The case involving the former Chairman of the Changi Airport Group, Mr. Liew Mun Leong and his Indonesian maid has helped to spark off the old age debate on equality in Singapore. If you read enough of the online chatter, you will notice that there is common thread – Singapore is an increasingly unequal place and this small island is increasingly two societies – those with $50 million in the bank and the rest of us.
Many of us who have taken to the online space (myself
included) are often filled with examples of how there seems to be one set of
rules of the rich and well connected and another set of rules for eh rest of us.
We say a lot but then resign ourselves to the fact that, well this is the way
life is and you either learn to live with it or leave. It’s a case of thinking
that this is the way things are and going to be, so what else can you do other
than complain about it in cyberspace and the Powers that Be are happy to let us
have our grumbles on cyberspace because it allows us to let off steam rather
than get organized into anything in particular.
For many of us, the acquittal of Parti Liyani comes as a
relief to many of us because it seems to be something like a big stop into the
slide into decline that many of us believe our society is going through. This
story of David beating Goliath gave us, the little people, a sense of hope that
we have the chance to get our voice heard. If you ask enough Singaporeans, most
of us will say that we don’t need to hear the side of the story of Mr. Liew and
the rest of his friends because they are the ones writing the story for everyone
else. It is, contrary to what Mr. Dilhan Pillay Sandrasegara, CEO of Temasek
International, would tell you, it is the story of the likes of Ms. Parti Liyani
that need to be heard. As Mr. Anil Balchandani, the lawyer for Ms. Parti Liyani
argues, she is only one of many cases that goes unheard. Mr. Balchandani’s
interview can be seen at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4Az5koGHKo
We need to remember that the main point of this case was the
fact that it involved a lot of pain and hard work from various parties. The
reality of taking on the powerful is that its often a thankless and expensive
task. As Mr. Balchandani says in the interview, plenty of foreign workers will
plead guilty to accusations because in the cost-benefit analysis of things, it’s
the easier option. Let’s remember, Parti Liyani, an Indonesian maid who never
earned more than $600 a month, had to stay in Singapore for four years to fight
those charges. Even if she didn’t pay a single cent towards her living expenses
in Singapore, she was unable to earn money to send back home, which is the very
reason why people work as maids or construction workers in a foreign country.
While one might argue that “well, nobody asked them to plead
guilty,” we have to understand that most of us who read this post, have very
rarely been in a position where we’ve been the significantly weaker party in a negotiation,
particularly when it’s a negotiation where the lives of our loved ones is at
stake. Like it or not, foreign workers and maids are the forgotten people of
our society and we tend to dismiss the work of Organizations like HOME, ACMI and
TWC2, because, well they are trying to give a voice to the people whom many of
us don’t bother thinking of.
However, we can’t ignore the abuses against the downtrodden
based on the fact that they’re not from around here. We need to care about
abuses against them, because, well – if the system that is beholden to a rich
and influential man like Liew Mun Leong can be used to against a maid, it can
be used against us. The fact that Parti Liyani can win against Liew Mun Leong
is hopeful because it says, we can win should we be able to win too, should we
ever be in that situation.
Yet, we need to remember that there was hard work involved. While
we do have laws to protect us on paper, getting the laws to work for us, is a
painful process especially when you have the might of the State or someone like
Mr. Liew against you. The cost of having a lawyer fight for you in the court
system is prohibitively expensive. “Cheap” lawyers in Singapore cost around
$500 an hour and lawyers don’t solve things in a single hour. Then there’s
things like having to take time off just to deal with lawsuits.
Parti was lucky that her resolve to fight the charges
against was supported by the likes of HOME and Mr. Balchandani, who worked
tirelessly for her case without measuring the benefits to them. How many of
people end up giving up because they don’t get the help.
Think of what happened in 2010, when Dr. Waffles Wu, had an
elderly employee take the rap for him for a traffic offense. Sure, Dr. Wu did not
go out of his way to get someone more vulnerable to take his place on the wrong
end of the justice system. Dr. Wu was finned a grand (spare change to Dr. Wu)
and had his license suspended for four months. Dr. Wu has said that he was
investigated and feels bad for it:
However, for most members of the public, this incident was a
case of the powerful working under a different set of laws from the rest of us.
If you want Alex Au’s opinion on it, you’re going to get Alex’s apology:
https://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/woffles-wu-case-hits-a-nerve/
So, what can we do? Perhaps, we just need to do the simple
things like trying to support the good works of NGOs and Civil Society moments
like HOME. We should also go out of our way to try and support small businesses
like Mr. Balchandani’s. Why do we need to do this? The answer is simple, these
are organisations that support us. The people who supported a maid, the lawyer
that took a long case for maid free of charge against the full weight of the state,
will be the people who stand up for us should we ever be at the wrong end of
the system.
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