Ladies and Gentlemen,
Lee Kuan Yew deceased, has to be credited with Singapore of today, a thoroughly fascist boring and obedient island. It is a society where any divergent views cannot be tolerated. Everyone has to accept the Lee Kuan Yew concept to survive. Which is this. The ruling elite decide laws for you, You are not permitted to openly criticize them, You are not to have strong individual opinion and do things that they do in the West such as openly protesting, You are not permitted to openly make speeches criticizing them or else you will be sued by Kangaroo courts and bankrupted and jailed, You have to appreciate what they do for you such as building shoe-box houses for you to live and trains for you travel, You have to accept that your rulers are wise and full of wisdom and you as a child should obey and not behave as unruly Westerners.
And if you accept this and you have an education, and if you sufficiently show your support for them by volunteering at their state grass roots organizations, you will, if lucky be selected to rule over your fellow men and paid astronomical salaries. Lee Kuan Yew's Peoples Action Party is like a brotherhood. They take very good care of their supporters. Once selected you are taken care for life. If you succeed at elections and become a minister, you get millions of dollars. Even if you lose you get millions because they will give you a similar job at astronomical salaries anyway. And that security and luxury that you have is for life.
On the other hand if you are seen to openly challenge them, you are ruined for life. You are sued jailed and bankrupted. You are thrown out of your job. They will make sure that you will never succeed in the island. You are literally condemned for life.
For a foreigner in Singapore, it would be puzzling to see why this society accepts a life such as this without complaint. It is true, they don't complain. They have not complained for decades. You never see any open protest against the government. You never see any public speeches against the government. You don't see any criticism against the government in print. Yet Singapore is a place where their political leaders are openly corrupt. They pay themselves millions and simply justify the corruption by calling it a salary. The laws make it illegal to protest, to speak publicly or to organize publicly without a license. And licenses are never granted. The entire media in the island is state controlled, including all newspapers, TV and radio stations and magazines. To a foreigner living in the West, such a state of affairs is intolerable. It is like living in Nazi Germany. Yet these people are comfortable with such a life. They have no complaints. They have had no complaints for decades.
Such a brainwashed society has been created through years of Lee Kuan Yew's behavior training practice manuel. Like you would train a dog. Reward of obedience. The stick of disobedience.
And the forced submission and brain washing was assiduously and relentlessly worked upon the society for years as history will tell. I remember firstly JB Jeyaretnam. He was a brilliant lawyer but unfortunately a believer in democracy and therefor against Lee Kuan Yew's fascism paradise. So he was promptly destroyed. The Kangaroo courts were ordered to finish him off with trumped up defamation charges imprisonment and bankruptcy. And then there was Chee Soon Juan. Similar story. And then there were countless others in the island's short history. I too happened to be, when I was there, a thorn on their side. Their Kangaroo judges were, as expected, released upon me. I had to face numerous professional discipline charges as a lawyer. I was suspended from practicing law there for 2 years. Eventually after I left Lee Kuan Yew's island for settlement in America, I was jailed for 3 months when I returned for a holiday and subsequently disbarred in the island as a lawyer. I am of course practicing law in America and am still on the rolls of lawyers in England.
In the last few years with the advent of the Internet, the disaffected began to criticize in blogs. But that too has stopped. Of course in my case, they cant do anything to me while I am in the US writing this blog as they have no power to stop this. However if I wrote this within Singapore, I would of course be arrested and put away. Others recently within the island who wrote critical blogs have all been silenced. Last year, Roy Ngerng a young man who criticized the government on how they run the state pension fund known as the CPF was sued for defamation and ordered to pay $150,000.00 dollars. But they weren't really interested in the money as is always they case. The purpose is to permanently silence the critic because they don't want any criticism. In the case of Roy Ngerng, this was achieved by allowing him to pay the sum in instalments of a mere $150.00 a month over 20 years, and then the amount is increased to $1,000.00 a month until the amount is fully paid. You see the purpose of doing this of course. In this way Roy Ngerng will be shut out for good for the reminder of this life! The moment he criticizes, they will either bankrupt him or arrest him.
Even more recently 2 persons, one Australian and one Singaporean were arrested and charged for sedition for having written blogs in their The Real Singapore. The woman an Australian pleaded guilty and has been sent to jail for 10 months. As for the Singaporean her husband he has pleaded not guilty and is facing trial as we speak. Of course he would be found guilty and sent away. What else can one expect in Kangaroo Courts.
All this is done on purpose. It is done not only to silence any critic. But it is primarily done to mould human behavior and to tailor the brain into the way the state wants you to think. The purpose is to clearly instill in the minds of the public that opposition to the regime is futile. You cannot succeed. If you are wise, you should remember which side of the bread is buttered (Lee Kuan Yew's often quoted phrase). And this purpose has handsomely succeeded for the sort of people who still remain in the island.
But the Singaporean regime continues to pay a very heavy price for their forced repression.
I say, still remaining in the island. This is because this whole idea of brainwashing which they adopt is something which will ultimately fail. Fascism is not a concept that is likely to succeed in this modern age. Look at Saudi Arabia. Anyone who criticizes the regime is arrested and punished and the general prevailing philosophy is to submit and obey. But at what cost. The oil revenue, their only means of survival is depleting and young Saudis are either leaving or are getting emboldened. It is worse for the rulers in Singapore island. There is no oil, cheap or otherwise, and their only means of revenue is what the islanders make or through foreign investment in the island. And worse, the island is very small and the population tiny.
On both grounds the island is faltering. Increasing numbers of English educated Singaporeans are being being disillusioned. They realize there is no need for them to live this way. Why should anyone have to live under a fascist regime and accept that their rulers are always right? The reality today is that ever increasing young men are leaving for settlement abroad. At the same time the lack of any social security safety net causes people not to have any children. The island has the lowest birth rate in the world. And the rate of emigration is also highest in the world, an unbearable situation for an already tiny society. Due to these multitude of problems the tiny local native population continues to shrink and being replaced by recently arrived economic migrants from China whose numbers have overtaken the local population.
The problem that Singapore faces is that the locals have no respect for their government. How could they when their own leaders are openly corrupt and unashamedly justify their corruption and behave like thugs against their own population. And how could the state justify the denial of fundamental human rights such as free speech and expression or the lack of the rule of law as can be seen in the hundreds of politically motivated verdicts.
In the end the society slowly becomes one with a single ideology, that of the government. That is the only way to survive. In Hitler's Nazi Germany you had to support Hitler. In Singapore you are left with no choice but to support the rulers. This is fascism where no contrarian opinion is tolerated. Even if there are pockets of independent thinkers, they are slowly eliminated while the island marches to one that has only one way to think, that of the government.
Such a society cannot succeed in this modern world where invention innovation and idealism is what drives nations. Whereas Singapore is moving backwards into a North Korea in South East Asia. If Singapore is able to continue to survive today, it is only because foreign countries wanting a cheap compliant labor find such a society attractive for investment. But even they are now realizing that there is no need to use such compliant labor to succeed. Many western companies are either deciding to manufacture in their home countries or moving to countries which are democratic as such labor is more more appreciated, more politically correct and gives greater value to their manufactured products. In the US, a label showing "Made in the US" sells better than "Made in Bangladesh" because it was made with decent wages and decent working conditions. As countries around the world begin to realize that Singapore workers are treated no better than North Korea, so will their products decrease in value.
As long as the Singaporean rulers refuse to allow democracy in the island or allow their people the right of self determination, it will continue to slide towards lesser productivity and competitiveness because there is only one philosophy in the island, that of Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore.
Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
A Singaporean in Exile
Fremont, California USA
Tel: 510 491 8525
Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com
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