Death Penalty

It is dejecting when you realise that something as egregarious as the death penalty is still sanctioned in a good number of States. I once thought, rather puerily, that every crimes begets a punishment of some sort, and there are those which almost definitely deserve the death penalty. Its was not until when I reached 15, then I started to question the value in killing as a "solution" to a crime (particularly when killing is the crimes itself), and when I started to learn the virtue of compassionate altruism.

Sometimes the idea of revenge fritters away when the very subject of vindictive hatred gets indicted and incapacitated by the law. Consider a close relative of a murder victim. At the heat of the moment, he/she might be predisposed to emotively violent notions of revenge, and might even wish that he/she might be able to dispose of the killer himself. But what purpose does the killing serve after the victim is already dead, and the killer, already imprisoned? George Orwell,in his essay "Revenge is Sour", remarked rather cryptically and facetiously at the same time, that the condition for a victim to exert revenge on Mussolini,the heinous Italian Facist leader, is that he must be dead. So going along with his argument, what purpose does revenge serve after all when the target of it has already been incapacitated?

Sometimes the notion of revenge is abstract. As time withers off, so does the raging impulse to avenge, and the angst, the pulsating desire to effect vengeance on a particular target slowly subsides and then disintegrates. I am not proscribing punishment altogether; I am merely questioning the need to effect punishment in such a way that it takes someone esle's life away (as if lives lost due to the crime itself is not enough). The erudite Mahatma Ghandi remarked that "an eye for an eye makes the world go blind" and if the death penalty were to be dispensed with disregard to human conditions such as compassion and mercy, then the World we live in is a very unstable one indeed. As many opponents have mentioned (and i emphasize), taking away someone esle's life does not offer restituition or an absolute bouleversement of the criminal event itself. As in the case of murder, the only satisfaction comes in the form of superficial, very cursory comfort that the killer has been hanged for his crimse, but in real terms, there has not been redemption of any sort. Redemption and restituition occurs when one makes up for his crime by offering various means of compensation, in other words, doing good to make up for one's bad. This I believe is much more sensible and productive than the death penalty, because in the end it is a zero sum conclusion. What can either party gain from the death penalty itself?

Singapore's unflinching attitude in the wake of greater anti death penalty sentiments is embarrassing, and disturbing too. It reminds me of those time when witches were burnt, adulterors were stoned and even at present, of the Middle East where thieves have their limbs severed and women have their faces disfigured for contravening the extremely dysfunctional Islamic laws, which would seem absurd by any standards in the Modern World. And precisely when we judge the penalty through the same vein ,we realise that Singapore is just as regressive and archaic (in its implementation of the death penalty) as the aforesaid nations. A rather enlightening aphrodism I read somewhere, stated that things that would seem most absurd by today's standard, would be completely quotidian and ordinary during the time in which they were being practised. Public flogging, and even buring people at the stakes, seemed too gruesome for us to stomach, yet during those times, these were totally mundane routine punishments, and the people at those times were unlikely to bat their eyelids or give 2 hoots about these sort of punishment.

Yet the World presently has evolved significantly. The reason is too complicated and tenuous for me to properly explain within the constraints of this post itself, but in essence, Mankind has evolved to such an extent that the standards with which we judge certain actions have changed in tandem with the World. We recognise that stoning and public flogging are barbaric, uncivil actions and it is quite unthinkable to actually prescribe punitives that carries a tone of sexual discrimination, as in the Middle East laws whereby men are more likely to get away with sexual crimes than women.

I am not here to be didactic and I am perhaps not qualified to decide whether this changing standards is a progression or a regression, although I am confident that many of us would like to think so. And Singapore, for all her state of art technology and flourishing economy, should know better than most of them that backsliding into archaic territories is not the path we ought to take. We all know how insignificantly small Singapore is and how powerless it is against the overwhelming tides of changes, and when the tide dictates that death penalty is no longer relevant in today's context (and for very good reasons as well), it is time we bite the bullet and concede. This is not about being sycophantically and fawningly obsequetious to the World itself. It is about being able to acknowledge that this piece of our law is indeed a pastiche, an incongruity with our image as a modern nation, an archaic form of punishment that can no longer be justified by today's standards, and no matter how much we try to fight the tides, this fight is ultimately self defeating.

I find it incredibly hypocritical when Singapore argues that each and every country should be left to their own when it comes to enacting the laws that governs them. When Singapore requires trade, foreign talent to bolster its economy, the clarion call for greater foreign trade, investment and even immigration is sounded. Yet when it comes to international consensus and arbitration on issues like this, Singapore remains obstinately enclosed in its own World and defiantly unheeded to international pressure. Singapore is a myrmidon of the World, because her circumstances need her to be so. Is being so resistant to the change damaging to our reputation and our economy? Yes, and I believe the damage is far reaching and manifold.

The death penalty, as argued previously, is an anachronistic piece of legislation that is no longer convincing in Today's world. Singapore leader ought to have been more judicious when reviewing this issue. Right now the damage has already been done. For how long more can we shoulder the effects of the damage before we finally realize the inexorable hurt it has done to our country?