SINGAPORE – Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s younger brother and sister say they have lost confidence in the nation’s leader and fear “the use of the organs of the state against us.”

“We are concerned that the system has few checks and balances to prevent the abuse of government. We feel big brother omnipresent,” Lee Wei Ling and Lee Hsien Yang said in a joint news release and an accompanying six-page statement issued at 2 am Singapore time.

As a result, Lee Hsien Yang and his wife, Lee Suet Fern, would be leaving Singapore. “I have no desire to leave. Hsien Loong is the only reason for my departure,” he said.

“We feel hugely uncomfortable and closely monitored in our own country,” they said, in a rare public display of discord at the top of a city state that usually keeps such matters behind closed doors.

A view of former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s Oxley Road residence in Singapore June 14, 2017. (Photo: Reuters)

In a statement, the prime minister denied the allegations made by his siblings, and said he was very disappointed that they have chosen to publicise private family matters.

“I’m deeply saddened by the unfortunate allegations that they have made,” he said. “While siblings may have differences, I believe that any such differences should stay in the family,” added Lee, who is overseas on holiday with his family.

At the heart of the family dispute is whether a house in which their father, Lee Kuan Yew, lived most of his life should be demolished. He was the first prime minister of Singapore and ruled the country for three decades.

Before he died in 2015, the founding father of modern Singapore made it public that he wanted the house, a humbly furnished home with retro furniture near the bustling Orchard shopping district, demolished.

But the prime minister’s siblings claim that he and his wife, Ho Ching, had opposed the wish.

Reuters