Lee Wei Ling, Janadas exchange words over Oxley Road spat

SINGAPORE – Dr Lee Wei Ling and chief of Government Communications Janadas Devan exchanged words on Facebook on Friday morning (June 30) over the ongoing Oxley Road saga.

In a post at 7.20am, Dr Lee put up an email from Mr Janadas, dated July 28, 2011 as a rebuttal to what she referred to as claims by her elder brother Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong that their father had “come to accept” that the family home should be preserved after July 21, 2011.

In the email, Mr Janadas wrote that he met Mr Lee Kuan Yew that day, July 28, and Mr Lee told him that the house will be torn down. Saying it is “obvious” that is what Mr Lee Kuan Yew wants, Mr Janadas added: “It will be a small minded people that denies him this personal wish. I think he’s wrong wishing it, but I’d feel awful denying him what he obviously wants.” 

Juxtaposing Mr Janadas’ email with a snippet of PM Lee’s statutory declaration, she wrote: “We thought that Singaporeans should hear directly from Janadas Devan, chief of Government Communications at the Ministry of Communication and Information.”

The post was immediately shared by her younger brother Lee Hsien Yang. 

Responding to Dr Lee on Mr Lee Hsien Yang’s Facebook page, Mr Janadas accused her of “blar(ing) tabloid-style, misleading information”. 

He said the email she quoted was written when he was associate editor of The Straits Times. Furthermore, he said Dr Lee knew that he and a few other journalists had met with Mr Lee Kuan Yew to discuss a book that he had proposed on 38 Oxley Road. 

He laid out that Mr Lee Kuan Yew made plain that he wanted the house to be demolished in July 2011, but as the months and years passed, “the nature of the project changed as it became less definitive whether the house should be demolished – and if so, when”.

While he agreed that “there was no doubt then or now” that Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s preference was to demolish the house, “the shifting instructions” given by the family in 2011 and 2012 indicated that the fate of the house “had by no means been decided at that point”.

He added that he ceased to be involved in the Oxley Road book project in July 2012 when he left The Straits Times, although his personal view remains that Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s wish to demolish the house should be granted the moment she is no longer living in it, which may be 20, 30 or more years in the future.

Putting in a personal appeal to her at the end to “Please: Think of Singapore, and forget the rest”, Mr Janadas said: “In the meantime, I am as baffled as most Singaporeans why Hsien Yang and you wish to consume all of us in your personal family matters.”

The two younger Lee siblings, Dr Lee and Mr Lee Hsien Yang, have been engaged in a widely publicized feud with PM Lee over the fate of 38 Oxley Road, the home of their father, the late founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. 

They alleged that they felt “threatened” in trying to honour their late father’s long-standing wish to demolish his two-storey bungalow, and also they also accused PM of abusing his power and position to “drive his personal agenda”.