Pkchukiss – Reality Wine

I laugh, and continue to be tickled by the comments made in the Straits Times forum. It’s a poor diet of badly-written arguments, but the entertainment and sheer lunacy you read sometimes more than makes up for the invisible sledgehammer against the side of my head.

The papers today are over-brimming with letters bemoaning our government Cabinet’s mini-Fukishima. To be precise, the Minister Mentor and Senior Minister have both decided to retire from the Prime Minister’s Cabinet. This is in addition to the Foreign Minister, George Yeo’s automatic job loss resulting from losing his MP seat in Aljunied.

While many of the forum writers are disappointed for the losses, I’m (ironically) disappointed at their lack of confidence in the remaining PAP MPs. While the 3 ministers, as well as many others before them have contributed a lot to the nation’s development, to suggest that we hang on to ministers as much as possible reeks of a heavy dependence on their competence for direction and leadership. I’d even venture to say that these people exhibit addiction syndromes, hoping to cling onto the past achievements of the ministers, and expecting more and more out of them.

The reality is that nobody, and nobody lives forever. Minister Mentor is in his 80s, and all our ministers are ageing alongside ourselves as we speak. To cling on to a minister of proven capability beyond their prime is not just being unfair to the minister (who may be thinking of retirement), but also to the nation as a whole, by preventing new-comers from taking up posts and demonstrating their ability to serve. In politics, the only way you get a candidate to prove his worth is to give him a post of significance. By asking the incumbent minister to stay on in the post perpetually, we are stifling these new-comers. They are unable to execute new ideas, so the point of innovating new ideas become moot when new-comers don’t get the chance to put their strategies into practice.

We speak a lot about stepping out of our comfort zones. It’s time for Singapore to take that step, and give-up-and-coming ministers a chance to serve Singapore. Renewal is key to any country’s continued growth and prosperity. Let’s give our sincere thanks to the departing ministers for all that they have done for our nation, and let’s put new ministers to the test.

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Current Affairs

Since the post-independence days, the PAP government has led Singapore through its growing years, seeing the country not just through our industrialisation, and also our subsequent climb through the economic value chain. In the 80s and 90s, the same PAP government identified the services and tourism as a potential growth area for the economy, and sought to attract MNCs to set-up regional HQs in Singapore. In the late 1990s, the economic planners identified the Internet as a disruptive force in the status quo: The connectivity offered is simply too irresistible. It marked the start of cheap, outsourcing capability for companies, and enabling corporations to widen their outreach globally — in what we know as “globalisation”.

Throughout it all, the PAP government has been instrumental in attracting economic growth to our country, and the subsequent rise in the standard of living is something that no critic of the party can readily ignore. In the mid 2000s, the Goh Chok Tong administration decided that Singapore was lacking sufficient local human capital to continue attracting foreign companies to set up bases in Singapore. The rise of China and India has led to the birth of a vastly cheap, and talented labour force in those countries. It was too hard for companies motivated by the pursuit of low-cost margins and high profits to resist. The outsourcing began, and much of the work that used to be done in Singapore started to be outsourced to other countries.

To deal with this disruptive force, the PAP administration decided to compete on the basis of low-cost, rapidly absorbing foreigners into Singapore, probably in the hope that the domain knowledge held by these professionals would rub off and be propagated locally. This policy is quite obvious in our local sports scene. Table-tennis, badminton national teams comprise of foreign nationals imported to play for Singapore. It is an uncomfortable thought for many Singaporeans to deal with: don’t we have local talents? Why are we inviting foreigners to play under our banner, when we can nurture our own players?

In terms of attracting companies to stay in Singapore, I would argue that pursuing a low-cost objective, as what our current rate of intake foreigners suggests, is unsustainable in the long run. Let’s face it: the trend of outsourcing services is set to continue for the forseeable future, with the improved education standards in growing economies, we would still be losing out in terms of competitiveness. In addition, the risk of depressing wages creates a huge disparity in the country across income classes. We can still achieve relatively modest growth numbers, but the inflationary pressure of such high growth, yet low salaries is something that is not beneficial to Singaporeans. Furthermore, much of the GDP growth we have achieved through this low-cost objective has increased the spending power of the wealthiest segments of the country, but also resulted in much of the country lagging in economic progress.

Of course, this is not an easy problem to solve. However, the least I would want is a government that is emphatic to the difficult living conditions for the poorest segments of the population. It is at this that most PAP politicians have trouble with. While GDP is an important measure on the impact that government policies have helped to grow the economy, the policy of tying ministerial salaries to GDP growth causes politicians to lose sight of the people that growing the economy is supposed to do. I appreciate the need to keep key politicians honest and uncorrupt, but the same high salaries does make it tough for the same politicians to empathise with the disadvantaged in Singapore.

I am talking about the destitute segment of the population: the group of people who cannot work or earn insufficient salaries to support themselves and their families. Anecdotal evidence from Parliament sessions recorded of skirmishes between the PAP’s Dr Lily Neo, and the Minister for Community, Youth and Sports (Dr Vivian Balakrishnan) bear this out. Despite the good Dr Neo’s efforts to raise government assistance to this group, Dr Vivian has resisted raising the assistance sum for the destitute. With a Parliament dominated by PAP MPs, and the Party Whip system (where MPs from the party must vote according to the party line, in spite of their own beliefs), there is insufficient consideration or representation of the needy in Singapore.

Furthermore, the lack of transparency and accountability by the PAP ministers is something undesirable in the long run. IDA’s $388 million “honest mistake” and the recent floods have been testimonial to the abuse of the blank cheque given by the electorate. We have also seen how the PAP has utilised withholding HDB upgrading as a whip to punish citizens whom vote for the Opposition, in blindness to the fact that citizens in Opposition wards still pay the same taxes, and do the same National Service as with wards that vote for the PAP.

And this is precisely why, we need an institutionalised Opposition in Parliament, to hold the PAP Cabinet accountable for their policies, and to ensure fair play.

I do recognise that the Opposition has insufficient manpower and resources to form the government, and much of their manifestos lie in social policies, with SDP candidate Tan See Jay’s economic plan being the first to address economic worries. However, I believe that PAP, for all its economic savvy, is insufficiently representative of Singaporeans. By voting the Opposition into Parliament, I wish to see a robust competition of ideas and policies. I’m sufficiently satisfied that most Opposition parties understand this view. Worker’s Party has declared that they believe that PAP should continue to be at the wheel, with an Opposition to keep the Cabinet accountable.

What’s more, with PAP’s continued monopoly on policy-making, there is no way for us to know if there is a better alternative policy out there. Even the PAP ministers themselves have recognised that competition is good. I don’t see how politics should be any different from the many other areas that PAP has espoused this ethos for.

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Current Affairs

In this story from the Straits Times, Law and Home Affairs minister K Shanmugam makes the case of WP candidate Mr Chen’s citizenship narrative a “success story of PAP’s immigration policy”.

From The Straits Times (29 April 2011)

THE Workers’ Party’s ‘star catch’, corporate lawyer Chen Show Mao, 50, is a ‘success story’ of the PAP’s immigration policy, said Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam on Friday.

So is researcher Ms Angela Oon, 32, a WP candidate in Nee Soon GRC, where Mr Shanmugam’s PAP team is the incumbent.

Taiwan-born Mr Chen and Malaysia-born Ms Oon are ‘examples of the success of our immigration policy – and they are beneficiaries of the policy,’ Mr Shanmugam told reporters at the Chong Pang PAP branch after a walkabout.

‘So, it is surprising that Mr Chen is making such an issue out of immigration.’

At a WP rally on Thursday, Mr Chen had asked the massive crowd ‘how many tens of thousands of foreigners a year is enough?’

Moderating the influx of foreigners until the country’s infrastructure can ‘catch up’ is a key point in the WP manifesto.

Mr Shanmugam wanted to know how Mr Chen and Ms Oon would change the immigration policies which allowed them to become Singaporeans, in 1986 and 2010 respectively.

‘Mr Chen wouldn’t be able to ask these questions and stand for elections if the immigration policy wasn’t there – the very policy he is now criticising,’ he said.

‘I’m not saying they shouldn’t be in politics,’ he said. ‘I’m saying that there are in fact successful examples of the (immigration) policy. Singaporeans can see that the policy has its benefits. You have people like (Mr Chen and Ms Oon) coming out.’

Personally, I find it annoying that the minister claims Mr Chen’s citizenship is possible only due to the PAP’s pro-immigration policy. That’s complete rubbish, purely because all countries take in immigrants all the time; to claim that an Opposition government that takes over the PAP’s reins would somehow stop foreigners from coming into Singapore is disingenuous. Hell, even the United States, Australia, and other countries around the globe open their doors to immigrants the whole time; there was nothing special in the PAP’s policy that made a difference in Mr Chen’s situation.

Thus to claim credit for Mr Chen’s successful naturalisation is not only a self-serving red-herring, but also a cheap attempt to insinuate that Mr Chen does not welcome foreigners into Singapore.

Unfortunately for the minister, he cannot be further from the truth. None of the political parties in Singapore have released a manifesto that demands to stop the import of foreign talents into Singapore. Quite the contrary. For example, the Singapore Democratic Party’s manifesto on immigration policy states that foreign workers should be welcomed into Singapore, however with the expressed condition that employers are unable to hire Singaporeans to complete the task required. Such a policy is quite in line with many other country’s, counting the world’s biggest immigrant-absorbers Australia and United States as the ones that hold this policy.

In contrast, the PAP’s immigration standards are the practices that completely ignore best practices around the world. The leaders of the party believe that an unchecked influx of foreigners into Singapore is good for the economy. What the PAP Cabinet has failed to realise is that Singapore’s transportation, housing, and entertainment facilities are unable to cope with the vast increase in foreigners within the past few years; that’s not to mention the cultural shock of being thrown amidst so many newcomers at once. Of course, since none of the ministers take public transportation during the peak hours, none of them are aware of the infrastructural squeeze. Rising public housing prices in the resale market is yet another consequence in the sharp rise in demand for housing from new migrants. Which the ministers are unaware of, since none of them live in public housing (their world class salaries preclude them from doing so).

And let’s not forget that the vast majority of our nation has a strong conservative base; All we are asking for, as citizens, is for the immigration rate to be carefully considered, and carefully tailored to suit the country’s needs. Foreign talent should continue to be imported into Singapore, but there has to be a legitimate justification for doing so. If employers are allowed to import foreigners without restrictions, then that is tantamount to a simple import of cheaper foreign labour to reduce costs. As we can see, the results of this carte blanch foreign talent policy has resulted in wage stagnation for Singaporean employees, while the economic benefits of having these foreign talents pay off for the Cabinet in the form of double-digit bonuses.

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Current Affairs

Singaporeans are kiasu, and kiasi. We’re just famous for that. Queuing up for NDP tickets 3 days before they ate given out doesn’t faze most of us, though it proved too chaotic and unfair so the organizing committee decided to use online balloting to allocate tickets a few years back.

Even I’m not immune to that, and my friends called me a “Crazy typical Singaporean” when I went for the overnight queuing for the iPhone 4 launch last year; right on the morning of a friend’s university graduation ceremony.

So it’s totally not surprising that the PAP, with it’s very astute observers of Singaporean psyche, thought that it would be a good idea to prey on the insecurities within each and everyone of us. And many of them don’t mince their words.

“You know, the cure for all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government. You get that alternative and you’ll never put Singapore together again: Humpty Dumpty cannot be put together again… my asset values will disappear, my apartments will be worth a fraction of what are, my ministers’ jobs will be in peril, their security will be at risk and their women will become maids in other people’s countries, foreign workers.”

Quote by Lee Kuan Yew

This argument strikes right at the heart of our fear of losing years of phenomenal economic growth, and unjustifiably so. We have no evidence (and the PAP certainly hasn’t shown any) that having a sizable Opposition presence in Singapore will upset the policies of the PAP which, let’s face the facts – are going to be forming the next government anyway.

To buttress their claims, Tanjong Pagar MP Ms Indranee wrote in to The Straits Times to argue just how the Opposition would “block policies that benefit Singapore”. I would argue that in part, Ms Indranee has succeeded in painting the Opposition as a malevolent force intent on destroying the country, as we can see in the recent letters to The Straits Times forum.

Notice that neither the recent letters, nor Ms Indranee describe any specific scenarios where the Opposition supposedly intend to do Singapore in.

Yet the fear has already set in for some people; the irrationality of such feelings serve to alienate them from any logical arguments attempting to convince them to critically consider the merits of having an Opposition in Parliament.

We need to recognize such fear tactics for what they are: legally acceptable, but misleading tools of politics used to charge up support, and to invoke our deepest fears in the hope of winning a few more votes. See through the rhetoric, examine the underlying arguments; determine whether they hold merits, then decide for ourselves whether what they’ve said is valid or not.

That said, I do feel these political campaigns add colour and vibrancy to our political landscapes. It’s my deepest wish that such tools will electrify the country, seek out our own positions, and defend our ideas with the same passion and vigour as we see in the political campaigns. That competition of ideas can only be healthy.

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Current Affairs

To be honest, I hadn’t exactly expected the Opposition to contest all the wards: traditionally, most of the parties would struggle to even field candidates within a GRC, not to mention more than one. Indeed, such a radical change in the contest strategy by the Opposition is a refreshing change. That is, if mentioning that the air is absolutely electric doesn’t do proper justice to the atmosphere permeating from my peers.

Despite all that, the force of political change wafts gently in the air — almost perceptible, but remains an unmeasurable quality in the sea of confusion, as we read media reports of he-said-she-rebutted. We have highly-educated Opposition candidates staking their claim to represent the wishes of voters in most constituencies, probably quelling the PAP’s disdain of non-graduates (and raising the goosebumps in its stead). In fact, we are almost assured of an interesting contest between young Tin Pei Ling (PAP), and Nicole Seah (NSP) at Marine Parade. Both claim to represent the voices of young, which makes me feel very good; but whether their claims are for real — only time on the campaign trail will tell.

Which brings me to the next point: I’m a bit discouraged by the reckless cat-calling and disparaging comments made about PAP’s Tin Pei Ling. During Nomination Day, while she was giving her speech at the nomination centre, a vocal group present chanted “Kate Spade… Kate Spade…” I do believe that they were well within their rights to heckle her, since it’s part and parcel of enduring politics; however, I take issue with the fact that many people dismissed her outright as a potential candidate due to her age, the now-famous photograph where she posed with her Kate Spade bag, as well as the video interview where she stomped her feet.

I personally believe that the photograph and video is a part of her personality, and in no way would be an indication of how she would do her job as an MP. When the time comes, and it is time to do work, we all put on our work mannerisms, and conduct ourselves professionally. It’s just ridiculous to expect anyone to stay that way the entire time, regardless of whether the person is an important office holder. My guess is that the people are angry about Ms Tin riding on the coat-tails of the Senior Minister into Parliament without having to face electoral scrutiny on her capabilities. I do indeed want to point out the irony, since Dr Chia Shi Lu, a doctor whom even PAP activists in Tanjong Pagar hadn’t heard of, rode the Minister Mentor’s coat-tails into Parliament for real.

I think that the electorate should give the young candidates, Ms Tin and Ms Nicole Seah a fighting chance to campaign for the hearts and minds of the Marine Parade voters. Please do not dismiss them as being unsuitable for the job at hand simply because of what they do in their private time. Let whomever hadn’t goofed around at least once in their teens and tweens cast the first stone.

On a side note, I was surprised to find out that both candidates hail from NUS, within the school’s University Scholars Programme. And my Government and Politics of Singapore professor (Prof. Hussein Mutalib) made a very incisive observation during one of the lectures a few months back: “You’ll never know. Some of you sitting in this room now are going to be in the Administrative Service. Some of you will be joining political parties. Maybe one day I’ll get to invite you back to give us a talk after you become an MP.” My guess is Prof. Hussein probably did previously taught some of the candidates fighting for election.

That’s a mind-boggling thought, to be honest. That the Koi bubble tea-obsessed classmate sitting a mere 3 seats away from you may one day represent you in Parliament is a thought that is akin to getting dwarfed by a silent giant kept in a little bubbly-faced undergraduate. Oh wait, that’s what I was describing.

At any rate, I’m proud and happy that our political system has come this far to empower young people of my age have the confidence and tools to take on the challenge of being a Member of Parliament. It is a testament to us ushering in a new age of advancement in our political system towards something that would be more inclusive. And as someone who is eligible to vote this time round, you can be sure that I’m going to soak in this atmosphere… after my semester finals :p

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Current Affairs

A commenter left this under The Temasek Review’s report on the school fee hike for PRs in order to hype up a sense of exclusivity of citizenship. I find this so apt. If you treat your own people badly, what makes you think that the new people you’ve attracted would think about coming under your wing?

The Goatherd And The Wild Goats

A Goatherd, driving his flock from their pasture at eventide, found some Wild Goats mingled among them, and shut them up together with his own for the night. The next day it snowed very hard, so that he could not take the herd to their usual feeding places, but was obliged to keep them in the fold.

He gave his own goats just sufficient food to keep them alive, but fed the strangers more abundantly in the hope of enticing them to stay with him and of making them his own. When the thaw set in, he led them all out to feed, and the Wild Goats scampered away as fast as they could to the mountains.

The Goatherd scolded them for their ingratitude in leaving him, when during the storm he had taken more care of them than of his own herd.

One of them, turning about, said to him: “That is the very reason why we are so cautious; for if you yesterday treated us better than the Goats you have had so long, it is plain also that if others came after us, you would in the same manner prefer them to ourselves.”

[Comment on Temasek Review's article on measure to hike school fees for PRs]

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General

From Techcrunch’s article about the fallen partnership between Fusion Garage, and themselves:

We didn’t learn about this until last Summer because Singapore media, including blogs, are largely controlled by the government. Embarrassing stuff just isn’t reported.

I’m a Singaporean, I blog. Therefore, my blog must largely be controlled by the government.

Now, why the hell am I paying for my web hosting? The government should be paying for it, since they are controlling what I’m writing. Oh yes, and I’m being controlled to say that “Michael Arrington sucks!”

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General

It doesn’t have to be to put them out of power. yaevlejunce‘s article succinctly summarises the arguments for voting against the PAP in the next elections.

I, for one am keeping my vote a secret. Privacy mah.

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General