[cheekopekman]

I did not come on to this discussion well-prepared by reading up on the Lee family, gleaning the biographies of LKY and the information superhighway. I've a superficial knowledge of the Lees. With the snippets of info I received from news articles, I'll use them to help me form opinions which may or may not be true. So correct me if I'm wrong.

I started my last post with this statement: "PM Lee must have ("must have" suggests a possibility, but not a certainty) felt it was his duty to be protective of his siblings despite being branded as dishonorable." Our resident opinion maker told us PM Lee shared in Parliament, in the wake of the Oxley cause celebre, that he had obtained a specific performance to "look after his younger siblings." I too read about this in the paper.

The SP was in effect a court order. This means that he was, and still is, under legal obligation to care for his younger siblings after the passing of the elder Lee. As the head of the Lee household, he would have to shoulder this burden. My understanding is that to take legal proceedings against any of his siblings would be a contravention of the SP.

Our late founding father could have a premonition that the long-simmering tensions between his children might boil over into an ugly situation. For this reason he filed for a SP in hopes of peace and quiet in the family and that things would not come to a head. What happened after his passing was his children's disputations over the fate of his Oxley bungalow. The issue was the talk of the town. Dirty linen was aired, with Wei Ling calling her brother "dishonourable."

The dust has settled, and now Hsien Yang is mired in legal troubles. The indiscretion in his remarks was his undoing. I share Oyk's feeling that PM Lee would not be elated over his younger brother's legal troubles. The libel action must have caused him pain. Sibling ties are like any others, with their ups and downs. No matter how violent their arguments, the bonds and feelings of kinships remain unbreakable for most siblings.

I don't want to get involved with their family issues lah!  Not my problems lah!