In its July/August 2006 issue, FEER ran an article by Editor-in-chief Restall. Titled “ Interview: Singapore’s ‘Martryr,’ Chee Soon Juan ,” the piece explored the testy relationship between Chee, a sidelined and oft-imprisoned opposition politician relegated to “selling his self-published books on the street... to feed his family,” and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, who often lashed out at Chee in public. ^[57] Restall traveled to Singapore to interview Chee, who spoke about both his run-ins with the government and his hopes for change in Singapore.

In the piece, Restall wrote that, despite the Lees’ protests to the contrary, Lee Kuan Yew was “the man who many believe still runs Singapore.” Unlike Lee Kuan Yew, Restall wrote, his son lacked leadership abilities and media savvy, and “even supporters privately admit that the new prime minister doesn’t inspire confidence.” Restall touched, too, on the ever-prickly topic of race relations in Singapore, and quoted Chee as saying that “the harder they [the government] press now”—that is, suspend debate about “the persistence of discrimination”—“the stronger will be the reaction when [Lee Kuan Yew is] no longer around.” Restall also discussed the former prime minister’s ability to effectively stifle dissent, and thereby hide what Chee termed the accumulated “skeletons in his closet” from the public eye. “Why,” Restall wondered, “is all this oppression necessary in a peaceful and prosperous country like Singapore where citizens otherwise enjoy so many freedoms?” That in turn, he wrote, “raised the question of whether Singapore deserves its reputation for squeaky-clean government.”

Restall then described a scandal involving Singapore’s largest charity, the National Kidney Foundation (NKF), whose patron was former Prime Minster Goh’s wife. In 2004, the Foundation’s chief executive was found to be drawing a nearly $400,000 salary, and was using the charity to bankroll the maintenance on his Mercedes, his first-class flights, and the gold-plated fixtures in his private office bathroom. Ironically, these details had come to light only because of a bitter lawsuit between NKF and Singapore Press Holdings, whose lawyers learned of the abuses. ^[58] Restall argued that this was not necessarily an isolated case of corruption, but could be only the tip of an iceberg. “The government,” he wrote, “controls huge pools of public money” that financed numerous projects from government investments to public housing. Though he did not accuse the government of corruption, Restall noted that a lack of transparency in its operations raised questions. “Singaporeans,” he mused, “have no way of knowing whether officials are abusing their trust as [the chairman of the Kidney Foundation] did.”

Finally, Restall observed that “Singaporean officials have a remarkable record of success in winning libel suits against their critics. The question then is, how many other libel suits have Singapore’s great and good wrongly won, resulting in the cover-up of real misdeeds? And are libel suits deliberately used as a tool to suppress questioning voices?”