From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

Far Eastern Economic
Review
(
FEER
) of 29 January 1987, he denied that he was ever an alcoholic. The
permanent secretary (health) sent Nair and the FEER a letter dated 14 February
1987, signed by all seven doctors who had managed Devan Nair’s case in March
and April 1985, confirming their diagnosis of alcoholism. No doctor has
contradicted these findings.
In May 1988 Nair intervened in the case of Francis Seow, a former solicitor-
general who had admitted that he had obtained from a US State Department
official an assurance of asylum if he needed it. Nair attacked me, saying this was
what I had done when I lobbied for international support while fighting the
Malay extremists in Malaysia, meaning that I would have fled from Malaysia in
case of trouble. When Nair refused to withdraw his allegations, I sued him and
tabled a command paper in Parliament containing the documents relating to his
alcoholism.
After these documents were published, Nair left Singapore and has not
returned. Eleven years later (1999), in Canada, in an interview, he said that he
had been wrongly diagnosed and that I had got the doctors to slip him
hallucinatory drugs to make him out to be an alcoholic. As Dr Nagulendran had
warned us, there were “personality changes”.
My mistake in Nair’s appointment was to assume, without checking, that all
was well with him. After his collapse, I consulted one of his closest NTUC
friends, Ho See Beng. See Beng, an MP, confirmed that Nair had been drinking
heavily before he was appointed president by Parliament. Asked why he had not
warned me of this risk, he replied that Nair was never comatose. Had misplaced
loyalty not prevented See Beng from warning me of this risk we would all have
been spared much pain and embarrassment.
But all said and done, Devan Nair played a significant part in the building of
modern Singapore. He stood up to be counted when the communists attacked the
PAP in the 1960s, and he initiated the modernisation of the labour movement
that made the NTUC an important partner in the development of our economy.

---