‘Worse than the Kardashians’: Lee Kuan Yew family feud turns ugly as siblings target Singapore prime minister’s wife
Plot thickens as Lion City premier’s wife is put front and centre of a fresh skirmish over the donation of Lee Kuan Yew’s personal items to the National Heritage Board
THE LATEST: The Prime Minister’s wife Ho Ching late on Friday (June 23, 2017) released a statement on Facebook confirming she lent the personal artefacts of Lee Kuan Yew to the National Heritage Board, at the request of her husband. She said the executors of the patriarch’s estate – Lee Hsien Yang and Lee Wei Ling – were kept informed of this development. She took issue with Lee Hsien Yang’s initial accusation that she had “helped herself” to the items while the senior Lee lay on his death bed. She wrote: “There would not be any reason to rummage [through] or tidy up papa’s [Lee Kuan Yew’s] things when he was in hospital – that is not me nor my values.”
The bitter public quarrel among the family of Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has taken a turn for the worse, as the two feuding sides engaged in a fresh social media skirmish centred on the leader’s wife.
It was not the first time Ho Ching had found herself caught in the crossfire of the battle over the estate of her father-in-law Lee Kuan Yew, the late founding leader of the city state. On Thursday, she was put front and centre of the feud as the premier’s brother Lee Hsien Yang launched new accusations on Facebook claiming his sister-in-law “helped herself” to personal items belonging to the family patriarch as he lay on his death bed in February 2015.
He posted documentary evidence that he claimed showed Ho Ching removing the items from the elder Lee’s house, and donating them to the National Heritage Board a day after he was admitted to hospital for the last time on February 5, 2015. Lee Kuan Yew died at age 91 seven weeks later, on March 23, 2015.
But the latest allegation was left standing on shaky ground on Friday after the heritage board said the dates on the documents were inaccurate due to a “clerical error” – with the actual date of its receipt of the items being April 6, 2015. Official accounts meanwhile put the leader’s wife overseas when her father-in-law was sent to hospital. Lee Hsien Yang, one of the two younger Lee siblings entrusted with executing Lee Kuan Yew’s final will, remained defiant after the contradictions were revealed.
‘EVEN MORE TROUBLING’