- 1 week ago
A thoughtful and pragmatic leader, Dr Goh Keng Swee built the foundations for Singapore's economy, defence, and governance. Through bold ideas and quiet foresight, he left a legacy that continues to shape the nation's growth and resilience today.
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00:00Everybody has heard of Lee Kuan Yew.
00:02Few of them have heard about Kho King Sui.
00:05His legacy is all around us.
00:07You just name it.
00:08TDB, EDB, MAS, GIC.
00:13He had that farsightedness to see
00:17how the solutions he was working towards
00:21would look like two years or ten years down the road.
00:25So he had that ability to think in time.
01:00But about doing good.
01:02Lee trusted Dr. Goh
01:04and that whatever Dr. Goh said
01:07comes from his inner self
01:10as to what is and should be good for Singapore.
01:15Dr. Goh was born in Malacca.
01:17But at the age of two, actually,
01:19his parents moved to Singapore.
01:20And his father was the general manager of a rubber plantation in Clemente.
01:26Early morning, he would go and watch the rubber tappers tap the rubber.
01:31He was very curious.
01:32And he would spend a lot of time wandering.
01:35This curiosity became one of Dr. Goh's defining characteristics.
01:40He read lots and lots and lots of books.
01:43He took a speed reading course so that he could very quickly skim through
01:48and just pick up the key points in any book.
01:51And there will always be a whole pile of books on his desk on the strangest subjects.
01:57His inquisitive nature extended to the people in Singapore.
02:01After World War II, he became a researcher at the Social Welfare Department
02:06where he conducted his first social survey.
02:10Dr. Goh and his team personally interviewed more than 4,000 households.
02:16And he ate with the tri-shore drivers in Teluk-Ayer.
02:21He had to understand how the poor lived.
02:24And Chanita was one of the poorest areas.
02:27He must have seen the poverty around him
02:29that made him want to dedicate himself to public service.
02:33His dedication earned him a scholarship to study in London in 1948.
02:39And he chose to study statistics.
02:41I suspect, actually, that he wasn't pleased with his first social survey of Singapore.
02:47In London, Dr. Goh's quest for a better Singapore didn't stop.
02:52I think he was aware that communism was a growing global force,
02:58that British colonial policy was changing,
03:01and that he had to be better prepared and think through
03:06what is going to happen when decolonisation takes place.
03:11He recognised during his time in London
03:14that he and his fellow students were rather unaware of the great political currents around them,
03:25that they co-founded the Malayan Forum to further their discussions and understanding of politics back home.
03:32With his sharpened mind and social sensitivities,
03:36Dr. Goh returned to social welfare, determined to make change.
03:40He challenged colonial discrimination,
03:42where huge pay disparities existed between British expats and equally qualified locals.
03:49This gave rise to the formation of the Council for Joint Action in 1952,
03:54fighting for equal pay for local civil servants.
03:57I believe he dedicated his life to public service
04:03because he felt that this is what he should do.
04:08But if he's going to effect change and significant change,
04:11he has to be a politician, even though he disliked being in the public eye,
04:16because that's the only way that you can make policies
04:19and affect the lives of the masses.
04:22He was in the informal discussions with his good friend Lee Kuan Yew,
04:28but he could not actively contribute to the formation of the party
04:33as he was a civil servant.
04:36He had to resign from his job in the government in 1958
04:40to contest the 1959 elections.
04:44Well, Lee Kuan Yew had said that Dr. Goh
04:48was the one who would often give him contrarian views.
04:52He will think differently given the same set of facts.
04:56That's the way his mind works.
04:59Dr. Goh was not your typical politician.
05:01He disliked being in the spotlight.
05:04I think he's a shy person.
05:05He's a man of few words.
05:07He's very uncomfortable kissing babies and shaking hands,
05:11as most politicians have to do.
05:13But despite that, Dr. Goh was committed to the public good.
05:17In 1959, Dr. Goh became Singapore's first finance minister.
05:22Founding the Economic Development Board
05:24and taking on the country's most ambitious project yet,
05:27the Zhurong Industrial Park.
05:30That corner of Singapore, Zhurong, was largely a mangrove swamp,
05:39which Dr. Goh had filled in.
05:41At that point, it was thought that it was sheer folly,
05:46that we would never be able to industrialise.
05:49In fact, also called Goh's folly.
05:52And then he managed to attract a series of what would today be called SMEs,
05:58little industries, to set up factories there.
06:00Where the other countries around us,
06:03at that point of independence,
06:06were either trying to substitute and cut down their imports,
06:12Dr. Goh decided we would go for export-orientated.
06:17That we would not nationalise the existing British factories.
06:23Where sceptics saw failure, Dr. Goh saw potential.
06:27The success of Zhurong Industrial Park
06:29laid the foundation for Singapore's manufacturing economy.
06:33I don't think Dr. Goh is daunted by anything.
06:35And I think I know why he offered himself to be the Minister of Defence.
06:40In 1965, Dr. Goh was appointed the Minister of Defence.
06:57He had a daunting task ahead,
06:59to build Singapore's armed forces, now known as SAF, from scratch.
07:04We started, as is well known,
07:08with only two battalions of infantry soldiers,
07:12which Dr. Goh and all the others in the Cabinet
07:16recognised was inadequate to defend Singapore.
07:20Dr. Goh here was very open to outside ideas,
07:24so he tapped on a lot of ideas from the Israelis,
07:29from the Americans on how to go about building up the armed force
07:35at the battalion level and at the higher level.
07:38He also engaged a retired German general
07:41to advise us, General Schutz.
07:43This resulted in Dr. Goh implementing a citizen army
07:47with the introduction of conscription
07:49through the National Service Bill in 1967.
07:53He was very hands-on.
07:54He loves visiting the camps
07:56and he would want to test everything,
07:59if he could, himself.
08:01He wanted to be in a fighter jet
08:03and they were advising him not to
08:05because he's not used to the G-force,
08:08but he insisted on it.
08:11When Dr. Goh emerged from the plane,
08:13he was blue and purple
08:15and he was very, very sick.
08:18So that's him.
08:19He wanted to understand
08:20what his SAF pilots really had to feel
08:24when they are in their planes.
08:27Dr. Goh is a very thorough person.
08:29His cabinet colleagues will not query him
08:31on whether to buy a particular equipment or another.
08:34He would have done his homework.
08:36His immersive style of leadership
08:38would guide him to ask a simple question about a rifle,
08:41one that would spark far bigger questions
08:44about value, vulnerability
08:46and how self-reliant Singapore truly was.
08:50He asked an officer, Mr. Lai Chun Long,
08:53to go to his office
08:54and to bring the M16 gun with him.
08:57And Dr. Goh said, strip the gun.
09:00Dr. Goh said, separate the high value
09:02from the low value items.
09:05And after, he said,
09:06now separate the parts that we are manufacturing
09:09and the parts that we had to import.
09:12And his question was,
09:14why are we manufacturing only the low value parts?
09:18Because it's important that we can import the low value items,
09:22but the high value items,
09:24we should be making it ourselves
09:25so that we will be self-sufficient in times of crisis.
09:29And so he thought of our own defence industry
09:32and that was the beginnings of the defence science organisation.
09:37He loved challenges.
09:39He was known as Mr. Fix-It in the Cabinet
09:43because he was just good at troubleshooting.
09:46So when Ministry of Education needs looking into,
09:51Lee Kuan Yew asked him to be the Minister for Education.
09:54He would approach any crisis or any challenge
09:56in a more calm way than most people.
10:00In 1979, he took on the task of identifying problems
10:05in Singapore's education system.
10:07Well, this was an old colonial education system
10:12that Dr. Goh inherited,
10:14where, yes, there was a very high dropout of students.
10:18Schools were run pretty independently.
10:21And Dr. Goh realised that there was a problem there
10:24when you have got the students being taught
10:28in different languages, different curriculums.
10:31And integrating them into some sort of a common curriculum
10:35was not easy.
10:36So that was a challenge that Dr. Goh took on.
10:39How do we streamline and more efficiently
10:42give each student the best opportunity
10:46to develop skills according to their pace of development?
10:50Streaming was introduced in 1980
10:52as a way to tackle the high dropout rates
10:55and poor literacy.
10:57It was a bold move,
10:58but one that was deemed necessary at that time.
11:01In recent years, streaming has faced growing scrutiny.
11:05And today, this policy has been phased out
11:07to keep up with changing needs.
11:10Times change,
11:11and we have to change our evaluations of the policies
11:15that were made in that point of time
11:19according to the circumstances.
11:21Dr. Goh wasn't just focused on survival.
11:24He saw the bigger picture,
11:26that building a nation also meant building a life worth living.
11:31Dr. Goh was a chess player.
11:33He would always think five, six steps ahead of everybody.
11:37I think all along he knew when he was a minister
11:40that there would come a time
11:42in which Singaporeans need breathing space.
11:45They need more culture.
11:47Dr. Goh was a man of very wide interest.
11:49He was a lover of music.
11:51He also had a deep interest in natural history.
11:54So these interests
11:56led to him proposing
11:59the formation of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.
12:03He said that no self-respecting nation
12:06should be without its own national orchestra.
12:09Dr. Goh played the accordion when he was young.
12:12He could syncopate on the piano
12:14because his sisters played the piano.
12:16But he had no formal music education.
12:19But he loved music.
12:21I remember going to his home in the evenings
12:23and Beethoven would be playing.
12:26Dr. Goh recognised that meeting basic needs
12:29was only the beginning
12:30and that thriving meant giving Singaporeans
12:33space to dream and play.
12:36So he built spaces of wonder,
12:38the Singapore Zoological Gardens,
12:41the Jurong Bird Park,
12:42and Sentosa Island.
12:46Dr. Goh continued serving as Deputy Prime Minister
12:48until his retirement from politics in 1984.
12:52But even then, his work did not stop.
12:56He continued on in advisory roles
12:58and private and public boards.
13:01In his last interview,
13:03before he stepped down,
13:04he said,
13:05I'm grateful for this opportunity
13:07to be able to serve.
13:12Dr. Goh's passing in 2010
13:14marked the loss of a cherished figure
13:16in our nation's history.
13:18As one of the chief architects
13:20of modern Singapore,
13:22his vision and leadership
13:23laid the foundations
13:24for the nation's economic success
13:26and social stability.
13:29Even at the top,
13:31he stayed grounded
13:32and cared deeply for the people.
13:35I know his secretaries,
13:37his driver,
13:39his security guards,
13:40they adored him.
13:41He was very caring,
13:43very considerate
13:44about their welfare.
13:46He would personally write
13:47thank you letters
13:49and that's very unusual
13:51for a minister to do.
13:53Mr. Lee,
13:54in his eulogy,
13:55wrote,
13:56of all my cabinet colleagues,
13:57it was Dr. Goh Kang Sui
13:59who made the greatest difference
14:01to the outcome
14:02for Singapore.
14:03He had a capacious mind
14:05and a very strong character.
14:07When he held a contrary view,
14:09he would challenge my decision
14:10and make me re-examine
14:12the premises
14:13on which they were made.
14:14As a result,
14:15we reached better decisions
14:17for Singapore
14:18in the middle of a crisis.
14:20Dr. Goh may be gone,
14:22but his legacy lives on today.
14:25Well, if you ask me
14:26what was Dr. Goh's
14:28greatest legacy,
14:30you just have to look around.
14:32If you go to the bird park,
14:34that started by Dr. Goh.
14:35You go to the zoo,
14:37that's Dr. Goh.
14:38You could listen to a symphony,
14:40orchestra,
14:41that's Dr. Goh.
14:43This is because he felt
14:44that institutions last,
14:48human beings do not.
14:49You just name it.
14:51TDB, EDB,
14:53NTUC,
14:54MAS,
14:56GIC.
14:57His legacy is all around us.
15:00The lessons that we can learn
15:02from Dr. Goh
15:04and his colleagues
15:06is to think beyond
15:08immediate political gains
15:11for longer term
15:13other geopolitical,
15:16geo-economic gains
15:18for Singapore.
15:19So here was one man,
15:22shy, awkward,
15:23and yet he devoted
15:24his life to politics.
15:26I would like you to be remembered
15:27as a selfless person,
15:30somebody who,
15:31in the Chinese saying,
15:33I Ming,
15:33I Guo,
15:34who devoted his whole life
15:36to the betterment
15:37of Singaporeans.
15:39youreston,
15:41thank you.
16:09You
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