TR EMERITUS

By Lawrence Pek Even though Singapore is a Democratic Country, I am concerned that there little if not, no concept of Separation of Powers, which is a very critical but common trait of any democratic country. Please allow me to quickly introduce the concept to you and the basis of my concerns with application to my homeland, Singapore. In Political Science 101, you will be introduced to the concept of Separation of Powers – simply under this model, the state can be divided into branches or estates, each with separate and independent powers and areas of responsibility. The normal division of such estates is into an Executive, a Legislature, and a Judiciary. The Separation of Powers is designed to distribute authority away from the Executive Branch - an attempt to preserve Individual Liberty in response to tyrannical leadership throughout history. The Executive Officer is not supposed to make laws (the role of the Legislature), or interpret them (the role of the judiciary). The role of the executive is to enforce the law as written by the legislature and interpreted by the judicial system. The intentions for any state to adopt such separation are to ensure Personal Liberty, Check and Balances and critically, the Distribution of Authority (away from the Executive Branch). Personal Liberty Even though there are several intense discussion and study of Liberty and Liberalism, in the simplest form, the individualist theory of government holds that the state should protect the liberty of individuals to act as they wish as long as they do not infringe upon the liberties of others. The right to assembly, free speech and expression is covered under each and every citizen’s Personal Liberty. Checks and Balances Any 1 of the 3 branches of government (Judiciary, Legislative or Executive) should never be given supreme powers. Further to induce cooperation between these branches, they are effectively given the same quantum of powers, despite their roles and governance being different. As an example – the Executive Branch will not have any role, authority to decide on the Structure, Operations or Decisions from the Judiciary. Upon the passing of a Bill (Laws) by the Legislative, they will not have a say on how the Executive Branch implement and enforce these Laws. Below is a quick example of how the United States of America which the Executive and Legislative Branches of Government clearly demarcates their Roles and Responsibilities. You will be clear about WHAT is separated and hence you can formulate yourself, WHY it is separated. Above and beyond the Separation of Powers, the United States has in place several other contingencies which ensure the sustainability and continuity of their way of life. Legislative Branch Executive Branch Makes All the Laws Executes All the Laws Controls all the Monies – Makes the Budget, Taxes, Borrows or Lend Execute the spending authorized by the Legislature Sets, Oversees, Investigate all the Rules for the Executive and its Officers Preserve and Protect the Constitution, Faithfully executes all the laws of the United States. Only the Legislature can Declare War and Martial Law Controls the Military (Commander-In-Chief) Confirms the Head of the Executive Branch and Judiciary Officers (Judges) Creates Treaties, Appoints (Recommends) Judges and Other Executive Heads Even though we often see conflicts between the Executive and Legislative Branches, (The Presidency and Its Cabinet vs. Congress), we have to admit that the strength, the core and the spirit of the American culture exists in part due to The Way its Politics is Structured. In the Singapore Context One of the critical issues which Modern Singapore faces now is the assumption that all the Organs of Government are under the directions of the Ruling Party, the PAP. The key basis of my assumption is that the Head of each and every Ministry is helmed by a Key PAP leader. The People Association (PA) which runs all the Town Councils, Grassroots Organization, which directly impacts the daily lives of its citizens is also very much under the preview of the PAP. The average Singapore citizen will be hard pressed to make this differentiation in Singapore, simply not because such demarcation do not exists but rather, the lines are blurred b/w Government Organs and the Ruling Party. Further it is always those Few Good Men from the PAP, which helms the Key Positions both in Government as well as the Legislature. The Electorate and the Election Process Singapore maybe a 1st World Economy with World Class Process and Brands, but its People is Uneducated, Under Exposed and has been more often than not, accused of being Apathetic. The common man is often described as being uncaring, disinterested and aloof on all matters political. Even though these assumptions may be true, but let’s ask ourselves, Why is it so? Can it change? The Singapore Electorate needs to clearly understand what options exists, that it is the government’s role to take care of its people, move the economy forward and protect the very constitution which is swore to preserve and protect. The Government Powers are given to it by its people, in order for it to organize structure, plan and execute its roles and responsibility back to its citizenry. The gap which has never been filled (many do not even understand it exists) is due to the fact that the only news paper (government backed Main Stream Media) – The Straits Time (with circulation of over 500,000 daily) is constantly performing the role of the government’s mouthpiece. Its justification (maybe to itself) is to ensure social cohesiveness and stability. It does not independently assess the merits of any government policies, does not relentless pursue the truth of alternative stories, options or opinions, nor does it sees itself as having this burden. The burden of Education of what is possible; of what are the options to its readership. The Election Process As a simple compare and contrast to the US Election Process (every 4 years) – the key differences with the Singapore process are as follows. Primarily a 2 Party State – You can either vote for Blue (Democrats) or the Red (Republicans), based on what their party platforms are (they will spend a lot of money to gain your awareness), for the person that you trust. This is for each and every of the 52 states in the U.S. You can vote for any Independent (neither Blue nor Red) Candidate, but those are few and far between. Every 4 years, the America gets to vote for their President, however, the prelude is such that both Democrats and Republicans will field their own candidates and allow the electorate to choose which candidate can eventually win the Party Nomination (in the last election, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama fought to the bitter end, while John McCain had a smooth endorsement since his rival back down early in the Republican Nomination). After each Party’s nomination is finalized, then there is the fight for the eventual office of the Oval Office. You effectively decide who will head up the Legislative Branch, the President of the United States. The Process was designed so that the electorate has a choice, by his / her own vote to decide on either the candidate or the party (platforms). The issues are clear, the candidate campaigns hard for votes and almost everything is fairly transparent and accountable. Virtually, everything that I have described above do not exists in Singapore. At this point, I will choose not to elaborate further on our current election process in that I disagree with the terms and condition which is exists and implemented. If it is my hypothetical assumption that the rules of elections is designed to keep the ruling party in power, it is therefore designed to reduce the chances of the opposition from gaining a majority in parliament. It is therefore reasonable to finally interpolate that the ruling party is reducing or robbing the electorate from its most important crucial rights which is the right to choose who should organize and govern them. In Conclusion The Objective of my article is 2 folds – to highlight, to educate, what a basic Democracy should entail, in its lowest common denominator, what is missing and hence what we could, or rather, we should be expecting. Secondly, if we understand and we want to achieve a state of true democracy, then we need to understand that with Separation of Powers, we need not fear the change of any Ruling Party that merely organizes the Executive Branch, leaving very much the Legislature and the Judiciary intact. The Singapore Miracle created and boasted by the ruling PAP Party has created a country with a unique DNA, one which the Founding Father, with a Few Good Men, deemed to lead the country, creating policies which they think is best for the country. The PAP (or often called the nanny) seems to justify its paternal instincts on the basis that “daddy knows best”, the electorate is still uneducated and immature, that we will never know what we want or what is best for ourselves. I would like to make an assumption as part of my conclusion, that who and how we went about in our years of Nation Building, Cannot and Should not be how we proceed henceforth. The new world order plays by very different rules. We cannot, should not continue with the same culture of paternal supervision and implementations. The initial 44 years of nation building is very much over, the next stages of Singapore should be one of Political Awakening, of Self Preservation and Robust Deliberations. The livelihood and future of Singaporeans are in the very hands of its electorate and not that of its Ruling Party. The Winds of Change are blowing…. Other articles by Lawrence Pek: >> Exposure: The element of change for Singapore and Singaporeans >> A deeper understanding of the “Foreign Talent” issue >> Where is my country going >> Strategies for the next election 2010/11  Read More →

Perfect spin is so elusive Andrew Bolt From: Herald Sun March 05, 2010 12:00AM  POOR Peta Duke. If she hadn't somehow typed the ABC's address on the email she'd actually meant for her boss, she'd be a hero. "You've done it again, girl!" Planning Minister Justin Madden would probably have chortled. "Your plan will do the trick." With emphasis on the word "trick" - as in one more deceit by those pea-and-thimble shysters you now elect in these spin-spin days. You know the kind of thing - stacking committees to produce the "right result", fudging surveys to prompt the longed-for answer, and launching sham inquiries to give your crusading politicians exactly the dodgy conclusion they always wanted. But, alas. Duke, eyes no doubt whirling from another frantic day of spinning in the Brumby Government's media unit, last week accidentally emailed her plans for the Government's latest "trick" to the ABC, and now must pay the price for being caught doing precisely what she's paid to do. Denounced by the suddenly moral Premier, John Brumby, and the suddenly outraged Madden, she was "demoted" to doing, er, what she always does. Paid to spin, and now "punished" as spin, by a minister whose other new title - "Minister for Respect" - is pure spin, too, to trick Indians into thinking this Government is cracking down on racist thugs. It's a circus, folks. You've no doubt heard about Duke's precise "crime" - drawing up a document titled "Minister for Planning Justin Madden's Media Plan" to help her man rig the blocking of a proposed redevelopment of the heritage-listed Windsor Hotel. The problem, she wrote, was that the "Windsor Advisory Committee report is expected to recommend that development go ahead". The solution: "Strategy at this stage is to release it for public comment, as this affects the entire community, and then use those responses as reason to halt it, as we have listened to community views." Well, listened to only the "community views" they were sure they could incite. The Government has since tut-tutted that Duke's email was something it neither wanted or endorsed, being "not professional" and filled with "speculative language". Heavens, they would never do anything so cynical. But they do, and many of you - I'm afraid to say - keep falling for it. Want some examples? Right from the very start of this Labor Government, we got exactly the kind of rigged public consultation Duke proposed a decade later. Remember the Government's plans then to give us five "safe" injecting rooms for the addicts it falsely claimed would otherwise die by the hundreds? It appointed a committee of experts under Prof David Penington who - surprise! - already agreed with the Government's mad scheme, and who commissioned a survey that claimed that two-thirds of residents in the five lucky druggie-packed municipalities agreed, too. Except, of course, the Government never released the survey questions that prompted this highly unlikely support, and it soon dropped the whole idea when it became only too obvious that the public was in fact furiously against it. Later came the Government's even more reckless spinning over our water supplies. Maniacally opposed to building the dam that fast-growing Melbourne clearly needed, it appointed just the kind of committee that would say it was damn right, too. This 2003 committee on Melbourne's water resources was stacked with "experts" sure to share the Government's green ideology - dam-buster Tim Fischer of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Mary Crooks of the Victorian Women's Trust (yes! really!) and a spokesman for the Victorian Council of Social Service. And the Government got the echo it wanted - a committee that called dams "unacceptable", suggested "exploring the drought response strategies adopted by indigenous people", and pooh-poohed even a desalination plant (which Labor then opposed), saying we'd be right until 2050 if we just used a lot less water. Wrong, insane and wrong. Three strikes, but is the Government out for fiddling such a trick? But here I am criticising the apprentice for the sins of the master. If you want a real lesson in salt-the-mine spin, look no further than your Prime Minister. YOU'D think Kevin Rudd actually set the bar with the trick he pulled with the bill of human rights that is Labor policy - a bill that lets Leftist judges bring in the laws that Leftist politicians can't get through parliament. He stacked a committee, led by Jesuit Frank Brennan, and had it do "public consultations" of the kind that were sure to be dominated by the very activists who'd back Labor. And, indeed, Brennan's committee found that 87.4 per cent of the 35,014 submissions it got agreed - goodness, yes - we did need the human rights act the Rudd Government wanted. Which would make you think every sane person backed this idea, right? Ahem: consult now the survey Brennan unguardedly commissioned, that found that whatever Rudd, his committee and their consulted experts thought, two-thirds of Australians were sure their rights were already protected just fine, thanks. Not that this mere detail stopped the committee from telling Rudd his plan was just peachy. Yet Rudd trumped even that effort, and anything John Brumby could dream up, with his 2020 Ideas Summit. Remember that farce of two years ago? Rudd invited 1000 of our "best and brightest" - actually almost all tame Leftists, including 118 members of the GetUp group alone - to give the Government a plan for our future. This was meant to show you that all Australians, or at least the smart ones, agreed with Rudd. Indeed, delegate Sam Mostyn even boasted: "We do represent the whole community." And - like magic - these 1000 "best and brightest" almost unanimously agreed that so many of Labor's policies were fabulous, whether it was fighting "global warming", giving us that bill of rights, creating one-stop childcare centres, reviewing the tax system or assembling fresh armies of bureaucrats. Not one person at Rudd's summit was a declared climate sceptic. Most tellingly, only one even objected to the summit's call for a republic, even though the latest Galaxy poll shows fewer than half of the rest of us want such a thing. BRILLIANT spinning. Fabulous, and better than anything Peta Duke could suggest to our Minister for Respect - yet I'd still have expected voters to have learned by now to see through such flagrant fakery. But, no. There you lot go again, falling for the latest trick of these watch-my-hand slyboots - of appearing sorry for having stuffed up what they'd once pretended to fix. There was Rudd last week, in strife and suddenly admitting his Government deserved a "whacking" because "we haven't been up to the mark so far". And there, almost within hours, were Brumby and South Australian Premier Mike Rann playing the very same trick to turn scorn into sympathy by putting the con in contrition. "We've been not delivering as well as I would have hoped," sighed Brumby.   "We haven't communicated our message well enough," cried Rann. What a great trick, but to have three leaders play it at once forces me to ask young Duke a hard question. Peta, you didn't muck up your emails again, did you - sending to Rudd and Rann advice meant only for Brumby.   Source: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/perfect-spin-is-so-elusive/story-e6frfhqf-1225837126876  Read More →

Written by Our Correspondent Embarrassed by its own ineptitude, incompetence, and impotence during the last few years, PAP spin doctor Chua Mui Hoong has been called upon again to whitewash the disastrous performance of the PAP during the recent parliamentary"debates" on the Budget which is all "sound and fury", but nothing of substance to show of. In other democracies, the lawmakers will debate first before the Budget is finalized and put to a vote. In Singapore, it is the other way round - the Budget is announced and then the MPs pretend to "debate" on it. Isn't this a "wayang"? Even with literally no opposition to speak of in Parliament, the PAP ministers and MPs appear to be completely clueless and out of touch with public sentiments on the ground. In a lengthy commentary titled "Gently, gently does it with political opponents" published in the Straits Times today, Chua Mui Hoong tried desperately to sugarcoat the PAP MPs' juvenile mistakes by portraying them as "gentlemen" to take the heat off them. (Source) If you haven't realized, this is part of a well-thought, comprehensive strategy over the years to shift the style of political engagement in Singapore from a "confrontational" to a "constructive" one for the simple reason that the present PAP MPs cannot stand up to scrutiny and will be demolished flat by eloquent speakers like the late J.B. Jeyaretnam and Dr Chee Soon Juan in Parliament thereby piercing through their fake aura of invincibility forever in the eyes of the people. Remember that one old man kept reminding Singaporeans that his ministers and MPs are the best talents in Singapore and therefore deserving of the highest pay in the world? How can they justify that when they can't even deal with an opposition MP in Parliament? Chua's article is no more than PAP propaganda to paint a positive picture of them as "gentlemanly" politicians and to further reinforce the erroneous public impression that politics must be conducted in a civil manner minus the confrontation. Take for example the following choice of words used by her: 1. Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam is a gentleman. 2. Instead, it was gently, gently does it when he sipped his water, walked to the lectern and began his speech at 1.52pm. When he sat down an hour later, the House applauded. Even MPs most critical of the policy - Mr Low and the PAP's Inderjit Singh - were smiling. 3, Ministerial responses to the opposition have been remarkably benign this debate. Mr Lim Swee Say for example did not react to Mr Low's obvious dig that the labour movement was squeezing workers to be 'cheaper, better, faster'. Instead, he coolly explained the pressures caused by global competition..... 4. Less patronising, less heat, more light. Gentle rebuttals based on facts, without giving ground on fundamental values. Old wine in new bottles? But specially packaged to appeal to a young generation. Ms Chua should cut that crap - she does not speak for the younger generation of Singaporeans who yearn for a genuine debate and not half-baked "wayangs" as such. For the past five decades, the PAP has been using only repressive measures to destroy their political opponents such as the use of ISA to detain them without trial, use of ruinous defamation lawsuits to bankrupt them and laws to prevent them from reaching out to Singaporeans. Let us recall some infamous quotes made by its paramount leader Lee Kuan Yew, courtesy of leewatch: "Anybody who decides to take me on needs to put on knuckle-dusters. If you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try. There is no way you can govern a Chinese society.” - Lee Kuan Yew, The Man and His Ideas, 1997 “If we had considered them serious political figures, we would not have kept them politically alive for so long. We could have bankrupt them earlier.” - Lee Kuan Yew referring to opposition MPs Chiam See Tong and Low Thia Kiang, Straits Times, Sept 14 2003 "I will make him crawl on his bended knees, and beg for mercy.” - Lee Kuan Yew on J. B. Jeyaretnam, as reported by Devan Nair, 1981 And let us not forget the mother of all quotes by his son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong: "Right now we have Low Thia Khiang, Chiam See Tong, Steve Chia. We can deal with them. Suppose you had 10, 15, 20 opposition members in Parliament. Instead of spending my time thinking what is the right policy for Singapore, I'm going to spend all my time thinking what's the right way to fix them, to buy my supporters votes, how can I solve this week's problem and forget about next year's challenges?" - Lee Hsien Loong during a pre-election speech, 2006 With due respect to the three opposition MPs in Parliament, they are hardly good orators or formidable political opponents to begin with and even then, the PAP ministers can still "gabra" and screw up big time like multi-millionaire Minister Lim Swee Say using a lame fable of a "frog" to counter Mr Low Thia Kiang's criticisms of the labor movement: "We never give up....... We are deaf to all these criticisms.....So instead of telling us that low-wage workers are having problems, why not be part of the solution?" Does Ms Chua really consider this type of answer a "gentle rebuttal"? Mr Lim would have been crowned as the clown of the year had he made those remarks in the United States or United Kingdom. Politics is all about passion, committment and confrontation. That is the way it is in the rest of the world. If the PAP MPs cannot take the heat, then they should get out of the kitchen! The PAP ministers are the highest paid politicians in the world! Surely they should be able to articulate themselves well and hold their ground when challenged by the opposition? Ms Chua should seriously go and watch the parliamentary debates of the U.K., Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Hong Kong on Youtube and see how the opposition lawmakers take the ruling party to task. Watch how DAP MP Tony Pua grilled Malaysian PM Najib over his plan to introduce GST, the Hong Kong legislators heckling Chief Executive Donald Tsang for not helping the poor or Taiwanese President Ma Ying-Jeou being jeered and taunted by DPP MPs over his inept handling of the Typhoon Morakot disaster. Only in Singapore do we see such gross ineptitude being labelled, repackaged and spun as "gentle rebuttals" by the Singapore media, described as a "trusted" source of information by Minister Lui Tuck Yew.  Read More →