Thursday, July 30, 2009

Singapore. A useless legal system, beyond the reach of the ordinary man

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Singapore Island's state controlled newspaper the Straits Times Online edition of July 31, 2009 has this story, "Deposit for appeal doubles. Bigger sum to keep pace with costs likely to be awarded". This is not the first time court costs in that island has increased; it has steadily been increasing over the years to what it is today, completely unaffordable levels. You will not be wrong to say that the courts are beyond the reach of the ordinary man. They serve only the rich.

I do not know the exact figures. While I was in Singapore last year for 6 months, many had told me this. A court case in the Subordinate Courts requires many hundreds of dollars in filing fees. In addition, each day of trial requires several hundred dollars to be paid to the court each day. In the High Court, it is double that. Several thousand dollars. Each trial day in the court there requires the payment of thousands of dollars each day. And unlike in the US or other civilized countries, there is no provision of fee waiver for indigents.

The result of all this is to deny ordinary people access to the courts unless they have the money. How meritorious your case is irrelevant. As is said in common parlance "No money no talk". In this case "No money, go to Hell".

This is not the only fact keeping litigants away from Singapore's courts. The other is the lack of respect for these courts. Repeatedly Lee Kuan Yew's government has over the years given full publicity in their state controlled press for political show trials, like they did in Russia, deliberately reminding the people again and again that there is no rule of law.

You recall how much publicity the entire state controlled media gave to the late JB Jeyaretnam, Lee Kuan Yew's arch opponent being humiliated, punished, sent to jail, bankrupted and impoverished by Lee kuan Yew's judges. Make no mistake about this. Lee Kuan Yew while perverting justice for his political ends in these many show trials was all along fully aware that people knew JB Jeyaretnam was innocent. What Lee Kuan Yew was doing was to send a message. He wants people to know that despite the law, Lee Kuan Yew can finish anyone he wants, like he did to JB Jeyaretnam.

It was the same old story with all his political opponents, Francis Seow, Chia Thye Poh, Tang Liang Hong, the honest decent people falsely termed "Marxist Conspirators", myself, Jufrie Mahmood, Dr. Chee Soon Juan! Lee's actions were, as you can see deliberate. He wanted to firmly and surely send the message that there is no rule of law in Singapore. He, Lee Kuan Yew is the law, take it or leave it. And with this he has succeeded in instilling in every humble Singaporean's mind that the law is there for the PAP elite and sympathisers. The law is not for Dr. Chee or any of us.

With both these hurdles, money for one and government influence over a corrupt judiciary for another, the law is not only inaccessible because of the expense, it is also unattractive because of the the judiciary's corruption, being beholden to the dictator Lee Kuan Yew.

It is no suprise therefore to see that Singapore has insufficient lawyers, less that 3,000; and people have become so helpless with no recourse to the law, they just live accepting anything that this dictatorship throws at them in silence. What else can they do in this hopeless situation, with this hopeless lives they live?

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.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Is Singapore's Law Minister just doing these things for the sake of it, or what!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Singapore's state controlled newspaper has in it's online edition of July 28, 2008this report "Views on arbitration act sought". It seems, Lee Kuan Yew's recently handpicked Singapore Minister for Law, K Shanmugam, has even more grandiose ideas. This time, he wants public feedback on internationalizing the Singapore Arbitration Act with a view to making Singapore an international arbitration center.

It is quite obvious he has run out any real ideas. Now it seems he goes through the motion of doing something or the other, just for the sake of pleasing his master, Lee Kuan Yew.

This is not the first time this man has come up with such high sounding ideas for an island such as this where there is no free press whatsoever; where there is no freedom of speech expression or assembly at all even though the Constitution guarantees it; where any critic of Lee Kuan Yew or his family members is always sued and sent to prison; where it is very clear by anyone with eyes or ears that this is another Burma or North Korea. Yet, ladies and gentlemen, believe it or not, this man persists in telling us that he intends to make it a world class arbitration center!

As a lawyer, being Minister for Law, does he not know that parties will avoid places perceived to lack the rule of law, to resolve disputes, since obviously they cannot trust the impartiality of the tribunal? Is he not aware that the International Bar Association put out a 72 page report lambasting Singapore for it's complete lack of judicial impartiality or the rule of law? Is he not aware that the same article of the respected Association reported the Singapore judiciary systematically abuses the rule of law and denies fundamental human rights to Lee Kuan Yew's critics? Is he not aware that that the same Association clearly stated the judges of Singapore, one example being Judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean, permit themselves to be used by Lee Kuan Yew and his government to further their own interest and that of their master Lee Kuan Yew? Is he not aware that all human rights organizations including Amnesty International have equated Singapore with North Korea in areas of human rights and self determination of the people? In other words, is he not aware that Singapore citizens are just slaves of Lee Kuan Yew?

Yet this man, almost like clockwork, periodically comes up again and again claiming this small dictatorial island republic, devoid of human rights or human dignity is a world class arbitration center!

Someone should wake up this man from his reverie and remind him of the naked bitter truth. Which is this. For a start there are insufficient lawyers there. No one wants to be a lawyer and practice Lee Kuan Yew's law, that is, laws which pleases him and his interest. That is why there are no more than 3,000 lawyers in that island of 4.5 million people, in jam packed conditions living one on top of the other in skyscrapers. That is why the Singapore Law Society refuses to tell me how many lawyers there are out of embarrassment (see my earlier blog).

K Shanmugam, the Singapore Law Minister, whose head appears to have been misplaced, should not be spending taxpayers money and newsprint by coming up with total nonsense time and time again about his place claiming to make it into an international arbitration center. The perception of Singapore is so bad now that people elsewhere think that anyone found chewing gum anywhere in the island is instantly whipped by any policeman who has seen it! It is viewed as a clown show with clowns such as Lee Kuan Yew and this Minister.

There is a sentence in the report which is particularly insulting to the great and proud cities of Paris London, Geneva and Zurich. It claims International Chamber of Commerce has equated Singapore with these cities as a possible international arbitration center. I have my doubts when something completely false like this is printed in a state controlled newspaper like the Straits Times. Either the International Chamber of Commerce has got it completely wrong or Singapore's state controlled newspaper has put out a statement which is blatantly false.

It should be clear to anyone who knows Singapore's Alice in Wonderland legal system. It can never aspire to be like any of these great cities. For a start France, England or Switzerland does not own and control the press, they do not prohibit free speech and expression, they do not throw government critics in jail and they do not rig parliamentary elections like Singapore does. These are great cities in respected countries. Singapore on the other hand, is nothing but a small overcrowded island with a tin pot dictator strutting around like a prize rooster, paying himself and his family members millions of tax payers money, where everyone including all lawyers live in fear of this small time bully.

And it is one country where this handpicked Lee Kuan Yew's Law Minister K Shanmugam can continue to publish any amount of nonsense he wants in the state controlled press, simply because there is no one to question him. You will be put in jail if you did.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall!

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.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Lee Kuan Yew's Minister for Law, K Shanmugam is at it again. This time flaunting the soon to be (I hope not) WIPO Singapore Center.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The state controlled newspaper the Straits Times has this article in it's online edition of July 28, 2009 "WIPO sets up Singapore office". WIPO as you know stands for World Intellectual Property Organization, one of it's primary objects being the prevention of intellectual property piracy, for example, to stop people from illegally copying videos and songs without paying for it, so as to protect the rights of their original owners. Except for the the protection of patent copyright and trademark rights, the WIPO has no other business.

But if you were to read this Minister for Law's remarks in the newspaper article, it would appear as if Singapore has managed an earth shattering success by the presence of WIPO office here, when in actual fact it's ambit of business is purely intellectual property law and nothing more.

The article refers to the soon to be set up WIPO ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) center there and this Minister's hope that it will attract ADR clients. First the reader must keep in mind that if there is going to be any ADR in Singapore which I doubt, it will only be in disputes relating to patents trademarks and copyrights and nothing more.

In any case, I don't believe Singapore will achieve any success as an ADR center even for Intellectual Property Disputes. You will recall 1 year ago, the International Bar Association put out a 72 page article on human rights in Singapore relegating it's human rights and the lack of rule of law to a level no better than Burma. In their unforgiving scathing attack on the legal system in Singapore, they stated categorically that Singapore has no rule of law, that it's judges routinely abuse the law to silence political opposition and Singapore lawyers are unable through fear to stand up to this repression. You should read the report for yourself.

With this 72 page detailed report which sets out a litany of human rights abuses and denial of fundamental rights and the rule of law, the world legal community already shuns Singapore the way they shun Burma or North Korea.

Furthermore the recent ugly spate of prosecutions of major newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the harsh punishments meted out to their editors with crippling fines for the slightest criticism of the Singapore strongman Lee Kuan Yew is fresh in the minds of the international community of civilized nations. So is the jailing of 3 men in the Kangaroo T shirt trial by Judge Judith Prakash who I believe has left Singapore permanently with her family in shame. So is the jailing of myself, Gopalan Nair, last year for 3 months for questioning the impartiality of Judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean for prostituting her judicial office for personal gain.

The reputation or the lack of it, of Singapore is so low, just look at what happened today. I had gone to the Immigration Court San Francisco for filing some papers and was having lunch at the Chinese Ming's Restaurant on Second Street at the junction of Market Street. Across my table was a Chinese American and we got talking. This man was a highly educated individual whose card read "Head of Business Development" Dubai. We got talking. I told him I was from Singapore and asked him if he remembered Michael Fay, the American who was caned in Singapore. His immediate reaction was to say that he was caned for "chewing gum"! Yes, caned for chewing gum! I did not want to correct his mistake. One thing is sure, he is one man who is never going to step foot in Singapore!

The law, as any lawyer will tell you, is interrelated. In other words, Intellectual Property Law does not stand alone and apart from other laws such as the Constitution, Laws of Contract and every other law even including Criminal Law. And therefore if the one party dictatorship of Singapore can violate the Constitution of Singapore anytime they want by denying the right to free speech and expression, what guarantee do you have that the same tribunal will try an Intellectual property case in an impartial and unbiased manner?

And since the judiciary is not open to any criticism with any detractor either sued and bankrupted or sent to jail, what guarantee do you have that any tribunal in that one party state island has any reason to be impartial?

Trying to resolve an intellectual property dispute in Singapore is like trying to say that Singapore judges will abuse the law whenever they come across a political opponent but they will always uphold the law in commercial disputes? Is this possible? Is it not an oxymoron? Is it not an impossibility?

I reckon Singapore island unlike London, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong or New Delhi, will find it very hard pressed to get any client to Singapore for any sort of arbitration whether it is in Intellectual property or otherwise. All they have to do is to pick up a copy of that dreaded (for Singapore that is) 72 page report of the International Bar Association for them to cancel all tickets to the island never to step foot there again.

You have to give it to this K Shanmugam, he is trying very hard. But poor man, he is up against an impossibility. Singapore has gotten such a bad name in the international scene, they might as well forget any aspirations in the direction of an ADR center.

Readers of this blog may want to do your part by writing to WIPO office in Switzerland and tell them, for their own good, not to set up this office in Singapore. By doing so, they would be doing a disservice to their members. Tell them there is no rule of law in Singapore, at all. And without it, you cannot have any judgement that has any integrity since they will all be suspect.

Please write to:
World Intellectual Property Organization
34, chemin des Colombettes
CH-1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland
Email: wipo.mail@wipo.int
Website: www.wipo.int

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.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Singapore. Easier entry for lawyers. Clutching at straws?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Remember Lee Kuan Yew himself and his minion Goh Chock Tong in the recent past, making passionate pleas to students in Western cities like Melbourne and London begging them to return home in the face of the unbearable flood of talented Singaporeans permanently leaving the island for settlement abroad?

Remember only last week Goh Chock Tong tearfully lamenting the fact that 2 out of 3 students who go abroad never return.

With the cat out of the bag, Singapore being a first class dictatorship plain and simple, everyone wants to leave and no one wants to return. Finally it seems Lee and Company have realized there is nothing they can do but just accept the sad fact that no one in his right mind would want to stay in his Island of Dr. Moreau. The steadily increasing brain drain out of Singapore has now become an undeniable fact.

Take another fact. You know that Singapore has a population of 4.5 million. With this figure in mind, do you realise that Singapore has no more than 3,000 practicing lawyers! Yes, this is true. No more than 3,000 lawyers! Recently in my blog post of Tuesday June 30, 2009 titled "Law Society of Singapore Island refuses to disclose the number of lawyers!", I had written about the Singapore Law Society refusing to state how many lawyers are there; an obvious sign that because the number has declined even further, they are embarrassed even to state the figure!

What this means is this. Singapore lawyers shamefully aware of the political interference of the judiciary and the legal profession by Lee Kuan Yew, have become so disgusted, they simply want out and high school graduates are refusing to study the subject. As a result the Singapore legal profession is dying and the dictatorship is finding it increasingly difficult to run the island without them.

So about a week ago, K Shanmugam, the recently hand picked Lee Kuan Yew's Minister for Law, had prominently publicized in his state controlled press another harebrained plan to increase the number of lawyers by attracting foreign lawyers, the carrot being a shorter training regimen; a plan doomed to fail from the start.

Everyone knows, except it seems for K Shanmugam, that lawyers training is long and arduous anyway, and lawyers willingly accept this. Otherwise they would not have become lawyers in the first place. Shortening the training period by 6 months or a year will not change anything. Lawyers, as the name itself suggests, are people who have a heightened sense of justice, integrity and truth, which is why they chose the profession. And regardless of how long it takes to train as a lawyer, they will choose a country which upholds the integrity of the rule of law, as a place to spend their career in it. For a good lawyer, the length of time it takes to become one is usually completely irrelevant.

What honest lawyers all over the world find repulsive, if Lee Kuan Yew's favorite boy K Shanmugam did not know, are dictatorships and totalitarian regimes where the law is the dictator itself. And that is why there isn't a long line of lawyer aspirants waiting outside Rangoon, Burma, or Pyongyang North Korea and Singapore waiting to be lawyers there. And he should also realize that even if Burma, North Korea and Singapore, all totalitarian dictatorships who abuse the rule of law and silence dissent, were to allow admission without any training at all, they would still not be able to find anyone!

Yet we have this article in the state controlled online edition of the newspaper of the island , the Straits Times of July 25, 2009, "Easier entry for lawyers. 320 applicants for course that speeds up entry to practice law in Singapore". It has a large picture of the face of a man, beaming and grinning from ear to ear, who claims to have recently graduated from University College London and intends to practice law in the island. It is obvious that this happy man and the other 320 hopefuls do not know what they are getting into.

They will all very soon see the Singapore reality in it's ugly face. The reality that every single judge and lawyer practices there in fear and obedience to Lee Kuan Yew, the Singapore strongman, not the rule of law as we know it. They will soon realize the law is systematically abused for Lee Kuan Yew's political ends. They will soon realize that the only way to survive is to join Lee's bandwagon and sing the tune that pleases him.

And of the 100 or so lawyers who manage to obtain admission, if they had any moral integrity, will leave the country as soon as they find out the Singapore legal system is no different from that of Burma or North Korea. And these lawyers who came and left would be doing a tremendous amount of good by becoming unpaid ambassadors of the truth to the rest of the world, telling even more people abroad that Singapore is in reality another Burma.

You can see the desperation in these acts of Singapore's Minister for Law. The number of lawyers there has become so low that it is becoming difficult even to govern the place. This is another useless exercise by this administration which is now clutching at straws. Even the figures are hopeless. 320 applicants to a profession standing at no more than 3,000 in a country with 4.5 million people! No one can really know what the real number of lawyers or how much further it has declined since the Singapore professional body is unwilling to reveal the figure!

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.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Lee Kuan Yew's son, Singapore's Prime Minister, pulling a fast one on the Germans

Ladies and Gentlemen,

That's what the Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore dictatorship does all the time. Hoodwink foreigners, particularly Westerners into thinking Singapore is something what it is not. What it is is this. It is a dictatorship, a one party state, with Lee Kuan Yew and his family as the oligarchy in total control; where the press is controlled entirely by them, where the courts abuse the law at will to preserve the Lee family in power, and where every organ of government is firmly in their control. In short, a country where the people live in fear of the Lee Kuan Yew family, completely at their mercy and whose lives are abandoned to their whims.

What it is not is this. It is not a democracy.

Singapore has over the years successfully misled the Western world into thinking it is a democracy. And to a large extent, so far, they have managed it. With a state controlled press in Singapore, who is there to refute the non stop good news that flows from it? Any country that has a state controlled press can very much get away with anything they say. But all this is changing with the Internet. Today it is getting harder and harder for dictatorships and totalitarian regimes around the world to get away with lies. But despite this, despite the fact that the west is now aware of what Singapore, Burma and other small minded dictatorships in the region are, Lee Kuan Yew's son, the boy whom his father placed as the Prime Minister is at it again.

Singapore's state controlled newspaper the Straits Times online edition of July 23, 2009 has this story, "Striking a Balance, Singapore feeling it's way forward in establishing a system that works best for it, says PM Lee". This is an interview with the well known German newspaper Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung.

The state controlled newspaper's title itself is completely false. With 50 years continuous rule by this man and his father Lee Kuan Yew, when every opposition political candidate over the years has been either bankrupted or imprisoned by them, the system “does work for them”, that is for him, his father and his family. It certainly has not worked for the 4.5 million other ordinary people who live in fear of him lest they say something he does not like.

As we go on with this completely misleading article, every single line of it is false and a lie. In the first sentence he says it is "a system which achieves a balance of quality leadership" and "which gives the people an opportunity to voice their grievances". If it a quality leadership, then why is that almost half the population live below the poverty line in their government owned HDB flats or cubicles, many without even being able to afford 3 meals a day, no electricity or water and many going hungry? Why is there massive unemployment? Why does every Singaporean almost to the man, if they could, leave Singapore for settlement abroad? Why are no children being born and why does 2 out of 3 students who go abroad never return?

And if the people are "given an opportunity to voice their grievances" then why is Dr. Chee Soon Juan repeatedly jailed, bankrupted and impoverished by the corrupt courts for doing just that "voicing his grievance". And why is there no dissent at all from the entire population, because they have all been subdued and silenced from even the slightest criticism, lest they end up like Dr. Chee Soon Juan. Why was I sent to jail for 3 months last year for doing just that in this blog, criticizing? And if people are allowed to criticize, can he or his father explain why they have both between them monopolized the office of Prime Minster in the country and winning every single election since 1959?

In the next line, Lee's son tells the Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung, "It is a system that has worked well and not let the people of Singapore down". Instead of telling Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung, he should tell that to the miserable wretches who live in the 1 and 2 room flats and the millions of others who have lost their jobs and unable to find any other. He should say that to the thousands of young people who are coming out of the schools with no jobs and no prospects. He should tell that to the millions of other Singaporeans whose jobs have been taken away by foreigners. Without the benefit of a minimum wage, he should tell that to the thousands of man and women who earn less that $500 or less. He should tell that to the growing numbers who have made their homes in the void decks of the government owned flats. He should tell that to the man who was so upset he set one of his politicians alight on paint thinner.

The next paragraph is so blatantly false, it seems as if he has no respect whatsoever for the intelligence of Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung. He says, believe it or not, "How do you keep a system which delivers outstanding quality of leadership and government and yet (allow) the people to say, I want this government but not this policy or the other". My dear Lee Kuan Yew's son, you are presuming too much. How can you say you deliver "outstanding quality of leadership" when the truth is, your entire government is literally falling apart, and it will with your father's impending demise. And what makes you think the people want your government but not a particular policy or other? What makes you think that? If you ask me, I think to the last man every Singaporean wants your entire family out. But there is nothing they can do since you will put them in jail if they say so.

Further down it is alleged (we do not know if this is true, keeping in mind this is a state controlled press) that Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung had asked if Singapore will become more democratic? I am not sure whether the German newspaper was being a bit sarcastic or whether they really believed there was any democracy in Singapore. If the German newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung did not know, there is no democracy at all. Protests are disallowed entirely throughout the island except for a small patch of ground no bigger than a football field, where even there plain clothes police will harass and threaten anyone found in it.

Next Lee's son says every country has to devise a system that works for them. Sure, Burma has devised a system that works very well for the military junta and the Lee family in Singapore has similarly devised a system that works very well for them. Not for any other Singaporeans. Then he says, that simply because you are developed does not mean you should have democracy. Wait a minute, dear son. What makes you think only developed countries should have democracy? Should it not be a universal right for everyone, as along as you are a human?

He then puts out another shameless blatant lie that "the opposition had a fair chance to compete and contest in elections"! Tell me son, did the late JB Jeyaretnam get a fair chance? Did Dr. Chee Soon Juan? Did Chia Thye Poh? Did Francis Seow? Did Tang Liang Hong? Come on boy who are you kidding? The Germans are not as stupid as you think.

Then he says the reasons why the people have not organized a revolution and rebellion against him is because the government helps them through training. The truth is there is no re-training at all, and no one who has been re-trained has ever got any job because there are none.

Another reason he says is that employers have been given money towards employees’ salaries. The truth is that money is only given to government linked or government supportive companies and none of that money has ever gone to any worker; it is pocketed by the employers. And thirdly, he says when people have problems they can talk to the government. It is true that unemployed and miserable Singaporeans can form a line outside one of the son's members of parliament and beg for help. They might get a bag of rice and a couple of hundred dollars but this in no way helps any Singaporean who is in a bind.

Unemployment he says has not shot up. If you count those who earn less than $500.00 per month wages, an amount way below the poverty line, almost half the people of Singapore live in poverty, not much different from Communist China or India. Then he says look at the people in the shops shopping as evidence of the people's wealth. This is the lowest of the low, a dastardly and shameful lie. Yes in any country that is jam packed like Singapore with 4.5 million people living one on top of the other; you will see some people in shopping malls. But Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung has to be warned these shoppers are just 5% of the population of the island. The rest 95% live in their cramped government owned flats hardly surviving.

Please Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung, go on a tour of the HDB flats and ask the miserable creatures ensconced in them. Lee's son is just pulling wool over your eyes because he thinks, you, being a foreigner would not know.

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.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Lee Kuan Yew's enemies, Singaporeans themselves.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Throughout history, dictatorships first fought external enemies. Then they began fighting their own people. That is when they all collapsed. And history is being repeated again with Lee Kuan Yew's dictatorship today, not having to defeat any external enemies, but their own citizens; which is now, as history dictates, the precursor to complete collapse.

The Soviet Union, the Eastern block countries and every single dictatorship today except for Communist China, Cuba, North Korea and Burma are going through history yet again. Remember Czechoslovakia and East Germany. First their enemies were the western capitalists. Later they began to have to deal with popular uprisings for democracy, which they initially managed to put down with force. And then, they themselves collapsed.

Singapore is no different. First Lee Kuan Yew's trick to cling to power was the communist bogey. When that trick was eventually exposed, and Singaporeans began to increasingly demand a more free and democratic society, Lee Kuan Yew's enemies became the citizens themselves.

Today Singapore's (or Lee Kuan Yew government's) enemies are ordinary Singaporeans like Dr. Chee Soon Juan, Gandhi Ambalam, John Tan and numerous other Singaporeans who are fighting for freedom in Singapore. Among those abroad, the enemies are Francis Seow, Tang Liang Hong, the various Singaporeans who had to flee Singapore and who now live all over the world including myself, all enemies of the Singapore state according to the Lee Kuan Yew administration. Singapore's model citizens are the Attorney General Walter Woon, his Minister for law S Shanmugam and lawyers who work for him by eliminating the opposition such as Davinder Singh and judges who carry out the dirty work entrusted to them like Belinda Ang Saw Ean.

While this public denunciation, condemnation and punishment of totally innocent men such as Dr. Chee Soon Juan goes on every day before the very eyes of the entire Singaporean public, increasing numbers of Singaporeans not only lose their respect for this administration, they begin to hate it. Through fear, many are unable to voice their hatred. But hate, they nevertheless have for this corrupt and discredited administration.

The result of this is emigration of the talented from Singapore, a declining population and the talent pool in Singapore continuing to decline, leaving only those with little or no education in Singapore; or those lacking any principles or moral fibre who are willing to profit by collaborating with this dictatorship. Another difficulty that the administration faces is the bad reputation Singapore receives in the rest of the world with the repression against their citizens being exposed worldwide. This results in lack of foreign investment into the country thereby weakening it's capacity to function normally.

The next thing to look out for is the gradual weakening of it's global competitiveness. And next thing, finally, is it's total collapse. Just as the former East Germany and Romania.

Just as someone had said "Dictatorships always look good till the last ten minutes".

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.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Lee Kuan Yew "orders" Singaporeans to "fly the Singapore flag."

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In most countries it is up to the people whether they fly their national flag on special days of the it's history. They may want to show their loyalty by this. But even those who are deeply loyal, may not think it necessary. It is matter of choice. And surely you will not be punished if you don't. Second, in most countries their governments don't have to make a deliberate effort to persuade their citizens to do this.

Not so in Singapore. In Singapore's state controlled newspaper the Straits Times on line edition of July 15, 2009, Lee Kuan Yew's dictatorship has prominently put out a notice headed "Fly the Singapore flag", urging their citizens to fly the island's flag during the country's fortcoming national day celebrations. Odd as it is for any government to go out and deliberately ask their citizens to do this, since this is always a personal choice and not legally mandatory; in Singapore it is even worse, since when the government puts out any "request" such as this in their state controlled media, it is usually not a "request", it is in fact an "order".

In Singapore, unlike anywhere else, even though the flag denotes the country and not any political party or government; because Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's dictator has been ruling the country uninterrupted for the last 50 years, the flag in effect personifies not Singapore but Lee Kuan Yew and his government. Therefore, in Singapore, when you fly the national flag, you are showing your loyalty not to Singapore but to Lee Kuan Yew and his family for ruling over you. This "order", to fly the Singapore's flag in his state controlled newspaper is a demand that you show your appreciation particularly for him, his family and his government.

And what if you refused after this demand has been put out in the newspaper? Singapore being a country run on fear, that is fear of Lee Kuan Yew and what he will do to you if you oppose, the people fear government agents going around the island marking the names of those who do not fly the flag. Next thing, these "ungrateful citizens" may lose their jobs, they may lose their pensions, they may lose their career promotions, their children might be thrown out of schools, and a litany of misfortune may happen to them.

Even though these terrible things may or may not happen to these flag refusers, the fear itself is sufficient for them to do as they are told. Surely it is not hard to fly the flag. So why take the risk of Lee Kuan Yew's ire by your refusal?

In Singapore, it is hard to live as men and women with free will, because you don't have it. Everything you do, including the apartment that you live in, depends on the patronage and good will of the supreme Lee Kuan Yew and his family. They virtually own each and every "digit" (what Lee Kuan Yew has called the citizens of his country) of a Singaporean.

It is easy for me, from the comfort of my home in California to ask Singaporeans to have more backbone and refuse to fly the flag, because it will be a clear signal to Lee Kuan Yew and his family that you want them out. But as you are prisoners of the dictator Lee Kuan Yew in his island, it would be wrong to expect too much from you.

If there are those who despite these dangers still refuse to fly the Singapore national flag during national day celebrations, I would think you rightfully deserve the Victoria Cross or some other medal for bravery beyond that normally expected of a soldier in battle!

Salute.

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.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Singapore. More weird laws

Ladies and Gentlemen,

For someone living in the United States, some of the happenings one reads in the island of Singapore would seem very weird indeed.

Let me tell you what happened. Singapore's state controlled newspaper the Straits Times on line edition of July 16, 2009 has this story "Man charged over banners". It is abut Mr. Zeng Guoyuan, 55 years of age, who coincidentally I had met before when he contested the national elections there as a Workers Party candidate. The newspaper report claims he had pasted 2 pictures of the recently captured escaped prisoner Mas Selamat, one on a wall of a shop at MacPherason with the words "dead" written on it; another on the wall of a shop at Toa Payoh. A week later sometime in December 2008, he is alleged to have pasted another similar picture of the man on the same wall with a "charge Sheet", whatever that is.

It is also alleged that he refused to turn himself in a few times to Tanglin Police Station.

From here in California, I or anyone else in the United States would probably ask "What is the big deal"? OK, the man pasted a picture on some walls. If you don't like it just take it down! But why go the trouble of arresting him and charging him in court. What has he done after all? Killed 10 people? What is the point of arresting him and charging him in court for that, and what is more, making it headline news in Singapore's state controlled press?

We know that Singapore has some very odd laws, the most famous one being criminalizing chewing gum! Now we have this. It is major offence that will result in your being charged in court and your case made the headline news in that island if you so much as posted a picture on any wall in Singapore.

Or is this man being singled out for punishment and shame because he was a member of the Worker's Party and not Lee Kuan Yew's party?

If you are a thinking person within the island, take my advice. Get out of that island. It is a weird place. But contrary to what you may think, according to the regime of Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, it has the best legal system in the world! Well, if you own and control the entire media in the country like Lee Kuan Yew does, you can say anything you want whenever you want.

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.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Singapore. A welcome refuge for Indonesian fraudsters

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It has been reported in the Jakarta Post of June 24, 2009 and July 13, 2009 of the sightings in Singapore, of 2 Indonesian criminals on the run from justice in Indonesia. In the first report of June 24, 2009, Joko Soegiarto Tjandra had defrauded banks of millions and had been sentenced to 2 years imprisonment as well as a restitution fine of US$54 million. However before he could be apprehended, left Indonesia for Port Morsbey, New Guinea and then arrived in Singapore. Singapore authorities have been officially told of his presence there but have not taken any steps for his arrest or repatriation.

In the July 13, 2009 report, Anggoro Widjojo had bribed a former legislator in the house of Representatives for a radio communication contract with the forest ministry for which he got the contract worth US$12.72 million. He was arrested, convicted and sentenced to four and a half years in jail, but managed to flee to Singapore. Singapore authorities however not only refused to arrest him, but have totally refused the demands of repatriation.

This practice of refusing to hand over convicted criminals to a neighbouring country, thereby frustrating their criminal justice system is thoroughly unacceptable especially when done to a so called friendly neighbouring country. This sort of behaviour does nothing to further neighbourliness among neighbouring countries, fostering instead ill will and disharmony.

As a Singaporean by birth, it shames me to see my country behaving in such a brazenly shameful way. It may be true for a country that has lost it's means of survival to resort to desperate measures. It is true that Singapore has lost most of it's financial reserves and is suffering from unprecedented joblessness. But this sort of behaviour is going a bit too far, even for a bankrupt country. Harbouring millionaire bank cheats from neighbouring countries because you can use their money is a lowly disgraceful means of living.

Lee Kuan Yew, stop it now. Return these fugitive criminals back to Indonesia. At least show a modicum of respectability. Don't stoop so low as to be another North Korea.

What will you do next? Start printing fake American money?

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.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Singapore. The final demise of the institution of Parliament.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As if it was not bad enough already, with 82 out of 84 members of a so called Singapore Parliament, supposedly a representative body, coming from Lee Kuan Yew's party, we now have to have totally unrepresentative people there called Nominated Members (nominated by Lee Kuan Yew himself) to be speaking there!

Speaking for whom? And about what?

Are Singaporeans so ignorant as to not even realize the island is supposed to be a Parliamentary democracy! And have you nothing to say!

The Singapore island Parliament, even if you wanted to be as kind as possible, is inescapably a clown show, period. And Lee Kuan Yew is now literally treating you as no better than "digits" as he has confessed truthfully for once.

Anyone with eyes should be able to see what I see. It is literally factually and in reality, a one party dictatorship. There can be no other description of it in the English language.

Which brings me to a movie that I watched "Around the World in 80 days" when in the end, Phileas Fogg walks into London's Reform Club with a woman and his butler Passpartout. For over a hundred years since the beginning of the Club no woman has ever set foot in it! When the club members saw the woman in the club, aghast in horror, this they said must be the end of the British Empire!

In Singapore, Parliamentary Democracy is dead. Finally dead. What you have is undiluted unmitigated dictatorship.

Heil Mein Fuhrer Hitler (no Lee Kuan Yew)! Deutchland (no Singapore) uber alles!

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.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Singapore. The need for a leader to move the people.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This is a message to Dr. Chee Soon Juan. The disadvantaged in Singapore have been oppressed for so long; brainwashed into submission so long; silenced into a paralysis so long, that they are unable to stand up for their rights anymore. A person from the outside has to stand up and lead them. And that person is Dr. Chee Soon Juan.

I ask Dr. Chee Soon Juan to do it now. What are you waiting for? Is not the suffering of those in the one room flats, the suffering of those displaced by foreign workers into unemployment, the suffering of the minorities not enough. How much more have they to endure before someone who has the courage to lead them to step forward and march to Lee Kuan Yew's palace and demand answers to their questions? Demand answers to their suffering.

You are in the best position to do it. Your actions are credible and will be so. Can you not see this dictatorship bringing Singapore down steadily without any real agenda at all? Can you not see the Lee dictatorship behaving as if there was no real problem among the poor of Singapore?

Lead them now. Organize a mass protest of the poor. You will have sufficient numbers for it, with this appalling state of affairs in Singapore.

Those who know Singapore already know the great sacrifices you have made. We respect you for it. And we know that if there was anyone in Singapore who can bring about change there, it is you. Noone else.

Dr. Chee, do it for Singapore. Now.

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.

Singapore a "third world" country in every way.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

How does one judge a country as "first world"?. I suppose, a country that upholds the rule of law, a country with free and fair elections, a country that upholds human rights of free speech and expression, a country that has a free press, a country that does not discriminate against any section of it's people, a government that is accountable to the people, a government that does not engage in corruption by calling the money a salary; these are some of signs of a civilized first world country.

Not forgetting of course the foremost of signs of a free country, a country with a free press; Singapore being ranked one of the countries with the least free press in the world. All the newspapers there are both owned and controlled by Lee Kuan Yew and his family. The internationally respected free press monitor, Reporters Sans Frontieres of France has placed the island so far down the list, next to Sudan and Eritrea!

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore Island's strongman had not too far back written a book claiming in it that the country is first world. It is true that he has managed to build a number of skyscrapers along the waterfront like in Hong Kong, an excellent infra structure of roads and supplied clean water and electricity to households. In addition he has managed to make it free of litter by imposing harsh laws for the slightest indiscretion and criminalized the chewing of gum, which the outside world erroneously thinks is punishable with caning! But are these any indication it is a developed 'first world" country? hardly.

You have to have lived in Singapore to know what it is like I do. It is a country with no rule of law, where it is routinely abused to punish the government's critics. A country without free and fair elections where Lee Kuan Yew and his party has been continuously returned to power at every single election without interruption for the last 50 years since 1959! Same as Cuba! Any potential parliamentary candidate critical of the government or Lee Kuan Yew is sent to jail through willing judges. It is a country where the judges, all of them, have no shame at all; shamelessly using their position to please Lee by punishing his opponents.

Singapore is a country not run by rule of law but by law. That is, whenever the government feels the slightest threatened by their people, they pass a law to criminalize it, like what they have done recently under the Public Order Act where all protests, even peaceful ones are criminalized. Singapore's recently appointed Tamil Minister of Law, K Shanmugam and Wong Kan Seng, Minister for Home Affairs, Lee Kuan Yew's cousin, willingly abuse the law to please him.

It is a country that has no laws against racial discrimination, which means the Chinese majority in the country blatantly discriminate the Malays and Indians in jobs, benefits and every other way possible. Even the government itself openly discriminates them by denying jobs in the public sector, positions in the armed forces and security sensitive occupations.

It is a country, despite having only 4.5 million people, with a land area of less than one third the size of New York City but yet pays their leaders salaries that are, believe it or not, five times the salary of the US President. They do it openly and shamelessly. In any other country, it would be called by it's correct name, "corruption"; but in Singapore, an island that is in essence owned by Lee Kuan Yew and his family, it is called "salaries".

And none of these grievances can be openly challenged by the people, because, as you correctly guessed it, Lee Kuan Yew will punish you if you did!

Tell me, what sort of a country is that? First world?

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.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

The hidden ugly side of Singapore

Ladies and Gentlemen,

An interesting personal account of Lee Kuan Yew's "island paradise". Something that Lee Kuan Yew tries very hard to keep under wraps from foreign governments but surfaces nevertheless. Mind you, a huge section of Singaporeans live this way. But what is frightening is this; there is no hope for them out of the poverty; with no skills no education and no financial assistance from the million dollar Singapore ministers. My gratitude to Vijay Kumar and to Singapore Democratic Party for posting it and for permission to use it.

I hope many more concerned people like Vijay Kumar would expose the uncaring and heartless million dollar Singapore dictators.

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.

Tuesday, 07 July 2009
Vijay Kumar
Malaysiakini (letter)

In between the glamarous buildings and shoppings complexes of this city state, there is huge suffering that the world has never seen. Something that the Singapore government or media will try to hide from the rest of the world. And this is the lives of 80 percent of 'true' Singaporeans who live in the republic's Housing Development Board (low cost) flats.

I, like many young youths, went looking for a better future in this Lion City of opportunity. After four years of working experience in Kuala Lumpur. It was my first experience outside Malaysia and I was very happy to be offered a job in Singapore with a basic salary of S$3,500.

Then, with huge hopes, I started looking for a master bedroom to rent being single. I finally got a master bedroom in Clementi for S$700 a month but only after being rejected by many other landlords for being Indian. The ensuing eight- month ordeal that I spent in this HDB flat really opened my mind to what Singapore is for those who can't earn.

It made me ask if this is the type of development that I ever wanted in my country Malaysia. This is the first time that I felt gifted to be born in Malaysia. Anyway, I lived with a family of three (husband, wife with one daughter) who rented out their master bedroom to me while they slept in the common room.

It was a three-room flat (but unlike in Malaysia, a three-room flat has only two bedrooms). I did not believe it was the master bedroom that I was staying in until I went into the other room and saw that there is no attached bathroom there. I was given a bed and a mattress and also two fans. Then I noticed that the couple with their daughter sleeping on the floor with a thin mattress in the other room. Not even a fan in that room.

Both husband and wife are born Singaporeans and were employed. It was after one month that I realised that the daughter was not going to school regularly and most of the time there would be a quarrel in the early morning between the father and daughter as there was not enough money to pay for the bus to go to school.

There were times when the daughter was very sick and father had no money to take her to see a doctor. It was a real pain in the heart to hear a small girl suffering through the thin walls of this HDB flat. It was unbelievable for me to see this happening in this ultra-modern city. It took me another two months to realise that what was happening in this flat was not an isolated case of urban poverty in Singapore.

It was every where in those HDB flats. There was a Chinese neighbour (an elderly man) and his son had no money to get a taxi to send his father to the clinic for daily diabetic wound-dressing. I soon understood that poverty in Singapore transcends racial boundaries. The whole family of my landlord got a shock that I own a car in Malaysia.

My landlord would keep pestering me every time I come back to Malaysia to bring my car over so that his whole family could go sightseeing in Singapore. In all my life, I never believed people in a developed country like Singapore would ever consider car ownership a privelege.

Three months later, one fine day, I came back home and realised that there was no electricity in the house. This time, my landlord did not have the money to pay for the utility bills. I was back in the Stone Age, using candles. This lasted for days until finally he borrowed money from somewhere and settled the bills.

My landlord as a person I have known during that period never come back drunk or looked like a gambler. He had to pay for his mother's medical expenses, that much I know. This was the time in my life when I learned what is was like to live in that poor quality HDB flat, drying clothes in the rooms and listening to what the couple talked about in the next room via the thin walls.

It was this time in life that made me to think, 'Is this what I want Malaysia to be? For those who talk great or look up to Singapore's success, have they ever come and lived in Singapore like I how I did? Have you seen a HDB flat and how it looks like?

Bring your whole family for a dinner using public transport and then rush to catch the last bus. Is this what a 10% growth rate a year is about that we want boast? Does this growth figures mean anything in the first place? Do we want to open our country to expats so that they can progress at the expense of our own Malaysians?

Do we want to 'progress' to a level that even our children can't buy a house in our own land? Last, I ask myself. Do we Malaysians look at GDP growth as the only measure to choose our government or are we much more matured than that? Achievement at whose expense?

http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/107799

Monday, July 6, 2009

The Punch and Judy show in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Parliament goes on.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's intolerant leader has successfully managed to remove even the remotest resemblance, if there ever was, of representative government in his Parliament. For a start, there are only 2 opposition politicians there, albeit being only pretenders who are careful about what they say so as not to offend the dictator. The entire remaining 82 members in the house are there to sing his praises. With this disgraceful situation, where everyone can see it being nothing more than a one party dictatorship, his efforts to hoodwink the world into thinking it is a model democracy is failing. So he does the next best thing. Which is to make a fool not only of his subjects but the entire world audience by faking a representative Parliament.

In his state controlled press the Straits Times online edition of July 7, 2009, there is an article titled "9 NMP names submitted". This is what it means. Even though the Constitution of Singapore calls for a representative government in Parliament, in total contempt for it, he has selected 20 to 30 citizens whom he feels will ask some political questions in Parliament which he will approve before hand, and thereby give the impression of genuine political debate. Of course you rightly guessed who these selected speakers are, none other than Lee Kuan Yew sympathisers of course, who are not there to further any citizen's interests but their own; that the right patronage and connections naturally bring.

Singaporeans who are aware of this shameless chicanery will rightfully ask who these Nominated Members are speaking for in the first place; not them since they did not elect them. And therefore they have no right to be speaking for them, let alone in Parliament, not having been elected by anyone.

And who are these selected clowns (Nominated Members of Parliment) anyway? There is a former sportswoman Joscelyn Yeo aged 30. Calvin Cheng 33, a fashion manager, Audrey Wong 41, an arts manager etc. No one is bothered about any of these individuals and neither does anyone care.

If they were intending to represent the people in Parliament, then why have they not stood for elections especially when they would almost certainly win being Lee Kuan Yew's bootlickers. You know why this is the case of course. Any real opposition candidate would be sued for defamation, criminally charged, bankrupted and impoverished, not necessarily in that order. And yet, even though winning is almost a guaranteed certainty in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, these individuals have no desire to stand up to it. Despite lacking any political interest or even the slightest civic consciousness of any sort, they are chosen to go to Parliament and speak a lot of nonsense, on your behalf, which everyone cares nothing about!

Lee Kuan Yew is becoming a joke. So is his Parliament and so are his obedient clowns who do the clown show in his Parliament.

If asked about all this, I think Singaporeans should say as they have always done "I do not know, and I do not care." These handpicked Lee Kuan Yew's clowns can do all the talking they want. They would be talking to themselves.

And the Singapore watchers reading this would be alerted once more to what Singapore really is; a one party Lee Kuan Yew dictatorship trying very hard to fool everyone into thinking the island is not what everyone knows it is. Lee Kuan Yew's nonsense is not fooling anyone anymore.

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.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Singapore Island. Lee Kuan Yew's sidekick, Tamil minister K Shanmugam, can say any rubbish he wants to his helpless subjects.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

If you read the article in Singapore's state controlled newspaper Straits Time's online edition of July 6, 2009 titled "Meritocracy not quota. That's affirmative action the Singapore way" you may think Lee Kuan Yew's recently handpicked Minister for Law is advocating affirmative action for his oppressed Tamil Singapore brothers and the equally oppressed Malays there. In fact, sorry to disappoint you, it was not the case at all!

With a newspaper which is owned and controlled by his government, what else did you expect? He can say any nonsense he wants with total impunity. The paper belongs to his boss, Lee Kuan Yew. And since this newspaper has been judged to be no more independent than the newspapers of Omar Al Bashir's Sudan or Eritrea by the international monitor Reporters Without Borders, it really makes no difference what they say, since they have no reputation at all. The world totally ignores what it says, and they (Lee Kuan Yew and his hand picked Tamil minister) don't care one bit what anyone thinks either. They know the Singaporean "digit" as Lee Kuan Yew calls his people are completely powerless to complain.

So what you have here is a newspaper article about what this Tamil Lee Kuan Yew's recently handpicked Minister has said; where in fact he has said nothing at all!

The article starts off by stating that about a decade ago, he had advocated affirmative action for Malays. But how this fact has any relevance to the rest of the article, except to mention that recently some Malay Singaporean was made a General in the Singapore Army (what his actual job duties are, we will never know, perhaps distributing the paperwork in the office!).

And finally we are told the truth. There is not going to be any change at all. According to him, things are going to be the same, and people are going to advance based on merit. If only this was true!

What is true is what we see. The Malays and Indians continue to be discriminated in the workforce by Chinese employers who demand a knowledge of Chinese for the job, when in truth none is necessary. In fact there was an comical but tragic nevertheless, incident, where the Indian in fact knew Chinese but when the employer discovered this, placed yet another requirement; knowledge of ancient Ming Dynasty caligraphy, and on this impossible requirement the Indian linguist naturally failed!

Just ask any Malay or Indian in Singapore. Blatant unashamed racial discrimination goes on before the very eyes of this Tamil, Lee Kuan Yew's poodle, K Shanmugam. If he had any decency, he should help his downtrodden Tamil brothers and sisters in Singapore in Serangoon Road to ensure they receive some modicum of fairness from the Chinese majority, instead of having to sleep on alleyways in Buffalo Road and Norris Road, high on traditional Chinese 100% proof spirit!

And coming to the word majority, if the Singapore Malays had their way, the Chinese in Singapore would not be majority at all, but would have been relegated a long time ago to being a very small minority.

Look at the facts. The Malays procreate and at a much faster rate than the Chinese, where every Chinese couple have either no children (too much stress, or unable to have sex, I don't know which) or at most one child. Take the Malay families. Every family has a full compliment of 3 to 5 children, and they should be very proud of it. And if this Singapore tyrant Lee Kuan Yew and his one party government had complied with the Singapore Constitution which demands equality between the races, the Malays would now be the majority race in Singapore, the Indians coming in a close second and the Chinese would have been a distant minority.

But this did not happen. Lee Kuan Yew, an ethnic Chinese himself, in blatant violation of the Singapore Constitution, brought in and continues to bring in disproportionately large numbers of Chinese from mainland China to ensure the Chinese continue to make up 75% of the Singapore population, in total violation of the rights of Malays and Indians.

And the discrimination against the Malays is particularly hurtful as they were the true sons of Singapore. They were there before anyone else. They were there before the British colonials brought in the Chinese and Indians.

And now this recently appointed minister in Lee Kuan Yew's dictatorship has the cheek to talk about meritocracy, when what he is actually saying is this. He intends to continue the discrimination of his government against his own Tamils and Malays as long as he is comfortable in his million dollar ministerial job, thanks to the continued patronage of his master, Lee Kuan Yew.

I really wonder why he is being employed at all, if all he can say, as in this case is to, in fact, say nothing at all!

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.

Singapore Island's Lee Kuan Yew. Clutching at straws in desperation.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Singapore's Dr. Chee Soon Juan has posted in his blog, Singapore Democrat, http://www.yoursdp.org/ of Sunday, 05 July 2009 headed "Breaking news: Did YouTube censor film on PAP?".

It tells about YouTube blocking, presumably at the behest of Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore the video "One Nation Under Lee" from being watched in Singapore. It can still be watched outside Singapore.

The video is obviously hurting Lee by it's exposure of the tyranny in the island. Unfortunately for Lee, the proverbial cat has been out of the bag a long time ago.

Many thousands all over the world have already watched it before this blocking, so any real effect of this is minimal. If you are outside of Singapore, it still can be watched.

I understand from Dr. Chee's blog that you could still watch it through other means and of course, he will always send you a CD if you need one. Please contact him for a complimentary copy.

The point I wanted to make is to show Lee Kuan Yew's desperation in persuading YouTube to take this action. The truth is, his government and Singapore is crumbling at his feet and he hits out any way he can, hoping it would make some difference.

But believe you me, it will not. The foundation of his government is rotten at the core and is crumbling. And nothing he does now can make any difference.

You know what I mean. The population is declining; no babies. 2 out of 3 students who go abroad for an education never return.

The people are angry with Lee Kuan Yew making his son, Prime Minister, who see this as shameless nepotism. He does not permit a free press.

Singaporeans are angry seeing innocent people such as Dr. Chee being sent to jail for peaceful protests. They look upon Lee's Ministers and supporters such as Wong Kang Seng as money and power greedy men who oppress the people. The people imports from China and India do not match up to Singaporean emigres whom they are intended to replace.

None of them want to set up home in Singapore anyway. Lee Kuan Yew has made enemies of neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia from whom he receives no assistance. The huge public sector in Singapore will soon eat up whatever remains of Singapore's savings which is being depleted by the day. Need I go on?

Today if there is anyone such as Judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean who still backs the Lee Administration, this is what I will tell them. You are backing the wrong horse. This administration will fall and fall soon. And the one clear sign of this is Lee Kuan Yew trying to block the viewing of the video "One Nation Under Lee".

The maker of the video, Seelan Pallay has been called up for police investigation. He has mocked and sneered at them and remains defiant. What more signs do you need?

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.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Running Singapore Island by controlling information.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Lee Kuan Yew's one party state is really run by controlling information. In the island, all newspapers, the entire media is state controlled.

Every journalist, every reporter, ever newsreader, every TV and radio worker takes orders from Lee Kuan Yew's agents.

Only news that is approved for public dissemination reaches the Singapore islander. No one is allowed to publish or publicize anything unless it is cleared by state censors.

Singapore's Ministry of Communications and Information is the island's propaganda department.

Through this Ministry of Propaganda, the island's Ministry of Communications and Information, the minds of Singaporeans are controlled, so as not to permit any thought adverse or detrimental against the one party state and its supreme ruler Lee Kuan Yew and his son.

Another George Orwells’ 1984.

Any foreign newspaper or media found to be critical of the one party state is successfully sued, fined and refused circulation within the island, as what had happened to Wall Street Journal and the Far eastern Economic Review last year, not forgetting the long list of foreign newspapers that have been punished this way for decades.

This leaves the local Singaporean islander powerless to read anything neutral critical of the state apparatus, except the propaganda churned out.

The islanders can receive blogs and writings through the Internet which are neutral but the fear is so compelling, many are even afraid to read these things, lest they are found out by the unseen eyes and ears of the state, and punished.

Singaporeans are terrified to publicly oppose the one party administration. The blogs that circulate openly indentifying the owner are all praise of the leader, Lee Kuan Yew, his son and his one party state apparatus.

Those who are critical do not dare to identify themselves doing so incognito.

Only 3 people in the entire island of 4.5 million people dare to oppose the government openly through their writings but they have been punished so much and so many times by the Supreme leader Lee Kuan Yew that they no longer care.

They are Dr. Chee Soon Juan in his blog Singapore Democrat, Mr. Yap Keng Ho in his blog Uncle Yap and Robert Ho who writes as himself. It is well known in psychology that a man reaches a certain point of pain and punishment that from that point he no longer cares. That is the case with these 3 people here.

I too write critically. But Lee Kuan Yew can do nothing as long as I am not in Singapore making me effectively beyond the reach of his clutches, that is, his corrupt police force and his corrupt judiciary.

But with the complete lack of investigative journalism, where the entire journalistic profession has sold themselves lock stock and barrel to the supreme leader Lee Kuan Yew, what is the real news then?

For instance, what has happened to the legal profession there?

In my post here of June 30, 2009 titled "Law Society of Singapore Island refuses to disclose the number of lawyers" it appears the number of lawyers has declined perhaps to below 2,500, an unsustainable number for a country with 4.5 million people and engaged as they say in international commerce and finance!

In order not to embarrass themselves, they rather remain silent than state the number of lawyers remaining in the profession.

Since this fact of declining lawyer population there is not only embarrassing but also detrimental to the island's unchallenged self-claim that it is a banking center (since no one is allowed to challenge it), Lee Kuan Yew's hand picked Tamil Minister for Law had with great fanfare, declared that the requirements for foreign Singapore lawyers to practice there has been made easier, and therefore there will be a flood of them returning to Singapore.

In saying this, the handpicked Tamil Minister did not believe in it one bit. He knew the real reason why no one wants to practice there is because there is no longer any rule of law but rule by dictate; Lee Kuna Yew's dictate.

And therefore, making it easier to practice there would not make anyone return when they had left not because the rules to practice were difficult but because they were thoroughly disgusted with it.

Without an independent press, it is, as you can see impossible to know the truth. Are there 100 lawyers there today, or are there 2,000? No one can tell.

About a year ago there was a newspaper report revealing the great loss in manpower from the Singapore civil Service.

Since then, nothing further has been said about it. Today we do not know what the number of Singapore civil servants there are.

It appears the highly skilled and educated upper echelon are all leaving and many are leaving the country entirely, preferring to emigrate overseas to countries such as Australia.

It appears that they no longer want to live in a one party state ruled over by Lee Kuan Yew and his son, a country that lacks individual human rights and self respect.

But it is impossible for us to find out one way or another the truth or otherwise of what actually happens in the organization.

You see, it is the same throughout the island and with every single happening there. The news is controlled, calibrated and twisted to tell you what the government thinks you should hear, and no more.

And with it is the totally unacceptable situation in a country where the people, many of them, being overseas educated and demanding of democracy, the two don't meet.

Lee Kuan Yew's demand that he rule over them like obedient children and their desire to live as free agents is irreconcilable and un-resolvable. And with this impossible situation, the islanders have begun emigrating en masse.

For the moment, Lee Kuan Yew, the dictator manages to continue with false information being fed to his people by the state controlled media. But my question is how long? The system is rotting from it's foundation so rapidly that you can expect a sudden collapse in the not too distant future.

That is why I say if you are smart enough, pack up now and leave with your children. Lee Kuan Yew is managing it now, but only just.

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.