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Working with the government[/FONT]
[FONT=open_sansregular]How did Ho go from journalist to jailbird to islander to businessman, and then go on to work with the Singapore government on so many things?[/FONT]
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Bar labelling him a sell-out, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think he has mellowed out significantly over the years.[/FONT]
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After all, one would expect that being wrongfully detained without opportunity for trial, denied the right to see one’s loved ones and then having to do a televised confession for something he didn’t even agree with, would leave a person bitter at best, vengeful at worst.[/FONT]
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Yet, Ho went on to chair Singapore Power, and apart from starting up SMU, also served on the board of the GIC, the Civil Service College, MediaCorp, Singapore Airlines and the Singapore Tourism Board, among a host of other organisations.[/FONT]
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He, too, admits he is an anomaly among people who were arrested under the ISA — after all, how many former detainees do you see working so prominently and openly in Singapore?[/FONT]
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His views on Lee Kuan Yew[/FONT]
[FONT=open_sansregular]Ho also maintains his position that he was arrested wrongfully, but here’s what he has to say about it:
[/FONT]“With all due respect to the government and to (the late) Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who I deeply respect and admire… I do not believe Mr Lee Kuan Yew was correct. I was not a communist, but what I do believe was that he honestly believed that I and other persons that he arrested were a threat to Singapore, for whatever reasons. I do not believe he detained me for his own personal gain, because he was corrupt and I was going to expose him, like 1MDB. He detained me because he thought he had to do it.”
[FONT=open_sansregular]Also, consciously or unwittingly, Ho believes the manner in which the late Lee engaged him in the decades that followed sent him a message of reconciliation, in his own indirect, strategic manner:[/FONT]“In retrospect now I think he… well, he would never admit it, he’s not the kind of person that would ever admit it, but the fact that after that he was quite nice to me, the fact that he asked me for dinner, for lunch many times, the fact that we had a lot of discussions, the fact that he asked me to join the board of GIC and all these other things, is a man who’s basically said, ‘I’m never going to say sorry but look, would you like to help us out?’ and so on.
Again, I would do the same thing too. We all have our own face and so on. And I think to his mind, quite frankly, his mind would be ‘Why do I have to say I’m sorry? I did what I had to do. And you’re not what I thought, so okay, I come back to you now and ask you would you like to serve the country.’
So I only have the utmost respect for him as a person, not necessarily if you look back now that he’s dead, but I got to know him much better in the later years. He was never a man who ever did a single thing for himself. He could be really excessive, he could be paranoid, a lot of things, and that’s why a lot of young Singaporeans I think realise when he died that he never did anything for himself. And so that’s why I bear absolutely no bitterness.”
[FONT=open_sansregular]Ho then went all Sigmund Freud with the late founding prime minister:[/FONT]“Somebody said it quite correctly that Lee Kuan Yew was never corrupt because he was too intellectually arrogant. Corruption was below him. Only lesser mortals would be corrupt. And I think that’s partly true. To him, corruption was never a temptation. He never cared about material things. He wanted power, and he had almost absolute power, but lesser mortals would want absolute power to create wealth. He wanted absolute power to create the Singapore that he wanted to create.”
[FONT=open_sansregular]Ho also touched on Lee’s legacy:[/FONT]“In terms of his legacy I think to me the main legacy is not about, well of course there’s the obvious legacy of creating the country and all that kind of stuff… But what he has left behind is if you look at Southeast Asia and the rest of the world, Singapore is a true exception — is this culture of incorruptibility…
And this is where I kind of think the Western media in some way is somewhat insulting to Singaporeans when they say that we Singaporeans are so stupid, we’ve tolerated this authoritarian government. I think Singaporeans have made a social contract. They basically have said ‘yeah, we know you’re authoritarian, we know you’re this sort of stuff, but you’re doing it for us and we can see you’re not corrupt.’ I think Singaporeans are very strong-minded, and the minute the PAP is corrupt they’ll throw it out. So this culture of incorruptibility is probably his strongest legacy. And he demonstrated it in incredible ways.”
[FONT=open_sansregular]The next question I had, then, naturally, was — was Ho ever invited to tea? The answer, to our surprise, was an honest yes.[/FONT]
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In the ’80s, he said, stressing it was “way back”, while cheekily adding he would not be able to sell copies of his memoirs if he told me more, should he ever opt to pen one.[/FONT]
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