I'm so tire of the Singapore miracle and Lee Kuan Yew hymn as someone who received education and lived early life there. I do believe on certain grounds they are produced and promoted by public relation department of Singapore government, as a counter-measure to all the criticism concerning human rights, free speech, totalitarianism, etc.
To put it shortly, Singapore is just China in minuscule, just that Singaporean officialdom knows how to conceal. There are many myths/narrative constructions regarding to this city state.
1, Singapore government is immune from corruption and highly efficient.
To be fair, Singapore government is very efficient and officials not corrupted at low levels. However, at high levels, it's a different story. Things are just concealed. One department buying useless software and renewing license for millions every year from some 2-people company, do you think it's corruption? remember it's not a democracy you can hold officials accountable. At top level, well, they own the country. Also, as a totalitarian regime where all decisions are made by a few feudal families, Singapore government made many wrong decisions that cost trillions. For example, it spent a huge amount of resources to biopharmaceutical industries for years in belief that this will have great economic gains, which turned out a total failure. Baisically they can do anything without any kind of mechanisms to check.
2, Singapore is a (economic) miracle.
Authority in Singapore since the very beginning has been saying that Singapore before PAP(People's Action Party) is a dirt poor fishing village, in primary schools, on textbooks, in scholar studies, etc. Well, this is a severe distortion of truth to say the least. In colonial era, Singapore had already been far ahead of other regions in South East Asia in every aspect. And that's why Singapore less than 1% of the land counted more than 50% of Chinese immigrant population in the whole Malaysia. People came to Singapore for money! In fact, in late 1800s and early 1900s, you can make about 5-10 times of what you can in other Malaysia cities for same job.
3, Singaporean people are living a happy life.
Some certainly are. Majority is not. Singaporean people's life standard is quite low, given its GDP. In fact, the philosophy from top, is, people's very basic needs are to be met, but anything else should be a luxury that they need to labor very hard (for us) to get. Singapore's wage is not high. Very basic food and shelter is not expensive to be fair. But if you want some comfort from life that most people in the world can have rather easily, you are probably not able to afford. I'm not talking about bmw or luxury condo, i'm talking about ice cream, beer, high quality fruit, air-con, Toyota, etc.
4, Singapore is meritocratic and being pragmatical.
Again, at low level of officialdom, it is, to a great extent. But there's saying in Singapore, people who got to make public transportation policies never take public transportation in life. You get the idea. To understand this, you need to know some Singaporean/Malaysian history. There's a people called Straights Chineses, to which Lee Kuan Yew's family belong. Straight Chinese is what later Chinese immigrants call them. They don't deem themselves as Chinese. Lee Kuan Yew only changed his name to Chinese and began to learn Chinese in his late years. That history is quite completed.
As I said, Singapore is just China in minuscule. Whatever you think of China, be it good or bad, applies to Singapore. I personally don't think highly of it. Actually there's a perennial quitter phenomenon in Singapore. Those who make it thru to middle class, especially professionals, tend to leave.