Lee Kuan Yew (Harry) لی کوان یو ۔۔ ہیری

Lee Kuan Yew (Harry) لی کوان یو ۔۔ ہیری

Lee Kuan Yew, GCMG, CH (English name: Harry, Chinese: 李光耀; pinyin: Lǐ Guāngyào; POJ: Lí Kong-iāu; born 16 September 1923; alsoLee Kwan-Yew) is a Singaporean statesman. He was the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore, from 1959 to 1990, and was one of the longest serving Prime Ministers in the world.

As the co-founder and first secretary-general of the People's Action Party (PAP), he led the party to a landslide victory in 1959, overseeing the separation of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965 and its subsequent transformation from a relatively underdeveloped colonial outpost with no natural resources into a "First World", Asian Tiger. He has remained one of the most influential political figures in South-East Asia.

Under the administration of Singapore's second prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, he served as Senior Minister. He currently holds the post ofMinister Mentor, a post created when his son, Lee Hsien Loong, became the nation's third prime minister on 12 August 2004. Because of his continued Ministerial posts, he became one of the longest serving ministers in the world.

In 1983, Lee sparked the 'Great Marriage Debate' when he encouraged Singapore men to choose highly-educated women as wives. He was concerned that a large number of graduate women were unmarried. Some sections of the population, including graduate women, were upset by his views. Nevertheless, a match-making agency Social Development Unit (SDU) was set up to promote socialising among men and women graduates.

Lee also introduced incentives such as tax rebates, schooling, and housing priorities for graduate mothers who had three or four children, in a reversal of the over-successful 'Stop-at-Two' family planning campaign in the 1960s and 1970s. By the late 1990s, the birth rate had fallen so low that Lee's successor Goh Chok Tong extended these incentives to all married women, and gave even more incentives, such as the 'baby bonus' scheme.