This bungalow was built for Dutch traders during the colonial period, but has become part of modern Singapore legend. It's where Lee Kuan Yew lived for decades, founded a political party and began building Singapore into one of the richest countries in the world.
Mr Lee said that rather than preserve his home as a museum, he wanted it to be demolished after his death so the public could “trample” his private quarters.
However, the contents of his will left the fate of the estate up in the air and caused a rift between his three children. This reflects the growing debate over Singapore's semi-authoritarian political system.
Now, the extraordinary voice of one of Lee's own children has joined those complaining that the city-state's prosperity comes at the expense of an unaccountable government.
“The idea that one good person at the center can control this and just rely on his benevolence to make sure everything is right doesn't work,” says the youngest son, who wants to respect his father's wishes. said Lee Hsien Yang in a recent interview with the New York Times from London.
After Lee Kuan Yew's death in 2015, his eldest son, who was Singapore's prime minister at the time, claimed that his father's instructions regarding the bungalow were vague. His brothers wanted the house demolished, but one continued to live in it, and as long as she did so, its fate remained unresolved.
Then, after her death in October, the controversy resurfaced and rapidly escalated. Lee Hsien Yang, known as Yang by his parents and siblings, has announced that he has sought political asylum in the UK, fearing he will be unfairly imprisoned in Singapore for his differences of opinion.
Yang said his brother Lee Hsien Loong, who resigned as prime minister in May, had abused his power over the family dispute.
Ms Yang, 67, described the pattern of persecution by the Singapore government in recent years. In 2020, his son was charged with contempt of court for criticizing Singapore's courts in a personal Facebook post. That year, his wife, a lawyer who arranged for a witness in the signing of the chief's will, was barred from practicing law for 15 months. The couple were later questioned by police for lying under oath. They left Singapore in 2022.
In October, Mr. Yang announced that Britain had granted his asylum request, ruling that he and his wife had “sufficient grounds for persecution and cannot return to their homeland.”
The Singapore government rejected this claim, saying the couple were free to return home. He said he would be accountable to voters and an independent judiciary. It added that Mr Yang had a “tremendous personal vendetta” against his brother Mr Lung.
Mr Long, 72, who currently holds the title of senior minister, declined to comment as he recuses himself from House of Commons matters.
For Mr Yang, the years of conflict are evidence of “fundamental problems with the way Singapore is governed and run”.
Yang acknowledged that his father had detained opposition politicians and trade union leaders, but said, “Deep down, he had the country's interests first.”
The People's Action Party has ruled Singapore strongly for nearly 70 years. And years after the death of our founding father, we continue to celebrate his accomplishments.
This puts Singapore at a crossroads, some analysts say.
“Can we move on?” said Jia Ian Chong, a political science professor at the National University of Singapore. “Or are we still stuck with this relatively weak, big-shot approach to politics?”
Lee Kuan Yew transformed a colonial outpost into an economic powerhouse in one generation. He had no qualms about intervening in the lives of Singaporeans and prioritized the community over the individual. Some observers say this idea illustrates the irony of family feuds.
“We understood that the house had to be preserved if the government determined it was in the public interest,” said Lung, a member of a government committee set up to consider options for the property. In a 2016 letter to Lawrence Wong, He is now the prime minister.
The committee concluded that the bungalow had historical significance and that Lee Kuan Yew was responsive to its preservation. But polls show that most Singaporeans want it demolished. In October, the government announced it was reconsidering whether to save the circa 1898 house.
“The best combination”
For decades, Lee Kuan Yew's family seemed as orderly as the nation he ruled. His wife, Kwa Ngok Chew, was the household manager at 38 Oxley Road, one of Singapore's most expensive areas.
In the 1950s, Mr. Lee and a group of friends founded their own political party, PAP, in a basement diner. most The house was Spartan. The furniture was old and mismatched. Families bathed by scooping water from earthenware vessels. Even after my sons got married and left home, the family met every Sunday for lunch.
Visitors quickly noticed that there was only one photo of a child on display. It was a photo of Ron.
“He has the best combination of our two DNAs,” Lee told local journalists. “Other players have a combination of both, but they don't have as much of an advantage as he does. It's the luck of the draw.”
“He was my mother's idol, and she had ambitions for him,” Yang said of Ron. “I never had any animosity towards him, nor did I feel any jealousy or jealousy towards him.”
Ron became Prime Minister in 2004. At the time, Mr Yang was chief executive of Singapore's state-run telephone company and said he had no political ambitions. That's going to change.
Demolition controversy
After Mr. Lee's wife died, he continued to live in the house with his daughter, Dr. Lee Wei-lin, a neurologist. Mr Lee died in March 2015, and his children gathered at his bungalow the following month to read his will.
The house was left to Ron, but Lynn was able to continue living there. When she moved out, the house was to be demolished. And if for some reason the house was not demolished, he did not want to show it to the public.
Rune was blind and would later publicly say that she did not know about this last will. He became “aggressive” and “threatening” when the will was being discussed, his sister wrote in an undisclosed email to a friend in May 2015. She added that Ron told his brothers that if they pursued the demolition clause, the government would punish them. They would intervene and designate the house as a national monument.
According to Mr. Yang, this was the last time Mr. Long spoke to Mr. Lin and Mr. Yang.
The next day, Mr. Ron raised the issue in Congress. He said he hoped his father's wishes would come true, but said: “It is up to the government of the day to consider this issue.”
After a few months, the brothers seemed to have reached a solution. Jan purchased the house from Ron for an undisclosed price.
But soon the government established a committee to consider housing options. That was the beginning of Mr. Yang's troubles with the state.
new opposition party
Mr Luhn told the committee he was “deeply concerned” that the demolition clause in the will had been “re-inserted under questionable circumstances”. He asked whether Mr Yang's wife Lee Suet Fern, who organized the will signing, had a conflict of interest.
To the brothers, it seemed like the committee was “investigating the will,” Yang said, noting that the court had declared the will binding.
In a joint statement in 2017, Yang and Lin said they did not trust their brother as a leader. They said Long and his wife were exploiting “Lee Kuan Yew's legacy for their own political purposes” and harbored dynastic ambitions for their son.
Mr. Lung told Congress that he did not issue instructions to the committee and that his only interaction with the committee was to respond in writing to the committee's requests.
He denied raising his son to hold public office.
The government later accused Yang's wife of professional misconduct over the will. The disciplinary tribunal ruled against her, saying she and her husband had built an “elaborate temple of lies” during the proceedings.
A three-judge panel later ruled that Mr Yang's wife, Mr Li, had made a “contrived and ultimately false representation of her role” in the will. He was suspended for 15 months for his misconduct. However, the court also ruled that she was not acting as Mr Lee's solicitor and that Mr Lee was satisfied with the will.
For Yang, the People's Action Party had lost its way. He joined a new opposition group, the Progressive Singapore Party, and considered running for the ceremonial post of president.
In 2022, police questioned him and his wife for lying during a fraud proceeding. The couple agreed to be questioned at a later date, but left Singapore immediately. It was not until 2023 that the minister revealed to Parliament that the matter was being investigated by the authorities.
In October, Yang hosted Lin's funeral from afar. Ron was not invited.
The wall at 38 Oxley Road is now cracked and parts of the gate are rusted and eroded. When a reporter rang the doorbell on a recent Sunday, the housekeeper answered and said no one was home.
