Review | Biography of Singapore prime minister Goh Chok Tong dwells on his differences with Lee Kuan Yew
- A telling episode in story of Singapore’s second prime minister highlights the ‘climate of fear’ in the nation in the years before he took power
- The book plays up his governing style, a contrast to that of his political godfather, who wanted Goh to be more Machiavellian and less ‘kind and gentle’
Tall Order: The Goh Chok Tong Story, by Shing Huei Peh, World Scientific, 4 stars
In one of the more dramatic scenes peppered throughout the first biography of former Singaporean prime minister Goh Chok Tong, an academic steps into his office in 1987, three years before Goh took over power from his political godfather, the legendary Lee Kuan Yew.
“She was looking around and seemed somewhat nervous,” Goh is quoted as saying of his visitor in the first volume of the authorised biography, titled Tall Order: The Goh Chok Tong Story. “I asked why and she said, ‘There is a climate of fear. The ISD is everywhere’.”
The acronym refers to Singapore’s Internal Security Department, the island nation’s domestic intelligence agency, once notorious for cracking down on critics of the long-governing People’s Action Party (PAP). Goh’s encounter with the academic, a friend of his from their university days, came as a huge shock to him, even though, as Singapore’s first deputy prime minister at the time, he probably should have known better.
