Former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has died early Monday. He was 91 years old. Lee was Singapore’s leader from 1959 until 1990, but remained a highly influential figure and a strategist on the city state’s economy.
Lee was hospitalized in Singapore General Hospital in early February with severe pneumonia, and was later placed on life support.
U.S. President Obama offered deepest condolences to Lee’s family. In a White House statement, Obama described Lee as a "visionary" who built "one of the most prosperous countries in the world today." Obama said Lee was "a true giant of history who will be remembered for generations to come as the father of modern Singapore and as one the great strategists of Asian affairs." The president said he joined Singaporeans in mourning Lee's death. “Harry” Lee Kuan Yew, a fourth generation Singaporean, whose ancestors migrated from China’s Guangdong Province in the 1860s, played a primary role in guiding the island state’s post-colonial era toward economic success.
A survivor of the Japanese Imperial Army’s occupation of Singapore, Lee studied economics in London after the war and attended Cambridge University, gaining a law degree.
His political life began in 1954 with the formation the People’s Action Party (PAP), a coalition of middle class and pro-communist trade unionists. In 1955 Lee was the opposition leader in the legislature. But splits within the PAP with the party’s left wing led to arrests of pro-communists in 1957.
The PAP won an electoral landslide in1959, and Lee Kuan Yew became Singapore’s first Prime Minister, a position he held until 1990 before taking a post of senior minister. (VOA)
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