Singapore. A society lacking character.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Reading the newspapers of Singapore, a tiny island at the tip of the Malay peninsula with a tiny shrinking native population of just 2.5 million and foreigners, another 2.5 million, newspapers which are all state controlled as the totalitarian police island state's government run by Lee Kuan Yew and his son do not allow independent newspapers, you will instantly get the impression that this is an island made up of thugs, embezzlers, child molesters and crooks.

Today’s Sunday Times has the story "3 students charged with robbing 52 year old cleaner";  In the past 2 days there were these, "Man jailed 2 1/2 years for slashing friend over dispute with ex-tenant"; in today’s popular sex story in the island of a government officer negotiating a government contract and having an affair with his client "New Witness takes witness stand for Ng Boon Jay"; where a Singaporean and his Filipino wife were running a prostitution ring "Couple on Vice Charges remanded with more offences"; and so on and so forth.  It is a long list of shame and it goes on. See: http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news

You see this sort of thing every day in the local state controlled papers and if anyone is trying to convince the public into claiming Singapore to be a law abiding society, he has to have his head examined. Remember the island's population is a tiny 2.5 million locals and another 2.5 million foreigners and with a crime rate like this, in a small tiny place, it can beat the worst slums and ghettos of Tegucigalpa, Honduras at midnight.  

The general trend observing the crimes committed has this pattern. Mostly you have white collar crime, such as stealing, cheating, embezzlement of banks and customers and confidence tricksters. Second you have the sex criminals, a huge number of pedophiles having sex with children and other sex offences and lastly you have violent crime, where people appear to attack others with knives for even minor occurrences such as staring or for road rage.

You could on the whole come to the conclusion that this is a crass, uncultured, unprincipled society lacking in probity or integrity which would cheat you at the next opportunity if you were not looking.

If a people are to take their guidance from their leaders and to look up to them, Singapore’s problem is that their leaders who are supposed to be model citizens, are themselves the biggest crooks. If Lee Kuan Yew, the leader of Singapore with his son whom he appointed Prime Minister are supposed to be the island's model citizens, we might as well give the Mafia the Nobel Peace Prize and equate them with Mother Theresa and Florence Nightingale.  

Lee Kuan Yew pays himself $3.7 million dollars officially and perhaps triple that amount secretly. So does his son and every member of his family and the top people in his government. And if anyone challenged him openly on this, he would use his police to have you arrested, charged and convicted for libel, sent to prison and bankrupted. Also he denies the people the right to a free press, denies freedom of expression and criminalizes even a one man peaceful protest. Such a man can honestly be described no better than the worst sort of a thief, a tyrant and bully. One word that best describes him is dictator.

Yet in Singapore, this man is their model citizen whom people have to respect and emulate. He is described as the father of Singapore. If this is supposed to be good moral behavior, surely his people have a right to be that way too. If Lee Kuan Yew has succeeded through cheating and abuse of power, then surely others would want to be like him too and succeed the way he did; perhaps even outdo him at his dirty game.  

Unfortunately there are some parents who see that this is the way to success. They make their children sing praises to this man and serve his political party in the hope that the father and son team would bestow benefits on them too.

And unfortunately you see rampant crimes of cheating and embezzlement on a daily basis with Singaporeans trying to make it rich the way the Lee family has done.

I have no hesitation to say that Singapore is a bad place to bring up children. In Singapore, in their formative years, with the teachers being afraid of the Lee government not to criticize, they as well as their parents are unable to teach their children the most important truth, more important than all the sciences, arts and social sciences, which is this; the need to have principles and character. What use is it for a child to be taught all the knowledge in the world without teaching the child the importance of the truth, honesty and integrity?

If Lee is in fact a dictator, the courage of a child to state openly on record that he is in fact a dictator. Such a child will grow up a leader of men. Not the cowardly children with their Singaporean cowardly teachers and their cowardly parents who collaborate with a regime because there is profit in it.

If there is one advice to parents in Singapore, it is this. If you can send your children abroad for an education from a young age, do it. If you have to go with them, then do that too. You are hurting your child's character development by raising him in Singapore. It is simply an island run by thugs who rule through placing fear in the minds of its people. You don't want your child to grow up a hypocrite. If you are looking for a child with integrity and principles, you will not find it in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore.

Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
Singaporean by birth in exile
Fremont, California, USA
Tel: 510 491 4375