Singapore is "Grooming youth leaders"

Ladies and Gentlemen,

By now you must know Singapore is a weird country with some weird practices. For instance unlike any other country, bringing chewing gum to Singapore is illegal! Unlike any other country, peaceful protests and public speaking is not allowed! Judges have 2 roles to play, one as a judge and the other as a government politician. This is what they do, when they are periodically called upon to abuse the law to punish critics of the government!

Although it claims to be a first world country, it brutally whips criminals like in Iran and hangs petty drug mules even if they had with them as little as 14.9 grams of heroin for personal consumption! And while they beat and they hang people (I understand it has the highest rates of execution in the world), they allow murderers to escape the noose if they could come up with some silly excuse, such as depression! All Singapore newspapers need a government licence to operate. And you guessed it, all Singapore newspapers are owned and controlled by them. And yes, you guessed it again. What you read in them is propaganda, since what else could you expect from a state controlled press!

You can read all these weird goings on in the newspapers of this Alice in Wonderland of a country, Singapore.

Take this for instance. Singapore's state controlled press, the online edition of the Straits Times of March 22, 2009 has this story "Grooming youth leaders". In it is described another weird practice, that of the government going around the island looking for leaders! In the story, Goh Chock Tong, the senior minister (another weird name for a politician since he has no particular duties and yet is paid a salary of not less than $3.7 million a year, for basically doing nothing) has officially announced that he and his friends have begun going around the island to look for political leaders for his government!

I had written about this unusual activity in my earlier post some time ago. Think of it. In any other country, politicians become politicians because that is what they chose to do and there is no need to persuade them to do it. But by their own admission, Singapore is incapable of producing any leaders so much so that the government has to deliberately go around the country to persuade people into becoming leaders, PAP leaders, that is! According to Goh chock Tong, once he locates such leadership potential, the shortlisted candidates would be promptly sent off for leadership training and thereafter appointed ministers in his cabinet!

Surely if they have to do this, there must be something seriously wrong with that country. It is quite obvious from this that Singaporeans by and large have completely shut off their minds to any form of political activity, unless it is political activity which is approved by Lee Kuan Yew and his minions. What you do get in the end is not true leaders who are prepared to speak their minds fearlessly, but opportunists who see advantage in being second fiddle to Lee Kuan Yew and his ideas of government.

40 years of state persecution against dissenting views by Lee Kuan Yew has successfully shut out any semblance of independent thinking in the island. Take for instance the case of the Judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean who so flagrantly abused legal process during the 3 day defamation trial of Lee Kuan Yew against Dr. Chee Soon Juan, May 26, 2008 to May 28, 2008. I was there in her Singapore courtroom to see that shameful spectacle where she acted as if her job was to permit Lee Kuan Yew to get away with anything he wanted with a resultant fine of $410,000.00 against Dr. Chee. I was not the only one in that courtroom who saw the abuse of legal process. Yet not a single Singaporean present had the courage to write about it, as it is, except of course for Dr. Chee himself. I did write about it, and as a result, you know what happened. I was sent to prison for 3 months for my efforts. Anyone else who had any leadership in him, would have done exactly what I did, which is to say it as it is. But not in Singapore where the people have been terrified beyond their wits even to show the slightest of courage.

The only other country which practices this form of selected succession of a leader is Tibet. There the high priests scour the country looking for a child who shows the makings of a Dalai Lama, who is then taken from his parents and ensconced in the monastery to be groomed into a Dalai Lama. It might be all right for a theocracy of the middle ages but if this is the practice to be adopted for a so called first world country, let me tell you this. Singapore is in more trouble than you think it is.

Gopalan Nair
39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1
Fremont, CA 94538, USA
Tel: 510 657 6107
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Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com
Blog: http://singaporedissident.blogspot.com/

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