Word: kuan
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...Singapore not only appears determined to carry out its caning sentence on American teenager Michael Fay, but is planning the same punishment for another youth. A second American, who was arrested for vandalism along with Fay, is still on trial. Singapore's Senior Minister and predominant political personality, Lee Kuan Yew, 70, recently addressed this and other issues of U.S. policy with managing editor James R. Gaines, chief of correspondents Joelle Attinger, Southeast Asia bureau chief William Dowell and senior correspondent Sandra Burton. Excerpts...
...with a sopping-wet bamboo staff? At what point does swift, sure punishment become torture? By what moral authority can America, with its high rates of lawlessness and license, preach to a safe society about human rights? Isn't the shipshape and affluent little city-state molded by Lee Kuan Yew a model of civic virtues...
This strict ethos of honesty comes straight from the country's remarkable founding leader, Lee Kuan Yew, now 69, who "believed anything venal had to be destroyed," says Bilveer Singh, a leading political scientist. "Lee basically weeded out corruption by giving it no excuse or legitimacy...
...Singapore be cloned? Not without a Lee Kuan Yew, say many citizens. Moreover, their city-state possesses special advantages: small size that makes control easy and infrastructure cheap, no job-seeking rural poor to overwhelm the city with slums, an ambitious immigrant population, a Confucian ethic stressing education and respect for authority, location on a major trade route in the heart of a dynamic region. The country's perpetual siege mentality -- it feels threatened by bigger neighbors and fears its own ethnic mix is volatile -- also encourages economic and political sacrifice...
Fukuyama asks "whether, in the long run, human beings are really made happy by the sacrifice of their individuality." Young and better-educated Singaporeans chafe at the petty restrictions and ruling-party patronizing. "Lee Kuan Yew thinks we are basically stupid," says law professor Walter Woon, a rare establishment critic...