Singapore. Education comes with responsibilities.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

When one becomes educated, with it comes responsibilities. And it is dishonorable for the educated to remain silent when a dictator misleads, deceives his fellow citizens but yet remains silent; even though he knows the truth. Even though, by virtue of his education, he is in a position to stand up to the dictator and stop him from carrying on with the mischief.

Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore runs the country as a dictatorship even though it was meant to be a democracy. Singapore has a constitution which gives citizens their basic fundamental rights. A constitution which guarantees the citizens rights against excesses by the government. A constitution which is meant to allow the citizens through elections to change the government. A constitution which guarantees a free press, free speech and expression; which guarantees the rule of law and the right to equality among people; the right to be protected from racial and religious discrimination. The citizens of Singapore have the right to live as free men and women. This is the right that they are guaranteed under the constitution.

Before their very eyes, deliberately and without any shame, Lee Kuan Yew has denied the citizens of Singapore each of these rights, making the citizens of Singapore live at the whims and fancies of the supreme dictator, Lee Kuan Yew. All these guarantees in the constitution are openly and shamelessly broken and violated. There is no free speech. To speak you need a license and if it is speech that the government does not like to hear, you will not get the license. And not getting the license, you will be arrested, sued, impoverished and bankrupted in that order, by a pliant and corrupt judiciary, if you did speak.

Although the constitution guarantees the right to assemble, a license is needed to do it; if it is an assembly to criticize the government, no license will be granted and if you assembled anyway, you will be punished in the above order; even though the assembly did not even hurt a fly.

Every aspect of freedom is denied; if the intent is to criticize the government. In Singapore people are permitted to go about their lives, do their work, go about their occupations and recreations, go about their living, but with one caveat, which is this. Do not criticize the government. Do not complain even if Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and his son steals $3.7 million of your money each year, for each of them; which by the way he does claiming it to be a salary.

If you wish to live in peace, do not criticize if the government refuses, as they do now, to pay your retirement CPF money when you reach 60 years; which by law they are required to do.

You have no right to criticize if the government is building gambling dens next to your homes which they intend to do. You have no right if the government permits prostitution in Geylang by the massive influxion of Peidu Mama, single mothers from Communist China whose children are given scholarships at government expense.

You will be punished if you complained about racial discrimination and ethnic rearrangement though the massive importation of Communist Chinese so as to maintain the illegal racial quota of 75 % Chinese.

To put it simply, the Constitution of Singapore is a dead letter. It is intended to fool the rest of the world and Singapore citizens into thinking it is a Constitutional Parliamentary democracy. Nothing can be further from the truth. Singapore is nothing more than a country run by the Lee family, the Lee Kuan Yew family, assisted by their corrupted minions, who decide what the lives of an average Singaporean will be, day by day.

I know this fact, the fact that it is nothing more than a dictatorship of Lee Kuan Yew. But I am not the only one who knows this fact. Every educated person, if he bothers to find out, knows all that I have said. Every educated person in Singapore knows that Lee Kuan Yew has brought Singapore to what it is now; a place where he and his family can make as much money as they want without complaint from anyone. A place where decisions are made by them and them alone. A place without any set rules for government, the rules being made by the Lee family as time goes on. A place where the people have to live entirely at the mercy of what Lee may or may not decide tomorrow.

Every educated Singaporean knows this. They know that their rights have progressively been diminished over the years until today, when they have none. A self respecting Singaporean would feel outraged at this denial of his rights which are guaranteed to him under the Constitution. Any self respecting Singaporean should take back his rights that Lee has stolen; how dare Mr. Lee Kuan Yew take away the rights that belong to them. The educated Singaporeans should ask who this man thinks he is is. God? Any self respecting Singaporean should not tolerate this. They should demand redress. They should demand the right to live as men again, not sheep.

There are those whom Lee has deliberately kept only partially educated and who may not be aware that they have more power than they think. If these people did not see their lives being in bondage, it is possible to understand. But how can one forgive those with an education, those who are aware of the damage being done, and yet remain silent. These people cannot be forgiven. These are shameful people, fearful people who do not have the confidence to stand up to a tyrant, so they continue with their sheepish lives.

Within this group of shame; that is the educated people who lack the courage to do thief right thing; I include the lawyers, all of them; I include all the other professionals; I include the professors and lecturers at the universities who claim to have a lot of gray matter in their heads but not the courage to stand up to tyrants; I include the school teachers, the engineers, the scientists; in fact I include everyone with any amount of tertiary education.

If I know this much, they too know this much. If I know Lee Kuan Yew is a thief, they too know this. If I know that all their rights are denied, they too know this.

I know of a professor at the SMU who was my classmate at Raffles Institution. I should not say too much about him; so as not to give away his identity. Needless to say, he lives in fear of Lee Kuan Yew. He reads a lot, literature, poetry and English. He wants us to believe that he is a man of letters. He even wrote a comical poem to me once. He even told me once, how far true I do not know, that he had lunch with Vaclav Havel. He attends theatrical performances, symphony performances. In other words he wants me to believe that he is part of the educated polished elite. But in spite of all this; in spite of all his accomplishments; in spite of the fact that he knows full well that in Singapore, he is nothing more than Lee Kuan Yew's subject to do as he pleases; this professor does not dare to raise a single complaint, openly against this dictatorship. It is such people who live lives in disgrace, in denial and in cowardice. He knows that if Lee so desires, his entire career, his wine sipping and theatrical performances would disappear overnight. So like a cowardly goat, he remains silent as Lee rules over him.

Not only him, the entire educated class deserves contempt. Contempt because they as citizens of Singapore, are prepared to stand idly by, as Lee and his family continue to steal from them at will; steal their money, their rights, their everything.

As for me, I have a stake in Singapore. I was born there. My father spent almost his entire life in Singapore, building up the country to what it is today. I have a right to complain and to expose these dictators. And like myself, I ask others in Singapore and elsewhere to cry out against these dictators and these tyrants.

The wheels of change have begun to turn. The Lee government is finding it impossible to stifle the criticism that is outpouring against this dictatorship; but so far, except for a few, the criticism has been only incognito, hiding behind pseudonyms and false pretenses. The educated should stand out now, openly identifying themselves in criticism. Being educated, they will always manage to survive. Therefore they should have more courage. Remaining silent is not an option in these circumstances.

The professor at the SMU should not only be writing poetry, but like Vaclav Havel, be a beacon for truth and freedom. Like it was in Czechoslovakia.

These blogs that I write and others write will continue to prick the minds of their readers, and even if a single person was moved into some thought process to demand change, even in a very small way; this blog would have served its purpose.
Each reader even in a small way can be part of the movement for change by small efforts, such as distributing these blog posts to others and disseminating the information in them throughout the island. These small efforts by all of us combined will help towards political change in Singapore.

Gopalan Nair
39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1
Fremont, CA 94538, USA
Tel: 510 657 6107
Fax: 510 657 6914
Email: gopalnair@us-immigrationlaw.com