Asked if he had been in touch with PM Lee since the joint
statement was issued, or whether he planned to get in touch with
him, Hsien Yang replied emphatically, “No.”
When asked whether there was any hope of reconciliation with his
brother, Hsien Yang did not answer directly but recounted the
dispute over the status of the house and PM Lee’s promise to recuse
himself.
“And yet now, he goes to the cabinet committee and says ‘Oh, my
father wasn’t quite so unwavering in his wish. You know, he would
have accepted that the government has a right to do what it does’.
What is all this sophistry? What, are you quibbling and trying to
play with words, to try and say that it might be all right?”
In their joint statement, the Lee siblings had claimed that they
felt threatened and that “organs of the state” would be used
against them. In this regard, Hsien Yang planned to leave Singapore
“for the foreseeable future”.
Asked to elaborate, he said that some of his friends had
suffered “serious repercussions”, adding, “They don’t want to be
identified and they don’t want the issue to be raised. But there
have been…a number of incidents which have caused hurt and pain to
people.”
The father of three clarified that while the decision to leave
had been “relatively recent”, he had not yet decided where to go.
He added that it depended on the authorities and his personal
circumstances whether he would retain his position as chairman of
the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore.
