Corruption at the initial stage of the Year 2023 !

“What has brought most Third World countries down, and what has led to their failure in development, has been corruption!  So, Lee Kuan Yew after he became Prime Minister of Singapore, made it a point to punish not the junior people but the very senior people. A Deputy Minister went on holiday with his friend, a businessman. When he came back, he was arrested. He asked why he was being arrested and he was told, ‘you went on holiday with a businessman and the latter paid all your expenses and that is corruption. You will go to jail’. So, when a Deputy Minister was sent to jail, everybody said ‘oops … I got to be careful. I can also go to jail’. That honesty factor is one critical reason why Singapore has been exceptionally successful.”

This quote is from a speech made by Prof. Kishore Mahbubani, who served as a Singaporean diplomat as well as later as the Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He was speaking of how Singapore fought corruption and, how that effort has been instrumental in raising Singapore from being a Third World country to a First World country.

By per capita GDP, which was reported as US$72,700 in 2021, Singapore is today the richest country in Asia and the Pacific region. It has overtaken the traditionally richest countries in the region – Australia in 1993 and Japan in 2007. Today, Australia’s per capita GDP is $60,000, and Japan’s $39,000.

The strategy of the Singaporean leadership to fight corruption has worked well. As a result, there are not many instances of corruption, even at higher levels involving politicians and bureaucrats, reported from Singapore. As per the quotation, “eliminating corruption at top-level has been critical for Singapore to become exceptionally successful”.

A similar incident, as reported in The Straits Times of Singapore on 27 March 2015, was the bribery case of the Cabinet Minister of National Development, Teh Cheang Wan, which ended up with the Minister’s tragic suicide on 14 December 1986. The Prime Minister kicked off the parliamentary session on 26 January 1987 surprising the Chamber by reading out the suicide note of the Minister, addressed to him. He revealed for the first time that the Minister was being investigated for a bribery case and, emphasised that there is no way a minister can avoid investigations.