Why should PM Lee Hsien Loong resign over abuse of power?

This transcript was originally posted on Friday, 30 June 2017 at http://2helixsg.blogspot.sg/ 

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This is the transcript of the YouTube video “Why should PM Lee Hsien Loong resign over abuse of power”. The YouTube video  is at https://youtu.be/aHrMjo1MlOg

1.     Hello, my name is Yan Jun.  I am probably the first person in Singapore who has proved that the present Singapore government is totally corrupt. In this video, I will tell you why Mr. Lee Hsien Loong, the current Prime Minister of Singapore, should resign over abuse of power. My abuse of power allegation is based on two facts. The first fact is the Singapore government’s obstruction of justice, or its insistence on covering up the judicial corruption scandal in Supreme Court to hide the massive human rights violations in Singapore. These violations resulted from a misinterpretation of the Constitution by the later Lee Kuan Yew in 1984. The second fact is the Terrex detention conspiracy, or the Singapore government’s plot to violate China’s sovereignty in an attempt to rescue its unsavory reputation. PM Lee Hsien Loong knowingly and voluntarily joined this conspiracy by writing to the Hong Kong authorities.

2.     I bear no malice towards the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), but as a victim of judicial and government corruption, I think I am the right person to call for the resignation of the PM Lee Hsien Loong to restore public confidence in the PAP government. Recently, PM Lee Hsien Loong was accused of abuse of power by his siblings and he vowed to refute this allegation in the Parliament to protect the integrity of the PAP government. I would request that PM Lee Hsien Loong adhere strictly to the principle of equality before the law and openly deal with my abuse of power allegation by way of parliamentary explanation or through legal action against me.

3.     In January 2016, I uploaded video “Judicial corruption in Singapore" to YouTube.  In March and April, I took to the streets to protest judicial corruption in Supreme Court after I had exhausted all other means to get justice. Police arrested me, formally charged me in court with unlawful assembly, and sent me to the Institute of Mental Health for a psychiatric evaluation. The doctor did not diagnose me with any mental illness so I was found competent to stand trial.  Throughout the hearings, the judge refused to determine the truth or falsity of my corruption allegation. On June 16, I was convicted of unlawful assembly and was sentenced to 3 weeks in prison. Because the local newspapers did not report the trial, the verdict and the official diagnosis of my mental condition, the PAP government effectively halted the spread of the judicial corruption scandal by treating me as a psychiatric patient. As explained in my previous YouTube video, Supreme Court has bias towards the PAP government to cover up the fact that the people in Singapore have been denied of their fundamental right against arbitrary arrest by the police for over 3 decades, because of the late Lee Kuan Yew’s misinterpretation of the Constitution in 1984.

 

4.     In this video, I will discuss three issues concerning Singapore’s political system. The first is about Samuel Huntington’s gloomy prediction about Singapore’s future after Lee Kuan Yew. The second is about the grand corruption in Singapore and how the PAP government has managed to engage in corruption and at the same time maintain its reputation of being corruption free. Finally, I will analyze the Terrex detention issue and explain why it is a political conspiracy against China.

Part I

5.     Now I discuss the first issue, or Samuel Huntington’s gloomy prediction. Samuel Huntington, the late political scientist at Harvard University, explained in his book “Culture Matters” in 2000 that Singapore’s uncorrupt political system was artificially achieved through political action. Although Huntington didn’t explain in detail how political action helped Singapore earn its reputation of being corruption free, he did raise the question “how uncorrupt Singapore will remain after Lee Kwan Yew is no longer there”. In fact, Huntington had famously predicted in 1995 that “The honesty and efficiency that Senior Minister Lee has brought to Singapore are likely to follow him to his grave”.

6.     In an interview with the Straits Times in 2003, the late Lee Kuan Yew dismissed Huntington’s prediction as a “non-sequitur” and explained that “My colleagues and I have institutionalized honesty, integrity and meritocracy into the systems we have created.”  However, the late Minister Mentor’s explanation hasn’t stood the test of time because the Singapore political system turns out to be founded on institutionalized corruption rather than institutionalized morality, as shown in the PAP government’s apparent disregard of the Rule of Law to cover up the judicial corruption scandal. Here is the evidence.

7.     After I was sentenced to prison in June, I filed an appeal and the appeal was set for hearing on October 21, 2016. On the afternoon of October 20, I staged my 3^rd protest in a public area outside the US Embassy in Singapore in the hope that my corruption allegation would be reported by news media after I was formally charged in court. As I expected, police arrested me on the spot and charged me with unlawful assembly at the police station. Police then decided to free me on bail but I firmly insisted that I should be formally charged in court. On the following morning, to my surprise, police released me unconditionally and drove me from the police station to Supreme Court to ensure that I attended the appeal hearing on time. It was self-evident that the unconditional release was inconsistent with the police responses to my first two protests so this decision fatally compromised the principle of equality before the law. However, the police provided no justification. 

8.     At the appeal hearing, I informed the presiding judge Chan Seng Onn of my protest outside the US Embassy and the police decision to release me unconditionally. Justice Chan ruled that these facts were irrelevant to the hearing and finally dismissed my appeal, without addressing my legal augments. Even worse was the fact that Supreme Court declined to release the written judgment in this case so the general public was unable to question the correctness of Justice Chan’s decision. 

9.     Attorney-General VK Rajah, a former Judge of Appeal of Supreme Court, was supposed to be responsible for the police controversial decision to release me unconditionally. On November 25, he was suddenly announced to step down in January 2017 upon reaching the retirement age of 60 when he was still in the middle of a 3-year term. The succeeding Attorney-General Lucien Wong was already 63 years of age. It is evident that Mr. Rajah will not face impeachment and trial even if the police controversial decision was an abuse of police power.

10.  On December 8, I wrote to PM Lee Hsien Loong by email, informed him of my protest outside the US embassy and the police controversial decision, and seriously suggested that he resign. I copied this email to the international community. On December 23, I staged my 4th protest in a public area outside the British High Commission in Singapore. Police arrested me on the spot, freed me on bail at the police station on the same day and finally released me unconditionally two weeks later because public prosecutors gave no instructions to the police to proceed with this case. Both the judicial corruption scandal in Supreme Court and the police responses to my protests outside the embassies provided definitive evidence of government corruption.

11.  It is clear that Huntington’s prediction has come true because the PAP government doesn’t remain committed to the Rule of Law. In other words, Singapore’s clean and incorrupt system turns out to be a sham.

Part II

12.  After showing the corruption in Singapore’s political system, now I discuss the 2^nd issue, or how has the PAP government managed to engage in corruption and at the same time maintain its reputation of being corruption free. To answer this question, first of all, I must remind you that watchdogs such as Transparency International usually do not comment on a corruption scandal unless the scandal is reported in the press. Secondly, I must distinguish between petty corruption and grand corruption because Singapore is more appropriately described as petty corruption-free.

13.  Petty corruption refers to everyday abuse of entrusted power by low- and mid-level public officials, and grand corruption refers to the abuse of entrusted power by high-level officials. Grand corruption is sometimes used interchangeably with political corruption. With respect to petty corruption, Singapore certainly lives up to its reputation of being corruption free because of the famous Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB). While CPIB is an independent body headed by a director who reports directly to the Prime Minister, it is self-evident that in actual practice the CPIB is not in a position to investigate grand corruption cases directly involving the Prime Minister.

14.  In August 2016, Transparency International developed a legal definition of grand corruption as “A public official or other person deprives a particular social group or substantial part of the population of a State, of a fundamental right, as a result of bribery, embezzlement or other corruption offence”. Based on this definition, the PAP government has fully engaged in grand corruption because it has deprived Singapore citizens of their fundamental civil rights such as the right against arbitrary arrest by the police, and the right to freedom of speech and expression. With respect to grand corruption, it is clear that Singapore doesn’t deserve its reputation.

15.  But why do people take it for granted that Singapore is grand corruption-free? The answer is: it is hard to engage in grand corruption and it is even harder to prove grand corruption. In grand corruption, corruption has entirely taken over the political system and becomes the rule rather than the exception. For top-level leaders to behave with impunity, a government must have complete control of the judiciary because the law is used to assess and guard against corruption. From within a government where corruption has been institutionalized, it is almost impossible to show the government’s improper influence on the court from the other branches of government. It is precisely this difficulty to demonstrate the PAP government’s control over the court system that explains why it is hard to prove grand corruption in Singapore.

16.  The last time that the PAP government was caught for disregarding the Rule of Law was in the 1987 Jeyaretnam’s case. In that case, the Privy Council in London reversed the wrongful conviction by Singapore courts and called Jeyaretnam had suffered a serious miscarriage of justice. However, the PAP government refused to accept the Privy Council’s decision and later abolished the Privy Council as Singapore’s highest court in 1994. In the same year, the PAP government fully offset negative effects produced by Jeyaretnam’s case on its legal reputation. In the 1994 Michael Fay case, the PAP government strictly adhered to the principle of equality before the law and declined the then US president Bill Clinton’s personal appeal to grant Fay clemency from caning. Since then, the PAP government has established and maintained an international reputation for fairness and impartiality until the judicial corruption scandal in Supreme Court was uncovered in my case in 2015. 

17.  It should note that the full control of the judiciary is not enough for the PAP government to maintain its squeaky-clean reputation. In order to avoid public scrutiny, the PAP government must have complete control of the media and legislation. The PAP government’s tight control of the media has officially denied Singapore citizens their right to information and even the general election cannot serve as a check on governmental power. In other words, the ruling PAP has given itself free rein to behave as it wishes. In response to the criticism that Singapore’s remarkable economic success has been achieved at the expense of fundamental civil liberty, an ex-Parliament Member famously argued that freedom in Singapore “is being able to walk on the streets unmolested in the wee hours in the morning, to be able to leave one’s door open and not fear that one would be burgled. Freedom is the woman who can ride buses and trains alone”. No matter how strong this argument may sound, it is fundamentally flawed because it is based on a false assumption that the people in Singapore have a basic right against arbitrary arrest by the police. As I explained earlier in this video, the truth is the opposite because the PAP government has denied its citizens this fundamental right as a result of the late Lee Kuan Yew’s mistake in 1984.

18.  Transparency International has treated grand corruption as an international crime on the ground that fighting grand corruption must be the responsibility of the international community. I would add another reason here that corrupt leaders are willing to do anything necessary to protect their reputations, including organizing international conspiracies to violate the sovereignty of other countries. 

Part III

19.  Now I discuss the 3rd issue, the Terrex issue. The Terrex issue refers to the seizure of Singapore’s nine Terrex army vehicles by Hong Kong customs on November 23, 2016 due to a suspected licensing breach. These vehicles were used for military training in Taiwan and were transported back to Singapore via Hong Kong for serviceability checks and maintenance. After completing its investigations of the breach, Hong Kong customs released the vehicles on January 24, 2017 and two months later, brought a charge against the captain of the container ship for not having required license.

20.  Although the detention of the vehicles has been seen as an issue raised by China in retaliation for Singapore's stance on the South China Sea dispute, the truth is that the detention is just one part of a carefully laid trap set by the PAP government to embarrass China by exposing to the world Singapore's military cooperation with Taiwan. The other part of this trap is the PAP government’s escalating demands to the Hong Kong authorities for the legal basis for the detention. In retrospect, the PAP government had set this trap by exploiting a legal loophole which was expected to leave Hong Kong customs powerless to detain the vehicles. However, this legal loophole turned out to be a common misunderstanding of the law of sovereign immunity in Hong Kong so the conspiracy failed in the end.

21.  Although the licensing breach has been widely considered very unusual, the PAP government has made little effort to identify the cause of the breach. On January 9, Singapore’s Defence Minister Dr Ng Eng Hen explained the sovereign immunity doctrine to Parliament that under international law, state-owned property automatically enjoyed sovereign immunity every country was entitled to. Since the nine military vehicles were the property of the Singapore government, Dr Ng reasoned that the vehicles enjoyed and were protected by sovereign immunity the Singapore government was entitled to so the detention of the vehicles was against international law. With regard to the suspected licensing beach, Dr Ng stated the shipping company was solely responsible for the breach and this commercial shipping issue should be settled between the shipping company and the Hong Kong authorities only. PM Lee Hsien Loong reiterated the doctrine of sovereign immunity in his letter to the Hong Kong’s Chief Executive and asked for an immediate return of the vehicles. After completing its investigations of the suspected breach, the Hong Kong customs concluded that the Singapore government was not responsible for the Terrex issue and released the vehicles on January 24, 2017.

22.  On January 20, or 4 days before the vehicles were released, I informed two legal academics by email that the sovereign immunity doctrine was not applicable to the Terrex issue, because the state-owned property did not automatically enjoy sovereign immunity unless it was under state control. If the shipping company was responsible for the suspected breach, the vehicles were out of the control of the PAP government so the vehicles did not enjoy sovereign immunity and the detention was lawful. If the PAP government was responsible for the suspected breach, the vehicles certainly enjoyed sovereign immunity but the PAP government would have violated China’s sovereignty. In this situation, Hong Kong customs could legally detain the vehicles under international law, or Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts 2001 by the International Law Commission of the United Nations. In other words, the detention of the vehicles was perfectly lawful no matter who was responsible for the suspected breach.

23.  I copied my January 20 email to the Attorney-General’s Chambers, the Ministry of Defence and the media, but there was no reply. Because the Attorney-General had a duty to defend the government’s legal position, on January 25 and 31, I requested A.G. Lucien Wong twice to respond to my criticism of the government’s legal position. Although I stated in my email “silence on the part of the A.G. can be reasonably treated as acceptance of my criticism”, there was still no response.

24.  On February 7, I wrote to Hong Kong's Chief Executive CY Leung, and copied my email to PM Lee Hsien Loong and the international press. In this email, I disproved the sovereign immunity argument, suggested that the Terrex issue was a conspiracy by Singapore government against China, and asked whether the Hong Kong authorities accepted Singapore government’s legal arguments. The Chief Executive’s Office later forwarded my email to the Customs and Excise Department. On February 20, Mr. Roy Tang, the Commissioner of Hong Kong Customs and Excise, replied by email, saying, “We will not comment on the handling of a specific case, particularly if the investigation might lead to criminal prosecution.” However, on March 24, Hong Kong Customs charged the vessel captain for not having required license and thus reaffirmed its legal position that the detention of the vehicles was lawful.

Part IV

25.  After telling the Terrex issue, now I explain why it is a conspiracy by Singapore government against China. Wikipedia has identified four characteristics features every conspiracy is supposed to have. I use these features as criteria to prove my conspiracy story. The 1st criterion is conspirators. Conspirators must act as a group but not isolated individuals. The 2nd criterion is the purpose of the conspiracy. The purpose must be illegal or sinister and would not benefit society as a whole. The 3rd criterion is the principal events of a conspiracy. These events must be orchestrated acts but not a series of spontaneous and haphazard ones. The 4th criterion is the secret of the conspiracy. A conspiracy must be secret planning and is not open up for public discussion.

26.  My conspiracy story meets all four criteria. Regarding the 1st criterion, the PAP government always acts as a group but not individuals. Regarding the 4th criterion, the PAP government has never publicly discussed the strength of its legal position. Regarding the 2nd criterion, or the purpose of the conspiracy, it is indisputable that the PAP government had already faced a serious credibility crisis after its inconsistent response to my protest outside the US embassy was exposed to the international community. As a result, the PAP government badly needed an opportunity to rescue its reputation so its top leaders could stay in power.

27.  Regarding the 3rd criterion, or the connections between principal events of a conspiracy, it should note that the principal events leading to the Terrex issue took place in a controlled manner, as shown in the fundamental flaws in the PAP government’s explanation of the incident. First, it was unnecessary to ship all nine military vehicles back to Singapore for serviceability purposes. Shortly after the incident, Lin Yu-fang, a national security expert at the KMT’s think tank in Taiwan, reasoned that the vehicles were new so didn’t require regular maintenance and even if there was such a need, routine maintenance could be easily done in Taiwan. Lin was concerned that Singapore was about to either close its military cooperation with Taiwan or reduce the level of cooperation. Here is the videoclip.

(Transcript of the video clip) The military officers who were invited for the interview said the Terrex vehicles mostly stayed in the military camps. While Taiwan's military authorities didn’t comment much on the seizure of the vehicles by HK customs, their response has still attracted attention from the outside to the current Singapore-Taiwan military cooperation. Lin Yu-fang, a national security expert at the Kuomintang’s think-tank in Taiwan, thinks the Terrex detention issue is very unusual. First, these Terrex vehicles are new so they are not supposed to be replaced. Secondly, even if the vehicles broke down, broken vehicles can be repaired in Taipei. Although it is unlikely that the 9 vehicles broke down at the same time, they are now all transported back to Singapore. Lin Yu-fang suspects that Singapore is about to end the related cooperation or at least reduce the level of cooperation. He doubts whether the military cooperation between Taiwan and Singapore will suddenly change.

28.  Second, the PAP government’s explanation of the licensing breach does not make sense. As the owner of the vehicles, Singapore Ministry of Defence was in a position to decide independently whether the vehicles should be unloaded or not at the port before the container ship arrived in Hong Kong. The shipping company was expected to follow its customer’s instructions rather than made an independent decision. A professional shipping company should have known that unloading military equipment in a country without complying with the requirements of law is a violation of the sovereignty of this country. Accordingly, the licensing breach can only be explained by reason of malice but not incompetence, negligence or gross negligence on the part of either the shipping company, or the PAP government, or both. For the same reason, if a judge orders a one-sided cross-examination at a hearing, the only explanation is malice on the part of the judge. To shift its responsibility to the shipping company, the PAP government was supposed to provide evidence such as official communication from the Ministry of Defence to the shipping company and the relevant contract clauses. However, the PAP government didn’t show any evidence but blamed the shipping company APL for the licensing breach. These two lines of evidence, or the unnecessary shipping of the vehicles and the simplistic explanation of the incident, strongly suggest that the Terrex incident occurred because of the PAP government’s careful planning.

29.  Third, the PAP government showed little response to my criticism of its legal position, to my conspiracy story and to the Hong Kong custom’s legal action against the vessel captain. These actions have put Singapore’s reputation for squeaky-clean government at stake so the PAP government is expected to clear its name by taking a defamation suit against me, as it repeatedly did to the international newspapers. However, the PAP government has so far remained silent. In sharp contrast to the prevailing view that the detention was “a serious and flagrant infringement of Singapore’s national sovereignty and interests”, PM Lee Hsien Loong made a complete U-turn in the BBC HARDTalk interview on the severity of the Terrex issue and downgraded the detention issue to an incident but not a major problem with China, without even mentioning the doctrine of sovereign immunity.

30.  Fourth, after the incident, the PAP government abruptly changed its official position on Singapore-Taiwan military relations. Throughout the incident, the PAP government had technically shone a bright spotlight on Singapore’s annual military exercises in Taiwan because the detained vehicles had license plates issued by Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence. In line with this position, the PAP government flatly refused to halt its military training in Taiwan. While it is expected to keep the spotlight on Singapore-Taiwan military cooperation’s such as Exercise Starlight, the PAP government has not address this issue again since the vehicles were returned. These two lines of evidence, or the PAP government’s sudden change in its legal position on the Terrex issue and its official position on Singapore-Taiwan military relations, can only be explained by reason of the failure of the Terrex conspiracy.

31.  The course of the Terrex conspiracy is described as follows: First, the PAP government started the conspiracy by deploying its military equipment from Taiwan to provoke an incident. Second, the PAP government treated the incident as a matter of law in order to exploit the legal loophole regarding sovereign immunity and at the same time, played up the incident through news media. Third, PM Lee Hsien Loong added considerable weight to the incident by claiming sovereign rights over the vehicles in his letter to Hong Kong’s leader. However, the doctrine of sovereign immunity was found inapplicable to the incident so this political conspiracy was suddenly brought to an end. Fourthly, the PAP government compromised with China and settled this “matter of law” through diplomatic channels but not legal proceedings. Lastly, PM Lee Hsien Loong downplayed the Terrex issue in the BBC HardTalk interview to minimize the negative consequences resulting from the failure of this conspiracy after I passed the conspiracy story to the international press. It is clear that the Terrex conspiracy is a case of grand because the head of government abused his position for the benefit of the ruling party at the expense of Singapore’s international standing.

Part V

32.  Here is the summary of the misconduct on the part of PM Lee Hsien Loong. With respect to the miscarriage of justice, or the misinterpretation of the Constitution by the late Lee Kuan Yew in 1984, Mr. Lee Hsien Loong has failed to discharge his duty as Prime Minster to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of Singapore according to law and to the best of his knowledge and ability. As such, PM Lee Hsien Loong has violated his constitutional oath and is unfit for office. He should resign over abuse of power, although this misconduct can be corrected to some extent if Supreme Court rectifies the late Minister Mentor’s mistake. 

33.  With respect to the Terrex conspiracy, PM Lee Hsien Loong has completely disregarded the Constitution and the international law. He has misused the Singapore Ministry of Defence, Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Parliament. In addition, PM Lee Hsien Loong has misled the people of Singapore by knowingly and voluntarily joining the Terrex conspiracy. The discovery of this political conspiracy has largely damaged Singapore’s international reputation and credibility. It is self-evident that PM Lee Hsien Loong has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as Prime Minister and has ceased to command the confidence of both Parliament Members and the general public. As such, PM Lee Hsien Loong is unfit for office and must resign over abuse of power to restore public confidence in the PAP government. 

34.  As Samuel Huntington observed, “Throughout history, authoritarian rule never has provided good government over a sustained period of time. In some circumstances, authoritarianism may do well in the short term, but experience clearly shows that only democracy produces good government over the long haul.” I think it is time for the people of Singapore to think about the Constitution, freedom of the press, and the future of this country.

35.  Thank you.