Lee Hsien Yang takes a dig at AG, whose office has acted against his wife and son

Lee Hsien Yang has taken a dig at Attorney-General Lucien Wong, whose office has acted against his wife, Lee Suet Fern, and his eldest son, Li Shengwu, in two separate cases.

In 2017, the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) initiated legal action against Li Shengwu over a private Facebook post.

This past Sunday, it was revealed that the AGC filed a 500-page complaint to the Law Society against Lee Suet Fern, for her possible role in drafting founding Prime Minister and her father-in-law Lee Kuan Yew’s last will when her husband is one of the beneficiaries.

Lee Hsien Yang has vehemently denied the claim that his wife drafted his father’s will and called on the AGC to release their full correspondence with his wife after the authority claimed that Lee Suet Fern has not offered clarification to their questions.

Although AG Lucien Wong (who served as Lee Hsien Yang’s brother Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s personal lawyer prior to his appointment as AG) has recused himself from the AGC’s action against Lee Suet Fern, the youngest Lee has taken a dig at him for comments he made at a recent event.

In a recent talk, the AG had said that his office is not in the position to “reject work” from government agencies as that would affect “national objectives”.

Calling for a boost in manpower and for more lawyers to join the AGC, Wong noted that there has been a government-wide increase in demand for its legal services and that the AGC is called to deal with increasingly complex cases.

The AGC presently employs 597 lawyers. In 2017, it employed 594 lawyers and it employed 565 lawyers the year before that. According to an AGC spokesperson, both the volume and complexity of cases the AGC handles has increased since 2013.

In this period of five years, the AGC has taken on 70 per cent more civil hearings, faces 70 per cent more cases in the Magistrate’s Appeals, more than doubled the number of concluded criminal cases in the High Court and the Court of Appeal, seen legislative work go up by 167 per cent, based on the number of bills.

Some netizens responding to AG Wong’s comments that the complexity of the work has increased pointed out that it must take a lot of work for the AGC to have prepared a hefty 500-page complaint against Lee Suet Fern and an even more whopping set of documents that were in excess of 1,300 pages in their case against Li Shengwu.

Highlighting the AG’s call for increased manpower and that the AGC cannot “reject work” from the Government, Lee Hsien Loong wrote on Facebook:

“Shocking. Today online reports: “Attorney-General Lucien Wong stressed the need for the organ of state to beef up its manpower to deal not only with more cases but increasingly complex ones.” and “The AGC is not in the position to “reject work” from government agencies as that would affect “national objectives”””

Lee’s post quickly went viral, garnering nearly 800 reactions and over 200 shares on social media. His post is especially interesting since he is usually selective with what he posts online.