Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Lee Kuan Yew not dead tweets Tessa Wong


UPDATE : This a post about an old event. Refer to Lee Kuan Yew health condition here for 2015 events.

As a blogger, I regularly check Google Trends Singapore to find out what people are searching in Singapore. This is a very good way to find out what is going on in Singapore. A few days ago, I have started to see "Lee Kuan Yew passed away" type of searches trending up in Singapore. And today most searches were about this: "lee kuan yew" is the number one search in Singapore as of today and "lky dead", "lky passed away", "lky died", "lky rumour", "lky sick" and "lky death" kind of search terms are all in the top 20 list (see screenshot below). (Update : As of August 9th "lee kuan yew death" is the top search term.)

I remember these type of rumors circulating before (back in 2010 a rumour/hoax was doing the rounds that Lee Kuan Yew suffered a “massive” heart attack and was hospitalized at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Cardiac Unit of the Singapore General Hospital (SGH)). They are not new and I think they are periodic. It is quite global also especially for important and elderly political figures who do not appear in the media for a while. I guess this time, the rumours about the health of Lee Kuan Yew (88), the founding father of Singapore, originated in twitter and quickly spreaded online and in the HDB heartlands.


Searches about Lee Kuan Yew's health are trending up as of  8 August 2012
And just today, I have heard two dudes in the train talking about it. One said "They are hiding it now because of NDP 2012 and will announce after that".

Later today, I have seen SPH political journalist Tessa Wong's tweet where she says Lee Kuan Yew is alive and one of her colleauge will meet him tomorrow. She twitted:

"People. LKY not dead. Okay? My colleague is seeing him tomorrow. And not in a mortuary."

She also wrote:

"The idea tt media is coverg up LKY's death cos "dowan spoil NDP" is ludicrous. Hello, NDP is gr8 excuse for giant LKY mourning parade, can?"



UPDATE: Lee Kuan Yew seen at SGH on August 8th 2012



Tessa Wong of SPH says Lee Kuan Yew is alive.

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