Red Dot United

"Three things cannot be long hidden, the sun, the moon, and the truth."

There is something reassuring about this ancient saying. We may live in an age of confusion, distraction, and uncertainty, but some things remain remarkably stubborn.

The sun continues to shine. The moon continues to glow. And truth continues to find its way into the light.

We wish all who celebrate a peaceful and meaningful Vesak Day. 🙏🏻☸️

Ravi Philemon says, "Courts don’t deal in some magical thing called “truth” — they deal in whatever version of the truth you can actually afford to bring in. If you’ve got money, you can pay for lawyers, experts, long fights and clean narratives. If you don’t, you’re stuck with scraps, burnout and a hard stop when the bills hit. That’s what “truth decay” really looks like long before anyone posts a single thing on social media."

𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐞𝐟 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐌𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐧 𝐈𝐬 𝐑𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐲 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐈𝐭 𝐁𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐑𝐨𝐨𝐦 𝐨𝐟 𝐋𝐚𝐰, 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞

Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said recently that "anyone now has access to mass media and mass reach, and it gives you the opportunity and the platform to pontificate on what you want to pontificate on, to propose the viewpoint that you think is true." He said this is a "huge challenge" for the courts, because they are fundamentally truth-seeking institutions focused on discerning truth and making verdicts based strictly on the evidence before them.

Justice Menon is right, and his warning about "truth decay" is timely. But social media — the reason he points to — is at most a partial cause. The more important piece of the puzzle is access to justice.

The first Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, C. N. Annadurai, said it long before social media existed: "The law is a dark room, where the lawyer's argument is a lamp. But it is a lamp that is inaccessible to the poor."

The dark room has not changed. The lamp is still out of reach for most people. And a verdict rendered in the dark — on incomplete, resource-filtered evidence — may be procedurally fair, but it is not the whole truth.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡

The fact is truth is expensive. And very often it is hidden in the vault of the rich and powerful. Truth in court is procedural — it emerges from what evidence is marshalled, tested, and admitted. And the capacity to marshal evidence is not equal. Access to investigators, expert witnesses, and research teams is a luxury most people cannot afford. But it is not merely a luxury — it is the mechanism by which facts become legally cognizable truth.

But this is not just about scarcity. The rich and powerful also shape which parts of the truth are brought into the open. They have the money to pursue or defend claims for years, to commission private investigations and expert reports when it suits them, and to challenge or outspend those who cannot keep up. They can ration which facts are tested in court and which are buried in paperwork or private settlements, while everyone else is left to live with whatever version survives. That is the rot at the core, and it is the part the system still does not fix.

The World Justice Project puts it starkly: people living in poverty are not just less likely to win legal disputes. They are more likely to face legal problems in the first place, more likely to hit barriers when trying to resolve them, and they bear the greater hardship as a result. The gap between what happened and what can be proved is, in large part, a function of resources.

This is what criminogenic asymmetry looks like — where the justice system structurally advantages those with social and economic power, not by being corrupt, but by operating exactly as designed. A verdict rendered fairly on the presented evidence can still be a verdict rendered on an incomplete, resource-filtered version of reality. Facts are not truth. They are what truth looks like after it has been filtered through power.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐓𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡

Consider what happened to General Nguyen Ngoc Loan.

In 1968, AP photographer Eddie Adams captured the moment a South Vietnamese police chief raised a pistol to the head of a Viet Cong captive and pulled the trigger. The photograph won a Pulitzer Prize. It became one of the most recognised images of the Vietnam War. And it destroyed a man.

Every fact in that photograph was real. A uniformed officer. A handcuffed prisoner. A public ex*****on. The facts were not manipulated. They were not fabricated. They were simply — incomplete.

What the photograph did not show was what happened moments before. The captive, Nguyen Van Lem, had just led a Viet Cong death squad that murdered a South Vietnamese army lieutenant, his wife, and their six children — their throats cut. General Loan arrived at that scene. He knew the family. He was fighting a war where the line between civilian and combatant had completely dissolved.

Eddie Adams spent the rest of his life haunted by what he had done. He wrote: "The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths."

General Loan was vilified across the world. He was refused medical treatment in Australia. He spent his remaining years running a pizza parlour in Virginia, hounded by the fact of a photograph that told everything that happened and nothing of what it meant.

No court convicted him. The facts did.

Facts are isolated data points — rigid, measurable, verifiable. Truth is the ecosystem those facts live in. A fact tells you what happened. Truth tells you what it meant.

And now we have more than the camera.

𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐈𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐒𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐈𝐬 𝐎𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐎𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐚𝐭

This is the world Chief Justice Menon is warning us about. Social media has given everyone the power to strip context, flatten truth into a single frame, and broadcast it to millions before anyone can say otherwise. In that sense, he is right — it is a huge challenge for the courts.

But here is the harder question he leaves unanswered: if the courts are truth-seeking institutions, and truth itself is already inaccessible to those without power and resources — what exactly are the courts seeking? And for whom?

The decay of truth did not begin with social media. It began the moment we accepted that justice and truth were available on a sliding scale — that what you could prove depended on what you could afford, and that the verdict of the powerful has historically carried more weight than the testimony of the poor.

Social media has made it worse. But it did not make it so. In most real battles for truth, social media plays almost no role, except perhaps as a place to pass the hat for legal fees.

The real fight is quieter. Think of an ordinary person who believes a powerful institution has wronged them — a university, a hospital, a large employer. They start with an internal complaint. Doors close. So they turn to the courts.

The institution comes with in‑house counsel, external law firms, and a budget line for litigation. The individual comes with their savings and maybe a crowdfunding page. Over the years, they exhaust their money, their mental health, and their time, while the institution keeps filing affidavits and appeals as a matter of routine.

In the end, the individual may lose not only the case but also face crushing cost orders, statutory demands, and even the risk of bankruptcy. The institution moves on. The individual is left carrying the full weight of “access to justice.”

𝐋𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐋𝐚𝐦𝐩 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐑𝐨𝐨𝐦

There are practical ways to dull this asymmetry. Raise legal aid thresholds so more people in that position actually qualify. Put real caps on the legal costs an ordinary person can be made to pay when they take on a large institution. Allow structured “no win, no fee”‑type arrangements in at least some civil cases, so serious claims are not strangled at birth by lack of funds. Fund independent legal clinics that stay with people beyond one quick advice session.

These are not utopian ideas. The United Nations’ Principles and Guidelines on Access to Legal Aid, the OECD’s work on people‑centred justice, and reports by the World Justice Project and Open Society Justice Initiative all point in this same direction: without affordable lawyers, cost protection, and early legal help, “access to justice” exists only on paper.

The dark room will not light itself. Chief Justice Menon has named the danger of “truth decay”; lighting even a small lamp now means widening access, lowering the cost of reaching the truth, and bringing those with less access closer to the light of justice.

We wish all Muslims Selamat Hari Raya Haji.

RDU West team leader speaks about why the recent LRT death could have been an avoidable one.

𝗪𝗲 𝗠𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗟𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗮 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝘂𝗸𝗶𝘁 𝗣𝗮𝗻𝗷𝗮𝗻𝗴 𝗟𝗥𝗧 𝗶𝗳 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗛𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗻 𝗣𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗘𝗱𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗮 𝗛𝗮𝗱 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗛𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀

My RDU West team and I visited the Segar LRT Station where Mr Loh Hee Chen died a day ago. What went wrong? We needed to find out. We also paid our respects to his family at the wake the day after. But after doing all that I was at a loss as to how to talk about this incident properly. I was upset. I was angry. Because this was a totally avoidable tragedy. It was a tragedy in the making for more than 15 years. The signs were all there.

From 2010 onwards, LTA’s own figures show an average of about three LRT track intrusions every year – roughly 50 in total – even after barriers and other “safeguards” were put in. In 2015, the decision was made to roll out glass and steel barriers at all LRT stations but to leave actual platform doors out, so the gaps to the tracks remained. Later, they said AI‑powered video analytics would be deployed to “capture events” and prevent accidents. Let me say that again: AI to prevent accidents.

The public were surprised. Many were shocked. Some wrote in to the press to say that AI cannot stop someone from falling onto the tracks. One even predicted – three years ago – that someone might become unconscious and fall onto the tracks and AI would do nothing, absolutely nothing, to prevent it.

People also questioned LTA’s line that there is “insufficient space” on LRT platforms for screen doors and that signal controls, cables and power needs make doors too cumbersome. They pointed to existing technology in Japan, even at platform areas with severe space constraints, where walls and columns are as little as 1.5m from the train doors and yet platform screen doors are still installed.

All these pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears. And I cannot shake-off the suspicion that the unspoken reason, the real reason no one wants to say out loud, is cost. LRTs were sold from day one as a “cost‑effective” transport solution. Maybe proper platform doors were simply deemed too expensive. If so, what is the price tag that has been put on a human life?

Any system that consistently puts dollars and cents above the lives of human beings is an evil power.

Then I chanced upon Edward Chia Bing Hui 谢秉辉’s post about the incident, and I got even more frustrated. Why? Because it reads like performance.

In all the years he has been MP for Holland‑Bukit Timah GRC, how often has he spoken up about LRT safety? I checked. Once. And even then, he asked the Transport Minister about the “learning points” from a malfunctioning network switch – after the incident had already happened. “Learning points”, after the fact.

Today he says he is arranging emergency funds for the family. That is good. I have spoken to them. They have lost their main breadwinner. They are distraught. Some funds to tide over will help.

But what they really want are answers. They know the power asymmetry between themselves, SMRT, LTA and those in government. They know their voice is smaller. They wonder if justice will ever be done. Will it?

Will an MP who has never seriously fought for safety on the LRT – the main public transport lifeline for residents in the area – now suddenly follow up diligently with the authorities so that the family gets justice? Will he fight for his residents and insist on that blasted barrier, on real doors and real protection, instead of another round of polite “learning points”?

I hope he does. If he truly fights for them, I will eat my words about his response being performative.

In the meantime, I have written to the Acting Transport Minister Jeffrey Siow （萧振祥） for answers, and copied LTA and SMRT. My team and I will stand with Mr Loh’s family. We will push for answers. We will do what we can to get those platform doors up, and to change the conditions that made this tragedy possible.

Because a force for good will never treat human beings as collateral in a cost‑saving exercise. And for me, I want to make sure no one else has to die this way.

The RDU West team has been looking into the tragic incident in which Mr Loh Hee Chen, a Holland-Bukit Timah GRC resident, fell onto the tracks at Segar LRT station and is believed to have been run over by an oncoming train.

Yesterday, the team visited the wake of Mr Loh to express condolences to his family and loved ones.

We will be writing to the authorities with recommendations to improve commuter safety, especially for seniors, PMA users and families who rely on the LRT system daily.

We are rising. Join the movement.

Those of us who've played older video games know what God mode really means.

It's the cheat code that makes you invincible. No damage. Infinite resources. Unstoppable. You walk through enemies like they're not even there—because in God mode, they aren't. They're NPCs: non-player characters following a script, incapable of changing the outcome. The game isn't a challenge anymore. It's a formality.

That's the People's Action Party in Singapore. God mode enabled for 60 years. And the rest of us? We're cast as the NPCs.

Look at what one side controls. The narrative. The laws. The economy. The bureaucracy. The media. Electoral rules. Public fear. Access to opportunity. Even what counts as "realistic."

They decide when elections happen. They redraw boundaries to erase threats. Competition isn't a fight—it's a formality they permit.

In such a scenario, all other political parties become NPCs. Even the ones with seats. Especially the ones with seats—because now they can bleed you through the courts for town council failures, prosecute your leader when one MP misspeaks, flip your own former colleagues to testify you're criminals. The seats aren't victories. They're hostages. Play your scripted role as "responsible opposition" or watch everything burn. That's not democracy. That's a leash with parliamentary privileges.

It is in this context that you must read today's ST article which talks about Red Dot United, Singapore Democratic Party and Progress Singapore Party. No other political parties were mentioned, presumably because they do not have the people's mindshare. On the surface it reads like "these are the most relevant parties outside the two that are in Parliament"—but look closer at the framing. We are caricatured as needing to "deconflict" with each other over territory, as if we are each other's opponents.

For any serious reader who reads between the lines, the subtext is clear: opposition parties fragment, compete, and "jostle for attention" while the PAP governs. We're measured not by whether our policies are credible or our ground game is strong, but by survival metrics—volunteer counts, geographic reach, whether we're still relevant a year after losing. The article doesn't ask if RDU's 50% volunteer growth signals momentum, or if our initiative, Altgovsg's shadow ministries represent genuine policy capacity.

Instead it asks if we're fading. Because in God mode, that's what opposition parties are supposed to do between elections: fade, fragment, and eventually disappear.

I know that gods cannot be defeated by mere mortals. This is why we have stopped playing defense since GE 2025. We have shifted to a bigger office space. Decentralised our ground work and are covering more constituencies than we contested in the last GE. We want to expand to the central and east too. If the GE is called tomorrow, we are ready to field more candidates than we fielded in the last GE. We are mirroring Government Ministries with our AltGovSG work. We are trying to work across party lines with PSP and SDP.

Of course some will ridicule what we are doing and say we are pretending, or that we are doing cosplay. Let them say what they may.

But the truth is we are rising. Rising to God mode—not by asking permission, but by becoming unstoppable. Matching their relentlessness. Rejecting their boundaries. Building infrastructure they can't ignore.

That's how mortals become gods. And their cheat code? It's breaking.

The fact is, monopolies fall to competitors who move faster and refuse to stop. The PAP runs on legacy infrastructure—60-year-old code, bloated, unrefactored, paying themselves the highest salaries in the world to maintain a system built in 1965.

RDU runs on hunger.

They have resources. We have velocity. They're on autopilot, collecting million-dollar paychecks. We're shipping daily with volunteers who pay their own transport.

God mode vs. God mode. Except theirs is running on a 60-year-old build maintained by the world's most expensive devs. Ours is bleeding edge, built by people who believe.

They have everything to protect. We have nothing to lose—and that makes us unstoppable.

On the ground in .

On 2 May, a metal beam from the Chong Pang City construction site fell onto the roof of Block 103 Yishun Ring Road’s common corridor. It pierced the 4th‑floor roof before stopping. When we visited on 12 May, residents told us it was unsettling to realise they are often in that corridor at that time, and that if the beam had fallen all the way to the busy walkway below, people could have been seriously hurt.

Residents also shared that for about two years, they have lived with long construction days — often from around 8am to 8–9pm, including weekends — along with dust and debris drifting into their homes.

We saw for ourselves how close the new integrated hub is to Block 103, and how limited the visible barriers and netting were between heavy works and occupied flats. In our letter to the Ministers for National Development and Manpower, and the relevant agencies, we have asked detailed questions about Sunday work, work hours, safeguards against falling objects, and how noise, dust and health impacts on nearby residents are being monitored.

We will give the authorities a reasonable period of time to respond to our email, and after that we intend to release a public version of it, together with any reply we receive, so residents can see clearly what issues were raised and how they were addressed.

We hope that the authorities will share the full findings of their investigations and clearly explain the measures that will be taken to protect residents living next to major construction projects like Chong Pang City and elsewhere in Singapore.

Call to action:

If you live beside major construction and have similar experiences with noise, dust or safety worries, we invite you to share them with us so these concerns can be properly surfaced and addressed.

You may email us at [email protected] or WhatsApp us at 88064365.

When we are young, we think mothers are simply there. Cooking. Cleaning. Waiting up for us. Holding the family together somehow.
Only later do many of us begin to understand the weight they carried quietly.

The fear they hid.
The exhaustion they swallowed.
The things they went without.
The dreams they postponed.

Many mothers built entire lives around their children and never once asked for applause.

Today, we must especially of the mothers who are still fighting quietly for their families, stretching every dollar, worrying about their children’s future, carrying burdens nobody sees.

And we must think too of those whose mothers are no longer around. The ache never really leaves. It simply learns to sit quietly beside us.

To all mothers, thank you.

Life begins with you.