected name, human rights NGOs may disagree, and I for one wish Singapore well in its relentless fight against man’s most debilitating social ill. – mysinchew.com
By Tunku Abdul Aziz