I’ve been accused of not having much sympathy with people with professional qualifications or a lot of wealth and money.
To be fair, the
people who have accused me of this, have generally been right. While I
generally don’t go out of my way to offend people with power and money (I
generally try not to offend people), I don’t give them much sympathy either.
I think of this
as a boxing match between a chicken and a lion. You end up giving emotional
support to the chicken because no matter what it does, it’s going to end up as
dinner. The lion on the other hand could fight blindfolded and with one paw tied
behind its back and still emerge victorious.
However, I’ve realized
that this personal philosophy of mine doesn’t gel with what the rest of society,
lead by the government thinks. Our system goes out of its way to cut off the chicken’s
feet and pump the lion with steroids so as to ensure that the obvious outcome
is just that. Our political, business and dare I say, legal culture is all
about ensuring the proverbial lions get pumped with steroids and the chickens
have their feet amputated before they even step into the boxing ring.
This became very
obvious to me when I supporting PN Balji during the Susan Lim affair. Say what
you like about Dr. Lim’s undoubtedly hefty medical bill, but she did perform a
service and was not compensated for it. The government went out of their way to
ruin her practice and her distinguished medical career because she had the audacity
to charge the one patient on the planet with the ability to pay any medical
bill for work done. I think of people who felt morally outraged that by this
dastardly action. One of the worst humbug statements being “Not even doctors in
the US or UK charge so much.”
However, while
the government was out batting for the Sultan of Brunei to get free medical
treatment, a government hospital was sending my aunt, a retired civil servant
pink slips for my uncle’s medical bills. My Uncle died penniless. In his decade
he had no income whatsoever to speak of because he was ill. As I’ve said, I’m
probably not the only person to see something like this.
The Singapore
government went to battle for the Sultan of Brunei to get free medical
treatment from a Singaporean doctor employing Singaporean medical staff but at
the same time going after Singaporeans living on a government pension for the
bills run up by their deceased relatives who didn’t have the means to pay for basic
medical care.
Fast forward a decade
and we had another similar incident between Liew Mun Liong and his former maid,
Ms. Parti Liyani.
We had Mr. Liew,
who has probably made something north of a few hundred million, going out of
his way to use tax payer resources to frame his former maid, whose last drawn
salary was probably not more than S$600.
What did the
powers that be do when the evidence of what can only be described as a clumsy
attempt to frame Ms. Liyani came out? Well, we had our Minister of law promising
to investigate what went wrong and you had the future head (assuming his predecessor
is serious about retirement) going out of his way to remind the rest of us of
Mr. Liew’s great achievements for the country – never mind the fact that he had
been exposed as someone who was willing to screw up a maid for having the audacity
of not wanting to work beyond what she was legally supposed to work.
Well, to be fair,
Mr. Liew retired and our Minister found out exactly what went wrong and duly
corrected the “mistake,” by ensuring that the judge who had the audacity to acquit
Ms. Liyani, to deny her obvious claim for compensation against the Attorney
General’s Chambers (AGC).
Something is
rather interesting here. Why do the powers that be feel obliged to rush to the
defense of anyone with power, money or both whenever they’ve been caught doing
something horrible but at the same time doing everything to ensure that those
without money and power know their place?
The next case
that we should observe is that of Envy Holdings, which involves a massive fraud.
What’s particularly interesting is the fact that among those defrauded are
prominent members of the legal community like the former President of the Law
Society and the general counsel for Temasek International as well as the head
of a large investment company. Full details of the story can be found in the
link below:
Copyright –
The Straits Times
All these highly
intelligent people, with access to whatever information they needed, actually
pumped in money into a investment firm that was NOT regulated or licensed by
the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) promising very sexy returns. The
question that should be asked is how was it possible that none of these very
prominent and clever people smell a rat? However, why is there a need to admit
to being stupid and greedy when someone else will clean up the mess?
The Commercial
Affairs Department (CAD) has been quick to act. Mr. Ng, was arrested in
February of this year, charged in March and had further charges slapped against
him. Sure, cheating people is wrong and it’s good to see CAD acting so quickly.
However, CAD
doesn’t always act so quickly. I can think of an instance where the investigation
continues and the director is happily sitting behind the wall of bankruptcy
protection (good luck to anyone trying to sue) and going about his usual
business.
In Singapore,
government has shown time and time again that it can work brilliantly. I have
people from Europe and America telling me they wish had a government like ours.
However, my question is why does government only seem to work brilliantly for
those who don’t it and so painfully for those who need it most.
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