Speaking at a community event on Saturday, 8 August, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam spoke of the importance for Singaporeans to continue to embrace multi-culturalism.
He said, “As we go forward into our next 50 years, we must deepen the Singapore spirit. Deepen our multiracialism, deepen this desire for excellence in everything we do. And we must deepen our spirit of compassion, our compassion for those in need because that’s what makes us a strong Singapore and a strong society.”
Mr Tharman described how the different races here were like a rainbow – and related how a rainbow had supposedly appeared on the day that the late Lee Kuan Yew’s body was cremated at theMandai crematorium earlier this year in March.
“When Mr Lee Kuan Yew passed away and we had the funeral, everyone will remember that on the day of the funeral, we had very heavy rain. But after the rain, there was a rainbow,” he said.
“That rainbow is all of us who are here today. All of us are Singaporeans – we are the rainbow. Different races, Malay, Chinese, Indian, Eurasian, pioneers, young children, we are all the rainbow.”
It is unclear which reports Mr Tharman was referring to when he mentioned the rainbow which supposedly appeared on the day of Mr Lee’s funeral.
However, Member of Parliament Inderjit Singh had posted a photo on his Faceook page at the time purportedly showing a rainbow appearing over Marina Bay.
The photo had also apparently been reposted on other social media pages.
However, it was later pointed out that the photo was a fake, or a hoax – that it was not taken on the day of Mr Lee’s funeral, but was instead taken in 2010 and that the photo was one published on content-sharing site, Wiki Commons:
