TR EMERITUS

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 →

Written by Our Correspondent Workers' Party MP Sylvia Lim pressed DPM Wong Kan Seng to reveal the electoral boundaries at least six months to a year before Nomination Day in Parliament yesterday. The electoral boundaries are under the charge of the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee which will review and redraw the boundaries to reflect "demographic changes" before the election. Ms Lim said that a longer timeframe will give the political parties adequate time to prepare for the elections: "Having good notice will give voters confidence in the boundary redrawing process. It will also give a reasonable time for political parties to do more focused groundwork and consider their candidate line-up," she was quoted as saying in the Straits Times. As the past elections have shown, the electoral boundaries are often announced only in the last minute to throw the opposition off guard. For example, Singapore People's Party Chairman Sin Kek Tong (previously with SDP) won 47.1% of the votes in Braddell Hill SMC in the 1991 elections. He had been working the ground there for six years till it was announced on the eve of the 1997 elections that Braddell Hill has been "absorbed" into Marine Parade GRC under then PM Goh Chok Tong. She also took a dig at the PAP for the rampant gerry-mandering and alteration of boundaries to serve its own partisan interests: "This is especially important because of the unique situation in Singapore where... GRCs can be chopped and changed, and SMCs can be created and dissolved with the stroke of a pen." The electoral boundaries are often changed radically to weaken and dilute areas of strong opposition support. Eunos GRC was won only narrowly by the PAP in the 1988 and 1991 elections. It was dissolved and absorbed into neighboring Aljunied, East Coast and Marine GRC in the 1997 election. Similarly, Cheng San GRC which was hotly contested by the Workers' Party in the 1997 election "vanished" into thin air by the next election without any proper explanation. Mr Wong replied that the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee has not been convened. It is likely to happen only after the Constitution is amended to make certain changes to the electoral system. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced last year to increase the number of single-member constituencies (SMCs) and reduce the size of the Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) ahead of the next general election to allow for more "alternative voices" in Singapore. As the parliamentary "debates" over the last few days have shown, it is pointless to have alternative voices in Parliament so long they remain powerless to effect real changes in the policies. Unless the PAP is denied its traditional two-thirds majority in Parliament or ousted from office altogether, there will be no changes in the disastrous policies they have implemented in the last few years which have caused tremendous hardships and sufferings for ordinary Singaporeans. With public sentiment against the PAP at an all-time high, it is expected to lose a few more single seats and even a GRC in the next election. Some online punters even predict that the PAP will garner less than 50 percent of the popular votes. If the opposition is able to work together and field a team of credible candidates, it is not inconceivable that the PAP loses its two-third majority as the Malaysian political tsunami in 2008 has shown us.  Read More →

Written by Our Correspondent Living up to its reputation as the nation-building press and in another desperate attempt to show that the PAP really "cares" about low-income Singaporeans, the Straits Times put up another hogwash again with the misleading headline - "$460,000 for a family" to create the erroneous impression that the PAP is giving cash handout to each family. (read article here) It quoted Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam as saying: "A low-income family of four can receive transfers from the Government totalling about $460,000 over a lifetime." The statement is patently false as the $460,000 consists of several packages, the majority in the form of subsidies such as childcare and student care subsidies, means-tested subsidies in public hospitals and polyclinics, course fee subsidies for Workforce Development Agency-approved courses and grant provided to Singaporean households upon the purchase of resale flats. This means that the amount will not be used so long the families do not utilize the subsidies. For example, the family will never enjoy the housing grant provided under the $460,000 sum if they do not purchase a resale flat and live in rental flats for their entire lives. Given the sky-rocketing prices of resale flats now, it is doubtful if low-income families will be able to afford them, let alone use the housing grants. Similarly, the means-tested subsidies will be untapped on if they are healthy and do not visit polyclinics and public hospitals. Medical bills are so exorbitant nowadays that some Singaporeans opt to die or commit suicide than to seek medical treatment and hence again the subsidies will be left untouched. Furthermore, some of these "subsidies" are derived from inflated prices. According to feedback from readers, some courses conducted by WDA are "marked up" and to "accommodate" the subsidies. The "help" given to the lower-income Singaporeans by the PAP is most unimaginative and does not address the root source of the problem. It should revamp the entire economy to lessen our dependence on foreign workers and allow Singaporeans to earn a decent wage commensurate with the standard of living here It is highly obnoxious and undignified to make Singaporeans slog like dogs for a meager pay and then "subsidizing" them to make life abit more bearable. Won't this lead to a "crutch mentality" too? Finance Minister Tharman should not simply pluck the figures out of thin air and treat Singaporeans like idiots. He must substantiate his claims with detailed calculations on how he arrive at the magical figure of $460,000. Though Singaporeans have been decried as sheep, donkeys and frogs by PAP leaders, many of them are still able to comprehend simple primary school mathematics.  Read More →