Lee Kuan Yew, Architect of the century.

" Kuan Yew, means "the light that shines far and wide". Architect of the century. 50 Most Powerful men in Asia Guru of Asian values, architect of Singapore's development. Still sought after for advice and comment. "

Lee Kuan Yew
Lee Kuan Yew was born in Singapore on September 16, 1923. He studied at Raffles Institution and Raffles College, and proceeded to Cambridge to read law. After graduating in 1949 with a double First Class Honours and a star for "special distinction", he returned to Singapore to practice law at a well known firm, Laycock and Ong.
Lee emerged as the top Malayan boy in the Senior Cambridge examinations. At the age of 19, his studies were interrupted by the Japanese invasion. After the war, he took law at Cambridge University, where he scored a double first (first-class honors in two subjects) in law.

Political career
In November 1954, led by young Lee, a group of British-educated, middle-class Chinese who had returned to Singapore in the early 1950s after studying in Britain formed the People's Action Party. The party sought to attract a following among the mostly poor and non-English-speaking masses.
Lee became the first offically elected Prime Minister of Singapore. He stayed in office from 1959 to 1990, when he voluntarily stepped down from office to let a group of second-generation leaders take over the running of the government.
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".
During Lee's long rule, Singapore experienced remarkable economic growth and diversification. In addition to enhancing its position as a world trade centre, it has developed powerful financial and industrial sectors. Singapore has the most advanced economy in Southeast Asia. An island of 600 square kilometres, with three million people, it is the ninth richest country in per capita terms today.
Even in his graying years, the founding prime minister of Singapore wields very strong influence. 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.
The story of how Lee transformed Singapore is a fascinating one because 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.
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.

Prospects for Democracy
The purpose of this paper has been to demonstrate the extent to which Lee Kuan
Yew and other Singaporean leaders have conceptualised politics, and acted in them, as
Machiavelli would have recommended. By creating a continuity between Lee’s
ideological premise of Asian values and the notion of Virtù in Machiavelli’s works, it
has been asserted that both men rejected the predominant worldview of their time, in
favour of another value system which they deemed more suitable for politics. Asian
values and Virtù have also been shown to intrinsically have much in common.
Subsequently were explored the points of convergence between the meathods of
Singapore’s PAP government in maintaining control of the opposition and the people,
and Machiavelli’s observations and counsels. A perfect correlation can never exist, but
it is hoped that by now there has emerged a clear picture of the Machiavellian imprint
on Singapore’s politics.

Lee Kuan Yew's Fabian Phase
Lee Kuan Yew, was undoubtedly genuine in his belief in Fabian socialism in his university days, but there has been very little detailed attention paid to the later development and eventual abandonment of his socialist ideas, or his attitude to the welfare state. This article explores the conflicts and paradoxes in Lee's own accounts of his early socialism and argues that Lee never intended to build a welfare state in Singapore, Malaya or Malaysia, but that despite the apparent contradiction, he regarded himself genuinely as a socialist in the early years of the People's Action Party (PAP) government. The basis for this conclusion is four-fold: a study of Lee's reminiscences of his ‘socialist youth’; a study of the politics of the major welfare issue facing the first PAP Government; a brief examination of the PAP's record during the period of Singapore's membership of Malaysia, and; a study of Lee's statements regarding socialism and welfarism at the time. The article also considers the relationship between Lee's socialism and British and Chinese socialism.