Just came back from my school’s gala dinner with LKY. I’m sorry to report I was unable to ask him the questions members of the club requested. There were plenty of thought provoking questions involving China and India, though on hindsight I really should have gotten in front of local writer Catherine Lim and asked a balancing question about the West instead of enduring another inane episode of verbal fencing about local politics.

A bombshell was dropped by my dean though. Former UN Secretary-General (and crook) Kofi Annan is coming to my school as a lecturer! Next Feb, in fact. That gives me about 3 months to be a pest. ^_^

Lee Kuan Yew had plenty to say about the usefulness of authoritarianism in ‘getting things done’, citing examples from India and China, and pointing to the difference between the development of the two nations. However, his liberal sympathies poked out occasionally, when he insisted that if his party ever got soft and incompetent, they deserve to LOSE an election.

It seems he is also deadly afraid of that most insidious democratic disease… of the majority stealing from the minority, or from the future. And said so quite openly.

I doubt we shall ever see such blunt honesty from a politician from the West.