Readers of this blog who are unfamiliar with the goings on in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, may think reading the comments that there are many who think Singapore is a democracy based on the rule of law. The reader is warned that they may be Singapore government employees whose job is to discredit those who criticize Lee Kuan Yew's authoritarian rule. Please use your discretion as to how much weight you will give these comments.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The first thing to do in a battle, is to soften the ground, before the attack. Artillery fire, rockets and mortar. And when the enemy is weakened, you launch the attack. This is no different in politics, and this is exactly what Dr. Chee Soon Juan is doing now.
In a sustained concerted and concentrated effort, he demolishes Lee Kuan Yew by exposing his repression, his dirty tricks, his abuse of the law through his blog, through his actions in court and through the punishment he takes at the hands of his oppressor. And slowly and surely, day after day, more and more Singaporeans become aware of the lack of justice and fairness in their country. And progressively Lee Kuan Yew loses all moral authority to rule. People become aware that Singapore is a morally bankrupt country, a country where the laws are abused at will to destroy critics, where the government is corrupt paying themselves millions while the poor teeter on the poverty line, and where human rights are literally non existent.
And as time progresses, as more and more people begin to hate Lee Kuan Yew and his millionaire ministers, the country becomes ripe for change. There is a simmering of discontent under the surface only to erupt when the time is right.
And the right time is when Lee Kuan Yew dies. He is presently 85 and is kept alive with a battery powered pacemaker next to his heart. It was reported that he is suffering from irregular heartbeat. I saw him in Judge Belinda Ang's court in Singapore from May 26, 2008 to May 28, 2008 which resulted in my unexpected arrest and imprisonment for criticizing her conduct. He appeared very weak, with some difficulty walked from the courtroom door to the witness box, with some effort sat down. He did not appear very sound in health.
With his death, something has to give, there is no doubt about it. I think he knows it too. His greatest mistake is to have chosen the sort of ministers presently with him. His son, he appoints prime minister, an obedient child who obeyed his father, passed all his exams and selected first as the highest ranking officer in the army and immediately thereafter, Prime Minister. He has not been leader of anything, not accomplished anything and no one knows anything about him except that he is the Prime Ministers son.
Law Minister Shanmugam was not too long ago, a lawyer in Allen and Gledhill, after which we were told that he is now Minister for Law. No one had any say in it and no one cares. Had he been selling Indian pancakes in a dhoti in Serangoon Road, no one would have cared either. I suppose he loves no one, and no one loves him either.
All of Lee Kuan Yew's ministers are handpicked men whose principle qualification is to do exactly what he tells them. We have no idea as to their principles, convictions and philosophy. Very probably they have none of those. They are there for only one reason, because the pay is good, and because there is Lee Kuan Yew, the 85 year old octogenarian to protect them.
But everything will change when Lee Kuan Yew dies. Lee knows this too. And that is why his many references to the secrets of longevity, clearly shows that he fears what will happen when he dies. So his desperate efforts to keep living one extra day at a time. But this fear of death, will itself cause him to die sooner than later. The obsession to stay alive will itself turn into a killer. So I expect him to be saying goodbye very soon.
And that is why I say they should be packing. Judge Belinda Ang, if she knew what was best for her, should pack her suitcases and leave. If she does not, the people might want to know why she deliberately abuses the law to punish Lee's critics. And knowing what she has done, it will be difficult to come up with an answer satisfactory to the people. Not knowing whether Lee Kuan Yew will live one week or one year, his days are numbered and the time of reckoning is also numbered for Judge Belinda Ang.
Judge Judith Prakash, Judge Kan Ting Chiu, DSP Mohamed Hassan, ASP Abdul Razak Zakaria, Judge VK Rajah, Kalaselvi d/o Rengasamy of the Bankruptcy office and the list goes on. If I were them, I would ask myself one question. Is it safe? Is it safe to continue misusing the law to please Lee Kuan Yew, when he is just about to die. Will the people hold men and women who oppress their fellow citizens to account when the time comes? These men and women who please Lee Kuan Yew for money should, if they were smart, start thinking about their actions, and whether it is safe to go on as they have done so far.
And in the meantime, as Lee Kuan Yew takes one more step to his grave, Dr. Chee Soon Juan and the other brave activists continue to spread the message throughout the island that Lee Kuan Yew is nothing but one corrupt dictator, who is propped up by minions such as Judge Belinda Ang, who do it for money.
I expect, with his death, there to be protests. The people's anger kept bottled up will erupt. The protests may be small in the beginning. But with the expected irrational actions of this government, we expect the minions of the dead Lee Kuan Yew to arrest them. This will result in even larger protests which will attract even harsher retaliation from this government. This in turn will cause even more people to hate them, and with mass protests, massive outflow of people, capital and investment, the present staus quo will change forever. And we never know, with Lee Kuan Yew's son in the decision making chair, he may, like his father suggested, even shoot at unarmed Singaporeans.
All this is very likely to happen in Singapore where everything depends on one man, Lee Kuan Yew. It is pity he did not think of this before.
Ahmad Ben Bella's famous words to the French troops in Algeria nearing the end of the civil war was "Choose. The suitcase or the coffin". Judge Belinda Ang is lucky that Singaporeans are a gentle people. Perhaps they would not insist that she get into a coffin. But I don't think they will let her go scot free either.
Gopalan Nair
39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1
Fremont, CA 94538, USA
Tel: 510 657 6107
Fax: 510 657 6914
Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com
Blog: http://singaporedissident.blogspot.com/
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13 comments:
Nair,in my wildest dreams, you and me travelled back in time in a time machine to take that very man out before 1965.
Mr. Nair,
I would like to ask you a simple question: how is your brand of fearmongering any different from the fearmongering which you accuse the incumbent government of?
Regards.
Perhaps, I can help Mr Nair out on this one: Gopalan Nair is not paid by us to inflict 'fear' in us.
That is, if 'fearmongering' is what he is doing. I myself don't feel 'fear'; I would feel vindication should what he describes materialize.
Only those who have done serious wrong need to fear, and rightly so.
My dear Mr. Nair, you are way to naive yet about the PAP and Mr. Lee Kuan Yew. Surely you don't really believe that the "Organization" hasn't already created down to the finest detail contingency plans for the event of Mr. Lee's death. You make the same mistake as others before you have made: your wishful thinking leads you to grossly underestimate your adversary.
The first thing that will happen, way before the announcement is made, is that the military and police and riot truck firemen will all be put on the highest alert, probably even on Emergency status. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised and neither should you be, if the PAP doesn't declare a state of emergency and declare a curfew and have police and soldiers patrolling the streets. Next, the media will kick into high gear and on every channel news of the event and warnings about how the populace is expected to behave will deluge the citizens of Singapore. Then, there will be the state funeral. Finally, in carefully orchestrated steps, the populace will be guided back to normalcy. Now I ask you, Mr. Nair: if an idiot like me can figure this out, don't you think the higher-ups in the PAP, who are paid to do so, can also? Please be more understanding of the work cut out for you. Let me leave you with a reference: see the Far Eastern Economic Review for the first or second week in December of 1987. Look for the letter to the editor over the name "Wolfman." I think you'll find it as interesting as I did.
Dear Anonymous,
If you unseat the tyrant by the ways of the tyrant, what gives me the assurance that you wouldn't be a tyrant yourself in time to come?
The resort to fear is by definition unjust.
Wow, really Gopalan. U good at predictions.Set up a stall at Serangoon Road, put on a dhoti, get a parakeet and some cards and you should be in business. As for me, I know the system is entrenched and the demise of one man or even a few is not going to make a difference. The only way to throw out this lot is through the ballot box but then even then they gerrymander the boundaries to keep themselves in power.
Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is still around inficting unbearable pain to his people. No soft methods are working to unseat him.
Similarly, we need a revolution to unseat LKY, then allow UN to conduct a democratic election to select a new leader.
Revolutionary leaders do not make good peacetime/nation rebuilding leaders.
To Anonymous on Fri Jan 09, 07:02:00 PM PST:
Clearly, you are someone who is capable only of surface level analysis.
A tyrant is a tyrant because he has removed all checks and balances against his excesses.
If you read between the lines of the pro-democracy, reformist minded - that is if you are capable of reading between lines, seeing that even explicit mentions elude you - you will find that this group is adamant that checks and balances are put into place.
An effective system of checks and balances can effectively prevent tyranny.
I believe that that is the point that Mr Nair, and others like him are driving at.
"Clearly, you are someone who is capable only of surface level analysis...
If you read between the lines of the pro-democracy, reformist minded - that is if you are capable of reading between lines, seeing that even explicit mentions elude you - you will find that this group is adamant that checks and balances are put into place."
Perhaps I am. Perhaps it befalls to the simple-minded such as myself to gasp at how wonderful it is that fear is regarded by "pro-democracy, reformist [sic] minded" persons to be a viable means to institute political change.
"I would like to ask you a simple question: how is your brand of fearmongering any different from the fearmongering which you accuse the incumbent government of?"
Why, it's different because it isn't fearmongering to point out the consequences of wrong-doing — isn't that obvious? Would you call it fearmongering to be told that taking something that doesn't belong to you without permission is a criminal offence which could be construed as theft? And that you could spend time in custody for it?
Fearmongering is a deliberate attempt to frighten citizens and influence their political views, a tactic honed to a fine art by Mr. freak-election-result-will-result-in-the-army-being-called-in LKY. How does Gopalan's post even compare in the slightest to the persecution, bankrupting and jailing of anyone, whether citizen, foreigner or media, foolhardy enough to question the ruler's methods? Now that's REAL fearmongering, red in tooth and claw.
It's pretty facile of you to try to conflate that with Gopalan's pointing out to the judges and assorted hangers-on that there are downsides to knowingly choosing the path of personal gain and moral bankruptcy. Nice try Anonymous, but no cigar.
Dear Norman Wisdom,
No cigar for me? Oh shucks. Just as well: I don't smoke.
"Ahmad Ben Bella's famous words to the French troops in Algeria nearing the end of the civil war was 'Choose. The suitcase or the coffin.' Judge Belinda Ang is lucky that Singaporeans are a gentle people. Perhaps they would not insist that she get into a coffin. But I don't think they will let her go scot free either."
I was criticised for failing to read between the lines. Which portion of Mr. Nair's war metaphor eludes you?
I should be clear: I would welcome political change. But I am also of the opinion that one should be circumspect about how change should be brought about.
To both anonymous:
#1 You mentioned curfew but you forgot to add that chartered flights will be arranged for those in the organisation to fly to a little island somewhere in the pacific which was secretly bought during their regime.
#2 You mentioned the death of the emperor will not destabalise the country, rightly so for a "clean" government but this famiLEE has tons of dusts under the carpet and the people wants to know where is their CPF monies and how much for example, is GIC really worth now.
Talking about CPF monies, it is very wrong to keep changing the withdrawal age. It is after all our hard earned money and yet we couldn't withdraw it! Ridiculous!
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