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Goh Keng Swee: A Public Career Remembered
Author(s): Desker Barry & Kwa Chong Guan (Author)
- Publisher: World Scientific Publishing/S Rajaratnam School Of Int'l Studies
- Publication Date: 18 Sept. 2011
- Edition: Illustrated
- Language: English
- Print length: 200 pages
- ISBN-10: 9814291382
- ISBN-13: 9789814291385
Book Description
Dr Goh Keng Swee was Singapore’s first Minister for Finance from 1959 to 1965 who initiated Singapore’s first industrial estate now known as Jurong Town. He was also the first and longest serving Defence Minister after Singapore became independent in 1965, responsible for building up the Singapore Armed Forces from scratch. Later he became Minister for Education in 1981 and revamped the education system to what it is today. Dr Goh was also concurrently Deputy Prime Minister from 1973 to 1984 during which time he set up the Monetary Authority of Singapore.While Dr Goh’s public career and achievements are well documented in press reports and archival records as well as in photographs and speeches, what is missing is an insight and exposition of Dr Goh as an individual in his various roles. Goh Keng Swee: A Public Career Remembered seeks to provide this missing dimension of Dr Goh as a person to work for. Thirty-eight persons who had the opportunity of closely observing or working with Dr Goh have contributed their reflections and recollections of Dr Goh as a person, colleague and “boss”, to this book. They have given candid and personal pen portraits of an unusual leader and minister, revealing a glimpse of the working habits of Dr Goh not known to most people.Drawn from oral histories and recent interviews, these reminiscences have been chronologically arranged, from those who recalled what it was like to work alongside Dr Goh on the Malayan Forum in London in the early 1950s, through his various ministerial positions, to travelling with Dr Goh after he “retired” from politics in 1984. What emerges from these anecdotes of Dr Goh is that he could be an extremely demanding “boss”, who could also be very supportive of his subordinates. They show him to be a person with a very inquisitive and creative mind capable of making great leaps of lateral thinking, able to connect disparate ideas and data to propose new and innovative solutions to intractable policy problems. He was truly a Singaporean for all seasons.
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From the Back Cover
A crucial founding father of independent Singapore, Dr Goh Keng Swee has his distinguished and unparalleled stint in public service hitherto reduced to dates and designations. The book is the first to collect and present a broad range of historical material commemorating Dr Goh’s public career. This book is not a biography of Dr Goh’s life. Instead, it commemorates his public career and attempts to portray a more personal and candid perspective of the principal architect of independent Singapore. This is done by pulling together a variety of historical sources, ranging from Dr Goh’s public statements and speeches, and existing and fresh oral interviews with his former colleagues to archival documents and imagery. This book is an important contribution not only to Singapore’s history in general, providing valuable historical context to the challenges of ensuring the sustainability and survival of a young nation at the highest levels of policy-making, but also a tribute to Dr Goh how he is remembered, respected and revered by some of his closest peers and colleagues.
