LKY - why it's so hard to say goodbye

Since news of MM Lee Kuan Yew's worsening condition broke a few weeks ago, the nation has waited with growing dread. 

Why is this so? He's already 91 and has been frail for sometime. It's a ripe, old age, he's led a full life and he clearly misses his wife. He hasn't even been involved in politics for many years now, so his death will not impact Singapore in a big way. And yet, it somehow does.

A friend wrote on his FB: "More bummed out about ‪#‎LeeKuanYew‬ health than I realised. He looms larger in my psyche than I gave credit for." Why do we feel this way?

My parents and many of their time spoke of LKY with total deference. He created an economic miracle - this little red dot that was nothing, became a force to be reckoned with within one generation. He and his pioneering team achieved the impossible, armed with just extraordinary vision and sheer willpower.

My generation was less starry-eyed. After the 1980s, rumblings of discontent started. LKY was too controlling. Too hard-hearted. He ruled with an iron fist. Two main things I personally found disturbing about him: 1) He would mow down anyone who disagreed with him. It was terrifying, paralysing even. I suppose that was the effect he wanted and it worked. 2) He glorified himself at every opportunity (which he called Truths with a capital T) and saddled me with this debt of gratitude that he insisted I could never finish repaying in my lifetime. It was a Messiah complex that didn't sit well with me.

I know I wasn't the only one. However, back then, even mentioning any unhappiness with the Man (and the Party) was taboo. So people kept their grumblings to themselves. But then, the Internet age came about. Gradually, people realised that they could get away with saying anything (almost) without fear of the ISD knocking on their doors at midnight and ferrying them all away. Suddenly, all the pent-up frustrations burst forth like a dam. The sheen of LKY started to look a lot less shiny as people focused on his flaws. In a sense, it's like a teenager who has been made to obey instructions all his life, and facing freedom, decides to release all his resentment against his parents, his teachers, all authority.

But if we are to be honest with ourselves, we should know that in the midst of poking and picking at what the Man did wrong, they do not discount what he did right. And what he did right looms infinitely larger. Some may say, but he did it all for power! I say, sure, maybe part of it was, but if you examine closely all the work that he did, hours that he poured into working the ground, it cannot be the only, even the primary reason. If he simply wanted power and money, there were much easier ways to achieve those.

And there are those who would curse him now because they say he has ruined many lives. I don't believe for a moment that these people truly care about the so-called ruined lives. (It always strikes me as ironic - those with vested interests accusing others of having vested interests). It's the need to blame someone for your discontentment and what better way to do so than create shock value and rally other petty minions. If you would curse someone you barely know so easily, it reflects on your lack of humanity, not his (and such people seldom care for others so much as they care about themselves). You can disagree and still be respectful. So grow up already.

No matter how much I disliked LKY's style, I cannot deny that he has done more for this country than I could ever envision, even in my wildest dreams. Here is a man who transformed a tiny nation in all aspects - a peaceful city with many trees and green spots, where most Singaporeans own a home, where public services work efficiently, where corruption is an anomaly, and so on and so forth. The achievements in each of these areas are so massive and ahead of their time that sometimes, I think they have set an impossible standard in the minds of Singaporeans, so that we have come to expect perfection in everything and each mistake or breakdown becomes magnified a thousand times.

Perhaps we have always known this but it hasn't taken centrestage in our minds because it's always easier to focus on what's troubling us now. It took LKY at his deathbed for the spotlight to readjust itself and for us to finally come to terms with the enormity of the man and his legacy.

LKY is the ultimate patriarch of a slightly dysfunctional family, sometimes implosively so. In a nation where we are often accused of being identity-less, he's the figure that binds us in our past into our present. That's why letting him go is harder than we thought it might be because it's almost like giving up a little part of who we are.

And so I acknowledge that I need to put my adolescent days behind me and release this security blanket. Like Bertha Hanson who wrote so eloquently in this piece, I wish him a good death. As for the rest of us, it's time to let go. Thank you, LKY, for all you've done.