The weary hand of justice - 3 murders, 3 different sentences.

 

The hand of justice was kept very busy this week. Three deaths, and each accused faced three different sentences - 30 years, 22.5 years and 4 years (3 years suspended, effectively making it only one year of prison time). 

All three gavels struck the sounding block firmly, letting out an ominous echo along the dark corridor of humanity. It is a lesson in the courtroom which effectively stretched the hand of justice from the most undeserving to the most deserving. 

Singaporean housewife Gaiyathiri, 41, caused the death of her maid, Ms Piang Ngaih Don, 24 (30 years jail). Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, 45, ended up killing George Floyd, 46 (22.5 years jail). 

And a mother, French Ms Valerie Bacot, 40, shot her rapist stepdad, Daniel Polette, 61, who was also her husband (4 years, 3 years suspended). 

Mind you, all three accused are not natural born killer, for a lack of a proper term; not even by a long shot. No doubt opinions will surely be divided between the three of them, but I believe the general consensus is that they are no Dr Hannibal Lecter of The Silence of the Lambs (1988), a serial killer who eats his victims. 

You don’t need to be pathological or sociopathic to end up taking a life. You may be a homemaker (Gaiyathiri and Valerie) or an enforcer of the law (Derek), and one unsuspecting day, you find yourself at the receiving end of the gavel strike. 

And all three of them brought with them not just extreme emotional and mental baggages when they committed the offences, but for Derek, the police officer, he became the law, for more than 9 minutes in May 2020, when he pinned George onto the road and choked him to death. 

In that 9 minutes or so, George could be heard crying out more than 20 times that he could not breathe. In the courtroom, Derek said: “I do want to give my condolences to the Floyd family.”

As for Gaiyathiri, we know what she did to her maid. It was reported in every major newspaper here. It was 9 months of living hell for Ms Piang. She started at 39kg, and at her death, in July 2016, she weighed only 24kg. 

The abuses were unspeakable. The prosecution even asked for the court’s “righteous anger” to be invoked to jail Gaiyathiri for life. 

Ms Piang was kicked, choked twice, slapped, punched, stamped on and her hair was pulled. She was deliberately starved, given only cold rice and sliced bread soaked in water, and had to sneak into the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning to eat food from the dustbin. 

Ms Piang was also made to shower with door opened and “tied to the window grille at night while she slept on the floor during the last 12 days of her life - so that she would not be able to eat food from the dustbin.”

Yet, Gaiyathiri had no history of maid abuse with her previous maids - at least no reports were ever lodged. She was also suffering from depression (while pregnant with her son) and had obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (“OCPD”), which the prosecution admitted contributed significantly to her offences (all 28 charges). 

Her father told ST that she was a “normal person” who was “fussy about cleanliness but changed significantly after the birth of her second child.”

 

Even High Court Judge See said that Gaiyathiri “did not appear to have been a pathologically violent person prior to her offences and was not thought to be at risk of re-offending or to pose a danger to the public.”

Yet, what she had done, for that 9 months of dehumanizing torture, committed with a high degree of deliberation, was “among the worst cases of culpable homicide,” so remarked Judge See. 

If one thinks Gaiyathiri is a “normal person”, here’s another normal person by the name of Valerie, a mother/wife who killed her husband/stepfather.

 

When Valerie left the courtroom, freed on Friday, she was met with thunderous applause. More than 700k petition was filed for her early release. This is her story of terror, over many years. 

When Valerie was 12, her mother’s boyfriend, Polette, raped her. After Polette was released, he continued to sexually abuse Valerie until she was pregnant at 17. Her alcoholic mother threw her out of the house and forced her to live with Polette. 

Over the years, Valerie was attacked with a hammer, kicked repeatedly, punched and almost choked to death. She described her life as an “extreme hell”. Polette also used Valerie as a sex worker for him. 

One of the last straws was when Polette “started questioning their 14-year-old daughter Karline about her budding sexuality.” That was when Valerie decided that “this has to stop”.

“In March 2016, after Polette ordered his wife (Valerie) to undergo yet another sexual humiliation by a client, she used the pistol that he kept in the car to kill him with a single bullet to the back of the neck as he sat in the driver’s seat.”

Valerie confessed that after she shot him, she hid his body in a forest with the help of two of her children. 

I know this does not make for a good Sabbath reading this morning, but all three lives taught me something about human nature, its darker side. It allowed me to catch a glimpse of the extreme effects of what is the intersection between human nature and nurture. 

We cannot fully understand what Gaiyathiri did apart from her depression and her OCPD. This may be one of genetic predisposition at birth. No doubt she still had a choice, or many choices before the last straw, and yet, she chose to dehumanise Ms Piang just because the circumstances allowed her to. 

Nobody heard Ms Piang’s cries for help in that nine months. Those who might have crossed her path walked on by, because they didn’t think Gayathiri was capable of such unspeakable acts. She is a normal person to them. 

Mind you, Gaiyathiri insisted that Ms Piang showered before 6 pm because she “said her prayers at 6 pm and considered it to be a bad omen if the women in the flat had not showered by the time of her prayers.” 

Alas, is this a mind distorted, warped beyond comprehension, or a normal person who is pushed to the edge by her circumstances, or both? 

How about Derek? Isn’t he the byproduct of a broken system, where justice is skewed by race, colour and income gap? 

For sure, he is as normal as normal comes by. Yet, in that 9 minutes he became the judge, jury and executioner. I am sure, like Gaiyathiri, he is a loving parent, and would do anything for his kids. Yet, when it comes to law enforcement, he practiced selective justice and carried it to the extreme. 

And Valerie, what can we say about her and her actions? 

In fact, the prosecution in her case said: ““Valerie Bacot should not have taken the life of the person who was terrorising her, (but judges) should ”uphold the transgression” without incarcerating her again.””

How do you then “uphold the transgression” and then ask for her to be released as soon as possible? Maybe, in her case, nurture played a greater role. She was forced by circumstances mostly beyond her control and the last straw was when her 14-year-old daughter’s life was at risk. 

She dealt with a monster the best way she knew how. Her justice challenged every aspect of the rule of law and its sentencing goals, because every abuse she had suffered in the hands of the one she had killed added up to give her defensible cause to take the law into her own hands. 

And in her case, justice in the courtroom saw fit not only to turn her eyes away from her crime, but also to tilt the balance in her favour. 

Indeed, when you look at the whole spectrum of human nature/actions and the different circumstances they face, some much more extreme than others, you get a better, more nuanced and mature picture of the demands on, for and of justice, and also its degree and depth. 

Most times, the gavel is light and easily finds the sound block. But at other times, the gavel is heavy, and lifting it up and hammering it down take more than just a reflex-like deliberation. 

In any event, these three cases have forced me to think more critically of what we are capable of, even if we think we are never capable of such acts. And I end with this quote that nudges me softly in that direction: -

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

 

Jeya Seelan - Facebook Justice in Kampong Spirit Style.

 

How about that, a shop owner selling spices and condiments at Yishun, abiding by the kampong spirit of helping one another, decided not to report someone who stole from him? 

That was the choice that Jeya Seelan, 31, had made. And it all started on 3 June. When he was away on a course, and two of his assistants were not watching, the stall customer walked over and swiped away about $800 cash visibly placed in a plastic box. 

That person was caught on camera. His face and identity were exposed. Yet, Jeya chose an unusual road. He did not lodge a police report. The neighbourhood police post was not mobilised. 

He blurred the identity of the customer who took the money and posted it on Facebook. He didn’t want to tarnish the man’s reputation. He only wanted him to return the money. 

He said: “It was just heartbreaking and shocking. If you think about all the hard work that went into earning that money, and one guy suddenly comes in to steal it in a flash, it’s devastating.”

Facebook justice worked swiftly. One day later, on 4 June, “a friend of the man who took the money sent Mr Jeya a text message at about 6pm. The next day, he came with the thief to return the money.”

Jeya said: “We like to say “bila bila Yishun”, which means “Yishun forever” in Malay. We have a spirit of helping one another. People say the kampong spirit is dying but I don’t believe that’s true.””

Lesson? Well, thinking aloud, do you call that the kampong-spirit-styled justice at work? Does it stop there? Is it consistent with our modern day justice/enforcement system based on the 4 sentencing principles of retribution, prevention, deterrence and rehabilitation? 

Here are more questions: Did the man learn his lesson? Is he remorseful? Will he re-offend? Will Jeya’s kampong spirit-styled justice deter future acts of theft? How will AGC and the SPF view this development, because $800 dollars is no small sum? 

Will there be a floodgate of such dispensation of justice carried out under one’s own hands? And for lawyers mitigating for their clients who have pleaded guilty to theft, what role, if any, does this unusual case play in their representation? Does this count as their first offence? 

I have more questions, but I resist being a smart-Alec about it, because I personally think justice in our strictly rule-based society has taken an unexpected detour for this case - at least for now. And it ought to be a good General-Paper-like discussion for A-level students in JCs. 

Mind you, Jeya’s angelic act in the spirit of kampong togetherness may warm the hearts of many in Yishun, others who read it, and myself included, but I suspect not all will share this kampong-spirit styled justice, especially those who had served time for relatively minor offences, for example, negligent driving. 

For them, and many others, where is the kampong spirit when they were charged and sentenced to serve a short jail time over a largely uncharacteristic, momentary lapse of judgment?

Still, kudos to Jeya, for he has shown communal mercy. And ironically the way mercy is shown cannot be done apart from exposing the crime on some social media platform, and now on ST and well, my Monday morning reflection. 

Complete anonymity would not work at all, because at most times, our conscience requires god-like surveillance in the form of video recording effectively brought to the culprit’s attention (and risks bringing the same to the attention of public authority at large) for him to come to its senses.

 

And let’s bear in mind that this is not a case where the man who stole suddenly had a road-to-Damascus experience the day after, and that led him to give up the cash. In this particular case, as Jeya puts it so nobly, the kampong spirit is not dead, and that is the truth. Jeya exemplified it well. It’s justice meted out by dint of pure compassion, when the game is up. 

For now, I too wonder, how will the law enforcers exemplify it? More importantly, how will society at large and the man who stole exemplify that same Kampong spirit? For having been shown grace, will the person who had stolen pays it forward by self-reform and demonstrating grace in return to others too? 

Alas, a small pebble of kindness thrown into a pond can create a ripple effect that compels society as a whole to confront their views/conviction about the criminal justice system, or about a balancing between crime and punishment, but with a human touch to it.

 

Parti Liyani - Karl Liew charged with false information.

 

Karl Liew, 43, is being charged with giving false information to a public servant. He told ASP Tang that “he had found 119 pieces of clothing belonging to him inside boxes packed by Ms Parti.” 

He is also accused of “intentionally giving false evidence in a judicial proceeding before District Judge Olivia Low on July 17, 2018.”

The report states: “Accompanied by his legal team and an unidentified woman, (Karl) left the State Courts building at around 11am and entered a black BMW car.” He is represented by lawyer Adam Maniam from Drew & Napier, one of the top law firms in the country. 

Well, I started with that because with that you see a glaring contrast between someone rich in our society facing criminal charges and a maid being hauled to court and being represented pro bono with support from a voluntary migrant organisation, while living in a rented premise, and walking to court everytime she and her lawyer Anil are called to defend the charges against her. Let me flesh it out here for you. 

Assoc Editor Chua Mui Hoong has this morning written a searching article about “Justice in an imperfect world”. Let me just say that while some are leaf blower and some whistle blower, Chua is a button pusher. And one of the hot buttons she had pushed in the Parti’s case is to ask: “But was there bias? Were the police and prosecution officers more inclined to believe the Liews than the maid?”

Our Law Minister talked about the insidious old boy type “that will cause fundamental structures to be “eroded like the supporting beams of a house after termites have attacked.”” Yet, the question here is: “Are these old boy type and the generation that follows after them insidiously, if not unwittingly, creating a society that is more unequal than our Government can ever check and contain, or even have the political will and resolve to check and contain?”

Now, Shanmugam did say this yesterday in Parliament: “the message is, it doesn’t matter who you are. If you do wrong, action will be taken. But it is not only corruption that we must guard against. We must also guard against soft corruption and influence peddling.”

Well, influence peddling also comes in the hard and soft types. The hard type involves string pulling, maybe some disguised donations to a wing of a faculty in return for preferential treatment for one’s kid. But the soft type is equally insidious, because it is like the termites that Shanmugan talked about that erode the supporting beams of society. 

This is where Chua’s probing struck a cognitive dissonance chord with this question:- 

“When Singapore ask if the justice system is biased, they are asking not just whether the privileged get favourable treatment or pull strings for themselves, but also whether police officers, prosecutors, even judges, internalise social hierarchies and make decisions that favour the rich and powerful.”

“Are they more inclined to believe the testimony of someone from a similar socio-economic class as themselves? Who went to the same schools as them?”

Mind you, that soft type of influence peddling is best described as “implicit bias” and we accord that quite unthinkingly onto the rich and famous even when we profess to believe otherwise. 

Most times, it takes conscious intervention to stop and check us from bestowing what is a soft type of favourable biased leaning on people who are wealthy, knowledgeable and/or adored by thousands. 

This is something Shanmugam had spoke about and understood, but did not go far enough to fully address. He said: “People are fed up with unfair structures. Equal opportunities are drying up.” He added that we must give everyone a “fair shake” and “must be alert, guard against the wealthy and the powerful taking unfair advantages.”

“If Liew Mum Leong did unfairly influence the proceedings, then it will be a hit to our foundations. It will hit our sense of fairness, equality and justice. A dent to project Singapore itself because Singapore is built on these ideals.” 

At this juncture, he then said in Parliament that the decision to sack Parti was not sudden. LML had in fact wanted to sack her way before the theft incident. 

But the reality is that he didn’t sack her. Yet, what is however sudden is when Parti was asked to pack immediately and thereafter sent home by flight. That suddenness is from the perspective of Parti, not so much LML’s. 

While I know it is important to present LML’s side, but in my view, it doesn’t change the suddenness of the decision to sack Parti from her side of things. Thus, what may not be sudden to LML doesn’t change what Parti had perceived to be sudden for her, especially when she was given so little time to pack. 

Shanmugam also talked about the threat to complain to MOM about the deployment to Karl’s house. But as it turned out, what Parti had at first wanted to complain to MOM was that she was given short notice to leave, not the deployment. 

Yet, again, the pertinent question is, “what would be in the mind of the LML and Karl at that time?” Even if Parti had told them she wanted to lodge a complaint about the short notice, it is not implausible for LML and Karl to consider the consequences arising from that complaint. And the consequence is that MOM will also find out about the deployment to Karl’s house, that breach of the rule. 

As such, it doesn’t discount what Justice Chan had said about them taking a preemptive step to sack her because she is a perceived liability, or loose canon to them. And what makes it even more intriguing is the recent charges against Karl of giving false information, which further stains his motive from the get-go.

So, let me end with this: while our law minister had addressed the soft corruption and influence peddling, what is more nuanced, but no less insidious, is the concealed working of implicit bias, and how the poor and less educated are constantly singled out and discriminated against, even sidelined and dismissed. 

That I believe is the frog-in-the-gradually-boiling-pot situation, and the consequences are like termites ingesting our foundation and our sense of fairness, equality and justice, the ideals we have built up and held dear.

 

The FIL to SIL - "you are too much".

“Everything seemed so perfect”.

That was what Shyller Tan, 46, with three children, 13, 11 & 9, said in today’s report about her father’s sentence of 8.5 years. It was reported by Cara Wong.

When I wrote about it a few weeks back, that is, the fatal stabbing of one’s son-in-law at a Telok Ayer Street coffee shop on 20 July 2017 at lunchtime, because he was “too much”, the comments for that post were quite overwhelmingly for the father-in-law, Tan Nam Seng, 72. 

Many felt that justice was done in a way that was less rule-based, and more emotion-based. Many wished Tan and his family well and hoped they would find closure. 

Well, with the sentence of 8.5 years, and with Tan having already served 3 years in remand, he will be released in about 2.5 years’ time.

Now, let’s return to what Shyller meant when she said “everything seemed so perfect”. Here’s the backdrop.

She said that she went “hysterical” when she received the call from her father, with this ominous message: “I can’t sleep at night. I have done it. I have killed him. Don’t cry. I am old already. I am not scared (of) going to jail.”

Shyller said she was screaming and crying, as she rushed to the scene where the stabbing took place. She was worried for her father, who was nearing 70, and was suffering from major depressive disorder at that time. The sentencing judge also noted that his health was “fast-deteriorating” in remand. 

But then, what was seemingly perfect? I believe she was referring to her marriage to Spencer Tuppani, 39. After all, they have three kids and he was running the family business. But all was just not what it seemed.

She said she soon discovered that he had several affairs and had also misused company funds for his lavish lifestyle. “She said she found out about his mistress in February 2017 through a friend of his. She confronted (him), who admitted that he and the woman had two children, conceived through in-vitro fertilisation.”

Not only that, Spencer also persuaded the Tans to sell their company to GKE Corporation and Tan and his daughter only received $450k each, “instead of the $1 million and GKE shares they had expected,” the defence lawyer said. 

On top of that, in 2017, Shyller found out that Spencer had purchased a property with company funds to house his second family, that is, his mistress and kids. 

Spencer also assured his father-in-law that he will not contest custody of his three grandkids, but later went back on that promise and fought for their custody. He also recorded the couple’s arguments to use it in his divorce against Shyller. 

Shyller said: “Betrayal is not an emotion that is easy to quell, and I too suffered many sleepless nights, but can only imagine it must have been a fraction of what my dad went through.”

To Tan, Spencer was simply “too much” and that led him to stab Spencer three times in the chest, saying to worried passers-by: “This is my son-in-law, don’t help him, let him die.”

Well, as a father myself with two young girls, I too desire more than anything for them to find love, true love that is prepared to go all the way for my daughter. Which father doesn’t want that for the apple of their eye right? 

But to have a son-in-law like Spencer is a very exhausting challenge to resist the temptation to not mentally snap in more ways than one. Yet, no doubt Spencer had crossed the line, Tan himself had also crossed the line in a strictly rule-based judicial system. 

Justice Dedar Singh Gill opined: “This was a vicious and brazen killing carried in broad daylight on an suspecting victim having a meal in a coffee shop in the Central Business District.”

The irony is that even in death, his mistress wouldn’t want him to rest in peace. It is reported that his “mistress has now filed a lawsuit against Mr Tuppani’s estate, to claw back over $3 million that she claimed was either borrowed from her by him or was from their joint bank account.”

Indeed, betrayal is an emotion that is not easy to quell, and Spencer had lived his life committing one betrayal after another. 

And the prosecutor Jian Yi (who had asked for 12 years) may have called the attack a case of “vigilante justice”, but I think it is more complicated than that. It was a crime no less, but one done from a heart that is more broken than angry, more torn than is driven by hate, and more pained than filled with revenge. 

In one of the comments I received in my last post, it was said that Spencer would have lived his life the way he had wanted, regardless of the people he had betrayed deeply. 

He would have destroyed a family who had brought him in, provided, cared and trusted him as their own. He would have betrayed someone who had loved him and would have stood by his side in good and bad times. And he would have taken everything from them, not just the company, but even the children his wife and father-in-law loved so dearly. 

Alas, for all that, justice and karma would have sat side by side each other, with arms folded, both riding on a sigh and a wistful prayer that Spencer would one day come to his senses. Will he? 

Now, I am not at all encouraging people to take the law in their own hands, but I am lamenting about people who take other people, especially loved ones, for granted, and betraying them for sheer self-gains. And while some people may suffer from sleepless nights because their conscience torments them, I believe people like Spencer sleep quite soundly at night on a soft pillow with his conscience snoring along. 

Let me end with this observation. 

“Yesterday, about 20 people including Tan’s daughter and grandchildren turned up in court for the sentencing. Among them were several of his friends, who waved at him and gave him a thumbs-up as a sign of support.”

Usually in a case of murder (or manslaughter), the accused is demonised or given the thumbs-down, to put it mildly. But I guess in this case, the justice that is in the minds of many had quietly allowed an unlikely hero to be taken into custody to serve his time.

 

Parti Liyani Saga Part IX.

Well, Sylvia Lim’s motion on Parti Liyani’s case will not be discussed in Parliament next week. She “lost” fair and square by way of ballot. “When more than one MP have submitted an adjournment motion, the MP who gets to speak at a sitting is decided by ballot.” (Lim Min Zhang, ST). 

Between Louis Ng (whose topic for discussion is about second-hand cigarette smoking during covid) and Sylvia’s inequality issue, Ng won the ballot. 

But, not to worry, the PAP MPs will be taking on that issue. It seems like Murali Pillai (Bukit Batok), Vikram Nair (Sembawang GRC) and Tan Wu Meng (Jurong GRC) will be tabling it for discussion, with our Law Minister helming it in a ministerial statement on Monday. 

Somehow, this reminded me of the time when PM Lee wrote a memo to all his ministers, calling it the “Rules of Prudence” just after the PAP won a resounding mandate in the 2015 election. 

He called upon the ministers to be “servants of the people, not masters." He cautioned that MPs should not "mistake the strong mandate election result to mean that our efforts have succeeded, and that we can afford to slacken."

Further, PM Lee also expected them to attend all Parliament sittings unless they have have a valid reason. He said, "Overtime, the public will see that PAP backbenchers are as effective as opposition MPs, if not better, at holding ministers to account, getting issues fully debated, and influencing policies for the better."

Well, that seems like a good rule of prudence - tempering electoral victory in 2015 with a precautionary note to remember one’s civic duty and responsibility. 

But the inequality issue that many people has to confront everyday, which has come to glaring-light in the Parti vs Liew Mun Leong’s case, is, I believe, something that goes beyond just a week of intense discussion in Parliament. 

We all know that. That is the reality of things. And the enduring issue is this - “How far do we want to go down that rabbit hole to address the root cause of an unequal society, with gap widening even more with the new constricted world that is emerging in the shadow of the covid-19 pandemic?”

Where does this rabbit hole then lead us? 

Mm...in my view, the first motion about addressing inequality ought to be about the disproportionate growth of privileges of the status quo. Underscore “disproportionate”. 

In any event, this is best explained with a scripture. In Matthew, Jesus says: “To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich: from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” 

I know there’s a context behind that scripture, but whether prophetic or not, the Matthew effect has become an economic law with pervasive social consequences upon which the poor often has to bear the brunt of it.

And when you throw in our technocratically fashioned, Singapore-styled meritocracy into the Matthew Effect mix, you get a disconcerting cocktail of good parliamentary intentions and well-intended incremental measures to address inequality that risks lagging (or always lagging) behind the widening rich/poor gap. 

Author Malcolm Gladwell makes this incisive observation: “To the degree that Matthew effects amplify prior advantages and disadvantages, both the fortunes of the fortunate and the misfortunes of the unfortunate are unearned and undeserved”. I guess that is why Goh Keng Swee once told banker Wee Cho Yaw that he prefers to be born lucky than rich. 

But, unearned or undeserved, nothing is stopping the rich from getting richer, with the poor getting poorer, almost by some social law of default, thanks to the ever-widening gap of inequality. 

And this brings me to the point of my post: At a time like this, when everyone below a certain economic livelihood threshold is struggling, what signal are we sending to them when the people we have voted in are enjoying such huge salaries to the extent that they are able to pile it all up for themselves and their future generation?

I know this is a touchy subject, and I am not against reasonable pay. Yet, I believe that it has to be pegged more to the conscience of society, and less to the impulse of the market. Finding the right adaptive balance is the darnest task I know. 

And I am also not blind to the different standards of living of different people. I recently read about an employee in the airline business who had suffered a 20% cut of his more than $20k monthly salary. That, to him, was quite disruptive as he has to sell his properties, dine out less, and go for some personal belt tightening measures. 

But we must never forget that, for a cleaner, who has to pay for her children’s education and living expenses, that same 20% cut can turn her world upside down. 

So, going back to the question, and when it comes to inequality, it is seriously not so much about whether we pay our ministers enough. I always believe that talent comes with a price. A fair society therefore requires that one’s pay justifies one’s talent or contribution. 

But, tbh, when a minister’s sacrifices do not differ that much from the sacrifices of a social worker, a nurse or even a cleaner, I would no doubt still expect the former (minister) to be paid more than the latter because of their coveted talent. 

Yet, at some point, especially during a crisis, where the majority is struggling to make ends meet, the “servants of the people, not masters” that PM Lee is talking about has to be such that one starts to review the justification of one’s pay that is pegged to the market, instead of pegging it to the heart/conscience of public service right? 

The more philosophical question to this is, when is enough enough? And mind you, this applies not just to prosperity gospel preacher, but to politicians as well. 

Let me end with a famous speech by LKY in Parliament in 1996, when he said that he felt very guilty of robbing his friend, Eddie Barker of $30 million had he stayed in Lee and Lee. ”Had he gone into business with my brother, he would have had easily $60 million”.

But, what is surprising is that Barker himself was bewildered by the high salary of ministers at $60k monthly, which was more than double the current salary at that time. 

And at a social gathering at his home, with a group of Oxbridge graduates, Barker shared that “he did not understand the need for huge salaries.” He even told his good friend, Subhas Anandan, that as long as he got his “cigarettes and beer”, he would be fine (page 207, “EW Barker - The People’s Minister”). 

I guess when you peg your worth to the market, and as you pile up your net worth with ever-higher standards of living, enough is seldom enough. But when you peg it to society’s conscience and to the heart of public service, you will experience what Barker had experienced in his decades of giving selflessly to the people wherever he is placed. And you will then be able to be inspired and contented with these words by the same man. 

“Life is what you make of it. There are some who inherit wealth only to squander it away, while others make their fortune on their own efforts by dint of hard work, determination and perseverance.”

“But happiness is not necessarily associated with wealth. The important thing is to have a purpose in life, a goal to achieve and the satisfaction of achieving it.”

That about sums up a life worth living for. A life defined by purpose, perseverance and contentment.

 

Parti Liyani Saga Part VIII.

The case of the Maid vs the Chairman is again being talked about today. This time, a senior lawyer, Harpreet Singh Nehal, is taking up the justice’s baton to highlight some areas that are of particular concern to him.

Harpreet has written a blow-by-blow account of what went wrong in the much-ventilated case. He said: “Errors appear to have occurred at every level of the system, from the initial police investigation to the prosecutors’ decision to charge Ms Parti, an Indonesian domestic worker accused of stealing from her employer, prominent business chief Liew Mum Leong; to the handling of the case at trial and the lower court’s finding of guilt.”

I know this has been said and written about before, at the risk of flogging a dead horse, but for the sake of public perception, especially in a highly unequal society, the high horse on the issue of elitism and class prejudice is still very much alive and kicking. At times, the floggings are seen as no more as a slap on the behind rather than one calling for the top to give a proper and thorough account. 

Harpreet raised some good, credible points. He did a brief CSI and traced the steps of errors taken (and at times, allowed to be indulged) by the whole machination of the justice system. It is a long, detailed article, but let me do a quick rundown. 

If the main issue with this case is that of the broken chain of evidence collecting, then this trail has a genesis all the way up to the AGC.

First, it took 1.5 years to take the about 150 allegedly stolen items into police custody. We all know that. It is very much a public fact. And why the police took so long to do what I believe their protocol would have mandated them to do to the contrary is a mystery at this present moment. 

Well, they did record the items, but that took time too, a few weeks. In the meantime, the Liew household were allowed to use the items as and when they wanted it. And this part here is rather curious: Was it because Parti has left the country? As such, there’s no rush? 

Or, the more disconcerting part is, did the unconscious influence of the Liews have a part to play? 

Mind you, such bias is not wholly intentional, but essentially underlying, by reason that we often place those high up on the pedestal of trust, faith and hope. It is the same way we are less suspicious of religious leaders, and would never think that they would commit sexual and/or financial abuses. 

If that is the case, and if we really address it wholeheartedly, then, I suspect the issue is more systemic than just one-off. There is thus more than meets the eye about our unequal society, causing a wedge between the have and have-not, both economically and socially. 

Then, there is the question of Parti’s statements to the police. She said it was not properly interpreted to her, in a mix of English and Malay. She could not follow fully. 

Well, I believe that happens, at times. But following the trail to the next level, shouldn’t the prosecutor have caught up with it? That is, the possible contamination of the evidential chain and the lack of proper interpretation? Were the police investigators questioned about it? Did the seniors at AGC have a shot at it, and offer their unbiased, honest view? 

Now, let’s be fair. Human errors abound. We all make mistakes. It is expected, even to the best of us. This case may be one of inadvertent oversight, and I can understand that. It may even be occasional incompetence. I can sympathise.

But, to carry things this far, even up to the appeal stage, with such insistence of guilt, unfortunately gives the public impression that the prosecutors’ job is to convict, period; instead of pursuing justice even to places where one may not want to confront or admit. 

Alas, this is no doubt a chain of assumption on my part from this case, but what kept this chain taut to some certain is the DVD issue. It is what the Justice Chan had described as a “sleight-of-hand” by the prosecutor to only present evidence in a light that supports their conviction (pun unintended) rather than to submit to the objective hand of justice. 

As for the lower court judge, this is what Harpreet has to say: -

“...the burden of proof was in one instance, reversed and wrongly placed on the defence instead of the prosecution, expert evidence by the defence was ignored, and the defence was unfavourably commented on for conduct that was allowed for the prosecution. These errors were corrected on appeal.”

Like it or not, this is how things are perceived by the public. The evidential trail went from the police to the prosecutors, and then to the judge at the lower court. 

According to Harpreet, the district judge has left the courts to “assume her appointment as Deputy Senior State Counsel at the AGC’s civil division.” This was done even before the parliamentary session and the review that our Law Minister has called for. 

Lesson? Only one, and this is the real intent behind this post this morning. It is the protection of our social conscience. 

This case of the maid fighting for her freedom (for four long years) could have just been swept under the rug. But it didn’t. Thankfully, there were and are fighters of enduring justice like HOME, Anil and many more who confronted the system with moral courage, and asked deep, searching questions. 

Let me end by saying that our system is not broken - not in the way that many authoritarian and populist countries are experiencing now. It is not broken beyond redemption because, in a way, it took one justice to smoke out another in the appeal, and set things right. 

As for our government, there is the assurance of a review at the highest level by our law minister. That should be comforting. So let’s hope it is a review to clear the air for all, especially Parti, in this most unfortunate case of the misdirection of justice.