Originally Posted by
davidj1
Hi. I suggest you do what feels best for you and vote with your wallet.
A few pointers:
- Most folks in SG follow garmen ‘blindly’, thus there won’t be much push back locally about this issue.
- This case reaffirms the governance style of the island, with covid measures largely draconian, yet again locals fully supportive. There has been and currently is a mass exodus of foreigners who feel differently, but they will be replaced with a new set of foreigners who you could say are mostly ignorant to the issues or were not personally affected.
- Agree with previous posts about most garmens don’t have a clean ethical record, so does that mean I stop flying?
Point is, as harsh as it sounds, locally there is never push back on these matters, or foreigners just move out only to be replaced with a fresh batch eager to start their expat journey. So there is (or will) never be any structural pressure to change policy, for example covid measures, or in this case, death penalty for mentally disabled folk, unless there is reform in the form of change of garmen at the next election. Water of a ducks back at the moment. Therefore you need to do what you feel is personally right.
I don't think there is currently still an exodus of foreigners although many left during covid and numbers are still below 2019 levels. Certainly, foreigners/MNCs/US government put a lot of pressure on Singapore to change covid travel restrictions which are now almost entirely gone as Singapore has normalized. While Singapore still a few more covid restrictions than most Western countries it's hard to imagine this leading to many foreigners leaving at this point in time.
Most nearby countries are not so opposed to the death penalty or its use for drug crimes as well which has limited diplomatic fallout over this case. If Singapore executed another Australian for drug crimes I would imagine that would spark a big rift in Australia-Singapore relations similar to more recent executions of Australians for drug crimes in Indonesia. Even though Singapore Airlines is quite close to the government I am not sure it would be affected by any diplomatic fallout. From 2006,
https://www.theage.com.au/national/s...23-ge1t94.html quotes the then Australian treasurer as saying "
We don't link executions to aviation policy,".