Thoughts, insights, and criticism please, as Singapore and the world bids him farewell.

His book "From Third World to First" offers interesting solutions to Africas problem. He is reportedly Paul Kagames' Mentor. In short it tells his story from being a 35 year old prime minister of Singapore in 1959, a self governing poor (poorer than Kenyans then) third world tiny island in Southeast Asia approximately 690sq kilometers (Karibu area ya Nairobi to Thika generating four times what Kenya generates today), formerly a British trading outpost, Lee Kuan Yew illustrates a journey that takes a multiracial, multilingual third world island nation besieged by a quest for survival to a thriving, modern developed nation with 15 fold GDP growth leap in 32 years!, offering it’s citizens one of the highest standards of living globally. In comparison with Kenya that gained independence about the same time, Singapore today with a population of only 3.5million has a GDP four times that of Kenya where a Singaporean’s globally fifth highest per capita income is almost forty times that of a Kenyan mwanainchi. Sometimes i wish Jomo Kenyatta had the guts to appoint Tom Mboya VP as has often been suggested, too bad the communist in Nyanza got him with a bullet. Kenya would have been at per or better than Singapore today.

A people's dictator, how i wish we got one at the time Singapore got theirs.

How i wish we get one at some point.

To him i'll say R.I.P, something i hardly do.

One of Lee's abiding beliefs was in the efficacy of corporal punishment in the form of caning.[45] In his autobiography The Singapore Story he described his time at Raffles Institution in the 1930s, mentioning that he was caned there for chronic lateness by the then headmaster, D. W. McLeod. He wrote: "I bent over a chair and was given three of the best with my trousers on. I did not think he lightened his strokes. I have never understood why Western educationists are so much against corporal punishment. It did my fellow students and me no harm."[46]

I heard and read of Mr. Yew sometime back, and I remember adopting the view points expressed by many of us here.

But then I have grown to change my mind about how to evaluate and judge leadership.

It's no easy matter to lead a body politic, and even to ensure stability and wealth. And for this Mr. Yew deserves respect.

Somehow, I have found myself in several leadership situations for as long as I can remember and, one thing I have learnt is one should be careful when emulating and borrowing ideas from other leaders and their contexts.

In this case I state simply that;

1. There's no guarantee that borrowed ideas will work in any context
2. It's easy to flatter a leader for selfish interests
3. How a nation begins and grows, economically and politically is a key factor when emulating

These are some of the caveats we should consider. There are many more that I can see, and in the end I see Mr. Yew as a leader who has something to emulate like resolution, understanding of balance of power, and a visionary who believed in the power of reason and innovation.

Maich, even on the other thread you'll realize that I have nothing against Kagame. Because I know it's not about being for, or against a person. It's about learning and making choices in our own areas of leadership and being.