Is today's Singapore worth taking credit for
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Lee Kuan Yew's state run newspapers, the Straits Times among them, has been running a series of interviews with him about all things Singapore, involving one subject alone; that he single handedly brought about the miraculous transformation of a small fishing village into what Singapore is today, an international city.
Some sort of superhuman feat equal to the Hindu God Ganesh who carried the entire universe on his shoulders with ease! Really? But is it really? Is Singapore worth anything at all, if you look beneath the veneer of the sparkling outside?
I think Singapore is hardly an international city. If it is, it only goes as deep as the glossy newspapers that sing Lee Kuan Yew's propaganda on a daily basis.
Singapore today is a carbon copy of what Lee Kuan Yew himself is, not a very honest character. He has kept himself in power by abusing the law, through corruption by paying himself and his family members millions of dollars, by manipulating the judiciary to destroy his political opponents, by silencing dissent through trumped up contempt of law and defamation actions and by instilling a fear down the spine of everyone not to so much as squeak under pain of punishment.
And the people of Singapore themselves are largely a carbon copy of Lee Kuan Yew himself. Today his newspapers are filled with criminals committing fraud, their numbers are perhaps the highest in the world compared to the size of Singapore's population. Almost everyday clerks steal their bosses money, the bank clerk runs away with the banks money and their lawyers run away with their clients money. You can sum this up and accurately say today that Singaporeans are by and large the most dishonest people in the world.
After a series of cases where Singapore lawyers had routinely run away with their client's money in the millions, culminating in David Rasif's running away with hundreds of millions of dollars, and still remaining at large, foreigners have completely lost faith in the legal system preferring instead to use outside lawyers for the job.
Lee Kuan Yew's virtues include, his taking advantage of others if he can get away with it as he does in politics. Similarly the Singaporean emulates him by being rude in public, not giving way to others if it means he is giving up something, cutting lines whenever he can get away with it, and on the whole, like Lee Kuan Yew, an uncultured ungracious people.
Just as he has no compassion at all for the poor and disadvantaged to what Singapore is today, an island with no social welfare at all, where the mantra is, if you fall into bad times, it is your problem not mine, you see Singaporeans abusing their maids, Singaporeans looking down at the poor, and cars almost running pedestrians down because they are a status symbol in that island which the poor cannot afford.
Singapore is a country where foreign domestic maids have no holiday at all, a thoroughly uncivilized place lacking graces or any respect for human dignity, just as what Lee Kuan Yew himself is.
Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore today has the the lowest fertility rate in the world which means within a couple of decades, there will no longer be anymore native Singaporeans. It has the highest rates of emigration in the world with educated Singaporeans leaving the island in droves, a double whammy.
With no choice whatsoever in maintaining a sizable population, the government brings in hordes of second rate foreigners who cannot speak any English, mainly from Communist China for whom Singapore would have no use anyway. The Indians who come in, simply refuse even to send their children to local schools preferring instead Indian curriculum foreign schools, which shows how much they think of Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore.
To top it all Singapore's suicide rates are one of the highest in the world, the preferred method being jumping off tall buildings and jumping onto to oncoming trains. Singapore police who do this terrible job, have, I understand, got pretty good at the job; hosing off the blood, putting the remaining limbs into place and carting away the cadaver all within 30 minutes. It seems the public are no longer interested when they see it, since they have seen it multiple times in the past.
There is simply no point in building tall buildings and roads if you cannot inculcate a sense of integrity and honesty in it's citizenry, an impossible task since the man they idolize, Lee Kuan Yew is himself the worst rascal of them all.
No my friends, what Lee Kuan Yew has done for Singapore is not building it. He has destroyed it. What takes precedence in nation building is not tall concrete structures, but a people loyal and loving of their country. Today if given a chance every Singaporean would have migrated to the West, not wanting anything to do with Lee Kuan Yew's island, a place without the rule of law, an insecure island, run at the whim and pleasure of Lee Kuan Yew himself.
And another thing. Had I written his within Singapore, the next minute Lee Kuan Yew's thugs would be at my door arresting me. But as I write this from afar, bound by international legal standards and not Lee Kuan Yew's personal law, there is simply nothing he can do. That is why I have all along called him, nothing but a coward who abuses the law in his island where he can do anything he wants.
And that is why everyone wants to leave the place. Singapore is not an achievement. It is a shame.
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/
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