Lee family feud comes at ‘great personal cost’, but needed due to ‘broken social compact’: Lee Hsien Yang

Younger brother of premier says abuse of power has unbalanced the Singapore equation where civil liberties may be curtailed in return for the rule of law and a government utterly beyond reproach

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The public row between the three children of former Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew escalates each day with new accusations and leaders weighing in. Photo: Reuters/Edgar Su/File Photo

Published: 8:30am, 19 Jun 2017Updated: 11:07pm, 6 Jul 2017

Lee Kuan Yew’s youngest son Lee Hsien Yang yesterday said his public feud with his brother – Singapore’s current prime minister – has come at a “great personal cost” but claimed it was necessary to safeguard the national interest.

“We speak up at great personal cost because we care deeply for the Singapore our father built,” Lee Hsien Yang, 59, told the South China Morning Post.

He and his sister Lee Wei Ling, 62, last Wednesday shocked the country with public accusations their eldest brother Lee Hsien Loong, the current premier, had abused executive powers to force them to drop plans to demolish the family home.

The Facebook post by Lee Hsien Yang, coordinated with his sister Lee Wei Ling, blew the lid wide open on the family row.

The late Lee Kuan Yew – prime minister from 1959 to 1990 and the architect of the Singapore’s status as a high-tech, high-income global city – inserted a “demolition clause” in his seventh and final will in 2013. He died at age 91 in March 2015.

Lee Hsien Yang in the initial release said the harassment he faced from “organs of state” for clashing with the premier on the matter was so grave he had made plans for self-exile.

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