WTC Wrap: 10 January 2026

Happy New Year! Did you have a good break over Christmas and the New Year?

Apart from having what was hands down the worst Christmas I've ever had and more or less working to the New Year (although not right up to midnight, thank god), I feel into a Heated Rivalry rabbit hole (I'd recommend it, but be warned that it's a NSFW gay hockey romance, just in case you were thinking of watching it with your parents or something) and buried myself in fanfiction.

Executions

What a way to start the new year. Yesterday morning, Singapore executed two Singaporeans: Ramdhan bin Lajis and his co-accused (I'm not in contact with his family, so couldn't find out what his wishes were or if there's consent to publish his name).

Last year, we hanged 17 people—15 for drugs, 2 for murder—making it the deadliest year since 2003. We're not off to a good start in 2026.

(1)

As I wrote last year, we lost M Ravi, a human rights lawyer and anti-death penalty activist, on Christmas Eve. The news came as a total shock to family and friends. It didn't help to have found out about it in a truly awful way: with reporters calling around saying that they'd heard from "sources" that Ravi had died and were looking for people who could verify the news so they could run a story. The media had learnt about his death so early—even before some of Ravi's family members—that I'm still wondering about the timeline and how that could have happened.

Then it got worse: news articles saying—according to the police, who got it from the friend who'd called for help—that Ravi had consumed drugs before his death, not stating but heavily implying that he'd died of an overdose. This friend, Shawn Loo, has since been charged with one count of arranging a gathering knowing that drugs would be consumed and one count of taking meth.

Even while Ravi was still lying in his casket of green and gold, even before he'd been taken to Mandai Crematorium, comments were emerging online mocking him. People made snide remarks about his lifelong devotion to death penalty abolition and fighting for people on death row. "See lah see lah, fight so hard to defend drug traffickers, then die because of drugs himself!" some snarked.

I wasn't surprised by these comments—I'd been expecting them the moment the drug connection was made. Such sentiment is unsurprising in a country that has been steeped in a 'war on drugs' logic for a long time. There are just some points I'd like to make:

• Investigations have not concluded. The articles that said Ravi had consumed drugs were based not on official drug reports, but the account of his friend who had called SCDF. It might be some time before investigations are fully concluded, and a report submitted to the state coroner to decide whether a coroner's inquiry is needed. There's been plenty of speculation, and many people have already jumped to conclusions, but there are still many questions that haven't actually been answered about the circumstances and manner of his death.
• Also, Singapore's war on drugs regime is still in force. It's been in force this whole time. We executed more people than we had in a long time last year. We've been trying to clamp down hard on the drug trade, and on drug users themselves, for decades. We even expanded this to vapes in a big way last year. There is no mercy. Yet, if Ravi's death was drug-related, none of this kept him safe. It's horrifying to think about, but it might have even harmed him: if drug use wasn't so heavily criminalised, with such harsh, devastating consequences, might his friend have called for help even sooner? Would that have made a difference? If there'd been harm reduction instead of prohibition and punishment driving drug supply and consumption into underground, unregulated spaces, would things have been safer, would Ravi still be with us today?

I'll be thinking about them for a long time, but I don't have answers to these questions and probably never will. I'm also still waiting for the final report and coroner's inquiry.

For now, all I can hold on to is the fact that we sent Ravi off on Boxing Day with so much love and light, more flowers than I've ever seen in one place, and a Singapore flag draped over the hearse that brought him on his final journey. For all the criticism and mockery that people directed at him throughout his life—and even in death—Ravi saw himself as a proud son of Singapore and was determined to make this country a better place. That's something no one can take away from him.

(2)

The Nominated Member of Parliament scheme taken a beating recently. First, we had two NMPs resign and join the PAP before the general election last year. Now we have an incoming NMP discovered to have previously been a member of the PAP. Haresh Singaraju, a doctor (who can "drop bars and save lives"), said the photo of him in a PAP T-shirt had been taken in 2023, and stated in a social media post that "I'm now not a member of any party."

My immediate question: how now is "now"? When did he leave the PAP? How much time had elapsed before he put his name in the hat for an NMP seat? The Straits Times put this question to him—and also asked if he'd had any grassroots leadership positions—but received no response.

The NMP scheme was introduced in 1990, ostensibly to allow more independent voices, not beholden to electoral or party politics, to be heard in Parliament. Although there's no hard rule against being in political parties before or after one's term as an NMP, the role is supposed to be non-partisan—and needs to be perceived to be such for it to have legitimacy. These incidents have now cast that independence and non-partisanship into question, feeding into impressions that this has become yet another way for the ruling party to stack the deck.

And in other parliamentary news... Indranee Rajah, the Leader of the House, has filed a motion asking Parliament to consider whether Pritam Singh is fit to continue as Leader of the Opposition. This official LO role—which comes with extra remuneration, resources, access, and duties—is a relatively new thing for Singapore, established only in 2020 after the election that year. Singh is the first, and so far only, LO that we've had. Since Singh lost his appeal against his conviction for lying to Parliament, Indranee says that Parliament needs to figure out an "appropriate response".

(3)

Last year, ministers K Shanmugam and Tan See Leng filed defamation suits against Bloomberg and its reporter (among others). They were unhappy about an article, written by Low De Wei, about Good Class Bungalow transactions in Singapore and how it had referenced their GCB transactions (one selling, one buying). Bloomberg is standing by their journalist and sticking to their guns (as they should!) and fighting the case: the trial has been set for eight days between 7–16 April. I'm assuming this will be in open court, if anyone would like to kaypoh and attend.

A similar defamation suit had been filed against The Online Citizen's chief editor Terry Xu, who runs the site from Taiwan. In December 2024, Xu rejected the letters of demand that had been sent to him. Because he did not file a defence, Singapore's court granted default judgments in the ministers' favour.

Got some more...

🇺🇸🇻🇪 The Trump administration kicked off 2026 in fine form by bombing Venezuela and nabbing President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, dragging them to the US to face drug and weapons charges. (Does anyone believe this is about drugs? If it were, then why did Trump pardon the former president of Honduras, who'd been convicted and sentenced to 45 years' imprisonment for his role in drug trafficking?)

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has released a statement saying that Singapore is "gravely concerned by the US intervention on 3 January 2026 in Venezuela" and that we've "consistently opposed actions contrary to international law by any parties, including foreign military intervention in any country".

Speaking at a forum on Thursday, Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong pointed out that, if this sort of unilateral military intervention is how the world works from now on, then "we have a problem" as a small country.

🤑 If Singapore wants to be a wealth hub—our favourite sort of hub to be!—then we've got to be prepared that there might sometimes be crooks in our midst. Chee Hong Tat, the national development minister and deputy chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, said that while Singapore has to work hard to make sure we're still a trusted place for money matters, we can't be so careful that we stifle innovation.

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