Article

The Lees of Singapore:

A quality brand

South East Asia Research

2016, Vol. 24(3) 341354
SOAS 2016
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/0967828X16659727
sear.sagepub.com

Michael D Barr
School of History and International Relations, Flinders University, Australia

Abstract
It is no secret that a dynasty has emerged as the ruling force in Singapore. The Lee family (of former
Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong) is referred to as the
first family as a matter of routine in private conversation, though not usually in public. Power has
already passed from father to son and now there is a generation of high-flying grandsons in the
wings. This article traces the establishment and consolidation of the Lee dynasty from the point in
the early 1980s when Lee Kuan Yew emerged as the centre of all the significant power networks in
Singapore, through to the consolidation of power in the hands of his son, Lee Hsien Loong, in 2011.
In the process of doing this, it argues that despite official rhetoric that says that the country runs on
the talent of the best and most talented men and women in the country, and the closely related
myth that professionalism provides the basis of governance, the reality is that of rule by a familybased clique of confidantes and relatives. There is a strong element of reality to both myths, but
both elements are ultimately subordinated to and in the service of the forces of consanguineous
and personal networks.
Keywords
Lee Hsien Loong, Lee Kuan Yew, nation branding, political dynasties, Singapore
It is no secret that a dynasty has emerged as the ruling force in Singapore. The Lee family (of
former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong) is referred to
as the first family as a matter of routine in private conversation, though not usually in public.
Power has already passed from father to son and now there is a generation of high-flying grandsons
in the wings. The Lee family has become a brand and has been effectively identified as such by the
founder and patriarch who, towards the end of his life, expressed mock concern that his grandchildren might degrade the Lee name if they were to go into politics and not be good enough.1
1. Lee Kuan Yew in Han FK, Ibrahim Z, Chua MH et al. (2011) Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep
Singapore Going. Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings, p. 399.
Corresponding author:
Michael D Barr, School of History and International Relations, Flinders University, Adelaide, GPO Box 2100,
Adelaide 5001, South Australia, Australia.
Email: michael.barr@flinders.edu.au

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This article explores the process by which the Lee dynasty has established itself as a multigenerational project, and how the Lee brand has become close to interchangeable with what
Koh Buck Song has identified as brand Singapore.2 Brand Singapore embodies, in the words of
Lee Hsien Loong, something exceptional:3 extraordinary levels of professionalism, seamless
planning and service delivery and incorruptibility.4 The article then considers how the dynasty has
defended its position against the only serious challenge it has faced to date, and concludes with
some thoughts on its future, now that the first generational change has been definitively settled
with the death of the patriarch. The article argues that the essential characteristic of the Lee brand
is its deliberate conflation of a personality cult into a national ideology and an imprecise but very
powerful image of a Singapore model of national governance;5 a family brand that has subsequently built, sustained and at least for the time being overwhelmed the Singapore brand. The
combined political events of 2015 the death and mourning of Lee Kuan Yew in March, the SG50
celebrations in August and the General Elections in September have confirmed the ongoing
durability and utility of the Lee brand.
The establishment of another dynasty in South East Asia is hardly remarkable in itself but this
one is singular in part because it is the only dynasty in this Special Issue to exercise absolute
hegemonic control over an entire country albeit a very small one. Yet it also has other points of
distinction. Despite the fact that it is blatantly a multi-generational dynasty run along patriarchal
lines familiar to many traditional societies, the members of this one threaten to sue anyone who
alludes to this feature directly and publicly because the national ideology is built on a myth of
meritocracy. This mythology is incompatible with the dynastic inheritance of power6 but it is
nevertheless the basis of the Lee familys legitimation.7 In a real and practical sense, a challenge to
the Lee brand is an existential challenge to the Singapore brand, which puts the Lee dynasty at the

2. Koh BS (2011) Brand Singapore: How Nation Branding Built Asias Leading Global City. Singapore:
Marshall Cavendish.
3. Today (2013) Singapore in big trouble if we are not exceptional. 6 July.
4. The details of brand Singapore are spelt out in many places in varying levels of detail and enthusiasm,
but one of the simpler expressions appears in Kishore Mahbubanis official welcome message to the Lee
Kuan Yew School of Public Policy: Finally, the world has come to recognise that Singapore provides
one of the best public policy laboratories in the world. Many independent international surveys confirm
that several of Singapores public policies are among the best-performing in the world. Available at:
http://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/about-us/deans-welcome/ (accessed 9 April 2014).
5. For indications of the strength of the Singapore model and evidence of overt exercises in proselytising
the model, see the website of the Singapore Cooperation Programme at www.scp.gov.sg/ (accessed 3
April 2014), which gives details of Singapore-sponsored professional training institutes in Cambodia,
Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam; and the website of Singapores Civil Service College International at
www.cscollege.gov.sg/ (accessed 3 April 2014) for reports of long-standing and on-going efforts to teach
the Singapore model to administrators in the PRC. Also see Ortmann S (2012) The Beijing Consensus
and the Singapore model: Unmasking the myth of an alternative authoritarian state-capitalist model.
Journal of Chinese Business and Economic Studies 10(4): 337359; and Ortmann S and Thompson MR
(2014) Chinas obsession with Singapore: Learning authoritarian modernity. The Pacific Review. Epub
ahead of print, 30 April.
6. Lee Hsien Loongs interview broadcast on 14 April 2010 posted on the Charlie Rose website. Available
at: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10963#frame_top (accessed 15 February 2011). Also see
Pach J (2015) Singapore: The Lees and the rise of Singapore. The Diplomat, 13 December.
7. Han et al. (2011: 429).

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centre of Singapore national identity and its international image. This reality has been given
official recognition by the March 2016 decision to issue guidelines governing the use of Lee Kuan
Yews name and image, and explicitly permitting their use for purposes of identifying with the
nation.8 By way of illustration, this article explores the dynastys response to the most recent
challenge to these myths the public revelation in 2008 that Lee Kuan Yew gave Lee Hsien Loong
extraordinary and privileged treatment to facilitate an optimal transition from school into his
university studies and his Army career.
The existence of a Lee brand is indisputable and some of its elements are outlined below yet
despite being trumpeted, the patriarch and many of his admirers not only deny that there is a
dynasty,9 but even that he has built himself a cult of personality.10 At one level the hypocrisy is
unremarkable, but the particularly intimate relationship between the Lee dynasty and the Lee
brand11 is unusual even more so when one considers the relationship between the dynastic brand
and the national brand that has a level of symbiosis the likes of which Sukarno must have dreamt,
but could never achieve.

Dynasty as reality
Singapore runs on the myth of the meritocracy: the most talented rise to the top. It just so happens
that a disproportionate amount of talent seems to run through Lee Kuan Yews extended family.
This, at least, is the official explanation to account for inconvenient facts about the concentration of
positions of power in the hands of the Lee family. I refer to the fact that until May 2011, there were
two members of the Lee family in the Prime Ministers Office (then Minister Mentor Lee Kuan
Yew and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong) and both the countrys sovereign wealth funds the
Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) and Temasek Holdings were helmed
and run by members of the Lee family. Up until 2011 the GIC had been chaired by Lee Kuan Yew
with Lee Hsien Loong as Deputy Chairman (now Lee Hsien Loong is Chairman and Lee Kuan
Yew until his death was a Senior Advisor), and to this day Temasek Holdings Executive
Director and CEO is Lee Hsien Loongs wife, Ho Ching, while Lee Hsien Loongs cousin, Kwa
Chong Seng, only stepped down as Deputy Chairman in November 2013. Lee Kuan Yews other
son, Lee Hsien Yang, persistently refused to enter politics, or even to sustain a career in the
mainstream civil service or the Singapore Armed Forces. If he had entered the civil service or
stayed in the Army we have Lee Kuan Yews candid assurance that he would have risen to be the
head of whichever institution he chose to favour.12 Instead he went into the Lee dynastys version

8. Channel NewsAsia (2016) Guidelines issued on use of name and image of Lee Kuan Yew. 16 March.
9. Han et al. (2011: 428, 429).
10. See Han et al. (2011: 352, 253); Banyan (2013) Singapores elder statesman: Whats the big idea? The
Economist, 17 September; Francesch-Huidobro M (2008) Governance, Politics and the Environment: A
Singapore Study. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, p. 4.
11. Hong L and Huang J (2008) The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and its Pasts. Singapore:
National University of Singapore Press, pp. 32, 33; Lam PE and Tan KYL (1999) Introduction. In: Lam
PE and Tan KYL (eds) Lees Lieutenants: Singapores Old Guard. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, pp. ix
xxi; Barr MD (2008) No island is a man: The enigma of Lee Kuan Yews legacy. Harvard Asia Quarterly
IX: 23, 45, 46.
12. Han et al. (2011: 126, 415).

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of the commercial sector: flitting from one government-linked company to another, routinely
earning seven-figure incomes.
He was Chief Executive Officer of Singtel for 11 years before moving to the drinks company
Fraser and Neave, immediately after Temasek Holdings took a major share in the company.13
Upon Temasek selling out of Fraser and Neave, Lee Hsien Yang lost his position on that board, but
was subsequently appointed to the board of Rolls-Royce. Rolls-Royce is not, of course, a
government-linked company, but it is one of the major suppliers to the Singapore Air Force and it
has made Singapore its base in Asia, so it needs to maintain close relations with the Lee government.14 During his post-Singtel career Lee Hsien Yang has also been doubling as head of the
Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (appointed in 2009) as part of his fathers push to revamp
the aviation sector.15 Various uncles, nephews, cousins and in-laws also hold other significant
positions in a clutch of GLCs, in academia, in regulatory boards and statutory boards.16
This is not a complete description of the family connections, but it is sufficient to confirm the
centrality of the Lee family in the corridors of power and to alert the reader to keep an eye on the
grandchildren: most notably Lee Hsien Loongs son, Li Hongyi, who has made his mark in the
Army by publicly criticising his superior officer to the Minister for Defence and to several hundred
other people via a group email, for which he earned no more than a reprimand;17 and Lee Hsien
Yangs son, Li Shengwu, who has been a star performer at Oxford University through his primary
and post-graduate studies.18

The Lee brand; brand Singapore

The story of Lee Kuan Yews successful campaign to place himself at the centre of Singapores
history and make himself the ideal Singaporean was a project of relatively recent vintage. Early
efforts at hagiography, such as Alex Joseys volumes on Lee from the 1960s and 1970s,19 were not
part of a concerted campaign. Indeed when pro-government authors writing as late as the 1980s
were looking for a focus for their praise, Lee was a principal figure, but they generally wrote stories
13. Money and Investing (2008) Ins and outs at F&N: A crusty conglomerate in Singapore could see its new
boss take to drinks. 15 September.
14. Rolls-Royce website, available at: www.rolls-royce.com/singapore/sg/about/singapore/ and www.rollsroyce.com/news/press_releases/2013/08112013_non-executive_director.jsp/ (accessed 15 November
2013).
15. Today (2008) A split for the better? Lee Hsien Yang to head new regulator, Liew Mun Leong to chair
airport company. 8 October.
16. See an outline of Lee family placements as they stood in 2002 in Tan Boon Sengs report, Why it might
be difficult for the government to withdraw from business. Available at: http://www.singapore-win
dow.org/sw02/020210gl.htm (accessed 9 April 2014). For a more up-to-date and more wide-ranging
survey of family connections in Singapore including but not restricted to the Lee family see Jess
Scotts 96-page report at https://jesscscott.wordpress.com/ (accessed 14 March 2016).
17. The Star (2007) Reprimanded . . . but admired. Prime Ministers son gains accolades from a generally
anti-government internet. 21 June. Also see Han et al. (2011: 399).
18. The Sunday Times (2009) 3 Sporeans top at Oxford. 15 August; and The Online Citizen (2010) Li
Shengwus finale speech at World Universities Debating Championship. 6 January. Available at: http://
theonlinecitizen.com/2010/01/li-shengwus-finale-speech-at-world/ (accessed 11 December 2012).
19. See, for example, Josey A (1968) Lee Kuan Yew: The Crucial Years. Singapore: Times Books
International.

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of collective achievement and heroism rather than ones of the rise of the super-man.20 This situation changed dramatically during the 1990s as a new founding mythology of Singapore called
The Singapore Story was created around the person of Lee Kuan Yew by the Ministry of
Information and the Arts (MITA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education (MOE).21 Not
coincidentally, this project foreshadowed the release of Lee Kuan Yews memoirs, which were
also called The Singapore Story.22
Since this high-profile beginning, the official focus on Lee personally has been so obsequious
that one wonders that the beneficiary did not cringe, at least a little. Singapore now boasts of a Lee
Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, a Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities, a Lee Kuan Yew
Endowment Fund and a Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism. Arms of government have offered
so many awards named after Lee that one suspects that they might have been struggling to find
variations on the theme. There is, for instance, a Lee Kuan Yew Scholarship (Public Service
Commission), a Lee Kuan Yew Gold Medal (Nanyang Technological University), a Lee Kuan
Yew Award (Temasek Polytechnic), a Lee Kuan Yew Step Award (Singapore Institute of
Technology), a Lee Kuan Yew Distinguished Visitors Programme (Lee Kuan Yew Endowment
Fund), a Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize (Urban Redevelopment Authority), a Lee Kuan Yew
Global Business Plan Competition (Singapore Management University) and a Lee Kuan Yew
Water Prize (Temasek Holdings via the Singapore Millennium Foundation). Beyond such conventional laurels, there is a small assortment of international points of recognition: a Lee Kuan
Yew Fellows Program that funds students from all parts of Asia to study at Harvard Universitys
Kennedy School of Government; Lee Kuan Yew Chair in Southeast Asian Studies at the Brookings
Institution (which receives financial support from Temasek Holdings and engages in joint projects
with the National University of Singapore); a Lee Kuan Yew Scholarship at the University of
Birmingham (which has several partnership agreements with Singapore educational institutions)
and; a Lee Kuan Yew Conference Room in the International Institute of Strategic Studies Arundel
House in London. The rather immodest title of Lees book Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Masters
Insights on China, the United States and the World23 should not raise an eyebrow, but news of a
video-song on YouTube and a musical and a movie dedicated to Lee show that his fans are still
capable of surprising us.24
20. See, for example, Drysdale J (1984) Singapore: Struggle for Success. Singapore: Times Editions; and
Bloodworth D (1986) The Tiger and the Trojan Horse. Singapore: Times Editions.
21. Ministry of Information and the Arts (1999) The Singapore Story: Overcoming the Odds. An Interactive
Media CD-ROM, a National Education Project by the Ministry of Information and the Arts. This CDROM has been widely distributed to school children as part of a package entitled The Singapore Story:
A Choice Collection.
22. Lee KY (1998) The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore: Prentice Hall; and Lee KY
(2000) From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 19652000: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew.
Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings and Times Media.
23. Lee KY (2013) Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Masters Insights on China, the United States and the World:
Interviews and Selections by Graham Allison and Robert D. Blackwill with Ali Wyne. Cambridge, MA
and London: The MIT Press.
24. Chin D (n.d.) You first believed. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8fujcZ85vLwXm
nOOcegsFg/ (accessed 3 April 2014);Tan C (2014) Two musicals on Lee Kuan Yew next year. The Star
Online, 7 February. Available at: http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Entertainment/Arts/On-Stage/
2014/02/07/Two-musicals-on-Lee-Kuan-Yew-next-year/ (accessed 3 April 2014); Today Online (2015)
Theatre review: The LKY musical. 25 July. Available at: http://www.todayonline.com/print/1401796

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Despite Lees protestations to the contrary, this litany leaves it beyond doubt that he was
happily cultivating a cult of personality. Furthermore, even a passing inspection of the tone and
content of the accolades makes it clear that there is little, if any, distinction between a tribute given
to Lee personally and one to Singapore an outcome that was consciously encouraged by his
decision to subtitle his personal memoirs the Singapore Story. It is in the voluminous collections
of tributes by world figures to Lee personally in his various books that the blurring of the lines
between Lee and the nation he ruled is at its most overt. This leads to my suggestion that the Lee
brand and the Singapore brand are or at least have been to date linked inextricably.

The Lee Hsien Loong story

Yet for all the evidence of a cult of personality centred on Lee Kuan Yew, without at least one
succession to the next generation we could not speak of a dynasty as such. Hence it is necessary
that we move on to a consideration of Lee Hsien Loong. The details of Lees succession began
emerging in 2006 with my research on the extraordinary steps that were taken to position Lee
Hsien Loong as an inevitable candidate for prime minister.25 Lee Kuan Yew publicly satisfied
himself that this task was accomplished, having asked in his 2011 book, Hard Truths, Look,
who could better him mentally, in political experience, in linguistic abilities? Nobody.26 The
succession is a sensitive point because it goes to the heart of the linkage between brand Lee and
brand Singapore. While Lee Kuan Yew was alive it was intolerable for either Lee to hear the
suggestion that Lee Kuan Yew engineered the rise of his son to the prime ministership because
both the Lee brand and the Singapore brand rest secure only while it is presumed that he rose
entirely on his own merits in a political system that is entirely merit-based. Both brands are at
risk if the idea takes hold in the public space that Lee Hsien Loong rose because he is his
fathers son. Lee Hsien Loongs pugnacious defence of this principle on American television in
2010 outlines both the family and the national myth and demonstrates the seriousness with
which the fiction is maintained:
The whole of our system is founded on a basic concept of meritocracy. . . . And if anybody doubts that I
as prime minister am here not because I am the best man for the job but because my father fixed it or my
wife runs Temasek because I put her there and not because shes the best woman for the job, then my
entire credibility and moral authority is destroyed. . . . So if theres any doubt that this is so, and people
believe that Im there because my father fixed it or the whole system is just make-believe, then the
system will come down.27

(accessed 14 March 2016); The Straits Times Online (2015) Watch Lim Kay Tong play Lee Kuan Yew in
the upcoming movie 1965. 17 February. Available at: http://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/entertain
ment/watch-lim-kay-tong-play-lee-kuan-yew-in-the-upcoming-movie-1965 (accessed 14 March 2016).
25. Barr MD (2006) Beyond technocracy: The culture of elite governance in Lee Hsien Loongs Singapore.
Asian Studies Review 30(1): 1114.
26. Han et al. (2011: 429).
27. Charlie Rose website (n.d.) Interview with Lee Hsien Loong. Available at: http://www.charlierose.com/
view/interview/10963#frame_top (accessed 3 April 2014). Lee Hsien Loongs sensitivity on this issue
can also be seen in his interview on the Chicago Tonight programme on WTTW, 16 April 2010.
Available at: http://www.pmo.gov.sg/content/pmosite/printerfriendly.html (accessed 6 April 2014).

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His father also did his best to maintain the fiction, but despite how much is at stake he
sometimes let slip the dynastys vulnerability. In the 2011 defence of his son in Hard Truths,
cited above, he conflated a hypothetical accusation of nepotism into an overblown hypothetical
accusation that his son is incompetent, and then defended his son against the more extreme charge:
You prove it that Loong is not fit to be there and that hes there because I engineered it.28 I am
not aware of anyone who has suggested that Lee Hsien Loong is anything less than a competent
administrator. A more pertinent question is implicit in the second part of Lees sentence: would he
be prime minister without his father having paved the way from childhood? And indeed just a few
lines below Lees defence of his son, he conceded that he gave him a language education specifically, if not exclusively, to prepare him for the prime ministership. [I did not give only Loong the
languages to prepare him for this job. I gave them to all my three children . . . .].29
Without revisiting material that has already been well aired, an outline of the case for the
privileging of Lee Hsien Loong can be put in a few paragraphs. From the age of three, Lee Kuan
Yew and his wife set out to equip each of their children with the languages that would enable them
to rule and/or thrive in the Singapore he envisioned for the future30 (though admittedly at a time
when he could not have been confident of being able to deliver on his vision). In the case of Lee
Hsien Loong his father went further and insisted that he also learn Malay in the Jawi (Arabic) script
and Russian in the mistaken expectation that it would be a language of the future in Asia.31
The developments that took place at the end of Lee Hsien Loongs schooling are of particular
interest and they centre on the odd fact that he did his Higher School Certificate (HSC) in both
1969 (at Catholic High School) and 1970 (at National Junior College NJC).32 (NJC was the first
of a new model of well-endowed pre-university junior colleges. It opened in 1970, just in time for
Lee Hsien Loong to be in the first intake). He took this path despite the fact that he had already won
a Presidents Scholarship on the strength of his 1969 results.33 He then delayed his tertiary studies
yet again so that he could begin his three years National Service in the Army (despite having the
option of deferring National Service). Doing his National Service made him eligible to apply for
the inaugural round of the Singapore Armed Forces Overseas Merit Scholarship (SAFOS), and he
was one of the five winners in 1971. This launched him on his Army career (and ultimately his
political career). He returned to Singapore and completed his National Service obligations just as
his father was introducing an advanced scholarship programme for SAF officers and returned
scholars Project Wrangler34 and he was off to Cambridge again for further study. Upon his
return he was fast-tracked through the officer corps of the Army, finishing as Brigadier-General
before entering politics in 1984.

28. Han et al. (2011: 429).

29. Han et al. (2011: 429).
30. Lee HL (2012) My language journey. In: Chua LH (ed.) Lee Kuan Yew, My Lifelong Challenge: Singapores Bilingual Journey. Singapore: Straits Times Press, pp. 234236, 241.
31. Lee (2012: 241244).
32. Barr MD (2014a) The Ruling Elite of Singapore: Networks of Power and Influence. London: I.B. Tauris,
p. 44.
33. The Sunday Times (1970) PSC chooses eight new Presidents Scholars. 31 May; The Straits Times (1970)
Presidents Scholar Lee to do national service stint first. 1 June.
34. Worthington R (2003) Governance in Singapore. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, p. 260, note
136.

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We can safely say that Lee Hsien Loong did rather well out of his decision to repeat his HSC and
then not to defer his National Service, but we are asked to believe that he received no privileged
treatment due to his fathers position as prime minister in the process. We will consider more
recent aspects of his career later in this article, but for the moment I would like to focus on his
transition from school to the military.

Coming of age at the Lees

At this point the list of coincidences that the official scenario asks us to accept stretches credulity
beyond breaking point. Lee Hsien Loong seems to be particularly sensitive on the matter of his
matriculation a sensitivity borne of the tension between the reality of dynastic privilege and the
meritocratic myth at the heart of both the family brand and brand Singapore. Much of the significance of this episode for the purposes of this article is not so much in the fact of the privileged
pathway that was laid out for Lee Hsien Loong (which is not remarkable in itself), but the hitherto
success in burying the embarrassing details, and the reluctance to publicly acknowledge the
favouritism. Remarkably, despite the fact that it was publicly known and officially acknowledged
that Lee attended both Catholic High School and National Junior College, it is apparent from my
interviews with opposition politicians in January 2011 that it was not generally known either that
Lee had extended his schooling by a year or repeated his HSC and the revelation came as a shock.
The occlusion of this part of his life is all the more remarkable since it is a family trait, begun by
Lee Kuan Yew and perpetuated by Lee Hsien Loong, to routinely draw upon folksy accounts of
family history and experiences to illustrate and even determine policy. Indeed Lee Kuan Yews
decision to send his sons to Catholic High School, a Chinese-medium school, has featured large in
his public discourses about the importance of mother-tongue education.35 Yet it was only very
recently in 2012 that Lee Hsien Loong acknowledged that he had repeated his HSC, and it is
doubtful if even this statement would have been forthcoming if the story had not entered the public
domain in 2008 when it was published in an academic book that was readily available in Singapore.36 Until then the fragmented account of the episode was lying unread and unknown in the
microfilmed archives of The Straits Times newspaper, and usually obscured in his curriculum vitae
by a generic reference to having completed his schooling in Singapore37 or having been educated
at both Catholic High School and National Junior College, but never with a mention of having sat
for the HSC in both schools. Only rarely is there an acknowledgement of the exact years in which
he attended the two institutions, or the presentation of the level of detail that shows in one place
that he received matriculation-level scholarships in different years.38 On his Facebook page Lee

35. Barr (2014a: 91).

36. Barr MD and Skrbis Z (2008) Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation-Building
Project. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.
37. See, for example, his official curriculum vitae on the Singapore Cabinet webpage, both in 2007 and 2014,
available at http://www.cabinet.gov.sg/CabinetAppointments/MrLeeHsienLoong.htm (accessed
25 November 2010), and http://www.cabinet.gov.sg/content/cabinet/appointments/mr_lee_hsien_
loong.html (accessed 27 March 2014).
38. See Lees official biodata, available at: http://www.cabinet.gov.sg/content/cabinet/appointments/
mr_lee_hsien_loong/biodata.html, as updated 1 July 2011 (accessed 27 March 2014).

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Hsien Loong has obscured the details of his education to the point where it is implied that he was
attending Catholic High School and National Junior College at the same time.39
The reason for the reticence about repeating the HSC is surely not that anyone might think Lee
Hsien Loong is dumb. That would be an absurd suggestion that could be laughed off without a
second thought. No, the reason is clearly that it exposes the chronology outlined above, which in
turn raises serious questions about privilege and special treatment. Lee Hsien Loongs only public
account of the end of his schooling appeared appropriately as a contributed chapter in one of his
fathers books.40 In the spirit of fair dealing, I repeat his account, almost in full:
After graduating from Catholic High School, I spent an extra year at National Junior College redoing
the HSC in the English stream. It was partly to do new subjects which might prove useful later,
particularly Economics. But the main reason was because I was a year younger than my cohort, having
entered primary school a year early, and so was still too young to be called up for National Service.
After the extra year, I could do National Service and then go to university. I needed to do it in this
sequence because National Service was then still new. If I had gone to university first there would have
been some doubt whether I intended to serve. But this way showed quite clearly that National Service
applied to everyone, and nobody was exempt, even if his father was the Prime Minister.
In National Junior College, I enrolled for Chinese as a principal level subject in the HSC examination. I
was not satisfied with my C6 in Comprehension and Essay Writing.

He admits that he repeated to improve his results (in Chinese), but his main thrust is that he was
making a sacrifice of his youth (delaying entry to Cambridge not just when he decided to repeat his
HSC, but again when he decided not to defer his National Service) so he would be setting a good
example for the nation. He audaciously presents the whole episode as evidence that he did not
receive special treatment while carefully avoiding mention of the elements that demonstrate how
much he has been advantaged by his decisions, or how seemingly fortuitous was the outcome of the
series of new initiatives that were falling open just as he was ready to take advantage of them. We
should also note that despite the main reason for the repetition of his HSC being that he did not
want to create the impression that he was avoiding the sacrifices involved in National Service, in
the end he fulfilled only 10 months out of the three years of his National Service before leaving for
his studies at Cambridge on his SAFOS scholarship and a Second Lieutenants salary.41 Not much
sacrifice there! Nor in the fact that Lee Hsien Loong was admitted to NJC back in 1970 as a parttime student,42 setting a precedent that has rarely, if ever, been followed since.

The politics of privilege

There are sensible political reasons for discouraging coffee shop talk about the privileges accorded
to members of the Lee family, but the more substantive basis of the familys sensitivity goes to the
points that Lee Hsien Loong made in his interview with Charlie Rose, and which have been cited
above:
39. Lee Hsien Loong, Facebook page, available at: https://www.facebook.com/leehsienloong/info (accessed
27 March 2014).
40. Lee (2012: 238, 239).
41. The Straits Times (1970) Presidents Scholar Lee to do National Service stint first. 1 June.
42. The Sunday Times (1970) PSC chooses eight new Presidents Scholars. 31 May.

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You are where you are because you are the best man for the job and not because of your connections or
your parents or your relatives. . . . So, if . . . people believe that Im there because my father fixed it or
the whole system is just make-believe, then the system will come down.

This logic goes far beyond ordinary considerations of protecting political turf. We have Lee
Hsien Loongs word that this is an existential threat to the system. Note that in this instance he
does not explicitly claim to identify an existential threat to Singapore, but when he refers to the
system he is pointing to the system of governance as a whole: he has correctly identified the nexus
between his own legitimacy as prime minister and that of the Singapore system of governance as a
whole both are based on the concept of meritocracy. Hence the paramount need to stamp out
any suggestion that his rise was aided by his father and that he is the beneficiary of a dynastic
succession. If brand Singapore is dependent on the Lee brand (and vice versa), then nothing can
be allowed to disturb the legitimacy of either.
Lee Hsien Loongs entry into university and the military was not, however, the final or
necessarily the most crucial point of dynastic succession. After all, even without his father
smoothing the way, Lee Hsien Loong would have been at least a credible candidate for top office if
he had been willing to do the hard work of fighting his way up a hypothetical political system with
a more level playing field. In this study of the Lees as a dynasty, the means of Lee Hsien Loongs
rise into parliament and his subsequent rise to the premiership are of even more immediate interest
and arguably of more relevance. His entry into parliament has already been subjected to a considerable amount of attention and so I offer just a brief one-paragraph summation, sufficient to
establish the continuation of the pattern identified in the previous section. Of more significance is
the account immediately following of the ease with which the dynasty was able to see off the only
serious challenge to its pre-eminence to date Goh Chok Tongs challenge in the 1990s. This latter
account is of interest mainly for the demonstration it gives of the extent and security of the
dynastys hold on power.
Upon his retirement from the Army as a 33-year-old Brigadier General, Lee Hsien Loongs path
into parliament was smoothed for him by a team working in the Housing and Development Board
(HDB) under the direction of Zulkifli Baharudin, who was a senior officer in the HDB. This team
worked the ground for him and enabled him to weave a story as a successful administrator who
built the first of Singapores new Town Councils.43 Lee was successfully elected as the member for
Teck Ghee and became a Deputy Prime Minister in 1990, a few months before Goh Chok Tong
was appointed Prime Minister.
Goh Chok Tong was appointed as a stop-gap prime minister while waiting for Lee Hsien
Loong to gain the experience necessary to be a credible replacement, but Goh had his own ideas
and set out to reduce the power of the Lees and build his own power base.44 Gohs plans were
given an unexpected fillip when Lee Hsien Loong was diagnosed with cancer in November
1992. Goh used the years following Lees diagnosis to build his own networks of patronage and
reciprocity in the civil service and the Government-Linked Companies (GLCs). Central to
Gohs putsch was the highly secretive Directorship and Consultancy Appointments Council
(DCAC), because it was charged with making almost every appointment at board and executive

43. Interview with Zulkifli Baharudin, Singapore, 26 March 2003.

44. This is the story that Ross Worthington told in Worthington (2003).

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level across almost every GLC.45 It was housed in the Ministry of Finance and was chaired by
the Minister for Finance which in the 1990s meant it was chaired by Finance Minister Richard
Hu, a Goh loyalist.
Goh spent the first half of the 1990s building his networks in the institutions of power, but
in 1996 he just stopped: he gave up at the first point at which he would have been required to
challenge the dynasty directly. In his make-or-break moment, Goh broke without even
trying. The turning point was an episode in which a publicly listed company, Hotel Properties
Limited, offered million-dollar discounts to Lee Kuan Yew, Lee Hsien Loong, their wives and
other relatives as part of a soft launch of a condominium development.46 When this episode
became public knowledge Goh passed up the chance to submit the case to the Corrupt
Practices and Investigation Bureau (CPIB). Instead, he and Finance Minister Hu conducted
their own ad hoc investigation and on the basis of this, Cabinet cleared the Lees of all wrong
doing.47
The institutional fallout was almost immediate: over the next couple of years Gohs networks in the GLCs were quietly swept aside. Both the institutional roles and the personnel of
the DCAC and the governments two major GLC holding companies were overhauled, leaving
Lee family members and Lee loyalists (notably S Dhanabalan) in charge.48 The power to
appoint board members and non-executive directors of GLCs was transferred from the DCAC
to Temasek Holdings, at the same time (1996) that S Dhanabalan was appointed Chairman of
Temasek Holdings. A year later Lee Hsien Loongs first cousin, Kwa Chong Seng, was
appointed Deputy Chairman of Temasek Holdings (1997) and his wife, Ho Ching, was
appointed Executive Director and CEO of the Singapore Technologies Group, which is the
Temasek-owned holding company for defence-related GLCs. These changes were followed
very soon by sweeping changes to the leadership of the GLCs in late 1997 and 1998.49 In
1998 Lee Hsien Loong himself was appointed Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and S Dhanabalan became Chairman of the DCAC (while continuing as Chairman of
Temasek Holdings). When Lee Hsien Loong became Minister for Finance in 2001 he resumed
direct control of the DCAC, and when he ceased being Minister for Finance in 2007 he
retained control of the DCAC by shifting the entire institution from the Ministry of Finance to
the Prime Ministers Office since by this stage he had been prime minister for three years
already.50

45. See Temasek (2009) Remarks by S. Dhanabalan, Chairman of Temasek Holdings, at the media
roundtable on the Temasek Charter. 25 August. Available at: http://www.temasekholdings.com.sg/
media_centre_news_releases_250809.htm (accessed 13 June 2010). Also see Mauzy DK and Milne RS
(2002) Singapore Politics under the Peoples Action Party. London and New York: Routledge, p. 29.
46. The Straits Times (1996) The sequence of events. 25 May.
47. The Business Times (1996) PM Goh I probed Lees condo purchases. 22 May.
48. Barr (2014a: 5964). Most details in the account of these events are taken from these pages without being
individually referenced.
49. Bhaskaran M (2009) Transforming the engines of growth. In: Welsh B, Chin JUH, Mahizhnan A et al.
Impressions of the Goh Chok Tong Years. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, p. 208.
50. Ministry of Finance (2008) Head U Prime Ministers Office. Budget Papers. p. 179. Available at: http://
www.mof.gov.sg/budget_2008/revenue_expenditure/attachment/PMO_EE2008.pdf (accessed 13 June
2010).

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The passing of Lee Kuan Yew

The long-awaited accession of Lee Hsien Loong into the prime ministership in 2004 notionally
marked the successful inheritance of the mantle by the son. We could stop there, but with the death
of Lee Kuan Yew on 23 March 2015 we have the opportunity to take our analysis further. In terms
of straightforward politics and the exercise of power, the younger Lee had already been prime
minister for 11 years at the time of his fathers death, and by the most conservative estimate he had
already stepped out of his fathers long shadow by May 2011 when Prime Minister Lee Hsien
Loong forced Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew to step down from Cabinet following the elder Lees
unhelpful interventions in the 2011 General Election campaign. The dynastic succession may have
already been firmly established before Lee Kuan Yews death, but the death of the patriarch in a
Chinese family business is always a time of risk. In Singapores distinctive system of regime
legitimation elections are the ultimate test of political success.51 There is no pretence that elections
are free or fair, but they are the essential ingredient in conferring legitimacy on the countrys
authoritarian ruling elite, a form of governance characterised by Andreas Schedler as Electoral
Authoritarianism.52 Despite the reality that there is no chance of the government changing hands,
a poor election result for the party can damage a prime minister and a poor showing in his own
constituency can do significant damage to his standing and authority as it can to any minister.53
This makes the 2015 General Election particularly significant since it was not only the first
election since the death of Lee Kuan Yew, but it also followed a series of electoral setbacks for the
government that began in 2006 (the first election after Lee Hsien Loong became prime minister)
and which showed no overt signs of slowing as Singapore entered the 2015 election cycle. Over the
previous four years, the party had lost an unprecedented number of seats to the opposition, seen
nearly two-thirds of Singaporeans vote against its favoured presidential candidate in an islandwide vote and watched agog as the prime minister apologised on national television for a series of
policy and administrative failures.54
If the 2015 general elections had gone very differently, with continuing slippage of the PAP
vote and the opposition picking up a handful more seats, then I would now be writing about the
decline of the Lee brand and the troubles ahead for the Lee dynasty but this was not how GE2015
played out. As we now know, the electorate rewarded the government handsomely in 2015, giving
it a 10 per cent swing in its favour, taking its support up to 70 per cent. But for what was it being
rewarded? Most of the failures that contributed to the setbacks of the last few years were no more

51. Barr MD (2014b) The bonsai under the banyan tree: Democracy and democratisation in Singapore.
Democratization 21(1): 2948. Also see Barr (2014a).
52. Schedler A (ed.) (2006) Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition. Boulder, CO
and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers; and Schedler A (2013) The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining
and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
53. Goh Chok Tongs authority was seriously damaged by the oppositions good performance in the 1991
General Elections, and the poor showing of the team he led in his own constituency in 2011 contributed
directly to his exit from Cabinet. Lee Hsien Loongs poor showing in his own constituency in 2006 raised
question marks over his authority since it was accompanied by a drop in support for the party overall, but
the recovery of his constituency vote in 2011 contributed to the revival of his personal fortunes, despite
the PAP doing badly at the national level.
54. Lim J (2016) Political developments after the 2011 general election. In: Lee T and Tan KYL (eds)
Change in Voting: Singapores 2015 General Election. Singapore: Ethos Books, pp. 2644.

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than half fixed, so we can say with confidence that the electorate was not rewarding the party for its
recent record.55
Tellingly, in his final rally speech of the campaign, the most rousing claim that Lee Hsien
Loong could muster was: We are making progress. Work with us.56 This is the stuff of securing
and reinforcing a vulnerable constituency, not that of a 10 per cent swing towards the government,
but this observation does not take into account the spectacular optics of the six months leading up
to the General Election all of which built on and strengthened the Lee brand. The week-long
mourning period following Lee Kuan Yews death was marked by an extraordinary outpouring of a
mixture of grief, respect, adulation and spectacle. Hundreds of thousands of Singaporeans lined the
streets and queued for up to eight or nine hours each to show their respects. His image was projected onto buildings, stuck onto cars and sold as figurines. Newsreels of his old speeches going
back to the 1950s seemed to be on a near-continuous rolling loop on local television, shared with
contemporary tributes. (They were not literally on a rolling loop, but it seemed that way.) The
funeral itself was no less spectacular and it was followed months later by the extravaganza of the
SG50 celebrations, which linked the adulation of the older Lee to the living presence of the
younger one.
Eugene Tan, Bridget Welsh and I have all independently suggested that the drive behind the
swing to the PAP was a flight to safety,57 but I suggest that it was something more than that: the
safety to which Singaporeans were flying was the safety of the Lee brand as much as or more so than a
flight to the government or the PAP as more generic entities. If confirmation of this was needed, it
came a week before the first anniversary of Lee Kuan Yews death, when the Ministry of Culture,
Community and Youth (MCCY) issued guidelines regulating the use of the former prime ministers
name and image, explicitly saying that they may be used for purposes of identifying with the
nation.58

55. See Loh KS (2016) Devoid of any new ideas: How the political parties failed to address the housing issue
in GE2015. In: Lee T and Tan KYL (eds) Change in Voting: Singapores 2015 General Election.
Singapore: Ethos Books, pp. 85103; Yew L (2016) The foreigner issue and dilution: From GE2011 to
GE201. In: Lee T and Tan KYL (eds) Change in Voting: Singapores 2015 General Election. Singapore:
Ethos Books, pp. 104121; Loke HY and Lew A (2016) Transport and infrastructure. In: Lee T and Tan
KYL (eds) Change in Voting: Singapores 2015 General Election. Singapore: Ethos Books, pp. 122134.
Also see Barr MD (2016) Ordinary singapore: The decline of singapore exceptionalism. Journal of
Contemporary Asia 46(1): 117.
56. Lee HL (n.d.) English speech by Secretary General Lee Hsien Loong (9 Sept 2015). Uploaded by
PeopleActionPartyHQ. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PRVwdio7q0 (accessed 11
December 2015).
57. For Eugene Tans see, for instance, The Straits Times (2015) Flight to safety gave PAP big boost. 12
September. Available at: http://www.straitstimes.com/politics/flight-to-safety-gave-pap-big-boost
(accessed 15 March 2016), and Reuters (2015) Singapore ruling party in decisive win as voters shun risk.
11 September. Available at: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-election-idUSKCN0
RA2LQ20150911 (accessed 15 March 2016). For Bridget Welshs assessment, see Welsh B (2016)
Clientelism and control: PAPs fight for safety in GE2015. The Roundtable. Epub ahead of print, 14
March. DOI: 10.1080/00358533.2016.1154390. For mine, see Barr MD (2015) Singapores flight to
safety. Inside Story, 14 September. Available at: http://insidestory.org.au/singapores-flight-to-safety
(accessed 18 March 2016).
58. Channel NewsAsia (2016) Guidelines issued on use of name and image of Lee Kuan Yew. 16 March.

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This move confirms (if confirmation were needed) that the Lee brand is more important than
either the PAP brand or Lee Hsien Loongs personal following, and has become so thoroughly
integrated with brand Singapore that the two are, for the foreseeable future, inseparable. Lee Hsien
Loong is damaged goods, which can be seen from watching a video of either his apology during the
2011 election or his ghastly performance at the final election rally of 2015 (both referred to earlier),
along with several other apologies he has made in the years in between.59 Yet he is, nevertheless, a
Lee of Singapore and carries the burdens and the considerable benefits of being a Lee. Time will
tell whether someone from among the third grandsons steps up to continue the dynasty, but there
should be no doubt that the choice is theirs to make. The most likely candidate for future leadership
in Lee Hsien Loongs son, Li Hongyi. If Li Hongyi should set his sights on filling his fathers and
grandfathers shoes, it would be a brave punter who would bet against his success. The simple
reality of this scenario being credible, whether or not it comes to pass, confirms not just the reality
of the dynasty, but its extraordinary power within its tiny fiefdom.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

59. Reuters (2015); You Tube, 3 May 2011, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?vMHAGSw-i7l4; https://

www.youtube.com/watch?vJbOKJhiuH5Y&ebcANyPxKpAFSSr16e8zradRaJX8NKDRkKOX_Vu
WXHw2cP-vX0V-CD16jpGQHt0Z8Ax65147-RibtaLbGN295rn9UizoK0j_Ijo0g; https://www.youtube.
com/watch?vJ4EwdaWnh3I (all accessed 15 March 2016).