Could LHL be HINTING that he's INTENDING to RESIGN earlier than expected?

takashi · Mar 30, 2015

'Life is better when it is short, healthy and full': Mr Lee Kuan Yew's 1972 speech - Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE: In his eulogy at the private ceremony at Mandai Crematorium on Sunday evening (Mar 29), Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong revealed that his late father, Singapore's founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, had once made a speech about "growing old and dying".

In a Facebook post on Monday, PM Lee shared his father's speech, saying that he "had looked it up recently, and re-read it with delight".

Click to expand...

[video=youtube;eYDeF6KSjGo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYDeF6KSjGo[/video]

LEGEND · Mar 30, 2015

Resign before he gets the sack.

XxooxX · Mar 30, 2015

I dont wish he resign
I hope whole family die to end our agony

enterprise2 · Mar 30, 2015

He better do it before he get a third relapse!

takashi · Mar 30, 2015

In my eulogy at the private service at Mandai yesterday (on.fb.me/1OP4e6Y), I mentioned my father's speech to a congress of cardiologists in 1972, titled “Life is better when it is short, healthy and full”. I had looked it up recently, and re-read it with delight. Some of the medical bits are a little out of date, e.g. preferring lean beef to pork, but the speech is vintage LKY. Here it is. – LHL

Life is better when it is short, healthy and full
30 March 2015 at 18:22

TRANSCRIPT OF SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, MR LEE KUAN YEW, AT THE 5TH ASIAN-PACIFIC CONGRESS OF CARDIOLOGY DELEGATES DINNER HELD AT SHANGRI-LA HOTEL ON 13TH OCTOBER, 1972

Mr. Chairman, Professor Charles Toh, Baron Professor Lequime, Sir Kempson Maddox, Distinguished Specialists, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am overawed to find myself in the presence of so many eminent heart specialists. It’s a daunting prospect to have to talk to some 500 people who, even as I speak, will run their professional eye up and down me, checking my age against my weight, height, the amount of alcohol I may be showing, either on my countenance or lack of crispness in my speech.

The reason I am here, of course, is that your Chairman gives me an annual check-up to see whether the old ticker is degenerating faster than it should. Every year, we go through the routine: ECG lying down, ECG sitting up, ECG -- after going up and down steps at a certain speed for several minutes, ECG to discover how quickly the pattern returns to normal after this exercise. Each time I leave a little encouraged. He knows I am suspicious. So he never tells me that all is well. His is the subtle approach -- a quiet nod, and a hum of satisfaction as he runs through the stream of paper graphing my heart-beat, and the very audible asides to my general physician about an athlete’s heart. It gladdens mine. He knows that I read up all the medical articles in magazines ostensibly meant for more than just the average layman. He knows I cut out saturated fat -- lean meat, preferably beef, only selected parts of mutton and pork, and that only occasionally. Even in vegetable oils some are to be avoided like coconut, which is saturated.

Yet despite all this hotch-potch collection of do’s and don’ts from articles and tips from friends like Professor Monteiro, I had all this while laboured under a grave misconception -- that the heart should never be strained, that as one gets older one should be careful not to push the ticker too hard. So violent exercises like badminton and squash are to be eschewed. More leisurely ones unlikely to induce cardiac failure like golf or swimming are for me.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew joined then United States Vice-President Mr Spiro Agnew (right) for a game of golf at the Bukit Golf Course back in 1971. (Photo courtesy of SPH)

Then one day I was playing golf with a surgeon friend. He had read up the latest on aerobics. He said the heart should be pushed to its uttermost limits to dilate all the arteries throughout the body and in the heart itself, and to increase the pulse rate to its maximum, for as long as possible. It will improve heart muscle tone, and after a few weeks the lethargic feeling will go. I asked him if he had tried it out himself. Well, he said, running on the spot for him, bringing his knees as high up to his chest as possible, that was difficult because he was well in his 50’s. So he walked on the spot. But he assured me that he had got quite a few friends who had complained of feeling lethargic, and slothful -- to run on the spot, more and more minutes each day, and now they are almost bursting in song with a spring in their steps. None have dropped down dead. I asked him whether they were his friends or his guinea-pigs. He countered that it was the results of experiments by a Canadian heart specialist. He recounted a case of a Canadian pilot was invalidated because of heart problems. After one year of aerobics he had his pilot’s licence and status restored.

This sounded convincing. So I tried it, but cautiously. I walked on the spot. Nothing happened. So I began to run, but gently, on the spot. Still no ill effects. So I increased it day by day. Then one day after a round of golf, I ran for five minutes. Because that I got my surgeon to take my pulse rate. So he said it was normal, 70 plus. After 5 minutes, “Marvellous, 140”. After 3 to 4 minutes, back to 70 plus. Marvellous! Young man’s heart was his verdict.

If only I had known earlier I would have been younger at heart all these past years!

My belief life is better short, healthy and full than long, unhealthy and dismal. We all have to die. I hope mine will be painless. As de Gaulle said, “Never fear, even de Gaulle must die,” and he did. And how lucky – heart failure during sleep.

Of course, it is preferable to die at home in one’s bed -- not in a motel. Just think of the embarrassment to one’s children, all the gossip that the extra excitement of unaccustomed company caused a defective heart to falter.

When I was a young man I considered the various professions that might be satisfying and fulfilling. I ruled out medicine. It was too noble. The oath of Hippocrates -- to keep alive a patient as long as possible. Sometimes as I cast my mind back to my teen-aged years, I wonder perhaps whether I should not have been a doctor. Never mind the nobility. It’s a marvellous profession, the Hippocratic oath: everything should be done to keep the patient alive. Patients are kept alive longer with tremendous leaps in knowledge, breakthroughs in both medication and surgery. And, of course, it creates more demands for services of doctors. Like the car, so the body. When the carburator gives way -- repair or change it. When the piston rings wear out -- change them. When the pistons get too small for the cylinder bore -- grind bole the engine block and put bigger pistons. If the piston block cracks, put in a new piston block. Better still take the whole engine out and put a brand new one. Then door-hinges give way -- change hinges, if necessary, change doors. Constantly repaint and retouch. With every passing year, it becomes more expensive to keep the car going. So beyond a certain point -- I think the third year, it becomes more economical to sell the car and replace it. Now in America the economics have been worked out one stage further: don’t buy a car, lease it for two years.

If only one could do that with life! There is no point in owning a decrepit body with daily deterioration making it even more expensive to stay alive. But you cannot change the human body. So it is good for doctors. Your heart timing is wrong, they put in a timing device. Then something else, like the kidney gives way, in which case a kidney machine will keep the patient alive for years and years, but for what purpose?

Then transplants -- just like spare-parts in cars, and cortisones to prevent rejection of transplants, and sterile conditions to avoid infection which with cortisones will be hard to detect. It is a marvellous never-ending process. Each discovery prolongs life and moves the degenerative failure to some other part of the body.

The medical profession is the biggest and best trade union of all unions. It is a closed shop in all countries, and in some countries even when you cross state boundaries they make you become an interne or a houseman for many years before you are allowed to practise on your own. Every breakthrough in medical science prolonging life creates more patients, as degenerative failures take place in some other part of the human physiology. And now geriatrics and gerontology have become respectable but not yet lucrative branches of medicine, because pensioners get poorer with galloping inflation in so many Western countries.

So knowing this, the medical profession now promise, or hold out the prospect, not only of prolonging life but of prolonging youth. This is an entirely different proposition. That means the man or the woman can work, and make the money to pay his medical bills, which his pension cannot afford him to do.

Tonight, I have a unique occasion of some 500 heart specialists as a captive audience. Can I say that the kindest thing you can do for me -- if ever I have a partial cardiac failure or a stroke, is to let me die as painlessly as possible.

Nothing is more pitiful than to have stroke after stroke after stroke. With each one both physical movement and intellectual capacity are reduced until one becomes a vegetable.

One evening at dinner last year, I had a morbid discussion over coffee. My guest had coffee and liquor. I stuck to my wine. We discussed the right to die -- euthanasia. He was a very high-powered American executive. He had thought the whole question through. He said, "But after the first stroke and when the time has come to make the decision, one finds life is still sweet. And you will not make the request to die." I said, "In that case, make the request before the event." He said, "You will withdraw it when the event occurs, or you may not be in fit mental condition to exercise your judgement." I countered, "In that case, let the decision be taken by a close relative or a friend.” He said, “A close relative, God forbid, he is after your money! He may believe he is in your will." I said, "Then a friend." He says, "He may be such a good friend that he believes, despite the fact that you are only 30% of what you were, it is still worth giving you that 30%, and he will keep you alive."

There will never be a final solution to the problem of life and death, other than death itself. And whether it is philosophy or logic or medicine or morality or law, we are all human beings with human imperfections, both as individuals and as societies. And Singapore is an imperfect society. But I hope, despite all the imperfections you have found some pleasure in having come here.

virus · Mar 30, 2015

he's grasping with straw that such a posh job, can travel, makan, feed his wife frenzy gambling habit.. such a job where to find?

DollarsNoSense · Mar 30, 2015

"Life is better when its short" - how short? before 55?

GOD IS MY DOG · Mar 30, 2015

will abandon ship while PAP still in power...........if oppo takes over, too late for him liao...........years later, we'll know how much of foreign reserves kena makan............

spotter542 · Mar 30, 2015

The old Hokkien saying ,

Tree collapse , monkeys scatter

looneytan · Mar 30, 2015

not bad leh! hitting Arnie style

JohnTan · Mar 30, 2015

We are all hoping for the current PM to stay around until another Lee or Li is ready to take over.

takashi · Mar 30, 2015

JohnTan said:
We are all hoping for the current PM to stay around until another Lee or Li is ready to take over.

Even the Lee/Li-controlled Tang dynasty had to come to an end over a thousand years ago! :rolleyes:

Followed by half a century of wars before the Zhao-controlled Song dynasty began...

laksaboy · Mar 31, 2015

Better take care of his own health and find a successor quickly. What is more important than health?

No guarantee when the dormant cancer cells start to fight back. :biggrin:

Confuseous · Mar 31, 2015

laksaboy said:
Better take care of his own health and find a successor quickly. What is more important than health?

No guarantee when the dormant cancer cells start to fight back.

Then what about all the talk about long term succession planning during each erection?
All talk?
Or all nonsensical candidates and ministers over the decades?

jw5 · Mar 31, 2015

Perhaps he is hinting that he wished to be a mathematician married to a chiobu. :wink:

JohnTan · Mar 31, 2015

My grassroots buddies seem to have high hopes for both Shengwu and Hongyi. There is a possibility that they both will play a role in our politics, such as in the coming GE. I wouldn't be surprised to see a Li stand in a possible by-election in tanjong pagar GRC. He would most probably receive a ton of votes in memory of his dead grandpa. And pioneer generation sinkies are known to be fiercely loyal to the late Ah Gong.

takashi · Mar 31, 2015

JohnTan said:
My grassroots buddies seem to have high hopes for both Shengwu and Hongyi. There is a possibility that they both will play a role in our politics, such as in the coming GE. I wouldn't be surprised to see a Li stand in a possible by-election in tanjong pagar GRC. He would most probably receive a ton of votes in memory of his dead grandpa. And pioneer generation sinkies are known to be fiercely loyal to the late Ah Gong.

There is also a possibility that LHL will either unexpectedly resign or even die before 2020, followed by a possible civil "war" of some sort!

JohnTan · Mar 31, 2015

takashi said:
There is also a possibility that LHL will either unexpectedly resign or even die before 2020, followed by a possible civil "war" of some sort!

If that happens, then the two grandsons would be snuffed out before they even have a chance to show that they can be credible politicians. But fortunately, PAP is renown for its tight party discipline. WP is next.

The other parties have no semblance of discipline. People can join and leave as and when they like. Party manifesto means nothing to them nor to the public, given how easily opposition candidates can jump from party to party. It seems their only plan is to unseat PAP, but they have no concrete plan to build a solid grassroots support or to spread their plan. There was some semblance of all those plans after the excitement of GE2011, but as usual, it would fizzle out.

That's why I stick to PAP. It's the only party that is deemed credible by the majority in spite of its faults. WP post-JBJ has been marketing itself as a blue PAP party. And this strategy has paid off handsomely, way beyond the wildest dreams of David Marshall and the late JBJ.

kryonlight · Apr 1, 2015

JohnTan said:
WP post-JBJ has been marketing itself as a blue PAP party. And this strategy has paid off handsomely, way behind the wildest dreams of David Marshall and the late JBJ.

I hope SDP markets itself as red PAP party. White, Blue and Red in Parliament.

looneytan · Apr 1, 2015

JohnTan said:
My grassroots buddies seem to have high hopes for both Shengwu and Hongyi.

the guy who spitted on your table?

Could LHL be HINTING that he's INTENDING to RESIGN earlier than expected?

So, what do you guys think?

Yes, LHL wants to retire early!

No, he's not.

I'm not sure.

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