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BEYOND SUSPICION? The Singapore Judiciary. By Francis T. Seow, with a foreword by Gary Woodard. New Haven (CT): Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 2006. xxii, 405 pp. (Tables.) US$26.00, paper. ISBN 0-938692-87-9.
Francis Seow's third book is a savage and unmerciful critique of Singapore's judicial system. He provides convincing evidence that the Singapore court system is basically the play-thing of former prime minister (currently minister mentor) Lee Kuan Yew, through which he toys with and destroys his enemies at his leisure, corrupting the Bench, the legal profession, the police and the profession of journalism on the way through. The case presented by Seow-overwhelmingly drawn from the intimate details of a single legal battle-demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that Singapore is at heart a corrupt dictatorship separated from Third World dictatorships primarily by its national income and the cleverness of the techniques by which it manipulates institutional power.
It is a damning indictment that could have been much more powerful if Seow had resisted the temptation to indulge in childish name calling and heavy-handed didacticism. These acts of self-indulgence dominate the first part of the book and are never far away in the rest. Their main impact,...