Given what we saw transpire in the last 24hrs, the lawsuit against Terry Xu and Singapore filing a motion at the UN to block 3rd party arbitration on the border dispute without mutually agreed terms, it is fitting that today I talk about the rule of law and its changing and selective use by our government.
We all know back in the middle of last year the Prime Minister’s brother and sister made very definite and clear accusations against him, but no action was taken against them.
Then the Prime Minister's nephew said something about our legal system in a private post among friends. This was shared by a 3rd party but was still unknown to 99.999% of us until the Straits Times published it and spread it widely. No action was taken against either the original sharer or the Straits Times who made it all public, but it was the PM’s nephew based in the US who was sued for his private thoughts never intended for the public.
Contrast this with the action against blogger Leong Sze Hian who was one of hundreds who shared an article by Alex Tan based out of Australia. In this case Sze Hian appears to be the only one asked to remove the article to prevent its dissemination, which he complied with, and yet he is being sued and not all the others who shared it nor the actual author based overseas who has been issuing a steady stream of taunts and dares to the government to go after him and has never retracted his claims.
In both the above cases the words being argued about were very clear and definitive. The article in Terry Xu’s case does not actually say what the Straits Times and other mainstream media is reporting but is being interpreted to mean what they claim is a defamatory statement. Again Terry Xu just shared the article which he also removed when requested to but is still being sued and those sharing and magnifying the interpretations (The Mainstream Media) are left alone when they are clearly doing more reputational damage than Terry ever did.
Then of course we had our infamous “selected” presidency where our laws were rewritten and then uniquely interpreted to ignore the previously publicly acknowledged first president, Ong Teng Cheong, and 4 terms magically became 5 and then Halimah Yacob suddenly changed her previously published race from Indian to Malay and lo and behold we have a Malay president with no other qualifying candidates.
Nobody believes the PAP line that they altruistically would take a political hit to ensure minority representation by making it a reserved presidential election when they never had such a thought before Dr Tan Cheng Bok looked like he would have a strong chance of winning if there was an open one and they didn't want that.
And now to the latest border spat where the talk has been, we need arbitration and yet Singapore now wants to block that unless it is specifically on their agreed terms.
We know from experience of how the questioning was done during the Fake News hearings, amongst others, that our government officials like to cherry pick facts and try and generate very narrow and limited terms of reference to get the answers or narrative they want, so we shouldn’t expect much more different here. So much for fair and free arbitration.
It is interesting to note however that for an “urgent” sovereignty issue, with the IB’s banging war drums etc, they are only going to sit down with Malaysia in the middle of next month, so it can’t be that urgent after all can it? And are the Malaysians a real imminent enemy or is it a distraction and playing on our security and fears for politics?
And of course, apart from elections and lawsuits and distractions we have seen a raft of new laws introduced, many this year, to limit what we can say and do and to allow government servants warrantless access to our house even more easily than for the police force.
Now the IMDA, the HDB and soon the NEA will have a right to break down our doors for the smallest of reasons and in some cases arrest us and a temporary 5-year law the British Introduced for unrest in the 50s (The CLTPA) has just been extended and amended for the 14th time to curtail us even more.
Along with the massive surveillance system being installed this is clearly weaponizing the legal system, the civil service and the very state itself against the citizens.
This is a government out of control.
Our laws are selectively implemented or changed and interpreted at will to allow them to achieve their private aims and our rights as citizens from assembly (now even standing on your own counts as an assembly) to the privacy of our own homes are rapidly being taken away.
This is the stuff of fascist dictatorships not democratic societies and our self-proclaimed aristocrats are certainly now acting in every way like the despotic kings of old they seem to claim themselves to be. So much for Lee Kuan Yew's words in the attached photo.
When your government acts in this manner, does not fairly and impartial obey the law of the land but twists or amends it to its own and uses it vindictively against the people (of course not against those that can easily fight back) while taking away your basic human rights then you have to ask can these cowardly dictators any longer be trusted with such power and authority?
Will it be you or your children that next become their victims as they do anything they can to avoid accountability and hang on to their increasingly undeserved power?
Think and share and act.
They can easily attack one but not the many and whatever rules they implement to impede our voice with volume we can vote these real enemies of Singapore out.
The rest of the world is waking up and so should we.