TR EMERITUS

Dear Speaker of Parliament, I chanced upon an article on ST which I rarely read, except for updates to what is occurring around Singapore on the Home Edition and saw what you told the State Media on “Parliament committed to holding government accountable “. I got a little curious as to how can Parliament hold your party leaders accountable when 83 of 93 seats, including yours are subjected to party whipping while the following list of sticking questions from the previous session of Parliament remain unresolved? 1. Summoning Lee Hsien Yang & Dr Lee Wei Ling to give their side of the story to the 38 Oxley Rd saga. 2. Open a parliamentary enquiry into the appointment of family and friends to key positions such as the AG, DAG & AGO etc. 3. Updating Singaporeans on the outcome of the embarrassing Keppel corruption case & if key stake holders will still be held LIABLE for either the corrupt act itself or “negligence” similar to the AHTC ruling. 4. For your deputy, Charles Chong to be referred to the Committee of Privileges for disciplinary action into the false dissemination of Punggol East Town Council matters. 5. For parliament to convene a constitutional court to look into the systematic discrimination of minorities being unable to assent for Premiership, don hijab as the reserved president has stated her difficulties in concurring with the cabinet to do so. 6. Review of executive actions and controversial bilateral agreements such as the CECA, gerrymandering, population growth and most important of them all, the salary of sovereign wealth fund CEO Mdm Ho Ching. In view of the above circumstances, is Parliament able to extract answers to these contentious issues? Additionally, please advise if Parliament is still a forum for the people and of the people for us to submit queries to, in the event our PAP MPs are unwilling to do so? Sincerely, Dan De Costa      Read More →

Whenever I think of Singapore elections, I’m reminded of a talk that I attended that was given by Kamal Nath, who was India’s transport minister at the time. The host had said something about India’s elections being very messy and Mr. Nath proceeded to go on about how he found it strange that his Singapore counterparts faced an election that involved going up and down a lift. Mr. Nath is not be the only outsider to be baffled by all the interest in our elections. As I’ve said in my last few postings that we must be the only democracy (yes, we are a democracy) on the planet where the governing party fights to try and whitewash parliament and the opposition parties fight to be…opposition. In other democracies, an election is inevitably about fighting to be government. I don’t think its wrong to suggest that we must be the only place around where the opposition celebrates when it wins four seats in an election and the ruling party mourns when it has 84 out of a possible 94 seats. I can imagine every other world leader look at our prime minister with a sense of sarcastic commiseration of “Boo-Hoo, you lost another four seats,” in the same way my school matron looked at me and told me, “Boo-Hoo, you found ONE zit on your face.” Having said all of that, its probably a good thing from a survival point of view that our ruling party goes into an over drive correction type of mode whenever its losses a few seats. It’s a sign that it is at least listening to the electorate and does not take the electorate for granted (though most of us would argue that we would rather the government not wait till the election to listen) and if one were to analyse the election results, one can argue that the ruling party has a reason to worry. The first argument, which I’ve used previously, was summed up by the Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC who munches on Pork on a Ramadan Day, when he said, “Once you go blue, there’s no going back.” Our main opposition party, the Workers’ Party have proven to be exceedingly good at holding onto the seats that they’ve won and that’s despite the ruling party doing everything in the book to make their life miserable. Once a constituency is lost, it’s pretty much lost. The second point that should give the ruling party some concern comes from a table published in the Straits Times, our national daily, which compared how much the ruling party spent in each constituency and how much the opposition spent. The table can be seen below: It goes without saying that the ruling party outspent the opposition by an average margin of two to one and had by most standards a pretty thumping win. Like it or not, elections around the world are increasingly about money. The candidate with the most money has the ability to spend on ads, events and so on. The most prominent example of this are the American elections, where aspiring presidential candidates need to raise funds on a consistent basis in order to stay in the race. While its less pronounced in other parts of the world, money talks at election time. Having said that, Singapore isn’t any part of the world. The ruling party is for the foreseeable future in no danger of being unseated. As such, the power of patronage remains solely in the hands of the ruling party. It is the only party in a position to offer things. So, the first key question that one should ask is why does the ruling party need to spend twice what its underfunded opponents in order to convince people to vote for them? In any other democracy, the candidate needs to work hard to persuade you to give out your vote because, well they may lose and by extension not be able to give out what they promised. In Singapore it’s different. The guy promising you a lift upgrading has the ability to grant it. In case you think your MP won’t have the clout to get you things, the ruling party will send you someone with the clout – look at how the Prime Minister-In-Waiting was sent to East Coast Group Representative Constituency (GRC) just before the election and this was a place where they scrapped through. The second point can be found in Senkang GRC, which fell to the Workers Party. The ruling party fielded a minister, who also happened to be the head of the labour movement. In this constituency, the ruling party outspent the opposition by nearly three to one instead of the average two to one. Yet, they lost. The ruling party has every advantage conceivable. They are the only party with actual resources to make things happen. They have a track record of some competence (even if the pandemic did expose some major lapses). Let’s put it crudely, we all like people who can do things for us. We all like people to throw money at us. Logic has it that when the only guy in the room comes in throwing money at people and still gets rejected, it’s probably because people don’t trust that guy or they suspect something is off behind that generosity. Is the ruling party suffering from the laws of diminishing returns? Whatever it is, the ruling party needs to do some soul searching about its relationship with the voters, who could still reject them despite the fact that they could outspend and offer things the other side couldn’t.   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 →

I suggest the following measures to create meaningful jobs during the economic downturn. 1) Allow each teacher to employ an assistant, working 4 hours a day, and earn $15 per hour, to help monitor the students in the class and studying at home. There are 30,000 teachers in Singapore teaching in primary and secondary schools. This will allow 30,000 jobs to be created. They can go to the unemployed graduates or to the unemployed older workers. They will earn $60 a day or $1,200 per month. They work for 4 hours a day, and can use the other 4 hours for other part time work or to further their skills. These workers can also contribute to the Central Provident Fund. The jobs should be reserved for locals (citizens and permanent residents). These jobs are better than the "safe distancing" jobs that seem to be a waste of time. The teacher can recommend a suitable person to be engaged. This will save the headache of interviewing 30,000 workers. The teacher can also provide the supervision of the teaching assistants. When the economy recovers, some of these temporary workers will do other jobs. At that time, it will be possible to allow some teaching assistants to work 8 hours a day and assist two teachers. Do you like this idea?   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →