Singaporeans yesterday wept on the streets and queued in their thousands to pay tribute to founding father and former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) as his flag-draped coffin was transported on a gun carriage to parliament for public viewing.
After a two-day private wake for the family, the coffin was taken in a slow motorcade from the Istana government complex, Lee’s workplace for decades as prime minister and Cabinet adviser, to the legislature, where it will lie in state until the weekend.
The 91-year-old patriarch died on Monday after a half-century in government, during which Singapore was transformed from a poor British colonial outpost into one of the world’s richest societies.
Photo: EPA
The government of Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍), one of Lee Kuan Yew’s sons, apparently taken by surprise by the heavy early turnout, announced that Parliament House will stay open 24 hours a day until Saturday night “due to overwhelming response from members of the public.”
Applause and shouts of “We love you” and “Lee Kuan Yew” broke out as the dark brown wooden coffin, draped in the Singapore flag, emerged from the Istana housed in a tempered glass case on a gun carriage pulled by an open-topped military truck.
Earlier, in scenes that evoked Singapore’s colonial past, Lee Kuan Yew’s coffin stopped in front of the complex’s main building, where British administrators once worked, as a bagpiper from Singapore’s Gurkha Contingent — the city-state’s special guard force — played Auld Lang Syne.
It was brought down tree-lined Edinburgh Road to the Istana’s main gate where the motorcade made a slow turn in the direction of parliament as a crowd, including students in uniform with black arm bands, waited behind barricades.
Many along the route were in tears as they raised cameras and mobile phones to record the historic event. Some threw flowers on the path of the carriage.
Office workers watched from the windows of high-rise buildings along the route.
Singaporean President Tony Tan (陳慶炎) and his wife, Mary, were the first to pay their respects after Lee Kuan Yew’s closed coffin was placed in the foyer of Parliament House.
Local media said that people in Singapore began queuing after midnight on Tuesday for a chance to be among the first to pay their respects to the man popularly known by his initials “LKY.”
By yesterday afternoon, people were waiting for up to eight hours in queues that snaked around the central business district, many with umbrellas unfurled in the 33oC heat.
They came from all walks of life, from office workers and bosses to students and the elderly in wheelchairs accompanied by caregivers.
A lady surnamed Tamilselvi brought two of her granddaughters, each clutching flowers.
“Lee Kuan Yew has done so much for us,” she said. “We used to live in squatter [colonies] in Sembawang, my husband was a bus driver. Now my three sons have good jobs and nice houses. The children all go to school. What will we be without Lee Kuan Yew?”
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat