Photo: Singapore's financial district

A common refrain by partisans of Uganda’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) goes something like this: “President Yoweri Museveni’s prolonged stay in power is not a unique phenomenon. How long was Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew in power?” 

The choice of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, who was popularly known as LKY, is not by accident or a lack of awareness of other examples of rulers who have enjoyed power for decades.  They know lots about the likes of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Muammar Gaddafi, Mobutu Sese Seko, Paul Biya, Robert Mugabe and Felix Houphouet Boigny. 

The NRM partisans probably ignore these and other multi-decade rulers because, for the most part, these men have led their countries to ruin or engaged in overtly ruthless abuse of human rights. 

However, to mention Museveni and LKY in the same breath is to engage in false comparison. More different characters are hard to imagine. 

Whereas LKY was prime minister for 31 years, he was a true leader, not a ruler of his people. His success in Singapore had less to do with the length of his tenure than with his leadership style and his ability to galvanize the majority of Singaporeans to join him in transforming their society. 

First, LKY’s regime was not a one man show, but a collaborative effort with his colleagues. At the core of his leadership was a belief that his country's greatest asset was its people. 

He was the quintessential “multiplier”, to use a term coined by Liz Wiseman, a modern thinker and expert on leadership. In her book titled “Multipliers,” Wiseman describes them as those “who make everyone around them smarter and more capable.” 

In his many speeches and writings, there is no hint that LKY was what Wiseman refers to as a “diminisher.” The latter is a ruler or leader who believes that people will not figure it out without him.

She describes a diminisher as one who hoards resources and underutilizes talent; creates a tense environment that suppresses people’s thinking and capability; gives directives that showcase how much he knows; makes centralized, abrupt decisions that confuse the organization; and micromanages things, driving results through personal involvement.

LKY’s healthy intellect was buttressed by an insatiable appetite for knowledge and new ideas from his subordinates and colleagues. He possessed what Wiseman describes as the five disciplines of the multipliers, namely, a talent magnet, a liberator, a challenger, a debate maker and investor. 

Second, LKY conducted his leadership with a clarity of purpose and strict adherence to the rule of law. He did not undermine the very institutions that he and his colleagues had so painstakingly nurtured to provide a firm foundation for Singapore's successful political, social and economic culture. 

For example, he respected the judiciary’s independence and included the judges among those whose salaries had to be competitive with the private sector in order to recruit and retain the best. 

The Singaporean army was not his army. It was a professional army with one mission - the defence of Singapore, not of Lee Kwan Yew and his family. 

It is his policies and personal conduct that gave him the moral authority to expect excellence from his countrymen. His people reciprocated with unforced support.

Populism was not his style. Honest realism and a long-term focus on sustainable development was his mode of operation. Bribery of individuals and groups for electoral gain was foreign to him.

Third, anti-sectarianism was not merely an empty slogan in LKY’s rhetoric. He worked hard to ensure equitable development and opportunities for all Singaporeans. He did not deprive communities of their social and economic rights simply because they did not vote for him. 

Instead he joined forces with colleagues to bring the underprivileged Malay people onto a shared road towards national prosperity. By giving all Singaporeans a stake in the stability of their country, he prevented the emergence of resentment and inter-ethnic tensions.

Fourth, LKY was highly allergic to, and intolerant of corruption, not even among his most loyal political comrades or relatives. He did not use corruption as a means of political control. 

Fifth, his belief in meritocracy was total. He despised promotion of sycophantic mediocrity as a means of gaining political advantage and control. He believed in getting the best people, whether friend or foe, and letting them get on with it without his meddling. 

Besides promoting quality education for Singaporeans, he opened the doors of his small city-state to the best brains from around the world, not to small time merchants and fortune hunters nicknamed “investors.”

Sixth, LKY lived a very modest life, and did not attempt to convert his family into a pseudo-monarchy. His one son who joined politics, eventually becoming prime minister 14 years after the old man had stepped down from the job, seems to have done so on his own record of accomplishments.

 Commenting on this in 2005, LKY wrote: “We run a meritocracy. If the Lee family sets an example of nepotism, that system collapses. If I were not the prime minister, he [Lee Hsien Loong] could have become prime minister several years earlier.” 

Seventh, LKY was a democrat, certainly miles ahead of most of his ex-colonial peers.  Yes, opinion is divided on his democratic credentials. His penchant for suing political opponents and journalists who were critical of him, allegedly with a view to silencing them by bankrupting them, was a big stain on an otherwise remarkable leadership. Others argue that he was simply exercising his democratic and legal rights of citizenship.

What is clear is that LKY neither used the armed services to intimidate the hapless voters, nor cash and other trinkets to persuade the electorate to "vote wisely." For the most part, people supported him not only because he had led Singapore from third world poverty to first world prosperity, but because he was consistent in what he said and did throughout his years at the top. 

Whereas I do not condone life-presidencies, a malady that does not afflict truly good leaders, the duration of one’s tenure in power is a not as important as what one does with that power and what legacy one bequeaths to one’s country.  

When Mr. Lee died in 2015, Singaporeans were not worried about their country’s survival without him. That the NRM partisans claim that Uganda cannot do without Museveni is, perhaps, one of the most persuasive arguments that the Ugandan ruler and the late Singaporean leader are as different as night and day.