Lee Hsien Yang’s more serious game plan

If ever there was a possibility that 38 Oxley Road would be torn down, the latest twist of events might have made it almost an impossibility now.

To demolish it could be seen as a political capitulation by the government, especially as the demolition does not appear to be central to the Lee siblings’ quarrel at this juncture.

It looks like Lee Hsien Yang may be going for beyond the house – to at least challenge the very edifice of government that his father had built, judging by the comments he made to The Guardian newspaper in Britain.

How else can one interpret his latest moves?

At the point where he said he would be applying for the demolition of the house where the late Lee Kuan Yew and his wife, Kwa Geok Choo, lived together in happier times with the three children – Lee Hsien Loong, the late daughter, Lee Wei Ling, and Lee Hsien Yang – the main issue was still only the house.

Yet almost around the same time, Lee Hsien Yang said in an interview with The Guardian in Britain, as reported by The Straits Times (ST), that he had been granted asylum in that country in August 2024 after fleeing from what he described as a “campaign of persecution”.

ST: “In The Guardian report, LHY said that the government turned on him after he endorsed the Opposition and that despite its economic prosperity, there was a dark side to it, that the government was oppressive.”

There was, according to LHY, as quoted by The Guardian, a need to look more closely at Singapore’s claim of financial probity, at its role as a facilitator for arms trade, for dirty money, for drug monies and for crypto money.

The Singapore government has quickly denied all this and said it has a robust system to deal with and tackle money laundering and other illicit money flows.

LHY also criticised “repressive measures”, many of which, he said, came “from the time my father was prime minister and from the time when it was a British colony”.

Although the Singapore government has said there was nothing to prevent LHY or his wife from returning to Singapore, he said he had applied for political asylum in Britain, which had been granted to him for five years.

We are no longer talking about any crossing of the Rubicon. It is way past that. It seems to be an outright war targeted at the government.

The question is: what exactly is LHY’s long-term objective?

Is he still contemplating going into politics? Will he be an even greater supporter of the Progress Singapore Party, which he openly backed in GE2020?

Will he want to be a catalyst for the ABP (Anything But the PAP) and middle-ground voters who want more checks and balances on the dominant People’s Action Party? Will he form his own party?

Will he be contented to be just a voice of conscience operating from abroad? Or will he be grooming his sons for a political career?

We are now beyond irony (of witnessing a Lee Kuan Yew son challenging the very establishment of which he was a part). We are in the middle of a potentially messy battle.

Tan Bah Bah is a former senior leader writer with The Straits Times. He was also managing editor of a magazine publishing company