I've come to the conclusion that Singaporeans must be one of the biggest groups of conspiracy theorists as a whole. I mean honestly... we even beat Fox Mulder. And at least he is a rarity. The average person on the street in the US definitely doesn't think there are aliens out there and the government is hiding it. They may think the government is hiding lots of other things and they'll generally let you know it exactly what they think the government's hiding - usually within five minutes of meeting you. However, it's usually something fairly small and standard, like our favourite villian Bin Ladin, or the presence or lack thereof of nuclear weapons in Iraq.

Now the average Singaporean on the other hand, believes in a whole myriad of other things, ranging from - "the football match kanna kelong one!" to "that unit got 'white horse' that's why training so easy" to "actually there's only one person running the country the rest are all figureheads". Erm.. not to comment upon whether or not I actually believe in these theories of course. ;-p

But back to the topic- Singaporeans and conspiracy. I honestly think that proabably part of the reason is that where else are you going to get circumstances where conspiracy IS possible?

"Daddy, Daddy, why are your ears so big?"
"Why all the better to hear you with, my dear."
Case in point, Singapore is small enough that anything you say could potentially be overheard or tracked down. In fact, even better, everyone knows things through word-of-mouth. 1984 could have been based on Singapore with the number of times I've heard the phrase "sssh... big brother is watching."

"Daddy, Daddy, why are your hands so large?"
"Why all the better to hold you with, my dear."
Even better, the government is actually efficient. The keystone of conspiracy theory in Singapore is that it can be done. And who really believes that it won't be done if it can be done?. Case in point, rumours that the Gep is one huge experiment and like any good experiment it has a control group. Now whether or not that is true, the important point was that it could have been done and so the rumour stays alive generation after generation.

"Daddy, daddy, why are... *fill in your own blank here*?"
"All the better to *fill in your own blank here* you, of course."
Honestly, i think the biggest reason is this whole depndency thing that we have with the government. We'll like children really, we complain a lot about the controls that our parents set over us like things we can't say or do, laws, curfews etc. but whenever they don't do something we want them to do like when they reduce our pocket money through cpf cuts, we turn around and complian that they aren't doing their job. Of course the tendency to depend so much on the government also means that you're convinced of the absolute power the government has, leading rise to even more conspiracy theories.

And of course like any good paranoid conspiracy theorist, I'm going to end my post by adding a note that says: *this piece does not reflect the personal views of the author in anyway at all regarding either conspiracy theory, singapore or government. Therefore, anything she has said or not said in this piece cannot be held against her.