NAME: Lee Kuan Yew

AGE: 80

NATIONALITY: Singaporean

CLAIM TO FAME: The father of modern Singapore

IT was celebration time in Singapore on September 16 when Lee Kuan Yew, the architect of Singapore’s emergence from a topical backwater into one of Asia’s wealthiest economies, turned 80. But those who thought that the Lee, who was this island nation’s first prime minister, would be thinking of calling it a day were disappointed. Though he admitted that he had less energy than 10 years ago, he announced that he will stay on in the cabinet as long as he could contribute, and then remain a Member of Parliament while he was “fit and able”.

Lee Kuan Yew, whose name means ‘the light that shines far and wide’, became prime minister in 1959 and relinquished the post to Goh Chok Tong in 1990. But as senior minister, he still yields considerable power in the government and at times seems to be the ultimate decision-maker. He is as reluctant as ever to let go of power and seems to be ensuring that what he does give up, stays within the family. His son Lee Hsien Loong is due to take over from Goh Chok Tong as prime minister before the next election — due by 2007 — and more probably by next year or 2005 at the latest.

Despite some criticism regarding his family’s tight grip on power, Singaporeans are united in respecting Lee Kuan Yew — with many regarding him in benign, almost reverential terms. The no-nonsense, charismatic Cambridge-educated lawyer spearheaded Singapore’s independence from Britain in 1959 and led the island through its rocky separation from Malaysia in 1965 after founding the long-ruling People’s Action Party. He then engineered two decades of ten per cent economic growth in a country with no natural resources. No other leader in the modern world has had such a hand in influencing and directing his country’s progress from independence to developed nation status the way he has. None has straddled the two worlds with as much success: the revolutionary world in the first half of this century for independence from empire, and the development world in the second half for wealth and progress. He is regarded as virtually a national institution at home. Governments elsewhere solicit his advice on development, and his insights on a changing world, particularly the rise of Asia, are widely respected.

Lee’s intellect and energy, shaped bold — and often uncompromising — responses to the challenges of wresting rule from the British and building a nation. His government sought to build a multiracial and multilingual society that would be unified by a sense of a unique ‘Singaporean identity’. That Singapore is a success today and the success is largely attributable to Lee, there can be few doubts, even among his most severe critics.