The Fight Over Lee Kuan Yew’s House

The bungalow was built for a Dutch trader during the colonial era, but has become part of modern Singaporean tradition. It was there where Lee Kuan If lived for decades, where he founded his political party and began building Singapore into one of the richest countries in the world.

Mr Lee had said he wanted the house demolished after his death rather than preserved as a museum, with the public “trampling” his private quarters.

But the formulation of his will left the fate of the property in limbo and caused a rift between his three children – a rift that reflects a intensify the debate on Singapore’s semi-authoritarian political system.

Now an extraordinary voice has joined those who complain that the city-state’s prosperity has come at the expense of a government that lacks accountability: one of Mr Lee’s own children.

“The idea that a good man at the center can control all of this and that you just rely on his benevolence to make sure everything is okay doesn’t work,” said Lee Hsien Yang, the youngest child, who wants to honor his father’s wishes. home, said in a recent interview with The New York Times from London.

After Lee Kuan Yew’s death in 2015, the eldest child, then Prime Minister of Singapore, argued that his father’s instructions regarding the bungalow were ambiguous. Her siblings wanted it torn down, although one of them continued to live in the house, and as long as she did, her fate remained unresolved.

Then, after his death in October, the argument resurfaced – and escalated sharply. Lee Hsien Yang, called Yang by his parents and siblings, announced that he had was granted political asylum to Britain because he feared he would be unjustly imprisoned in Singapore over the disagreement.

Yang said to his brother: Lee Hsien Loongwho resigned as Prime Minister in May – had abused his power in the conflict over the House.

Yang, 67, described what he called a pattern of persecution by the Singapore government in recent years. In 2020, her son was charged with contempt of court for criticizing the Singapore courts in a private Facebook post. That year, his wife, a lawyer who had called witnesses to the signing of the patriarch’s will, was banned from practicing law for 15 months. Then the couple was investigated by police for lying under oath. In 2022, they leave Singapore.

In October, Yang announced that Britain had granted his request for asylum, finding that he and his wife “had a well-founded fear of persecution and therefore could not return to your country.”

The Singapore government rejected the allegations, saying the couple were free to return home. He said he was accountable to voters and an independent judiciary. Yang, he adds, was engaged in “an extravagant personal vendetta” against his brother Loong.

Loong, 72, who now holds the title of senior minister, declined to comment as he recused himself from House business.

For Yang, the conflict that has lasted for years is proof that there are “fundamental problems in the way Singapore is governed and managed”.

Yang acknowledged that his father had arrested opposition politicians and union leaders, but said he “had the best interests of the country at heart.”

The People’s Action Party has ruled Singapore with a firm grip for almost 70 years. And years after the founding father’s death, she continues to extol his legacy.

Some analysts say this places Singapore at a crossroads.

“Are we capable of moving forward? said Ja Ian Chong, who teaches political science at the National University of Singapore. “Or are we still stuck with this relatively flimsy, big-man approach to politics?

Lee Kuan Yew transformed a colonial outpost into an economic powerhouse within a generation. He has made no secret of his intervention in the lives of Singaporeans and prioritized the community over the individual – a notion that some observers say highlights the irony of the family feud.

He “understood that the government should preserve the house if it decided it was in the public interest,” Loong wrote in a 2016 letter to Lawrence Wong, who was part of a government committee created to review the options for property, and is now prime minister.

This panel concluded that the bungalow had historical significance and that Lee Kuan Yew had been supportive of its preservation. But polls indicate that most Singaporeans want it destroyed. In October, the government declared that it I’m still studying whether to keep the house dating from around 1898.

“The best combination”

For decades, Lee Kuan Yew’s family seemed as orderly as the state he ruled. His wife, Kwa Geok Choo, was in charge of the house at 38 Oxley Road, in one of Singapore’s most expensive neighborhoods.

In the 1950s, Mr. Lee and a group of friends established his political party, the PAP, in the basement dining room. Most of the house was spartan. The furniture was old and mismatched; the family bathed by drawing water from earthenware containers. Even after the sons married and moved away, they gathered every Sunday for a family lunch.

Visitors were quick to notice that only one child’s photograph was on display: that of Loong.

“He got the best combination of our two DNAs,” Mr. Lee told local reporters. “The others also have combinations of both, but not in as advantageous a way as he does. It’s the luck of the draw.

“He was the apple of my mother’s eye and she had ambitions for him,” Yang said of Loong. “I was never hostile towards him, and I never had any jealousy or envy towards him.”

In 2004, Loong became Prime Minister. Yang was chief executive of Singapore’s state-owned telephone company at the time and said he had no political ambitions. That would change.

Demolition debate

After Mr Lee’s wife died, he continued to live in the house with his daughter, Dr Lee Wei Ling, a neurologist. Mr Lee died in March 2015 and his children gathered at the bungalow the following month for the reading of his will.

The house was left in Loong, but Ling was able to continue living there. Once she moved out, the house would have to be demolished. And if for some reason the house wasn’t demolished, he didn’t want it open to the public.

Loong was blindsided and would later say publicly that he was unaware of this final will. When the will was discussed, he became “aggressive” and “threatening,” his sister wrote in an undisclosed email to a friend in May 2015. She added that Loong told his younger siblings that if they maintained the demolition clause, the government would step in and declare the house a national monument.

That was the last time Loong spoke with Ling and Yang, according to Yang.

The next day, Loong raised the issue in Parliament. He said he wanted to see his father’s wishes come true, but “it will be up to the government of the day to look into the matter.”

A few months later, it appeared that the siblings had reached a resolution. Yang bought the house in Loong for an undisclosed price.

But soon the government formed a committee to explore options for the house. This marked the beginning of Yang’s problems with the state.

New opposition party

Loong told the panel he was “very concerned” that the demolition clause in the will had been “reinserted in questionable circumstances”. He asked whether there was a conflict of interest for Lee Suet Fern, Yang’s wife, who arranged the signing of the will.

To the younger siblings, it seemed like the committee was “conducting an investigation into the will,” Yang said, noting that a court had declared it binding.

In a joint statement in 2017, Yang and Ling said they did not trust their brother as a leader. They said Loong and his wife were exploiting “Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy for their own political ends” and harboring dynastic ambitions for their son.

Loong responded to Parliament, saying he had not given instructions to the committee and that his only dealings with the panel were his written responses to their requests.

He denied grooming his son for a position.

Then the government accused Yang’s wife of malpractice regarding the will. A disciplinary tribunal ruled against her, saying she and her husband had constructed an “elaborate edifice of lies” during the proceedings.

A three-judge panel then ruled that Yang’s wife, Ms Lee, had given “an artificial and ultimately false version of her role” in the will, and suspended her for 15 months for misconduct. But he also ruled that she had not acted as Mr Lee’s lawyer and that he had relied on her will.

For Yang, the People’s Action Party had lost its way. He joined the Progress Singapore Party, a new opposition group, and considered running for president, a ceremonial position.

In 2022, police requested to question him and his wife, claiming they had lied during the malpractice proceedings. The couple agreed to be interviewed later, but soon left Singapore. It was not until 2023 that a minister revealed in Parliament that they were under investigation by the authorities.

In October, Yang organized Ling’s funeral from afar. Loong was not invited.

The walls of 38 Oxley Road are now cracked and rust has eroded part of the door. When a reporter rang the doorbell on a recent Sunday, a housekeeper answered and said no one was home.