The rumors are that Lee Kuan Yew's playboy minister has been having an ongoing affair with another of his women colleagues, Foo Mee Har, also a Singapore Chinese woman, a fact which is common knowledge in Singapore.

Since there is no freedom of speech to speak of and Singaporeans live under a very rigorous defamation regime where judges abuse the law at will to punish anyone who criticizes the government, there is no way in the world for someone to mention this fact openly, leaving Singaporeans to rely on rumours and innuendo, which under the circumstances are usually very accurate.

There can be no doubt that this Tamil playboy minister has been at it again given his proclivity for being an adulterous Romeo.

His reputation for sexual conquest upon Chinese women has a long history. It all started as long ago as a decade, to the days before he was handpicked to do Lee Kuan Yew's bidding. Then he was working in the law firm Allen and Gledhill and besides the law he was having a very active extra-marital curriculum with Chinese women, his race of choice.

Shanmugam’s marriage to Dr Jothie Rajah failed and they divorced after 15 years, due to “mutual incompatibility.” In 2012, Dr Jothie Rajah wrote Authoritarian Rule Of Law, a critical text which alleges that the rule of law is a subjugating rather than liberalising force in Singapore. Shanmugam said he had not read the book.

In 2012, Shanmugam sent a lawyer’s letter to blogger Alex Au to remove “defamatory comments” with regard to an alleged affair with MP Foo Mee Har. As yet, no lawyer’s letter has been sent to U.S.-based lawyer Gopalan Nair, whose blog post contains a detailed comment on Shanmugam’s “affair with a Chinese colleague” while working in Allen and Gledhill law firm (where Shanmugam was formerly a senior partner).

In 2015, Shanmugam wanted to make a police report over an “inaccurate and seditious” Facebook post.