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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, Number 5. 3rd April 1974

Intellectual wheelchair

Intellectual wheelchair

The book is certainly provocative to say the least. George's style is trenchant and he is not afraid to tread on corns. In a chapter titled 'Mould of Conformism' he skillfully builds a case deploring the intensive campaign of indoctrination initiated by the Government in an attempt to create a new kind of Singaporean who shares Lee's conviction that 'democracy is a dispensable virtue in a society which must put survival above everything else.' In keeping with this philosophy no doubt. Lee's favourite word when referring to Singaporean is characteristically 'digits'.

The result in the end has been, in the words of one journalist, the creation of a 'highly controlled situation. You can literally plug electroconvulsive waves to people's temples and get them to respond in a certain way by a few twists of the knobs. Every citizen is brought into a political address on an intellectual wheelchair.' Perhaps most frightening of all has been as George points out. Lee's claim for the need to expend the State's meagre resources on the needs preferably of the 'more than ordinarily endowed physically and mentally' in order to maintain and ensure Singapore's pre-eminent position in South East Asia. Inevitably, Lee was to state in Parliament that steps would have to be taken toward 'correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anaemic.'

The other chapters in the book titled 'From Athens to Israel' and 'Under the Banyan Tree' provide fascinating glimpses into the whole methodology of Lee's benevolent dictatorship and are of particular interest to page 15 anyone interested in appreciating the wholesome reality of Singapore today.

The importance of political biographies in the study of political situations cannot be over-emphasised and especially so in regard to the study of young independent nations. Such studies provide very valuable tools in attaining an understanding of political trends. In this respect, the last chapter is of particular interest.

George's own answers to the questions he put at the beginning of his book embody a very negative flavour. The picture he draws is an unduly pessimistic one. His main stress is that Singapore has to be seen in the perspective of fundamental human values and of South East Asian realities. In this respect, George concludes, Lee's record leaves much to be desired. 'Singapore' he notes, 'is led by a man whose subjective reactions are so forceful that he can turn a difference of opinion between nations which ought to be perfectly manageable into a potential war situation; who stifles the free exchange of ideas and the experimentation through which alone a society can improve its standing in the modern world; who casts a pall of conformity and caution over the lives of the people he controls.'

Lee's successes, George notes, are mostly municipal rather than of a kind to claim a considerable place in history whilst his failures are on a grander scale.'

It is not customary for a reviewer to shower unqualified encomiums on a piece of work in most cases. In this respect, I cannot but do so. George's book is a fascinating and highly readable piece of work, and in his pages, he brings out many different facets of a complex personality with superb skill.