Ladies and Gentlemen,
Singapore has indeed a unique "rule of law". From Lee Kuan Yew's Minister for Law to his Attorney General and the lowest ranking judge, you can hear the same song repeated ad nauseam about Singapore's admirable "rule of law".
But it is certainly not what we generally understand it to mean. It an "Alice in Wonderland type rule of law", one which has a very lenient regimen for Lee Kuan Yew and his friends, Singapore's doctors in high places, lawyers, rich businessmen, high ranking civil servants and such like.
It is a demonstrably harsher regimen for ordinary folks, truck drivers, bus conductors and security guards.
Singapore's state controlled press the Straits Times online edition of Jan 20, 2010 has the story "Doc's jail term cut to a fine".
A shocking background. Singapore's official newspaper the Straits Times on Oct 22, 2009 had reported the following "Sometime after 1.30 am her (Dr. Lim Kay Hian's) stationary car, with engine running, headlights turned on and hazard lights off, was spotted on the third lane of the Pan island Expressway in the direction of Tuas, near the Clementi Avenue 56 exit". When checked on by a policeman she smelt of alcohol and was arrested. She is a doctor, a senior consultant radiologist at KK Woman's and Children's Hospital.
Ordinarily anyone else who had been responsible such a serious life endangering act due to alcohol would have been sent off to jail for no less than 2 years. It was a deliberate life threatening act, a stationary car in the fast lane of an expressway!
And had it been a person in a position of authority, any other court would have added on a few more years because greater responsibility is expected from them.
In this case, it was bad enough that this woman was only sentenced to 2 weeks jail in October 2009, a thoroughly inadequate sentence.
But even that was not enough for the Singapore style "rule of law", where if you are the elite and privileged, you can do almost anything you want and get way with it. And that is exactly what happened here yesterday.
The same newspaper's online edition reports on Jan 20, 2010 "Doc's jail term cut to fine". The doctor naturally appealed, resulting in even the 2 weeks jail term, thoroughly inadequate as it was, is set aside. The Appeals Court decides she does not have to go to jail at all, reducing it to a mere fine of $5,000.00. Although she was banned for driving for 4 years as well, this would not cause her any real inconvenience in Singapore, a city flush with the ubiquitous ever present cheap taxis.
Coming to think of it, if you are not a Lee Kuan Yew critic like Dr. Chee Soon Juan, Singapore is indeed a very pleasant place to be in. You can do almost whatever you want and get away with it each time; get drunk and drive automobiles, kill motorcyclists while driving and talking on cell phones, get drunk and beat up taxi drivers whenever you want. Go have a party in Singapore, if you are lucky either to be rich and powerful or if you are a foreign businessman. (All these injustices can be gleaned in Singapore's official newspaper the Straits Times, some of which I have reported in this blog).
By the way it is interesting that I predicted this doctor's getting away with this crime with clockwork accuracy. See my blog post "Will Singapore's corrupt legal system send drunk driver Dr. Irene Lim Kay Hian to jail? I think not" of Wed October 21, 2009.
Gopalan Nair
39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1
Fremont, CA 94538, USA
Tel: 510 657 6107
Fax: 510 657 6914
Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com
Blog: http://singaporedissident.blogspot.com/
Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Nothing that S'pore's Mickey Mouse courts do comes as much of a surprise any longer. People can only shake their heads in disgust and hurry past holding their noses as they watch the rich and connected literally get away with murder, as in the case of a state-controlled newspaper's editor recently:
A Shin Min Daily News editor Michelle Lim, who was found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving, will now serve ONE day in jail. (CNA, 7 April 2009 2131 hrs)
Control of the nation by its elite regime is now virtually absolute, right down to legislating to legitimise human organ trading in order to get a multi-millionaire fat cat off the hook for illegally buying a kidney. The accounts of butchers eagerly sharpening their scalpels and pressuring next-of-kin to turn off life-support so that they can proceed with the macabre harvest are terrifying. These are the words of Ms Yenny Young, the wife of Mr Tong Kok Wai, one of the victims of the fatal road traffic accident on the morning of 15 December 2009 at Bukit Panjang involving a vehicle from the Romanian embassy (emphasis mine):
Actually it’s not my decision only. It’s a decision made by the entire family. We discussed this a lot of time before we finally decided to let him go. We wished we could have more time but we were given deadline until 25 Dec only. As for the organ donation, since he is a PR and did not opt out for HOTA, he HAD to donate his organ. We were against the idea as we wanted him to pass away naturally — meaning the heart stop by itself. But the HOTA staff did not allow us to do so, they kept on pressuring us to take off his life support. We begged repeatedly but they refuse to listen to our pleas. In the end, we got the HOTA co-ordinator in charge into trouble too as he took pity on us. We think that since the way my husband passed away is too inhuman, we wanted to let him go in peace and in one piece.. but .. law is law … there is nothing much I can do to against the law...
[interview with Ms Yenny Young]
For the uninformed, HOTA is the Human Organ Transplant Act which mandates that your spare parts MUST be 'donated' - unless you opted OUT before your unfortunate accident or state-sanctioned execution. Needless to say, this is donation Singapore-style. Won't be too long before your organs become legally fair game for the unscrupulous sickly personage who needs a tissue match. "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee, Singaporean."
Stupid, blind, greedy, Singaporean sheeple. Nauseated? Don't complain, it is the Singapore Rule of Law you tacitly voted to support by keeping Lee and his Nazis in power for the last 50 years. Now he will literally devour the flesh of you and yours. Quite legally. And you laughed at how corrupt the Malaysians are with their PM up to his neck in the murder of the Mongolian model!
LOL. With all due respect nair, the lady doctor didn't deserve jail.
It won't be hard to predict that she won't go to jail because her case of DUI is not that serious. There were a lot of mitigating factors..go read the judgement..she was rushing to attending to her family member who was dying or seomthing like that...she also has a long history of performing charitable acts...she also was a first time offender...
in hong kong, japan, she wouldn't go to jail as well
justice was served in this instance and the punishment fitted the crime. the sentence was appropriate.
Animal Farm Rings a bell?
Some are more equal than others...
I wonder why during my NS days some people are single out as "white horses". I guess some soldiers' lives are worth more than others. A hawker's son for the frontline (ie. high risk job) a doctor's son for telling the first bugger to go in front.
Unlike India, Singapore don't have a complex cast system. Ours is VERY straight forward. We have only the Elites Caste and everyone else are really the untouchable.
Remember the movie Matrix? I was laughing so hard when they actually showed it in Singapore back in the 90s. If you want to fight the system, you first have to be "unplugged" and see how rotten the world you live in really was.
This site is trying to help fellow Singaporeans to be unplugged so that they can see the reality of the bubble world they live in.
I was unplugged years ago, after I graduated from Boarding school in Australia and served as a Lt. in my beloved Army and Country. My patriotism was to the Core, my dad was ardent PAP man and ultra nationaist! Jeez, I was not allow to fly any other ariline but SQ. When I graduated from UK and move home to try start a career only to be under appreciated and treated like a second class citizen. Against my family's will, I decided to "unplugged" myself and move overseas. I thank god I am a free man here EVERYDAY.
AhBeng in Europe.
Apart from Dr Lim Kay Hian's case, there are also other cases which you may not be aware of. One of the most blatantly orchestrated case if you can recall is that of Eddie Taw Cheng Kong. He was a GIC manager based in Hongkong since 1991. In May 1997, he was sentenced to 9 years jail and fined 2.4 million dollars for accepting bribes from companies whose shares were purchased by GIC. In a subsequent appeal, after some long cooling off period and in a low profile mode, he was acquitted by the then Chief Justice Yong Pung How. A very vague excuse like he committed the crime outside Singapore was used to acquit Eddie Taw. Eddie Taw was an executive working with SIA before he was recruited to join GIC by Yong Pung How when Yong was the Managing Director of GIC. Eddie Taw was actually one of the blue-eye boys of Yong. Had it been anybody else, it would not be at all possible to get away scot-free like the way Eddie Taw did.
very clear picture of a secret class system in Singapore. Different sets of laws for different classes. On top we have the ruling class of Papists and their underlings, the next we have the professionals and civil serpents, this is followed by PRs, expats, fallen talents and diplomats, then followed by middle class Singapore born citizens and the bottom will be the working class local born citizens. I wonder if the police arrested a working class Singaporean who is recently retrenched and has a family of elderly and young children to feed, will his appeal be successful or even considered?
This is not a recent phenomenon. In 1990 or 1991 a lecturer from St. Andrew’s JC knocked down a father and his 2 young sons at Lower Delta. The father and a son was killed and the other son seriously injured. Apparently she dropped something and bent down to pick it up from the floor of the car while driving and she lost control and ran up the pedestrain path. She was an active member of community work and you know what she got? A fine and ban from driving! The judge passed the sentence said she contributed much to community work so he exercised leniency! Can you believe that? I hope she has nightmares for the rest of her life!
We have an idea how much wealth the dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, amassed during his reign.
Can anyone shed any light as to how much money the LKY dynasty has salted away?
$100 million?
$100 billion?
Clearly, anonymous people have no say in this conversation because they are too cowardly to place their name in the conversational box. People who insist that people are favored by the Singapore government do not know their place as a Singaporean and next, as a citizen of this country. Only Singaporeans are truly afraid of the law because they have been brought up as half-assed wimps, if you had something to say about the court of law, bring it up to the Straits Times, not post it on some blogger site.
I'm reading an old comment from Jan 2010, by anonymous regarding the Eddie Taw Cheng Kong case and his subsequent acquittal. Anonymous, are you saying the judge who acquitted him of bribery at the GIC was, at one stage, the General manager of the GIC? Were they one and the same person?
Post a Comment