TR EMERITUS

We are in the Year 2020, and while I shouldn't be surprised that PAP is still using personal attacks to campaign, I am still shocked. We are now in 2020, not 1959 when PAP first took power. Has PAP not learnt to evolve, to catch up with the times? At a time where Singapore's inequality is at one of its highest levels, and while there are Singaporeans who fear losing their jobs, or are facing wage depression, the PAP is still focused on making personal attacks against the opposition - personal attacks against the other political parties which have developed good policies which can improve the lives of Singaporeans - new policies that PAP did not even bother to put in their manifesto. What upsets me is that, PAP's personal attacks work. And it upsets me because it distracts us from the very important issues at hand - the important policies we need to implement in Singapore to protect Singaporeans. You look at how the PAP plays its politics to attack the opposition, you look at Shanmugam, you look at Vivian, they are very good at making others look bad. But are they capable of talking about policies? Or rather, are they able to take on the policy proposals of the other major parties? They cannot. Because Shanmugam spends his time on his Facebook attacking the Progress Singapore Party while Vivian spends his time attacking Chee Soon Juan. It is immensely childish for people who are supposed to represent citizens to do that. What's more, Shanmugam entered politics in 1988. Has he been in politics for so long that all he knows is how to make personal attacks? What we are sorely missing in this election are debates about the policies. While many of us know, in the end, the PAP will become government again, because really, it's not difficult to become government again if you spend your campaigning time making your opponents look bad. But as Singapore faces the question today of how we want Singapore to continue developing, do we want a future where our young people can afford housing? Can the elderly retire? Can people afford healthcare? These are the important issues. And while these are what we should be talking about, the PAP wants us to focus on the personal attacks. And so, we are dragged along by them, we want to see the gossip, a show. In the end, how serious are we in wanting to use this election to make our lives better? How serious are we to make use of this gap in government now during the election, to try to turn things around, for the betterment of our lives and of Singapore? You have PAP politicians who make personal attacks, and want to distract us, but should we allow ourselves to be distracted? There is a reason why election campaigning has been shortened to only 9 or 10 days. Within these short 9 to 10 days, when the PAP use personal attacks, our senses become heightened, we start being shocked by their smears, and before we have time to recover, the vote is held and we vote PAP because they managed to stir our worries. But if we are given another few weeks to settle down and to think, we will start to put the politics aside, and start thinking about more important issues, like policies. We will then start asking questions - why is the PAP politician making personal attacks? Why is his or her opponent so important that he or she has to do this? Actually, what are the policies that matter? Why is the PAP politician not debating policies? Given time, these are the important questions we need to ask. The question of course, is, given that there are only 9 days of campaigning and we are less than a week to the polling day, can we shorten our state of shock, and to start straightening our thoughts? Can we start to focus on what matters, instead of allowing the PAP to shock us into immobilization? Do we want to be excited by the gossips and smears now, only to remember after the election that we should have focused on the important matters like policies, and realize once again, that we have wasted the opportunity to make a difference in our lives? The important thing for us to do now, is to sit ourselves down, and tell ourselves, all these personal attacks, they might be juicy, they might be gossipy, but let's put it aside for another day. We have less than a week to go. What policies do we want? What new ideas do we want for Singapore? Which parties will speak for us in parliament? Which parties will not keep quiet and allow laws to be passed because their party tells them to do so? It is really time for us to focus, and not allow ourselves to be sidetracked. While a short 9 to 10 days of campaigning means it can be easy for us to be pull in the direction the PAP wants to pull us, a short 9 to 10 days also means it is a short enough time, that if we keep ourselves focused, we can focus on really thinking about what matters, what policies matters, and who we need to vote to make our lives matter. Make your vote count.   Roy Ngerng      Read More →

I’m going to side track and shock my more liberal friends by defending a member of the ruling party in Singapore’s General Elections. The member is Mr. Murali Pillai, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bukit Batok Single Member Constituency (Bukit Batok SMC), who apparently said that he didn’t see why MPs were expected to serve the people full time and couldn’t keep their day jobs. This call has given the opposition plenty of opportunity to accuse PAP MP’s like Mr. Murali of being greedy opportunist who are more interested in extra money than in devoting their lives to serving the people. On the face of it, being an MP is a wonderful money-making scheme. If you’re elected into parliament, you get a monthly allowance of some $15,000 (three times the national average) and you are only work one day a week when you meet your constituents and even then, you have an army of grassroots volunteers who are so eager to please, they’ll do all the heavy lifting for you. Given this scenario, it’s only logical for one to take on another job as this job officially pays you to do not very much. When the Worker’s Party made Singapore’s electoral history by winning a single GRC (Group Representation Constituency – a concept unique to Singapore but it’s basically a case of voting for a single MP but getting four) in the 2011 General Election, the first thing that the Workers Party did was to announce that their MPs would only be MPs and live off the single income of an MPs allowance. It was a brilliant political move that was designed to show that the Worker’s Party MPs were going to be dedicated servants of the people as opposed to the ones from the ruling party, who were made to look like they were treating the MPs job as a summer getaway on the tax payers dime. While I get the political master stroke that this move is, I believe that the concept of making people work only one job is faulty. This is especially true in a time where innovations like artificial intelligence (AI) and robots are changing the job market in ways that we never imagined possible. Jobs that we thought of are no longer going to exist. Gone are the days when you joined a single department in a single company for the next fifty years. Tying people down to a single employer at any given time made sense when people worked for a large organization that would take care of them for life. However, in an era where organizations can dump you at a drop of a hat and be praised for creating “shareholder value,” this does not make sense. The only thing this does is to create a sense of insecurity among people and create a generation of neurotics who will do anything to keep onto that ever-precious job. It works beautifully for big time employers who haven’t exactly been good about raising salaries to keep up with inflation. I take the example of Singapore’s migrant worker population as an example. Thanks to the explosion of Covid-19 cases among are migrant worker community, the world became very aware of the sub-human conditions that our migrant workers were being housed in. It took a global pandemic for people to even pretend to understand that there was a gross mismatch in the power between the employers and the employees, which led to a national health crisis. One of the reasons for this mismatch in power between the employer and employee is the fact that the migrant workers are tied to the employers by law. The employer controls their right to stay in Singapore and the migrant worker has to put up with it. An employer can easily terminate the pass of migrant worker for the smallest infringement and choose other workers. By contrast, the migrant worker faces plenty of legal hurdles designed to give jobs to emasculated tin cans sitting in an office jacking off over spreadsheets, should he want to change his (they are mostly men) his employer because the current one is screwing him. I speak as someone who once had to fire 30 of them in a liquidation scenario. There are of course arguments that one has to be careful about conflicts of interest. For example, you cannot expect someone working in Human Resources at Coke to moonlight in the same role at Pepsi. Doing this would put most employers at risk – trade secrets would no longer exist. However, as long as you avoid such situations, there should be no reason why any worker should not be allowed to take a job on the side? I think of one of my best friends, who is a Nepali chef. He used to work for a hotel but on his spare days would cook at other restaurants. Didn’t please his HR but he had a reasonable argument, which was – “I can knowledge when I work other places, which I bring back.” It assumes that the knowledge of an employee is a monopoly of the employer. Contrary to what you might be told by the Singapore government, knowledge is not a static block but a flowing river and when people work in many places and in many different roles, they learn and share best practices. I had a relatively enlightened employer, who allowed me to keep working at the Bistrot. At first it was a little uncomfortable for him when common friend did point out that I was clearly happier in the Bistrot environment than in the office one. However, I had the chance to repay his kindness when I could introduce potential clients to him through people I had known at the restaurant. No sensible businessman who will depend on a single customer, so why should human beings depend on a single employer? The issue with our MPs is not so much a case of them having two well paid jobs. It’s a case of one of the employers not being willing to ask for more value. Mr. Murali is right, why can’t an MP hold down another job. The key here is that in return for the $15,000 monthly allowance, we should make Meet the People sessions every night. The MP can finish his day job at 6pm and then deal with constituents from 8 to 10 at night. That would be worth the money. Making people get tied down in an age of mobility and fluidity is to create slavery to an organization. The last time I checked, slavery was the antithesis to a normal society.   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 →

The one thing that must have caught the People’s Action Party by surprise on Nomination Day was the tactical switch by the Singapore Democratic Party to field Dr Paul Tambyah in Bukit Panjang SMC. Widely expected to anchor the SDP team at Holland-Bukit Timah GRC, Dr Tambyah will instead face off with the PAP’s Liang Eng Hwa, filling in for Dr Teo Ho Pin, who has retired. SDP chairman Dr Tambyah is a political veteran given the recent honour of being elected President of the International Society of Infectious Diseases. The surprise tactical switch to Bukit Panjang SMC should see a hotly contested battle – one that the PAP didn’t see coming. There will also be a rematch between the SDP’s Dr Chee Soon Juan and Murali Pillai of the PAP. Dr Chee hopes to turn the tables on the PAP candidate who beat him in the 2016 Bukit Batok by-election. SDP secretary-general Dr Chee has once again stressed the need for a full-time Member of Parliament. When he made this point in 2016, Minister Grace Fu said: “Dr Chee hopes to be a full-time MP. But you should note he’s not actually giving up a full-time job. As far as I know, he hasn’t held a steady job for many years.” Now, concerning the 10 million population dispute, the PAP has said of Dr Chee: “A leopard does not change its spots. The new Dr Chee – of which there have been many – is still the old Dr Chee.” What else is new? Despite the tough times he has had, Dr Chee said at one rally: If I leave, there will be one less voice against the government . . . I was born Singaporean. I was raised Singaporean. And I will die Singaporean. Will Bukit Batok voters reciprocate by finally sending Dr Chee to Parliament? Isn’t it about time?   Augustine Low      Read More →