Ensuring succession is a leader’s toughest job: MM Lee
According to AsiaOne News:
Ensuring succession is the toughest part of being a leader, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew has said.
“If people ask me what it is I am proudest of, I would say it is that there is a Singapore that did not exist, and more important still, there is a Singapore after I am no longer in charge,” he said.
Mr Lee was sharing his experience in leading a country at a discussion last Friday with the Cabinet of Tatarstan Republic — a part of the Russian Federation. He is on a seven-day visit to Russia.
The tragedy of the Soviet Union, said Mr Lee, was that a succession plan was missing. Today, however, Russian President Vladimir Putin is helping the Federation regain stability, he noted.
“With stability, you have a chance to maximise the fortuitous rise in price of oil and gas, use these resources to restore your economy, and get your people to be more optimistic about your future and press forward in a very different world in which we are all inter-dependent.”
Asked about the use of resources in Singapore, Mr Lee said her priority today is foreign affairs and international trade, as the country has to strengthen her competitive position with measures like free trade agreements with her most important economic partners.
Another important issue is climate change, which Mr Lee said he is worried about not just for Singaporeans but also for the world, as millions of people may get displaced.
On the issue of educating its population, Mr Lee said by educating women, Singapore had inadvertantly created the problem of capable women who are staying single and who do not have children.
It is a problem faced by other Asian countries like Hong Kong and Japan as well, since Asian men generally shun women who make more money or who have higher job status than them, he observed.
In the West, the response to this problem has been to encourage single parenthood to get highly-educated women to have both career and children. This one solution, said Mr Lee, though Singapore may not be ready for this.
