I then lunched with my old friend, Tan Boon Teik, who was still the attorney general. He politely heard all my arguments about why it would be disastrous for Singapore’s reputation in Western legal and human rights circles if the government again blatantly violated the nation’s constitution and undermined the rule of law by arresting the defendants’ legal defender. As expected, he told me that everything would turn on the hour meeting I was scheduled to have with Lee beginning 4 pm. I knew it would be an uphill struggle.
Lee could not have given me a more cordial reception. As I left him at 5 pm, I thought that perhaps my trip had not been in vain. Yet, when I returned to my hotel to watch the 6 pm television news, I learned that Francis Seow had been detained shortly after 4 pm for supposedly cooperating with an American diplomat to promote US interference in Singapore politics.
I rarely get angry but I did believe that Lee’s reception had been genially abusive. When, after my return to Hong Kong, the BBC, virtually the sole Western press agency allowed free access to Singapore at the time, telephoned for my views on Seow’s detention, I attacked Lee’s action for what it was. Friends in Singapore soon reported that the interview had been aired many times that day and infuriated Lee, an inveterate Anglophile. I was subsequently advised to wait a reasonable period before planning another trip to the city-state. Although I was told over a decade ago that, while all had not been forgiven, another visit would be acceptable, I have never returned.
It will now fall to historians to do the research required to strike a balanced and comprehensive perspective of Lee’s complex career. This task has been hampered until now by the harsh restrictions that Lee and his followers have imposed on free inquiry and expression within their realm. Yet, fortunately, an impressive body of scholarship is already emerging concerning the achievements and shortcomings of Lee’s distinctive and successful effort to coat Singapore’s economic and social progress with the veneer of legitimacy that skillful manipulation of the ‘rule of law’ can confer upon an authoritarian and often arbitrary government.
Much of this scholarship has been done by Singaporeans who, unable to pursue their research at home, have nevertheless managed to make major contributions from abroad. Outstanding among this group is Research Professor Jothie Rajah of the American Bar Foundation, whose 2012 book Authoritarian Rule of Law successfully reveals ‘a configuration of law, politics and legitimacy that may have far-reaching consequences for theory and politics worldwide’.
Rajah’s stunning study of Singapore implicitly illuminates Beijing’s ongoing struggle to develop a legal system appropriate to contemporary needs. Despite China’s continuing reproduction of Western-style legal norms and forms, in practice President Xi Jinping seems intent on resurrecting and applying the spirit of traditional China’s unique blend of hierarchical Confucianism and cruel legalism.
Xi must frequently regret that his Communist Party predecessors committed the People’s Republic to respect the formal restraints on government of at least 26 international human rights documents. By contrast, Lee, although a proud Cambridge-trained lawyer, was too shrewd to commit his country to the main human rights covenants. Underneath its formal Western legal façade, his Singapore bears important traces of imperial China, which used law as an instrument of government control unconstrained by notions of individual rights — including the right to an independent defence lawyer.
In 1988, I had a glimpse of how such a system operates and it wasn’t pretty.
