Lee feud rocks Singapore
City- state suffers series of failures under current PM
The dispute between Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his siblings might challenge the stability of the country and bring pressure for political reform, experts said.
Lee Hsien Yang, the second son of Singapore’s first leader Lee Kuan Yew, and his sister Lee Wei Ling, posted a statement on Wednesday, accusing their older brother of using their father’s legacy to reinforce his own power and personal popularity.
“The dispute between the prime minister and his siblings is actually about the use of the former leader Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy in Singaporean politics,” Xu Liping, an expert on Southeast Asia at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Thursday.
As Lee Hsien Loong’s achievements in government, compared to his father’s, are not as impressive, this open family feud might affect his political status to some extent, Xu said.
The dispute was apparently sparked
by disagreement over the fate of the family home at 38 Oxley Road.
The late prime minister had asked for it to be demolished upon his death, part of his long- held belief against monuments and self- aggrandizement, but the house has been preserved.
“However, we believe that [ Lee] Hsien Loong and [ his wife] Ho Ching are motivated by a desire to inherit Lee Kuan Yew’s standing and reputation for themselves and their children,” read Lee Hsien Yang and Lee Wei Ling’s statement.
Political ambitions
The two siblings also said in the statement that Lee Hsien Loong and his wife, the chief executive of state investment firm Temasek Holdings, also “harbor political ambitions” for their son Li Hongyi.
“To appoint a successor within the first family in Singapore is becoming increasingly unacceptable, and pressure on the ruling party, the People’s Action Party, is actually growing,” Chu Yin, an associate professor at the University of International Relations, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Chu said that the Lee family’s public feud shows that democratization in the country is increasing and that Lee Hsien Loong is not an unchal- lengeable figure in Singapore.
In response to his siblings’ allegations, Lee Hsien Loong released a statement on his Facebook account on Wednesday, saying that he was “very disappointed that my siblings have chosen to issue a statement publicizing private family matters.” He denied the accusations, including any political plan for his son.
Differences among siblings should “stay in the family” and the statement had “hurt our father’s legacy,” the statement said.
His son, Li Hongyi, also said on his Facebook account on Thursday that “For what it is worth, I really have no interest in politics.”
“The dispute is not only a private family issue, but also shows that the younger siblings hold very different political values to the prime minister, and their opinion is very similar to Singapore’s opposition party, which is getting popular in Singapore and bringing pressure for political reform,” Chen Jiulin, former chief executive of China Aviation Oil in Singapore, who lived and worked in Singapore for 11 years, told the Global Times.
“Lee Hsien Loong can’t be compared to his father. Singapore’s economy has obviously declined in recent years, and its state- run investment companies have suffered heavy losses. In the diplomatic sphere, Singa- pore has also suffered failures like the US withdrew from the Trans- Pacific Partnership ( TPP),” Chen said.
In Lee Kuan Yew’s era, the Sino- Singaporean relationship was healthy, but after Lee Hsien Loong took office, Singapore started to urge Southeastern Asian countries to go against China on the South China Sea issue, and encouraged the US and other Asian- Pacific countries to form the TPP free trade deal to isolate China, Chu said.
“The fact is Lee Hsien Loong’s attempts to isolate China have failed, and we hope he can fix ties with China in the future,” Chu said.
Dirty laundry
As the Lee family continued to air their dirty laundry in public, it not only drew attention in Singapore but also aroused enthusiastic discussions among Chinese netizens.
Some Chinese Net users are questioning whether China should learn modern management skills from Singapore by saying that “Singapore is just like a developed and capitalized version of ‘ North Korea,’ so what can we learn from it?”
Singapore’s advanced civil service system and management skills have nothing to do with the dispute in the country’s top family, and in many areas, China still needs to learn from Singapore, Xu said.