KUALA LUMPUR, March 23 — Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew achieved the impossible when he turned the republic from a backwater to one of the world’s most developed nations, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said in tribute today.

Extending his condolences to Singapore and its prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, following the death of the island-state’s founding father, Lim attributed Singapore’s many achievements to the elder Lim.

“What I think caused many to admire Lee Kuan Yew is his spirit in pursuing excellence and he pushed many around him to work very hard to achieve what many said was impossible and he made it possible,” the DAP secretary-general said outside Parliament today.

“He showed the way of how you can transform a country, a backwater, who (sic) had no resources, a poor, undeveloped state to be one of the most modern and progressive states. And one of the wealthiest,” he added.

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Lim added that Lee, like anyone else, had his positives and negatives, but insisted that his achievements outweighed it all.

Lee passed away earlier today at 3.18am after having been hospitalised since February 5 for severe pneumonia.

Lee was the longest-serving head of government in Asia who transformed Singapore from a backwater to one of the world’s richest nations in just three decades.

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