When Singapore was separated from Malaysia, the public mood was in its all time low. For years, many Singaporean had longed for a merger with Malaysia. They believed that it was the pathway towards national utopia, and in 9th of August 1965, the dream for a developed Singaporean city was vanished. Lee was anguished by the news too. But one has no time to weep. Lee, adamant in realizing his dreams of a socially democratic Asian country, set his team to work.
Taking stock of the situation, he found that in the grand scale, there were only two challenges that hindered his goal: one is developing a country of slums to a modern nation; the other is his political enemies who want to sabotage his goal.
Let’s focus on the second challenge. Thankfully, Lee had done some groundwork when his party took power since 1959. Since Lee Kuan Yew became Prime Minister, his government began to deregister (apparently) communist-infested trade unions led by the opposition party Barisan Sosialis, and carried on rounding up communist leaders without trial. To quell the trade unions, Lee co-opted the lower-class workers into the government’s own trade union organization (NTUC). When Lee promise to merge with Malaya succeeded in 1963, he took the advantage of the people’s approval of his party and called for a snap election. Unsurprisingly, his party ended up winning the election. And without skipping a beat, Lee locked up his opposition leaders. He later deregistered even more trade unions, and close down media outlets that are critical of government decisions. The opposition party – Barisan Sosialis – alternatively created community centers, daycare centers, kindergartens, and “youth study groups” to rebuild its base. Lee’s PAP riposted by creating more social and community centers and organizations.
After the Separation, Lee get into the business to weed out all political opposition and social organizations that are against his government. Dissidents from the press were strangled using heavy regulations (In 1974, the government passed a law that allows the government to own “management shares” on newspaper companies. While it only comprised of 1% of the shares, the shares had 200 times stronger voting power). Malay and rural based organizations were abolished or incorporated into the government administration to silence the Malay protesters in Singapore.
These suppressive decisions would stoke outrage internationally today, but why it didn’t occur then? Some believed that the public recognized Singapore to be a vulnerable nation and some voices must be silenced to keep a fragile nation alive. For instance, to attract Foreign Direct Investments from the West, the state clamped down profit sucking communists and trade unionists. They also chose to retain colonial statues to gesture their friendliness to western investment, driving nationalists and communists up the wall (This makes Singapore the few countries to glorify their colonial leaders). In other words, the government was on the “politics of survival”, which means that to guarantee collective flourishing, people must be sacrificial, discipled, hardworking. Unpopular national policies must be tolerated, individual freedoms must be shrunk to create a better country in the long run. However, one can also say that the backlash didn’t happened because people don’t want to end up in jail for speaking up. They didn’t want to end up just like the communists and dissidents they saw in the news. Also, Singapore got lucky from a global standpoint. The Cold War United States, seeing Singapore capturing “communists”, didn’t bother to intervene Singapore’s questionable anti-liberal policies and human rights violations.
After a barrage of clamp downs and co-optations, Lee’s government finally gained monopoly in Singapore politics in 1968 when their only opposition – Barisan Sosialis -boycotted the elections. Since then, Lee’s party took absolute control of all the parliamentary seats for nearly 20 years. With a firm grip on the country’s fate, challenge two was completely overcame.
With challenge two overcame, tackling challenge one – the true business of national building itself – is much less difficult. Before that, the government had to use limited state-owned land or hunt for new lands to kick off urban development projects. While doing so, the government agencies had to appeal to the desires and objections of community groups while developing the island for fear of losing votes on the next election. For example, the Housing Development Board (HDB), established in 1960 to resettle slum dwellers and homeless people in the downtown to the surrounding suburbs, was struggling to find land for its housing projects. Besides smaller plots here and there, the housing projects were ongoing on a military camp (Queenstown) and a sacrificed fertile land in Singapore (Toa Payoh)[4]. When a fire broke out next door in Bukit Ho Swee, the board pounced to acquire the land for development. When HDB tried to level the Kallang Basin to build factory spaces, the Barisan Socialis and the Rural Dwellers Organization joined hands to stop development work.
Now, divested of a higher authority, Lee’s government enlarged its executive powers to speed up urban renewal and development. The most notorious legalization passed in this period was the Land Acquisitions Act 1966, which empowers the state to acquire land forcefully with a low price for any public purpose. This allowed the state to gobble up mini plots of farm and squatter land, merge them and repackage it for the state’s public housing programmes, low-rise factory development or to be leased (not sold) for private commercial developers. This effectively strips property rights of its citizens. By 2024, 90% of land is owned by the state.
The Land Acquisition Act was a microcosm of Lee’s government that leveraged sweeping executive powers to enact change in every aspect of the country. Tentacles of the state penetrated into healthcare, public housing, pension schemes, marriage and childbearing policies, racial and language laws. For instance, Singaporeans were forced to learn and converse in English – radical move coming from a country that speaks in their native tongue like Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. The law also covered on minute aspect of people’s lives such as prohibition of spitting, littering, smoking in public, tree planting and selling chewing gums. Transgressors will be severely punished for their failure to obey the law. In a one-party government in a country so small like Singapore, there is no way to hide.
This power was wielded by experts to guarantee delivery of the state promises. Since 1965, the state consulted international bodies for technical advice. Lee approached seasoned United Nations experts for opinions on economic development, rejuvenation of the downtown slums and redrawing the map of Singapore’s land use. Lee also headhunted for the brightest professionals to learn from them and run the country. Bright graduates overseas such as the architect-planner Liu Thai Ker were recruited to design public housing estates and structure of Singapore urban management. Alan Choe was picked to collaborate with UN professionals to develop the Concept Plan published in 1971, a long-term plan for the use of the country’s scarce land resources.
Along the way, clean from the noise of opposition parties or independent social organizations, government boards matured and cooperation between them strengthened. Departments were created, abolished, merged to streamline the process of developing the city-state. As a result, Lee’s administration, grew more effective in providing quick and quality results in the economy and social welfare for the citizen. One election after another, the hands of the state seep deeper into the nook and cranny of on the land of Singapore and lives of Singaporeans. This gave the state the ability to micro-manage every aspect of the country.
After decades, this brutally top-down, technocratic political structure guided the miracles of Singapore’s rise from a underdeveloped squatter to a developed world-class city. Crime-ridden to crimeless, dirty to immaculate, poor to rich, homeless to housed. Singapore became a well-planned city equipped to comprehensive infrastructure, top-notch transport systems, and a sophisticated, world-class economy. Still, the state seeks to renew its urban planning practices, experimenting on new architectural styles and tinkering on digital urban solutions to meet the higher expectations of Singaporeans, while keeping up with global trends on sustainability and digitization. All these were founded on the man who understood power, skilled in gaining them, and wise to use power for the benefit for the people.
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Randolph Yew 
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