Gun In The Mouth
channel-x.blogspot.com
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Lee Hsien Yang quits Singtel
The Lee family continues to dazzle us with high profile anouncements lately. First Lee Kuan Yew opens up on GIC and now his millionaire son quits the biggest telecom firm in southeast asia.
video credit: 140thmedia
video credit: 140thmedia
Monday, July 17, 2006
Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang snubs Singapore style policies
Kyodo News - Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang on Monday concluded his three-day visit to Singapore in which he exchanged views on developments in Singapore and Hong Kong.Noting Hong Kong has its advantages and special features, Mr Tsang said he will not copy Singaporean policies direct, adding that it is important Hong Kong is not complacent and conservative, and that people should plan strategically and act practically.
He said he admires how Singapore pushes forward mega infrastructure projects swiftly, but noted that Hong Kong and Singapore are different politically.
"We have different political backgrounds, systems and values," Tsang told reporters.
China's official Xinhua News Agency reported Tsang met with Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Monday and discussed bilateral relations and exchanged views on developments in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Tsang also called on Singapore's Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew respectively on Monday afternoon, Xinhua reported.
Workers' Party elects seven new members to executive council , James Gomez Missing
The Workers' Party has elected seven new members to its executive council, but where is James Gomez?
Candidate elected for post of Chairman:
Candidate elected for post of Chairman:
- Sylvia Lim Swee Lian
- Low Thia Khiang
- Abdul Salim bin Harun
- Chia Ti Lik
- Goh Meng Seng
- Glenda Han Su May
- Lee Wai Leng
- Jane Leong
- Mohd Rahizan bin Yaacob
- Ng Swee Bee
- Dr Poh Lee Guan
- Brandon Siow Wei Min
- Eric Tan Heng Chong
- Perry Tong Tzee Kwang
- Yaw Shin Leong
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Lee Kuan Yew proves he is transparent
For the first time the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) has announced how its massive foreign investments have performed. It has revealed that a return of 9.5 per cent in US dollars was made each year for the past 25 years. I don't know how much that equates to but I'm pretty sure its a lot considering its assets are worth more than 100 billion US dollars.If indeed they are having fantastic returns so why didn't they make this public earlier?
Is the Lees trying to put up a wayang just to prove Chees wrong over the allegation in New Democrat?
Why So Sad?
Singaporeans the least happy people in Asia
Jul 13, 2006
The Straits Times
LONDON - OF ALL the countries in the Asean region, Vietnam has the most to smile about and Singapore the least, according to a list of the happiest countries on the planet.
A new study published yesterday ranked the small South-east Asian country as 12th on a list of 178 nations, beating big-economy behemoths such as Britain and the United States in a survey that measured people's well-being and their impact on the environment.
Singapore, on the other hand, fared the worst of all the Asean and Asian nations ranked, coming in at 131st.
Compiled by the British think-tank New Economics Foundation (NEF), the Happy Planet Index painted a different order of world wealth.
Abandoning what it termed 'crude ratings' of countries according to economic indicators like gross domestic product, the NEF intended the new index to strip life back to the basics - measuring life satisfaction, life expectancy and environmental impact.
Island nations did well in the rankings, with the tiny South Pacific nation of Vanuatu topping the list. 'People are generally happy here because they are very satisfied with very little,' said Mr Marke Lowen of Vanuatu Online, the republic's online newspaper.
Industrial countries, perhaps unsurprisingly, fared badly on the index - Britain came in at 108th while the US ranked 150th. Most of the bottom 10 countries were African nations, with Zimbabwe coming in last.
'The order of nations that emerges may seem counter-intuitive. But this is because policymakers have been led astray by abstract mathematical models of the economy that bear little relation to the real world,' said NEF's policy director Andrew Simms. -- AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS
Click here for the report
Jul 13, 2006
The Straits Times
LONDON - OF ALL the countries in the Asean region, Vietnam has the most to smile about and Singapore the least, according to a list of the happiest countries on the planet.
A new study published yesterday ranked the small South-east Asian country as 12th on a list of 178 nations, beating big-economy behemoths such as Britain and the United States in a survey that measured people's well-being and their impact on the environment.
Singapore, on the other hand, fared the worst of all the Asean and Asian nations ranked, coming in at 131st.
Compiled by the British think-tank New Economics Foundation (NEF), the Happy Planet Index painted a different order of world wealth.
Abandoning what it termed 'crude ratings' of countries according to economic indicators like gross domestic product, the NEF intended the new index to strip life back to the basics - measuring life satisfaction, life expectancy and environmental impact.
Island nations did well in the rankings, with the tiny South Pacific nation of Vanuatu topping the list. 'People are generally happy here because they are very satisfied with very little,' said Mr Marke Lowen of Vanuatu Online, the republic's online newspaper.
Industrial countries, perhaps unsurprisingly, fared badly on the index - Britain came in at 108th while the US ranked 150th. Most of the bottom 10 countries were African nations, with Zimbabwe coming in last.
'The order of nations that emerges may seem counter-intuitive. But this is because policymakers have been led astray by abstract mathematical models of the economy that bear little relation to the real world,' said NEF's policy director Andrew Simms. -- AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS
Click here for the report
Singapore’s ‘Martyr,’ Chee Soon Juan
July/August 2006
By Hugo Restall
Striding into the Chinese restaurant of Singapore’s historic Fullerton Hotel, Chee Soon Juan hardly looks like a dangerous revolutionary. Casually dressed in a blue shirt with a gold pen clipped to the pocket, he could pass as just another mild-mannered, apolitical Singaporean. Smiling, he courteously apologizes for being late—even though it is only two minutes after the appointed time.
Nevertheless, according to prosecutors, this same man is not only a criminal, but a repeat offender. The opposition party leader has just come from a pre-trial conference at the courthouse, where he faces eight counts of speaking in public without a permit. He has already served numerous prison terms for this and other political offenses, including eight days in March for denying the independence of the judiciary. He expects to go to jail again later this year.
Mr. Chee does not seem too perturbed about this, but it drives Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong up the wall. Asked about his government’s persecution of the opposition during a trip to New Zealand last month, Mr. Lee launched into a tirade of abuse against Mr. Chee. “He’s a liar, he’s a cheat, he’s deceitful, he’s confrontational, it’s a destructive form of politics designed not to win elections in Singapore but to impress foreign supporters and make himself out to be a martyr,” Mr. Lee ranted. “He’s deliberately going against the rules because he says, ‘I’m like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. I want to be a martyr.’”
Coming at the end of a trip in which the prime minister essentially got a free ride on human rights from his hosts—New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark didn’t even raise the issue—this outburst showed a lack of self-control and acumen. Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the man who many believe still runs Singapore and who is the current prime minister’s father, has said much the same things about Mr. Chee—“a political gangster, a liar and a cheat”—but that was at home, and in the heat of an election campaign.
Mr. Chee smiles when it’s suggested that he must be doing something right. “Every time he says something stupid like that, I think to myself, the worst thing to happen would be to be ignored. That would mean we’re not making any headway,” he agrees.
But one charge made by the government does stick: Mr. Chee is not terribly concerned about election results. Which is just as well, because his Singapore Democratic Party did not do very well in the May 6 polls. It would be foolish, he suggests, for an opposition party in Singapore to pin its hopes on gaining one, or perhaps two, seats in parliament. He is aiming for a much bigger goal: bringing down the city-state’s one-party system of government. His weapon is a campaign of civil disobedience against laws designed to curtail democratic freedoms.
“You don’t vote out a dictatorship,” he says. “And basically that’s what Singapore is, albeit a very sophisticated one. It’s not possible for us to effect change just through the ballot box. They’ve got control of everything else around us.” Instead what’s needed is a coalition of civil society and political society coming together and demanding change—a color revolution for Singapore.
So far Mr. Chee doesn’t seem to be getting much, if any traction. While many Singaporeans don’t particularly like the PAP’s arrogant style of government, the ruling party has succeeded in depoliticizing the population to the extent that anybody who presses them to take action to make a change is regarded with resentment. And in a climate of fear—Mr. Chee lost his job as a psychology lecturer at the national university soon after entering opposition politics—a reluctance to get involved is hardly surprising.
Why is all this oppression necessary in a peaceful and prosperous country like Singapore where citizens otherwise enjoy so many freedoms? Mr. Chee has his own theory that the answer lies with strongman Lee Kuan Yew himself: “Why is he still so afraid? I honestly think that through the years he has accumulated enough skeletons in his closet that he knows that when he is gone, his son and the generations after him will have a price to pay. If we had parliamentary debates where the opposition could pry and ask questions, I think he is actually afraid of something like that.”
That raises the question of whether Singapore deserves its reputation for squeaky-clean government. A scandal involving the country’s biggest charity, the National Kidney Foundation, erupted in 2004 when it turned out that its Chief Executive T.T. Durai was not only drawing a $357,000 annual salary, but the charity was paying for his first-class flights, maintenance on his Mercedes, and gold-plated fixtures in his private office bathroom.
The scandal was a gift for the opposition, which naturally raised questions about why the government didn’t do a better job of supervising the highly secretive NKF, whose patron was the wife of former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong (she called Mr. Durai’s salary “peanuts”). But it had wider implications too. The government controls huge pools of public money in the Central Provident Fund and the Government of Singapore Investment Corp., both of which are highly nontransparent. It also controls spending on the public housing most Singaporeans live in, and openly uses the funds for refurbishing apartment blocks as a bribe for districts that vote for the ruling party. Singaporeans have no way of knowing whether officials are abusing their trust as Mr. Durai did.
It gets worse. Mr. Durai’s abuses only came to light because he sued the Straits Times newspaper for libel over an article detailing some of his perks. Why was Mr. Durai so confident he could win a libel suit when the allegations against him were true? Because he had done it before. The NKF won a libel case in 1998 against defendants who alleged it had paid for first-class flights for Mr. Durai. This time, however, he was up against a major bulwark of the regime, Singapore Press Holdings; its lawyers uncovered the truth.
Singaporean officials have a remarkable record of success in winning libel suits against their critics. The question then is, how many other libel suits have Singapore’s great and good wrongly won, resulting in the cover-up of real misdeeds? And are libel suits deliberately used as a tool to suppress questioning voices?
The bottling up of dissent conceals pressures and prevents conflicts from being resolved. For instance, extreme sensitivity over the issue of race relations means that the persistence of discrimination is a taboo topic. Yet according to Mr. Chee it is a problem that should be debated so that it can be better resolved. “The harder they press now, the stronger will be the reaction when he’s no longer around,” he says of Lee Kuan Yew.
The paternalism of the PAP also rankles, especially since foreigners get more consideration than locals. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund will hold their annual meeting in Singapore this fall, and have been trying to convince the authorities to allow the usual demonstrations to take place. The likely result is that international NGO groups will be given a designated area to scream and shout. “So we have a situation here where locals don’t have the right to protest in their own country, while foreigners are able to do that,” Mr. Chee marvels. Likewise, Singaporeans can’t organize freely into unions to negotiate wages; instead a National Wages Council sets salaries with input from the corporate sector, including foreign chambers of commerce.
All these tensions will erupt when strongman Lee Kuan Yew dies. Mr. Chee notes that the ruling party is so insecure that Singapore’s founder has been unable to step back from front-line politics. The PAP still needs the fear he inspires in order to keep the population in line. Power may have officially passed to his son, Lee Hsien Loong, but even supporters privately admit that the new prime minister doesn’t inspire confidence.
During the election, Prime Minister Lee made what should have been a routine attack on multiparty democracy: “Suppose you had 10, 15, 20 opposition members in parliament. Instead of spending my time thinking what is the right policy for Singapore, I’m going to spend all my time thinking what’s the right way to fix them, to buy my supporters’ votes, how can I solve this week’s problem and forget about next year’s challenges?” But of course the ominous phrases “buy votes” and “fix them” stuck out. That is the kind of mistake, Mr. Chee suggests, Lee Sr. would not make.
“He’s got a kind of intelligence that would serve you very well when you put a problem in front of him,” he says of the prime minister. “But when it comes to administration or political leadership, when you really need to be media savvy and motivate people, I think he is very lacking in that area. And his father senses it as well.”
However, the elder Mr. Lee’s death—he is now 82—is a necessary but not sufficient condition for change. Another big factor is how civil society is able to use new technologies to bypass PAP control over information and free speech. The government has tried to stifle political filmmaking, blogging and podcasting. Singapore Rebel, a 2004 film about Mr. Chee by independent artist Martyn See, was banned but is widely available on the Internet.
Meanwhile, pressure for Singapore to remain competitive in the region has sparked debate about the government’s dominant role in the economy. Can a top-down approach promote creativity and independent thinking? The need for transparency and accountability also means that Singapore will have to change. That is the source of Mr. Chee’s optimism in the face of all his setbacks: “I realize that Singapore is not at that level yet. But we’ve got to start somewhere. And I’m prepared to see this out, in the sense that in the next five, 10, 15 years, time is on our side. We need to continue to organize and educate and encourage. And it will come.”
He doesn’t dwell on his personal tribulations, but mentions in passing selling his self-published books on the street. That is his primary source of income to feed his family, along with the occasional grant. As to the charge of wanting to be a martyr, once he started dissenting, he found it impossible to stop in good conscience. “The more you got involved, the more you found out what they’re capable of, it steels you, so you say, ‘No, I will not back down.’ It makes you more determined.”
Perhaps it’s in his genes. One of Mr. Chee’s daughters is old enough that she had to be told that her father was going to prison. She stood up before her class and announced, “My papa is in jail, but he didn’t do anything wrong. People have just been unfair to him.”
Mr. Restall is editor of the REVIEW.
By Hugo Restall
Striding into the Chinese restaurant of Singapore’s historic Fullerton Hotel, Chee Soon Juan hardly looks like a dangerous revolutionary. Casually dressed in a blue shirt with a gold pen clipped to the pocket, he could pass as just another mild-mannered, apolitical Singaporean. Smiling, he courteously apologizes for being late—even though it is only two minutes after the appointed time.
Nevertheless, according to prosecutors, this same man is not only a criminal, but a repeat offender. The opposition party leader has just come from a pre-trial conference at the courthouse, where he faces eight counts of speaking in public without a permit. He has already served numerous prison terms for this and other political offenses, including eight days in March for denying the independence of the judiciary. He expects to go to jail again later this year.
Mr. Chee does not seem too perturbed about this, but it drives Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong up the wall. Asked about his government’s persecution of the opposition during a trip to New Zealand last month, Mr. Lee launched into a tirade of abuse against Mr. Chee. “He’s a liar, he’s a cheat, he’s deceitful, he’s confrontational, it’s a destructive form of politics designed not to win elections in Singapore but to impress foreign supporters and make himself out to be a martyr,” Mr. Lee ranted. “He’s deliberately going against the rules because he says, ‘I’m like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. I want to be a martyr.’”
Coming at the end of a trip in which the prime minister essentially got a free ride on human rights from his hosts—New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark didn’t even raise the issue—this outburst showed a lack of self-control and acumen. Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the man who many believe still runs Singapore and who is the current prime minister’s father, has said much the same things about Mr. Chee—“a political gangster, a liar and a cheat”—but that was at home, and in the heat of an election campaign.
Mr. Chee smiles when it’s suggested that he must be doing something right. “Every time he says something stupid like that, I think to myself, the worst thing to happen would be to be ignored. That would mean we’re not making any headway,” he agrees.
But one charge made by the government does stick: Mr. Chee is not terribly concerned about election results. Which is just as well, because his Singapore Democratic Party did not do very well in the May 6 polls. It would be foolish, he suggests, for an opposition party in Singapore to pin its hopes on gaining one, or perhaps two, seats in parliament. He is aiming for a much bigger goal: bringing down the city-state’s one-party system of government. His weapon is a campaign of civil disobedience against laws designed to curtail democratic freedoms.
“You don’t vote out a dictatorship,” he says. “And basically that’s what Singapore is, albeit a very sophisticated one. It’s not possible for us to effect change just through the ballot box. They’ve got control of everything else around us.” Instead what’s needed is a coalition of civil society and political society coming together and demanding change—a color revolution for Singapore.
So far Mr. Chee doesn’t seem to be getting much, if any traction. While many Singaporeans don’t particularly like the PAP’s arrogant style of government, the ruling party has succeeded in depoliticizing the population to the extent that anybody who presses them to take action to make a change is regarded with resentment. And in a climate of fear—Mr. Chee lost his job as a psychology lecturer at the national university soon after entering opposition politics—a reluctance to get involved is hardly surprising.
Why is all this oppression necessary in a peaceful and prosperous country like Singapore where citizens otherwise enjoy so many freedoms? Mr. Chee has his own theory that the answer lies with strongman Lee Kuan Yew himself: “Why is he still so afraid? I honestly think that through the years he has accumulated enough skeletons in his closet that he knows that when he is gone, his son and the generations after him will have a price to pay. If we had parliamentary debates where the opposition could pry and ask questions, I think he is actually afraid of something like that.”
That raises the question of whether Singapore deserves its reputation for squeaky-clean government. A scandal involving the country’s biggest charity, the National Kidney Foundation, erupted in 2004 when it turned out that its Chief Executive T.T. Durai was not only drawing a $357,000 annual salary, but the charity was paying for his first-class flights, maintenance on his Mercedes, and gold-plated fixtures in his private office bathroom.
The scandal was a gift for the opposition, which naturally raised questions about why the government didn’t do a better job of supervising the highly secretive NKF, whose patron was the wife of former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong (she called Mr. Durai’s salary “peanuts”). But it had wider implications too. The government controls huge pools of public money in the Central Provident Fund and the Government of Singapore Investment Corp., both of which are highly nontransparent. It also controls spending on the public housing most Singaporeans live in, and openly uses the funds for refurbishing apartment blocks as a bribe for districts that vote for the ruling party. Singaporeans have no way of knowing whether officials are abusing their trust as Mr. Durai did.
It gets worse. Mr. Durai’s abuses only came to light because he sued the Straits Times newspaper for libel over an article detailing some of his perks. Why was Mr. Durai so confident he could win a libel suit when the allegations against him were true? Because he had done it before. The NKF won a libel case in 1998 against defendants who alleged it had paid for first-class flights for Mr. Durai. This time, however, he was up against a major bulwark of the regime, Singapore Press Holdings; its lawyers uncovered the truth.
Singaporean officials have a remarkable record of success in winning libel suits against their critics. The question then is, how many other libel suits have Singapore’s great and good wrongly won, resulting in the cover-up of real misdeeds? And are libel suits deliberately used as a tool to suppress questioning voices?
The bottling up of dissent conceals pressures and prevents conflicts from being resolved. For instance, extreme sensitivity over the issue of race relations means that the persistence of discrimination is a taboo topic. Yet according to Mr. Chee it is a problem that should be debated so that it can be better resolved. “The harder they press now, the stronger will be the reaction when he’s no longer around,” he says of Lee Kuan Yew.
The paternalism of the PAP also rankles, especially since foreigners get more consideration than locals. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund will hold their annual meeting in Singapore this fall, and have been trying to convince the authorities to allow the usual demonstrations to take place. The likely result is that international NGO groups will be given a designated area to scream and shout. “So we have a situation here where locals don’t have the right to protest in their own country, while foreigners are able to do that,” Mr. Chee marvels. Likewise, Singaporeans can’t organize freely into unions to negotiate wages; instead a National Wages Council sets salaries with input from the corporate sector, including foreign chambers of commerce.
All these tensions will erupt when strongman Lee Kuan Yew dies. Mr. Chee notes that the ruling party is so insecure that Singapore’s founder has been unable to step back from front-line politics. The PAP still needs the fear he inspires in order to keep the population in line. Power may have officially passed to his son, Lee Hsien Loong, but even supporters privately admit that the new prime minister doesn’t inspire confidence.
During the election, Prime Minister Lee made what should have been a routine attack on multiparty democracy: “Suppose you had 10, 15, 20 opposition members in parliament. Instead of spending my time thinking what is the right policy for Singapore, I’m going to spend all my time thinking what’s the right way to fix them, to buy my supporters’ votes, how can I solve this week’s problem and forget about next year’s challenges?” But of course the ominous phrases “buy votes” and “fix them” stuck out. That is the kind of mistake, Mr. Chee suggests, Lee Sr. would not make.
“He’s got a kind of intelligence that would serve you very well when you put a problem in front of him,” he says of the prime minister. “But when it comes to administration or political leadership, when you really need to be media savvy and motivate people, I think he is very lacking in that area. And his father senses it as well.”
However, the elder Mr. Lee’s death—he is now 82—is a necessary but not sufficient condition for change. Another big factor is how civil society is able to use new technologies to bypass PAP control over information and free speech. The government has tried to stifle political filmmaking, blogging and podcasting. Singapore Rebel, a 2004 film about Mr. Chee by independent artist Martyn See, was banned but is widely available on the Internet.
Meanwhile, pressure for Singapore to remain competitive in the region has sparked debate about the government’s dominant role in the economy. Can a top-down approach promote creativity and independent thinking? The need for transparency and accountability also means that Singapore will have to change. That is the source of Mr. Chee’s optimism in the face of all his setbacks: “I realize that Singapore is not at that level yet. But we’ve got to start somewhere. And I’m prepared to see this out, in the sense that in the next five, 10, 15 years, time is on our side. We need to continue to organize and educate and encourage. And it will come.”
He doesn’t dwell on his personal tribulations, but mentions in passing selling his self-published books on the street. That is his primary source of income to feed his family, along with the occasional grant. As to the charge of wanting to be a martyr, once he started dissenting, he found it impossible to stop in good conscience. “The more you got involved, the more you found out what they’re capable of, it steels you, so you say, ‘No, I will not back down.’ It makes you more determined.”
Perhaps it’s in his genes. One of Mr. Chee’s daughters is old enough that she had to be told that her father was going to prison. She stood up before her class and announced, “My papa is in jail, but he didn’t do anything wrong. People have just been unfair to him.”
Mr. Restall is editor of the REVIEW.
Mr Brown and the case of rights vs rice
11 Jul 06
Singapore Democrats
For those who wonder why the SDP spends so much time and effort talking about human rights, your answer came in the form of the Mr Brown episode.
In materialistic Singapore, many question the wisdom of championing for human rights and whether these values resonate with the average Joe. Can you eat civil liberties? How does freedom of speech bring you the next paycheck? Can protests make you rich? – are some of the cynicism expressed whenever the idea of democratic freedoms are raised.
Such political myopia has gotten many a society into trouble.
With the economy running away with the rich leaving the poor poorer, people want desperately to voice out their hardships and rectify the imbalance. But through what avenue? The elections are designed to let the PAP tell the people how powerless they are, civil society is all but dead, and the media…well, just ask Mr Brown. The writer’s essay touched a raw nerve in the Government because it expounded on familiar kitchen-table issues albeit in a manner with tongue firmly in cheek. The Government swiftly responded with its routine one-two counter-punch. One consisted of the usual rebuke that politics should be left to wise men in the PAP and two was the more lethal move of removing the writer’s and/or dissident’s means of communication.
The upshot is that there will be no more discussion, or in this case fun-poking, of the cost of living in Singapore in the press. It was like plucking out the only blade of grass that grew out of the hot, dry desert sand.
But this is PAP at its vintage worst. It deprives society of the means to discuss and debate issues that reflect the views of the people. Once this is done it proceeds to paint the picture it wants the people to see – in this case Singapore as a veritable island of milk and honey, no matter how far removed this is from reality.
Can you see now how freedom of speech fits into the equation? Without political rights, including freedom of the press and the right to free expression, Singaporeans cannot talk about issues that directly affect their everyday lives. Without these rights how do Singaporeans like Mr Brown draw attention to the unfairness of the PAP’s economic policies and perhaps change them?
It is true that pocket-book issues are usually the main factors that go into deciding which party voters pick. But this makes sense only in a democratic system where votes really count. In an undemocratic society, talking about pocket-book issues are meaningless when free speech and a free press don't exist.
Look at it this way: In a nomadic, agrarian society that practices subsistence farming, people are constantly foraging for food and shelter. To them political rights don't matter very much. In modern societies, however, one doesn't just up and go to another spot to set up camp and grow crops. People depend more and more on systems and community organization for their livelihoods.
In such societies, there will inevitably emerge a ruling class that will seek to dominate those around it. For the dominated, remaining focused on food and shelter to the exclusion of protecting their right to have a say in how society is run is to invite exploitation and, ironically, eventual deprivation of one’s basic necessities.
Wanting financial security without protecting one’s political rights is like wanting to eat rice without having the fire to cook it. Seen this way, does it make sense to say that rice is more important than fire? Would the cynics, having seen the latest Brown-out, continue to insist that human rights are just airy-fairy concepts that don’t affect our lives?
While we may not be able to eat democracy, the rights that it brings will put the meaning of human into “human beings” and, in the process, keep us alive.
Singapore Democrats
For those who wonder why the SDP spends so much time and effort talking about human rights, your answer came in the form of the Mr Brown episode.
In materialistic Singapore, many question the wisdom of championing for human rights and whether these values resonate with the average Joe. Can you eat civil liberties? How does freedom of speech bring you the next paycheck? Can protests make you rich? – are some of the cynicism expressed whenever the idea of democratic freedoms are raised.
Such political myopia has gotten many a society into trouble.
With the economy running away with the rich leaving the poor poorer, people want desperately to voice out their hardships and rectify the imbalance. But through what avenue? The elections are designed to let the PAP tell the people how powerless they are, civil society is all but dead, and the media…well, just ask Mr Brown. The writer’s essay touched a raw nerve in the Government because it expounded on familiar kitchen-table issues albeit in a manner with tongue firmly in cheek. The Government swiftly responded with its routine one-two counter-punch. One consisted of the usual rebuke that politics should be left to wise men in the PAP and two was the more lethal move of removing the writer’s and/or dissident’s means of communication.
The upshot is that there will be no more discussion, or in this case fun-poking, of the cost of living in Singapore in the press. It was like plucking out the only blade of grass that grew out of the hot, dry desert sand.
But this is PAP at its vintage worst. It deprives society of the means to discuss and debate issues that reflect the views of the people. Once this is done it proceeds to paint the picture it wants the people to see – in this case Singapore as a veritable island of milk and honey, no matter how far removed this is from reality.
Can you see now how freedom of speech fits into the equation? Without political rights, including freedom of the press and the right to free expression, Singaporeans cannot talk about issues that directly affect their everyday lives. Without these rights how do Singaporeans like Mr Brown draw attention to the unfairness of the PAP’s economic policies and perhaps change them?
It is true that pocket-book issues are usually the main factors that go into deciding which party voters pick. But this makes sense only in a democratic system where votes really count. In an undemocratic society, talking about pocket-book issues are meaningless when free speech and a free press don't exist.
Look at it this way: In a nomadic, agrarian society that practices subsistence farming, people are constantly foraging for food and shelter. To them political rights don't matter very much. In modern societies, however, one doesn't just up and go to another spot to set up camp and grow crops. People depend more and more on systems and community organization for their livelihoods.
In such societies, there will inevitably emerge a ruling class that will seek to dominate those around it. For the dominated, remaining focused on food and shelter to the exclusion of protecting their right to have a say in how society is run is to invite exploitation and, ironically, eventual deprivation of one’s basic necessities.
Wanting financial security without protecting one’s political rights is like wanting to eat rice without having the fire to cook it. Seen this way, does it make sense to say that rice is more important than fire? Would the cynics, having seen the latest Brown-out, continue to insist that human rights are just airy-fairy concepts that don’t affect our lives?
While we may not be able to eat democracy, the rights that it brings will put the meaning of human into “human beings” and, in the process, keep us alive.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
PAP don't like political opinions based on emotion
The truth is PAP never called on Mr Brown to support his views, instead they have completely shut him up from ever voicing on any national issues.
They have once again demonstrated how freedom and rights of citizens are easily lost and regaining them are going to be very difficult and impossible given such circumstances.
Singapore’s falling living standards
By Alex Au, Yawning Bread
SINGAPORE - A local Singapore newspaper, Today, just suspended one of its regular columnists after the government gave him a tongue-lashing for his writings about the deteriorating state of the local economy.
Lee Kin Mun, who writes under the pseudonym "Mr Brown", wrote a harsh, though humorous, commentary on June 30 concerning Singapore’s rising cost of living, mentioning that latest official statistics showed that one in every three Singaporean households had suffered a reduction in income over the last five years. The irony, which was not lost on the island state’s government, was that Lee cited official statistics to bolster his argument.
On June 28, the Department of Statistics (DOS) issued a press release with a slew of new data from its general household survey. The most striking result was that only 50% of Singaporean households enjoyed any significant improvement in their income over the five-year period spanning 2000 to 2005.
Moreover, the bottom 10.1% of households reported no or negative income, a marked deterioration from the 2000 level when 8.7% of the population reported they were in the red. The DOS explained that a possible factor for the notable increase was the aging of Singapore's population and that an increasing percentage of the population was retiring.
More striking, perhaps, the 11 to 20 percentile group saw their household incomes fall a whopping 19.7% over the same five year period. On average, these households had S$1,180 (US$744) monthly incomes last year, compared to S$1,470 (US$927) five years previously. On an annualized basis, their average household income fell 4.3% each year. A smaller income fall was recorded for the next up percentile group.
The DOS suggested that the decline in household income in these two groups "was partly caused by the larger number of households with retired persons and no incomes". "It could also be partly due to the higher unemployment in 2005 than 2000 ... and lower income from employment," the statement said, which acknowledges both structural unemployment and depressed wages in less-skilled jobs.
The data on household income notably excludes government hand-outs, which the ruling People’s Action Party doled out just before the general elections they resoundingly won earlier this year. The most recent round of hand-outs, which targeted the lower-income households, was called the "Progress Package". In contrast to the one-third of households which witnessed falling household incomes, the top10% of households saw a 14.8% improvement in theirs. In Singapore dollar terms, their monthly household incomes leapt by an average of S$2,120 (US$1,337) over the period.
The figures show clearly that income inequality in Singapore is increasing rapidly. The DOS reported that the Gini coefficient increased from 0.490 to 0.522 from year 2000 to 2005. The Gini coefficient is a statistical measure of income inequality, whereby the higher the number, the more unequal the distribution.
The Straits Times, Singapore’s government-influenced major English language newspaper, reported that members of parliament were, "not surprised by the survey findings, noting that these reflected the effects of globalization." This response was consistent with the Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts' letter to Today explaining that the government "had told Singaporeans all along, that globalization would stretch out incomes".
However, most Singaporeans would probably have taken "stretch out" to mean that incomes would universally rise but at differential rates, not that a large percentage of the population would get poorer. The increasing cost of living was one of the major issues in the May 2006 general election, but the data from this survey was conspicuously not released in time for the May polls.
Shooting the messenger
In his commentary, Mr Brown alluded to how convenient it was that the survey results, together with recent announcements about increases in electricity rates and taxi fares, have come out after rather than before the elections. "We are very thankful for the timing of all this good news, of course. Just after the elections, for instance," he wrote, tongue in cheek. "It would have been too taxing on the brain if those price increases were announced during the election period, thereby affecting our ability to choose wisely," he wrote.
On July 3, a stern rebuke from the government appeared in the form of a letter published in Today. Signed by Miss Krishnasamy Bhavani, the Press Secretary to the Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts, she denied that the release of the survey data was in any way delayed for political purposes. She took Mr Brown to task for writing a piece that "poured sarcasm on many issues", and claimed that his views "distort the truth".
Characterizing his commentary as "polemics dressed up as analysis", Bhavani accused him of calculating to "encourage cynicism and despondency". "Instead of a diatribe," she continued, Mr Brown "should offer constructive criticism and alternatives. And he should come out from behind his pseudonym to defend his views openly."
This statement echoed the government's growing concerns that anonymous bloggers on the Internet have found a venue to criticize the PAP-led administration in ways which otherwise would be impossible in Singapore’s tightly-controlled society. The government's response has been to try to frame all anonymous posts and blogs as “irresponsible and discreditable”, and is now exploring new laws and regulations to rein them in. Mr Brown also runs one of Singapore's best-known blogs, even though he also writes a regular column for the print newspaper.
But immediately after the government's outburst, which included a reminder to the newspaper that, "It is not the role of journalists or newspapers in Singapore to champion issues, or campaign for or against the government," the editors of Today told Lee his column would be suspended indefinitely. Left with only government-influenced mainstream media, Singaporeans will likely be left to guess if their economic lot is improving or deteriorating until the DOS’s next 5-year survey is released - unless their wallets tell them first.
Alex Au is an independent social and political commentator and freelance writer based in Singapore. He often speaks at public forums on politics, culture and gay issues.
SINGAPORE - A local Singapore newspaper, Today, just suspended one of its regular columnists after the government gave him a tongue-lashing for his writings about the deteriorating state of the local economy.
Lee Kin Mun, who writes under the pseudonym "Mr Brown", wrote a harsh, though humorous, commentary on June 30 concerning Singapore’s rising cost of living, mentioning that latest official statistics showed that one in every three Singaporean households had suffered a reduction in income over the last five years. The irony, which was not lost on the island state’s government, was that Lee cited official statistics to bolster his argument.
On June 28, the Department of Statistics (DOS) issued a press release with a slew of new data from its general household survey. The most striking result was that only 50% of Singaporean households enjoyed any significant improvement in their income over the five-year period spanning 2000 to 2005.
Moreover, the bottom 10.1% of households reported no or negative income, a marked deterioration from the 2000 level when 8.7% of the population reported they were in the red. The DOS explained that a possible factor for the notable increase was the aging of Singapore's population and that an increasing percentage of the population was retiring.
More striking, perhaps, the 11 to 20 percentile group saw their household incomes fall a whopping 19.7% over the same five year period. On average, these households had S$1,180 (US$744) monthly incomes last year, compared to S$1,470 (US$927) five years previously. On an annualized basis, their average household income fell 4.3% each year. A smaller income fall was recorded for the next up percentile group.
The DOS suggested that the decline in household income in these two groups "was partly caused by the larger number of households with retired persons and no incomes". "It could also be partly due to the higher unemployment in 2005 than 2000 ... and lower income from employment," the statement said, which acknowledges both structural unemployment and depressed wages in less-skilled jobs.
The data on household income notably excludes government hand-outs, which the ruling People’s Action Party doled out just before the general elections they resoundingly won earlier this year. The most recent round of hand-outs, which targeted the lower-income households, was called the "Progress Package". In contrast to the one-third of households which witnessed falling household incomes, the top10% of households saw a 14.8% improvement in theirs. In Singapore dollar terms, their monthly household incomes leapt by an average of S$2,120 (US$1,337) over the period.
The figures show clearly that income inequality in Singapore is increasing rapidly. The DOS reported that the Gini coefficient increased from 0.490 to 0.522 from year 2000 to 2005. The Gini coefficient is a statistical measure of income inequality, whereby the higher the number, the more unequal the distribution.
The Straits Times, Singapore’s government-influenced major English language newspaper, reported that members of parliament were, "not surprised by the survey findings, noting that these reflected the effects of globalization." This response was consistent with the Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts' letter to Today explaining that the government "had told Singaporeans all along, that globalization would stretch out incomes".
However, most Singaporeans would probably have taken "stretch out" to mean that incomes would universally rise but at differential rates, not that a large percentage of the population would get poorer. The increasing cost of living was one of the major issues in the May 2006 general election, but the data from this survey was conspicuously not released in time for the May polls.
Shooting the messenger
In his commentary, Mr Brown alluded to how convenient it was that the survey results, together with recent announcements about increases in electricity rates and taxi fares, have come out after rather than before the elections. "We are very thankful for the timing of all this good news, of course. Just after the elections, for instance," he wrote, tongue in cheek. "It would have been too taxing on the brain if those price increases were announced during the election period, thereby affecting our ability to choose wisely," he wrote.
On July 3, a stern rebuke from the government appeared in the form of a letter published in Today. Signed by Miss Krishnasamy Bhavani, the Press Secretary to the Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts, she denied that the release of the survey data was in any way delayed for political purposes. She took Mr Brown to task for writing a piece that "poured sarcasm on many issues", and claimed that his views "distort the truth".
Characterizing his commentary as "polemics dressed up as analysis", Bhavani accused him of calculating to "encourage cynicism and despondency". "Instead of a diatribe," she continued, Mr Brown "should offer constructive criticism and alternatives. And he should come out from behind his pseudonym to defend his views openly."
This statement echoed the government's growing concerns that anonymous bloggers on the Internet have found a venue to criticize the PAP-led administration in ways which otherwise would be impossible in Singapore’s tightly-controlled society. The government's response has been to try to frame all anonymous posts and blogs as “irresponsible and discreditable”, and is now exploring new laws and regulations to rein them in. Mr Brown also runs one of Singapore's best-known blogs, even though he also writes a regular column for the print newspaper.
But immediately after the government's outburst, which included a reminder to the newspaper that, "It is not the role of journalists or newspapers in Singapore to champion issues, or campaign for or against the government," the editors of Today told Lee his column would be suspended indefinitely. Left with only government-influenced mainstream media, Singaporeans will likely be left to guess if their economic lot is improving or deteriorating until the DOS’s next 5-year survey is released - unless their wallets tell them first.
Alex Au is an independent social and political commentator and freelance writer based in Singapore. He often speaks at public forums on politics, culture and gay issues.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Sad day for free speech
The day we'’ve been fearing for quite sometime has finally arrived. Newspaper TODAY has announced it has suspended Mr Brown column for his freedom of speech.
Most of you readers may be unaware of the seriousness of this matter, but PAP has once again succeeded in hijacking our free expression.
They know how ridiculous it is to say that people are free to say whatever they want but when the public criticises the government for high cost of living, suddenly it becomes against their rule.
They also know by suspending such a high profile blogger it could back fire the press and the government.
They don'’t care. They are simply too powerful and they are obviously pretty good at hyping up their political agenda behind everything that gets in their way and hoping to silence critic that will drive up support among the intolerant minority.
Talking won'’t do it. We need to defeat these people and boycott their sources where it hurts most.
Get a blog and Fight back!
Most of you readers may be unaware of the seriousness of this matter, but PAP has once again succeeded in hijacking our free expression.
They know how ridiculous it is to say that people are free to say whatever they want but when the public criticises the government for high cost of living, suddenly it becomes against their rule.
They also know by suspending such a high profile blogger it could back fire the press and the government.
They don'’t care. They are simply too powerful and they are obviously pretty good at hyping up their political agenda behind everything that gets in their way and hoping to silence critic that will drive up support among the intolerant minority.
Talking won'’t do it. We need to defeat these people and boycott their sources where it hurts most.
Get a blog and Fight back!
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Lee Hsien Loong's Greed
Salary as Prime Minister $2million yearly
Salary as Finance Minister $1.2million yearly
Variable Bonus: 6months salary minimum yearly
Full Medical Benefits - Private Specialist Consultant on regular standby - Yearly cost to tax payers $200,000
Security cost: Approximately $1.5million yearly
First class travel and stays at top hotels when he travels on business trips
-from unOfficial Yeo Cheow Tong Website
Salary as Finance Minister $1.2million yearly
Variable Bonus: 6months salary minimum yearly
Full Medical Benefits - Private Specialist Consultant on regular standby - Yearly cost to tax payers $200,000
Security cost: Approximately $1.5million yearly
First class travel and stays at top hotels when he travels on business trips
-from unOfficial Yeo Cheow Tong Website
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Lee Kuan Yew gets bitch slapped by Thais
Thai govt downplay Singapore statesman's criticism on Thai politic
Thai government have downplayed former Singapore's former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's criticism of Thai politics in an article in Forbes magazine.
Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon said what Lee wanted to point out in the article is that compromising is an alternative to end the country's political conflict.
He said that he has assigned the Thai Embassy in Singapore to follow up on this matter and inform the Singaporean leader the complexity of Thailand's political situation.
Lee wrote an article comparing and analyzing Thailand political situation with Iraq's. He said that authorities have to implement this subject carefully as he fears that it may affect the bilateral relationship of both countries.
Meanwhile Deputy Commerce Minister Preecha Laohapongchana on Thursday seemed to shrug off criticism by Singapore's former premier, saying that Thailand knew well and were well aware of how to deal with the current political and economic situation.
Preecha said he disagreed Singapore senior statesman. He chose to differ, and pointed out that Thailand's economic and political systems are clearly separated.
However, he conceded that the current political uncertainties had affected, "to some extent," confidence among both local and foreign entrepreneurs.
To restore that confidence, the caretaker government had closely monitored the trade and investment climate and tried to give entrepreneurs a proper understanding of the situation.
In addition Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister Somkid Jatusripitak and many cabinet members had gone "on the road" to explain Thai economic conditions to foreign investors.
He believed that Thailand's political and uncertainties would ease once the general election is held and a new government is formed. The foreign investors would then return to invest in the kingdom again.
The Nation
Thai government have downplayed former Singapore's former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's criticism of Thai politics in an article in Forbes magazine.
Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon said what Lee wanted to point out in the article is that compromising is an alternative to end the country's political conflict.
He said that he has assigned the Thai Embassy in Singapore to follow up on this matter and inform the Singaporean leader the complexity of Thailand's political situation.
Lee wrote an article comparing and analyzing Thailand political situation with Iraq's. He said that authorities have to implement this subject carefully as he fears that it may affect the bilateral relationship of both countries.
Meanwhile Deputy Commerce Minister Preecha Laohapongchana on Thursday seemed to shrug off criticism by Singapore's former premier, saying that Thailand knew well and were well aware of how to deal with the current political and economic situation.
Preecha said he disagreed Singapore senior statesman. He chose to differ, and pointed out that Thailand's economic and political systems are clearly separated.
However, he conceded that the current political uncertainties had affected, "to some extent," confidence among both local and foreign entrepreneurs.
To restore that confidence, the caretaker government had closely monitored the trade and investment climate and tried to give entrepreneurs a proper understanding of the situation.
In addition Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister Somkid Jatusripitak and many cabinet members had gone "on the road" to explain Thai economic conditions to foreign investors.
He believed that Thailand's political and uncertainties would ease once the general election is held and a new government is formed. The foreign investors would then return to invest in the kingdom again.
The Nation