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PAP, The Opposition & the Resilience of Singapore MM Lee’s latest warning about Singapore without the PAP is nothing new. It has always been the election scare tactic. Don’t vote for the opposition because you are bored, because you simply want to rebel, because you just want to voice your discontent over particular issues. You just might vote the PAP out of power and Singapore’s success is wholly attributable to the PAP and without them Singapore will be in ruins. Firstly, this is intended to be a statement about the calibre of the current opposition. Singaporeans are not unintelligent. We know that the current opposition leaders and their party members do not have the same kind of political experience as the senior members of the PAP. But, a long time ago when the PAP was itself an opposition party, its leaders did not have the political experience of people like the late David Marshall. The point is that given Singapore’s political climate of single party dominance, I wou...

A couple of months ago I was returning from a trip to Hong Kong. I enjoy the convenience of going through the automated lane at the airport. Place your passport on the reader; make your way through; place your thumb on the second reader; you are cleared. Very efficient. Very fast. And foolproof. On that occasion, there was a queue at the automated lane. But, I figured it would move fast and definitely faster than the manual lanes and besides that day there were long queues in all the lanes. So, I joined the automated lane. It was taking a while for each person to get through. A chap standing in front of me remarked to the officer who was trying to assist something along the following lines.... Wah! Nowadays the security is so tight ah? Singapore passport also the machine is taking so long to check. Obviously it was a snide remark about the glitches in the device that did the scanning. It drew chuckles and smiles from the rest of us in the queue. The officer obviously tre...

I'm sure the Home Minister did not mean it when he said, 'Any lapse by any department in the Home Team is a failure which all in the Home Team family must bear'. If he did mean it and if this was not a rapidly and loosely drafted statement, then the following meanings are possible: a) The 61 year old gentleman slipping through immigration (of all the places I would have thought this would be the most secure and in all honesty I have been complacent about the level of security there) using his son's passport was not a lapse; or b) The incident was a lapse but not a lapse by the ICA; or c) It was a lapse by the ICA but the department is not part of the Home Team or d) The ICA is part of the Home Team but the Home Minister is not as his is a political office and he is himself not a member of the civil service or e) The Home Minister is acknowledging that as a member of the Home Team family he is going to bear the responsibility for the lapse of a 'famil...

I found this great quote about the real work that the UN does... This couldn't be further from the truth... The UN is unfortunately a toothless organisation held hostage by the power of the veto at the Security Council and the behind-the-scenes dealings of powerful nations. Carlos Romulo (former president of the General Assembly of the UN): "If there is a problem between a weak nation and another weak nation and the UN takes action, the problem disappears. If there is a problem between a strong nation and a weak nation and the UN takes action, the weak nation disappears. If there is a problem between a strong nation and a strong nation and the UN takes action, the UN disappears."

Chee Soon Juan's strenuous and persistent questioning of witnesses whilst the court had disallowed those questions gave rise to a contempt conviction. Gopalan Nair's vitriolic verbal assualt making reference to the judge who presided over the case has resulted in a charge under the Penal Code of insulting a public officer. Both of these cases give rise to the fact that there is an interest in protecting the integrity of the judicial system and an opposing public interest in being able to engage in free criticism of the judiciary and to subject them to scrutiny. Here are some interesting quotes about insults leveled against the judiciary or contempt of court generally. It is quite a task to balance the need for an unimpugned judicial system as a cornerstone of constitutional governance and the need for free expression and free speech so that a little boy can still cry out that the emperor wears no clothes. In Re S.Mulgaokar(1978) 3 SCC 339. “The contempt power, though jurisdic...

Reporters Without Borders – they have again got their facts wrong. In an article entitled “US blogger Gopalan Nair still waiting the outcome of trial” dated 17th June 2008, Reporters Without Borders (RWB) makes the following assertions at two different parts of the article: Firstly, “This trial is a farce. Gopalan Nair appeared today before one of the plaintiffs herself”, the worldwide press freedom organisation said. (that’s a reference to RWB) Secondly, The case of “insulting” Belinda Ang Saw was heard today with the judge herself presiding over the hearing. The second sentence is hyperlinked to an AFP article. The AFP article does not state that the matter was heard before Justice Belinda Ang. I believe that the writer of the RWB article must have misunderstood the AFP article. The following is the relevant extract from the AFP article: In the blog, Gopalan Nair criticised a recent legal hearing at which Singapore founding father Lee Kuan Yew and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsie...

Judging from an AFP report on the net which is about 4 hours old, Gopalan Nair’s original charge of insulting a public officer via sending her an email has not been substituted. The new charge is apparently one of insulting via the blog contents and it is now under the Penal Code as opposed to the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act. In my earlier blog entry, ‘From Folly to Freedom’ dated 5th June, I had said the following: I’m a little curious as to the precise wording of the charge against him. If the charge was worded in exactly the same manner as indicated in parenthesis above in the AFP report, then there is a serious slip in the charge. If the charge is eventually amended to one involving the contents in the blog and not the alleged email, then there is likely to be an interesting jurisdiction issue. My reason for stating the above was that from multiple reports both on the net as well as in the papers, I got the impression that the charge probably stated the ...

Dennis Kucinich tabled an impeachment motion in the House of Representatives. By a vote of 251-166, the House was pushed the impeachment motion aside to the Judiciary Committee. That is going to be equivalent to sweeping it under the carpet. The motion that he brought against Dick Cheney last year has still been languishing in the Judiciary Committee wihtout any semblance of motion. What is disgusting is that the Republican dominated House was eager to impeach Clinton for a lie in relation to his sexual escapades but the current Democrat dominated House is unwilling to impeach Bush for lies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and not to mention the unaccounted for civilian deaths in Iraq. There are those who would argue that Bush is at the end of his term and it doesn't serve any useful purpose in impeaching him at this stage. But, it would serve a very useful purpose. It would send a clear message to all future Presidents that they cannot get awa...

Ron Paul, the Libertarian leaning Republican, has officially dropped out of the Republican race. Although realistically he was not going to get the necessary delegates to vote for him at the Republican Convention later this year, Ron PAul kept the hopes of his supporters alive by keeping himself in the race. There was a stage towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year when the net was abuzz with the Ron Paul Revolution. There appeared to be this new hope on the horizon. He was the most popular candidate on the internet. But, the MSM hardly gave him any credence. They won in the end. They succeeded in muzzling his voice and his message. He is, in my view, the person best suited to be President and the one person whose uncompromising and principled views would have done a great deal of good for America and the world. Well, Ron PAul has announced that he will shift his focus now to maintain a long term campaign for liberty. I guess in the larger scheme of things t...

This article looks at the workings of the Avant-garde, using "Language poetry" as an example. Coming to Terms First, some terminology The terms "L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry" and "Language poetry" are somewhat loaded. In conversation with Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews said he felt more uncomfortable about the "poetry" word than about "Language". He might have preferred the term "Language Writing", but said he found "poetry" more marketable. In the UK especially you'll see the term "Linguistically innovative poetry" used instead. Some say the avant-garde is dead - it's been suggested that the Impressionists were the first "official" avant-garde, and that the New York Poets were the last. Postmodernism, people claim, revealed avant-gardism as fundamentally sterile and outmoded - "there is no real resistance to the new, no stable norm from which the defiant artist may depart", writes ...

The Gopalan Nair saga (whatever the wisdom or lack of it that got it started) highlights another more important issue: The freedom to express one's views. How important is this right? What is the extent to which this right can be stretched? Rights are the antidotes to power. Often it has been stated that the freedom of speech cannot be unlimited; that freedom must be accompanied by responsibility. Whilst a person has the freedom to speak, he doesn’t have the freedom to hurt or harm. Instigating racial and religious hatred and creating social tensions in the name of free speech is a misguided use of the freedom. So far so good. I’m willing to concede. What about the use of free speech against public officials? Constitutional Rights are not rights operating in a vacuum. They are relational. The citizenry’s relationship with the state is spelled out in the form of rights. These are not weapons that we use against our fellow men nor are these empty propositions that we can cla...

The price of rice is so high My mom decided not to buy anymore. But, how could I survive Without any rice? “Men shall not live by rice alone” she preached sagely. Right! And I suppose I have to wait for the miraculous appearance of gunnysacks in my kitchen tonight. My rabble-rousing cousin had another take on it. “You are bitter about rice? Get yourself some rights!” “You can’t eat those,” retorted by mom. Age often breeds wisdom And I should have listened to her. Article 14 was hard to chew. Tasteless and soaked in saliva, I had a tough customer in my mouth. In the end, a glass of water and a quick gulp Was all it took to flush it down. It didn’t seem all that bad. So, I went in search of more rights. I wasn’t disappointed. There were plenty of those And I could print an endless supply. God bless the Internet! Papa splashed a smirk From the side of my hospital bed. “You should have listened to your mother,” the smirk seemed to say. My cousin’s blog entry for that day read: “He failed ...

The First African slaves were introduced into what is today the United States in the year 1619. In 1641, Massachusetts legalised slavery. In 1808, the American Congress abolished the slave trade. In 1865, slavery was abolished In 1868, Afican Americans received full citizenship In 1870, African men received the right to vote In 1909, the NAACP was formed In 1948, the US Army was desegregated In 1963, the famous speech by Martin Luther King... 'I have a dream' (one of my personal favourites) In 1964, the Civil Rights Act In 1965, the Voting Rights Act In 1968, to quote from U2.... Early morning, April 4th... A shot rings out in the Memphis sky... Free at last... they took your life. They could not take your pride... Martin Luther King was assassinated. 40 years later... In 2008, Barack Obama has become the presumptive Presidential nominee for a major political party. History is sometimes very poetic... It is exactly 200 years since the slave trade was abolished. The Democra...

After having written the last post, I visited Chia Ti Lik's Blog. He has updated it with today's events. It appears that a cautioned statement was taken from his client. The matter has been adjourned to 12th June as the DPP had requested for an adjournment to 'finalise the charges'. Well, I guess this would mean that a Sedition charge may well be on its way.

Mr Gopalan Nair, a US citizen, a lawyer, a blogger, an ex-Singaporean and former member of the Workers’ Party has been charged for insulting/threatening a public servant. I read the blog. The line between bravery and foolhardiness is not always very clear. But, I’m sorry Mr Nair, this is one occasion when I would venture that your dare was just a little over the top. I do hesitate to classify what you did as bravery for it seems more likely to be otherwise. In order not to humiliate you I shall not classify it at all. I guess you figured that you’d be served with a Writ for defamation and then you would scoot off to the US and never return again. Let there be a default judgment. Let there be an order for damages. They can’t get it enforced in the US. Talk about a colossal miscalculation. When you open your gap in Singapore, you are navigating a minefield. You, sir, have hit a mine. Has an offence been committed? It appears that Mr Nair has been charged under s.13D(1)(a) of the...