From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

Utusan Melayu
, a Malay newspaper owned by
UMNO, “The Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, is an agent of the
communists and the Djakarta regime who have the evil intention to destroy
Malaysia. Lee Kuan Yew has the evil intention to destroy Malaysia and to pit the
Malays and Chinese in Malaysia against each other.” Albar and the 
Utusan
Melayu
had no defence, apologised in court, and paid my legal costs.
I also brought actions against opposition candidates who accused me of
corruption in election speeches. An example was in 1972 when one of them said
in Chinese that whenever people wanted to buy or transfer their HDB homes,
they went to Lee & Lee, the law firm where my wife was a senior partner. Most
of these candidates were men without assets, who did not defend themselves and
accepted bankruptcy.
J.B. Jeyaretnam, a lawyer, was an exception. At an election rally in 1976 he
alleged that I had procured the grant of favours to Lee & Lee and to my family,

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that I had been guilty of nepotism and corruption and was unfit to be prime
minister. I was awarded damages and costs. Jeyaretnam appealed all the way to
the Privy Council in London, and lost. More than a decade later, in 1988, again
at an election rally, Jeyaretnam insinuated that I had advised Teh Cheang Wan (a
minister of national development) to commit suicide; that I wanted to avoid a
full investigation into allegations of corruption because they would have
discredited me. He could have raised Teh’s suicide two years earlier but waited
until election time. I won damages and costs.
I took action against an American-owned weekly based in Hong Kong, the
Far Eastern Economic Review
, and its editor Derek Davies. He had refused to
withdraw and apologise for quoting a renegade priest, Edgar D’Souza, who said
that the government had attacked the Catholic Church by detaining 16 Marxist
conspirators. I went into the witness box and was aggressively cross-examined
by the 
Review
’s QC for over two days. When it was the turn of the editor to
reply, Derek Davies did not give evidence because he would have been cross-
examined. Nor did he call D’Souza to support what he had printed. The judge
found against the 
Review
and its editor.
Another case was against the 
International Herald Tribune
(
IHT
), a
newspaper owned by the 
New York Times
and the 
Washington Post
, for
publishing on 2 August 1994 a libellous article by Philip Bowring, a columnist
formerly from the 
Far Eastern Economic Review
. Bowring wrote, “In the
Chinese case, history almost seems to consist of a battle between the corporatist
needs of the state and the interests of the families who operate it. Dynastic
politics is evident in ‘Communist’ China already, 
as in Singapore
(my italics),
despite official commitments to bureaucratic meritocracy.” My son Loong had
been elected to Parliament in 1984 and it was clear what Bowring meant. The
IHT
admitted in its paper that the words were defamatory, and meant that I was
advancing the interests of the Lee family at the expense of the corporatist needs
of the state. It apologised and paid damages and costs.
On 2 June 1996 the Chinese-language 
Yazhou Zhoukan
(
Asian Weekly
)
quoted a lawyer, Tang Liang Hong, alleging corruption in my purchase of two
flats. The weekly immediately admitted liability and paid a large sum in
settlement. But Tang refused to apologise and retract his allegation. Six months
later, at a rally right at the end of the election campaign, Tang aggravated the
libel by saying that once he had entered Parliament, he would raise the same
issue and that “This is their death blow.” The trial judge noted that the day after
the libel was published, Tang transferred a substantial sum of money from his

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wife’s bank account to his bank account in Johor Bahru, which was out of
Singapore’s jurisdiction, to exhaust her overdraft facility. The judge said, “It was
a clear piece of evidence of a devious mind.” As Tang had absconded from
Singapore and did not appear at the trial, judgement was in my favour. On the
appeal, Tang’s London QC did not challenge the defamatory meaning of the
words. The appeal was dismissed.
My opponents waited for elections to get under way before they uttered their
slanders, hoping to inflict maximum damage. Had I not sued, these allegations
would have gained credence. Western liberal critics argue that my reputation is
so unassailable that nobody will believe the outrageous things said about me, so
I should ignore them magnanimously instead of suing vindictively. But
outrageous statements are disbelieved only because they are vigorously refuted.
If I failed to sue, that would be cited as proof that there was something in it.
In Tang’s case, my purchase of the two flats had for a time been a hot
political issue. Had I not sued Tang after his statements in