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?”
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