I have to say that out of all people trying to crack Singapore's political stability, the character I find by far the most despicable is Lee Hsien Yang.
Yes, of course, there are populists out there, crazy activists, failed artists and the rest of the hippies who think they know better.
And while they are all lunatics, I can at least believe that most actually believe in their twisted fantasies. It's both sad and comical at the same time, but we have to accept that not everybody is born rational.
Lee Hsien Yang, however, is on another level entirely.
This is a man born to the beloved founder of independent Singapore and has enjoyed a privileged social position all his life, becoming a multimillionaire in the process.
And now his bizarre vendetta against his older brother, and prime minister, morphed into an even more farcical spectacle, in which he's trying to play a persecuted dissident.
This abhorrent individual spits in the face of everybody who has ever fought against tyranny.
I cannot begin to explain how much it boils my blood as a person born in a communist country, where every major city has a monument to victims of totalitarian oppression – jail, torture or murder of the regime.
Many of still active, now democratic, politicians once found themselves on the wrong end of a police baton in their youth, beaten, threatened, thrown behind bars, as many of their friends did not have their luck to survive the treatment.
So, when I see Lee Hsien Yang liquidating his landed properties worth tens of millions of dollars and bailing out of the country ahead of a police interview about lies he and his wife were found to have told under oath, I am struggling to fathom the extent of evil and corruption of character of any human being doing such a thing.
How cynical and unscrupulous must you be to do this with a straight face? Heck, even play victim afterwards!
I've never ever heard of a dissident who would reschedule his police interviews. Typically you get hauled in, interrogated for hours and can consider yourself lucky if you leave with a few cracked ribs and a missing fingernail or two.
But LHY asked and police agreed.
Compare him, if you will, to Alexei Navalny – Russian opposition leader, who barely survived a poisoning attempt in 2020, after getting airlifted to Germany following international uproar.
This man, keenly aware that the regime which killed many others speaking out against it would love to see him dead then chose to defiantly return to Russia, knowing full well that the most he can expect is years behind bars in a harsh Siberian prison.
He did it to stick it to Putin, to show that he's not afraid and is not going to be portrayed by the state propaganda as a foreign puppet who fled abroad.
He could have stayed in Europe, enjoyed generous international sponsorship to publish and speak against the Kremlin, leading a good life from the safety and comfort of the civilised world. But he chose to abandon it all just to defy a violent dictatorship.
I'm sure Lee Hsien Yang is aware of his existence – just like he must have been well educated about many others, during his time at Cambridge and Stanford.
Which means that his vomit-inducing show is entirely deliberate.
This first-class flying, bungalow-owning, ex-CEO of Singtel is trying to place himself among the people who fought actual dictatorships which kept millions in poverty and misery for the benefit of the brutal few – the exact opposite of the prosperity, safety and freedom that Singapore is envied for around the world.
I know mankind has produced quite a few evil individuals but I am struggling to think of many who could compete with Lee Hsien Yang on cynicism.
