I HAVE been watching George Yeo lately on YouTube and am quite pleased to see that the world did not lose its last wise man from Singapore when Lee Kuan Yew died at 92 on March 23, 2015. It appears that LKY passed on his mantle to the generation he had mentored: this begins with his son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, and includes George Yeo, the former minister for information, trade, and foreign affairs, among others.

Here, I am going to talk of George Yeo rather than Lee Hsien Loong. Although George Yeo left his last Cabinet post in 2011 after serving under Prime Minister LKY, Goh Chok Tong and the incumbent PM since 1976, he remains a goldmine of fresh ideas and information, and he spreads them generously in his varied international interviews and lectures. Much of what I recently heard has been profoundly enriching, but I am particularly struck by something he said in Hong Kong involving the Philippines.