Singaporeans conned. Voting for the opposition but getting Lee Kuan Yew and his PAP anyway

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In the last general election, Singaporeans who want a change in government voted significantly for the opposition, no less than 40%.

Of course they expected to get opposition politicians into Parliament, to end the one party rule by Lee Kuan Yew and his PAP who have an autocracy, not a democracy, but guess what? They didn't get an opposition. What they got instead was a mirage. What they got this time was the PAP masquerading as the opposition, thanks to the vast array of tricks and con games he plays on his people.

In the end, Singaporeans got what they have always had, a PAP government and an opposition which is in reality PAP. In other words they went back to square one, a Lee Kuan Yew government with every single seat in Parliament with the PAP.

Wait a minute, you may say. Didn't the Workers Party after many days of vigorous heated (literally) campaigning win a GRC (5 seats) and another single member seat?

True, but what you didn’t know was that the Workers Party is actually an extension of Lee Kuan Yew's PAP itself. They are not an opposition political party by any stretch of the imagination. They are merely there, by prearrangement, to ask questions in Parliament, questions that would not hurt the PAP in any real way, such as the rising cost of living, or the emigration rate; questions which Lee's PAP will answer if the choose to, and merely leave it at that.

If Singaporeans thought that their opposition representation's duty in Parliament was merely to ask questions, which the government may or may not answer and after that merely go home, they might as well not have an opposition. Questions merely for the sake of questioning serves no purpose. Questions alone will only keep Lee and his descendants and their minions in power in Singapore permanently in their one party police state.

What about the real questions? And shouldn’t they take additional steps to make sure that if they don't take steps to correct the wrongs, there will be consequences.

Take for instance, the denial of a free press in Singapore? Should they not ask why the government violates the Constitution by controlling the press? And if the government refuses to comply with the Constitution, should they not demand that they do? And if the government still refuses, should the opposition not organize island wide peaceful protests and pickets, outside Parliament House and vow not to leave until the Lee government complies with the laws of the land?

What about the right to free speech, a right which is similarly enshrined in the Constitution? Should not the opposition demand to know why the Lee government continues to criminalize free speech? And if no suitable answer is forthcoming, should they not similarly camp themselves outside Lee's parliament demanding that speech be decriminalized as is stated in the Constitution and swear that they will not budge until this is done?

And what about the other blatant abuses of the law that are crying out for a remedy? Should the opposition, if it is a true one, demand that these wrongs be corrected and refuse to take no for an n answer?

And does not the Singapore opposition realize that without the Lee government complying with the Constitution and without rights, no amount of blabbering in Parliament will do any good for anyone, because it will simply continue as Lee’s one party police state?

What sort of opposition do we have anyway? We have the Workers Party which appears to have made a pact with Lee's PAP to ensure that the impression is given that they are in  Parliament, but whose plan appears to be to merely to ask questions with no intention to bring about any real change whatsoever.

What is the point of having such an opposition anyway? There is simply nothing they can do or will do to make any change.

The Workers Party chief is Low Thia Khiang whom I have personally known for 7 years while I was a member of the Party in Singapore. To be fair to him, in the early days, while a deputy of JB Jeyaretnam, he was, I believe truly an opposition politician wanting to overthrow Lee and the fascist PAP. But over time, it appears, he is no longer the Low he once was. He is now, quite evidently, nothing more than an extension of Lee's PAP, which I am sure Lee engineered.

Lee saw the ground swell of anti PAP sentiment rising. If so, how then to use it to his advantage. You have to remember that despite the Constitution and the history of Singapore’s politics, he has no intention whatsoever of ever letting the island become a democracy. In his mind, Singapore shall and must be governed by him or his family and there is no 2 ways about it. So the thinking must be, if the Singapore electorate is going to demand an opposition, then they might as well infiltrate it and turn it into a PAP extension under the guise of the opposition. And that is exactly what has happened.

And the victims of this con game played by Lee Kuan Yew are the Singaporeans, who went to such time and effort trying to put an opposition into Lee's Parliament. It appears Lee has had the last laugh anyway, while Low Thia Khaing and his Workers Party play their part in the Singapore Opera, I mean the Singapore Parliament.

Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
Fremont, California
Tel: 510 657 6107 or 510 491 4375