By Mursi Saad El-Din The recent visit of the President of Singapore, S R Nathan, brought back memories. My relation with Singapore goes back to the early 1960's.At the time, it was part of the Federation of Malaysia, which included Malaya, Sarawak, Sabah and Singapore. I was in Singapore to select a political party that can be represented in the Afro-Asian Solidarity Movement. It was then that I met the founder of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew who was the Secretary- General of the People's Action party (PAP), the most influential party on the island. My first introduction to Yew was at a lunch he invited me to at his residence. It was there that I met three of Yew's strong supports, Nair, Rahim and Nathan and that was a beginning of a close working relation with Singapore and its leaders. I remember going around with Yew on an electoral campaign. The contender discussed many issues in Chinese which was translated to me by an English-speaking interpreter. I was convinced that the PAP was the right candidate for the Afro- Asian Solidarity Movement. I chose the PAP as the most suitable representative of Singapore's interest. At the time there was an active communist party headed by Yew, and he had hopes to represent Singapore in the Afro- Asian movement. When he failed he published an article in the party's newspaper accusing me of being an American agent. In the late 1960's I was invited to attend an International Labour Conference in Singapore and was impressed by the great strides the country had taken. It was during that visit that I had the pleasure of meeting DJ Enright, who was professor of English at the university who had been professor of English at Alexandria University. During that visit I was invited by Yew to spend a day with him and his family on an island which had been previously used as a prison. It was during that day that he told me the story of Singapore, an account which he later published in his autobiography, From the Third World to the First: The Story of Singapore from 1965 to 2000. Until 1824 Singapore was under the rule of the Sultan of Jahore, but in that year the British bought it from him and it was turned into a British Crown Colony. During World War II, the Japanese occupied it on 15 February, 1942. At the end of the war, Yew explains, a nationalist movement, led by PAP, began to call for independence. In 1963, Singapore joined the Federation of Malaysia which did not last long. In 1965, Singapore separated and Britain recognised it as an independent state. That was the beginning of the miraculous development which Yew describes in his book. Now the per capita income of Singapore is one of the highest in the world after USA and Japan. One thing the author emphasises is the insistence of his government on having what he describes as "a clean government". As a symbol of this, Yew and his ministers wear white shirts and trousers to underline the purity and honesty of their personal behaviour. The book is an inspiring story of a transition "From Third World to First", as the subtitle has it. But it is also the story of a great politician, with a vision. This vision is highlighted at the end of his book where he writes words to the effect that peace and settlement in the Asian Pacific depend on a three-dimensional accord between the USA, Japan and China, and that there should be some kind of parity between the USA and Japan, on one side, and China on the other.
