The crowd cheers
as Singapore's former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew (C) arrives at
the Marina Bay Floating Platform for the annual National Day Parade
celebrations in Singapore. (Reuters/Calvin Wong)
Lee Kuan Yew is alive and
well, and for a moment during Thursday's National Day Parade, one could hear Singapore as
a whole heave an almost audible sigh of relief.
The elder statesman's grand entrance at the NDP ceremony held at Marina Bay sparked
thunderous applause from the 26,000 spectators in attendance, and
quite possibly from the hundreds of thousands also watching on
television.
[Slideshow: Singapore's National Day Parade]
More importantly, it finally put to bed week-long rumours
surrounding the health and condition of the 88-year-old.
A
post on Yahoo!
Singapore's Facebook wall with a screengrab of a smiling
Lee dressed in a red Team Singapore polo shirt sparked an
outpouring of emotion, relief and happiness.
As of 1:30pm on Friday, the post had garnered more than 10,400 “likes”
and over 700 comments.
Wrote Sandra Tan, “So happy to see [former] Minister Mentor Lee
Kuan Yew looking good at the NDP! The cheer and applause when he
emerged at theNDP is undeniable".
Another Facebook user, Marcus Goh agreed and wrote that “Seeing
[Lee] makes me shed tears of happiness”.
In the past week, rumours swirled online and offline that
the former Singapore Prime Minister'shealth was
fading quickly. Day by day, the speculation grew stronger and
wilder.
It's not certain how the rumours started but one of the first
tweets referring to Lee's health was a tweet on Aug 7th from a user
called @izreloaded,
who claimed "high-level" sources had told him Lee's health was
"critical" and that "several government agencies had been put on
standby".
