Ex-president Devan Nair once told Melanie Chew that his contact with the MPAJA happened through an untouchable, the pariah Paramanan. He was one of the labourers working for Nair's father, the chief clerk put in charge of a rubber estate. It was a moral dilemma for father and son when thirty Japanese trucks rolled up and demanded the surrender of the labourers. Nair undertook the risk to warn Paramanan during the night. Next morning, the Japanese found only old ladies and babies, everybody else had fled to the jungle.
There were 15 people who had been involved with Paramanan and the MPAJA. Father and son included. If Paramanan was caught and succumbed to torture, they would be finished. The horribly mutilated corpse of Paramanan was later found, thrown out of the Kempeitai headquarters like discarded trash.
Parmanan had not revealed any names. What Nair found incredible was that "an unlettered, illiterate, lowly born pariah, enduring the most cruel Japanese torture" had saved their lives. He saw it as one more reason to reject one hated man's views on genetics and intelligence. You can give a man all the paper qualifications in the world, he said, it will not make a difference. Don't even get started with the bogus certificates from degree mills which the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) seems to accept with alacrity.
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That is true but unfortunately those rightous people died while the evil lived on. Dead people cannot come up and tell the truth. Stories are fabricated by survivors. Guess that is life.
ReplyDeleteWhat if IDA wants to sack any of her staff? Definitely submitting that bogus MBA cert is good enough reason (for lying) regardless of how many genuine certs, right?
ReplyDeleteInfocomm Development Authority - what a joke. First, they have to develop their own info gathering processes - like how to authenticate faked educational certificates. Second, learn how to communicate when confronted with the bought degree. Then we can talk with authority.
ReplyDeleteTalking about war stories, the Gallipoli 100 Commemorations on 25th April serve to remind us of the importance of honouring our war dead. After all isn't this what nationhood is all about, honouring the memory of the people who fought and died for our country that binds us together? What a blardy shame we only honour and glorify the departed one; and a hysterical mob baying for the blood of anyone who don't accord him the same respect.
ReplyDeleteSince they are tossing around the idea of honouring Him, I suggest they create a medal for gallantry like the Victoria Cross - a Lee Kuan Yew Cross or Star. Wouldn't this be great?(?) They can award this posthumously to our TRUE heroes and "fighters" (not some old geezer) like Lim Bo Send, Lt Adnan bin Said and Elizabeth Choy (OBE) who never flinched in front of the enemy. Maybe also Paramanan.
No Ma. Gallopoli reminds us not to listen to your so called leaders, especially those educated in Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale. Those schools are there to provide the same false diplomas and certificates to idiotic dauphins, in the same way that University of Mumbai confers degrees to less well off people with the same aspirations.
ReplyDeleteOne old geezer already got away - this old geezer will get away too.
ReplyDeleteSinkies are ballsless and have no principles...sigh.
....luckily got kamma, cannot escape wan, sooner or later it will get them.
ReplyDelete