LEVELING WITH LEE

These days the liberal intelligentsia is quoting Lee Kuan Yew with some relish regards the latest political developments in Sri Lanka, including those that concern the 13th Amendment.

The rather aged Mr. Lee will very probably not know what the 13th Amendment is in the first place but that has not deterred various self proclaimed 'left and progressive' Lee fans (!) from quoting him to buttress a claim that Sri Lanka's so called ethnic issue would not have festered if Sri Lankan leaders approached the problem from a more accommodative mindset.

Not that anybody who knew the first thing about politics leave alone political science would not have known how authoritarian and intolerant Mr. Lee was, but yet it was Mr. Lee who was held up as the model for Sri Lanka in -- of all things - these progressive people's quest to ensure that the 13th Amendment stays without any amending, tinkering or tailoring.

All this is as good as holding up the example of Mata Hari as the model for chastity, no disrespect to Mr. Lee being intended. Yesterday a conscientious objector in this regard had written to a local daily about how exactly Mr. Lee had been disposed towards the minorities in Singapore, and if anybody thinks that his model is to be followed in Sri Lanka to encourage pluralism and tolerance, such a person must be a roaring racist.

In Singapore the kind of debate that is now going on in Sri Lanka with regard to the 13th Amendment is not tolerated in the first place, and by law ethno-nationalism and the kind of dialogue that ensues from ethno nationalist impulses -- tolerated, nay encouraged in Sri Lanka -- is banned, under edict promulgated by the man who was the sole authority in Singapore, Mr.Yew.

Jehovah's witnesses are banned in Singapore, and some have been flung in jail! Moreover, not all Malays are welcome in the Armed Forces, particularly certain key sectors of it, and there are efforts to change the state's demographic by 'importing' Chinese into Singapore with the government in the lead in promoting the notion that the Malay segment of the population is increasing faster than that of the Chinese.

All those orthodox dead-end 'contrarians' writing for Sri Lankan newspapers never tire of telling their readers that Sri Lankans do not enjoy the right to free expression when it is known that Singapore which is ahead of us in the 'press freedom' indexes never had any kind of press freedom to speak of. Whatever freedom is enjoyed is under sufferance of the administration which though Mr. Lee himself is now retired, is still run by the inheritors to the Lee legacy who have yet to reverse the fundamentals of the Lee tyranny that puts Jehovah's witnesses in jail!

The reason some of these people talk about Lee with reference to the Sri Lankan situation, probably is Singapore's sterling record with regard to the maintenance of peace. They would say Lee has to be able to mentor us on ethnic conflicts, as Singapore has managed to stave off the ravages of war based on ethnic divisions.

Didn't anybody hear that Singapore is too small a place for that kind of conflagration? Also perhaps one reason there was no confrontation between the Malays and the Chinese in Singapore was the iron fisted approach of Lee Kuan Yew, and may be that's what he meant when he said that Sri Lanka did not have the correct approach to ethnic relations -- he may have meant that we never had Presidents and Premiers who were tough and tyrannical as he was! In sum, the Lee example vis-a-vis the ethnic issue in Sri Lanka tells us to what extent the reality is distorted in a bid to coerce a country to take a dose of medicine prescribed by outsiders that most Sri Lankans palpably do not want.