Like every country, Singapore has had its share of controversial figures damaging its reputation abroad. Socialists, communists, populists, including the longest-serving political prisoner in the world, Chia Thye Poh, who had really sentenced himself to 32 years of various ISA restrictions because he wouldn't sign a simple paper renouncing violence.
Even today it has some comical participants in the local political scene, including vaccine deniers, nutcase activists similar to the rainbow crowd found in the West or others, defending drug traffickers as human beings, and one party chairman who liked to say that people who oppose minimum wage should be shot.
But I dare say that the most embarrassing of all is none other than Lee Kuan Yew's very own son – Lee Hsien Yang.
And it has little to do with Oxley Road saga – but rather how he's using it.
Typical family business
There's really nothing unusual with sibling conflicts over their parents' last will. In that regard the Lee family is no different than any other, anywhere in the world.
Let's be honest – much of the blame is on Lee Kuan Yew. He voiced his personal will many times, but then acceded to requests from the government and Lee Hsien Loong and Ho Ching, understanding that nobody is above the law, and that perhaps he may have underestimated public sentiments on the matter.
With seven wills signed over three years, it's clear that he wasn't very precise in his wishes either and changed his mind several times. As if that wasn't enough, the circumstances of the execution of his last will are highly suspect.
All this became the perfect breeding ground for a family storm once the old man departed these shores.
And, if we're to be reasonable here, both sides have their arguments, so it's not very clear cut.
As I argued myself, nobody should try to determine how they are remembered and what of their heritage is preserved if it's of importance to the nation. But I understand that some may argue LKY's vocal stance on his house makes it, at the very least, troublesome.
So, I don't think Lee Hsien Yang behaved markedly different from how millions of other siblings would against their brothers or sisters in similar circumstances, quite regardless of whether his motivations are pure or not.
That is until he decided to turn himself into a refugee in self-imposed exile, crying day and night about some imaginary persecution.
The world’s weakest man
After decades of complaints from opposition supporters we have actually found the first real paper general – ironically, the very one they idolise today.
“For my own personal safety, I should not continue to live in Singapore” – Lee Hsien Yang
This statement is the most bizarre act of cowardice which could come from any Singaporean man, let alone one which served in the military, up to the rank of brigadier-general.
An actual general of the Singapore Armed Forces is publicly whining how afraid he is for his safety, because he was asked to be interviewed by the police.
Let me be clear, the fact that he is in conflict with Lee Hsien Loong, or even that he claims some persecution are nothing out of the ordinary even in many Western countries. Even if they are rarely true, they tend to be elements of a particular narrative.
But to run away with millions in the bank and then moan to the media of the world how scared you are for your life as an ex-general and incredibly wealthy son of the founder of the country, just because you have a family dispute over the father's house is a ludicrous act of self-emasculation.
Not even in the depths of Singapore's early existence, with hot wars involving communists in Southeast Asia surrounding the country, were any of Lee Kuan Yew's fiercest adversaries subjected to treatment that is currently practiced in countries like Russia, China or Iran.
Some would be detained, some would invite lawsuits if they said one word too much, but hardly at any point would any of them realistically fear for their lives.
Singapore had no labour camps, no penal colonies, torture chambers or death squads.
And yet today, that comical excuse of a man cries in public about how afraid his to stay in one of the safest countries on the planet, where real opposition politicians walk the streets unbothered every single day.
Given his status, wealth, heritage and career – including in the military – Lee Hsien Yang is an unprecedented embarrassment for Singapore, because the city-state has to accept that it has given humanity the weakest man ever known to exist.
To add to the irony, he was born out of one of the strongest...
Not a dissident but a disgrace
The role of a pretend-dissident that LHY is now trying to play is even more nauseating when you consider how many real dissidents actually have to fear for their lives – and not only in their home country, but everywhere they escape to.
And yet, I don't remember ever hearing Alexei Navalny whining in the global press how afraid for his life he is. He didn't need to, because – unlike in LHY's case – everybody knew that the threats to his existence posed by Putin's regime were real.
But he didn't flinch, he was devoted to his mission with bravery that Lee Hsien Yang can only read about in books.
Courage is not the absence of fear, after all, but the ability to act in spite of it.
When Navalny found himself in Berlin, it wasn't of his own volition and he didn't fly into the city on a first class flight. He was airlifted from Russia in an international emergency operation to save his life after he was fatally poisoned by a novichok nerve agent, suffocating amid paralysis of his respiratory muscles.
And yet he would not accept the role of a political refugee and defiantly returned to Russia in January 2021, after just 4 months since his brush with death.
He was promptly arrested upon arrival and sent to a Siberian penal colony.
Mr Yang, do you even know where Siberia is?
While in jail he was probably continuously poisoned, leading to enduring health problems, gaunt appearance and, ultimately, death in February of 2024.
Perhaps my revulsion with Lee Hsien Yang comes from the fact that I was born in a communist country, which also happened to have gone through two World Wars, a Bolshevik invasion and 123 years of persecution by Germans, Austrians and Russians, who undertook great efforts to ensure my nation was erased from existence.
When Lee Hsien Yang was coasting on his father's name, bullets were still flying and tanks were rolling up and down the places I would pass on the way to school just a few years later. This was after almost half a century after the country was sold out to Soviets following 6 years of brutal WW2 warfare, which included concentration camps that extinguished several million of lives.
In that time deadly events occurred with a frequency of at least every few years, former members of the military underground were persecuted, tortured or killed, while the society was sentenced to a life in isolation and growing poverty.
Throughout the 70s and 80s many current politicians were jailed and beaten by the communist regime, with dozens more tortured or even murdered.
So, you have to excuse me that when I witness all that Lee Kuan Yew's youngest son is doing and claiming in public, that quite a lot of sick comes up into my mouth.
And it's not about Oxley – that is a typical family dispute, with siblings at their throats. It's about his attempts to milk it to claim decidedly undeserved victimhood after decades of enjoying the benefits of a name he's so eager to tarnish today – just like Singapore's reputation in the world.
Lee Hsien Yang is one of the most pathetic, revolting, vomit-inducing human beings I've ever seen, precisely because of the vast gulf between his stature, which he had little participation in acquiring, and his current attempts at portraying himself as some patriotic freedom fighter, when he's one of Singapore's least deserving sons.
