Be silent no more
Singapore Democrats
13 Mar 08
The late S Rajaratnam and former deputy prime minister, once
recounted what Lee Kuan Yew taught: "If you want to break someone's
window, tell him that you are going to burn down his house. So when
you really break his window, he'll be so grateful that he'll thank
you for it."
So when our Home Affairs Minister tells us that he would consider
liberalising Speakers' Corner to allow limited forms of
demonstrations, do we celebrate?
(Or, for that matter, when he says that he will give the public a
"full account" of Mas Selamat's escape when he won't answer
questions by the public, should we commend him?)
Our right to speak and assemble peacefully cannot be taken away by
the Government. We own that right and anyone who takes it away has
robbed you. Let us never forget that.
And when the government robs you of the one thing that makes you
what you are - human, you don't whine and you don't beg. You go out
and take it back.
Through the years, the PAP has stripped us of all dignity and
value. It tells us that it feeds us and gives us a nice airport. In
return, it wants us to bow our heads and be silent.
Be silent even as it ridicules us and lies to us.
Be silent even as it bribes us to look away when our elderly have
to work when their bodies can take no more.
Be silent when the poor live on biscuits and Milo, and needy
families get evicted from their public housing.
Be silent when they take our hard-earned wages and refuse to give
it back to us or tell us what they do with it.
Be silent when they engorge their bank accounts with our money and
then tell us that they are worth even more.
A people silent is a people without a soul. And people without a
soul is life's saddest tragedy.
When God breathed life into us he wanted us to live it, not pawn
it.
The nay-sayers and the agents of autocracy will try to wring every
ounce of hope left in you. They will try to demoralise you with
their "be realistic" lectures. They will try to instill fear in
you. Don't let them.
If you do, they would have silenced you yet again.
Come Saturday let us, with dignity and peaceful resolve, choose not
to be silent any longer. It is not complicated. Just by being there
with the rest of us who have pledged to not sign the Faustian pact,
you will make a difference.
Every once in a while, an opportunity comes along and calls us to
demonstrate our courage and to do the right thing. That opportunity
is Saturday, 15 Mar. Come.
"You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as
your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to
be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives.
All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not
from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render
as powerful as he is...
He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two
hands...he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer
upon him to destroy you.
Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not
provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you
with, if he does not borrow them from you?...What could he do to
you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders
you, if you were not accomplices of the murderer who kills you, if
you were not traitors to yourselves?...
Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed.
I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him
over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will
behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled
away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces."
- Étienne de la Boétie, 1552
http://singaporedemocrat.org/articleWCRDprotest10.html
