Singapore’s first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew has died aged 91, its current leader has confirmed.

In a statement released on Sunday evening, the serving prime minister Lee Hsien Loong said the country’s former leader died in the early hours of the morning.

“The prime minister is deeply grieved to announce the passing of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister of Singapore.

“Mr Lee passed away peacefully at the Singapore general hospital today at 3.18 am. He was 91,” it read.


Lee, a Cambridge-educated lawyer, is widely credited with building Singapore into one of the world’s wealthiest nations on a per capita basis with a strong, pervasive role for the state and little patience for dissent.

He co-founded the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has ruled Singapore since 1959 and led the newly born country when it was separated from Malaysia in 1965.

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Singapore was barely a shadow of the economic powerhouse that it is today when it was expelled from Malaysia and became an independent nation in 1965. After hundreds of years of colonial rule as part of “British Malaysia,” the island had been invaded by Japan in WWII and left in shambles. Its population was a mix of traders, former indentured servants, escaped convicts and businessmen, who frequently clashed along economic and racial lines.


Instead of falling apart, though, Singapore thrived. Ramshackle single-storied houses in rural kampongs—Malay for villages—have now given way to an iconic glass and steel skyline complete with some of the world’s most profitable casinos where Asia’s second largest concentration of millionaires (after Qatar) can burn some cash.

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