Blank Doll envoie une valentine au gouvernement.

Ok, forget the heartaches and the various little things of life. We teenagers see too much of this and none of the road ahead of us, or better still, the road ahead of everybody else. So here is my valentine for that special creature- the government and the august body of the PAP:

Half a century ago, Singapore was nothing more than a provincial backwater that was the epitome of Third World backwardness. She was the ill-gotten spawn of British colonial rule, a scarlet mote at the heart of a forbidding darkness, of despair, of poverty and hunger. Fast-forward to the present day and we see a mighty Singapore, a city-state rivalling the spectacle that were the Italian city-states in the Renaissance, the very Venice of the East.

Do we remember who to thank for all this? Who was entrusted with the custody of our beloved nation at her moment of vulnerability? When the forces of the Malaysian Merger sought to smother this spark that we alone represented, who stood at the forefront? Mr. Lee Kuan Yew whom I will always remember as he wept before the cameras, a proud man brought low for that singular moment by this unprecedented and unexpected outcome. This most remarkable man and his white-clad team, they were the seed of a Singaporean miracle that raised us above all others in the South-East Asia region. Before them, we the citizens of Singapore were nothing but backward, illiterate cretins held by colonial strings, the crudest and vilest sort of people. If not for their coming, we would not have come so far, nor grasped the impossibility of success.

Look around you at everything that bears the mark of our beloved Government and the leading political party. Who are you to declaim their dominance as dynastic and corrupted? Would you level the same question at the Bush family? Aung San's daughter is the emblem of hope in Burma, would you question her legitimacy because she would claim to rule with the mandate of her father's legacy and ideals? We are not a politicized nation because our government has achieved what so few have. It is an institution of rationality, of order, of light. Pragmatism bears upon her every action, think not it an easy feat for the PAP to tie her legitimacy with economic progress because that is not something that all political parties may claim. I would certainly not have counted on the opposition to lead Singapore to greater prosperity and stature with their obsession with greater liberties and social justice.

It is dangerous, jejune and not to mention facile to reject the PAP with no reason for only through arrogance or ignorance may we discount the many virtues of our government.

This was meant to be a letter of praise to our beloved Government. I fear I can hardly do justice to her with words alone. Forgive me for not heeding to your call, for turning my back on Singapore to follow that other calling that would have be taken to a foreign land. Nonetheless, to the PAP, I would have you know that I support you as well as the values which you stand for. So there, on this day after Valentine's, I do sincerely wish the Government and the PAP.

C'est tout.