It all began on April’s Fool Day but this turned out not to be a joke.
It has since become a sensational social media saga of twists and turns involving well-known names and heavyweights such as the daughter of Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew as well as current and former editors of The Straits Times (ST).
On April 1, Dr Lee Wei Ling made a Facebook post proclaiming that she would no longer write for Singapore Press Holdings as the “editors there do not allow me freedom of speech”. While little elaboration was provided in this post, one only had to scroll a little further back to a March 25 post she had written about how her father, Mr Lee, would have cringed at the hero worship by Singaporeans just a year after his death.
Dr Lee had regularly contributed columns to ST for many years.
In a post on April 2, Dr Lee, 61, made another Facebook post, this time to say that ST’s ex-associate editor Mr Janadas Devan had called Mr Cheong Yip Seng, SPH’s former Editor-in-Chief of the English and Malay Newspapers Division, “sly” when he had asked her father to write a foreword in his book entitled OB Markers, and then criticised him in the same book.
She also wrote that a People’s Action Party cadre had told her that her brother, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, “had called up Cheong to scold him”.
The next day, she posted again: “It was a love-hate relationship between me and my three consecutive (sic) editors. there may already been a space for my article, then the editor did (sic) not like what I wrote, and I refused (sic) to have the relevant points deleted and the entire article was (sic) then dropped.
“..what each of the three editors objected to was so consistent, I decided they must have been commanded to edit certain issues out, and they are too (sic) timid to disobey, and too embarrassed (sic) by their timidness to tell me the truth.”
ST, ex-editor: We didn’t suppress her views
Mr Devan, 61, who is the son of former Singapore President Devan Nair, as well as ST have since denounced her allegations as unfounded.
In its Forum page today, ST said: “All professional newspapers require their writers to work with an editor, who gives a range of inputs on grammar, language, taste, relevance, coherence, judgment and the law. This is not an issue of freedom of expression, but a matter of upholding standards. This applies to all columnists, including Dr Lee, who has often written about not expecting or accepting special treatment.”
The newspaper said her recent demand that her latest column be published unedited, after a week of editing and e-mail exchanges, was “simply not acceptable”.
“Rather than seeking to suppress her views, ST published her columns for many years, and even compiled them into a book, which it promoted extensively,” it said.
Also responding to her allegations was Mr Devan, 61, who was appointed Chief of Government Communications in 2012.
In a Forum letter to ST, he said that Dr Lee had made a “serious allegation” about his conduct while he was an associate editor of ST.
He said: “We are expected to believe she suffered so much oppression, writing for ST, that she willingly persisted with the experience over almost 10 miserable years. And then, at the conclusion of that prolonged period of agony, she lovingly gathered the products of her oppression into a best-selling collection of essays. How credible can that be?”
He said reading Wei Ling’s unedited writings was like “sailing through a fog”.
“The effort of turning her raw material into coherent articles – that’s what I remember most about editing Wei Ling. That effort was often worth it because she had something valuable to offer, as her many fans can attest. I personally thought her pieces on medical matters and education the most useful.
“But hardly ever did I think that my main task in editing her was to curb what she might say on “sensitive matters”. Of course, like with any writer, she was fact-checked to make sure she did not inadvertently make inaccurate or misleading statements. That’s not “censorship”; that’s called editing. It beggars belief that she now presents herself as someone who was suppressed and silenced.”
Mr Devan who is currently overseas, told TODAY via text messages that he posted responses to Dr Lee’s comments in his private capacity.
He told the newspaper: “Not to have replied to deny such insinuations means I accept them… Dr Lee must know you can’t make such allegations about people and expect them to keep quiet.
Dr Lee also said in the April 3 Facebook post that Mr Devan had texted her from Texas in United States, to say that he “never called Cheong sly”. She added that she could not recall Mr Devan’s exact words during a conversation they had in 2013.
“But he expressed his displeasure with Cheong with great emotion and this was directed to the fact that Cheong made use of my father. ‘Sly’ seemed appropriate word to convey what he said to me,” she wrote.
On Monday (April 4), Mr Devan left a comment on Dr Lee’s Facebook page to clarify, among other things, that the Prime Minister did not call up Mr Cheong, “much less ‘scold him'”.
Mr Devan also said that Dr Lee’s descriptions of the incident involving Mr Cheong were inaccurate as were her “characterisations of what happened”.
Later on Monday afternoon, Mr Devan left another comment on her page. He said: “Much as I dislike publicly contradicting a friend, there is no alternative,” he said.
In response, Dr Lee said she could not remember his exact words over the Mr Cheong incident but she “clearly remembered” his emotion.
She gave her account of what she was told by Mr Cheong and the PAP cadre and asked Mr Devan to “read carefully before you make a fuss”.
Your move, Dr Lee.
chenJ@sph.com.sg
The Straits Times, AsiaOne
Estate of Lee Kuan Yew, Stamford Law, The Straits Times
