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While
this was happening...
Our
police were busy doing this...
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Abuse,
incompetence and arrogance personified
Singapore
Democrats
11 Mar 08
September 17, 2006. Zainal and his
girlfriend were sitting outside a 7-Eleven store at Central
Square, Havelock Road. The time: 1:30 am.
Suddenly, a
group of about ten men approached the couple and started
attacking Zainal who was stabbed several times in the abdomen. He
stumbled across the road where he collapsed in a pool of blood.
Shards of broken glass stained with Zainal's blood lay
strewn all over. His girlfriend screamed repeatedly for the
police. The gang disappeared as quickly as they
emerged.
Officers rushed down to the scene in large
numbers. They cordoned off the area and didn't allow any one in
or out. They were disciplined and they were determined to stop
what was going on.
They were also in the wrong place.
They were dispatched to Hong Lim Park which was on the
other side of street where Zainal was murdered. Their orders? To
stop a group of Singaporeans from conducting their protest for
democracy.
So while Zainal was fighting against a riotous
mob and his girlfriend was screaming for her life, our finest in
blue were making sure that six democracy advocates were subdued.
There must have been about 30 officers deployed at
Speakers' Corner on 16 Sep 06, 40 or more if you counted those in
plainclothes.
If a fraction of them had been assigned to
patrol an area barely 300 metres away, Zainal might still be
alive today.
This is how messed up our Government is. Only
in unaccountable and corrupt systems can rulers do this and get
away with it.
But the police can't be everywhere all of
the time, one may argue. Perhaps. But read what the security
guard at Central Square said: "Such things are not uncommon
here. There is a night crowd here, especially on Fridays and
Saturdays."
Didn't the Crime Prevention Unit pay
extra attention to a spot that has a history of fights and
thuggery instead of, of all places, Speakers' Corner?
Yet,
this is how Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng manages, or
rather abuses, his portfolio.
Crime and vice have found
Singapore an increasingly attractive haven. The number of arrests
of sex workers increased 25 percent from 2006 and the number of
drug-related arrests jumped by a whopping 600 percent!
With
commercial sex and drugs come organised crime. Prostitutes, many
of whom the Government classifies as foreign talent, have moved
into our HDB estates. Gang warfare is rife in the seedy lanes of
Geylang. Daring robberies are on the rise.
But wait. The
Minister tells us that "it is not realistic to expect vice
to be totally eliminated" and, incredibly, lectures us that
"this is the reality which Singaporeans should face up to."
Hasn't the man mastered the art of stating the obvious?
No one expects vice to be totally eliminated, dear
Minister. But we expect you to stop your abuse of power by
ensuring the police channel their resources to preventing and
prosecuting real crimes - not running around after choirs and
stopping them from singing in public, preventing singers from
performing in a pub to support our Burmese friends, prohibiting a
visiting professor from conduct a lecture on homosexuality, and
even warning a lone artist from holding a fast outside the
Malaysian embassy.
The police are for protecting the
public, not the PAP.
So what is this "reality"
that Mr Wong tells Singaporeans that we should face up to? You
mean the one that when a suspected terrorist escapes from right
under the police's nose, he can't tell us how it happened?
And
while the Minister waited for four hours to inform the nation
that Mr Mas Selamat had vanished and another five days to tell us
the kind of clothes the escapee was wearing, he wastes no time in
trying to convince us that protest rallies are banned because
they have the potential of causing "disruption to community
life."
In truth Mr Wong's abuse, incompetence and
arrogance is breath-taking as it is unchecked. He has shown
himself to be singularly unfit for the office he holds.
Many
things in Singapore need to be changed. The best place to start
is with Minister Wong. The best weapon to use is our courage.
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