TR EMERITUS

Original blog published by Lucky Tan HERE 现时经济不景，高利贷(loanshark)骚扰案件的数量亦急剧地上升了。在今年首3个月警察必须处理总共4000宗这类案件。 但不要担心，我们的内政部长搞到一个精采的解决辧法，可以减少警察必须处理这类案件的数量： 副总理黄根成(Wong Kan Seng)： “内政部也将考虑把借高利贷行为定为犯法”。 [原文在此]. 放高利贷的人欢迎这个方案：“这对我们是好消息。如果警察拘捕借高利贷的那些人，他们便不敢向警察告发我们骚扰他们了。”[原文在此] 如果您仍然不了解这个解决辧法是多么精采，就让我来解释一下吧。 现时因为受害者向警察求助，警察必须处理这么多放高利贷案件。 实行了定罪那些借高利贷的人之后，高利贷骚扰的受害者将不敢向警察求助，因为他们自己会为借高利贷而被拘捕。 警察将看见案件的数量暴跌，并且政府可以认为问题己经解决了! 真是精采! 应该喝彩! 那时高利贷的受害者必须静默地忍受骚扰。 这将释放出数量相当浩大的资源：将有更多警察可以处理违反新公共秩序法(Public Order Act)的那些麻烦的反对党成员与和平的示威者。 我原本认为派遣我们的老人家到新山(JB)去养老是今年最佳的想法：我错了….现在这一个新方案才是更加精采绝伦!  Read More →

Ripped from Yawning Bread: On TV, Josie Lau said, "My priority right now is to reconcile the team which clearly has fissured." Now, here's something the public does not yet know: The television station's original plan was for a member each of the old guard and the new guard to be in the interview. Josie Lau objected vehemently and insisted they would not share the interview room and program with anyone from the old guard. So much for reconciliation. There's also the extremely curt email (so much for reconciliation, again) they sent to Braema Mathi telling her she's been relieved of her position as chair of the subcommittee preparing AWARE's report to be submitted to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Without even a customary word of thanks, the email said: Kindly note that your term of office as chairman of the CEDAW Committee has ceased at the date of the AGM on the 28 March 2009. Kindly submit all the work in progess by Friday 17 April 2009 without fail.  Regards Sally Ang   Read full article on Yawning Bread  Read More →

By K J, Guest Columnist The government's feeble justifications for passing the Public Order Act (POA) have been roundly and rightly denounced by the Opposition parties and netizens, and it is important that you read their responses closely. The Public Order Act (POA) is about preserving the dominance of the PAP. For this reason, the POA is about us, the citizens. Take heed: the POA is not just about maintaining our racial and religious "harmony". Harmony can be maintained, if it must, with the existing laws, as they always have been. The POA is also not just about the impending APEC meetings or Youth Olympics and the protesters that accompany these events, for the POA is here to stay. The POA is about preserving the dominance of the PAP. For this reason, the POA is about us, the citizens. With the Internet, citizens have managed to reclaim some of their voices, and they are starting to speak and be heard. Nary a week now goes by without the government's mis-steps being exposed and scrutinized by netizens, and the mainstream media's chicanery continually unmasked.You would rather live in Singapore, wouldn't you? Anyway, where else can you go? Now, the PAP's pedigree no longer appears so distinguished and its record no longer that sterling, and the mainstream media little more than a lackey of the government. That is, a government whose largely fabricated aura, abetted by the media propagandists' daily worship, has been diminished exponentially. And right that it has. Our government is just like any good government  filled with fallible men, prone to err. And like any government, its natural impulses are to power and tyranny. This is why democracy, and the structures that uphold it must be built, must prevail. Democracy is vital, it starts with having free and fair elections, that will give rise to a strong Opposition, and it ends with a freer people. Currently, all three elude us. With the Internet, awakened and enlightened citizens who can now see the government for what it really is, might be galvanized to action, and threaten the PAP's hold on power. This is why the POA is enacted, to contain dissent, to suppress action, to shackle the citizen. But this absolute ease of tyranny did not emerge overnight. The government's successive legislations and insidious tweakings over the last four decades on public order, on defamation rulings, on the GRCs, the plethora of licensing and restrictive laws governing the broadcast and print media, public entertainment and civil society, not to mention the enormous discretionary powers the government has behind those laws have gradually but surely strengthened the PAP's grip on the country, entrenched its power in- and outside parliament, weakened the key institutions of the state, and silenced the citizen. In that sense, we have already been muzzled long ago. They create for better and worse, the Singapore that we live in today. It is this absolute ease of tyranny that manifests itself in the stark but facile choice posed to us by the law minister: Well, ask yourself two questions: in our region, which country would you rather be in? And among the countries in the world which became independent in the 1950s and 1960s, which country would you rather be in? In other words: There are those who simply cannot leave, there are those who truly want to remain. But to remain is to perpetually duel, conscience against cowardice, conscience against contentment. To remain is to live in oppression. This is sad, and this is wrong. From the law minister once more, as reported by TODAY: it boils down to how much Singaporeans trust the Government Ð bearing in mind the limitations and geo-political challenge that a small country faces. This is not pleading trust. This is delivering a thin-veiled threat, once more playing the vulnerability game, and inciting the siege mentality created by them trust us, or else. Trust them, or live in oppression. What a generous choice. What a mockery of trust it makes. And what does it make of us? It is rather the government itself who does not trust its people. From our NRICs to our health records on public computers, from racial profiling to academic streaming, from NS disciplining to scholarship bondage, from HDB flat allocation and CPF lock-ups, to the neighbours' constant gaze through grilled-windows from the opposite block, to how to love our lovers so as to propagate the state's ideal family structure, to 24/7 surveillance online and offline, all with the threat of the ISA and the knocking in the night a recurring spectre in our minds. All culminating in this country's pervasive, undignified, climate of fear, every step a landmine of a legislation, every step the high wall of state condescension, every step once more into the inescapable arms of the government. This is not about trust. It is about the regime's ability to exert and collect power. Power undergirded by a politics of deep mistrust, subjecting citizens to living in a prosperous state of constant intimidation and surveil. While they pry into all our personal affairs and indiscretions that everyone has, threatening to expose them, incarcerating you for them. Everyone a potential hostage, while their own infractions are placed above their panoptical power, beyond scrutiny. While they gently cajole: Trust us, or else. Or else, the government can trust us for once, no? The docile, disciplined, depoliticized Singaporean, produced, processed, labeled and sorted, all for the benefit of Singapore Inc. And to whom does Singapore Inc. benefit? If we bemoan our current state, it is also because we have ourselves to blame. I have written before, impassioned thought is in itself activism, that political activism is neutered at its heart when individuals forget that change comes not just from the arena of parliament and street protests, but also from the sitting and thinking individual, that the personal is the political, that action originates from oneÕs thought, conscience, and consciousness. But now to bring our thoughts, conscience, and consciousness to bear, and in our different ways, to serve one cause: honouring freedom. The POA and those who support it, dishonour it. Freedom is not, unless you have bought into the government's rhetoric, a lofty word, it is a basic need, without which citizens are bereft of dignity. The so-called politics of bread and butter is at one with the right to liberty: together, they constitute a proper, fuller life. One less, and itÕs half a life. Why would dignity discriminate? Albert Camus once observed: there are no two politics, there is only one, and it is the one that makes a commitment - the politics of honour. And indeed there can be no freedom without honour. Honour in words, honour in deed, honour in our hearts. No heart, no honour. Not unlike those moneyed men in white. Honour freedom. Today the government goes for them whom you think isn't about you. (Where were we when the Opposition members were intimidated and bankrupted?) As if it's none of your business, as if oppression is just fine. Tomorow they'll come for you and you alone. They will, simply because they can, and they will, because you had let them. Remember the saying: a nation of sheep begets a government of wolves? See how quickly the laws are amended and passed. This is our parliament of men in white, representing not the people but themselves. See how swiftly your basic rights have disappeared. The POA is only one of many examples, and no doubt many more will come, cumulatively, oppressively. And why? Because we blind ourselves to the fact that the numerous laws passed ostensibly to maintain peace and prosperity, also invariably constrain the Opposition, crush dissent, and ensure the continued dominance of the PAP. Because you have been trained to disdain freedom, and because you have been encouraged to love your own servitude and bondage. This is the most powerful form of control, indoctrination at its best. The Opposition is weak because we kept silent, and so we kept them weak. Serves them right, we chide. In the end, this has not served us well. And now when we speak, if at all, we speak the language of disappointment, of anger, of disillusionment, of despair. Forty years of independence, and we're as dependent as ever if not more. Our nation-building efforts built a tyrannical regime instead. This is what happens when you remain silent. You will be silenced, and you will be defenceless. The Opposition has spoken out against the POA; they always have. Go with the Opposition, that's a start. Honour those who honour freedom, their strength lies in your hands. Honour your own freedom too, for much is at stake. To be able to walk free and be heard, with fervour without fear. Because freedom is not a lofty word. (KJ is also a guest columnist at The Online Citizen)    Read More →