[audience applauding]

Thank you all for coming.

Um, Minister Chee, we are honored by your presence, and of course, Piyush, thank you for doing this series of lectures, and we now have a beautiful book as a result.

Um, Mr. Gupta's lecture series occupies a distinctive place in the history of the S.R. Nathan Fellowship, where previous fellows have, um, examined Singapore's external positioning amidst geopolitical flux, economic uncertainty, and pondering about the uncertain future of higher education among other subject.

Mr. Gupta turned to the sector that underwrites much of it, finance, and the trust upon which Singapore's future rests.

And I should explain a little why I asked him to do this.

I have not done so before, and I've certainly not explained it to him, so the explanation may come as a re- surprise to him.

And I think if you look at the share price of DBS today, we have Piyush to thank.

for a long

time.

In fact, he raised the possibility of separation as early as december 1964 in a public speech oh he came down to singapore he spoke to i think it was the medical society singapore medical association of society or whatever it was called and he gave a speech public speech he says look things are quite bad there were all these political contests parties of all stripes and then says if if we cannot resolve our differences the breakaway is the solution he mentioned it publicly in december 1964 and then privately He told Dr Goh, he says, perhaps we should think of hiving off.

That was the term he used, hiving off.

And then in conversation with Mr Lee in December 1964, he made clearer what he meant by hiving off.

He was thinking of a looser federation.

In fact, what he was proposing was more like a confederation.

book come