February 15, 2006
The death penalty
Source: Sunday Times (Singapore), 12 February 2006
My Sunday morning sojourn to the local coffee shop this week was spoilt somewhat by the headline of the newspaper left on the table (I didn't buy it ... honest). Ironically, I had, earlier that morning, been leafing through the lastest issue of the Amnesty International magazine, Human Rights Defender (see below), which had a feature on the Van Tuong Nguyen hanging in Singapore. I guess one shouldn't expect anything less of Singapore Press Holdings, and in a perverse way, I was quite pleased this issue was considered serious enough to occupy the front page. As the country with the dubious honour of having the highest execution rate in the world (13.57 executions per one million population, between 1994-99, followed by Saudi Arabia (4.65), Belarus (3.20), Sierra Leone (2.84), Kyrgyzstan (2.80), Jordan (2.12) and China (2.01)), there is virtually no public debate on the subject. The fact the powers-that-be think it is sufficiently important to figure so prominently in the national daily might be construed as a sign they are beginning to feel the pressure of criticism from the international community. According to Amnesty International, 70 countries have abolished the death penalty in the last 29 years (Human Rights Defender, Feb/March, p.5). Anyway, on the 96% figure, I could question the veracity of the data collection, the size of the sample, and so on, but the fact will remain that the majority of people in Singapore are in favour of the death penalty. Whether they would if they were a sufficiently open debate to be presented with some sound intellectual arguments against the death penalty is another matter. A recent podcast from ABC Radio's Late Night Live makes for compelling listening in this respect, in which Phillip Adams interviews the author of 'Dead Man Walking', Sister Helen Prejean.
February 05, 2006
Lim Chin Siong (1933-1996)
Source: Sunday Times (Singapore)
Quite by chance today, I opened up a newspaper in a coffee shop and saw this man's face in the Obituary column. I wonder how many Singaporeans under the age of 40 have heard of this man. If you are Singaporean and do not know who he is, ask your parents or grandparents and they will likely tell you about a brilliant young political activist in the 1960s whose talents as an orator were such that he attracted a huge following. A co-founder of the People's Action Party (PAP), he was supposedly introduced in 1955 to David Marshall, then Singapore's Chief Minister, as the future Prime Minister of Singapore. The introduction was made by a person named Lee Kuan Yew, someone Singaporeans will have heard of. An edited volume on Lim Chin Siong, Comet in our Sky, is well worth a read. The chapters contributed by T.N. Harper and Greg Poulgrain are particularly interesting in that they draw on British colonial records (released after a 30 year embargo) to explain how and why Lim fell from grace so dramatically. A review of this book was published in Pacific Affairs in 2003.
February 01, 2006
An afternoon with President Kalam
When I learned that His Excellency Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the President of India, was to deliver the 27th Singapore Lecture I registered without hesitation. As a regular visitor to India, devotee of Indian culture (particularly its cuisine) and amateur 'India watcher' I am very interested in this man. He has always struck me as an eccentric professor type, and not the sort of person you would normally expect performing the role of President. Furthermore, despite his role in India becoming a nuclear weapon state, he has given me the impression of being a humble, philosophical man, capable of rising above the cesspit of party politics. As a result, Dr Kalam's lecture this afternoon was a bit of a disappointment. With a title like: "Evolution of Enlightened Societies on our Planet" I expected some deep philsophising with a strong dose of moral rectitude. Instead, the audience was presented with a technocratic exposition of the 'World Knowledge Platform' that, supposedly, will serve as a vehicle for societies to become 'enlightened'. Of most concern to me was what appeared to approving tones in connection with a reference he made to river networking/ linking. I hope I got this wrong, but I have written to him via his website (he invited the audience to do this on no less than four occasions) to seek clarification. Overall, it wasn't a bad lecture, just a little 'underwhelming', I guess, given my heightened expectations beforehand. (Someone also needs to counsel him about the use of text and colours in PowerPoint presentations!)
Any reader who attended and feels similarly short-changed might like to listen to the first part of this podcast (about 30 minutes) from Radio National's Late Night Live. It's an Australian show, but in this programme there is an interview with P. Sainath, a very erudite journalist, on the issue of farmer suicides in India. Sadly, it demonstrates that India (like many other countries around the world) will need a lot more than access to a World Knowledge Platform if it is to become enlightened any time soon.