Letters | How did Singapore quell protests? Carrie Lam could take a leaf out of Lee Kuan Yew’s playbook

Riots rocked Singapore in the British colonial era but became unheard of under Lee Kuan Yew’s rule

The late prime minister avoided the errors of predecessors who were either too soft or too hard on rioters

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As prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew managed to have good relations with the British, the Americans and Deng Xiaoping. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:25am, 30 Aug 2019Updated: 7:25am, 30 Aug 2019

It is my sincere hope that Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor can end the protests in Hong Kong peacefully soon. To do so, she could learn a lesson from Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister of independent Singapore.

The late Lee avoided the errors of his predecessors, the late David Marshall and the late Lim Yew Hock. When Marshall was chief minister of Singapore, riots and strikes rocked the island which was then a British colony. The British colonial rulers disliked Marshall because they deemed him too soft on the protesters. Marshall also had an uncooperative attitude towards the British colonial government. These were among the reasons the British refused to grant Singapore self-rule, causing Marshall to resign as chief minister.

Marshall’s successor, Lim, cracked down hard on riots. Many of the rioters were students of Chinese schools sympathetic to Communist China. Lim’s harsh methods lost him the support of many local Chinese, who formed Singapore’s racial majority. Lee and his People’s Action Party (PAP) gained the support of Singaporeans by flying the anti-colonial banner and accusing Lim and his party, the Labour Front, of being puppets of the British colonial government. In 1959, the PAP won the general elections and Lee became prime minister of Singapore, which then had self-rule under the British, not too dissimilar to Hong Kong under “one country, two systems”.

The Hong Kong chief executive should avoid the two starkly opposite errors made by Marshall and Lim, by being either too soft on protesters or too hard in a clumsy, unwise manner.

As prime minister of Singapore, Lee managed to have good relations with the British, later with the Americans and subsequently with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. The Hong Kong chief executive could emulate Lee’s skills by winning both Beijing’s trust and Hongkongers’ support.

.css-sioo19{color:#c79a00;}Letters | How did Singapore quell protests? Carrie Lam could take a leaf out of Lee Kuan Yew’s playbook

Letters | How did Singapore quell protests? Carrie Lam could take a leaf out of Lee Kuan Yew’s playbook