Ladies and gentleman, what do the two men above have in common?
Alright. Other than the thick nice hair, determined cheekbones, fleshy lips, thick eyebrows, nerdy glasses. same hair parting on a buay song face. What else? It shouldn't be too difficult for you. Both men spoke out against the PAP and were sued by the same family. Both men worked for public entities and were sacked respectively by their companies. The older man was made a bankrupt and the younger one is doomed to follow suit. A stark difference stood out between the two. One is a politician and the other, a commoner. The happenings in the previous weeks shown Singaporeans clearly that there the setting point didn't matter so long as the motivation was the same - all will be exterminated.
In another display of Constructive Politics, Roy was sacked from his job at TTSH. Whatever reasons that his employer gave, I am not really interested. That was his employer's prerogative. I'm sure they would have perfectly valid reasons to do so. For me, the question was never the justifications behind the sacking but whether the motivation mimics the intent. A justification can be crafted to sound perfectly gracious or even noble even when the motivation was anything but that. That, only TTSH knows for sure.
In the mean time, the people of Singapore, of course, believe that the sacking was not politically motivated. Because Constructive Politics.
At 0615 hrs, I sat on the toilet bowl in the cold 2°C Perth winter morning. To take my mind off the discomfort of my cold butt, I browsed through my phone and found multiple messages to me related to the sacking of the famous commoner of the late. One even sent me a photo of an enslaved chicken lamenting about the injustice of a society that accepts “杀一做百”. Even Miss V asked me, "What do I think of Roy Ngerng?" The last time I was asked a question in this manner, someone was trying to hook me up with another girl. I cringed at the thought and that helped me sober up for the day ahead.
The majority of Singaporeans will look at characters such as Chee or Ngerng in disdain. They did wrong. They were radical. They were illogical, ill-advised, irrational, tactless.... Most importantly, they offended the wrong guy so thus, they would be destroyed and rightly so. The extermination of such would come in a package of character assassination, bankruptcy and (probably a permanent) removal of livelihood. By the end of that, their credibility would have sunken to the depths that no one would believe them even if they call the sun the sun, rendering them eternally toothless to their political foes.
To V, I'll leave you my thoughts on this. As we know it, even if Roy does not end up in prison eventually, he would not be able to leave the country and seems doomed for decades of financial hardship. In a glance it is easy to agree that he deserves his punishment. But what wrong did he really do? Yes, he defamed somebody he shouldn't. Somebody powerful. No... what wrong did he really do? I meant in a raw form. Did he physically hurt someone? Under the penal code of SG, The penalty for using criminal force to another person is imprisonment for up to three months, or a fine of up to S$500, or both. If Roy's insinuation of PM Lee was actually true, the PM could be charged under a criminal breach of trust which the penalty is imprisonment for up to three years, or a fine, or both. It seems like Roy Ngerng is receiving a punishment harsher for defamation than what PM Lee would have received if he was found guilty of what he had been accused for.
Under the seven deadly sins; lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride, how many sins did Roy committed? And how many did PM Lee committed? Can justice in such a society ever address the inequality of the human beings?
A Singaporean Son
*The writer blogs at http://asingaporeanson.blogspot.com/