This Is Not Mother Teresa

Madam Kwa Geok Choo, known to the world as the wife of Singapore's first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, died at 5.40 pm on the evening of 2 October 2010, 11 weeks before her 90th birthday, at her Oxley Road home. Her daughter Wei Ling, 55, was by her bedside. Younger son Hsien Yang, 53, had been with her earlier in the day. Her husband of 63 years was in hospital with a chest infection. The flying PM was out of town.

Although Straits Times Online reported that "Netizens send condolences", they quoted only the saccharine sweet posts but not the unexpected ugly backlash from disgrunted citizens. Frankly, nobody deserves that level of vitriol, alive or dead.

She was rumored to have nagged to death Wong Ming Yang, the beautiful first wife of Lee Hsien Loong, for contributing an albino to the family bloodline. Then there was the story about rearranging the career path of a coloured young man who paid too close an interest in daughter Lee Wei Lin. Like the internet myth about Wong Kan Seng marrying into the Lee family, the truth will probably be shaded quite differently.

But she was by his side when Chia Thye Poh was accused of being a communist and locked away for 32 years. She was there when Teo Soh Lung's life was destroyed because, in her husband's eyes, she would look like a typical communist cadre if she had sported a ponytail. As for the Mareva injunction invoked on the properties of Tang Liang Hong's wife, guess who's the conveyancing expert?

You can't pin the Holocaust on Eva Braun, but they do say that “Behind every good man is a good woman,” and vice versa. Why should Lady Macbeth lament, "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand", when it was her husband who wielded the dagger? Even Geok Choo was confused when she once wondered aloud, why her husband was admired by many and hated by just as much.

In the same week that the Princess of Wales and Mother Teresa died, the adulteress was worshipped while the nun was buried in the backpages. The mainstream media tends to screw up their perspectives in these matters.