ABSTRACT
The People’s Action Party (PAP) elite has been active over the last 75 years and its members are highly energetic and thoroughly competent. The elite have sought out opportunities and always taken note of the wider context within which the Singaporean community was lodged. Lee KY and his colleagues in the early PAP belonged to a generation schooled by warfare and its associated radical dislocation of familiar routines. Lee himself had been a relatively privileged colonial schoolboy and, having narrowly missed being rounded up in the Sook Ching, he ended the war years living by his wits as a street trader. Cast in terms of the data sets of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Monetary Fund or United Nations Development Programme Singapore’s record is one of sustained success. The elite have sketched out a line to the future by embracing the possibilities of digital technology; hence, the idea of the Smart City.
