City & State

City. State. City-state. A wondrous conundrum.

One with equally wondrous implications.

I doubt anyone read the papers over the past few days with as much interest as I did, but recently Singapore’s legal heavyweights have emerged to tackle the tough questions that are often aimed at our judicial and political systems as levelled by most Western observers.

To see the replies, don’t bother with Western papers. Try the ToC instead.

But anyway, I appreciate many of the points. One in particular echoed a thought I had germed some time ago, but only recently developed.

Singapore is a city-state. Undeniable.

That means that we have some characteristics of a city, and some characteristics of a state. Still with me so far?

We also blur the lines at some points. In some cases we are more city than state, and in others we are more state than city and no one is to say which is more desirable. We agree.

Running Singapore might therefore in many aspects more resemble running a big city or metropolis than a full nation.

Like New York.

Which, of its elected city council, has 45 out of 48 seats occupied by Democrats.

No one calls New York undemocratic.

No one says that the Democrats are unfairly squeezing the opposition. Or maybe some people do, but no one’s blasting the Democrats for it.

No one thinks that having such utter domination by one party is a bad thing in New York. Although one can of course easily argue that the fractious Democrats can never really dominate anything.

So why blast the PAP for their death grip on our Parliament?

This isn’t satire. I’m deadly serious. New York’s bigger, has a larger population, GDP to beat ours. If they’re a ‘city’ and not a ‘country’ then by all that makes sense so are we.

A damn city. If New York with 45 Democrats in 48 seats can be the icon of the democratic money West so can Singapore in Southeast Asia.

So. Lefty editors. Especially if you live in Manhattan. Shut the hell up.

The next bit I take no credit for, because it was raised by our Law Minister.

The Western media cries stifling and silencing whenever confronted by Singaporean authorities because they’re so unused to having a leash. Any sort of leash.

Part of it is due to the competition. Look at their news. See how they sensationalize relatively minor crimes by bringing on ‘experts’ to offer opinions. They do so authoritatively, practically announcing verdicts and sentences before the case ever gets to court. Whichever station has the best ‘expert’ gets the best ratings, and whichever floats the best, or most exciting, theories about what happened gets the most commercial ad offers. CSI meets CNN.

The leader of the free world. News programmes. Where’s the presumption of innocence? Where’s the trial before sentence? Or should we just lynch the guy without waiting for the judge?

If anyone tried that in Singapore, the AG would had started proceedings against both the network and the ‘expert’. But that doesn’t happen in the West, like how you print cartoons of Muslim prophets or call your president an idiot in print and get away with it. They aren’t used to it and they cry foul whenever someone tries to remind them. Well to be the fair, the PAP isn’t very good at gentle reminders.

Strange, really.

Piaroh-Cze:

Stop, people, what’s that sound, everybody look what’s going down.