Former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew has called for the understanding of Singaporeans towards the government’s decision to continue taking in immigrants.

Speaking at a Lunar New Year gathering in his constituency of Tanjong Pagar on Friday, Mr Lee said Singapore’s per capita income is one of the highest in Asia.

But it faces an ageing and shrinking population. Last year, the birth rate was 1.15, with the Chinese leading the decline among other races.

Mr Lee said Japan also suffers from similar problems. But its decision not to take in migrants has contributed to economic stagnation.

He said: “Our choice must be the other one – taking in immigrants. I know Singaporeans do not feel very comfortable seeing so many strange new faces, but the alternative is economy stagnation and worse, nobody to look after our old people later on.”

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the son of Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew, said Thursday that he does not think that his children will enter politics.

“They will have to decide but if you ask me now I think the odds are not on it,” he told the Davos meeting of business and political elite.

“It’s a different generation, it’s a new world, there are so many opportunities in Singapore,” said Lee.

Lee, who has four children, took office as the island state’s third prime minister in 2004.

His father led Singapore to political independence and economic prosperity during a 31-year run until 1990 as prime minister, and remained in cabinet under his son until last year.

Asked what it was like living under his father’s shadow, Lee said: “Well, I don’t know. I’ve never not had it. It’s tough enough, but you have to live with it.”

Lee said his illustrious father “had expectations, but he left me to do my own thing. He did not push me into this, and neither would it have worked had he done so.”

I listened to several of the speeches in Parliament on ministerial salaries and read the rest in the newspapers. With a different generation, political attitudes change. But for Singapore, the basic challenge remains unchanged: That unless we have a steady stream of high quality men and women to serve as PM and ministers, Singapore as a little red dot will become a little black spot.

I was PM from 1959 to 1990 and Senior Minister in PM Goh Chok Tong’s cabinet from 1990 to 2004.

To find able and committed men and women of integrity, willing to spend the prime of their lives, and going through the risky process of elections, we cannot underpay our ministers and argue that their sole reward should be their contribution to the public good. Every family wants to provide the best for their children, to go to a good university. We were pragmatic and also paid competitive salaries in order to have a continuous stream of high calibre people to become MPs, and then ministers. They put their careers at risk and undergo an uncertain and unpredictable election process.

A PM and his ministers carry heavy responsibilities for the nation. If they make a serious mistake, the damage to Singapore will be incalculable and permanent. Their macroeconomic policies will decide the GDP of the country, which was more than S$300 billion in 2010, with per capita GDP of S$59,000.

We did not get Singapore from the Third to the First World by head-hunting ministers willing to sacrifice their children’s future when undertaking a public service duty. We took a pragmatic course that does not require people of calibre to give up too much for the public good. We must not reduce Singapore to another ordinary country in the Third World by dodging the issue of competitive ministerial remuneration.

The Department of Islamic Development of Malaysia (Jakim) has not banned a book by former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew that allegedly offends Muslims.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom said Jakim had no authority to ban any book.

“That can only be done by the Home Ministry,” he said, commenting on a news portal report that Jakim had banned Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going.

The book, a collection of interviews published in January, was reportedly included in a list of 15 declared haram by Jakim. …

“Jakim only gives its views,” said Jamil Khir, adding that Lee’s book was still being reviewed by a censorship committee on publications with Islamic elements, chaired by Perak Mufti Tan Sri Harussani Zakaria.

Former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew on Monday launched what he described as the ‘most important book’ he has ever written and kicked off a fund to help children become bilingual early.

Hoping that the fund would top $100 million, he pledged a personal donation of $10 million plus all proceeds from the sale of 200 signed copies of his book which will go for at least $10,000 each. …

The Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism will be used for initiatives to help children with their mother tongue and English, especially before they reach primary school.

The book, My Lifelong Challenge: Singapore’s Bilingual Journey, is published in separate but similar Chinese and English editions. The 400-page Chinese edition is by Lianhe Zaobao and the 388-page English one by The Straits Times Press.

Each copy of the book comes with a DVD of extracts from relevant speeches made by Mr Lee – in English, Mandarin, Hokkien and Malay – over the past 50 years.

The book consists of two parts. In the first part, Mr Lee recounts his lifelong quest to learn Mandarin and to get the bilingual education policy right. The second part features essays by Singaporeans on their individual linguistic journeys. There are 18 essays in the Chinese edition and 22 in the English edition.

My Lifelong Challenge is the story of Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s 50-year struggle to transform Singapore from a polyglot former British colony into a united nation where everyone, while knowing English, knows at least one other language, his own mother tongue. The founding prime minister of Singapore tells why he did away with vernacular schools in spite of violent political resistance, why he closed Nanyang University, why he later started Special Assistance Plan schools, and why he continues to urge all ethnic Chinese Singaporeans today to learn the Chinese language.

The reader learns not only about the many policy adjustments but also the challenges Mr Lee encountered – from Chinese language chauvinists who wanted Chinese to be the pre-eminent language in Singapore, from Malay and Tamil community groups fearing that Chinese were given too much emphasis, from parents of all races wanting an easier time for their school-going children, and even from his own Cabinet colleagues questioning his assumptions about language.

My Lifelong Challenge is also the story of Mr Lee’s own struggle to learn the Chinese language, which began when he was six years old and his Hakka maternal grandmother enrolled him in a Chinese class with fishermen’s children. In evocative detail, the man born to English-speaking parents recounts his own feelings of rebellion and humiliation at different points in his life, when faced with the Chinese language and his own inadequacy in it. This book describes in matter-of-fact yet vivid fashion his steely determination to improve his Chinese and reclaim his Chinese heritage right up to the present when he is well into his eighties.

News that Singapore’s first and longest-serving Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, is suffering from a neurological problem affecting his ability to walk is the latest reminder of the generational shift under way in the Southeast Asian financial center.

The disease—sensory peripheral neuropathy, which Mr. Lee has already been dealing with for two years—may not dramatically alter the 88-year-old’s regular globe-trotting activities, doctors said.

But the disclosure underscores, analysts said, the urgency for Singaporean leaders, including Mr. Lee’s son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, to have a long-term plan to maintain the city-state’s growth without regular input from its longtime leader.

The ruling People’s Action Party has been taking steps to reduce Mr. Lee’s dominance for years, analysts said. The elder statesman in May left Singapore’s cabinet, where he served as minister mentor, and, while still a member of Parliament, he has moved to the backbench, reserved for less-influential policy makers.

“Ten or twenty years ago, the news of [Mr. Lee] stepping down from cabinet would have overshadowed all other [political] news, but it did not dominate the Singaporean mind,” said Cherian George, a professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. “This is a good indication that future news of his incapacitation would not shock.” …

While the governing People’s Action Party remained firmly in control, winning 81 of 87 parliamentary seats in the poll, it received its lowest share of the popular vote since Singapore became a nation. The results added to the uncertainty about what will happen in Singapore once Mr. Lee, architect of the city-state’s success, dies. Analysts say the withdrawal of Mr. Lee from formal positions of power before the public disclosure of his health problems has allowed the PAP to project itself as a party under serious transformation, though Mr. Lee, co-founder of the party, still plays an important role in its vision and ethos.

Garry Rodan, a professor of politics and international studies at Australia’s Murdoch University, said Mr. Lee’s ideologies and institutions still have a huge influence over the choice of the PAP’s leaders, so any fuller withdrawal of Mr. Lee from the political process could create an atmosphere where the authority of the party’s leaders will be challenged more vigorously by the party’s critics.

Mr. Lee and his family told local papers that the disease hasn’t affected his mind or his willingness to participate in government.

Health professionals said the disease doesn’t affect patients’ intellectual capabilities, but it can sometimes force them to use wheelchairs. In Mr. Lee’s case, the disease is making it difficult for him to walk.

“The disease very rarely takes your life,” said Professor Craig Anderson, director of the Neurological and Mental Health Division at the George Institute for International Health in Sydney. “It affects one’s quality of life, but when it comes to intellect or otherwise, it is not a problem.”

Speaking to reporters, who asked for his comments on the news, Mr Lee said: “We learn to adjust. It started two years ago when I was 86. And at 86, many of my contemporaries are either on wheelchairs or aren’t around. So I’m grateful to be still around, although less steady than before.”

He added: “But, as you see, one learns to adjust, and I take steps which are wider apart to maintain a sound balance. I’ve no doubt at all that this hasn’t affected my mind, my will nor my resolve. People in wheelchairs can make a contribution. I still got two legs, I’ll make a contribution.”

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first and longest-serving prime minister, is fighting a neurological disease that makes it difficult for him to walk, his daughter wrote in a newspaper column on Sunday.

Lee Wei Ling, who is also director of Singapore’s National Neuroscience Institute, wrote in Singapore’s Sunday Times that her 88-year-old father has sensory peripheral neuropathy, a condition that has impaired the conduction of sensation from his legs to his spinal cord.

“This makes his walking unsteady, as many Singaporeans have already noticed,” she wrote.

“I have no doubt my father will fight his disease for as long as he thinks he can contribute to Singapore,” Ms. Lee added. “I think with medication and simple precaution, he can continue to be of service to his country and the world.”

Exceptional leaders are hard to find anywhere on the globe, including Asia. Until his recent retirement, this tough-as-nails guy—now 89 — had helped organise and run tiny Singapore almost like nobody has ever run anything. He certainly didn’t do things 100 per cent the American way. This made this US-led award event all the more extraordinary and noteworthy.

They call it the Ford Theatre’s Lincoln Medal. Recipients are said to somehow exemplify the legacy of old Abe himself. So now modern Singapore’s founding prime minister finds himself in the same category as past awardee Desmond Tutu, the legendary anti-apartheid crusader and 1984 Nobel laureate. And Lee becomes the first Lincoln awardee ever from Asia.

Western human rights organisations must be rolling over furiously on their bed of staunch principles. They so hated his control over the opposition and dissent. But Singapore, under Lee, never much cared for what rights ideologues thought. Singaporeans did it their own way: They wanted nation-building results—and fast. And, within decades, this is precisely what they achieved. The Lee speed-demon era is almost over, of course. Yes, his son is the prime minister and so the results-first legacy will endure for a time. But a new generation is moving into power and things will begin to change. This is as it should be. Nothing that is dynamic can stay the same.  In fact, in accepting the Lincoln Award, Lee made exactly that point about China. The 1.3 billion people question is whether some sort of evolution toward democracy, however defined, is in the cards for what in an earlier time was called the Middle Kingdom. …