Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
Having become an autonomous British dependency in 1959 Singapore joined the new independent federation of Malaysia in 1963, only to leave it two years later to declare itself the Reublic of Singapore. The country has been ruled since 1959 by the People's Action Party (PAP) whose long-standing leader Lee Kwan Yew was Prime Minister until 1990. The majority of the materials here are concerned with the two fundamental features of Singapore since independence, its strong record of economic growth and its political authoritarianism. Unsurprisingly the PAP holdings stress the former, and prior to the 1990s this was coupled with frequent references to the need for stability against the threat of communism. Opposition parties such as the Barisan Sosialis, which split from the PAP in the early 1960s and for which there are substantial holdings, have been more concerned with the perceived unfairness of the democratic system and with human rights abuses. Additionally many of the earlier materials deal with Singapore's position within the federation of Malaysia and the administration of the federation itself, seen by some left-wing parties as being a means by which British colonial interests could continue to be served behind a veneer of independence.