Invoking LKY's name, got use?

http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/three-old-guard-ministers-attend-ndp


[h=1]Three old guard ministers to attend NDP[/h] Mr Ong Pang Boon (left) and Mr Othman Wok. Photos: Channel NewsAsia, TODAY

• mail
• print
• View all 0 comments
  
• 
  
  
• 
  
  

Published: 6:00 PM, July 25, 2015
Updated: 6:00 PM, July 25, 2015

(Page 1 of 1) - PAGINATE
SINGAPORE — Fifty years ago, they were among the 10 government leaders who signed an historic agreement that birthed Singapore as an independent nation. Come Aug 9, these three Old Guard members will witness another historic Singapore moment — the Republic’s Golden Jubilee parade celebrations.

Mr Ong Pang Boon, 86, Mr Jek Yeun Thong, 85, and Mr Othman Wok, 90 — the three remaining living signatories to the Independence of Singapore Agreement 1965 — will be attending this year’s National Day Parade (NDP).

Special seats have been set aside for these long-time Cabinet ministers: Next to the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s seat, which would be left empty as a mark of remembrance.
Among the trio, Mr Ong was a significant member of the late Mr Lee’s team. He was appointed Minister of Home Affairs in the Republic’s first Cabinet following the 1959 Legislative Assembly General Election, and helmed several other key portfolios during his political career that lasted until 1988.
For instance, he spearheaded the “anti-yellow culture” campaign, to rid sources of “moral degeneration” in Singapore such as pornography, gambling dens, prostitution and secret societies. He was also instrumental in driving bilingual education, making second language a compulsory subject for the Cambridge School Certificate examination from 1969.
Mr Ong Pang Boon recalled signing the independence agreement: “I remembered being speechless when Dr Toh Chin Chye broke the news (of Singapore’s separation from Malaysia) to me. It was with a heavy heart that I signed the agreement. But over the past 50 years, as I watched Singaporeans enjoy what we have created and built, I know with all my heart that we made the right decision. I am looking forward to being part of the Golden Jubilee National Day Parade.”
Mr Jek was the Minister for Labour from 1963, given the task of eradicating communism from the trade unions. During his time in charge of the Culture ministry from 1968 to 1979, he promoted Asian art and values as a “culture ballast” against Western decadence.
Mr Jek was also credited with helping the late Mr Lee early on with his speeches for the Chinese ground.
Mr Jek Yeun Thong said that from the moment he signed the independence agreement, he knew that the road ahead would be challenging. “The initial years of our nation-building were not easy but everyone believed in a single cause: To make Singapore a better home for ourselves and our children. Through sheer grit and determination, we came to where we are today.”
Mr Othman served in the Cabinet for 14 years as Minister for Social Affairs, having key involvements in the Singapore Grand Prix and the establishment of the National Stadium. He was a firm believer in multi-racialism, and also started several initiatives that still impact the Malay community today such as the regulation and organisation of Hajj activities and creating the Mosque Building Fund.
After exiting politics, Mr Othman continued to serve Singapore, becoming the ambassador to Indonesia for more than three years, during which the two countries enjoyed warm ties.
On attending NDP this year Mr Othman Wok said: “I’m honoured that we’ve been asked to sit next to Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s empty seat. He is the man who brought Singapore to what it is today. He is truly an inspiration for all Singaporeans.”
The other six ministers who signed the Independence of Singapore agreement have all died. They are Mr Toh Chin Chye, Dr Goh Keng Swee, Mr E W Barker, Mr S Rajaratnam, Mr Yong Nyuk Lin, and Mr Lim Kim San.

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

it showed that with an incompetent leader to lead Singapore, he even need dead people hope to win the next election for him. Shame on you Pinky shithead.

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

Already said before, during Ndp, one empty seat, missing man formation fly pass, and TV show people with tears.....then sept election. see how much comes true:o

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

Expect more gimmicks coming this GE

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

Na beh. NDP has become 7th month getai.

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

HTOLAS said:

Na beh. NDP has become 7th month getai.

Click to expand...

Most expensive getai ever.

P.S: Those security guards should be relieved that no such thing will happen this year:

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

So they intend to send Ong Pang Boon, Jek Yeun Thong and Othman Wok to accompany JohnTan's Ah Gong one by one ....

.... or three at the same time

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

Certainly, they can leave the chair empty.
There is only so much you can milk - after which there is fatique.
They can milk for all they want.
Just reflective of how insecure LHL is.

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

Confuseous said:

Certainly, they can leave the chair empty.
There is only so much you can milk - after which there is fatique.
They can milk for all they want.
Just reflective of how insecure LHL is.

Click to expand...

Why leave chair empty? Ask lhl bring lky urn there la. Can use Singapore flag to wrap around the urn to create the maximum emo effect if needed.

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

will they place LKY's funeral portrait on the seat and show a stadium full of Sinkaporeans sobbing and wailing and queuing up for 3 hours to place flowers on his stadium seat?

[video=youtube;IrfZPMH-CEg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrfZPMH-CEg[/video]

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

any old guard, if still around... either standing or in a wheel chair, will be shaking their heads in disbelief..
to have a GE and still need someone (oredi up lorry) to help to win votes.... beri...beri.... dun know what to say

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

[video=youtube;kOquEimPp60]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOquEimPp60[/video]

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

why waste a damn good seat. there are many sinkies who couldn't get tickets to attend the parade. TCB wants a ticket. let him sit there.

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

I would be weeping at the sight of Ah Gong's empty seat during this year's NDP. Many of my fellow grassroots leaders and CCC buddies would also be weeping.

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

I have already booked a flight for the National day holiday. I would have gone earlier if they had declared a public holiday for the old farts death.

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

frenchbriefs said:

will they place LKY's funeral portrait on the seat and show a stadium full of Sinkaporeans sobbing and wailing and queuing up for 3 hours to place flowers on his stadium seat?

Click to expand...

That red box is now officially a holy relic.

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

Why never tell us that Ah Mat and Ah Jek led exciting lives with their respective mistresses? Shouldnt be shy or economical with the hard truth, eh?

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

shed crocodile tears lah.

JohnTan said:

I would be weeping at the sight of Ah Gong's empty seat during this year's NDP. Many of my fellow grassroots leaders and CCC buddies would also be weeping.

Click to expand...

Re: NDP - LKY's seat will be left empty as a mark of remembrance. Another Pre-GE Gimm

CABcommander said:

Why leave chair empty? Ask lhl bring lky urn there la. Can use Singapore flag to wrap around the urn to create the maximum emo effect if needed.

Click to expand...

Do not waste that empty chair.

place these on that chair so the demons and ghouls have more energy to tiew and rape and kan smear of shit on sole of shoe LKY

The Lee Kuan Yew Effect For GE2015! Ah Gong Deeply Loved By Most Sinkies!



In an interview last month, Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen described founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's passing in March as "his last gift to us".

This was in the form of a national unity that emerged through the celebration of his life and mourning of his death, a unity all the more notable for how rare it has become.

It's surprising nowadays to find consensus on any one thing, and even where consensus exists, for it to be so viscerally and deeply felt.

In mourning the man who singularly defined this nation's first independence-era act, Singaporeans felt a new appreciation for how far the nation had travelled, with him leading the way.

But the unity also stemmed from a shared national anxiety.

The goals and priorities of LKY-era Singapore have been achieved in most ways. Now, the people want something more - but there is little consensus on what.

The PAP cannot be fully credited with the civil-political opening up, but it has not resisted the tides of change the way many other long-ruling incumbents have done around the world. And in the realm of social and financial assistance, the current generation of PAP leaders have boldly ushered in a new era of state largesse that Mr Lee would have been, at the very least, slightly uncomfortable about.

With this post-LKY, post-affluence second act still tentative and undefined, we clung to one another.

As this coming general election will show, Singaporeans may also cling anew to the People's Action Party (PAP), the only organisation in the short history of this country that has been able to inspire, and channel national consensus into national greatness.

In that sense, Mr Lee's death was actually a final gift to his political party, one he was devoted to but also cajoled, corralled and crafted to his image.

For Mr Lee's strengths are the PAP's strengths, and his weaknesses, the party's too.

Throughout the week-long national mourning, those strengths - forward, big-picture thinking, a steely preference for the tough over the popular, an integrity that bordered on uncompassion - seemed re-validated through the lens of the future the party brought about.

Like in a long marriage, qualities that had become tiresome with familiarity were jolted through loss into the foundation, once again, of love and devotion.

The examination of his life, bringing alive scenes of an orphaned, unruly Singapore that was poised on the brink of extinction, triggered a process of "self-discovery" in both the old and young, as Dr Ng put it.

What was discovered, it seems, is something the party itself has always repeated: that this government is not so bad at all.

That the PAP itself expects the "LKY dividend" to be sizeable can be seen in the way that a general election before year-end is now all but guaranteed, after the release of new electoral boundaries on Friday.

A 2015 GE, if indeed it happens, would depart from the five-year electoral cycle associated with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong - polls were held in 2006 and 2011 - and will be a strain on public resources and energy in a year that has seen massive back-to-back public events, from the SEA Games to SG50 celebrations.

Prior to Mr Lee's death, such factors were spoken of as reasons not to hold a jubilee-year general election.

After his death, as PAP activists saw a surge in volunteers, members and overall goodwill, they started talking about these factors as mere minor considerations.

But to declare this electoral timing as opportunistic, as some have already done, is to ignore the fact that the "LKY dividend" is no sure thing.

The likely magnitude of its payoff come this general election will be due largely to how the party has evolved after Mr Lee stepped down.

Mr Lee's strengths are the PAP's strengths ,and his weaknesses, the party's.

And in the 25 years since he stepped down as prime minister, Mr Lee's successors have slowly but surely backed away from the more unpalatable aspects of his political legacy.

His knuckleduster approach to politics - which endured even after the volatile period when leftists threatened the nascent state -

saw reprisals against critics and opponents that many considered excessive, feeding a culture of government-knows-best obeisance.

While the nation is still dealing with this legacy, Singapore politics - and society as a whole - has been increasingly open and unafraid over the past two decades, a fact that only the most blinkered of critics could deny - and, in their denial, prove the point.

There may still be defamation suits now, but legal fees can be crowd-funded, a phenomenon that has been made possible not just by the Internet but by the support among segments of the population for the principle of plurality.

The PAP cannot be fully credited with the civil-political opening up, but it has not resisted the tides of change the way many other long-ruling incumbents have done around the world.

And in the realm of social and financial assistance, the current generation of PAP leaders have boldly ushered in a new era of state largesse that Mr Lee would have been, at the very least, slightly uncomfortable about.

Whether universal health insurance, permanent cash pensions for the bottom fifth, or the $8 billion Pioneer Generation Package, the current Government has pulled back the perimeters of the space that Mr Lee believed should be largely occupied by self-reliance and fiscal prudence.

On ministerial salaries, a policy Mr Lee remained ardent about despite - or perhaps because of - perennial public resentment against it, the symbolic one-third cuts to political pay in 2012 were a clear repudiation.

Where Mr Lee once saw high political pay as bitter medicine that the population must be persuaded to swallow, the current generation of leaders acknowledged, in the pay review that resulted in the salary cuts, that persuasion is not a one-way street, and giving some ground to win over some doubters not always a sign of weakness.

There would be no LKY electoral dividend if the PAP had cleaved to the axioms he forged instead of being ready to remake itself for a new generation.

The ways in which the ruling party has evolved can allow a new generation to appreciate Mr Lee's legacy from a place that's largely freer of his imperfections.

Despite all this, Mr Lee's impact on the vote even in death - which is likely to be as influential as it was in life - should give the ruling party pause. The "LKY dividend" is likely to pay off only in this coming general election.

But the great man's shadow will loom over many to come. Mr Lee was feared, but he was also loved, and the 70 per cent to 80 per cent national vote-shares that he garnered as party secretary-general and as prime minister are likely never to be seen again in Singapore politics.

Part of this is due to a growing diversity in this electorate.

But a major factor is also that the party is no longer the dynamic, galvanising force it was under him; The inner workings of a long-ruling incumbent are unlikely to throw up the sort of bold, creative leadership that he embodied, which emerged from the tumultuous times he lived in.

Mr Lee had the hero's way of transferring his steel and ambition to those he led - his boldness emboldened his people and his big dreams broadened their own.

As the old footage that played in a loop during the week of mourning showed, he could ignite a passion

in the people that no other Singaporean politician has ever come close to.

It may be that the days of passion for its politicians are gone for a country rounding 50, whose open horizons have narrowed into a wiser understanding of the finite options ahead.

When Mr Lee died, that was perhaps part of what Singaporeans mourned. A first love that has yet to be eclipsed, the heart thrumming to possibility, and the swooping breathlessness of the uncharted.

http://www.straitstimes.com/politics/singapolitics/the-lee-kuan-yew-factor-in-winning-over-voters