In a clarification made to Channel News Asia’s queries in regards to a Facebook post by Mr Lee Hsien Yang (LHY) on Thursday evening , National Heritage Board clarified that items 2 to 5 which were shown in LHY’s list were received on 6 April instead of 6 Feb.
CNA quoted the NHB spokesperson saying, “For items numbered 2 to 5, the items were received on Apr 6, 2015 instead of Feb 6, 2015 as indicated. This was a clerical error. NHB has a receipt for the items on loan from PMO dated Apr 6, 2015… All the items were loaned to NHB after the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew passed away, to be displayed at the In Memoriam: Lee Kuan Yew exhibition held at the National Museum of Singapore.”
LHY had earlier wrote on his Facebook page that Ms Ho Ching, wife of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, helped herself to a number of LKY’s papers after Mr Lee was admitted gravely ill into the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) on 5 February 2015.
A particular blog, http://www.shaunchng.com caught the eye of netizens. In one of his blogposts, the blogger posted a photo of one document exhibited in the memorial exhibition for LKY and the post was dated 3 April 2015, which was a few days earlier than the stated date by NHB.
According to NHB’s website, “In Memoriam: Lee Kuan Yew exhibition” was held from 25 March to 28 June. Therefore, some hypothesised that the documents could have been at the exhibition when it started on 25 March, which in effect, meant that NHB is again mistaken about the date of loan for the documents.
But as what Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat showed in a Facebook post on 2 April of the exhibition, the documents were not in sight.
Despite the blogpost being posted on 3 April as google records show to be the case, the information on the photo tells a different story.
The EXIF information of the photo shows that the file was created on 6pm, 11 April and not 3 April. Further checks on other photos of the blogger in other blog posts show that the EXIF timing of the photos are constant with the date of his posts.
It would therefore appear that the photos were added on 11 April to the blogpost created on 3 April.
According to media reports in 2015, the documents were placed on display on 10 April while Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong posted a photo of one of the documents that was found among LKY’s belongings.