TR EMERITUS

Our letter to the Editor of TODAY Online yesterday received a response. To remind readers my letter referred to an article published in TODAY dated 24 May 2020 entitled “Members who resigned, were expelled ‘no big deal’ for Progress Singapore Party: Tan Cheng Bock”. TODAY said in the body of its article ; “Back in 2011, the party founded by Mr Kenneth Jeyaretnam saw a mass resignation of nine members“ Like most state media articles about the Opposition, this and the story about members leaving Tan Cheng Bock’s party was just part of the PAP’s strategy of portraying the Opposition as a hopelessly fractious bunch, always squabbling both internally and externally. In doing so it gives credence to a group of serial professional party hoppers, some of whom, like Hazel Poa, feature in both events, even though they are nine years apart . To say that the Reform Party was founded by me is also clearly untrue. By publishing this fake news the state media was just trying to write JBJ out of history, which has been the PAP’s aim since he died in 2008, and suggest that the Reform Party is a personal vehicle. The Chair and I wrote to Today and received a reply. They have changed the word “founded” to “headed“. They also published a correction notice: CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story by CNA said that “in 2011, the party founded by Mr Kenneth Jeyaretnam saw a mass :”. This is incorrect. It should have been the party “headed” by Mr Kenneth Jeyaretnam. We apologise for the error. While I am one of the strongest opponents of the Protection from Online Falsehood and Manipulation Act (POFMA), which I view as an attempt by the Government to stifle criticism and prevent the expression of opposing views, the fact that TODAY backed down after I threatened to ask the Minister to issue a Correction Notice, shows that it can and should be made to work both ways. We need to prevent Ministers like Josephine Teo talking cock because they feel secure that Singaporeans will be intimidated by the POFMA legislation into not challenging them. I have personal experience of the difficulty of getting the state media to correct fake news. In the run-up to the 2011 election Tessa Wong, then a journalist with the Straits Times but who has now joined the BBC, to its detriment. She ran a story about Alec Tok, a member who left to join SDP because they promised him an SMC, claiming that he left because I was forcing him to retrospectively conform to a set of Central Executive Committee (CEC) protocols he had never seen. When I proved to Tessa that Alec Tok had in fact helped to draft the CEC protocols, she just amended the original article but left two versions on the internet. She also said that the Straits Times would not put any notice up apologising and saying they had amended the article. With POFMA it is at least theoretically possible to use the Government’s own weapon of repression against them, hopefully hoisting them with their own petard, so to speak. Lee Hsien Loong and his minions want to ensure that young Singaporeans and new citizens are kept unaware of JBJ’s special place in Singapore’s history and his breaking of the PAP’s monopoly back in 1981.That rewriting of history began with LHL’s condolence letter to me and my brother, where he accused my father of having “sought by all means to demolish the PAP and our system of government.” Ironically POFMA has become a weapon to prevent this.   Kenneth Jeyaretnam Secretary General, Reform Party      Read More →

The question uppermost in my mind is why is the task force led by politicians and not epidemiologist or even doctors? If the priority is to save lives, then people in the medical field are best qualified to lead. Yes, there are logistical and political considerations, like not enough mask, but that should be a secondary consideration. If it makes sense to wear mask, as the 4 doctors said, then it’s up to the politicians to find mask, or say they do not have enough, and let the task force further advise. It is not far fetch to say the task force lead by doctors will likely advise cloth mask or self made mask, rather than “no need to wear mask”, which may well have been the difference between a longer and and a shorter lockdown and the drawdown of tens of billions of taxpayers money. On the other hand, when the task force is led by politicians, there is always the tendency to make sure they come out of the exercise shoring up their political standing, at least, not damage it. This is likely the case with the mask, bearing in mind that there isn’t enough mask, this task force had to balance between not losing political point and doing the safe thing. In the end, they veered towards saving their political skin. If they weren’t politicians who also have to contest for votes, they may well have admitted their shortcoming of not being able to supply enough mask and ask people to use cloth mask or make their own, case close. But no, they are politicians who have a political agenda and they need to look good and can’t admit to such a shortcoming. So, the tall excuse of no need to wear mask, and better to reserve for the frontline etc, which did more harm than good. So, that’s the elephant in the room, which Ben did not address. In fact, that’s the main point in Tan Meng Wah’s post. Given Ben’s long expose, it’s telling that he did not once mention this point—because TMW is spot on: that the PAP thought they would nail the pandemic given their experience with SARS and the generally conformist nature of the people, and therefore win votes for the election round the corner. But that decision backfired big time. The decision to use politicians for the task force is best left forgotten lest it opens up a debate that can’t be defended convincingly. But instead, he scrutinizes the technicalities which, to me, is a red herring and misses the point. But that’s my guess, I may be wrong, would be happy if Ben would enlighten us. But there is something about his post that come across as not being sincere. I mean, if he is concerned that his “boys and girls” are being misled, he can have a whole lesson on TMW’s post in class, no need to publicly post his concerns on Facebook, and who’s to say all his students will read his post? And why the need to even mention his employer and that what he is writing on his Facebook post is his personal opinion? Who would assume otherwise? But it’s more than probable that his post didn’t do his standing in his employer’s eyes, any harm.   Foong Swee Fong          Read More →

Glad to know that there has been a progress in our stockpile of face masks recently. But where was the stockpile before, for a government which claimed to have had 17 years of preparation after SARS? After the dramatic U-turn on masks amongst other things on 3 April, it did not take private businesses long to bring in an abundant supply of face masks of all kinds. Today face masks are on sale throughout Singapore. If only Singaporeans had been fed the correct information on face masks in early February, private business would soon have plugged the GAP left by our incompetent government on masks. It is a great pity that the great majority of Singaporeans lost the defence of using the face masks for 2 and a half months! If only! We would not be having over 32 000 coronavirus cases today!   Lim Tean      Read More →