Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong is right to choose Parliament to respond to critics – it’s what Lee Kuan Yew would have done
Robert Boxwell says the airing of a family feud over social media does not befit a government and family of Singapore’s and the Lees’ stature, and commends the prime minister for choosing to submit the facts for full public scrutiny
Don’t click “Like” if you’re sick of the airing of political disputes and celebrity family troubles on social media. The latest – incessant tweets by US President Donald Trump aside – is the Facebook attack last week on Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong by his siblings. Suddenly the one country in Asia that has seemed above it for the past half-century is embroiled in a scandal. I have no basis to wade into the arguments on either side of the Lee family feud, but I know two things for certain: social media is not the place for it; and one should never click “send” in the wee hours of the morning because you’ll probably “covfefe” it when you wake up. So, good for Lee Hsien Loong for mostly resisting the temptation to respond in kind. Instead, he said he would “refute” the “accusations” in Singapore’s Parliament on July 3, followed by a session for all MPs to “raise questions for themselves and their constituents”. It looks like a page from his father’s playbook.
In the mid-1980s, as Singapore was muddling into its first recession since independence, a few members of Parliament began criticising Lee Kuan Yew and his fellow ministers about their salaries. One told constituents on the stump that ministers made as much in a day as some of Singapore’s workers made in a month. Another noted that Lee’s monthly salary, about S$31,000 (HK$174,000), was a lot more than salaries paid to his contemporaries around Asia.
Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew meets the press during a visit to Hong Kong in 1970. Photo: SCMP Pictures
As the annual budget debate approached in March 1985, Lee prepared to address his critics openly in Parliament.
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At the outset of his remarks, on a Friday afternoon, he told Singaporeans he could do one of two things: demolish “the specious arguments of [an accuser] and score debating points”; or talk about Singapore’s future. He did the latter which, in the end, effectively did the former. He came prepared with facts, delivered with the same wit and subtle mockery he used to rout the opposition before Singapore’s first election in 1959, and hold power for three decades.
The cacophony of social media, of fake news and leaks, are hardly contributing to thoughtful discussion in a time when the world needs it more than ever
“How is Singapore to preserve its most precious asset, an administration that is absolutely corruption free, a political leadership that can be subject to the closest scrutiny because it sets the highest standards?” he asked. “Just think about your future. How do you ensure that a fortuitous, purely accidental group of men who came in in 1959, and after 26 years of office … have remained stainless?”
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Over the course of two hours, he noted the corruption in practically every other country in the neighbourhood, often through vignettes about little shakedowns. “Any traveller knows that from the moment you hit the airport to the time you get into a taxi ... you know the difference: whether a place works on rules or it bends rules.”
