Lee Hsien Loong's son says he is not interested in politics

SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's son Li Hongyi has said he is not interested in politics, a day after the Prime Minister's siblings publicly accused him and his wife Ho Ching of harbouring political ambitions for their son.

In a Facebook post on Thursday (June 15), he said: "For what it is worth, I really have no interest in politics."

Hsien Loong (pic) had on Wednesday refuted the allegations saying that it was "absurd".

He added: "I am deeply saddened by the unfortunate allegations that they have made. Ho Ching and I deny these allegations, especially the absurd claim that I have political ambitions for my son."

He did not name his son in the statement, but his younger siblings Lee Hsien Yang and Dr Lee Wei Ling had done so in their statement centred around the dispute over the late Lee Kuan Yew's house.

Li Hongyi is in the public service. The 30-year-old is deputy director of the Government Digital Services Data Science Division of the Government Technology Agency of Singapore, a statutory board under the Prime Minister's Office.

He studied at Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) and Raffles Junior College.

In 2006, he won the Lee Kuan Yew Award for Mathematics and Science and received a Public Service Commission Overseas Merit Scholarship, a top government scholarship, to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.

After graduating from MIT, he worked in Google for two years from 2011 to 2013, before returning to serve a six-year bond, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Hsien Loong has a daughter Li Xiuqi and a son Li Yipeng from his first marriage. He married Ho in 1985 and they have two sons, Li Hongyi and Li Haoyi.

He had previously said in interviews that his children are not keen on entering politics. - The Straits Times/Asia News Network