Understanding Zaid's action: a casual observation.

BERITADARIGUNUNG

There is a natural tendency among men to live in peace. Then effort is made to create a safe environment. Thats how life goes. But one has to be clear about many things. What is peace? What are attributes of peace? What is environment? What is safe?

I read a simple essay on Lee Kuan Yew. Mr Lee is a giant for a little city state. Lets read the essay, and then make a fair assessment. Dont be bias, put aside sentiments and personal feelings. While agreeing to the point that peace is never static and in fact it is transcient in nature, we do have to allow a little bit of flexibility and being pragmatic most of the time. There is more to leadership than to succumb to limited aim and scope.

On man-made Law, i suppose it was not crafted for the fun of it. There is a larger picture to it. We do have to agree that not everyone has the privilege to be blessed with wisdom and a view of the larger picture. Most of us are walking about with limited aim and scope in life. Lee in Singapore and our own Tun Mahathir are two interesting leader to be analysed. Their wisdom is far reaching.

Here is the essay.......

Lee Kuan Yew - First Premier of Singapore

When Lee Kuan Yew resigned as Prime minister of Singapore in 1990 it was the end of the reign of a tiger; a man who took no prisoners in his drive to the top. Serving his country from 1959 until 1990, he was the longest serving prime minister of any country at that time.

Had it not been for the Japanese occupation of Singapore it is doubtful that he would have led his country, but that occupation had such a profound effect on him that it completely changed the course of his life. He was determined that no foreign power would ever again control his country and that his countrymen would never again be “the playthings of a foreign power”. His treatment by the Japanese was such that this burning ambition remained with him always.

After the war he was educated in England as a lawyer and on his return to Singapore joined the pro-British Progressive Party, for which he acted as an election agent in the 1951 elections. However, Lee was born of Chinese parents, and had a Chinese attitude to life and politics and realized, correctly, that no party could succeed in Singapore without the support of the Chinese working class, even though the majority at that time was not allowed to vote.

His opportunity came in 1953 when the Rendell Commission allowed all local born Singaporeans to have the vote, which enfranchised millions of Chinese-speaking voters. Lee Kuan Yew founded the People’s Action Party in 1954, a leftist party that formed an alliance with the trades unionists. The Communist Part was illegal in Malaysia, so the pro-communist trades unions considered an alliance with a respectable political party to be to their advantage. The British members of the PAP needed the support of the Chinese trade unionized masses to help them gain power, and both sides had the same objective of self government for Singapore and the removal of British rule.

Lee was appointed Secretary General of the People’s Action Party, and held that post until 1992, well after his retirement from national office. Thanks to the support of the Chinese-speaking masses, he was elected into the Legislative Assembly in 1955, and after his party won the next election, he became the first prime minister of his country in 1959. However, this was only the start of his work, not the end.

Lee ran a very tight ship. He possessed the Chinese trait of strict discipline and obedience of orders. When he took office he found the political scene to be full of corruption and he stamped this out immediately. He accepted no argument or criticism, and had no hesitation in destroying anybody who stood against him. The way he cut out corruption was to make it illegal, and he appointed an agency that enforced these laws rigorously. He was a tenacious fighter who left anybody who opposed him beaten. He enforced strict discipline and complete intolerance of disobedience. If you agreed with him you were fine. If not . . .

He had a typical attitude towards the severe housing shortage that existed when he took over the reins of power. He instituted a building program that increased state ownership of affordable housing from below 10% to over 90%. He invested in his country’s industry to provide employment to everybody, and the ability to afford the housing. Anybody who opposed him was politically destroyed. He could not be beaten. He was tenacious and refused to be beaten in anything he believed was right for his country. He abhorred corruption.

However, although the standard of living improved dramatically in Singapore, he was described by some as a despot and criticized by others for his autocratic approach to democracy. Examples quoted were his intolerance of political demonstrations and his restriction in the freedom of the press. Lee firmly believed, however, that the end justified the means. Examples of the way he handled dissent include bankrupting opponents and the use of the courts to settle personal disputes. He never lost! He did not believe in open debate, but in absolute rule if the end justified it.

He announced his retirement when he reached 65 in 1988, but did not hand over power to Min Goh Chok Tong until 1990. He held the position of Senior Minister as an advisor until 2004 when he took up the position of Senior Mentor, a position created for him.

Although he was authoritarian, a strong character was what Singapore needed to pull it out of the quagmire into which it had sunk after the Japanese occupation and then its reoccupation by the British. Singapore owes him a lot, and a weaker man could not have achieved what Lee Kuan Yew did for his country.

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beritadarigunung: Cheer up Zaid, it is not the end of the world and learning is lifelong.

Singapore Justice: a Moving Target

Our Correspondent
25 August 2008

A Singaporean court allows the Lee family to expand its libel suit against the Far Eastern Economic Review

“Humpty Dumpty: When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean ‑ neither more nor less.
Alice: The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things.
Humpty Dumpty: The question is: which is to be master ‑ that's all.”

In an extraordinary move, nearly two years after Singapore’s ruling Lee family filed a defamation suit against the Far Eastern Economic Review, a high court judge let it be known to the Lees’ lawyers that he was "searching for a higher defamatory meaning" that would allow the charges to be broadened. Last week, the lawyers took him up on it and amended their complaint to allow for greater penalties.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father, legendary strongman Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, are suing the Far Eastern Economic Review and its editor, Hugo Restall, over an August 2006 interview with opposition leader, Chee Soon Juan, in which Chee, among other things, said the island republic wasn’t going to liberalize until Lee Kuan Yew was dead.

After Justice Woo Bih Li’s suggestion, the Lees’ lawyers amended their petition to make sure that an allegedly libelous passage implying that Lee Kuan Yew had condoned corruption on the part of T.T. Durai, the former head of the National Kidney Foundation, also be applied to Lee Hsien Loong, although the offending passage didn’t mention the prime minister. Durai has since been imprisoned for misuse of funds.

It all came down to the meaning of the word “he.” The passage that Woo used to extend the libel to Lee Hsien Loong referred to him as a member of a generation that will “have a price to pay” for the elder Lee’s policies. It went on to quote Chee as saying “Why is (Lee Kuan Yew) still afraid,” and finished saying “I think he is actually afraid of something like that.”

Although the Review’s lawyers contended that the pronoun “he” referred to Lee Kuan Yew, Woo, in a June 25 hearing, asked: “Is the court precluded from concluding that the natural and ordinary meaning of the disputed words are as defamatory of Lee Hsien Loong as they are allegedly defamatory of Lee Kuan Yew?”

Prompted by the judge, the Lees’ lawyer, Davinder Singh, argued in his written submission to the court for the amendment, “the article clearly asserted that like Durai, who abused defamation suits to silence his critics and conceal his corruption, Lee Hsien Loong has abused libel suits as a tool to conceal his corruption."

The original 2006 article kicked off a spate of actions on the part of the Singapore government, which almost immediately required four more foreign media companies in addition to the Review – the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, Newsweek and Time, to post a security deposit of S$200,000 and to appoint a local agent authorized to accept service of legal writs in the event that the government decided to sue.

The Lees also filed suit against Restall and the Review, which is owned by Dow Jones Corp., which in turn was bought last year by Rupert Murdoch’s publishing empire, charging that the elder Lee had been “gravely injured in his character and reputation and [had] been brought into public scandal, odium and contempt” by references to him in the article.

Singapore and the Lee family have long been famous for suing journalists, both foreign and domestic – and they have never lost a suit in Singapore. The Far Eastern Economic Review was a favorite target.

The media watchdog organization Reporters Without Borders ranks Singapore 140th out of 167 countries surveyed in terms of freedom of the press. The country has been kicking foreign journalists out for writing critical articles about the republic since the early 1970s.

The Singapore government also was embarrassed in July by a 72-page report by the International Bar Association, which held its international convention in the island republic last year, on continuing controversy over the judiciary. Although Lee Kuan Yew described the association as having issued a letter commending the country’s judiciary, the letter was never issued. Instead, the report, titled “Prosperity versus individual rights? Human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Singapore,” makes 18 recommendations that the association urges the Singapore government to implement as a matter of priority.

Singapore, the report stated, “cannot continue to claim that civil and political rights must take a back seat to economic rights, as its economic development is now of the highest order. In the modern era of globalization, isolationist policies and attitudes are no longer tenable. The international community, through the mechanisms of the United Nations, regional forums and non-governmental human rights bodies, has a role to play in commenting on practices that it perceives to fall short of international standards.

“The [association’s human rights institution] strongly encourages Singapore to engage with the international community in a more constructive manner, and to take steps to implement international standards of human rights throughout Singapore. It is imperative that Singapore now takes its place as a leader in the region, not only in business and economic development, but in human rights, democracy and the rule of law.”

Singapore’s government, the report continues, “is currently failing to meet established international standards in these areas.” Reports of opposition candidates being targeted for criticizing the government, it says, “are of significant concern and threaten democracy and the rule of law in Singapore.” It describes an “apparent climate of fear and self-censorship surrounding the press in Singapore,” and that the “increasing tendency for high profile and respected publications to pay large out-of-court settlements to avoid litigation with PAP officials and the continued run of success within in-court claims is worrying.”

Click here: Singapore Justice: a Moving Target
Asia Sentinel, Hong Kong - 16 hours ago

Freedom's burdens

Freedom's burdens

By BARNEY MTHOMBOTHI

The string of holidays, a bit of a nightmare for those trying to do some work - with businesses hard-pressed to eke out a living in ever-deteriorating conditions - provides some respite to many for what has been a roller coaster so early in the year.

A few months into the new year and it already has the festive feel of December about it.

People are knackered, drained emotionally and physically. As the saying goes, it has not just been raining; it's been pouring an unremitting stream of bad news since Polokwane, which saw the unfathomable rise of Jacob Zuma. The Reserve Bank governor is in an unforgiving, intolerant mood. The price of oil - therefore of everything else - is reaching the stratosphere. Food is getting more expensive and less affordable and the spectre of food riots is becoming an ever-increasing reality. Violent crime remains a constant danger. The mess in Zimbabwe has worsened and our president has added fuel to the fire with his crass utterances and omissions.

And, of course, there's Eskom, the mother of all cock-ups. I wonder whether the brothers at Eskom would recognise a generator if they were to collide with one. They should be wearing sackcloth, weeping and wailing, and covering themselves in ashes for putting the future of the country and the wellbeing of its people in peril. Instead they're demanding a bonus. It's an obscenity. The fact that their political masters are indifferent to the disaster they have caused is almost rubbing salt into a festering wound. But I digress.

The litany of bad news has wiped the smile off our collective faces. The stress is telling. The holidays, Freedom Day and Workers' Day, which have so badly mangled this week, are a benefit of our new dispensation, a time to pause and reflect. And there's been a lot of reflection on what it means to be free, and what this democracy has achieved.

Unfortunately most such ruminations have tended to be negative. You hear it all the time: crime is rife because the constitution no longer allows the police to beat confessions out of suspects ; children have lost all respect for their elders because corporal punishment, at school and in the home, has been outlawed; managers can't manage any more because the law makes it almost impossible to discipline or sack workers; and in any case the unions are in bed with government, so they can get whatever they want. Teachers, well, they're useless and powerful; even the minister of education won't scratch herself without asking for their permission. The list goes on.

It's not as if there's some light at the end of this dark tunnel. It's been switched off - by Eskom, of course. And the unedifying prospect of a Zuma presidency looms large.

People tend to feel like hostages, believing that there's nothing they can do to extricate themselves from the web of problems confronting them. That's when they start looking around for a strongman, a Lee Kuan Yew or a Mahathir Mohamad; somebody able to keep the criminals at bay or behind bars and get the trains to run on time, even if it means sacrificing a few liberties.

Which is why the reaction to deputy safety and security minister Susan Shabangu's exhortation to the police to forget about the constitution and "shoot the bastards" (that is, criminals) has on the whole elicited a positive response from a public hankering for a tough guy. Some disillusionment with democracy seems to be setting in. But democracy was never supposed to be a panacea.

Democracy is like a marriage; after a whirlwind courtship and honeymoon, it tends to become banal, and can even go a bit pear-shaped. The trick is to keep working on it all the time.

But the fault in our case doesn't lie with democracy. It's competence that's missing.

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