Originally posted by PRP:
This year,all the murder cases involving Indonesian or
Philipino maids were amended to manslaughter which doesn't carry
death penalty.Possibley the govt was afraid hanging those murderers
would affect realtionsips with these 2 countries.[b]Those actions
were of course not the law run its course.
However,I can understand the govt had to resort to such action
dureto national interest.For Nguyen case, there has not been much
pressure from Austrialia.He didn't kill anyone.PM,is it to
say govt can't act humanely by granting clemency (which is
according to law) because there is little pressure form
Austialia?It seems to me: reasons don't work,only pressure
works.
[/b]
Well it depends on the country involved..
Australians are, on the whole, a fairly rational people who will
respect the laws of another country as long as they can convince
themselves that a free and fair trial has been carried out. They
acknowledge that justice has run its due course in Nguyen's case,
and their appeals are in the form of civilised letters and
emails.
Indonesians and Filipinas on the other hand, tend to be an
emotional lot, who are easily manipulated by certain interest
groups.. they are people who can resort to burning Singapore flags,
or maybe even the Singapore embassy. Just look at how the
Philippines responded when we hanged the filipino maid
double-murderer back in 1997. They took to the streets, burning our
flag, and their government recalled their ambassador to Singapore,
downgrading bilateral relations between the two countries.
And also notice that for the trials involving the maid
murderers, the Indonesian ambassador always attends the court as a
spectator... isn't that exerting great pressure on the
judge and our government?
Hence we can understand our different responses to demands from
these 2 countries.
