TR EMERITUS

Like dat also can? A reader reposted an article from Online Citizen Asia about a man, who was charged and convicted for cheating because he had taken payment but had refused to commit a crime he was paid for. It is indeed a baffling and debatable case and we are reproducing it here for our learnered readers to discuss. Netizens baffled that a man was convicted of “cheating” a loan shark who himself was not caught By kathleen -07/01/202114 34-year-old Muhammad Khairul Ismail on Wednesday (7 January) plead guilty to one count of cheating and an unrelated charge of online betting. He was sentenced to 11 days in jail for the cheating. He will also serve another four days in jail for not paying the S$1,000 fine he received on the gambling offence. The cheating charges relates to his plan to deceive an unlicensed moneylender who hired Khairul to harass debtors by chaining up their gates. Khairul, instead, found a way to get payment from the moneylender without actually completing the job. What he did was chain the debtors’ gates, record a video to demonstrate having done so for the purpose of showing the loan shark, and then remove the chains. Khairul is out on S$15,000 bail and is appealing his sentence. Khairul had reached out to the moneylender, known only as “Lucas”, upon seeing a job offer in November 2019, the Court heard. The job was to lock up the gates of people who owed Lucas money, paste a note on their doors, record the acts, and send the videos to Lucas as proof of the job done. Khairul was promised S$100 to S$120 for each completed job, based on messages exchanged between the two on WhatsApp. However, in December 2019 upon instructions from the loan shark, Khairul proceeded to a debtor’s house and locked the gate with two bicycle locks. He then pasted a note on one of the locks instead of the gate to avoid potentially damaging the gate. He then recorded the whole incident before removing the locks and leaving the gate unscratched. After sending the video to the loan shark, he was paid S$120 for the job. The court heard of two other similar incidents, both of which were taken into consideration during sentencing. According to reports, police were alerted to the case after Lucas forwarded the videos to debtors. However, it is noted that Lucas’ identity remains a mystery. This unusual case has caught the ire of many netizens who were baffled by the fact that Khairul was even charged with cheating as they pointed out that what he did was not really a crime as he honoured the agreement. On TODAY’s Facebook page, netizens highlighted that Khairul had taken care to not to harm any of the debtors or their property. Others wondered how it is even possible for someone to be charged with cheating an illegal moneylender since the moneylender is the one breaking the law. Many also questioned whether the loan shark himself would be brought to justice for his crimes, and how the police managed to nab Khairul but not the big boss himself. Other asked how anyone had even accused Khairul of cheating when the victim — the loan shark himself — could not be found. Our stroken techie, Andrew was the first to respond to the reproduced article with the following comment: This is indeed a very interesting case worth wasting time to discuss and study. What the unlicensed moneylender wanted the accused to do was clearly illegal, promising to pay him after he has committed the illegal act. The accused wants no part of it and did not carry out the clearly illegal locking of doors and harassment as instructed by the unlicensed moneylender. So he staged it for the unlicensed moneylender to think that he has done it and collected payment. Point to note: 1. Had the accused carried out the locking as instructed by the unlicensed moneylender, he would have committed an offence and the unlicensed moneylender would be guilty of abetting, if the house owner makes a police report. 2. What the unlicensed moneylender instructed the accused to do was clearly an illegal act, which is against the law. Technically it was a verbal contract, BUT since what the accused was asked to do was illegal, how then can the contract even be binding and valid and how could the accused have been charged for cheating (because he refused to commit an illegal act), even if the accused has received payment, be it before or after the event? By extention, the accused had to commit one crime or another, be charged for the locking of doors or cheating? Picture this: I was asked by Andy to murder someone and was paid upfront for the assignment. Since it was an illegal act, I staged the death of the person I was supposed to murder and told Andy that he was dead. So according to the police’s logic, I had cheated Andy since I took the money and did not murder that someone? Meanwhile, nothing happens to Andy, who had paid me to murder someone? Walan eh, whoever the IO and DPP in this case sibei tokong man, salute ar! Had this happen in China, Andy would have been arrested by teh police and I would get a pat on the back for not committing the muder liao lor. Its called "中止犯罪", a provision under their law for the police to not take any further action against an accused. So what do our learned readers think?      Read More →

Andy Zhu (left) The Straits Times published an article entitled “Former Reform Party chairman Andy Zhu and others form new political party, Singapore United Party” at the end of which they said, “ they had reached out to [me] for comment’. This is yet another example of the tricks perpetrated by the state media in their silly attempts to damage the Reform Party. The article was published on 3 January at 20:35. The journalist reached out to me for comments at 00:55 the next day a full 7 hours later. On behalf of the CEC, I sent the Reform Party’s response to the journalist at 02:10. The ST failed to update the article with our response. This is a minor story as it happens but by leaving the statement that I had been contacted but had not responded the ST is deliberately suggesting that I do not have a reponse and therefore by association that there is some kind of internal rift or implosion within RP. Far from it. We have a fantastic CEC and renewed enthusiasm since GE2020, a new women’s wing and a green manifesto. In the interests of transparency I reproduce below the ST email and my response: You will see that at the time she wrote this email to me the ST article had already been published. Very poor journailsitc ethics to claim she was working on an article. Hi Mr Jeyaretnam, This is Yuen Sin from The Straits Times’ political desk, I hope you are well. You may be aware that several Reform Party members have left to join a new party, Singapore United Party, led by former RP chairman Andy Zhu. We are working on an article about this and I was wondering if we can get your comments on their departure and the new party – particularly on the perception that SUP is a breakaway faction from the RP? Thanks, and do let me know if you have any clarifications. Hope to hear from you soon. I responded as follows: Dear Yuen Sin Thank you for your enquiry. “You may be aware that several Reform Party members have left to join a new party, Singapore United Party, led by former RP chairman Andy Zhu” Point of fact: Andy Zhu was expelled from RP so it is inaccurate to say that he left. He did not take up his right of appeal. After sanctions were taken against him following an internal Party disciplinary process he hijacked the party’s social media pages to put out his own misleading statements. Luckily Facebook were very helpful in having him removed but it left us with no choice but to expel him. I will note that previously your publication made factual errors and claims probably based on Zhu’s misleading statements from that time. For accuracy I would ask you to go to Charles Yeo, the Chair, who is a lawyer and who chaired the disciplinary proceedings which were lengthy, robust and fair. I have CC’d him into this email. “particularly on the perception that SUP is a breakaway faction from the RP” Yes, there appear to be some former RP members in the new party and I believe it is accurate to say there was a faction led by Andy Zhu. This faction was determined to take Reform Party into a 3-cornered fight in West Coast GRC, against Dr Tan Cheng Bock, in the face of all the evidence that this would be bad for the Reform Party, bad for the Opposition, and bad for the development of democracy in Singapore. In other words bad for our country. Some of those disgruntled members revealed deep-seated animosity against Dr Tan personally which I found difficult to understand. We were all sad to lose West Coast after all the effort and sacrifices made to contest two elections there. But party policy was to cede in favour of opposition unity. This faction can also be characterised as misjudging the importance of digital campaigning and failing to transition. In particular Andy Zhu misjudged the importance of national airtime, stubbornly refusing to join the Constituency Broadcast and effectively sabotaging it. We know how that ended. Mr Zhu and his friends, despite every effort, were unable to get Reform Party to engage in a 3-cornered fight against Dr Tan just as they were unable to completely disrupt our campaign in Ang Mo Kio. I don’t feel it is any loss to us nor any gain to the opposition ranks that these disgruntled former members are unable to put their egos aside and move on. We have a marvellous team in our new CEC, ably chaired by Charles Yeo, and we are looking forward to contesting in Ang Mo Kio, Radin Mas and elsewhere at the next election.   Kenneth Jeyaretnam * The author is the Secretary-General of the Reform Party and blogs at https://kenjeyaretnam.com/ .  Read More →

As far as our total fertility rate (TFR) is concerned, we started 2021 with very depressed news that out of >200 countries and territories worldwide, Singapore under the pap government again rank among the last few, if not the lowest and the last in international TFR standing. The TFR replacement level for each child bearing woman is 2.1 but our numbers is less than 0.9 per woman, so realistically speaking, we have lost our battle to reverse our falling and falling and still falling TFR and our native born core Singaporeans is on a steady path of decline to become a minority species in our own country. For many, many years now, the pap government, instead of working hard, resolutely and holistically to improve our TFR has instead opted for the easy and lazy way through the mass importation of PRs and new citizens to make up for the shortfall. The ills of such a strategy are not easily visible in the initial 10 or 20 years but beyond that, it will change the composition and character of our society beyond recognition. To compound our old age challenges, when those PRs and new citizens become old and if they don't have enough children of their own to look after them which is a very likely scenario, then the burden of looking after them will fall on our citizens and our children and become our burdens and by then, those so called 3G and 4G pap ministars would probably be enjoying life somewhere in the Caribbean or Hawaii etc and I can easily foresee that our today's fellow Singaporeans, especially those younger citizens and teenage Singaporeans, many of them will have to work their guts out day in and day out and suck thumbs here in Singapore. Either that or many will choose to leave if they can. Alearly, we might have more over 60s than under 16 years of age citizens and residents in our population. Just think harder about it. It is a scary thought. We are paying the world's record political salaries to those greedy politicians that we have and yet, over time, Singaporeans will lose big time due to their meekness, inability or unwillingness to think about issues critically and/or their indifference to demand corresponding performance from their government. Our pathetic TFR is one good example. Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →