Last Thursday, I had lunch with some friends near Arab Street. Looking out of the window, I tot I saw Uncle Leong walking on the street below. My friends said it was him.
He looked depressed and walked as though he was carrying a heavy burden: a cross perhaps? Last Thursday was after all Maundy Thursday, or Holy Thursday, the day before Good Friday.
I tot of him carrying a cross on his shoulders on the way to his crucifixion when I read this yesterday (Feel free to skip to my further tots after the bit about Leong: writer’s a windbag who also suffers from verbal diarrhea):
I was sued by the Singapore prime minister, fired from my job for political reasons and later the police ransacked my home for supporting the opposition.
I was made out to be a bad person.
Then in 2017, academic Donald Low was threatened with his job.
Then last year, the prime minister sued Leong Sze Hian.
Then, the police also ransacked Terry Xu’s home.
Are all these bad people too?
After I’ve been sued, sacked, charged, had my home ransacked and persecuted from 2014 to 2016, I have since then seen more and more Singaporeans go through what I did.
With each of them, I understand their pain and the injustice they had to go through.
Because it was what I had to go through too. From once being valued at work and school, I became disavowed.
But then, the people I mentioned above aren’t as bad as the person I am. They are people who continue to be respected in what they do. Yet they have had their lives hurt and slammed by the PAP.
They won’t be the last. I’ve seen people been hurt by the PAP every year since I was persecuted, and I know it will keep going on.
Then it reminded me, before I was persecuted, I had thought about the “troublemakers” before me. Why are they so stupid to get into trouble? Why can’t they do things in other ways?
Why did they have to get themselves sued by the prime minister? Why did they have to get themselves jailed? Opposition politicians like JBJ and Chee Soon Juan, lawyers like Soh Lung Teo, church workers like Vincent Cheng why must they find trouble with the government?
But then one day, after I was sued, someone asked the same question to me, someone very close.
Why must you go and find trouble with the government, she asked me.
And then I became the “troublemaker”.
It was funny listening to the “troublemaker” label used on me. I remembered that when I attended talks after I was sued, people saw me and thought I was going to start throwing chairs. The look in their eyes, it was funny.
But of course, I asked serious questions. You can ask Tharman at one of the CPF talks I attended. He answered back quite stably too. Well, he wasn’t threatened, was he?
But after going through all these, knowing how the government can come after you and make you a such a bad person, even beyond what you’ve ever known of yourself, and to even make me question myself, this made me finally understand what these other “troublemakers” were going through, and who they are.
When I first met Vincent Cheng, he was such a soft-spoken and sincere person, when I first met Soh Lung, such a passionate and helpful person! Chee Soon Juan also came across very smart and measured.
After going through what I have, I began to understand the lives of others who had gone through what I have before me.
And I also understand the pain of others who have gone after me. And I still see people being hurt by the PAP year after year. People who have to leave the country, people who have to try to fight to clear their name, people who had live their lives honestly.
You don’t really get it until you become one of the people where overnight, you are given a new label, where you become a criminal simply for standing up for what you believe in.
Does it make me angry? Maybe. Does it make me sad? Maybe. But much of this is all in the past now.
But it does make me wonder when Singaporeans will ever realise their power. It does make me angry that Singaporeans do not want to think about this.
If I do not think about society, nothing will happen to me. Exactly what they wanted.
To keep you quiet. If you keep quiet, I don’t have to change policies to make lives better.
Do you remember the story of the bundle of sticks? When the father in Aesop’s Fables got his sons to break the sticks individually, the sticks broke easily, but when he got his sons to break the sticks when bundled together, they could not.
What Singaporeans do not realise that together you are the bundle of stick, and you will always be.
The PAP takes a stick out now and then from this bundle, break it, and the rest of you sticks shudder.
But what you do not realise is that when you shudder, you are shuddering with the other sticks next to you. You are in that bundle of sticks, and that makes you strong.
They cannot break all of you, so they break one stick now and then. And if you stop letting them break you one by one, you can stop them.
This is what Singaporeans do not realise. You are powerful and you are strong.
I wish you would remember that.
Roy Ngerng
In addition to the burden of a defamation suit, Uncle Leong is also carrying the burden of the BS of Lim Tean, his lawyer. The legal basis of what Lim Tean is accusing PM of doing (that the libel suit is an abuse of court process) has been frowned upon in English courts. Yet Lim Tean thinks our court of appeal will agree with his line of reasoning.
Christ rose on Easter Sunday and is now sitting on a throne on the right side of god the father in heaven. Somehow I doubt Uncle Leong will escape as lightly as Christ did, even if he has a son of Ah Kong rooting for him: only the younger son leh. But then miracles do happen and if anyone deserves a miracle, it’s Uncle Leong for juz sharing an article (Albeit one that he should have known was fake and defamatory). Btw, why is Ah Kong’s daughter not publicly rooting for Uncle Leong?