Gopalan Nair's Disbarment in Singapore. A badge of honor

Gopalan Nair's Disbarment in Singapore. A badge of honor: Ladies and Gentlemen,

For a lawyer with a Singapore license, being disbarred can turn out to be something to be indeed proud about in the one party totalitarian police state.

I used to have a Singapore lawyer license since the time I used to be a lawyer there, although I had since moved to California.

For writing a blog post critical of a thoroughly corrupt Singapore judge, Belinda Ang Saw Ean, who was prostituting her judgeship for Lee Kuan Yew to destroy his political opponents, in this case Dr. Chee Soon Juan, through stage managed court cases, I was sent to jail for 3 months and subsequently disbarred in Singapore.

There simply was no basis under law to have me disbarred in Singapore which is another shameful example of the law being misused for their political ends. Needless to say neither the State Bar of California where I now practice nor the English and Welsh Bars where I have membership have bothered even to look into it.

In a pleasant surprise, through this disbarment in Singapore, I find myself now in illustrious company. JB Jeyaretnam, Singapore’s great lawyer and political opponent of Lee Kuan Yew was also disbarred for his trouble in fighting for freedom in the island. Tang Liang Hong who rightly pointed out that Lee Kuan Yew is corrupt during the 2006 Singapore general elections was sued and bankrupted, and presumably disbarred as well. Chee Soon Juan presently Secretary General of the Singapore Democratic Party, another staunch critic of Lee was sued for defamation numerous times bankrupted and jailed. He is not a lawyer but had he been one, I am sure he would have been disbarred as well.

These are upright men, men of courage and conviction, admirable specimens of the human race who were punished by Lee Kuan Yew for doing what was right. Today, I Gopalan Nair, also have the honor of walking among them, because I too was disbarred because I had the courage to call Singapore Judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean a disgraceful corrupt woman who saw fit to prostitute her judgeship to please her master for personal gain. Tell me please, what greater joy than this can there be for a man.

In fact if any lawyer is disbarred in Singapore for criticizing the Lee Kuan Yew government, instead of that being a source of shame as it usually is in any other country, in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore it is a badge of honor. Now I can proudly claim that I was disbarred from practicing law in Singapore because I had the courage to stand up to a dictator and point out that his judges are nothing but disgraceful people who abuse their position to please Lee Kuan Yew so as to enrich themselves.

And I would proudly proclaim to the world with pride the fact that I had the opportunity of being disbarred in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore.

Lee Kuan Yew hates people such as me. The only way he can rule, as he has himself admitted is when people are afraid of him and obey him. The moment you have the audacity to call his bluff publicly, he simply cannot tolerate it. No one in Singapore today is able to write something like this and put his name to it, because he would be sued or arrested, one or the other. This leaves Singaporeans only two choices, if in Singapore do not criticize, if you wish to do so anyway, and then leave the island for settlement abroad.

This is why Lee Kuan Yew is suffering from an intolerable brain drain from the island. And there are people such as myself who live abroad who continue to be a thorn on the side of Lee Kuan Yew pointing out to the world that he is nothing but a bully, his entire government. As for him, he has for the first time has run out of ideas on how to silence his critics from abroad.

The worst thing of all for Lee Kuan Yew would be to disbar a lawyer in his island, only for his intended victim to continue publicly flaunting the disbarment as if it was an Olympic Gold Medal.

Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
A Singaporean in Exile
Fremont California USA
Tel: 510 491 4375