The Singapore Parliament is a white elephant
Ladies and Gentlemen,
If you ever thought Singapore is a
parliamentary democracy, it is not. It is a one party state, with Lee
Kuan Yew's PAP in power since 1959, no less than 50 years; and with him
wielding absolute power and authority. It is a dictatorship.
It
is true, Singapore has a Parliament with elections held every five
years, but in truth these have no real effect at all. All civil
institutions including the judiciary, the civil service, the police and
the media take their orders directly from Lee Kuan Yew. To Lee,
Parliament is merely a nuisance.
The Singapore opposition should
not raise their hopes if they win additional Parliamentary seats other
than the miserable 2 they presently have. Even with 10, 20 or even 30
seats, and regardless of how many Parliamentary speeches they make; as
long as Lee has a Parliamentary majority of one, he will still call the
shots, because he alone has civil society under his thumb.
And
even, in the unlikely chance that the opposition wins a parliamentary
majority, it is more than likely that Lee will still continue to rule,
because, as was said, the institutions that matter, the judiciary, the
civil service, and everything else take their orders from this man.
If
you realize the gravity of the situation, you may feel, and rightly so,
that Singapore is a hopeless case. That you are destined by Providence
to live as Lee's slaves and there is nothing you can do about it. But
this is not so, and there is hope; abundant hope.
The way to
bring about change in today’s Singapore is not by winning seats in
Parliament, even though it is good; it is by demanding justice from
each institution of government, and holding them to account for each
transgression of your rights.
This is what has to be done. If a
Malay or Indian is not permitted to reside at the place of his choice
by the HDB because of illegal racial quotas violative of the
Constitution, the aggrieved citizen should refuse to accept it, and
protest against it; taking pictures and videos of his protest and
putting them up in blogs throughout the island, publicly exposing the
injustice.
The idea is to embarrass the government where they
clearly are violative of your rights. The constitution provides for
equality and prohibits racial discrimination. And in such a case, this
government would find it impossible to justify the discrimination.
If
a citizen is illegally deprived of his CPF retirement savings, the
aggrieved citizen should refuse to take no for an answer, protest at
the very spot, take pictures and videos of it and post it all over the
Internet.
If a Singaporean is deprived of his job because he was
displaced by a foreigner willing to accept lower pay, he should stand
outside Ministry of Manpower or other ministry and protest his loss of
a job, take pictures of it and post it on the Internet.
If the
Tak Boleh Tahan protestors of March 15, 2008 have still not been
returned their cell phones which the police had illegally confiscated,
they should protest outside Cantonment Police Station and not leave
until their cell phones are returned, photograph and film the entire
protest and put it up on blogs all over the island.
If you see
an employer discriminating against older workers, protest at the spot,
take pictures of it and post it all over the island.
The purpose
of this exercise is to shame these public institutions into respecting
the law and treating everyone fairly and impartially. At present, the
HDB feel they can discriminate against Malays and Indians because Lee
has ordered them to do it; their illegal actions become lawful because
of Lee's authority over them. The same with the CPF violating the law,
the Ministry of Manpower and every other public institution.
It
is quite clear that Lee's main tool to remain in absolute dictatorial
control is his absolute power over the judges and the newspapers. If
Singaporeans protest outside the state controlled newspaper offices,
they will be shamed by their misdeeds being exposed through blogs and
videos.
It appears to me, the energy of those opposing this one
man dictatorship should be directed to the institutions of civil
society such as the judiciary to force them to stop oppressing the
citizens. In order to do this, technology has turned out to be a
Godsend. The power of the Internet is something authoritarian
governments cannot overcome, and citizens should use it to the fullest
to force their governments to see reason.
The Internet has in
fact made a great difference for the better even in authoritarian
Middle Eastern countries. I have heard in Egypt, even a country under
the iron grip of Mubarak, had to concede a little, when a blogger took
a video of the police arresting some people and abusing them with their
batons, and put it up on his website. Immediately thereafter, his
website began to get several thousand hits each day, with almost the
entire country up in arms about the incident, forcing the Mubarak
government to take action against those officers. Were it not for the
blog, nothing would have happened to the policemen.
Riad
al-Turk, a Syrian opposition leader suffered many years of imprisonment
for his opposition to the government. But with the Internet exposing
the injustice publicly, the Syrian government eventually had no choice
but to release him.
It is for these reasons that the Lee Kuan
Yew government is terrified of public protests. In Singapore, a small
built up, completely wired island, which depends on international trade
and business; any adverse publicity involving the denial of human
rights can be very damaging. And realizing this, the opposition should
take full advantage of this and push this government to its limit of
either accepting the truth or resisting it at their peril.
They
are now clearly in the defensive as their actions show. You will
recall, some years ago at the CPF protests in front its offices in
Robinson Road, to disperse a mere 4 unarmed peaceful protestors holding
nothing more than placards, the police officer John Baptist, a man
totally undeserving of such a biblical name, deployed his Red Maria
Police vans with about 50 armed police in full riot gear!
When
such an over reaction, almost comical, on the part of the police was
captured on camera and prominently displayed all over Singapore on the
Internet, they realized that they had egg on their faces. Ever since
then, even for the larger protest of 50 at Tak Boleh Tahan, the police
began to use the soft touch instead; this time no riot police, no
police uniforms and women plain clothes police were used to arrest the
protestors!
This government is finding it increasing difficult
to deny the legitimate demands of its citizens when their actions are
being glaringly exposed to public scrutiny through the Internet. This
is something this government cannot overcome since it cannot stop the
Internet. No matter what, the Internet is here it stay and Lee whether
he like it or not has to live with it. And he is finding that
increasingly uncomfortable.
Since Dr. Chee's party now has
extensive experience in organizing protests, protestors could
collaborate with him to hold it at the offending location, pre-arrange
with video cameraman and photographers and immediately put up the
images on the Internet. If the protests attract police retaliation,
their injustice can be visually exposed. It is my belief that if this
done on a sustained basis, this or any other oppressive government will
have to listen. They have no choice.
Trying to change Singapore
through winning more Parliamentary seats may eventually be possible.
Change may happen if Lee is dead or if the opposition wins a majority.
But if you want to make it happen a little faster, protest take
pictures and keep embarrassing this government. That way, you leave
them no choice.
Gopalan Nair
How many times must i tell you this? There are only 25 online users at the moment and most of us have already heard of such articles a lot of times. And we have gotten sick of it already.
If you post at sgclub.com / local_affairs, you are going to reach out to more people.
FirePig, since you visit these other forums, why don't you do some propaganda work there to wake the people up?
They are still sleeping.
You cannot expect only one person to do all the propaganda work.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/
U talk so easy protest? U change citizenship and enjoy in USA, and we suffer here, u better come back and fight for us here otherwise u keep writing is no use.
pls continue in the 1001 existing and repeating threads
webspace is precious.