<Pic Credit: Omy.sg>
Less than one week after the state burial of the founding Prime Minister of Singapore, two incidents hogged the headlines. One is the abusive tirades of a 16 year old boy in the YouTube against the man himself. And this was taken very seriously, top priority and urgency. One day after it hit the news the boy was charged in court for 3 offences. How could it be when more than a million people paid their respect to the man, queuing for more than 8 hours just to walk pass his body lying in state over a whole week? And immediately there was this big hooha by a boy that took a diagonally opposing view that frayed raw nerves exposed by a week of mourning and public weeping.
To raise the temperature higher, some pro establishment grassroot leaders made threatening remarks like cutting the cock of the boy and shaft it in his mouth, and another insinuating that the comments by the boy could get himself killed, … in this first world city! My God, we are not far from the mentality of the medieval age or the tribes in the jungles.
Yesterday, the angry residents of an upper class public housing estate found it necessary to air their grievances publicly in the social media when they could not get the attention of the authority and the main media to deal with their unhappiness. A state organisation, the Residents Committee, in their zealous effort to help and bond with the residents, insisted on building more facilities in the estate. They already have a big presence but the residents are not happy with their generosity to help them. The residents did not want more RC facilities in their midst. But the RCs are adamant to build more facilities against the wishes of the residents. Strange that the state wanting to help the residents but the residents rejecting the help.
The residents have approached the social media to air their grievances in an open confrontation and to challenge the authority. They did not want the RCs, or as good as please go away. More details are available in an article in the TRE, ‘War breaks out between RC and residents in Toa Payoh’. This is a sample of the comments in the article:
‘Another resident told TRE, “We are being bullied by our RC and PA!”
“There is already an existing RC at our block and they want a 2nd RC. Seriously the residents don’t need 2 RCs within 5 blocks!” she explained.
She asked TRE to help spread the news. “We are really desperate and need your help to make this public as they are going to construct the RC soon. We have written several emails to the authorities but they are not addressing the issue,” she said. “This means a lot to the residents. We sincerely thank you loads.”’
Everyone is wishing the man to RIP and things are beginning to turn bad. How to rest in peace? You want him to jump up so fast? Leave the man in peace can?
Chua Chin Leng AKA RedBean
*The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.sg/