June 2006
Self-Censorship – A Myth?
“PAP questions quality of opposition” – main headline of the Straits Times on Apr 24, 06. Aiyah, if the opposition parties here have got ‘quality”, this wouldn’t be Singapore! Of course, our opposition parties are never up-to-scratch. Who doesn’t know that? Here’s more eye-candy on that same pre-Election day….
“Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) defamed the whole Government” (by calling it corrupt over the National Kidney Foundation’s wrong doing). Don’t these stupid people know anything about ‘honest mistakes’? “Only our PM and his father the Minister Mentor “will take legal action against SDP”. The Senior Minister said that SDP chief Dr. Chee Soon Juan, “being a bankrupt knows he has nothing to lose”. Perhaps that’s why the whole SDP motherlode has to be ‘courted’, lor. There’s more on that same day in the ST.
“The man who owns the firm, which printed the SDP newsletter, may well be working in Malaysia now. He has been served a letter of demand for his role in publishing The New Democrat” (for the SDP to defame our morally upright Government). Climate of fear? I can just hear our young generation say ‘donch have’. And of course, they can’t be wrong, when the national press asserts so.
What did Ms. Chua Lee Hoong say on that same day about the whole SDP saga? “Chee’s style does disservice to opposition cause.” (She perhaps means ‘no cause’, since they got questionable quality.) Now, donch we all know that as well! So let’s chime in a good Singaporean rally – Chee, byeeeeeee !!
C’mon, y’all. Learn once more and with greater vigor to stand on the side that’s winning. And we all know who has the truest of the true win-win! Who so stupid wants to be on the side of the loser(s), put your cock up!
“Not Govt’s job to help opposition,” the Govt. said (ST, Apr 13). Gosh, we didn’t know that! And then, a post-graduate theatre studies student Edward Choy wrote in the ST on Apr 17, “True democracy? I’ll take economic stability over mob rule anytime.” (Wow, this one’s ready of instant corporate sponsorship once he starts putting his degree to the test!) So, it’s either true democracy or mob rule, is it? Nothing in between, yah? Extremely well argued! “PAP’s manifesto boring? That’s fine,” said a PAP minister. Boring? Can bread-&-butter issues ever be boring? He who says the manifesto is boring, put your cock up higher. (Cock as in cockeyed, stupe!)
“Making Singapore a fashion hub” – went the headline of a Straits Times’ Life! feature on Apr 5. This is in addition to the current goal that Singapore is primed to be an arts hub as well. They can hub and hub and blow the competition down for all I care, but what good is an all-round hub when it can’t even screen to a limited film-festival audience my short film My Demon Brother! Sorry, not ‘can’t’, but – ‘rather not’ (see Apr 06’s Files). The fact that the festival committee thinks my film will be problematic (and that, all my friends also concur), though I can cover backside big-big about the film’s content, shows the extent of fear and paranoia this place harbors. And I’m not one to deny the fear myself. Oh-no. After all, I had willingly withdrawn the film through no coercion but my own paranoia. I do know that it is sheer arbitrary option what they choose to do to you should you opt to fly in their face. We’ve lived with enough scare-tactics all these years to know better. Unless one is referring to the gullible young that the System is so fervently trying to win over for fear of a no-future-leaders tomorrow.
“Who says Singaporeans are short on opinions?” – went just the kind of editorial-headline I lurve in the ST on Mar 31. When the write-up is one coming from the national press, we just know! When you lift up your leg/tail, people already know whether you’re peeing or shitting – goes the Cantonese saying. Ah, but the happy-hostage media is gleefully enthralled! By the way, the feature was to plug a new book titled Struck By Lightning – a selection of 36 post-1965ers’ essays published by the company that publishes the national press!
“They dared to ask the Prime Minister – in TV forum” – went another ‘provocative’ headline (ST, Mar 31). They dared only because they’ve been told to do so. (I love it!) More of these headlines please, for this writer’s benefit. Let’s have more of them, so our dodo Singaporeans will feel even more numbed out to care.
Dodo is so not true? Li Ao, a famously outspoken Taiwanese politician and author who went on a tour of China, said in a press conference in Hong Kong: “Taiwanese are still better. They’re scoundrels but they’re lovable. Hong Kongers are craftier. Singaporeans are stupider. The Chinese are more unfathomable” (ST, Apr 7). He also pointed out that Chinese Singaporeans’ forefathers were migrant workers and merchants from China who were poorly educated and “not of a good stock”.
Of course, some indignant Singaporean wrote in to the ST (Apr 14) to defend our great nation, saying that just because our forefathers were poorly educated migrant workers does not mean that their descendents are necessarily stupid. That’s true, but I’d say that they would end up being stupid when they were poorly educated during the ensuing nation-building years that dictated a certain desperate agenda for facts-&-figures engineers and more ‘yes-men’ engineers! I’m not saying it’s not a rationalizable agenda, but it’s certainly one that produced skewed results because something’s gotta give. And it’s all because our glory-hallelujah master wants us to be a place of great reckoning (if not no.1) in double quick-time. As for latent problems, it was put down to – we’ll cross the bridge when we get to it. Fabulous!
Another ST reader also wrote in (on Apr 14) but agreeing with Li Ao: “There is not one day I am not irked by poor manners on the streets.” Now, I can’t wait for the happy-hostage journos, in the national press, to be ‘dead chickens yanking at the lid of the rice-cooker’ to do the obvious, i.e. ‘drop on floor must pick up sand’. (All wonderful Cantonese sayings, y’all, to mean pulling out all stops to justify ‘til kingdom come.)
So what did our Prime Minister say in that oh-so-daring TV forum when asked about the Li Ao issue? “To Li Ao, many people are stupid” – was his answer (ST, Apr 8). Tell me if that’s not the best rice-cooker repartee you could hope to hear! Rice-cooker there refers to preserving our Singapore rice-bowl. Is that win-win enough for you?
On Apr 12, Li Ao’s follow-up statement to the commotion he stirred was that none of the other countries he ‘criticized’ “reacted strongly”. Let’s see, Singaporeans = dead chickens, no? Of course not, we are especially nationalistic – proven by our one-media system! It’s about bread-&-butter issues of getting the rice-pot filled, naturally!
In April (06), the pre-Elections season really reared its obvious head. “Multi-party democracy is not the panacea for all ills” – went one headline. What that means is that in Singapore, it’s better to have one party for all. The ‘miracle’ of Singapore is not that they’re so transparent about it, it is that no one could really refute the argument. You dare argue? Watch the verdict on SDP! Otherwise, argue just a little to show that we do have discussion here in Singapore. Manufactured dissent, I believe, is the popular term used.
I can just see it. In future, we will have a one-party government (again), and when the need arises, it will even create an opposition (!), and no one but no one will even think of calling it a farce. Now, that’s Uniquely Singapore, indeed.
Who says it hasn’t already happened, my siow friend asks? -- Jun 06
