Grieving individuals left flowers and messages outside Singapore General Hospital, where Mr Lee had spent his final days. One local newspaper published a 44-page special edition marking his death and celebrating his life.
A website called “Remembering Lee Kuan Yew” was set up to offer information on where tributes to be paid to the late politician.
A policeman looks at the state flag after lowering it to half-mast at the Parliament building in Singapore (Reuters)
As Singapore mourned, world leaders paid tribute to the influential and pragmatic politician behind the city-state's remarkable transformation.
“He 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,” said Barack Obama , the US president.
“Lee Kuan Yew personally shaped Singapore in a way that few people have any nation,” said David Cameron , the Prime Minister. “He made his country into one of the great success stories of our modern world. That Singapore is today a prosperous, secure and successful country is a monument to his decades of remarkable public service.”
Tony Blair , the former Prime Minister, described Mr Lee as “one of the most extraordinary leaders of modern times”. “He was a genuine political giant,” he said.
Xi Jinping, China ’s president, said Mr Lee had been an “old friend of the Chinese people”.
Lee Kuan Yew, who studied law at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, is credited with turning a tiny trading outpost into a leading global financial centre and one of Asia ’s most prosperous societies.
Born in 1923, he founded the People’s Action Party (PAP) and led the former British colony for 31 years from 1959 to 1990. He continued to play an active role in Singaporean politics until poor health forced him to withdraw from public life earlier this year.
People lay flowers and well-wishes in a heavy downpour at the Singapore General Hospital (Reuters)
“We might possibly compare him to the founders of Israel . He was a real pioneer,” said Michael Barr, the author of Lee Kuan Yew: The Beliefs Behind the Man .
“I look back and criticise the things that he has done and lots of aspects of his governance. But the truth is that when he set out in the 1950s to oppose the communists and to try to push the British out and make them see that they needed to go sooner or later, he didn’t know it was going to turn out well. It did take real courage.
"If I had been around in Singapore in the 1950s I suspect I would have been one of his backers. He was leading an intelligent and strong and courageous group of men who were trying to build a country.”
Tributes on Singaporean television focused on Mr Lee’s efforts to help the poor through government housing projects and how he had turned an impoverished port into a skyscraper studded metropolis.
Singapore was “the only city in the world without slums,” a report by Singapore’s Channel News Asia claimed.
Critics attacked Mr Lee for Singapore’s curtailment of freedom of speech and civil liberties. “The government still punishes speech and peaceful actions that it deems a threat to public order, especially on matters of ethnicity and religion,” said a Human Rights Watch report last year.
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“He really set the standard for marrying capitalism and authoritarianism,” said Michael Barr, the author.
“He showed that it can be done and he showed that if a government of country is a seat of prosperity, if it makes itself useful to global capital, then no one really cares if locks up its opponents, if there is torture involved or if they ride roughshod over democracy. That is a powerful lesson that will outlive him.”
Despite those criticisms, few dispute that Mr Lee’s mildly authoritarian “Singapore Model” brought great successes. Under him, Singapore became a global hub for aviation, shipping, finance and the oil industry, Mr Barr said. “He really made Singapore the repository of all the strategic advantages that come from being on the southern end of the Straits of Malacca: the gateway between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific ocean.”
“The vast majority of the population felt a sort of ownership of the Singapore Project and that really is a visionary achievement,” he added.
"A lot of policies were not popular,” Ee Ye Lin, a lawyer, told Channel News Asia on Monday. “But in the grander scheme of things, things turned out how they should have.”
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