The bungalow was built for a Dutch merchant in the colonial era, but has become part of modern Singaporean tradition. It was everywhere Lee Kuan Yew lived for decades, where he started his political party and where he began to build Singapore into one of the richest countries in the world.

Mr Lee said he wanted the house to be demolished after his death, rather than preserved as a museum, with the public “trampling” through his private chambers.

But wording of his will left the estate’s fate in limbo and caused a rift between his three children—one that mirrors one sharpening the discussion over Singapore’s semi-authoritarian political system.

Now an unusual voice has joined those who complain that the city-state’s prosperity has come at the cost of a government that lacks accountability: one of Mr Lee’s own children.

“The idea that one good man at the center can control this, and you’re just relying on his benevolence to make sure everything is fine, doesn’t work,” Lee Hsien Yang, the youngest child, who wants to honor his father’s wishes for the house, said in in a recent interview with The New York Times from London.

After Lee Kuan Yew’s death in 2015, the eldest child, then Prime Minister of Singapore, claimed that his father’s instructions for the bungalow were ambiguous. His siblings wanted it torn down, though one continued to live in the house, and as long as she did, her fate remained unsettled.

Then, after her death in October, the dispute erupted again — and escalated sharply. Lee Hsien Yang, called Yang by his parents and siblings, announced that he did received political asylum in Britain because he feared he would be unjustly imprisoned in Singapore for dissent.

Yang said to his brother – Lee Hsien Loongwho stepped down as prime minister in May — abused his power in the conflict over the house.

Yang, 67, described what he called a pattern of persecution by the Singapore government in recent years. In 2020 his son was charged with contempt of court for criticizing Singapore’s courts in a private Facebook post. That year, his wife, a lawyer who organized the witnesses for the signing of the patriarch’s will, was banned from practicing law for 15 months. The couple then faced a police investigation for lying under oath. In 2022, they left Singapore.

In October, Yang announced that Britain had granted his asylum claim, ruling that he and his wife “have a well-founded fear of persecution and therefore cannot return to your country”.

The Singapore government dismissed the claims, saying the couple were free to return home. He said he is accountable to voters and an independent judiciary. Yang, it added, was involved in an “extravagant personal vendetta” against his brother Loong.

Loong, 72, who now holds the title of senior minister, declined to comment because he had withdrawn from the house issue.

For Yang, multi-year dispute is evidence that there are “fundamental problems in the way Singapore is governed and run.”

Yang acknowledged that his father jailed opposition politicians and union leaders, but said he “had the country’s best interests at heart.”

The People’s Action Party has governed Singapore with firm control for almost 70 years. Even years after the death of the founding father, it continues to praise his legacy.

This, some analysts say, has left Singapore at a crossroads.

“Can we move on?” said Ja Ian Chong, who teaches political science at the National University of Singapore. “Or are we still stuck with this relatively fragile, large-scale approach to politics?”

Lee Kuan Yew transformed a colonial outpost into an economic powerhouse in a generation. He had no qualms about interfering in the lives of Singaporeans and prioritized the community over the individual – an idea that some observers say points to the irony of family feuding.

“He understood that the government would have to preserve the house if it decided it was in the public interest,” Loong wrote in a 2016 letter to Lawrence Wong, who was part of a government committee created to consider options for the property and is now prime minister.

That panel concluded that the bungalow had historical significance and that Lee Kuan Yew was prepared to preserve it. But polls show most Singaporeans want it to collapse. In October, the government said it was studying again will the house from approx. 1898 be preserved?

“The best combination”

For decades, Lee Kuan Yew’s family seemed as settled as the country he led. His wife, Kwa Geok Choo, was in charge of the household at 38 Oxley Road, in one of Singapore’s most expensive areas.

In the 1950s Mr. Lee and a group of friends founded their political party, the PAP, in a basement dining room. Most the house was spartan. The furniture was old and mismatched; family bathed by capturing water from earthen vessels. And after the sons got married and moved away, they gathered every Sunday for family lunch.

Visitors quickly noticed that only one child’s photos were on display: Loong’s.

“He got the best combination of our two DNAs,” Mr. Lee would tell local reporters. “The others also have combinations of both, but not in as favorable a way as he does. It’s the luck of the draw.”

“He was the apple of my mother’s eye, and she had ambitions for him,” Yang said of Loong. “I was never hostile towards him, nor did I have any jealousy or envy towards him.”

In 2004, Loong became Prime Minister. Yang was the chief executive of Singapore’s state-owned telephone company at the time and said he had no political ambitions. That would change.

Demolition Debate

After Mr. Lee’s wife died, he continued to live in the house with his daughter, Dr. Lee Wei Ling, neurologist. Mr Lee died in March 2015 and his children gathered at the bungalow the following month for the reading of his will.

The house was left to Loong, but Ling was able to continue living there. When she moved out, the house had to be demolished. And if for some reason the house wasn’t demolished, he didn’t want it to be open to the public.

Loong was blindsided and would later say publicly that he was unaware of this final will. When the will was discussed, he became “aggressive” and “threatening,” his sister wrote in a previously unpublished email to a friend in May 2015. She added that Loong told his younger siblings that if they followed the clause, the government would about the demolition, would intervene and declare the house a national monument.

It was the last time Loong spoke to Ling and Yang, according to Yang.

The next day, Loong raised the issue in parliament. He said he wanted his father’s wishes to be carried out, but that “it will be up to the government of the day to consider the matter”.

A few months later, the siblings seemed to have reached a resolution. Yang bought the house from Loong for an undisclosed price.

But soon the government formed a commission to explore the possibilities for the house. This marked the beginning of Yang’s problems with the state.

New opposition party

Loong told the council he was “very concerned” that the demolition clause in the will had been “re-inserted under dubious circumstances”. He asked if there was a conflict of interest for Lee Suet Fern, Yang’s wife, who arranged the signing of the will.

To the younger siblings, it appeared that the commission was “conducting an investigation into the will,” Yang said, noting that the court had declared it binding.

In a joint statement in 2017, Yang and Ling said they did not trust their brother as a leader. They said Loong and his wife milked “Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy for their own political purposes” and harbored dynastic ambitions for their son.

Loong responded in parliament, saying he did not instruct the committee and that his only dealings with the panel were his responses to their requests in writing.

He denied that he was preparing his son for duty.

Then the government charged Yang’s wife with professional misconduct over the will. A disciplinary tribunal ruled against her, saying she and her husband had built an “elaborate edifice of lies” during the proceedings.

A three-judge panel then ruled that she and Yang had lied under oath and suspended her for 15 months for misconduct. But it also ruled that she did not act as a lawyer for Mr. Lee and that he was satisfied with his will.

For Yang, the People’s Action Party has lost its way. He joined the Progress Singapore Party, a new opposition group, and considered running for president, a ceremonial post.

In 2022, the police requested an interview with him and his wife, saying they had lied in the misconduct proceedings. The couple agreed to further questioning, but soon left Singapore. It wasn’t until 2023 that a minister in Parliament revealed that they were being investigated by the authorities.

In October, Yang organized Ling’s funeral from afar. Loong was not invited.

The walls of 38 Oxley Road are now cracked and rust has eaten away at part of the door. When the reporter rang the doorbell last Sunday, the housewife answered and said that no one was home.