COMMENT Tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the capital offence of drug trafficking, Sabahan Yong Vui Kong’s final appeal to commute his death sentence was rejected on Wednesday by Singapore’s Court of Criminal Appeal.  

tony tan singapore president with wife 1 It is fait accompli as some would say as there are no more avenues left for Yong except for a state pardon from the city state’s sitting President Tony Tan Keng Yam ( right ).

Even then, as it was recently uncovered there is nary a chance of a presidential pardon ever being issued because the real authoritative body deliberating on a pardon in the city state is the Singapore cabinet.

The cabinet in turn takes any advice regarding a presidential pardon from the nation’s attorney-general.

NONE And because it is the Attorney-General’s Office that leads in the prosecution of all criminal cases, it is absolutely unlikely the august chamber of leading counsels would contradict themselves and accord Yong a pardon.

That outcome plus the fact it may take more than a miracle to grant the reprieve Yong so very desperately needs simply now means that Yong’s fate is all but sealed.

And executions in Singapore are customarily carried out some two weeks after the president rejects a clemency petition.

In the long history of the republic there has rarely been an instance when sitting presidents had ever taken to pardoning drug dealers.

The only person to have ever been pardoned was a certain Malay Singaporean named Siti who was pardoned in 1981 by then president CV Devan Nair.

But because she returned to the drug trade soon after her release from jail, the city state’s authorities must have resolved not to brook any more appeals from drug dealers.

And the republic’s judicial and penal handlers too must also have resolved to every man resulting from the ‘Siti fiasco’ to deal with drug dealers as expeditiously as they see and deem it fit - which is to despatch them off as soon they can.

Executions done usually on a Friday

That despatch routine traditionally begins in Cluster A of the city state’s maximum security prison in Changi.

Executions are usually carried out on nail on a Friday morning at 6am when the hangman suddenly shows at the prison cell of the condemned inmate, to begin the condemned prisoner’s last journey of his life along a 20-metre walk to the gallows.

At the gallows the condemned man will be mounted onto a scaffold with a cassock pulled over his head.

The cassock is to prevent rope burns from appearing around the neck of the prisoner when he falls through the trap door.

Singapore like Malaysia uses the Table of Drops method inherited from its British colonial masters and which was used to perfection by the city state’s first hangman, Ian Seymour who later bequeathed that gruesome task to a one Dharshan Singh who hailed from Malaysia.

In the Table of Drops method, the length of the rope used conforms to the height and weight of the person.

It is widely believed the present hangman - who according to sources within Singapore’s legal fraternity say is a relative or close associate of Dharshan Singh - is always paid baksheesh for every prisoner falling through the trap door and for every prisoner confirmed dead after he falls.

There are currently no data of how many prisoners Singapore hangs for drug related offences since the imposition of the very controversial mandatory death penalty in 1974 that many critics say violates natural justice.

Nor is there any debate on the use of a form of punishment that the city state’s one-time flamboyant and ebullient chief minister David Marshall decried as “destroying the miracle of human life”.

In 1994, Marshall bewailed the liberal use of the death penalty saying it “makes life cheap” when commenting on the grim statistics of some 58 executions for that year, in a newspaper interview.

Yet for something as morally repugnant as the death penalty is and especially so in the light of miscarriages of justice in recent years, capital punishment continues to be administered in the city state.

And if Tony Tan rejects Yong’s plea it would all but be administered to him too; death through the scientifically and artfully executed method of the Table of Drops.

In all, there is absolutely no question as to what the republic does not want. And that is drug dealers and another Siti able to cock a snook at the nation’s judicial system.

SAM  MIGUEL is a freelance journalist based in Singapore.