I also thought about the recent news in Singapore of that MP who got burnt by the 70+ year old taxi driver. I think this should serve as a wake up call to our leaders that there is genuine unhappiness with law in our country. They are not directly linked; the bus lane and the old man, but point here is, these are signs that people are getting really unhappy with things going on. Most Singaporeans would just follow the law and do it because they feel it is not worth it to fight for an unjust law. Martin Luthur King Jr once said that a citizen has a moral obligation to obey just laws just as he has the moral obligation to disobey unjust laws.
The burning of the MP didn't seem to get the message across that when people, pushed into desperation, would react in a most violent way to handle the situation. In particular, this time with the cabby; he is old, still drives taxi because he has no choice and the government is unable to help him settle for a decent life. Cabbies's life are hard, working those long hours and sometimes getting fined as well for minor stuff. Civil disobedience was Gandhi's call to the Indians. We are just too lazy to oppose and to decide if laws are just or unjust. Imagine if a few thousand of us went to oppose a law by going to parliment and asking them to arrest us because we say we can't keep the unjust law. That way, we wouldn't have broken the law itself, and would have shown peaceful civil disobedience to get our points across.
I'm not trying to instigate anything here... But I feel our country is walking down a wrong path. Full of smokescreens and deceptions and a place where red-taped beuracrats carve their careers. This thought has provoked me hard over the past few hours when I heard a few people talking about it at the coffee shop. I think our government should seriously get the message that discontent is growing and people are increasingly being pushed into desperation. They should start listening, before someone else gets burnt...
PS : think about it for a moment, maybe our society is not as perfect as they are telling us it is.
-Tofu
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3 comments:
I see more suicides than instances of civil protests. We're so lazy we'd rather kill ourselves than go out fighting.
On a happier note, bus lanes saved my ass the first day of polytechnic, lulz.
you do know the government/media is trying to build a case against him that he is nuts right?
It shows a social perception of civil disobedience is changing, and in time, i hope, will open up a path towards freedom, justice and openness.
Because this is not an environment I want my children to live in, to have to tell then there is no good reason why they can't do it, but live in perpetual fear of doing it.
well, you have travelled the world, and more or less seen the varying effects governments have on the country and people of different places. i have not travelled as much as you or Panzerz, but i have seen enough to say that our government has done good.
it is true we seemed to have traded away our voice and all that, but i still do think we got a better deal than most people in this part of the world
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