Singapore. Resistence to your own government as opposed to a foreign enemy.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

There is an excellent book recently published "Alone in Berlin" by Hans Fallada, about a Berlin couple who resist Hitler's Nazis, are eventually discovered by the Gestapo and put to death.

Even though the brutality and injustice of Adolf Hitler was so blatant and visible, yet there were not more than perhaps 12,000 people in the city of Berlin and 50,0000 in the whole of Germany who resisted, a relatively small number in hindsight. Yet we see that there were many times that number who resisted German occupation of their countries, the French resistance for instance which ran into several millions.

Which begs the question, why do you have much more willing to resist a foreign occupier while at the same time there is a dearth of activists against their own repressive governments.

Consider Singapore. Singapore is an island where it's leader Lee Kuan Yew pays himself and his family each, millions of dollars which he calls salary but which is in fact corruption. It has a corrupt judiciary which the government uses as a tool for repression. It does not have a free press. Any form of public protest is illegal. There is blatant nepotism with Lee Kuan Yew appointing his son as the prime Minister. All these things are totally unacceptable. Yet there is no mass resistance to this government.

The answer to this question I believe, is that when the government appears to have the support of a select few of it's cronies who are paid unimaginably large salaries, and you have a mass of uneducated clerks who do not resist because they are unaware of their rights, it becomes difficult for the other section of society to resist because they would in effect be going against many of their own people who support the government.

Resistance becomes much easier when you have a foreign enemy occupying your country since you therefore have only one single force whom everyone is united against, and where collaboration with the enemy is easily shown as traitorous and disloyal.

On the other hand Hitler was able to show, despite his evil against the Jews and other minorities, that he was doing some good for the German people, like building the autobahn, strengthening the economy and creating jobs.

I suppose this is where one sees the similarity between Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore and Hitler's Germany, both governments which did not see much resistance from their own people. In Singapore despite the destruction of every single pillar of civil society such as the rule of law, Lee Kuan Yew can still boast that he managed to build the subway and the tall skyscrapers that skirt the shoreline, just as Adolf Hitler could boast of making Germany the most powerful European economic power between the years 1933 to 1939.

But one thing is certain. Even without the war destroying Hitler, Nazi Germany would have collapsed sooner or later. The pillars of Government such as the rule of law, necessary for a government to last was simply absent. It is the same with Singapore.

Lee Kuan Yew's government just as Adolf Hitler's Nazis, will eventually collapse too. It too does not have the foundation for a lasting government because it does not have the rule of law, no free press, no independent judiciary. For Singapore too, it is only a matter of time.

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

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