Singapore's best and brightest have all fled to the West.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Many abroad attribute Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s sole political leader, better described as a dictator, with wisdom and other qualities. But if you look at what he has done to the island, besides building skyscrapers which you cannot eat but only look at, it appears he has done far more harm than good, which cannot be the result of any wisdom, surely.

Today, as he has said in his National Day message, the biggest problems facing the island are the unrelenting brain drain from the already small tiny island with a native born population of only 2 million, the world's lowest birth rate which really means in 10 years there won't be anymore Singaporeans left and a fast ageing population with no one to replace the dying.

These facts, had it related to Russia, wouldn’t have been so alarming; after all there are hundreds of millions of people there. But in Singapore which has no more than 2 million local born population, not counting the plane loads of recent immigrants from China who are no comparison to Singapore natives, the island is in very big trouble indeed. In fact, it's native born population of just 2 million would disappear entirely within a few years.

And oddly enough, the reason for the dire straits that Singapore is in today, with its disappearing people, is the result of the misguided unimaginable stupidity of this man, whom the world wrongly believes to be a great leader.

Lee's style of government is to deny anyone else the chance to usurp him. In order to prevent this from ever happening, over the years he usurped the law courts, the press, the police and every other organ of power to ensure that the law is bent as and when he wants to punish any possible threat to him. And in doing so, he made sure that the message was clearly sent to the entire tiny island of 2 million people that it is suicidal to challenge him, by publicizing in the mass media repeatedly the punishments that his victims had received.

Sadly for him in retrospect, his object was achieved completely and absolutely. These repeated jailing and defamation actions against people whose only fault was to stand up to him, sent a chill down the spines of even the most courageous of citizens.

Take the example of JB Jeyaretnam. In the 1970s and 1980s he was repeatedly sued for challenging Lee Kuan Yew in politics, when it was as clear as crystal, that he had done no wrong. And in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, we have Chee Soon Juan, the former university professor who had similarly suffered at his hands. I too suffered for standing up to him in the 1980s when I was in Singapore and more recently in 2008. Although now living in the USA, last year I was disbarred from practicing law in the island, although I was never living or practicing law there since 1991.

What did Lee Kuan Yew think Singaporeans would do if you abused the rights of his people in this way? Did he not realize that not everyone would be willing to live in an island where he could do willly nilly anything he wants to his people? Obviously he did not. Which is why he continues to face the fact of the largest brain drain to the West anywhere in the world, the lowest birth rate anywhere in the world and the world's largest ageing population, all in his tiny island of Singapore, where the native population does not exceed a mere 2 million!

Any fool would have known that if you mistreat your people this way, they would either rebel or simply leave. In Singapore’s case the people have just left mainly for Australia.

I remember in the 1980s when I was a lawyer there, and Lee was using his courts and his Kangaroo judges, to punish me into submission for daring to stand up to him. At this time I personally know that almost half the lawyer population of Singapore had left for Australia and some to Canada. Besides me, the other main reason for this large number of lawyers leaving the island for good was the ongoing persecution of JB Jeyaretnam at this time. Anyone with even half a brain should have been able to see that such blatant abuse of the law against people who are merely exercising their human rights would outrage the population. Why should anyone want to live in an island under this tin pot tyrant?

Since then we have seen the repeated persecution of Chee Soon Juan, being repeatedly jailed and bankrupted simply because Lee sees him as his political threat. This is simply wrong and no honest decent citizen would want to put up with this abuse. And that is why as we speak thousands and thousands of Singapore’s best and brightest leave it shores daily from a tiny and dwindling population of 2 million.

You don't have to an Einstein or a rocket scientist to know that policies such as this would chase away your very best. Apparently Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore strongman, strangely enough had never realized this, something which a man with even half a brain would have known.

Today, Lee Kuan Yew is begging his Singaporeans to remain in Singapore and have more children. No one with any ability or for that matter any brains would either want to live in his one party totalitarian police state or raise a family there. I am not sure if he realizes that.

I live in United States. Even for all the gold in the world, I would not want to live in Lee's Singapore that is for sure. Why, because the moment I step on that island, his thugs would be after me, framing all sorts of imaginary crimes and punishing me in court as and when he pleases. He does this simply because he is afraid of any threat to his power and the only way he knows how to keep it is to resort to illegality.

The only ones who would be comfortable in that island are those who are quite content to accept the Lees as their rulers and simply go along without complaint. This requires one to switch off their minds completely about government, be quiet, lie low and simply live your lives in accepting whatever you are told.

Only dumb animals and mindless spiritless people live like this. And that, unfortunately,  is how the majority of Singaporeans live.

Anyone who has an independent mind and the ability to question and reason is not living in Singapore now. If he has been left behind for some reason, he is already actively planning to leave just like the others who had left before him.

By next year, a further 50,000 Singapore born college graduates would have left Singapore further depleting the already dwindling native born population of 2 million. While this goes on, Lee Kuan Yew, if he is still alive tomorrow, can continue playing his fiddle, like the Roman Emperor Nero.

As for me, I won't be in Singapore but I will be watching the consequences of Lee's stupidity from near San Francisco, California while the other millions of Singaporeans and former Singaporeans would be watching from Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Darwin, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, London, Vancouver, Toronto and the Western capitals of the world.

Not a very clever man, I don't think. Do you?

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