[netvarun]

This is a really well-written comment. Thank you very much.

I'm Singaporean (though currently based in San Francisco) and identify myself as a supporter of the PAP.

I am currently traveling, and unfortunately got hold of LKY's passing a little late (though I had been following his health the past few days) and still feeling a little shell-shocked. I am personally very disappointed at all the comments on HN - most of them drowned out by expats and armchair political scientists.

Well if you had grown up in Singapore, read it's history, lived in HDB flats, recited the pledge and national anthem every goddamn day in school, played football at the void decks, served in the army, you will come to realize what a genius LKY was.

It's nice to see a message from a Singaporean from the other side.

[skinnylatte]

I'm also willing to wager that most of these armchair political scientists hate on Singapore because "it's not Asia" (meaning not poor enough). So much BS.

"I went to America once and here is everything I have to say about American politics and its people, and if you disagree you must be a brainwashed American."

Meh.

[nailer]

How does reciting a pledge and serving in an army prove to someone their leader's genius?

Something I frequently noticed working for a company with a Singaporean headquarters was confusion between authority and logic.

[netvarun]

Because both were very clever social engineering hacks that were brought in to unite a disparate, migrant, non-homogenous group of folks to work together for the benefit of all.

Those random references I made, including playing football in the void decks, are just part of the collective Singaporean experience that has made the country as it is. All were due to the various policies crafted by LKY and his team.

Look, by the time I cared about politics or even had voted for the first time, the GREAT LEADER had already retired and was a shadow of his former self.

Having criss-crossed the globe and now running a startup that has offices in three (very) different countries, I have come to appreciate and admire the man and his vision.

I am not trying to make the man a saint. He had his flaws and there are many policies I strongly disagree with. However at the end of the day, a man's genius is measured by the number of goals he scored, subtracting off his own-goals. And his score runs pretty high.

Just to make myself clear, it's not reverence. It's respect.

[judyzhou]

Because given the poor.circumstamces we've succeeded in becoming an economic miracle where most others have failed..and we've been able to protect our turf through diplomacy and deterance without having to fight a single war. For every foreign critic I meet I have only one advice... look at your own country and their leaders before u belittle