Partisan Polemics
3 Jul
This country has been worrying lately. Unlike some other people, who are concerned with “rising prices and the economy”:http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2006/07/today_sporeans_.html, I’m concerned with what seems to be the rising number of murders. And I thought this was a country with a crime rate so low that the police has to “create crime to fight it”:http://commentarysingapore.blogspot.com/2006/06/interesting-case.html! How come so many murders can happen in our great nation: body parts murders, double murders and corpses stuffed in boot of cars in Orchard carpark, bodies chopped up in plastic bags and dumped in Orchard Road? I work everyday in Orchard Road, you know. Skali me how? Of course I scared lah. But I’m more scared I don’t have alternatives or solutions, I don’t know how to stop people from killing each other, or stop people from being killed, so I should shut up. Later they say I _partisan_ lah, then simi _polemic_, and exploit my access to media and undermine their standing wor. Not constructive anymore. Gahmen will write “letter”:http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2006/07/letter_from_mic.html, say I distort the truth. _Mampus aku sia!_ (I tried for a Hokkien accent but my inner _mina_ had to resurface…)
What a wonderful country. If you have an opinion at all, that’s being partisan, and if you articulate it, it becomes polemic. Why am I still here?
“Uniquely Singapore: don’t like the slogan? Do you have an alternative?”
An article my friend Teng Qian Xi wrote in 2002 is “still shockingly relevant today”:http://www.thinkcentre.org/article.cfm?ArticleID=2535. I quote:
I live in a country where the state makes its arguments too simple.
Such as: the PAP = the country.
Such as: democracy = protests = violence = disorder = national disaster.
Such as: human rights = confusing Western concept that our people don’t need to learn very much about.
Such as: history = one man’s story.
Such as: Chia Thye Poh = opposition = Marxist = dangerous = 32 years of imprisonment = non-existence in the authorised history.
I live in a country with a population that is constantly hit by men in white with invisible and visible sticks. I live in a country where it is hard to expect people to value anything more than protecting themselves from these big sticks, or getting their own stick and white uniform.
*Related*
“The original storm”:http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2006/07/letter_from_mic.html
“Mr Wang Says So – Bhavani and Brown”:http://commentarysingapore.blogspot.com/2006/07/bhavani-brown.html
“Tomorrow entry”:http://tomorrow.sg/archives/2006/07/03/govt_gets_touchy.html with trackbacks
“Why I am cynical about Singapore’s political process”:http://www.thinkcentre.org/article.cfm?ArticleID=2535
