Obbana Rajah
Why the sudden rise in hooliganism all over the island?
In the past two weeks alone, there were four independent, rather violent, instances of brawls and run-ins with the law.
Are people just becoming more hotheaded and angry? Whatever happened to talking things out amicably?
Instead of fighting to the death on the streets of Singapore, people should just visit rage rooms. In places like these they can buy a box of breakables and smash them to their heart’s content with a baseball bat.
It’s definitely a viable alternative.
However, to look back at things, the first was at a coffee shop at Hougang Block 684 where a woman taunted a man. After he hit her, she proceeded to lie on the floor and appeared to be taking a selfie.
The second was the dispute and tussle at the NTI Food Court at Block 964 Jurong West Street 91 between the boss of the coffee shop and a customer.
The third was the brawl outside the KTV Lounge at Peace Centre involving the police, who appeared to do very little for crowd control.
The fourth (and hopefully last) would be a Chinese man and an Indian man fighting on board an MRT train, falling on top of other commuters amidst their scuffle.
Many attribute this to rising stress levels in Singapore and netizens have taken to popular question-and-answer website Quora to speculate.
All these fights raise the question as to whether police should tighten the consequences on those fighting in public, being drunken and disorderly or those just being trouble-makers.
obbana@theindependent.sg