Demolishing house without due process upends S’pore system: PM
Still image taken from video of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong speaking at Parliament.
SINGAPORE — If he had made the Government agree to demolish 38 Oxley Road without going through due process, “that would have been a real abuse of power”, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Monday.
This would have “gone against the whole system of rules and values that founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew spent his whole life upholding and building up”, he added.
In his Ministerial Statement on the allegations of abuse of power lobbed at him, PM Lee turned the tables on his siblings, Mr Lee Hsien Yang and Dr Lee Wei Ling, who alleged that he had abused his position to thwart their plans to demolish the house.
Noting that his siblings have given “scant details” of their charge, PM Lee added: “Suppose instead that I had decided as PM to knock down the house, and had pushed that decision through without allowing the Government to consider the alternatives, weigh the considerations, and go through due process, just because it was what my father wanted, that would have been a real abuse of power.”
PM Lee told the House that at the first Cabinet meeting after Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s final will was read out to his family — which was three days later — he recused himself from all discussions and decisions relating to the house, and placed Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean in charge.
PM Lee also rejected his siblings’ argument that the Ministerial Committee deliberating the options for the house cannot be independent from him. He noted that Mr Teo had set up the panel independently, and that ministers and officials report to and take directions from Mr Teo on all matters concerning the house.
“My only dealing with the committee has been to respond to their requests in writing by formal correspondence — no different from my siblings’ dealings with the committee,” he added.
Separately, in his Ministerial Statement afterwards, Mr Teo also said it was “ironic” that the fact that PM Lee had recused himself from the committee’s work had been “labelled by some as an abuse of power”.
Mr Teo said: “If PM Lee ... had simply as the Prime Minister, ordered the government agencies to demolish the house without due process, that would truly have been an abuse of authority and power.”
He added: “Perhaps (the current allegations may be due to how some) feel that their demand for a particular outcome should simply be carried out. But simply doing this would be an abuse of power.”
On Mr Lee Hsien Yang and Dr Lee’s accusation that PM Lee had improperly obtained a Deed of Gift they signed with the National Heritage Board (NHB) for artefacts from 38 Oxley Road, PM Lee dismissed any wrongdoing. Being one of the beneficiaries of Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s estate, he was entitled to be consulted on the move, but had been kept out of the loop.
Since the then-Culture, Community, and Youth Minister Lawrence Wong informed him that artefacts from 38 Oxley Road were going to be part of a major SG50 exhibition on Singapore’s founding leaders, PM Lee said he, as Prime Minister, “had every right to see it”.
PM Lee said he grew concerned over what the NHB had agreed to after reading the deed, saying that the terms were “onerous and unreasonable”. For example, the NHB had to, whenever it exhibited the items, display the demolition clause in Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s Last Will, but only in a partial manner to omit the part where he stated his wishes if the house could not be knocked down.
“This partial, selective disclosure would mislead the public on Mr Lee (Kuan Yew’s) intentions,” PM Lee said.
He said Dr Lee and Mr Lee Hsien Yang had also “misled” the public by saying the donation of the items was a “gift”, despite setting conditions in fine print that they could immediately reclaim all the items for S$1, if the terms of the deed were breached at any time. Denouncing their actions as “wrong”, PM Lee said his parents had never imposed any conditions on the many items they had gifted the NHB when they were alive.
Mr Wong, speaking to Parliament yesterday, also pointed to these “unusual conditions” in the deed, which the firm of Mrs Lee Suet Fern, the wife of Mr Lee Hsien Yang, had helped to finalise. Mrs Lee was a director on the NHB board at the time and involved in NHB’s discussions with executors of the elder Mr Lee’s estate, who were her husband and sister-in-law.
PM Lee said he “had to act” after he found out about terms his siblings demanded in the deed, lest people mistook later that he was party to this.
He added: “If I come across anyone doing something wrong, even family, maybe especially family, it is my duty to put a stop to it and set them right if I can.”
