ANU to honour Lee Kuan Yew

Sorry Hasdrubahl but RiotACT is only my second job. I’ll try and pay much better attention to my grammar in future posts. Of course we can’t all be elitist know-alls like you.

I have also spent time in Singapore and most people I know there remain very fond and supportive of Lee Kuan Yew. Check the voting results and you’ll see that the overwhelming majority of people vote for his party – and no gun is held against their head, unlike other so-called South-East Asian democracies.

Also, the majority of international students from Singapore who study in Australia return to Singapore, again, unlike many students from its nearby neighbours.

That’s why so many of them want to come here, bonfire.

-And accept our honorary doctorates.

yes the singaporeans would love to trade their quality of life for booming democracies such as vietnam, laos, cambodia etc.

…and despite the “puilled”, I’ve yet to hit the turps!

Methinks Kimba has puilled out the weekend turps a little on the early side, to judge by his/her post (and I’m not just talking about the crap use of grammar).

Having lived there, I am fully aware of the “reasons Lee had to rule with and iron fist” (sic). The material transformation of the place after independence was certainly remarkable. However, this came at the expense of a seriously flawed multiparty democratic system.

So, far from wanting to “prefer Singapore to be a democratic-basket case”, I would actually prefer that it is not!

Oh, and there’s no doubt that Lee was a brilliant lawyer in his youth, and a highly persuasive politician; but that doesn’t condone the way he went about flattening the opposition.

Not that malaysia is a bastion of human rights and democracy either.

yeah but you wouldn’t singa’s relationship with it’s major life source malaysia exactly one to write home about.

yep people forget the turmoil in which singapore was created. lky had a very tough job and certain compromises needed to be made. the fact that singapore is a modern, prosperous, democracy with strong ties to other regional democracies is directly related to the sweat put in by lky.

it could very easily have emerged as a crime ridden basket case.

I went to the Press Club a few years ago where Lee Kuan Yew was the special guest.

His speech was exhilarating and inspirational. Had people such as Hasdrubahl, Morgan Lee (I trust no relation) and NickD been at the talk they may have more of an appreciation of the reasons Lee had to rule with and iron fist. Of course people of this ilk (as Hasdrubahl, Morgan Lee and NickD) would must prefer Singapore to be a democratic-basket case, like most of South-East Asia, rather beging the success story of South-East Asia it is.

His speech was just after that punk-USA kid had vandalised some cars and was caned. Well did the liberal Australia press try to go to town on Lee but Lee ate them up and spat them out much to the delight of the guests (apart from media). Actually, the leftie media were horrified by the support for Lee.

mmmm, sounds like the ‘wrong people’ have been heeding the various govt. campaigns & financial incentives to get breeding, over there.

Apparently LKY has recently been advocating getting more migrants from mainland China. This is due to the Indians/Tamils/Malays etc breeding up and he wants to keep them as minorities…hehehe. I love it.

To be accurate, just like Zimbabwe, Sillypore is a one-party democracy.

The only difference is, the LKYs of this world use the courts, the Mugabes use thugs.

Also, it is incorrect to assert that Singers is “overwhelmingly heterogenous”. It is overwhelmingly homogenous, way over 80% of the population being Chinese.

NickD – that is not correct. there are multiple political parties in singapore.

Is there likely to be some form of protest at this great event?

At least here, it would be tolerated.

As an ANU graduate, this is embarrassing. Lee Kuan Yew ran a one-party state in which the opposition was ruthlessly supressed through the courts and nothing has changed since he handed power to his son. Imagine how much better the place would be going if there was some proper scrutiny of the Government?

i think that regional leaders can learn a lot from studying singapore.

its an overwhelming heterogenous nation surrounded by larger nations who try to bully it. most of this is countered by long term strategic plannign and quiet diplomacy.

LKY has tackled some big issues. ridding singapore of triad violence by setting the army on them. no one else (even us) has won that battle.

He also has a very sensible view on the vietnam war. while most people think it was a lost war, his view is that in fact it was a successful war. why ? because while vietnam was in turmoil, the us poured resources in which gave other regional nations time to counter their own communist insurgencies (thailand, indonesia, Malaysia) successfully. this means that thriving democracies now exist when there was a very real danger of the red dominos falling.

Well I’m sure you could transfer your PhD studies to NUS. Like most things in Sing., it is considered “Number 1”!

I think most law abiding, hard working people, would never notice the ‘repressive’ Singapore regime.

I’d love to spend a couple of years there.

One year was about as much as I could take, but stuck it out for over two…and still, I live!

I found Singapore a nice place to visit, but I couldn’t live there for more than a year or two. Sure, it’s a successful and relatively peaceful society – but that comes at the price of what feels to me like a disturbing culture of conformity and control. It’s a democracy sure, but not one with anything like the vibrancy of the USA, Australia, India…

So good luck to the Singaporeans and Lee Kuan Yew, but it’s not my cup of tea.

Incidentally putting Chavez in the same breath as Stalin is like lumping Yew in with Pinochet.

Would seem to sit well with ANU’s recent propensity to get things arse about, like making the age of a brain more critical to its (and its owner’s) continuing association with the uni than the value and import of that brain’s capacity to contribute…

That said, it is in the great how-hard liberal tradition to align oneself with the victors at the expense of decency and personal convictions.

I wonder who instigated the hon. degree process…

I wish I could get one….alas, I might as well buy one over the internet 🙂

For those of us who have PhDs (well I almost have mine) I feel that generally these things devalue the degree.

I can’t see the point in universities granting honorary degrees/doctorates to someone who hasn’t attended and achieved the required pass criteria after their years of attending courses. And that applies whether they’re a darling of the left (keating got one ffs) or lean to the right.

Is it done in an expectation of funding? Or a donation from the recipient?

Or is it an ego trip by someone in charge who wants to have a feather in his/her cap by being associated with awarding the gong?

This one seems to go against the usual leaning of academia, especially from the ANU.

Indeed.

It would have been better if he had been made ‘honorary’ Chief Minister. The ACT would be in great shape!

This is a grand award for a great leader. We could learn a lot from adopting the Singapore model in so many ways.

I suppose these snivelling academics wouldn’t be so up in arms if the award was going to Pol Pot, Stalin, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez or some other poster boy of the left.

It says Lee was already in receipt of an honorary Doctorate of Laws from Melbourne University in 1994, now one from ANU…how many does he need?

“do you not think that the award of this honorary degree to Lee Kuan Yew mocks the memory of Nguyen and the others who were hanged by the Singapore Government?”

Yes, that’s what awarding this honorary degree is about. Mocking convicted criminals. I’m sure Dr Hawke had exactly that in mind.

richly deserved award.

one of the regions greatest leaders.

For services to Human Rights??