TR EMERITUS

Let’s get to the point, Donald Trump has been a disaster as president. Despite the obvious damage that the virus has done to America (world champion in number of cases and deaths), the Trump has continued to act in what can only be described as “Criminally Stupid,” Instead of differing to medical expertise, he has gone to war against medical experts, refused to wear a mask in public, encouraged large gatherings of his supporters and prescribed drugs that a non-medical professional has no business prescribing. He has admitted to knowing that the virus was highly contagious but then proceeded to make announcements that it was all a hoax. In any normal country, this would have been grounds for a revolution. Yet, despite the obvious, his democratic challenger, Mr. Joe Bidden, the former Vice-President under Barak Obama has only held steady 10-point lead in the polls and despite the polling numbers, nobody is writing off the chances of the Donald to pull off an upset. This election will only be over until its actually over. Part of the reason is simple. Mr. Biden has not exactly been an inspiring candidate. His speeches are at times, cringeworthy, as his “You ain’t black” remarks showed: [LINK] Mr. Biden has tried to take the proverbial high road and avoided talking about Mr. Trump’s obvious flaws, namely the various conflicts of interest between Mr. Trump, his children in the administration and his business interest. While admirable from a text book moral point of view, it has meant that the Biden campaign has not used its most effective tool in sealing the lips of Trump’s team when they’ve gone on the attack against Hunter Biden, the former Vice-President’s son, whom the Trump campaign has accused of corruption. While the evidence linking the former Vice-President to anything dogy is spurious at best, you actually have people thinking that its worth keeping Trump because Biden is corrupt. If only Mr. Biden had openly challenged the Trump about the role of his kids in the administration Luckily for American voters, there is an “alternative” voice that is saying the things that Mr. Biden ought to say. This group calls themselves the “Lincoln Project,” and they have run some of the most devastating hard-hitting advertisements that one wishes Mr. Biden would run. The best part about the Lincoln Project is the fact that they’re all Republicans and you can’t accuse any of them of being part of a left-wing conspiracy. Samples of the ads run by the Lincoln Project can be seen at: here, here and here. In short, Mr. Trump’s worst enemy is not Mr. Biden, it’s the people in his own party that he’s pissed off. These are the guys who have only one thing in mind – getting rid of him at the ballot box. Now, Donald Trump is in many ways an exceptional case. Like him or loath him, he has managed to stir emotions in a manner in which no other politician has been able to do. As such, one might be inclined to suggest that a Lincoln Project propping up anywhere else in the world would be unheard of. However, while the Lincoln Project might only be an extreme example of what happens when there’s an ideological clash in a party, it does happen in places where the politics is less “interesting.” Take Singapore as an example. Our political situation is less fragmented that the American one. We have been run by the same party ever since our independence some 55-years ago and I’ve stated that we have to be the only place where the opposition fights an election with the aim of being, the opposition. Unity in our ruling party seems pretty tight too. You will, for example, not hear of anyone from the ruling party posting anything on Facebook that remotely looks like a disagreement with the official line. However, that might not exactly be the case as Professor’s Cherian George (who is incidentally the brother-in-law of a former minister) and Donald Low have argued in their latest book “PAP vs PAP: The Party’s struggle to adapt to a changing Singapore” As a matter of disclosure, I have not read the book. However, based on the various articles surrounding the book, this not a Lincoln Project style rebellion against the ruling establishment. It is, instead a critique of the ruling party’s ability to adapt to the changing socio-political landscape. A report on the book can be seen at: [LINK] As the report from the Independent (a website that has picked up my postings), rather than being remotely rebellious, it serves a something as a “how to guide” for the ruling party. It seems that writing books that suggests that the scenario on the ground isn’t the scenario that the ruling party says it is; is an act of rebellion and it bars you from participating in discussions, as both Professor’s George and Low found out when they were dropped as speakers on a webinar. Details can be seen at: [LINK] Why is this happening? Surely, the ruling party does understand that both Professor’s George and Low are respected for their views in Singapore and might have a thing or two to add to the public discourse, particularly when they have suggested ways in which the ruling party can keep power in a changing political landscape. The party’s ruling hacks need to sit down to watch the Lincoln Project ads to understand the difference between a rebellion by lifelong party members and constructive criticism from respected academics. This failure to recognize the difference between rebellion and constructive criticism is the best gift that the ruling party can give to aspiring opposition candidates.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →

Singaporeans are constantly bombarded with statistics by the PAP Government showing that their country comes top or near the top in innumerable rankings. Examples include the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the IMD Index of Digital Competitiveness (where Singapore comes second after the US) and the Index of Economic Freedom produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation, where Singapore comes top despite most large companies being state-controlled and 90% of land being owned by the state! Of course the comparison is unfair since Singapore should rightly be compared with major cities and not whole countries, which Singapore is quick to point out when comparisons are made of sporting achievement. Nothing betrays the PAP’s similarity to the totalitarian regimes of China and the former Soviet bloc than the Government’s obsession with Singapore’s global rankings, even to the extent of pouring resources into gaming the indices. Of course high rankings, along with manipulated GDP per capita and growth statistics, are used to justify the obscene salaries paid to Ministers as well as the even more obscene and often secret (in the case of the Prime Minister’s wife) remuneration paid to spouses, relatives and sycophants who are appointed to their posts in a selection process whose methodology remains deliberately obscure. Our national universities are part of this PAP policy of relentlessly gaming international league tables and indices. Both NUS and NTU have moved inexorably up in the rankings of top universities in the last two decades. At least according to the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) rankings where NUS has risen from 30th in 2009 to 11th in 2021, overtaking normally top-ranked universities such as Yale and Princeton. NTU’s rise has been even more meteoric, from 77th place in 2008 to 13th place in 2021. The QS rankings have been heavily criticised for being heavily influenced by subjective rankings from academics in which case it is possible that the prospect of generous salaries and expat packages has influenced the favourable ratings of NUS and NTU, as well as Chinese universities like Tsinghua. Other rankings, like the Times Higher Education (THE) put NUS at 25th and the Shanghai based Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) puts NUS at 80th and NTU at 91st. Going purely by the number of Nobel Prize winners would put Harvard at the top (though Cambridge is top for Physics) while both NUS and NTU have no Nobel Prize winners. The recent Jeremy Fernando sexual assault allegations have raised a lot of question marks over NUS’s, and the Rector of Tembusu College, Tommy Koh’s, lack of transparency and unaccountable slowness in reporting the allegations to the police , in particular the delay between Fernando’s dismissal and the public announcement which was two weeks later. Tommy Koh offered to resign on Facebook but retracted the offer an hour later, just as he retracted his comments about the proportion of children going to school hungry (I remember my father telling me with anger much the same thing) under pressure from the Government who pay his meal ticket. At 82 years old (I remember him from the 1960s when he used to attend parties at my parents’) one wonders why Tommy Koh is still working but he just joins a long line of other superannuated PAP apparatchiks who are allowed to go on drawing million dollar salaries as long as they are useful to the regime. Examples include Chan Heng Chee and Bilahari Kausikan. I am concerned more here with how Jeremy Fernando was hired in the first place and how he was allowed to continue working for ten years. Certainly one would not expect him to be one of the faculty at a university with such a high ranking, albeit from one highly questionable index. His biography shows he got his PhD from the European Graduate School (EGS) which is based in Switzerland and Malta. Anyone can apparently be accepted to do a PhD or Masters provided they pay the fees and most of it is distance learning. EGS is not recognised by the Swiss University Conference and is regarded as a degree mill in the US. It is not ranked by QS, THE or ARWU. Perhaps its attractions to NUS stem from its association with academics like Slavoj Zizek, who has refined the old Communist criticisms of democracy as providing too much freedom in order to praise totalitarian state capitalist regimes like Singapore and China. I wrote about Zizek in “How Lee Kuan Yew and Hitler Both Love Authoritarian Capitalism” EGS certainly seems to be a home for intellectual pseuds and frauds and Jeremy Fernando seems to have mastered the craft of using too many long and convoluted words and phrases to say nothing, or rather to deny that anything has meaning or indeed that there is any reality. He is merely following in the footsteps of his mentor, Jean Baudrillard (he is the Baudrillard Fellow at EGS), who denied reality, the most famous example being his 1991 book “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.” Baudrillard was a member of the Deconstructionist School which originated with the French philosopher Jacques Derrida whose obituary in the Economist said: “There were no arguments, nor really any views either. He would have been the first to admit this. He not only contradicted himself, over and over again, but vehemently resisted any attempt to clarify his ideas. “A critique of what I do”, he said, “is indeed impossible.” One can see why the Deconstructionist approach would be useful to the Government, which controls NUS, since it denies the moral superiority of liberal democracy over authoritarianism and totalitarian dictatorships and indeed of any moral values at all. In fact, Derrida was heavily criticised for supporting another member of the school, Paul De Man, who after his death was revealed to be a supporter of the Nazis and an anti-Semite during WW2. This seems to have led NUS to overlook the fact that Fernando’s work not only smacks of intellectual charlatanism but also seems to border on advocating transgressive and criminal behaviour. Once the assault allegations came to light, state media has lost no time in pointing out that he stated openly in his 2017 book, Why Hasn’t JB [Jean Baudrillard] Already Disappeared?, that ” insemination“ can be a part of teaching and could open up students and teachers to possibilities. Not only does he appear to have been a fake but clearly he was used to getting away with transgressive behaviour without being challenged. The Jeremy Fernando affair suggests that the extremely high ratings assigned to NUS (and undoubtedly NTU as well), putting it above institutions like Princeton and Yale, do not seem to be supported by the quality of the academic faculty or the rigour of the teaching. More worrying, Fernando seems to have been laughing at the university and using the authority conferred on him as a Fellow to engage in possible This is like many of the other high rankings for which the PAP Government claims credit with the help of venal or gullible foreigners. The worst confidence trick is the one perpetrated on Singaporean students who have overpaid for worthless courses, at least in the arts. They should demand their money back. And Tommy Koh, an old family friend, should be put out to pasture.   Kenneth Jeyaretnam * The author blogs at https://kenjeyaretnam.com/ .  Read More →

Many people are not familiar with the concept of probability. I wish to quote an example to illustrate this concept. The death rate in many countries in Europe and North America from covid-19 is more than 500 per million. This is more than 0.5%. It is a high rate. In many countries in Asia, the death rate is around 50 per million. This is a rate of 0.05%. It is a moderate rate. In Singapore, the death rate is 5 per million. It is only 1% of the death rate in Europe. It is a low rate. When the death rate is high, like in Europe, it is necessary to implement lockdown measures and close the economy. When the rate is moderate, it is necessary to take some precautions, but a lockdown is not necessary. The precautions could include wearing of mask in crowded places and safe distancing. When the death rate is low, there is no need to be worried excessively. Certainly a lockdown (or circuit breaker as it is called in Singapore) is rather extreme. It is also not necessary to insist on compulsory wearing of masks or safe distancing. A good approach is to allow the citizens to use their discretion. If they wish to be safe, they can wear a mask. But it is not appropriate to insist on compulsory wearing of mask or safe distancing when the death rate is low. Some people argue that precautionary measures are advisable to prevent an increase in the death rate. They overlook the negative impact of the precautionary measures. A lockdown or circuit breaker will cause harm to the economy and to the livelihood of many people. The harm can be worse than the death caused by covid-19. When things are uncertain, it is better to monitor the situation first. It is not advisable to take extreme measures that have its harmful consequences. We need a more sensible approach towards risk management.   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →