“Development vs democracy”
I read with intense interest the above piece written by Fahmida Khatun published on March 30. She tried to make a conclusion drawing on the political performance of Singapore and Bangladesh during the last four decades. But my contention is that it goes far beyond.
Mr. Lee is a leader bestowed with rare qualities of statesmanship. I would like to bring forward a few of the cases just mentioned by Mr. Lee in his autobiography "From Third World to First: The Singapore Story- 1965-2000". Mr. Lee crushed highhandedly any chance of corruption. He just heard from somebody that his Minister of Work took bribe. He called that minister and told him to come with the truth otherwise he would sack him and call a press conference the next morning. The next morning the minister's body was found hanging from the ceiling fan. Mr. Lee always said that the public servants must be paid at the highest rate for similar work in the market. His view was that if the public servants are not paid enough they would resort to corruption. How right he was can rightly be traced in Bangladesh.
He always believed in high standards of infrastructure and high quality of public servants. For this he would send the civil servants to study at the best universities of the USA and UK and ensured that they returned home to serve the motherland. He ensured racial harmony. During the sixties, race riots between the Chinese and Malay communities were not uncommon but in those instances, Lee ensured justice by quickly executing capital punishment to the offenders of the Chinese race eventhough he himself was a Chinese. If you want to find a comparison with Bangladeshi leaders, only Sher-e-Bangla might match but others in Bangladesh will cut a sorry figure.
Bazlur Rahman
Uttara, Dhaka
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