This excerpt is from Lee Kuan Yew's book "Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going" [Pg 120].
"This is to give you an idea of what my market value is worth," said Lee Kuan Yew as he handed us some papers. Listed in the printouts were his earnings from his memoirs, speaking engagements and appointments to various advisory boards since stepping down as Prime Minister in November 1990. He has donated all of it - without taking any tax deductions - to charity, with the bulk to three educational endowment funds. Since 1991, he has donated almost $13 million to charity (S$12.2 million and the rest in various currencies)."
So let me get this straight. Since Old Fart stepped down as PeeM in 1990, he earned $13 million from speaking engagements, appointments to corporate advisory boards, and his memoirs. Obviously, he was quite busy doing all these things, i mean $13 million is no small amount by any stretch of imagination. he must have spend significant time and effort going to all these speaking engagements, advisory board meetings, etc. This is not unusual as most politicians who retire have similar income from speaking engagements, and what not. All former Presidents of the US do this quite profitably in their retirement.
The only problem with this is that Old Fart never actually retired. He quit one govt position (the position of Prime Minister) and moved into another senior govt position (that of Senior Minister). In fact on the same day that he "retired", he immediately took the post of senior minister which is also paid a multi million $ salary and is posted to the PMO if I recall. Not to mention, he was earning his salary as an MP for Tanjong Pagar too. And even after he quit the Senior MInister position, he further took another ministerial post called Minister Mentor. And he was minister Mentor until 2011. So the question becomes how can someone paid millions $ salary to be first a Senior Minister and then a Minister Mentor by the tax payer of singapore, moonlight as a speaker and member of advisory boards and write his memoirs. All the time doing these things while on the taxpayer salary. Are we to believe that these highly paid Minister positions he took were PART TIME JOBs? Is there simply not a conflict of interest when you are a senior minister with people reporting to you and privy to many upcoming economic policy changes inside govt information also work for the boards of corporations doing the same business in singapore? Were taxpayer time money and resources used to help him write his memoirs? I find it hard that he would be able to write them on his free time, since he was such a busy person. Did he use a govt paid secretary to dictate his memoirs to?
All these questions point to systemic abuse of power and privilege, corruption and illegal use of govt resources for his own benefit, conflict of interest, and working in other private sector capacities when he should have been devoting his attention solely to the job he was hired for. As a result of his effort to portray himself as a generous person, donating his money to charity, it has raised more questions. The primary one being "Why was he paid to be a senior minister and how could he have possibly perform this job, when he was busy earning $13 millions worth of speaking engagements, memoir writings and Board advising?"
"This is to give you an idea of what my market value is worth," said Lee Kuan Yew as he handed us some papers. Listed in the printouts were his earnings from his memoirs, speaking engagements and appointments to various advisory boards since stepping down as Prime Minister in November 1990. He has donated all of it - without taking any tax deductions - to charity, with the bulk to three educational endowment funds. Since 1991, he has donated almost $13 million to charity (S$12.2 million and the rest in various currencies)."
So let me get this straight. Since Old Fart stepped down as PeeM in 1990, he earned $13 million from speaking engagements, appointments to corporate advisory boards, and his memoirs. Obviously, he was quite busy doing all these things, i mean $13 million is no small amount by any stretch of imagination. he must have spend significant time and effort going to all these speaking engagements, advisory board meetings, etc. This is not unusual as most politicians who retire have similar income from speaking engagements, and what not. All former Presidents of the US do this quite profitably in their retirement.
The only problem with this is that Old Fart never actually retired. He quit one govt position (the position of Prime Minister) and moved into another senior govt position (that of Senior Minister). In fact on the same day that he "retired", he immediately took the post of senior minister which is also paid a multi million $ salary and is posted to the PMO if I recall. Not to mention, he was earning his salary as an MP for Tanjong Pagar too. And even after he quit the Senior MInister position, he further took another ministerial post called Minister Mentor. And he was minister Mentor until 2011. So the question becomes how can someone paid millions $ salary to be first a Senior Minister and then a Minister Mentor by the tax payer of singapore, moonlight as a speaker and member of advisory boards and write his memoirs. All the time doing these things while on the taxpayer salary. Are we to believe that these highly paid Minister positions he took were PART TIME JOBs? Is there simply not a conflict of interest when you are a senior minister with people reporting to you and privy to many upcoming economic policy changes inside govt information also work for the boards of corporations doing the same business in singapore? Were taxpayer time money and resources used to help him write his memoirs? I find it hard that he would be able to write them on his free time, since he was such a busy person. Did he use a govt paid secretary to dictate his memoirs to?
All these questions point to systemic abuse of power and privilege, corruption and illegal use of govt resources for his own benefit, conflict of interest, and working in other private sector capacities when he should have been devoting his attention solely to the job he was hired for. As a result of his effort to portray himself as a generous person, donating his money to charity, it has raised more questions. The primary one being "Why was he paid to be a senior minister and how could he have possibly perform this job, when he was busy earning $13 millions worth of speaking engagements, memoir writings and Board advising?"
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