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Lee Kuan Yew (born September 16, 1923) (Hanzi: 李光耀, Pinyin: Lǐ Guāngyào), or Lee Kwan-Yew (he also goes by the English name Harry), is best known as the first] of the Republic of Singapore, from 1959 to 1990.
He currently serves in a new post of Minister Mentor, created when his son Lee Hsien Loong took up the Prime Minister portfolio on August 12, 2004. He was born in Singapore, where he was educated at Telok Kurau Primary School, Raffles Institution and Raffles College. After World War II, he studied law at the University of Cambridge in Britain. He returned to Singapore in 1949 to work as a lawyer.
In 1954, Lee and a group of fellow English-educated, middle-class men formed the socialist People's Action Party (PAP), to agitate for self-government for Singapore and an end to British colonialism . Five years later, in 1959, Lee was elected as the first Prime Minister of Singapore, replacing the former Chief Minister of Singapore, David Saul Marshall. He was regularly re-elected in Singapore's limited democracy until November 1990, when he stepped down and assumed the post of senior minister in the government cabinet in the Goh Chok Tong government.
During the three decades in which Lee was in office, Singapore grew from a Third World country into a financial and economical powerhouse, despite its lack of natural resources and small population. He is widely respected by the people of Singapore, and is often been credited as the architect of its prosperity, although a significant role was also played by his Deputy Prime Minister, Dr. Goh Keng Swee, who was in charge of the economy. Nevertheless, this economic success of an embryonic nation of immigrants was built upon its political unity which is the difficult accomplishment of Lee's leadership. Without a shared culture, forging unity required firm policies for which he has been criticized as an authoritarian.
Lee Kuan Yew has written down his memoirs in the book The Singapore Story (ISBN 0130208035), which covers his view of Singapore's history until its separation from Malaysia in 1965. His other book, From Third World to First: The Singapore Story (ISBN 0060197765), gives his account of Singapore's transformation from a third-world country to a prosperous nation today.
In an interview with the government-owned Straits Times, Lee said that he is an agnostic.
| First Prime Minister of Singapore | Prime Ministers of Singapore | Succeeded by: Goh Chok Tong |