Uncensored article from
Yahoo, FTP:
FTP - 12 September 2010
Minister Mentor (MM)
Lee Kuan Yew says the
stress of his wife’s illness is harder on him than the stress he
faced during his years in politics.
MM Lee spoke of his wife,
Kwa Geok Choo, 89, in an
interview on the New York Times’ Saturday
Profile.
The couple met each other when they were law students in London
and have been together for 61 years.
He shared that his most difficult moment is at the end of each
day as he sits by the bedside of his wife who has been unable to
move or speak for more than two years.
“She understands when I talk to her, which I do every night,” he
said. “She keeps awake for me; I tell her about my day’s work, read
her favourite poems.”
“I told her, ‘I would try and keep you company for as long as I
can,” before adding, “I’m not sure who’s going first, whether she
or me.”
MM Lee added that while he tries to keep busy, from time to time
in idle moments, his mind goes back to when they were up and about
together. To calm himself, he meditates for 20 minutes at
night.
“The problem is to keep the monkey mind from running off
into all kinds of thoughts,” he said. “A certain tranquility
settles over you. The day’s pressures and worries are pushed out.
Then there’s less problem sleeping.”
The New York
Times report also noted how younger people worry him with
their demands for more political openness and a free exchange of
ideas, secure in their well-being in modern
Singapore.
“They have come to believe
that this is a natural state of affairs, and they can take
liberties with it,” he said. “They think you can put it on
auto-pilot. I know that is never so.”
The kind of open political
combat they demand would inevitably open the door to race-based
politics, he said, and “our society will be ripped
apart.”
Singapore’s eldest statesman also reflected on
his political career and said he wasn’t perfect.
“I’m not saying that
everything I did was right but everything I did was for an
honourable purpose,” he said. “I had to do some nasty things,
locking fellows up without trial.”
