Security guard sacked for posting vulgar comment on Singapore PM's Facebook page
Brazen insult on Lee Hsien Loong's official page comes in the wake of other acts of dissent directed at city-state's leaders
PUBLISHED : Friday, 16 May, 2014, 11:17am
UPDATED : Friday, 16 May, 2014, 1:50pm
Satish Cheney
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Photo: AFP
A Singapore man was sacked after he insulted Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on the premier’s official Facebook page and disparaged Lee’s late mother.
Security guard Ridhuan Abdullah, 30, posted an expletive-laced comment on Lee’s widely shared Mother’s Day message, mentioning the prime minister’s mother – a Cambridge-educated lawyer who had passed away in 2010.
The 62-year-old prime minister’s May 11 post had featured a black and white photo from 1963 of his mother, Kwa Geok Choo, smiling and with her arms around Lee and his younger brother during a primary school graduation ceremony.
A message below the photo said, “One day is simply not enough to thank mothers for their unconditional love and untiring care” and called motherhood the “ultimate labour of love”.
It garnered close to 60,000 likes as of this morning. Kwa and Lee Kuan Yew, modern Singapore’s founding father, also have a daughter.
Local media reported that Ridhuan was fired by his company, Keith Morton Security. Its owner, William Morton Jnr told The Straits Times that the guard had “clearly breached our company’s code of conduct”.
Facebook users in Singapore were quick to condemn his actions. The abusive comment has been taken down.
Ridhuan is believed to have deleted the comment himself, according to some reports.
It is not known yet if he will face any legal action at this point.
Lee Hsien Loong's Facebook post on Mother's Day. Photo: Facebook
The incident comes in the wake of another recent brazen act directed at Singapore’s leaders.
Five teenagers were arrested last week after they allegedly spray-painted profane graffiti, directed at the ruling People’s Action Party, at the top of a public housing apartment block. If found guilty, they could be facing a maximum of three years in jail or even the possibility of being caned.
Such displays of rebellion are rare in the tightly controlled Southeast Asian city-state.
However, in recent years a small but growing number of discontented citizens online are lambasting the government for their daily woes – blaming the government for being too lax with immigration policies to not doing enough to help the middle class.
At a recent anti-immigration protest held in Singapore, organisers had planned to deface a poster of Lee, but they heeded a police warning not to do so.
