Crossing paths with Lee Kuan Yew’s offspring can be dangerous, even when they’re not officially in positions of power. Asia Sentinel:
The Singapore government has declined to reappoint Attorney General Walter Woon after his two years on the job expired earlier this month. Woon was earlier criticized by Lee Wei Ling, the daughter of Singaporean patriarch Lee Kuan Yew. Wei Ling is the head of the National Neuroscience Institute.
In 2008 Woon brought a case against CK Tang department store chairman Tang Wee Sum for attempting to buy a kidney for transplanting. Both Lee Wei Ling and Lee Kuan Yew voiced public disapproval of Woon for bringing the charges against Tang. He answered back, pointing out what he called a number of misconceptions she held as to the facts and the law, and emphasizing that he had brought the case in a move to implement the law without favor. (Tang got a day’s jail and a small fine, the poor young Indonesian would-be donor got two weeks).
The law was changed in March of 2009 to align with Lee Wei Ling’s position. Singaporeans can now pay for organs which in practice means from poor people in neighboring countries but where organ sales are illegal.
In a defiant interview in the Straits Times newspaper, Woon, a professor of law with a distinguished record with the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law, Dean of the Singapore Institute of Legal Education and as a former ambassador to Germany and Belgium, was asked if he thought he had “annoyed the powers that be.”
“It’s not unlikely that I have,” he said. “Look, to be fair, nobody called me in the middle of the night to say ‘you must do this, you must do that. If they were unhappy, they did not make it known to me while I was AG.”
But, he added, “‘Whether or not they’re happy with me – this one you’ve got to ask PM (Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong). This is a mutual parting of ways. Best to leave before you outstay your welcome, although I think amongst some people, I’ve already outstayed my welcome.”
http://leewatch.info/2010/04/24/singapore-officials-show-some-spine…/