38 Oxley Road would mark a milestone in the historical development of Singapore.
Mr Lee's house would not be the first to do so. The Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall legitimately embodies the legacy of Dr Sun's revolutionary activities in South-east Asia, capturing both the impact of the 1911 Chinese Revolution on Singapore and Singapore's contributions to the dawning of modern Chin...ese political history.
No one would suggest that the memorial serves an ulterior ethnic purpose by glorifying Singapore's links with the ancestral land of its majority race. The memorial records for all Singaporeans the role which the period played in a history that belongs to all the races of Singapore today.
Similarly, the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hall commemorates the remarkable life and achievements of the leader of India's independence movement. It pays concrete tribute to a person whose ideas of non-violence became a motif of many other anti-colonial movements apart from India's. The centrality of non-violence came to demarcate the constitutional struggle for independence from its violent communist counterpart here in Singapore as well.
No one would argue that the memorial celebrates India's connection with Singapore at the expense of the city-state's relations with countries in North-east and South-east Asia.
Surely, if buildings associated with Dr Sun and Gandhi can belong to the shared heritage of Singaporeans, it would appear incomprehensible that Mr Lee's house should be viewed as a partisan structure. Surely, he had - and has - greater influence on the destiny and direction of Singapore than the other two luminaries, great though they are in their own right.
It is essential to reiterate here that the national value of 38, Oxley Road exceeds its private value to the Lee family. If the Government were to gazette it, it would be recognising that national significance, even if Mr Lee's wishes were to be overruled in the process.
The conservation of the house would do no more than honour Mr Lee's lifelong belief that the public interest should supersede private interests and desires - even when it comes to the man with whom Singapore is identified, even today.
Instead of viewing 38, Oxley Road as a house around which to sustain the PAP's political legitimacy, it is important to see that building for what it is: a house that belongs not only to the Lee family, nor even to the PAP, but to the people of Singapore.
Let it last.
Excerpt from:
The Oxley House. Symbol of the Singapore story
By Derwin Pereira
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