Two lions in winter: Lee Kuan Yew and Fidel Castro both took office as prime ministers in 1959. The fortunes of S’pore and Cuba then are vastly different now. By Peter A Coclanis

December 20, 2013 Leave a comment

PUBLISHED DECEMBER 14, 2013

Two lions in winter

Lee Kuan Yew and Fidel Castro both took office as prime ministers in 1959. The fortunes of S’pore and Cuba then are vastly different now. By Peter A Coclanis

LEE KUAN YEW: Can legitimately feel great satisfaction with his life’s work. – ST FILE PHOTO

TODAY few people would think of associating, much less equating, Cuba with Singapore. After all, the Republic is one of the wealthiest and most developed countries in the world and Cuba is, well, Cuba – a developing country and one of the few remaining communist states on Earth. The two island nations would seem to have little in common these days and there are few notable connections or ties between them.Singapore doesn’t have an embassy in Cuba and Cuban affairs in Singapore, such as they are, are handled out of Jakarta, by Cuba’s embassy in Indonesia. Indeed, but for Havana Club rum and cigars, the Cuban presence in contemporary Singapore is pretty minimal, notwithstanding the opening of a “Cuban” nightclub in Clarke Quay in 2006.

To be sure, some would suggest that one commonality between the two countries relates to governmental authoritarianism, hardcore in the case in Cuba, and soft “calibrated coercion” in Singapore. I have written on both countries and have spent time in each – a lot of time in Singapore, and three (legal) trips to Cuba over the past decade – and I find the functional equation of the two governmental systems to be off base.

Singapore is infinitely freer than Cuba, which is more analogous in governmental and political terms to pre-reform Myanmar than to the Lion City-State. But invoking the “lion” image regarding Singapore does allow me to introduce one comparison with Cuba that does make a certain amount of sense, that between the two “founding fathers” – the commanding figures Lee Kuan Yew and Fidel Castro – both of whom played outsized, indeed, gargantuan roles in their respective nation’s development and both of whom might be considered – indeed, would likely consider themselves – lions in winter today.

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