Decades of repression by one party Singapore dictatorship takes it's toll

Ladies and Gentlemen,

From Chia Thye Poh, Singapore's longest serving political prisoner in the 1960s, to Dr. Lee Swee Cho to JB Jeyaretnam to Chee Soon Juan to myself, Gopalan Nair and to a long list of others, too numerous to mention, Lee Kuan Yew and now his son, have ruled the island of Singapore with an iron hand, jailing, bankrupting and destroying anyone who came in his way to ensure their continued rule.

To achieve his aim, he hijacked every government employee, the entire police force and the compliant ever willing corrupt judiciary to achieve his ends.

Today any semblance of a real opposition or independent thinkers are totally absent. JB Jeyaretnam is dead, Chee Soon Juan of the Singapore Democratic Party is silenced, Tang Liang Hong has fled the island leaving no one in the island to question the actions of Lee Kuan Yew, now senile and gravely ill and his son.

Today, Singapore courts are nothing more than the tools for Lee and his son to silence criticism.

The Constitution is turned into a piece of scrap paper with no human rights at all.

For almost everything, you need a police permit which, by the way, they always refuse.

Permit to speak, permit to own a printing press, permit to protest, permit to assemble, all of which has never ever been granted, which is why the island has not seen a peaceful protest for decades.

Chee Soon Juan, the only one with any balls,  who used to do it has been repeatedly imprisoned which is why he too has stopped completely.

Today the island has the calm of the cemetery.

But this sort of open and blatant repression and abuse of power takes it toll on the one party government. It has to.

Today except for the good news that we read on a daily basis in the state controlled press in the island, in substance, the island is going to the dogs.

The highly publicized repression of government critics such as JB Jeyaretnam and even myself is obviously repulsive to every Singaporean with any decency.

Everyone knows JB Jeyaretanm is no criminal and branding him so results in Lee Kuan Yew government and it's law courts losing all credibility.

As a result citizens, who find such abuse repulsive and abhorrent,  leaving the island and doing so in greater and greater numbers for settlement in the West, leaving only those unable to do so, meaning the unskilled, remaining.

In the past, the government, including Lee Kuan Yew himself used to visit the major cities in the West such as Sydney and Melbourne pleading with the Singaporean Diaspora to return with purveying sentiments such as the need to serve their motherland.

It seems, none of that worked.

Not only did no overseas Singaporean wanted to return, the numbers leaving have spiked even more.

And the people have shown their abhorrence and revulsion to this sort of government by other ways too.

The island has the lowest fertility rate in the world today with people refusing to marry and couples having no children or on the rare occasion just one child, which not only fails to replace even the parents, it roundly reduces the number of Singaporeans in total.

In the past, alarmed with this phenomenon, which can literally cause an island with no more than 1 million locals to literally disappear, they began various government campaigns to encourage marriage and procreation, some of them comical.

In desperation they even began showing porn movies late at night in the hope that couples after watching it would go and have sex; not to mention the generous tax breaks given to coupes with children.

After they found that despite all this, after screening these porn movies at night and giving generous tax breaks, Singapore's still refused to marry or have any children, they have given up trying.

Such nonsense of porn movies and such like is no longer being mentioned in the state controlled newspapers anymore.

Lee and son have finally given up and are resigned to the fact of the languishing Singaporean.

In desperation, they have resorted to importing unprecedented numbers of foreigners into the island to replace those who are dying and leaving; otherwise there won't be anyone left.

But this wholesale importation of foreigners, whom they conveniently call "foreign talent" mainly from China brings with it it's own set of problems.

Chinese from China are a people who have ingrained in them the propensity to protest.

Protests happen everyday in China as can be seen in the protests recently outside Malaysia Embassy in Beijing over the disappearance of flight MH 370.

And those coming to Singapore bring with them this practice, something which Lee is totally afraid of.

Recently Chinese bus drivers went on strike over bad working conditions and we can expect more of that causing the government to be so terrified as to wet their pants.

One can see why the government is so terrified.

The island is jam packed like sardines with people and any civil disobedience anywhere in the tiny island would inevitably spread across the island and would probably unseat Lee Kuan Yew and his son.

Just a few months ago, another incident, unheard of in the island's history occurred.

About 400 hundred Indian works rioted setting fire to police vehicles.

Many involved were deported with about 20 still in custody awaiting trial.

If that is not bad enough, today's state controlled newspaper carries a story that some Bangladeshi workers have rioted with others over a cricket match on television.

It appears rioting and fighting has become a common occurrence in a previously regimented and subdued island, thanks to the huge numbers of "foreign talent".

As result of the total dearth of locals, the conscript army cannot find any necessary numbers of recruits leaving the armed forces of Singapore understaffed becoming a threat to national security.

Another reason for this is the people's anger against the double standard adopted by the government in national service, not to mention the natural dislike of the military by ethnic Chinese.

Singaporeans have to serve national service but foreign immigrants who become Singaporeans are exempted.

This unjust double standards, causes many young men to deliberately abscond or desert national service by going abroad and refusing to return.

Even the large numbers of recent immigrants given almost instant citizenship to make up the numbers is not solving their problem.

Most of them who accept citizenship have no interest in ever sinking roots in the island and are in reality merely opportunists and transient workers, who leave as soon as they find a better opportunity elsewhere.

There are reports to suggest that most of these recent immigrant turned citizens are actually using the island as a stepping stone to greener pastures such as Australia.

These are insurmountable problems like a malignant cancer which is spreading across the tiny island and destroying it from it's very foundations.

Periodically we read reports in the state controlled press that Singapore has won some awards such as Singapore Airport being the best in the world.

Frankly such awards mean nothing for the average Singaporean whose life is no longer controlled by him, but is completely at the mercy of Lee Kuan Yew and son.

With almost no citizen participation in government, with a system that governs from top down, with a thoroughly discredited government and a judiciary, where their leaders are the most corrupt in the world paying themselves millions while the average person can hardly make ends meet, I think the damage has been done.

JB Jeyaretnam, Chia Thye Poh and the long list of others whom Lee Kuan Yew has persecuted is now beginning to take this regime down.

With the non stop emigration to the west and the very best among Singaporeans overwhelmingly opting to leave rather than stay, I think we have done very well in putting this regime in their right place and showing to the world that behind the veneer of the state controlled press, it is nothing but a farce on it's way down fast .

Of course they would go on writing self praise and the self proclaimed grandiose achievements in their state controlled press but other than that, they are incapable of doing much more. Just as  Pravda and Izvestia of the former Soviet Union, it is simply propaganda which will die a natural death.

And as for me, I can write this free from arrest in Fremont California because they cannot sue me here and hope to succeed. We do not have Kangaroo courts as in Singapore.

Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
A Singaporean in Exile
Fremont California USA
Tel: 510 491 8525
Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com