Singapore says "No shortage of jobs for law graduates"

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore reports in it's state controlled newspaper Straits Times on July 09, 2011 a story headed "No shortage of jobs for law graduates" which says "a record number of law graduates will enter the workforce next year that is desperate to get it's hands on young legal eagles" (I believe the reference to "legal eagles" are young graduates, a bit of a Singaporean style oxymoron it seems. Unless you are a miracle of some kind, I wonder how someone becomes a legal eagle if he is a young graduate!).

Considering the disgraceful reputation of Lee Kuan Yew Singapore's legal profession, where the law is daily misused by complaint judges taking orders from him to destroy political dissidents, this revelation of Singapore being short of lawyers shouldn't be any surprise.

In most countries, the legal profession, a highly desired and respected one, attracts huge numbers of applicants resulting in much difficulty for young graduates to get any jobs let alone succeed in it. This is because in those countries one takes pride to call himself or herself a lawyer.

In Singapore on the other hand, the law is misused daily and used as Lee Kuan Yew's tool to destroy his opponents. The law is no longer respected in the eyes of the ordinary person. As a result, the lawyers and judges there are seen as shameless lot of people, devoid of any moral fibre whatsoever, and who will willingly abuse of the legal system for Lee's pleasure.

Tell me in which other country, perhaps other than North Korea do you have such a disgraceful woman, Judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean, who calls herself a judge who sits in judgement in court in Singapore over Lee Kuan Yew while he deploys his favorite weapon to stay in power, defamation actions, and practically disallows Chee Soon Juan, an ardent critic of his, any opportunity whatsoever of defending himself and shamelessly awards Lee Kuan Yew hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing nothing wrong whatsoever.

In Singapore's (Lee's) warped notion of what a good lawyer is, a man who represents Lee Kuan Yew to do his dirty work without no shame whatsoever (defamation actions), is considered the best civil lawyer in the island, while the best criminal lawyer is one who has no complaints whatsoever on the denial of constitutional rights for his clients and would even go as far as to say that he will never defend any of Lee's political opponents, although he will defend the most vile of murderers out there.

Singapore's disgraceful disregard of the Constitution or even of basic human rights has taken it's toll. Today , Singapore has no more than about 3,000 lawyers, a number totally inadequate for a city state of that size. Anyone with any sense of moral righteousness has left.

And because of the disgraceful depths to which the law has descended to protect Lee Kuan Yew and his son of corruption and law abuse, it has chased away almost every single young man or woman with any sense of right and wrong, from ever entering the profession. To overcome this problem Lee Kuan Yew is now scraping the barrel. He is bringing in some Australians and Burmese who come into Singapore to ease the shortage as an foreign work stint, and some way to find a job. They would have happily worked as lawyers in Burma had there been an opening. These men and women who come in for temporary work, have no interest whatsoever in the island's well being or anything else. Can anyone balme them? The Australian lawyer in Singapore, on the other hand, would have been up in arms if Australia abused the human rights of their people as they do in Singapore. These sort of characters have no interest in Singapore and do not further the cause of Singapore one bit.

But with Singapore's honest lawyers leaving en masse, not wanting to have anything to do with Lee Kuan Yew and his Kangaroo Courts, what else could he possibly do.

On the other hand, I am a lawyer and used to practice in Singapore but left and am now in California USA. I have left Singapore because there is no rule of law and if one protests the injustices ( since it was my country, and I should complain), they lock you up and bankrupt you. This stupidity effectively chases away thousands of Singaporean lawyers who would have served Singapore well, but like me, feel it disgraceful to submit to a state controlled legal system instead of an independent one, and they rightfully leave, mainly to Australia.

I was just speaking to a former carpet dealer in Singapore on the telephone, who had somehow managed to get a law degree, and presently more than 60 years old. He tells me that the standards of admission have been lowered and that he too will be admitted to practice law even though it was entirely a distance learning degree from some university abroad, he does not wish to say which one. Although he had obtained his correspondence degree more than 15 years ago, he was not able to enter the profession before because his qualifications were found unsatisfactory, but now they are. The standards have been lowered.

The Singapore newspaper report says that in 2011, 480 people had applied to take the Part 2, a requirement for being licenced while in 2010, it was less, 386. If indeed 480 people do apply, we don't know how many would know even have basic English and very probably even those mediocre characters admitted would largely leave when they find they don' have what it takes.

Simply put, there is already a severe shortage of law graduates in Singapore, and getting a few unscrupulous Australians or Burmese is not going to help at all. Singapore will continue to have a shortage of lawyers, which will continue to cause standards to decline and very soon, there is going to be a collapse.

Singapore Dissident is working to expose this fast spreading rot.

Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
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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