38 Oxley Road — the former residence of the late Lee Kuan Yew — has captured public attention yet again, following the passing of Dr Lee Wei Ling earlier this month.
Since 2017, the property has been a source of dispute between Senior Minister (SM) Lee Hsien Loong and his siblings, Mr Lee Hsien Yang and the late Dr Lee. They had disagreed over the handling of the house and its demolition.
Source: Tharman Shanmugaratnam on Facebook
Mr Lee Kuan Yew had, in his lifetime, wished for 38 Oxley Road to be demolished, including in his final will executed in 2013.
“Take photos of it or whatever else they want, but demolish it after I am gone,” wrote the late Mr Lee in a letter to Cabinet in 2010. “38 Oxley Road has no merit as architecture. So please respect my wish to have it demolished when I am no longer around.”
He also wrote that if demolition was not possible, the house should be closed to all but family.
A recent poll with 14,030 respondents showed that a majority feel the property should be demolished.
In 2017, a dispute between Mr Lee Hsien Yang and Dr Lee on one side and SM Lee on the other went public in a letter titled “What has happened to Lee Kuan Yew’s values?”.
The former two wrote that SM Lee and his wife, Ho Ching, had “opposed Lee Kuan Yew’s wish to demolish his house, even when Lee Kuan Yew was alive”.
In April 2018, a Ministerial Committee noted that there was “no need to make a decision” about the property since Dr Lee was living there.
Dr Lee continued to live at 38 Oxley Road until her death on 9 Oct 2024. Now that she has passed, discussions about the fate of the property has resurfaced.
In an Answers.sg poll with more than 14,000 respondents, 65% supported 38 Oxley Road being demolished.
26% were against demolition, and 9% felt neutral about the issue.
Netizens have also voiced their opinions on online platforms such as Reddit, where most sided with demolishing the house at 38 Oxley Road.
Angel, a teacher in her 50s, pointed out that 38 Oxley Road held great historical significance.
Its basement, in particular, was the site of many meetings between Singapore’s founding fathers in the 1950s. However, Angel still held the position that it should be demolished, saying:
Despite its historical value, it should still be demolished to respect Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s last wish.
She added that future generations and the government could still use old photographs to remember the past.
Many online have also echoed Angel’s sentiment. One netizen pointed out that there are many ways to remember the first PM other than his house.
Source: Reddit
Meanwhile, another user who acknowledged the historical significance of the house suggested that there may be a “win-win solution”.
“They [the government] approve the demolition, but they get to pick what they want to preserve (off-site),” wrote the netizen.
Source: Reddit
Despite her stance, Angel did not have a position on the sibling dispute.
She said she understood the perspectives of Mr Lee Hsien Yang and Dr Lee in respecting their father’s last wishes, as well as SM Lee’s opinion that the 38 Oxley Road case needed to be discussed more carefully.
Channel NewsAsia (CNA) reported that SM Lee had “serious questions” about the preparation of his father’s last will. He had penned this down in a statement on Facebook a day after his siblings’ accusations in 2017.
In a ministerial statement, SM Lee noted that the demolition clause had been removed in the fifth and sixth versions of his father’s will. It returned in the seventh and final version of the will.
This was executed on 17 Dec 2013 with the involvement of Mr Lee Hsien Yang and his wife Mrs Lee Suet Fern, a lawyer.
On 19 June 2017, SM Lee — who was then Prime Minister — apologised for the harm caused by the siblings’ private dispute.
“As your Prime Minister, I apologise to you for this. And as the eldest of the siblings, it grieves me to think of the anguish that this would have caused our parents if they were still alive,” he said.
Some Singaporeans that MS News spoke to also noted that the issue should be settled in private.
Tom, a 26-year-old who works in media, described the dispute as a “domestic issue”, noting that he felt “quite sad” about how much the issue had blown out of proportion.
Meanwhile, Ann, 27, felt that the dispute felt proportionate to how big the family issues of politicians usually got.
Like most netizens, the marketing professional felt the residence should be demolished to respect Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s wishes.
For a 58-year-old Singaporean named Juan, however, the house is important enough to be preserved.
He emphasised that the basement must be safeguarded due to “nation-building significance”.
“The house preservation should be simple and open to the public,” he said.
Additionally, Juan felt that it should be preserved as a memorial of Singapore’s nation-building — not just as Lee Kuan Yew’s house.
He pointed to the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall in Balestier as an example.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The colonial villa was where the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen shared his ideals with his Nanyang supporters.
It was gazetted as a national monument in October 1994 and now stands as a museum.
On 24 Oct, the National Heritage Board (NHB) declared that it would perform a study on 38 Oxley Road to assess if it was “worthy of preservation”.
Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong has also urged Singaporeans to “approach the matter with an open mind“.
In 2020, the Court of Three Judges found Mrs Lee Suet Fern guilty of misconduct over the handling of Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s last will. The couple has remained out of Singapore since 2022.
A few days after his sister’s death, Mr Lee Hsien Yang stated on Facebook that he would apply to demolish the house at 38 Oxley Road.
He said that the late Lee Kuan Yew “wished for the house to be demolished ‘immediately after’ Wei Ling moved out”.
In response, a Government spokesperson said that this claim is inaccurate.
They further added that Mr Lee Hsien Yang is “trying to create false urgency”, reported The Straits Times (ST).
That said, the spokesperson noted that there is a variety of views about what should be done to the house.
“Many Singaporeans would in fact prefer to put behind us questions about Mr LKY’s will, and the property, and move on,” said the spokesperson.
Also read: S’pore authorities to study historical significance of preserving Oxley Road house
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Featured image adapted from Wikipedia and Tharman Shanmugaratnam on Facebook.
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