Opinion | My Father Founded Singapore. He Would Be Troubled by What It’s Become.

My father, Lee Kuan Yew, was the founder of Singapore. He guided the nation through its first 31 years with a firm hand as prime minister, pioneering a system of government that some have called benevolent autocracy.

His People’s Action Party monopolized political power and denied the people some basic freedoms. Under my father, it was also dedicated to ensuring shared prosperity, clean government and high-quality public services such as affordable housing. Singapore became a spectacular success, an oasis of stability, prosperity and efficiency.

Today that luster is tarnishing.

The party, which has governed uninterrupted since 1959, is no longer living up to its obligations to the people. At the same time, it is becoming more authoritarian, introducing oppressive laws in recent years. Singapore is still an autocracy but no longer the benevolent one my father envisioned.

This will be on the minds of many Singaporeans when they vote in parliamentary elections on Saturday. Today many people feel that they are living in a country that primarily benefits the wealthy, members of the ruling party and their cronies.

I revered my father and always wanted to believe well of him. But even I have come to realize that benevolent autocracy is a myth. Singaporeans need and deserve more open and accountable government, real multiparty democracy with a viable opposition and an end to a single party’s grip on power.

A simple family dispute led me to this realization.

My father, who remained influential until his death in 2015, lived frugally in our old family home throughout his political career and retirement. He was focused on the well-being of Singapore and its people, not self-aggrandizement, and had said that he wanted the house demolished after his death.

My sister and I wanted to honor that wish. This put us at odds with our older brother, Lee Hsien Loong, who was prime minister for 20 years until last year and remains a powerful figure. The house, which has symbolic political value to him and the ruling party, is still standing, against my father’s wishes.

This disagreement should have stayed in the family. Instead, my wife, my son and I have faced a campaign of legal retribution. In 2022, fearing arrest, I left Singapore with my wife for Britain, where we have been granted asylum and live today.

My father was a product of Singapore’s struggle for nationhood. He believed a firm hand was needed after full independence from Britain in 1963, a bitter separation with Malaysia two years later and the country’s emergence as a tiny, multiracial, resource-poor city-state in the middle of the Cold War.

He held officials to high standards and removed those who fell short. He interacted with and listened to a wide spectrum of Singaporeans and was ready to adjust his approach when circumstances changed.

This is no longer the case. Today’s ruling elite is out of touch, and Singapore’s vaunted reputation for efficient, corruption-free governance is in danger.

The government has long claimed that the salaries it pays to its ministers, among the highest in the world, help prevent official corruption and ensure top-quality administration. Singapore still performs well in corruption perception indexes, but perception lags reality. A slew of scandals in recent years has implicated government ministers, ruling party politicians and influential state-linked companies.

The Economist’s latest index of countries most affected by crony capitalism, which was released in 2023, ranked Singapore fourth, after Russia, the Czech Republic and Malaysia. A number of cases indicate that because of its carefully cultivated clean image, Singapore has become a prime destination for those seeking to launder money, evade international sanctions or otherwise dodge financial scrutiny, including wealthy Chinese citizens, Russian entities and drug and arms dealers from Myanmar.

More important to average citizens is that Singapore’s wealth is no longer being fairly distributed. The country has become a playground of the superrich and is routinely ranked as one of the world’s most expensive cities to live in. Providing inexpensive, quality public housing was once a point of national pride; today many citizens can’t find affordable apartments, or they face competition for jobs from foreigners. Public transport breakdowns, flooding and data breaches add to the sense of decline in government competence.

At the same time, the government has doubled down on autocracy, introducing repressive and overly broad laws in recent years. These are described as necessary to protect national security and social harmony or to combat fake news, but they give the government even more tools to silence dissent. As it did in my father’s time, the government continues to use police investigations, defamation lawsuits and other legal actions to intimidate political opponents, civil society groups and other critics. In February, with elections imminent, a court found Pritam Singh, the leader of the opposition Worker’s Party, guilty of lying under oath to a parliamentary inquiry, which he denies.

There is no chance that the government, headed by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, will fall on Saturday. The People’s Action Party holds 83 of Parliament’s 93 elected seats and has a firm grip on the institutions of state power and the media. Singapore’s elections are not free and fair. Critics cite last-minute changes to electoral boundaries as signs of gerrymandering. A short nine-day campaign period and limitations on freedom of speech also put the opposition at a clear disadvantage.

In the previous elections, in 2020, the ruling party won 61 percent of the popular vote, among its worst showings, and the Worker’s Party took 10 seats, the most ever for an opposition party. Those results made clear that a growing number of Singaporeans want change. The underlying public concerns that contributed to the 2020 outcome have only intensified since then.

Singaporeans deserve open and accountable government and more say in the policies that affect them. Genuine democracy also will help make Singapore more resilient in withstanding the challenges of a fracturing world. Even my father predicted a day “must come” when the People’s Action Party would no longer be in power.

As successful as Singapore’s system was under my father, it is clear now that it really works only with a man like him in charge. The political scientist Samuel Huntington probably said it best: “The honesty and efficiency that Senior Minister Lee has brought to Singapore are likely to follow him to his grave.”

That prediction has sadly come true.

Lee Hsien Yang is a son of Singapore’s founder, Lee Kuan Yew. He is a former chief executive officer of Singapore Telecommunications Limited and held a number of other public- and private-sector roles. He is a member of the Progress Singapore Party.

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