Ronald?Sanders

Lee Kuan-Yew, who led Sin­ga­pore for three decades, died on March 23. He was a re­mark­able man who is best re­mem­bered for coura­geous lead­er­ship that con­vert­ed a tiny is­land with vir­tu­al­ly no nat­ur­al re­sources in­to one of the wealth­i­est coun­tries in the world.

This com­men­tary re­calls a par­tic­u­lar role that he played on the Caribbean's be­half in the Com­mon­wealth, sav­ing the lead­ers of the East­ern Caribbean, Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica from dis­dain over their in­vi­ta­tion to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca to in­ter­vene in Grena­da in 1983.

But, first it has to be re­called that Lee Kuan-Yew com­mand­ed in­ter­na­tion­al re­spect, even en­vy for mak­ing tiny Sin­ga­pore an eco­nom­ic pow­er­house in glob­al terms. He tend­ed to tol­er­ate noth­ing that would like­ly dis­rupt the march to­ward progress of his tiny coun­try. Small states in the Caribbean and else­where are of­ten di­rect­ed to the "Sin­ga­pore mod­el" as a de­sign they should seek to em­u­late. That, how­ev­er, is eas­i­er said than done.

Nonethe­less, it is worth re­call­ing the in­gre­di­ents Lee utilised to de­vel­op his coun­try. A prin­ci­pal and over­rid­ing fac­tor was a dom­i­nant role for the state–some­thing which in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tors and West­ern de­vel­oped na­tions dis­cour­age in Caribbean coun­tries, in­deed, across the Third World.

Even while main­tain­ing a dom­i­nant role for the state, Lee ac­tive­ly en­cour­aged for­eign in­vest­ment, recog­nis­ing, in the be­gin­ning, that Sin­ga­pore lacked the cap­i­tal and knowhow to cre­ate in­dus­tries. That is not the sit­u­a­tion to­day, but it was his at­ti­tude to so­cial democ­ra­cy that im­proved, health, pub­lic hous­ing and, vi­tal­ly, ed­u­ca­tion.

The wages and salaries of pub­lic ser­vants to­day match equal­ly pay­ments in the pri­vate sec­tor, re­sult­ing in pub­lic ser­vants whose ca­pac­i­ty is every bit as good as the best in the pri­vate sec­tor.

Hav­ing reg­is­tered the ac­com­plish­ments of Lee Kuan-Yew in the de­vel­op­ment and pros­per­i­ty of his own coun­try and the re­spect it earned him in the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty, this com­men­tary records a cru­cial role he played at the 1983 Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing fol­low­ing the US-led in­ter­ven­tion in Grena­da.

I was priv­i­leged to be an An­tigua and Bar­bu­da del­e­gate to that con­fer­ence un­der the lead­er­ship of then For­eign Min­is­ter Lester Bird.

The tem­per of the meet­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly from the lead­ers of African States, was an­noy­ance with the coun­tries of the East­ern Caribbean, Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica that had par­tic­i­pat­ed with the US in in­ter­ven­ing in Grena­da af­ter the mil­i­tary coup that had over­thrown the gov­ern­ment, mur­der­ing its Prime Min­is­ter, Mau­rice Bish­op, and oth­er lead­ers.

Con­dem­na­to­ry state­ments were made by Pres­i­dents Robert Mu­gabe, Julius Nyrere and Ken­neth Kaun­da of Zim­bab­we, Tan­za­nia and Zam­bia re­spec­tive­ly. Their gov­ern­ments–and the ma­jor­i­ty of gov­ern­ments of Com­mon­wealth de­vel­op­ing coun­tries–had vot­ed just weeks be­fore at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly to con­demn the US-led in­ter­ven­tion.

The Africans vent­ed their dis­tress at Caribbean par­tic­i­pa­tion with the US. Julius Nyrere called on the Com­mon­wealth to ex­press its anger. And so it might have done were it not for Lee Kuan Yew.

He ex­plained that Sin­ga­pore had vot­ed at the UN against the US be­cause its in­ter­ven­tion in Grena­da had bro­ken a rule and break­ing that rule could have "hor­ren­dous con­se­quences." But, he said he had lis­tened to four Caribbean lead­ers who had spo­ken be­fore him ask­ing for un­der­stand­ing of their po­si­tion.

Those lead­ers were Lester Bird of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Kennedy Sim­monds of St Kitts-Nevis, Eu­ge­nia Charles of Do­mini­ca and JMG Tom Adams of Bar­ba­dos. Bird had said "when a regime mur­dered a prime min­is­ter and was ter­ror­is­ing its own peo­ple, the gov­ern­ments of neigh­bour­ing coun­tries with which there was an en­dur­ing re­la­tion­ship had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to act".

Lee Kuan-Yew told the con­fer­ence that de­spite his con­dem­na­tion of the US at the UN, which he would do again, "Com­mon­wealth lead­ers were pre­sent­ed with a para­dox".

He de­scribed the para­dox for his gov­ern­ment in the fol­low­ing way:

"Sin­ga­pore vot­ed against the Amer­i­can in­va­sion be­cause of the re­sult­ing dan­gers; it was nonethe­less grate­ful that it took place be­cause there were 110,000 hap­py Grena­di­ans." Each leader knew in his heart, he said, "that the East­ern Caribbean States' re­sponse was right."

He went on to ob­serve that "it would have been much more con­ve­nient" if the Caribbean coun­tries had the re­sources to in­ter­vene on their own. The mat­ter, he said, would not have been raised at the Com­mon­wealth Sum­mit "nor would their ac­tion have caused great ob­jec­tions in the Unit­ed Na­tions" which "would have seen it as an ex­am­ple of the Third World re­solv­ing its own prob­lems."

And he con­clud­ed that Com­mon­wealth lead­ers had not gath­ered "to put their part­ners from the East­ern Caribbean in the dock."

"It was nec­es­sary to con­demn the ac­tion in the Unit­ed Na­tions be­cause of the dan­ger­ous prece­dents it could cre­ate", but he want­ed the Meet­ing to turn away from re­crim­i­na­tion and to come out pos­i­tive­ly with a pro­pos­al to achieve se­cu­ri­ty for is­land states, and so make a con­tri­bu­tion "to in­ter­na­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty."

Not all of the Heads of Gov­ern­ment at the Com­mon­wealth Sum­mit would have wel­comed Lee Kuan-Yew's prac­ti­cal and prag­mat­ic in­ter­ven­tion, but they recog­nised the wis­dom in it.

Lee Kuan-Yew re­ceived a re­spect­ful and care­ful hear­ing to what was a thought­ful and defin­ing in­ter­ven­tion; one which Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, Shri­dath Ram­phal, de­vel­oped in­to a for­ward-look­ing state­ment from the Sum­mit that fo­cussed "on the ear­ly re­turn by Com­mon­wealth Caribbean coun­tries to the spir­it of fra­ter­ni­ty" and to the un­der­tak­ing of "a study of the spe­cial needs of small states con­so­nant with the right to sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty".

Sev­er­al pos­i­tive con­se­quences flowed from Lee Kuan-Yew's state­ment at the sum­mit, first it helped to bridge the di­vide that had oc­curred be­tween Com­mon­wealth Caribbean coun­tries that had par­tic­i­pat­ed with the US in the Grena­da in­ter­ven­tion and those who had op­posed; it led to the first de­fin­i­tive study on the chal­lenges con­fronting small states; and it con­firmed the val­ue of Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ings at­tend­ed by Heads them­selves.

Lee Kuan-Yew should be re­mem­bered in the Caribbean for the pos­i­tive and con­struc­tive role he played at the 1983 Sum­mit.

(Note: this com­men­tary is based on per­son­al notes and ma­te­r­i­al re­leased af­ter 30 years)

The writer is a se­nior fel­low at the In­sti­tute of Com­mon­wealth Stud­ies, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don.