absolutum dominium

while researching my information for the first of my three 30-page research papers, i came across this 22 october 2005 article in the sydney morning herald, where the s'pore government was rejecting the pleas for clemency for this australian drug trafficker who had trafficked 400 g of heroin to pay off the debts for his drug-addicted brother.

under the s 17 and the second schedule of the misuse of drugs act (cap 185),
possession of 10 g or more of diamorphine (i.e. heroin) is deemed a presumption of trafficking, and 15 g or more of diamorphine gets you a mandatory death sentence.

reason, morality; nothing matters. it's not a moral standard, as we have learnt well in public law. it's a legal standard. why do i bring up this example you ask?

because the australian drug trafficker's name in question is Nguyen Tuong Van. (law students, remember tt case?)

intepreting the law within its own four walls.

now tt i'm here in canada where marijuana is de-criminalised and you can grow marijuana plants in your own basement and get sent to jail for only a couple of months to a couple of years if you are caught (and provided tt the evidence is admissible in the first place), i finally see the tragedy in the hanging of shanmugam murugesu, who was sentenced to hang for trafficking 1 kg of marijuana (which is definitely 10 times less than 41 potted marijuana plants).

i was talking to my boyfriend about how the law here was so different from the legal system back home with regards to political freedoms and criminal procedures. here the charter of rights and freedoms really is paramount. it isn't qualified by the interests of the state first. whereas back in singapore i bet a lot of people don't even realise tt we have a constitution, and tt we have constitutionally-protected rights. of course, these rights are secondary to the interests of the state.

british columbia just had a 2 week long teachers' strike where high school and elementary students didn't have to go to school coz their teachers were walking around vancouver wearing pickets. we haven't had a strike in singapore since... since... the hock lee bus riots maybe? we had a joke of a demonstration back in august when 4 people tried to protest against the lack of transprency regarding the use of public funds by the government for investment. it's against the law for more than 5 people to protest without a police permit. these guys got broken up by riot police.

i'm reading the report and i'm wondering how the journalist managed to type all this out without laughing hysterically.

there's a war within me as i write this.

on one hand, there's still tt part of me tt still wants to see more of a change for singapore. i still believe tt we need a political opposition because though our current government has served us well for the past 40 years and having been in canada for a couple of months, i really do appreciate the kind of strength tt a strong government can exhibit, i am grateful for the security in our system, i am proud of the education tt i have received and even though we all do complain about the education system in singapore, i realise tt other countries do not necessarily have a better education system. and you'd better believe tt. i am appreciative of a lot of things tt i have taken for granted as as a singaporean. but at the same time, i still believe tt we need to liberalise.

i respect our current prime minister lee hsien loong. no matter what other people might say because of his being the son of lee kuan yew and all the dynastic connotations tt come out of it, i believe in his political speeches. i know tt he is intelligent and tt he is promising to be more progressive and to give singaporeans more chances to speak out.

but at the same time, i feel tt change isn't coming fast enough. a lot of people, especially the conservatives, feel tt we are not prepared for change. the older generation in singapore do not approve of things like homosexuality, oral sex (although my boyfriend believes tt the chief justice was lying through his teeth when he said tt we just don't have oral sex in singapore.... YEAH RIGHT. as if the same people who arrest some guy for having a girl go down on him don't go home and have their own gfs blow them after tt), or what they perceive as general immorality. but at the same time, i feel tt the standard of education is higher and much more pervasive now than it was 40 years ago. there is a difference. we are not stupid or illiterate anymore. we don't need to be mothered anymore.

the government has always prided itself on being paternalistic. a provider for the people. but with the forces of globalisation (a dirty word, i know) and the dynamics of outsourcing and the rising competition for jobs from both the higher economies of the west and the much cheaper labour markets of china and india, the government can't provide as much as it used to. and if you can't provide as much, you can't be a father figure.

it's why the government is encouraging entrepeneurship. there's a saying tt goes: "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. teach a man how to fish and you feed him forever."

and tt's what they're trying to do. teach us how to provide for ourselves. but a lifetime of conditioning, of having little choice, little freedom, little room for expression, and therefore little room to have to think, worry or to learn to provide for ourselves, is making this difficult for them. it's a vicious self-perpetuating cycle tt needs to be broken.

granted, the government is taking steps to do tt. encouraging the exchange of more universities, encouraging more people to take more arts subjects like well... arts, tt encourages liberal thinking (although admittedly one of my friends was asking me: what are we going to do with all our arts graduates, since it's so hard to get a job with an arts degree due to the narrow mindsets of employers? and i replied: maybe tt is the government's idea of entrepreneurship. because all of them can't get jobs, they'll be forced by desperation to become entrepreneurs and develop their own businesses. isn't tt how sim wong hoo first started out? desperate, and now the creative zen sells right next to apple ipods all over the world. but then again, sim wong hoo is very literally, one in a million.). but still... with things like the still ever so strict police laws on liberal protests and the need for licences (and trust me, from the inside it's fucking hard to ever get granted a licence for anything vaguely political in nature), the strict control of the media for 'national interests' (right now my singapore news source is still NOT the straits times or channel news asia, for a good reason), the censorship of movies, even the film poster of the internationally-acclaimed eric khoo's 'be with me', and of dramas like sex and the city, and the fact tt we have to be 21 to watch porno films... i mean, R21 films, when we can fuck legally by 16 (and prostitution though illegal, is decrmininalised and you have girls as young as 13 selling their bodies for pocket money, if the DPA (German News Agency) is to be believed), all in the name of "asian values"... something's gotta change.

i know tt the use of the sedition act on bloggers who make racist comments on the blog is a way to protect 'racial and religious harmony'. just as the crack-down on consumers who pirate music (i.e. NUS students) is a way to make singapore a so-called 'hub' in protecting intellectual property rights. but in countries like the states, such lawsuits are brought about by companies and individuals. in the states, you think you have a problem against some one, you litigate via civil action. here in singapore, the state brings about the action. against the small fry. the student. the twenty-something. there is supposed to be a deterrent effect, and i remember something about what thio li ann said about the effect of clamping down on public voices. it has a 'subduing effect' - it silences people and over the long term, makes them apathetic and stop caring.

tt's where melissa got the 'poor little rich girl' analogy from. we're economically successful, but we lack soul. the same kind of soul tt yuwei was speaking of about london, tt so-called 'vibe'. the feeling tt i got from standing on the corner of a street in seattle caught between buildings tt were neither old nor new, victorian nor modern, a city filled with the rich and the wealthy, yet with the homeless lining up for the soup kitchen three blocks from the qwest stadium.

singapore has no homeless. they're hidden from view. tt's why i find it so hard to look when i see them here in vancity or in seattle.

i advocate change. a part of me roots for more political liberalisation, the opening up of the mindset, the freeing of the media (or at least to the extent tt we won't look like hypocrites), etc.

but there's the other part of me tt i recently discovered. the innate fascist. i think it was always there all along, but it was never really big until i really became determined to be a cop. the respect for the law. the belief tt we need a strong government and a strong police force (and yes. i still think ISO 2001 is a dumb idea tt should be scrapped). i believe tt we shouldn't allow silly pointless demonstrations, strikes or protests over things like pay (although i would think tt there is a greater need for transparency myself). i condemn too much people power because i still believe tt power can never be in the hands of the masses. we are not communist and the IQs of people generally decrease when the number of them increase (the 'herd mentality effect'). people are in general selfish and self-seeking, and there is no such thing as a decision tt will please everyone. as the saying goes: "try to please everyone and no one will be happy." so for this reason i still believe tt we should have a strong government, strict laws and the strong enforcement of laws. in public law last year, one of the theories studied was this one, where in order to give freedom, you had to restrict it.

the example was the imposing of strict criminal laws to deter against the commiting of crimes (and therefore a wide view of what constituted ciminal offences), which restricts freedom. but the end result would be greater security, which means tt people can walk the streets more freely than were there relaxed laws - the granting of a greater freedom. ironically, i believe in this theory too, even though singapore is often regarded as a police state and a dictatorship by lots of foreigners outside of the country because of our laws (and yes. half of the people i talk to assume tt we are a police state or a dictatorship).

i'm proud of this country. one part of me is happy with it the way it is, or at least, with much of the system tt we have. yet one part of me constantly struggles, constantly wishes tt there could be more change, more liberalisation, less restrictions. we're not a nanny state. or at least, we should no longer be one. why should the state be interfering so much with our own judgments and decisions? if singapore's most important resource is people, should we not be allowing for development of this resource, and not restriction of it?

when asked about why the law enforcement of the country was so strict, wong kan seng defended this as being because "no one is above the rule of law". i was shocked when i learned tt his car gets vandalised more freqeuntly than a lot of other ministers (although i maintain tt this is probably because he's not as uptight about his own safety and security than some other ministers). but when i read this comment i begin to realise tt the meaning of the rule of law to our government is different from the intepretation of what the rule of law means to everyone else. to the government, the law is a technical creature. you go by the context and what the statutes say. to other people, including other countries like the US and Canada, it's about the spirit of the law. you look behind the statute to find out what the purpose of the law is in the first place and what objective it seeks to achieve. it's really about what is fair and just, or rather, what is the closest for fair and just tt you can get.

i think someone will probably ask me to go join a political party to get my ideas across. go join the opposition party! go publish my ideas in a media (as if: 1) i will be able to get a licence; and 2) anyone's going to want to publish them; 3) i won't incur the risk of getting accused of defamation or be threatened with the use of the ISA). but i don't want to. i don't believe in politics. i am interested in the subject and the study and the discussion, but i don't think i am cut out to be a politician. i am neither ruthless nor cunning enough to play the game. i believe tt changes comes from within, and is a gradual process.

but i am confused about myself. oh well.

too much research. k. enough babbling. back to my paper.

P.S. no, my bf doesn't know about this blog. he kinda despises blogging anyway. calls it the medium of the bourgeoise intelligentia (okay, my words, not his), and too 'high and mighty' for the annals of society to even contemplate.

oh well.