It is time our leaders recognise this and stop deceiving the world

It is time our leaders recognise this and stop deceiving the world that Singapore respect the rule of law.

It is time our leaders recognised this and stopped deceiving the world that Singapore respected the rule of law.

I believe there are errors in the original sentence, and I have replaced them with the italicised words.

Are there any errors in my amendments?

Thanks!

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I am afraid there is some semantic contrast in the statement though your corrections in the first two verbs (‘recognized’ and ‘stopped’) are acceptable. (It is because the expressions like It’s time, It’s high time etc take a past simple verb though the reference is to present and future.) But the verb ‘respect’ needn’t be changed because it is true of Singapore even now.

Well, when we try to understand the meaning, we find the intent of the statement to be the fact that Singapore respects the rule of law but in the latter part of the sentence we find it to be suggesting otherwise.
So, a reasonable recast can be as follows:
It is time our leaders recognised that Singapore respects the rule of law, and stopped deceiving the world with contrary statements.
(Do I make sense?)

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