Singapore wants obedient compliant citizens.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Despite the official Constitution in the books, for the last 50 years since independence, the island is run literally by the Lee Kuan Yew family, I mean, the 91 year old moribund dictator and his son, assisted by handpicked Ministers Civil Servants, Policemen and Judges.

The government is not run particularly by any pre-existing rules but only ones they themselves made which concentrates on order and obedience. Singaporeans are not allowed to strike, to protest, to criticize the government or their Ministers and are required to obey all laws at all times.

Whereas other more developed democracies like the US, Canada or Europe which gives great importance to the balance of between civil liberties and the need for law and order, in Singapore civil liberties are irrelevant; only order matters.

As evidence of this, in Singapore the concept of probable cause for arrest, a foundationally important requirement is totally absent. One can be questioned walking along the street by any illiterate policeman for any reason whatsoever at his whim, and if the necessary answers are not forthcoming, arrested. This turns the island literally into a police state where all powerful policemen like thugs can roam the streets at will and arrest anyone they please who wouldn't dance to the tune.

After being arrested, his conviction in court is a bygone conclusion. Singapore courts do not have a jury and every single judge is a hand-picked Kangaroo for his total loyalty, like a Nazi judge who has to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler.

The average Singaporean is totally without redress for anything done to him by Lee and his minions in his daily life. Of course the law courts are there but don't try bringing suit for redress; you won't succeed. What happens is this. You can bring whatever lawsuit you want against Lee Kuan Yew and his friends in government. The judge will carefully listen to your case, all the evidence and at the end of it all, he will merely say something like "You failed to prove your case". Period.

Lee Kuan Yew and his government have been abusing the legal system for so long, bringing defamation of character lawsuits resulting in million dollar awards against his opponents that today no one in the island has any confidence in the legal system. They simply know that you cannot expect to get any justice in the White Elephants Courts unless of course you happen to be connected to Lee or his family in which case the equation completely changes. They are simply above the law.

In Singapore you are completely at the mercy of the Lees. You can be denied the HDB flat of your choice with impunity, you can be denied a school of your choice for your child with impunity, you can be denied a job or fired from one with impunity, you can be deported with impunity, you can be maligned in the state controlled press with impunity. Simply put, they can do anything they want with you with impunity and there is nothing you can do, because there are no laws to protect you, no bill of rights to treat you fairly and no one in Singapore with any courage to stand up to the powers to be on your behalf.

If you are such a person as to be totally obedient and subservient to the Lee family and consider them simply your masters, you should have no problem. In fact such citizens are the very ones they are looking for. If you are prepared to simply do as you are told, do the job you are given without complaint and obey Lee's laws as and when they are amended, keep your mouth shut and go about your business, not only would you have no problem, the government would be highly appreciative. You would be a model citizen, Lee Kuan Yew style.

The government is not interested in your opinion, unless it corresponds to their own. You are particularly warned to keep views opposite to that of the Lees to yourself because if you persist, you will probably be facing a lawsuit and the consequent victimization and harassment which will inevitably follow.

But then you may ask, somebody has to do the thinking and decision making. Well for one thing, it is not you. In Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, leadership is not a process of citizens formulating opinions and creating grassroots support for political action.

Lee Kuan Yew selects those who have shown support for him, places them at rigged elections which they always win, and the next instant, viola, they become leaders with a license to decide the laws for you. You as an ordinary citizen has no part in this equation. Your job is simply to obey what they tell you, keep your mouth shut and go about your business.

This sort of an existence would naturally be distasteful for anyone with a head on his shoulders. That is why the Singapore population can be divided into certain groups. The average layman is literally a clueless dummy and a thoroughly contended human being.

He has almost nothing in his head. He is not aware of any rights, never heard of the Constitution and believes that Lee Kuan Yew's police have the right to do anything to you and you are powerless. As far as he, the clueless Singaporean, is concerned, he believes that democracy only requires elections every 5 years and nothing more. This group is Lee Kuan Yew and Son's favorite because they will never be a threat to them. The plan is, as long as they are clueless dummies, they can rule forever.

The other group is the small minority who are aware that Lee Kuan Yew has turned the island into a police state. They find life in Singapore distasteful and most have left for settlement abroad. Lee Kuan Yew and his son detest this group and consider them "quitters" for having abandoned their island which needs them most. But how can you, on the one hand, demand absolute obedience and at the same time expect them to have any brains?

Those who leave are the best and the brightest which a small tiny island like Singapore needs for its very existence. It is a group they can ill afford to lose. In the past Lee Kuan Yew, his son and various ministers have gone to the major cities in the West to coax and cajole them to return but since no one wants to, they have literally given that up. In fact this ever growing brain drain will be the very reason for the island's demise.

The next group are the lowly paid construction workers. Singapore is not interested in them since they are merely transitory and are not allowed to settle in the island. If they do anything even the most innocuous thing to annoy the state, they are instantly deported.

Lastly you have the highly paid Caucasian bankers and other professionals. They of course are fully aware of what Singapore really is, just a police state. But they have no concern about this. They are there merely to make money and go home. It would have made no difference if they had been in the darkest depths of Africa. They are not here either to tell Africa or Singapore how to live.

The moribund 91 year old Lee Kuan Yew is about to die. We have not heard of him for some time. Whether he is dying sitting up or lying down is any body's guess. The big question is what happens after he goes.

In an island where there are no real rules but what one man decides in a rubber stamp Parliament, it becomes questionable whether after his demise, Lee Kuan Yew's son will be allowed to continue to make the rules, or whether others will obey those rules, or even if the million dollar minions who dance to his  tune will continue dancing.

For any country to have a peaceful seamless transition from one government to another, or upon the death of a dictator, you need a set of rules upon which to go by. In Singapore you have none. What you have are rigged elections every five years where any real opposition is maligned and threatened with defamation lawsuits leaving only the handpicked minions to become Ministers.

With JB Jeyaretnam and Chee Soon Juan disqualified from elections even before they could even run, with repeated defamation actions before the Kangaroo judges and bankruptcy, the average Singaporean has lost all faith in elections Lee Kuan Yew style.

Lee Kuan Yew's son, who struts around the island like the prize rooster, thanks to his father, he is no different from the Russian thug, Vladimir Putin. And just look at what is happening in Putin's Russia. Except for the city of Moscow or St Petersburg, the entire Russian countryside lives even worse than any third world sub Saharan African country. Except for oil revenues, and some corrupt oligarchs, it has nothing, absolutely nothing. This is what happens when some dictator thinks he is too good to be true, and their people are no better than dummies.

These are indeed interesting times and I don't think we have long to wait. Everything will change upon the 91 year old dictators' death. But the million dollar question is how and in what direction. In an tiny island where the local Singaporeans are not more than 1 million and the vast majority are foreigners, one scenario is for the foreigners foreign businesses and capital to flee the island followed by an abrupt collapse of the entire economy.

I am holding my breath and I think you should too.

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