The Minister as a subject of the Emperor is your interpretation of his key message. When you draw analogy from the past, you cannot avoid having people who held divergent views and having influencing powers as ministers of the throne and therefore subjects of the Emperor. In fact everyone was subject to the Emperor, including the common people. In today's world, subjects can be interpreted as the populace and officials of the court can be the Ministers and MP's of today. More important is to read the gist of CSM's analogy. All he was saying was take our contributions (as we are MPs) as what wise rulers in the past had done and the country would flourish. He was not saying that the ruling party is Tang Tai Zong but if they can accept divergent views of the opposition MPs, they can be in the class of past great leaders.
I think you are stretching a bit too far. He has literally said let PAP be the Emperor while "they" be Wei Zheng. No matter under what context, that has been said and done.
It is ok for people try to explain, interpret, dissect or even twist a bit to justify an end. But even with that, the key message is still not lost, the idea that WP MPs are there to help PAP to govern better, Emperor or no Emperor, subject or no subject. This is basically the bare bone gist of the message.
Yes, some people may be happy to hear that, glad that WP is "constructive" in helping PAP to govern better, put up better policies etc. But there will be another group which does not think so.
There is a fine thin line between "defending the interests of the people" vs "helping the ruling party to govern better", not merely on how you interpret or say it, but on practical actions as well. Both may serve the same ends, to improve the people's life but in practice, could be very different.
A kind of strange when opposition MPs are subtly "pleading" the ruling party to "listen" to them and believe that they are there to help them!
Goh Meng Seng