absolutum dominium

and it is being made just after lunch on a lazy wednesday afternoon, while staring out the window of my room into a beautiful sunshiney day. the lull is preventing me from consulting my homicide notes on parties to homicide. i'd rather read political blogs and our fave newspaper - the state's times (credit to diana).

thaksin has resigned from his office. amazing stuff. as usual, our fave newspaper's editorial says tt this might lead to trying times for thailand. "possibly damaging", so called.

let me see. there's def going to be a period of political uncertainty, maybe even disorder as a transition from old to new govn comes into play; before the opposition and the ruling party come to some kind of consensus.

from the bbc news on this:

'Democrats leader Abhisit Vejjajiva told the BBC his party wanted a transitional government, political reforms to strengthen Thailand's democratic system and then fresh elections.

"We want the country to return to true democracy, where there are rights, participation by the people, where there are checks and balances, no abuses of power," he said.'

but you know what i think?

i think it's not so bad.

sure. pragmatic singaporeans might shun political uncertainty and disorder in the name of security and all our sad staid ideals (this is my personal opinion), but it is thru shake-ups tt real tangible change can be seen.

yes, i am influenced by v for vendetta. i feel empowered by the riots of the french students, even though i don't agree with their reasons for it. i believe in the power of the people. i believe tt if unity can bring change from the bottom to thailand, unity can similarly bring such change to singapore.

my mom advised me in not so many words to keep my mouth shut in view of my future. but i can't. my own conscience refuses to allow me to behave or act in ways tt i do not believe or subscribe to. i have no aspirations to change the world, or the system. but i don't believe tt i have to accept it or be integrated into it. i don't believe tt i should follow anything tt i don't believe in. i can't and won't lie to myself.

everytime i read the state's times, i feel almost sick and the kinds of stands tt they purport to uphold. the party stand. how they bashed freedom of speech over the publishing of the prophet muhammed caricartures. when incidentally most of the rest of the world were upholding the need for people to lighten up over them - the economist, for one gave a very intelligent and convincing 4 page article on it.

i find it disturbing tt the one party is saying tt they have a very transparent election system, one tt is so transparent tt they don't need external election monitors. interestingly enough, if your system is so transparent, you would welcome those external monitors with open arms. just for the challenge.

i find it equally disturbing tt all this restrictions are going to be imposed on bloggers. how it seems like the only avenue for (biased) reporting on the elections will be from the state's times. how can you say tt singaporeans are not politically aware when you see all tt awareness on the internet with all these blogs? and yet you want to clamp down on them. get blogs to register. say tt podcasts are illegal. the internet seems to be the only place where we can get fair and unbiased domestic news reporting, and i'm not saying it because i am saying tt bloggers are better reporters than our fave newspaper per se, but i'm saying it because of the plethora of info out there. you can read all diff stories from diff people with diff views, and from there form a holistic picture of what is truth.

yesterday in class, an australian was presenting his paper on the mixed legal system in south africa. interestingly, he was talking about the importance of understanding the idealogy behind the diff legal traditions and how they worked. and i thought tt tt was of paramount importance with regards to our system, if only because our system doesn't do it anymore.

like how the common law tradition gave the judiciary independence and separate powers from the parliament, because the idea was tt historically, this was to empower the people against monarchs and the use of possibly arbituary power. but it seems as if singapore doesn't seem to understand idealogy. at least, not real principles like what jb jeyaratnam had been arguing, when he argued for the use of the rule of law. the rebuttal had been tt the rule of law was already being followed - positive law. and singapore's definition of positive law was what was being imposed by the state. what is being left out is tt the rule of law is a higher law than what is just being imposed by the state, and under such a rule there can be such things as bad law which should hold no legitimacy.

when we were walking through calgary, ben remarked tt canada was something like singapore. it had v little of its own identity. and we concluded tt the reason for both is because neither countries had gone through any wars, any periods of upheavals. idealogy is forged and fought for, and tt is what makes you believe it. like how deeply americans feel for their principles of freedom and the american way. we might scoff all we like, but this is what the war of independence instilled into them. the french revolution was what defined a culture whereby power is in the hands of the people and not in an exploitative aristocracy.

singapore has no idealogy. not one tt i can currently think of. economic growth and stability is not an idealogy. it is a means to and end, and the end is money. maybe i guess i could say tt singapore has an idealogy of money, if it comes to tt, but i would like to believe tt we think higher of ourselves than just money-grubbing creatures.

we need something to unite us, something more intangible than money. something to believe in enough tt we would fight for it. some friends have been asking me if i miss singapore. here are the 2 things i miss about it: 1) friends. 2) food. and nothing else. efficiency? yeah tt is cool but i can live with less-efficient if it means more laid back, more relaxed and more time to enjoy the world around me. high costs of living? yeah it's true tt canada is fucking expensive. but if i could get a job here, i'd find out tt wages and costs are more or less comparative, so high taxes aside i can definitely survive. at least, better than the lower class would in singapore, where wages are disproportionate to the costs of living.

what i don't like, is how we don't have a minimum wage. we don't have much worker protection. the chairman of our only union is a member of the ruling party, and negotiations between companies and unions can only be conducted in tangent with the government. our costs (of doing business) are the lowest in the world, but what what reason i don't know because there is no way we can ever compete with countries like india and china on cost. yet our costs of living are disproportionately higher as compared to our wages. and strangely enough... our politicians are getting paid much more than politicians in canada, the US, switzerland etc... everywhere where average wages are much higher as compared to singapore.

i think there is a vast wage disproportion here. if you subject politicians wages to the so-called free market, as you do the rest of the country's... would they even be hired? fucking expensive to pay them... and no guarantee tt they'll do a good job. coz for every few good men in parliament, you've got those who ride on the coattails during the elections, who weren't elected in and could be cotecks, and we wouldn't really know now would we?

oh well. if i had my way, i'd impose a minumum wage policy. we cannot pay people peanuts for good work. if we've got problems sustaining this, increase taxes. goddamn corporations are evil, big and rich and we're taxing them a meagre 21% so tt we can make their shareholders bigger and richer. and our reserves are obscene. maybe if some wealth could be redisrtibuted - but not in base blatant cash handouts just so tt idiots will be motivated to decide the next 4 years of their lives on the basis of a 1 time bribe - things might actually work out better.

these are my views. so there. k. now i shall go watch grey's anatomy. nice and unthinking.