Singapore island city state government is just like any China city.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Despite official claims of having a Constitution and a parliamentary democracy, Singapore today is just another China city of the Peoples Republic of China.

Although the Constitution of Singapore allows for a multi party democracy, it is no different from China, where it is a one party state under the Communist Party.

In Singapore Lee Kuan Yew has decided a long time ago that his party, the People's Action Party alone will rule Singapore forever.

To enable this, every elections held in the island is a farce. He has carefully cultivated a climate of fear by repeatedly arresting and suing anyone who stood against him, resulting in the vast majority of educated islanders having no desire in any opposition politics.

The handful of those who dare, are only capable of muted protestations and really have no credibility as true courageous politicians, standing on principle.

Just like in China where all newspapers are state controlled, Singapore's newspapers are the same.

The requirement of a government license effectively prevents any free and independent newspaper from ever happening.

One difference between China and Singapore is that China also controls the Internet, while Singapore doesn't enabling the people to get the opposite view if they took the trouble.

Just as in China where the Communist Party has offices all over in both cities and villages, Singapore has their ruling party offices all  over the island, under both their own names and various other names such as Residents Committees, Peoples Association and a litany of others.

In China, the way to succeed is to volunteer your services at the local Communist Party agency and hope to catch the eye of the big wigs. If that happens and your work appreciated, you will be promoted up the ladder, and receiving more money, more benefits, career security, power and fame. It is questionable whether any one of these people do what they do out of altruism or is it for personal gratification, I mean money.

Singapore functions exactly like this. Every Singaporean wanting to succeed in life in Lee Kuan Yew and Son's Singapore should first of all join the local government organization, rub shoulders with the other party supporters, pretend to be doing good work in various social and political projects for the citizens, hope to be selected by Lee Kuan Yew and Sons headhunters, and thereafter hope for better prospects, more money and a better life, thanks to the generosity of their benefactor Mr. Lee and Co.

In Singapore those who serve in these government agencies are conveniently called "Grassroots Leaders". On the other hand if you were one who stood around promoting human rights and free speech, you are labeled a thug.

But you can see the hypocrisy in both the Chinese aspirant in China and the Singaporean one.

Both would claim openly that they are doing all this because they love China or Singapore respectively and it all because of pure civic consciousness.

But the problem is when you question what they are working for. China is a one party police state where everyone is required to parrot the government line and behave like a zombie.

Singapore is no different. It is also a one party state under Lee's Peoples Action Party, a country that denies free speech and expression, prohibits public protests and anyone who publicly advocates opposition to the regime liable to be arrested under the various laws enacted to prevent any opposition to the regime.

Anyone in Singapore who dares to challenge the government openly is branded a thug, a criminal and an enemy of the state. Support of the Peoples Action Party is praised as loyalty to the country while opposition to it tantamount to treason and sedition.

The path to success through supporting the one party police state in Singapore is well known on the ground. Every single Chinese immigrant who lands in Singapore today in planeloads immediately heads to one of these state agencies in the island to volunteer their support, a practice that they were well accustomed to in their erstwhile home in the Peoples Republic of China. I guess it wouldn't matter to them if the government were a bunch of monkeys, as long as they have power and control.

Surely and steadily the plan is to create an entire island of Lee Kuan Yew one party police state supporters while at the same time marginalizing and destroying anyone who thought he had a head on his shoulders and a brain inside it.

Throughout the 1980s while I was living in Singapore, the country of my birth, I realized the Singapore of Lee Kuan Yew is simply wrong in principle and something which I had a duty to oppose.

It is wrong for any country to deny their citizens fundamental human rights and rule as if the Constitution does not exist.

A country can only hope to advance if their people were allowed the right of self determination and fighting for what was just was not only a right but a duty which every human has.

For my troubles, I was systematically subjected to a series of government reprisals, sued for contempt of court, my reputation maligned and literally prevented from practicing my profession of law.

Two years ago, I was disbarred from ever practicing law in the island and branded a thug and a criminal, a reputation which I wear proudly on my shoulders.

As a result of this sustained political education in the island, the entire population of the island, a tiny 2 million or so of locals Singaporeans and another 3 million foreigners, have been reduced to a cowardly, hypocrite and opportunist society where one behaves according to what the state requires.

An average Singaporean is no longer able to engage in any discussion honestly about anything that relates to how he lives and what he thinks.

Any judge you meet in the island would publicly tell you that he is fiercely upholding the law but privately say that he has no respect whatsoever in what he does, which is none other than a rubber stamp for government dictates.

The same with any civil servant, any government employee or for that matter anyone else. Everyone in the island is actually doing, thinking and acting according to the template set out for them by the state, not according to what he or she really believes.

In recent years, the government despite all it does to put their citizens in a straightjacket both in mind and spirit have begun to discover that the election results show an increasing number of Singaporeans voting for the opposition.

Since the government have decided that they alone should rule forever, they had to invent a scheme where even the opposition is actually working for them.

They have done this by actually promoting and co-opting the Workers Party, an opposition party having first of all made a pact with them, that they will in effect support the Peoples Action Party but outwardly appear to the people as an opposition.

At the last election a few years ago, they won as many as 7 seats in Parliament but regardless of how many seats they capture in future elections, they would only be a pseudo Peoples Action Party committed to further their interests, a plan which would serve the regime very well.

It is not I alone who is aware of this perfidy committed against their citizens, many other educated Singaporeans are also fully aware of this state re-education.

Because passports are easily available and an English education system, thousands refusing to live under a one party police state where success requires one to prostitute one's beliefs and principles, they are leaving in droves to the West.

The number of students opting for an education abroad continues to grow and those who have left are not returning to their island. Also, those who have already emigrated are pulling their friends and relatives to join them and this huge brain drain is literally emptying out the local Singapore born educated and skilled leaving only those who are incapable of leaving remaining in that island.

And mind you with a tiny population, not more than perhaps 2 million native born, the island would be hard pressed to withstand anymore of this.

Every single Minister in Lee Kuan Yew's cabinet today is an unmitigated opportunistic cowardly hypocrite.

Take the case of K Shanmugam, the Tamil Minter of Law. At a young age his parents advised him to sacrifice his soul and his mind to the Lees as a sure but disgraceful way to succeed under the regime.

So he assiduously does everything to please the dictatorship. He joins all the necessary government agencies and works hard as a "grassroots leader", Lee's definition for sycophants and bootlickers.

He goes to the Singapore university and either by design or hard work, no one knows which, he passes all his exams and is promptly made a Minister.

In his job, the passes laws to completely criminalize protests or any opposition to the government. In return he is labeled a great lawyer, a great politician and a string of other accolades too numerous to mention.

But does he really believe in denying a free press, fundamental human rights and turning his fellow citizens into a society of slaves? Probably not. But he does this anyway because both he and his parents felt that success should be achieved at any cost, never mind one's principles. It is the same with every other Minister cringing and crawling at the feet of this administration because you achieve success, at any cost.

Today Singapore does not have any thinkers, or even men of principle. They have no chance in Lee's island. You can if you want oppose the system and fight for what you believe and end up miserable broke and living under the bridge somewhere in the island.

But the good news is that even if no one had the courage or naivety, depending on your point of view, to stand up to this administration, the forces prevailing in the island today will under its own volition destroy this regime.

With ever increasing educated and thinking Singaporeans leaving their shores the quality of the average Singaporean will continue to decline.

What will be left in the island is an entire society of people, all of whom are cowards, hypocrites and opportunists and who are poorly educated and unable to think beyond their work and what they will watch on TV that day.

Such a society cannot expect to advance and succeed among the nations of the world which are free, democratic and allow their citizens to think and form opinions on their own without fear of prosecution and arrest.

It will become a society of followers and not leaders and such a society has no hope to achieving even a iota of what the free peoples of the world can achieve.

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