Goh Keng Swee: Thinker and Institution Builder

Dr Goh Keng Swee passed away on 14 May 2010, aged 91. His death immediately brought forth an outpouring of accolades from older Singaporeans, which surprisingly left their younger compatriots astounded to learn how much credit for the country’s successes was owed to this forgotten man.

It is certainly startling that new generations of Singaporeans know so little about Goh. After all, between 1959 and 1984, if Goh was not Minister of Finance, he was either Minister of Defence or Minister of Education, and Deputy Prime Minister or Acting Prime Minister at the same time.

The range of institutions that he built was so wide that it has become a careless custom in Singapore among the old to suppose that the germ for all these successful institutions was first found in his fertile mind. This is not a wild supposition, for what is amazing is that at most times, their guess would prove correct. Goh did have a decisive hand in establishing a large number — though needless to say far from all — of the vital institutions that continue to power the political economy of the island state.

Another common assumption is that Goh and Lee Kuan Yew represented two different ways of doing things, and that the two did not always agree. This seems true only to an extent. Goh may have dealt largely with financial and defence matters while Lee was always in the thick of political battles, but the two seemed to have been in much greater agreement with each other, especially in the early years, than their varied fields of focused activity would have us suppose.

Goh was as great a believer in strict decisions and innovative hard work as Lee was; but although not one who could be pushed around, his acceptance of Lee’s political leadership was complete. We do not have here a case of a soft-handed leader working alongside a hard-fisted leader. Each was as tough and determined as the other, and yet, no power struggle threatened because their effective roles and selected profiling seemed principally complementary. As Lee put it in his eulogy on Goh’s passing away:

He had a capacious mind and a strong character. When he held a contrary view, he would challenge my decisions and make me re-examine the premises on which they were made. As a result, we reached better decisions in Singapore. In the middle of a crisis, his analysis was always sharp, with an academic detachment and objectivity that reassured me.¹

Stable and successful institutions are imposing constructs; and the irrefutability of their power and influence once they are properly established whitewashes the uncertainties of their beginnings from the popular mind. And yet, the chronological order in which they came into being clearly reflects not only the contingencies in the specific case of Singapore but also the generic pattern that nation building is prone to follow for small new countries.

The Post-war Years

The first organization Goh formed was apparently the Malayan Forum in the late 1940s. After being fired by the enthusiasm he had witnessed in Budapest in 1949 when attending the leftist Second World Festival of Youth and Students, the young Goh decided that he and his fellow students should form “a movement” once they were back in Singapore.² In the meantime, he and several eager students founded the Malayan Forum in London to counteract the political apathy evident among Malayan students.³

His leadership qualities soon became obvious. Despite a lifelong unease about public speaking, Goh would soon after coming back to Singapore form the pivotal Council of Joint Action in 1952 together with Kenneth Byrne and Lee Kuan Yew, to protest against glaring disparities in benefits between local and British civil servants.⁴

The most significant organization Goh helped form in those early years was of course the People’s Action Party itself.⁵ This took place in Singapore on 21 November 1954, and although he was back in London by then, he was in fact a leading light behind the party.

As a scholar and civil servant between 1945...