TR EMERITUS

Charlie Rose Show, 15 April 2010 CHARLIE ROSE:  Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is here.  He is in the United States this week for the nuclear security summit and for meetings with American officials, including the secretary of state.         He’s been prime minister since 2004.  He is only the city state’s third prime minister.  He is the son of Lee Kwan Yue, Singapore’s founding father.  I am pleased to have him back on this broadcast with me while he’s making this visit to Washington.  Welcome.  LEE HSIEN LOONG:  Hello.  CHARLIE ROSE:  Tell me what you think was accomplished at this summit of 46 nations.  LEE HSIEN LOONG:  I think President Obama did the world a service.  This is an issue, nuclear security and nuclear terrorism, which is important but not urgent.  It’s not something which we have to solve overnight, but it’s a problem which is a real problem, and if we don’t do something about it, some time, some place something disastrous will happen.         And he managed to get many leaders together, focus their minds, put on the table what they are able to do, what they are planning to do further to secure the nuclear materials and transit and trade and smuggling of these materials, and commit to take further steps together to make the world a safer place.  CHARLIE ROSE:  So over the next four years, the goal is to make sure that they know where all the nuclear weapons are, they can make sure that they’re safe and not likely to fall in the hands of terrorism?  LEE HSIEN LOONG:  Well, the nuclear weapons, the loose nukes, are the first problem, because that’s -- if I were a terrorist, that’s the first thing I’d look for.  CHARLIE ROSE:  Look for the loose nukes.  LEE HSIEN LOONG:  Yes.  But even short of the loose nukes, if you can find highly enriched uranium, you might find people smart enough to put that together into a bomb.  There’s enough information on the Internet to make a good stab at it.  Read rest of transcript here.  Read More →

Written by Our Correspondent Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was forced to defend his administration's frequent use of defamatory lawsuits against the foreign media during an interview on the Charlie Rose Show, a TV talkshow in the United States where he is currently on official visit at the Nuclear Summit. Last month, the Singapore High Court fined International Herald Tribune (IHT) an astonishing $160,000 for defaming three Singapore leaders – Lee Hsien Loong, Goh Chok Tong and Lee Kuan Yew in an article published a month ago. The libellous article contained only one sentence about Singapore stating the fact that PM Lee is the son of MM Lee: “The list of Asian countries with governments headed by the offspring or spouses of former leaders is striking: Pakistan has Prime Minister Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto, herself the daughter of the executed former leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Bangladesh has Sheikh Hasina, daughter of the murdered first prime minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman . In Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib Razak is the son of the second prime minister, Abdul Razak. Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong is Lee Kuan Yew’s son. In Kim Il-sung’s son Kim Jong-il commands party, army and country and waiting in the wings is his son Kim Jong-un.” [Source: Are political dynasties good or bad?] Most tellingly, no other Asian leaders mentioned in the above paragraph has found it necessary to sue IHT including North Korea dictator Kim Jong IL. The lawsuit prompted Mr Jean-François Julliard, the Secretary-General of international media watchdog Reporters without Borders to write an open letter to PM Lee in protest: “A foreign news organisation has yet again been forced to apologise to you and your father and pay you a large sum of money for publishing an article you did not like. This time it is the New York Times Co. that is a victim of this double punishment because of a compliant judicial system that always rules in favour of you and your family in all the lawsuits you bring against foreign news media.” As expected, PM Lee did not reply and choose to defend his actions on the Charlie Rose Show which his father, PAP strongman Lee Kuan Yew had appeared on several occasions in the past as well. When Charlie Rose commented that PM Lee "seem to be sensitive to the issue of what's called nepotism", he replied: "The whole of our system is founded on a basic concept of meritocracy. You are where you are because you are the best man for the job, and not because of your connections or your parents or your relatives. And if anybody doubts that I as Prime Minister am here not because I'm the best man for the job but because my father fixed it, or that my wife runs Temasek because I put her there and not because she's the best woman for the job, then my entire credibility and moral authority is destroyed because I'm not fit to be where I am." PM Lee is the eldest son of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's first Prime Minister from 1959 to 1990. His wife Ho Ching heads Temasek Holdings while his father is the Chairman of GIC. The two Singapore sovereign wealth funds manage billions of dollars of national reserves and have come under intense scrutiny of late after reportedly losing a significant proportion of it in failed overseas investments last year. The extent of the loss is still not revealed to this very day. PM Lee added that it is a basic "Confucian" precept that a leader must have the "moral right" before the right decisions can be made: "Only when you have the moral right then can you govern and make the country right. In Singapore, people expect that. And if there's any doubt that this is so, and people believe that I'm there because my father fixed it, or the whole system is just make-believe, then the system would come down." Since coming to power in 1959, the PAP has used its position of incumbency to subvert and control all institutions of the state such as the media, bureaucracy and civil society. Repressive laws are put in place to curtail the political and civil liberties of Singaporeans as guaranteed under the Constitution. The opposition is silenced by a series of punitive defamatory lawsuits to bankrupt them in order to prevent them from contesting the polls. The electoral system is engineered to perpetuate the political hegemony of the PAP. As such, it controls 82 out of 84 seats in Parliament. There is a secret police (ISD) to monitor the opposition and political dissenters. Even the police has become a tool of the PAP and is used to investigate and criminalize legitimate political activities to instill fear in the citizenry. Such is the "moral right" of the PAP to govern Singapore that respected NGO Human Rights Watch condemned it as a "textbook example of a politically repressive state" in its annual report this year. Though Singapore is a democracy in name, it resembles and functions more like a one-party totalitarian state similar to Kim Jong Il's North Korea. During a speech made during an election rally in 2006, PM Lee threatened to "fix" the opposition if more of them were to get elected into Parliament. PM Lee has forgotten the old adage that "respect must be earned" and is never won by using defamatory lawsuits to silent the detractors.   EDITORS’ NOTE: Please join our Facebook page here and invite your friends to do so to create awareness of the current affairs affecting Singaporeans.     Related articles: >> Reporters without Borders writes in to PM Lee >> Singapore leaders make international headlines again for defamation lawsuit against IHT  Read More →

Written by Our Correspondent The Housing Development Board (HDB) has splurged a massive $3.8 million dollars to "revamp" a gallery equipped with a greater interactive and multi-sensory platform to show off its "achievements". "The HDB gallery provides a canvas for HDB to portray not only the bricks and mortar, but also the heart and soul of public housing," Parliamentary Secretary for National Development Mohamad Maliki Osman said at its opening ceremony at HDB Hub in Toa Payoh, the Straits Times reported yesterday. The new gallery will showcase special features such as a circular 360 degree theatre experience as well as a life-sized hologram believed to be the first in Singapore. HDB was founded in 1960 as a government agency to provide cheap public housing for Singaporeans. More than 85 percent of Singaporeans stayed in 99 year leasehold flats built by HDB. Though the flats were relatively affordable in the early years and had serve its purpose of providing shelter for ordinary Singaporeans, the prices have sky-rocketed lately due to rising demand fueled by immigration in the face of limited supply of new flats. The price of resale flats grew by a 8.2 percent last year hitting a record high with median Cash-over-Valuation (COVs) doubling from $12,000 to $24,000 in the last quarter alone. Despite evidence showing otherwise, HDB continues to insist that public housing remain "affordable" to Singaporeans. National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan even lashed out at Singaporeans for being "fussy" and having "unrealistic" expectations about HDB flats. According to HDB, it expects visitors to the gallery to include students and delegates from other countries here to study Singapore's housing programmes. It is still too early for HDB to rest on its laurels. Much more needs to be done to ensure that the next generation of Singaporeans will be able to afford a home of their own and have enough savings for their retirement at the same time. At current prices, many Singaporeans will have depleted their life savings just to pay for the mortgage loans of these over-priced flats. The $3.8 million dollars could be better spent on providing more housing subsidies for needy Singaporeans. Generous self-praise is no praise really. HDB should remember that it is funded utimately by Singapore taxpayers. It is a public statutory board and not a private developer.   EDITORS’ NOTE: Please join our Facebook page here and invite your friends to do so to create awareness of the current affairs affecting Singaporeans.    Read More →