 | | PM Lee (left) is responding to a question from BBC's correspondent Johnathan Head, about the role that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and Ms Ho Ching had in the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation and in Temasek Holdings. -- PHOTO: BBC |
Here's the Q&A:
JONATHAN HEAD: Your own family has been quite involved in two of these funds. Your wife until recently ran Temasek, your father's deeply involved in GIC. Is there a risk that when the news is bad, as it has been over the past year for these funds, that people will tend to blame your family rather than look at the institutions?
PM LEE: I think the way you put it is not the way things work in Singapore. The Minister Mentor is chairman of GIC not because he is my father. It's because he is the best man for the job and he has been chairman since he was Prime Minister.
And Ho Ching is CEO of Temasek not because she's my wife but because the chairman of Temasek, who's Mr Dhanabalan, and the board decided that they wanted to appoint her as CEO.
And they are there as long as they are effective, performing, and if they don't perform, well, they have to take the consequences.
JONATHAN HEAD: Perception is important in politics and in difficult times like this, do you think, in retrospect, it might have been better if your family had a lower profile?
PM LEE: (laughs) Life would be much easier for me if the Minister Mentor was not my father and Ho Ching was not my wife. But they are there. This is the way Singapore has worked. I think Singaporeans have understood that this is how the system works and they will render judgment when elections come.
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