ADDRESS BY THE PRIME MINISTER, MR LEE KUAN YEW

• Citation: (1990) 2 SAcLJ 155
• Published date: 01 December 1990
• Date: 01 December 1990

I thank you for the honour of making me your first Honorary Fellow. The law was the profession I practised for about 10 years before I took office in 1959.

The problems I faced as Prime Minister required me to give high priority to security, political stability, economic development and social progress. The country then needed policemen, soldiers, engineers, scientists, economists, and administrators more than lawyers.

I wanted to know what subjects concerned or interested young lawyers, so I asked two of my MP colleagues, both lawyers, what I should speak on. Separately, they both suggested that young lawyers would be interested to know my philosophical approach to the development of the law and the legal system in Singapore.

To understand what we have done, it is not enough merely to tabulate the reasons why we departed from this or that English norm in particular instances.

For example: Why we did away with jury trials for murder in 1969? Why do we have preventive detention without trial since it was introduced in 1948 for political subversion and in 1957 for secret society gangsters? Why still the mandatory death penalty for murder, and now for drug trafficking? Why severe penalties like caning for vandalism?

They are expressions of our philosophy of government as applied to particular facets of Singapore society.

The basic difference in our approach springs from our traditional Asian value system which places the interests of the community over and above that of the individual.

In English doctrine, the rights of the individual must be the paramount consideration. We shook ourselves free from the confines of English norms which did not accord with customs and values of Singapore society.

In criminal law legislation, our priority is the security and well-being of law-abiding citizens rather than the rights of the criminal to be protected from incriminating evidence.

We also put communitarian interests over those of the individual, when sea-front land is acquired for reclamation by cancelling the right of individual sea-front owners to compensation for loss of sea frontage.

And in acquiring fire-sites we pay compensation as without vacant possession even though the premises had been vacated because of the fire.

These were contrary of the rights of the individual upheld in English jurisprudence. But because our people shared our values, they supported and abided by our legislation.

Next, why did we often adopt a radical approach...