Singapore not a country one would want to live

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Singapore is just one big fraud. And underneath all that glitter, it is really not a place someone who had a choice would want to live.

On the outside Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew paints a picture of a modern first class city. You have TV newsreaders who try to speak good English imitating someone from any other city like London, but with one difference. Those in London are free of government censorship while the Singaporean specimen reads out prepared texts vetted by government agencies. You have newspapers published in glossy paper just like in London, except in Singapore they are state owned and controlled, where journalists report to government ministers on what they have plan to write. You see lawyers all dressed in black dragging modern briefcases with books overflowing with wisdom, but in actual fact they are more afraid of the government than their clients ever were.

If you fall into hard times you starve unless you go to some government minister's office and beg on all fours for a handout. In the west there are established procedures for welfare for the unfortunate in society to live with their heads up.

Singapore has no place for people who want to better society towards a more humane and compassionate one. The political philosophy is that of Lee Kuan Yew which is not very different perhaps from how the Chinese peasants lived under the Ming or Tang Dynasty many centuries ago. Which goes something like this. You wake up in the morning, go to work, be respectful towards your rulers and superiors, don't think you know any better than your masters and work your way up the ladder through the recognition of your superiors. Of course above all your superiors there is the great master or leader who is better and wiser than all. In the case of the Chinese Dynasty, it was the Ming or Tang emperor. In the case of Singapore, it is Lee Kuan Yew and in his absence, his son.

I am sorry but this is not the way I like to live. And neither do I think anyone who has an understanding of the way things are going on in the island and has the means to live somewhere else.

So what is left of native Singaporeans are those who simply cannot leave because of lack of skills or an understanding of their plight or those who are not concerned about living as free men an women as long as they earn sufficiently large amounts of money. In this group are the Lee Kuan Yew minions who stay behind.

You have of course the foreign Western businessmen and professionals who do business in the island. For them it is only a case of making money. They are naturally not concerned about how they live their lives since it is not their country and they are there for short periods, when they will go hone to France, Germany or the USA. Most of them leave their families at home in the West and even if they bring them here, they study at foreign schools with their German, Italian or American teachers. As far as they are concerned, they despise Singaporeans for a cowardly people, willing to live as slaves in Lee Kuan Yew's island, which they would not in America, Germany or France.

Then there are the middle level professionals, some from England, Australia, India and other places. For a variety of reasons, they spend some time in Singapore working as engineers, bank officers, and executives. They too are totally unconcerned about how Singaporeans have to live their lives since they are here temporarily. In 6 months, if they got a better job in Rangoon Burma, they would spend some time there if possible.

In the end, all you have in Singapore at the upper levels is the revolving door phenomenon. People come in for a time, and then leave, only to be replaced by other people who come in and who themselves leave too.

If there are going to be anyone left behind to run the place, it is the handful of sycophants and crawlers who willingly take orders from above as to what to do, regardless of right or wrong. And their numbers are shrinking too, as Singapore students leave for a foreign education and opt to remain where they are. Singapore is reaching a point where it cannot find sufficiently capable people to run the show and this is entirely because of what Singapore is today, a life of submission and obedience, which people with an education find unacceptable.

Unless the native Singaporeans who have a stake in the country take drastic real earth shattering action to demand a democratic system of government, literally taking Lee Kuan Yew to task, I don't see him doing anything to arrest the decline into which Singapore is sliding.

Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
Disbarred from practicing law in Lee's Singapore, imprisoned and refused entry to the island for criticizing Singapore's judiciary in this blog (see blogpost May 29, 2008 Singapore. Judge Belinda Ang's Kangaroo Court)
Actively practicing law in California and in good standing at the California Bar.
Member in good standing as a lawyer in England and Wales (Barrister).
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