Ladies and Gentlemen,
If you read the article in Singapore's state controlled newspaper Straits Time's online edition of July 6, 2009 titled "Meritocracy not quota. That's affirmative action the Singapore way" you may think Lee Kuan Yew's recently handpicked Minister for Law is advocating affirmative action for his oppressed Tamil Singapore brothers and the equally oppressed Malays there. In fact, sorry to disappoint you, it was not the case at all!
With a newspaper which is owned and controlled by his government, what else did you expect? He can say any nonsense he wants with total impunity. The paper belongs to his boss, Lee Kuan Yew. And since this newspaper has been judged to be no more independent than the newspapers of Omar Al Bashir's Sudan or Eritrea by the international monitor Reporters Without Borders, it really makes no difference what they say, since they have no reputation at all. The world totally ignores what it says, and they (Lee Kuan Yew and his hand picked Tamil minister) don't care one bit what anyone thinks either. They know the Singaporean "digit" as Lee Kuan Yew calls his people are completely powerless to complain.
So what you have here is a newspaper article about what this Tamil Lee Kuan Yew's recently handpicked Minister has said; where in fact he has said nothing at all!
The article starts off by stating that about a decade ago, he had advocated affirmative action for Malays. But how this fact has any relevance to the rest of the article, except to mention that recently some Malay Singaporean was made a General in the Singapore Army (what his actual job duties are, we will never know, perhaps distributing the paperwork in the office!).
And finally we are told the truth. There is not going to be any change at all. According to him, things are going to be the same, and people are going to advance based on merit. If only this was true!
What is true is what we see. The Malays and Indians continue to be discriminated in the workforce by Chinese employers who demand a knowledge of Chinese for the job, when in truth none is necessary. In fact there was an comical but tragic nevertheless, incident, where the Indian in fact knew Chinese but when the employer discovered this, placed yet another requirement; knowledge of ancient Ming Dynasty caligraphy, and on this impossible requirement the Indian linguist naturally failed!
Just ask any Malay or Indian in Singapore. Blatant unashamed racial discrimination goes on before the very eyes of this Tamil, Lee Kuan Yew's poodle, K Shanmugam. If he had any decency, he should help his downtrodden Tamil brothers and sisters in Singapore in Serangoon Road to ensure they receive some modicum of fairness from the Chinese majority, instead of having to sleep on alleyways in Buffalo Road and Norris Road, high on traditional Chinese 100% proof spirit!
And coming to the word majority, if the Singapore Malays had their way, the Chinese in Singapore would not be majority at all, but would have been relegated a long time ago to being a very small minority.
Look at the facts. The Malays procreate and at a much faster rate than the Chinese, where every Chinese couple have either no children (too much stress, or unable to have sex, I don't know which) or at most one child. Take the Malay families. Every family has a full compliment of 3 to 5 children, and they should be very proud of it. And if this Singapore tyrant Lee Kuan Yew and his one party government had complied with the Singapore Constitution which demands equality between the races, the Malays would now be the majority race in Singapore, the Indians coming in a close second and the Chinese would have been a distant minority.
But this did not happen. Lee Kuan Yew, an ethnic Chinese himself, in blatant violation of the Singapore Constitution, brought in and continues to bring in disproportionately large numbers of Chinese from mainland China to ensure the Chinese continue to make up 75% of the Singapore population, in total violation of the rights of Malays and Indians.
And the discrimination against the Malays is particularly hurtful as they were the true sons of Singapore. They were there before anyone else. They were there before the British colonials brought in the Chinese and Indians.
And now this recently appointed minister in Lee Kuan Yew's dictatorship has the cheek to talk about meritocracy, when what he is actually saying is this. He intends to continue the discrimination of his government against his own Tamils and Malays as long as he is comfortable in his million dollar ministerial job, thanks to the continued patronage of his master, Lee Kuan Yew.
I really wonder why he is being employed at all, if all he can say, as in this case is to, in fact, say nothing at all!
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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1 comment:
Old post, but just saying: the Malays are not the true sons of the soil, not even of Malaysia. There were other orang asli tribes there first, and even if the Malays were here "before" the British colonials brought in the other races it's only because they kicked out and marginalized the other orang asli tribes first.
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