A case study on Leadership and Good Governance by Jayadeva de Silva Suitable for all students of management and leadership

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Case Study on Leadership and good
governance
Jayadeva de Silva
Lee kuan yew was never a politician. Politicians are people who use and abuse power for
survival. My motherland (Sri Lanka) is a classic example.
Lee was a statesman who used his wisdom to create a nation, a society where none is above the Law
and all are equal.
The Chinese (majority), the Malays and the Indians make up Singapore. While we are battling
whether our National Anthem should be sung in Sinhala or Sinhala and Tamil, the National Anthem
of Singapore is in Basha Malayu.
While in Sri Lanka a minor section of the majority community is attempting to oust some of the
minorities from certain areas, in Singapore the Government as a policy always creates a mixed
community living together, so that there will never be an ethnic or religious grouping which can
cause problems in the future. In the pioneering days Singapore was classified as a " sin city". Lee
converted it into a modern state on par with any modern developed state. It has no natural
resources, getting water from Malaysia and earth from Indonesia. Today it collects all the waste
water from all condo units, recycles and purifies it and it is so clean 'You can drink tap water in
Singapore." In my motherland Kelani Ganga and Mahaweli flows with not a drop of clean water to
drink.
Lee’s five powerful lessons for Lanka
All that man wants is freedom from fear and hunger. The entire gamut of human rights stems from
these two basic freedoms which ensure man’s right to life, property and dignity. In a society where
there is freedom from fear and hunger, there is little place for destructive politics.
This was the essence of the social contract Singapore’s founder and great statesman Lee Kuan Yew
conceived and sustained. In this social contract, the State was honest and expected from its citizens
discipline and reciprocal honesty. As Singapore, once a run-down port city, bloomed as a developed
nation just three decades after its independence in 1965, John F. Kennedy’s famous quote “Ask not
what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” resonated in public life.
His critics accused Lee of ruling the country with an iron fist and a virtual one-party democracy, but
most of them later agreed that Lee was right. After all, who cares about politics when your next meal
is assured, your welfare is taken care of, you are financially stable and your tax money is truly
accounted for?

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In Sri Lanka, Lee will be largely remembered for his statement that he wanted to make Singapore a
Sri Lanka. Decades later, Sri Lanka was trying to become like Singapore with slogans such as making
Sri Lanka an NIC -- a Newly Industrialized country – by 2000 or turning Sri Lanka into a Miracle of
Asia. But apart from the civil war, large-scale or mind-boggling corruption, especially during the
previous regime, deprived the country of the opportunity to become another Singapore.
But as the great statesman left on his final journey, Sri Lanka should learn a few lessons from his
legacy -- his model for success -- especially at a time when good governance has become the hot
topic.
It was largely good governance that helped Singapore to become the financial giant it is today. Sri
Lankan leaders need to stop paying lip service to good governance and look at how Lee’s Singapore
practiced it.
In Singapore, good governance operates on five principles
 meritocracy,
 ethnic harmony,
 clean government,
 the rule of law and
 Social equity.
Meritocracy
Singapore was run like a private company with the prime minister being the CEO. The right person
got the right job. To achieve the maximum benefit of meritocracy, Lee realized the need for an
educated society and worked towards it. In this educated society, people are judged by their
performance -- not on their family background, caste, class, ethnic group or political ideology. Can
this happen in Sri Lanka? Can we dream of a time when appointments will be made not on one’s
closeness to the leader but on the basis of one’s ability and qualifications?
Ethnic Harmony
Take the second principle: Ethnic harmony. Both Singapore and Sri Lanka have laws that promote
religious and racial harmony. But where Singapore succeeds and Sri Lanka totters is in the
implementation of the law. During the previous regime we saw how the law was observed in the
breach when religious groups advocating racial hatred got state patronage that led to violence in the
Aluthgama - Beruwala area. Unlike Sri Lanka where there is constitutional ambiguity over whether
the State is secular or not, Singapore is secular but tolerates no attempt to insult a religion or race.
Singapore’s language policy is also worth emulating. Learning a lesson from Sri Lanka, Lee struck
the golden mean where English, which is not an official language, became the working language
while the official languages -- Mandarin, Malay and Tamil -- are encouraged in schools to maintain
the country’s cultural identity and Asianness.
Lee told the International Herald Tribune in 2007: “We’ve seen Sri Lanka, when they switched from
English to Sinhala and disenfranchised the Tamils and so strife ever after. We chose — we didn’t say

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it was our national language — we said it was our working language, that everybody learns English
whatever language medium school you go to. Which means nobody needs interpretation to read
English.”
It is interesting to note that Lee’s Singapore saw no issue in adopting the crescent and the stars as
the symbols in the national flag, notwithstanding the fact that they gave an Islamic flavor to the flag
as seen in the flags of Muslim countries such as Turkey, Tunisia and Malaysia.
Clean government
Clean government was Lee’s third principle. One of the first acts of Prime Minister Lee soon after
independence was to increase the public servants’ salaries by many fold. Many questioned the move
because a new and poor country could barely afford a huge public servant salary bill. But Lee stood
by his decision because it helped reduce bribery and corruption in the public service. Lee realized
that if the head was corrupt, then down the line, the public servants in particular, and the people in
general would be corrupt. Lee proved that the leader’s commitment to cleaning up corruption must
be absolute. There were no deals within deals or cover ups on the basis of kinship or friendship. The
end result was prosperity to all.
Rule of Law
The Rule of Law was Lee’s fourth principle. There was general consensus that the Rule of Law was
what provided the necessary impetus for Singapore’s economy to grow rapidly from a per capita
income of US$ 500 in the late 1960s to a per capita income of US$ 55,000 today. Foreign investors
flocked to Singapore as they did not have to bribe officials and had confidence in the country’s
commitment to uphold the rule of law.
Social equity
The fifth principle is social equity where the state steps in not only to close the gap in income
disparity but also to ensure that everyone has access to quality education, health care and public
transportation. Singapore will not call itself a welfare state but many a welfare state can learn
valuable lessons from this laissez-faire state where the state provides a workfare payment to those
whose income is far below the national average.
“If an economy prospers but the median income is low and the disparity of wealth is large, the
society will not be cohesive and social harmony will be threatened. The philosophy of inclusive
growth is therefore important. We need to build social equity into our growth strategy,” Prof.
Tommy Koh, head of the Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore told in a 2009 lecture.
For Sri Lankans, especially the new government leaders who talk about good governance, there is
certainly a lesson to be learned from Lee’s Singapore. Instead of importing a central bank governor
from Singapore and messing things up, the Government should have imported Lee’s vision. It is
never too late.
Questions for discussion

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1 What is Leadership?
2 What is Good Governance?
3 What are the most important leadership qualities displayed by late Lee Kuan Yew
4 Discuss Lee’s initiatives for good governance
5 Were there any negative aspects of Lee’s leadership style?
6 Discuss how lessons learnt from Lee could be applied in an organization and explain lees actions
in terms of known leadership and management theories
References
http://www.dailymirror.lk/67429/lee-s-five-powerful-lessons-for-lanka#sthash.49mGUTQj.dpuf