Sunday, March 29, 2015

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Singaporeans and World Leaders Gather for Final Farewell to Lee Kuan Yew - New York Times




Crowds braved torrential rains on Sunday for the funeral procession of the country’s founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew. Tom White/European Pressphoto Agency

SINGAPORE — Thousands of Singaporeans braved torrential rains on Sunday for a final farewell to the country’s founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, whose funeral drew a long list of leaders and dignitaries from across the globe.


Mr. Lee’s coffin was paraded through the rain-soaked streets to the National University of Singapore, where the funeral service was held ahead of a private cremation. The route of the procession incorporated symbols from Mr. Lee’s career, passing by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau — a tribute to Mr. Lee’s reputation for incorruptibility — and two of the country’s oldest government-backed housing developments in a nation with one of the world’s highest rates of homeownership.


As the coffin passed, crowds shouted, “Lee Kuan Yew! We love you!” To allow more people to see, spectators in the front line closed their umbrellas as the procession passed, despite the pouring the rain.



“This has been a dark week for Singapore,” Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s prime minister and Mr. Lee’s eldest son, said in a nationally televised speech. “That light that has guided us all these years has been extinguished.”




Pallbearers at Sunday’s funeral for Mr. Lee, who died Monday at 91. Wong Maye-E/Associated Press

The prime minister eulogized his father, who died last Monday at 91, as “a straight talker” who “never shied away from hard truths.”


He gave his eulogy in a mix of English, Malay and Mandarin Chinese, three of the official languages of the city-state, which gained full self-government from the British in 1959 and which the elder Mr. Lee governed from then until 1990, when he stepped down.


During that long rule, he transformed Singapore into one of the wealthiest and least corrupt nations in Asia. His hugely successful “Singapore model” was sometimes criticized as soft authoritarianism and included centralized power, clean government and economic liberalism along with the suppression of political opposition and strict limits on free speech.






Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, in His Own Words


Former President Bill Clinton was in the audience, as was the former American secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who called Mr. Lee “a close personal friend.” Also in attendance were Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia; the British first secretary of state, William Hague; Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia; Vice President Li Yuanchao of China; Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India; Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and President Park Geun-hye of South Korea.


The number of prominent guests at the funeral was outsized for the city-state, a reflection of Mr. Lee’s role as an adviser to world leaders and a statesman.


“Despite being small, Singapore’s voice is heard, and we enjoy far more influence on the world stage than we have any reason to expect,” his son said in the eulogy.


The funeral capped a week of public grieving that included a large turnout at Parliament, where his body was displayed for four days and where many people waited up to 10 hours to see him. In a country of 5.5 million residents, more than 450,000 people viewed Mr. Lee’s body, and another 1.1 million paid their respects at centers set up across the city-state for people to express their condolences.


“I may not agree with all his policies, but I do need to salute this one man,” said Priscilla Neo, 42, a stay-at-home mother who had lined up with her husband and two children for four and a half hours Friday morning to view the body. Ms. Neo described the former prime minister as someone “who truly breathed, ate, slept, and thought about Singapore and its citizens.”










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