From ‘Protest organiser Gilbert Goh advised against defacing poster of PM’, 30 May 2014, article in Today
The police have contacted social activist Gilbert Goh regarding his Facebook post calling on the public to deface a poster of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at a planned Labour Day demonstration at Hong Lim Park tomorrow (May 1). In a statement to the media, the police said Mr Goh, who organised the protest, was advised against carrying out such activities during the demonstration, as they could be considered offences under the Penal Code and the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act.
…In a Facebook post dated April 19, Mr Goh had spoken out against Mr Lee’s comment that he was “appalled” to read about the harassment of organisers of the Philippine Independence Day celebrations in Singapore. “We want to showcase (Mr Lee) on our labour day protest by putting up a huge poster for protestors to vent their anger. You can spit, throw eggs, splash dog poo, draw graffiti and kick at the poster of our Prime Minister,” Mr Goh wrote. The post was still on his Facebook page as of this evening.
This afternoon, Mr Goh also posted: “A police inspector called me earlier asking us not to deface our Prime Minister photo tomorrow or else…but that doesn’t mean we can’t scold him for his errant pro-foreigner policies right?”
Few world leaders have been spared from public defacement. It happened to Obama.
Vladimir Putin.
And naturally..
With photoshopping skills you can mock a politician without stepping out of your house. Yet no one thus far has been taken to task for superimposing our President’s face on Colonel Sanders’. Or adding bloody fangs onto LKY.
Gilbert Goh got away with doing an impromptu Songkran on an effigy of Lui Tuck Yew previously, and now is threatening to incite violence upon an image of the PM. Resorting to juvenile voodoo aside, Gilbert’s call for egg-tossing is a shameless waste of a perfect food, and NEA should clamp down on the protest for encouraging wastage. Photoshopping Wong Kan Seng’s face onto an executed Viet soldier, however, may get you arrested, and Gilbert is tempting fate here by simulating violence against the PM himself. Interestingly, there was a time when the man was more accommodating of foreigners, leading some to accuse him of doing a U-turn or singing a different tune when he was working in Sydney.
In a 2008 letter to Today titled ‘Treat foreigners the way you want to be treated’, Gilbert revealed that he had left Singapore to work in Australia, and concluded from his experience that Singaporeans ‘must welcome such foreign talents’ and ‘at the very least not give them a hard time’. A year later he called for more integration among our migrant workers, at the same time stating that we should be more selective in who we bring in – people with ‘real talents’. In fact he thought it would be ideal if the good ones can remain long enough to convert to actual citizens. In a Facebook post he mulled over the high cost of living in Sydney while he was there, about $10 fried rice and ‘surviving’ despite his $15 per hour wage as a ‘casual worker’. Whatever that means.
In an interview with the SgVoize blog, he explained that he was there via a 4 year work visa tied to his ex-wife’s visa, who’s now a PR there (but he’s not). He also visits his daughter (I would assume also a Aussie PR) now and then. I wonder where would he be now if he had stayed married. If not for Gilbert, Hong Lim Park would be a terrifyingly lonely place, good only for picnics, family frisbee or qigong. Singaporeans would have lost the only place where you can cosplay as Guy Fawkes without getting questioned by the Police.
In 2011, he was appointed as candidate for opposition party NSP (after a brief, ‘sour’ stint with Reform Party), banking on his credentials as the President ofTransitioning.org, a support organisation for the unemployed. Armed with a Graduate Diploma in Counselling, he went on to racially profile the various foreign workers in Singapore in an article written in 2013, from PRCs being ‘brash and rude’ to Filipinos as ‘political and manipulative’. All this leading up to his personal vendetta againstPhilippine Independence Day, where he complained to the Philippine ambassador that the display of their flag in Orchard Road is a ‘betrayal of the motherland’.
PM Lee was probably referring to him among others when he called such harassment a ‘disgrace to Singapore’. The May Day Protest, with the highlight being people doing nasty, scatological things to the PM’s photo in a fit of rage (or fun) appears to be Gilbert’s way of retorting ‘Up yours!’, and maybe even following up with taunts of ‘My dad is better than your dad’. I’d advise anyone to stay away from the protest, not because you may get hounded by the police, but you may be coerced into holding up a lump of dogshit in your hand instead of a pink I/C or EZLink card, an act which has become somewhat of a Gilbert signature.
Everything Also Complain
*The author blogs at http://everythingalsocomplain.com