You say: "Shanmugam in particular may feel sensitive because in May 2023, it became known that he and Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan were renting magnificent colonial-era bungalows on exclusive Ridout Road which are owned by the government and whose grounds were renovated at state expense."
This is incorrect. It is not the Singapore state that owns and renovates these ridiculously priced bungalows for Singapore's ruling politicians or for that matter Singapore's ruling class. It is the Singapore taxpayers who own these properties and who pay through their noses to maintain these properties in their entirety. It's the Singapore taxpayers who are being screwed over yet again by the dynastic Lee regime, just as they have been since Lee Snr ran the joint.
But you're right about these capers being familiar when Singapore's political class and the Singapore one-party mainly Chinese dictatorship sues the media and its critics (remember how the state pursued American academic Christopher Lingle when he was teaching at a university in the so-called city-state?) for all the former's renowned shenanigans. These low-life scumbags think they are above the law, if not they are not accountable to Singapore's mostly docile and subjugated voters.
Then there is Singapore's judiciary. Critics who claimed that the one-party PAP dictatorship has Singapore's judiciary serving the state's crummy (two-bit) politicians, rather than the people and justice, were pursued through these very politically pliant courts to help them cover up their pathetic excuses and lies that they stupidly label as defamation or libel. If, as in Malaysia where a so-called judge or magistrate can be easily bought, is also true in Singapore, then "justice", in all its glorious meaning, purpose and practice, is not just a misnomer but a bleeding joke. Like the ruling class, the political class can purchase "justice" to protect them from accusations of lies and corruption against them.
What has happened in Singapore is more than just its stunning economic development, its industrialization and its technologization but in tandem the cajoling and subjugation of Singapore voters who so shamelessly dare not speak ou or even speak up against the PAP dictatorship. They're more than meek: like their political class, Singaporeans are essentially cowards. So, too, their local academics, especially in the university sector, who can shamefully boast to be academics but who do not practice academic freedom. When Christopher Lingle was being hounded, local Singapore academics hid under their mothers' sarongs. Such spineless, unethical, immoral so-called intelligentsia as it exists in Singapore.
There is nothing great about Singapore. It might be the richest of people in Southeast Asia. But when a minister sells his home for S$88 million dollars and shrouded in secrecy, it says something really rotten stinks in Singapore, and probably has been there since day one. The claim that Singaporeans are incorruptible is laughable, not laudable. It was always state-promoted propaganda, always a state-based lie. Singapore is corrupt. Maybe it's not (yet) as corrupt as its ASEAN brotherhood states but it's been clear for a while Singapore is corrupt, that its institutions are corrupt. And these "institutions" profess to serve the "public". What "public"?
So, the next question -- a question that applies to all of Southeast Asia -- is when in hell is the PAP dictatorship going to grow the spine and by law insist that all of its political class declare its assets, held within Singapore and abroad, in a register to which the public has unimpeded access? Or is besieged Lee Hsien Loong just another coward who emits more of his usual hot-air? What and who is he protecting that ordinary Singaporeans have the right to know? Where are their hard-earned taxes going?
And, last but not least, while the regime pays neighboring countries to dredge sand and sell it to Singapore so it can expand total land mass, has anybody questioned why it's okay to keep Singapore clean, by law, but happy to destroy the environs of its neighboring states at a time when climate change is advancing its destruction and no doubt will impact on Singapore in worse ways given it is resource-poor and sit right on the equator?
And why is it all right for the Singapore state to allow rising prices of HDB flats to a level where they are or have become unaffordable to its ordinary citizens (not the ruling class of the Shanmugam type), for home these flats were first designed and built? Has the PAP dictatorship shredded that social contract with its ordinary people? And why are ordinary Singaporeans still so silent on this and other related matters? What are you afraid of?
You say: "Shanmugam in particular may feel sensitive because in May 2023, it became known that he and Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan were renting magnificent colonial-era bungalows on exclusive Ridout Road which are owned by the government and whose grounds were renovated at state expense."
This is incorrect. It is not the Singapore state that owns and renovates these ridiculously priced bungalows for Singapore's ruling politicians or for that matter Singapore's ruling class. It is the Singapore taxpayers who own these properties and who pay through their noses to maintain these properties in their entirety. It's the Singapore taxpayers who are being screwed over yet again by the dynastic Lee regime, just as they have been since Lee Snr ran the joint.
But you're right about these capers being familiar when Singapore's political class and the Singapore one-party mainly Chinese dictatorship sues the media and its critics (remember how the state pursued American academic Christopher Lingle when he was teaching at a university in the so-called city-state?) for all the former's renowned shenanigans. These low-life scumbags think they are above the law, if not they are not accountable to Singapore's mostly docile and subjugated voters.
Then there is Singapore's judiciary. Critics who claimed that the one-party PAP dictatorship has Singapore's judiciary serving the state's crummy (two-bit) politicians, rather than the people and justice, were pursued through these very politically pliant courts to help them cover up their pathetic excuses and lies that they stupidly label as defamation or libel. If, as in Malaysia where a so-called judge or magistrate can be easily bought, is also true in Singapore, then "justice", in all its glorious meaning, purpose and practice, is not just a misnomer but a bleeding joke. Like the ruling class, the political class can purchase "justice" to protect them from accusations of lies and corruption against them.
What has happened in Singapore is more than just its stunning economic development, its industrialization and its technologization but in tandem the cajoling and subjugation of Singapore voters who so shamelessly dare not speak ou or even speak up against the PAP dictatorship. They're more than meek: like their political class, Singaporeans are essentially cowards. So, too, their local academics, especially in the university sector, who can shamefully boast to be academics but who do not practice academic freedom. When Christopher Lingle was being hounded, local Singapore academics hid under their mothers' sarongs. Such spineless, unethical, immoral so-called intelligentsia as it exists in Singapore.
There is nothing great about Singapore. It might be the richest of people in Southeast Asia. But when a minister sells his home for S$88 million dollars and shrouded in secrecy, it says something really rotten stinks in Singapore, and probably has been there since day one. The claim that Singaporeans are incorruptible is laughable, not laudable. It was always state-promoted propaganda, always a state-based lie. Singapore is corrupt. Maybe it's not (yet) as corrupt as its ASEAN brotherhood states but it's been clear for a while Singapore is corrupt, that its institutions are corrupt. And these "institutions" profess to serve the "public". What "public"?
So, the next question -- a question that applies to all of Southeast Asia -- is when in hell is the PAP dictatorship going to grow the spine and by law insist that all of its political class declare its assets, held within Singapore and abroad, in a register to which the public has unimpeded access? Or is besieged Lee Hsien Loong just another coward who emits more of his usual hot-air? What and who is he protecting that ordinary Singaporeans have the right to know? Where are their hard-earned taxes going?
And, last but not least, while the regime pays neighboring countries to dredge sand and sell it to Singapore so it can expand total land mass, has anybody questioned why it's okay to keep Singapore clean, by law, but happy to destroy the environs of its neighboring states at a time when climate change is advancing its destruction and no doubt will impact on Singapore in worse ways given it is resource-poor and sit right on the equator?
And why is it all right for the Singapore state to allow rising prices of HDB flats to a level where they are or have become unaffordable to its ordinary citizens (not the ruling class of the Shanmugam type), for home these flats were first designed and built? Has the PAP dictatorship shredded that social contract with its ordinary people? And why are ordinary Singaporeans still so silent on this and other related matters? What are you afraid of?
Singapore is the closest thing I found that resembles the dystopian society in the movie THX 1138
Singapore is corrupt to the core. A haven for crooks high and low.
"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy," Obi-Wan Kenobi.