WHY DEVAN NAIR WAS REMOVED AS PRESIDENT OF SINGAPORE
This story must be told to the awakening Singaporean electorate.
In the late ’70s and early ’80s the policy of LKY was to recruit all the top scholars and have them put into key management positions in the civil service, statutory boards, and GLCs. The NTUC, being the most crucial weapon controlled by the PAP, was no exception.
This central congress of labour unions commanded a total workforce of almost 800,000 workers, which meant that it was responsible for translating 800,000 votes for the PAP during each election time. And the man holding this trump card, the Secretary-General of the NTUC, was a very very important VIP to the party in power. At that time, Devan Nair was that man. He had been arrested and thrown into jail under the ISA by the British together with the others (the so called “communist” elements of the PAP, the Fajar generation). But LKY struck a deal with him and pulled him out from the doldrums and into the pedestal of political power again as Sec-Gen of NTUC. The reason was that DN all along, even before his incarceration, had a strong political voter base in the union members and LKY sought to use him as a proxy. Their alliance at first was tenable and they lived together in “one house two homes”.
During this period, DN was constantly talking about “socialism that works”, and the political doctrine of socialism seemed to prevail in the air. Singapore’s political system was then even hailed as democratic socialism, whatever that means (democracy and socialism in their base form can never be reconciled as their doctrines are tangent to each other). This liberal vocal output of DN was still tolerable within LKY’s barometer. However, when DN continued his slant of promoting democracy as being socialist in nature, LKY could see that, if left unchecked, the phoenix of the Fajar generation would have a fair chance of arising from the ashes in time to come. He had to act quick to remove a potential time bomb. But he couldn’t just remove DN – he was sitting on 800,000 votes and had the allegiance of practically all the subsidiary union bosses.
So he used a Machiavellan philosophy – elevate him to high office to earn his trust while plotting his downfall. By taking him out from the NTUC and appointing him as President of Singapore, he had appeased all his union bosses and members that their great leader had been elevated to the highest political office in the land. But they were still in their stupor to even realise that DN had moved from a position controlling a power base to one that is nominal in nature with no political power or control. Only the name President of Singapore was high sounding, and with it a tax free income (the only public office in Singapore with an income that is tax exempt).
The dice had been cast and the chips already rolling. LKY knew that DN was an alchoholic since his early union days. This has been common knowledge to his neighbours living in the Chestnut Drive area. And this was the weapon LKY can use to destroy him. But as the NTUC boss, this weakness could not be exploited as a weapon. Its tenacity as a weapon of destruction would be most expedient to use when he was holding a very high public office, one which had to maintain very high social decorum. Being the President of the country was the best way to use alcoholism to destroy him personally, and politically.
The catalyst came when DN, as the President of the people, became untenable when he began to adopt personal politics in his persoanlity disagreement with LKY, and they grew more apart each passing month.
Some time just before his downfall, DN gave a speech at one of the functions which included his call to all those aggrieved parties to sue government doctors if they have been found to be negligent. Within days Dr Tony Tan had to come out immediately to diffuse the situation by explaining to the public that the president had meant some other thing, etc, and not actually sueing government doctors per se. When DN gave that speech, although he did not mentioned any names, he was referring to a Dr Lee at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, who through a negligent act conducted by her had resulted in the unnecessary loss of life of one of the patients. That doctor was not trained as a surgeon but had been involved in a simple operation of a patient but due to inexperience, had negligently caused infection to set in the wounded area of he patient which became sceptic. A second susbsequent rescue operation by an experienced surgeon was conducted but it was too late and the patient died.
Before DN let more cats out from the bag about LKY and his dirty baggages, LKY had to remove him from office without any further delay. And so it started, with rumours from the Istana filling the grapevine that DN had secretly wore a wig and stolen out at night from the Istana to make secret calls to promiscuous woman, etc. This culminated in the grand rumour that he had grabbed and fondled some women when he was visiting and was a guest at a long house in Sarawak. All these were baseless and unfounded, and were the work of the Istana Mafia.
That was how DN was publicly disgraced and forced to retire as President. He had no more power base left as the NTUC had by that time been strongly rooted in its support and allegiance to LKY’s goodie boy at that time, Ong Teng Cheong (who was actually a very nice chap in person).
