Words of ex-president Devan Nair To Lee Kuan Yew

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:



From former Singapore President Devan Nair:

"Kuan Yew, I will come to the crux of my case against you straight away. What is it that you are afraid of, and that impelled you to such a massive public exercise in the total denigration of a comrade of nearly thirty years?

What prompted you to stoop so low to an utterly shameless demolition effort, by way of the incredibly sordid White Paper tabled before Parliament on 29 June?

Your statement in Parliament the same day gave you away. It made it abundantly clear that you were motivated by political revenge. For you referred to my recent public statements on political developments in Singapore as having made necessary what you did. But legitimate political comment calls for a rational political response, not for political revenge by way of a revolting descent into the gutter. The entire exercise reeks of revenge, a motive which enabled you to throw overboard all ethical considerations, medical ethics, Confucianist, Christian, Hindu ethics, the whole lot.

According to your own panel of doctors, I suffered from a medical condition, not a moral or political one. Clinical tests clearly indicated a much enlarged liver, resulting in a state of acute confusion, bouts of giddiness, exhaustion and fainting spells, admittedly erratic conduct, and amnesia. We may differ about the diagnosis. Several doctor friends of mine in Singapore, let alone in the United States, have quite other notions about the diagnosis. For now, we will let that be.

But where in the civilized world is sordid political capital so shamelessly squeezed out of a medical condition? Where else would self-respecting politicians count obviously transient behaviour, proceeding from a critical medical condition, as a fundamental moral or political lapse? And where else is the sacrosanct confidentiality of medical reports, and of doctor-patient relations, so outrageously violated for a purely political purpose? You know the answers. Only in a society governed by a man like you.

All my comrades in party, trade unions and government, including you, have always known me (you often extolled me), as a highly moral man over nearly three decades of intimate comradeship in a common struggle for a common cause-the building of a nation. How does a clearly transient condition transform me overnight into a hopeless alcoholic, womaniser, wife-beater, among other lurid depictions of depravity? The data presented in the White Paper, in the form of my letters to you just before and after my resignation, and of Dr. Nagulendran's psychiatric report! to you (the use of which constitutes the most disgusting outrage on medical ethics imaginable), can only be seen in undistorted perspective, in the light of the most crucial data of all which, of course, has been carefully omitted.

A very good friend of mine, the Indian physiotherapist who accompanied me to Kuching, Mr. Kalu Sarkar, has been quoted against me in the White Paper. Again, a stupendous omission, equivalent to the omission of the Pacific Ocean from the map of the world. It was not revealed that Mr. Sarkar had been arrested, detained, cruelly treated, and released for return to India only after the ISD secured from him statements about me which he knew to be untrue. I discovered this when I met him in India on my way to the United States in 1985. Among other things, Mr. Sarkar vouched for the fact that when in

Sarawak, I only rarely drink liquor in the daytime. Only in the evenings did I have my customary drinks. He therefore did not attribute my erratic conduct in the mornings and afternoons to alcohol. I learn
that Mr. Sarkar, who is a respected member of his community, is preparing his own affidavit now, as a free man, and not as one of your detainees.

The way you dramatically embellish your facts when it suits you takes some beating... Come off it, please!

I now understand why Brigadier General Lee told the BBC in a recent interview that my recent political criticism of the Government "showed impaired judgment."

So legitimate criticisms of some of your disastrous policies are the result of the impairment of perception and judgment on the part of the critics? In which case innumerable Singaporeans who feel the same way as I do, not to mention your growing number of critics elsewhere, are all loony bins?

Again, come off it, please!

You delude yourself if you believe that the disgusting concoction of misinterpreted truths, half-truths, and untruths, not to speak of gaping omissions, in your parliamentary statement and in the White Paper, will enjoy more than a passing season. Nearly thirty years of struggle and effort in the service of the people of Singapore, in intimate comradeship with you and others, are not wiped out so easily. Not even the formidable intimidatory apparatus of power and systematic misinformation you have assembled can forever stifle the truth. What will ultimately prevail is the season of truth. And the total truth, many-sided and whole, will include the virtues and defects, successes and failures, prides and shames of all of us, including you and me. In short, total truth has an infallible way of debunking the debunkers.

Your genius for sticking labels on people does Singapore no good.

The truth of things often requires the removal of the labels on them. Nowhere more so than in the brand of politics you have developed. Thanks to you, Singapore has rapidly become a vivid illustration of the political adage: "Give a dog a bad name and hang it."

If our nation is to survive as a credible entity in the modem world, we need to unstick the labels you have so tirelessly fixed on people and opinions you disapprove of. Honest, educated young professionals, who had the temerity to develop social ideas of their own, suddenly found themselves arrested and labelled "Marxist conspirators."

A former solicitor-general who entertained rather nebulous notions of leading a small opposition group in Parliament was labelled an instrument of an unlikely Machiavelli in the U.S. Embassy. Now I am the latest victim of your label-fixing genius-brain-damaged alcoholic, wife-beater and what not.

I was surprised to learn from you that it was not considered desirable for me to retire in Singapore after I stepped down as President. You suggested that I accept an ambassadorship. I declined, saying that

I did not relish the life-style of an ambassador, involving as it did the treading of an endless cocktail circuit, picking up the latest gossip, and sending it off as a dispatch to the Foreign Ministry. I told you that

I would prefer a readership in the National University instead, which would enable me to do my own writing and to relate to our students. You did not seem to particularly like this prospect.

When we met again the following week, you told me that the younger ministers were disappointed that I had rejected an ambassadorship.

Surprised, I asked why. I was dismayed to learn that some of them thought that if I remained in Singapore, I might be tempted to interfere in the political process. I assured you that I would not interfere in any way, and certainly not with the trade unions, which was probably what some persons might have been nervous about. In any case, I had believed what you told me. Indeed, I was prone to repose uncritical belief in you most of the time. I no longer do. I was perhaps blind then to what might have been an unmistakable writing on the wall for me.

It is not possible, in the course of a single letter, to reply in full to the massive public onslaught you unleashed on me with your speech on 29 June, and the accompanying White Paper, which I am confident will be judged by history as a product of acute political dementia.

I am most grieved by the wrong you and Dr. Nagulendran have done to my wife, than by the harm done to me. She has been shockingly and disgustingly misrepresented as a witness against her own husband. In your system, it seems that anything goes. Members of a single family are made to bear witness against each other, not to speak of doctors bearing witness against their patients. Are these the "Confucianist" values you prescribe for Singaporeans? My wife will make her own response. My sons, too, who were witnesses of the circumstances surrounding my resignation, will bear their own witness to the unfolding truth as they saw it.

For the rest, we have not seen the end of the play. The last Act of the tragi-comedy you began has yet to be played out. I wish you good luck."
http://therealsingapore.com/…/former...-singapore-de…


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