Petition to rename Singapore's airport after Lee Kuan Yew takes flight

An online petition to rename Singapore's Changi Airport "Lee Kuan Yew International Airport" has been signed by more than 12,000 people and submitted to the government, its organiser said on Wednesday.

In an update on the website change.org the organiser, who goes by the moniker 'Remembering LKY' - Lee's initials, said the petition, which gathered 12,481 signatures, was handed over to Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew on Tuesday.

Lee, who died aged 91 on 23 March after a long illness, was Singapore's founding prime minister and is credited with transforming the tiny city-state from an economic backwater into one of Asia's wealthiest countries.

His lying-in-state at parliament and funeral prompted an unprecedented outpouring of grief from hundreds of thousands of Singaporeans.

The petition says renaming the airport, which is currently named for the area on which it was built, after Lee "will help to serve as a constant reminder to present and future generations that the spirit of LKY lives on".

But Associate Professor Hussin Mutalib, senior political science lecturer at the National University of Singapore, cautioned against the move.

"Garnering signatures and pressuring our government via petitions is not the best way to pay tribute to him [Lee]. In fact, it dishonours one of his governing principles, namely, not to rule by populist pressures," Hussin wrote in a commentary published on Monday in the local newspaper Today.

Changi Airport was recently named the world's best airport for the third year running at the Skytrax 2015 World Airport Awards in Paris.