In 1997, having received death threats after a vicious election campaign in which he was branded, among other things, a “Chinese chauvinist”, opposition politician Tang Liang Hong fled to Johor. Lee Kuan Yew threw scorn on Tang’s reasons for going to Johor:

I was baffled. He claimed that his life was under threat. But, of all places, he went to Johor. That place is notorious for shootings, muggings and car-jackings. It did not make sense for a person who claims to be fearful for his life to go to a place like Johor…

…Why would a person who claims that he needs police protection not go to see the police himself? Why would he instead go to Johor? If there is anywhere where people can do him harm, that is the place…

Lee theorised instead that Tang was fleeing the country for good and did not intend to return to defend himself against the 13 lawsuits Lee and his cronies had filed against him.

I was a mere adolescent when this happened, so I have no memory of the political tension with Malaysia that resulted from Lee’s slander against Johor. I derived the quote above from Francis Seow’s book, Beyond Suspicion? The Singapore Judiciary. Seow also quotes, in that book, an excerpt from an excellent letter that Malaysian lawyer Azzat Kamaludin sent to The New Straits Times. I reproduce the full letter here for your edification.

Chok Tong should ask Kuan Yew to resign over remarks

I REFER to the report entitled “Singapore expresses surprise over Government’s stand” (NST, March 20) wherein Radio Corporation of Singapore reported Singapore Foreign Minister Prof S. Jayakumar as saying that the statement in Lee Kuan Yew’s affidavit was made by the Senior Minister personally in his action against Tang Liang Hong and quoted him as saying that “the affidavit was not made by him as Senior Minister nor did he make it on behalf of the Singapore Government”.

The Minister was once the professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Singapore.

His speciality is constitutional law. As such, he knows or should know very well the convention or practice of ministerial responsibility in a parliamentary system of Government.

Kuan Yew is Senior Minister of Singapore, whatever that means. Hsien Loong is not just Kuan Yew’s son. He is Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore. Together with the professor, they are members of a Government headed, as I understand it, by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong. Now if the good professor and his Prime Minister insist that Lee and Hsien Loong were, to borrow an expression, on a frolic of their own, then was there not a responsibility on the Singapore Government, at the least, to dissociate the Government from their scurrilous statements?

Indeed, I venture to suggest that in mature jurisdictions with similar governmental organisations, the Prime Minister, as head of the Government, would require his Cabinet members who express views that contradict Government policy or make statements, private or public, that upset foreign relations, to tender their resignations.

Yet all we have heard from Goh, as reported, is that Kuan Yew has acknowledged he was offside, whatever offside means.

It was by any measure a very curious metaphor to invoke. In games where there is an offside rule, such calls are made by the linesman, the one who runs along the sidelines. Are we to perceive that Goh is the equivalent of a linesman at such a game and not the captain of one of the teams on the field or not even the referee? In the metaphor of games, my perception of a Prime Minister is that he/she is either the captain or at least the referee on the field. When a member of the team or player commits a foul, the captain cautions him or the referee sends him off.

Jayakumar as Foreign Minister should know there is no such thing as the private views or actions of a Minister of the Government. And he should also know that in a parliamentary system of Government that Singapore practises, that is not the way to distance or dissociate yourself from the scurrilous statements of his colleagues. Unless of course he and his other colleagues are powerless to do anything else.

Azzat Kamaludin
Kuala Lumpur