TR EMERITUS

Agence France-Presse, 5 September 2010 It's tough being an opposition party member in Singapore, but history undergraduate Bernard Chen of the Workers' Party is unfazed as he meets voters, organises events and attends internal meetings. The 24-year-old is part of a new generation of activists fighting the formidable People's Action Party (PAP), which has ruled Singapore for 51 years and currently holds all but two of the 84 seats in parliament. All political parties in Singapore are reporting increased youth involvement as the country prepares for its next general elections, which are only due by February 2012 but are widely expected to be held much earlier. New voter-friendly measures announced by the government, such as caps on immigration following complaints from citizens about a spike in recent years, have further fuelled expectations of an early vote. "The PAP started off as being a minority in government too, so it's all about participating in the process and hoping to win the support of the people," Chen told AFP. One of his pet causes is lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 to enable more members of the Facebook and Twitter generation to take part in politics and -- in his thinking -- support the opposition. Despite getting into occasional trouble with media censors and police, young Singaporeans have indeed become more critical of the PAP on social networking sites, blogs and websites like theonlinecitizen.com and temasekreview.com. Read rest of the article here.  Read More →

Like most people I was studied in the nationalistic pride of reciting my Singapore pledge both at home and at school at an early age. I from then grew to love the Singaporean Pledge with it's deep rooted call for Democracy, Racial Equality and Freedom for our Nation as a whole. Yes I was one of those crazed patriotic Singaporeans that made my family stand up hold their clenched fists to their chest and declare the Singapore Pledge. 30 Years later whilst sitting at home on my country's National Day pondering what had happened why were we still not a full democracy, and why had things turned so far south for the real Singaporeans the children of this land, whose fore-fathers worked and spilled their blood sweat and tears in the the very soil we call home, the children of Singapore whose wife's shoulder the heavy burden of taking care of the Family whilst the Husband spends his night with his Platoon mates, atop a spring bed and a flimsy mattress serving his Reservist. We were slowly but surely being turned into second class citizens in our own land. I asked myself how must the man who wrote The Singapore Pledge feel if he were to be around for this, The man who penned the Singapore Pledge was the late S . Rajaratnam the former Deputy Prime Minister and the first Foreign Minister for Singapore during the climb of Singapore to be the first world country that it is today. So inquisitively I typed his name into my computer and Google Chrome did it's work it brought to me pages and pages of articles written for and by the man himself. However while I immersed myself into his words, his writing, his quotations and his ambitions, I was slowly but surely taken aback and was asking myself was this the man who wrote the Pledge, was this the man who wanted Racial Harmony, was he the one who demanded to build a Democratic Society ? Like a slap across my face his real ambition shone forth from his personal words. “Given a one-party government, the capacity of such a government to act far more independently than if it were harassed by an opposition and by proxies, is obvious. In the game of competitive interference pawns which can behave like bishops and castles and knights can in certain circumstances be extremely inconvenient and very irritating” - (S. Rajaratnam) This was a man who's words we teach our children to recite and adopt like a mantra, but alas he himself was against Democracy, He considered Democracy an inconvenience, he preferred having a one party Government which could act independently without the nuisance of an opposition. How could then one find Democracy in that land, would the people under the rule of such an exclusive and authoritarian Government enjoy Democracy. Did we all these years recite the Pledge of a man who believed that the Democracy was nothing more than a word... The ancient Greeks would surely be tortured with every reading of this mans words, for when they invented the word (Demokratia) it was invented to mean “ the Rule of The People” not the Rule of the Government. The Government was simply an extension of the peoples voice. His words which many believe to have contributed to Racial Harmony could also have been misunderstood, in that the racial harmony he was talking about in the Pledge was nothing more than a collective race, where our Identities are forged into one. This was a man against the different races setting up Mendaki, Chinese Development Assistance Council and Sinda. He was rather of the opinion that race, religion, language should not matter, he was against the promotion of our respective Mother tongues, he rather held the vision of a common Identity without the borders of race. Is that really Racial Harmony or a Marxist Plot to transform us into robots ? Without an Identity without a heritage and without our respective cultures. Is he starting to look like a Marxist to you ?, you would not have thrown your assumption very far. He was indeed a Marxist by training: “In 1937, He went to King's College, London, to pursue a law degree. There he received his political awakening, became fashionably anti-imperial, anti-British, joined the socialist Left Book Club and became a Marxist. “ His contributions have been great, and with due respect to him and his family this is but a study into the man and his pledge. Maybe we would like to rethink what the words we recite so often and hold so dear, actually meant to the man who wrote it.   David Raja   Source: S Rajaratnam on Singapore: From Ideas to Reality Victorian (pen-in-cheek) Vignettes - X by T.Wignesan (S. Rajaratnam : Biography)  Read More →

For the second time in less than a week, PAP strongman Lee Kuan Yew has called on Singaporeans to accept immigration as the country needs immigrants to make up for the population shortfall. Speaking during a community event at Radin Mas in his constituency of Tanjong Pagar GRC, the octogenarian Lee said that Singapore's total fertility rate (TFR) has fallen to 1.22 last year which "reflects the challenge the entire country faces." Lee said that the current immigrants are adults in their 20s to 40s and he hopes that "the immigrants who come here will have more than two children, so maybe the next generation, we may redress the problem." However, Lee fails to address the root cause of Singapore's declining birth rates - it is not because Singaporeans are not keen to have more children, but because of the economic malaise that has enshrouded Singapore thanks to the PAP's failed policies. Stagnant wages and high cost of living especially that of public housing are key reasons why Singaporeans are delaying marriage and starting a family of their own. The newcomers are unlikely to have more than two children as they face the same set of constraints as native Singaporeans as well. To compound the problem, they will grow old in the next twenty to thirty years, thereby imposing a tremendous strain on our public healthcare system. Lee should reveal figures of the TFR of new citizens to substantiate his claims that the PAP's current immigration policy is working. In case we forget, the present population shortfall we are suffering now is an indirect result of Lee's successful "Stop at Two" policy in the 1970s. If the new immigrants refuse to have children in Singapore, or worse, return to their homelands to give birth after earning money here, we will have a ticking time bomb on our hands a few decades down the road.   Please join our Facebook page here and invite your friends to do so to create awareness of the current affairs affecting Singaporeans. Please use our online web form to contact us  Read More →