I refer to Kerry McGlynn's letter which said that Lee Kuan Yew had changed tack (South China Morning Post, May 14).
Chris Patten met Mr Lee on July 7, 1992 with notetakers. To ensure there could be no misunderstanding over what Mr Lee said to Mr Patten, instead of talking to Hong Kong journalists who were waiting to interview him, he gave them this written statement: 'I believe if the objectives he (Patten) decides upon are within the framework of the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law, he would have firm grounds to govern and build upon during the transition up to 1997. I said the best measure of his success will be that the system he leaves behind continues to work well for Hong Kong beyond 1997.' Mr McGlynn quoted Mr Lee's interview with the Sunday Morning Post, of October 11, 1992.
Publicly, in that same interview, Mr Lee had added: '(Patten's) blueprint resembled more an agenda for action of a nationalist leader mobilising his people to fight for independence from a colonial power than a valedictory programme of a departing colonial governor.' Privately, at Government House, on October 10, Mr Lee cautioned the Governor that the interpretation he had given of 'functional constituencies' negated the meaning of 'functional', because he had widened it to include all workers employed by those functional groups. They would be representing the workers, not the professionals or businessmen for whom they were intended.
By December, 1992, three retired British Foreign Service officers had warned that the Governor's policy gave the Chinese Government an opportunity to renounce what they had agreed to.
At his lecture at Hong Kong University on December 14, 1992, with the Governor as Chancellor of the university in the Chair, in answer to a question, Mr Lee read out extracts of what Lord (David) Wilson and Lord (Murray) MacLehose had said in the House of Lords, and also what Sir Percy Cradock had written.
They all made it clear that Governor Patten's course of action was contrary to what they, on the British team, had negotiated and agreed upon with the Chinese Government.