Final Days
After retiring from politics, Kiệt lived in Ho Chi Minh City. Since then, he had spoken out on many issues, and was seen as a defender of people's rights.
Võ Văn Kiệt was the highest-ranking former government official to have openly spoken out about reconciliation with Vietnamese exiles and democracy activists. Recently, he had spoken out against the proposed expansion of Hanoi and the demolition of the historic National Assembly building in Ba Đình Square to make place for a new one.
Kiệt was admitted to Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital on June 3, 2008 with unspecified ailments and died at the age of 85 on early Wednesday, June 11, 2008.
State media did not announce his death until the night of June 12, after most foreign news agencies had already reported it and many foreign dignitaries had already offered condolences, including United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The government of Vietnam announced a state funeral on June 14 and 15 to be held in the Reunification Palace (Ho Chi Minh City), Hanoi, and his birth province Vĩnh Long.
Read more about this topic: Vo Van Kiet
Famous quotes containing the words final and/or days:
“And then ... he flung open the door of my compartment, and ushered in “Ma young and lovely lady!” I muttered to myself with some bitterness. “And this is, of course, the opening scene of Vol. I. She is the Heroine. And I am one of those subordinate characters that only turn up when needed for the development of her destiny, and whose final appearance is outside the church, waiting to greet the Happy Pair!””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and
lands—and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)