TR EMERITUS

OPINION The next general election will be a watershed in the history of Singapore. With young Singaporeans joining the electorate and public sentiments turning against the ruling PAP, the opposition stands a fighting chance of denying the PAP its traditional two-third majority in Parliament. An increasing number of Singaporeans including even PAP supporters are starting to accept the idea of a two-party system to ensure the continuing survival and prosperity of Singapore. Being a small nation without any natural resources, human resource is our greatest asset. We need not only one strong ruling party, but one credible opposition or government-in-waiting as well ready to replace the incumbents should they screw up. The PAP's track record over the last few years speaks of the flaws of a one-party system: many policies are hastily implemented without proper discussion and debate in Parliament and neither were the people adequately consulted with disastrous results for the common man in the street who have to bear the brunt of the its mistakes. The immigration policy is one classic example: too many foreigners were allowed into Singapore within too short a period of time and now we end up with a big headache of how to integrate them into our society. The PAP's solution to the problem they have created is one-dimensional: dumping $10 million dollars of taxpayers' monies to conduct free language classes and events to make the newcomers feel welcomed in Singapore. There is an urgent need for an alternative center of power to emerge in Singapore to challenge the PAP and to put an end to its political dominance which is killing Singapore. With Singaporeans more inclined to vote for the opposition now, it should ride on the wave of public support to build a credible alternative to the PAP. Of utmost importance is for the opposition to come together under a common coalition and put forth a common policy platform to Singaporeans without which it can never hope to pose a serious threat to the PAP. The opposition cannot afford to campaign on the tried and tested methods of providing checks and balances to the PAP anymore. While they can always count on 20 to 30 per cent of core supporters who will always cast protest votes, they have to sway the fence-sitters over and to do so, they must come up with a vision for Singapore which is radically different from the PAP's. As past elections have shown, the opposition's voice tends to get diluted amid the cacophony of election fever which distracts the attention of voters from the real issues concerning them. For example, in the 2006 election, the Workers' Party was embroiled in the James Gomez controversy while Singapore's Democratic Party was sued for defaming the government. In the end, Singaporeans still do not know what the opposition can offer them on the eve of the election. To put it bluntly: if the opposition do not come together in the next general election and continues to fight individual battles on their own, they will never be able to achieve any breakthrough and the status quo shall remain. All the opposition parties in Singapore should come together under a coalition like Malaysia's Pakatan Rakyat which allows each party to preserve their own individual entity while giving them a common platform to stand on. We propose the following steps for the opposition to take to increase its chances of taking on the PAP in the next general election: 1. Forge a common alliance - the Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA) is a good platform to begin with. 2. Draft up a common policy framework proposing to Singaporeans changes to be made in the following areas should they come to power: immigration, housing, education, economic, labor policies etc. 3. Come up with a simple slogan which resonates easily with voters, e.g. "Singapore for Singaporeans". 4. Bring the message out to the people via weekly public forums, seminars and exhibitions and use the New Media to reach out to the young voters, e.g. the opposition leaders can take turns to give a short speech on the policies which they propose changing which will be uploaded to Youtube. 5. Repeat their common policy platform again, again and again such that the message is ingrained in the minds of Singaporeans come election day. The opposition has no time to lose. The 9 day election campaign period is too short for them to achieve anything. They have to work the ground right before the battle begin. There is no point participating in the elections just to make your voices heard and be satisfied with not losing the election deposits. To stand a realistic chance of bringing down the PAP behemoth, the opposition has to stand united and speak in one united voice. The Malaysian opposition has taught us an invaluable lesson: they won only 27 seats in the 2004 elections when they contested the elections as individual parties, but 82 seats in the 2008 elections after they come together as one single coalition to fight the Barisan Nasional heads on. If the Islamist PAS and Chinese DAP can work together, why not the Singapore's opposition parties which have a lot more in common than their own petty differences and animosities? The situation is very much in favor of the opposition now: public unhappiness at the PAP is at an all-time high, young Singaporeans are clamoring for change, the New Media is enjoying an increasing readership and more credible candidates are joining the opposition. The opposition only has itself and nobody else to blame if it fails to deny the PAP its two-third majority in the next general election. With a proper electoral strategy and slick marketing to deliver their message across, the opposition should have no problems winning one or two GRCs and a few more SMCs. The onus lies on them to set aside their differences and to work together for a greater common goal.  Read More →

Written by Our Correspondent First it was Pasir Ris residents who protested against the building of rental flats in their constituency and now it is the turn of Tampines residents who were shocked to discover that the empty plot of land in front of Blk 885 along Tampines Street 83 will be used to construct 234 units of rental flats. As expected, HDB made the announcement suddenly without consulting the residents, 80 of whom have submitted a petition to their MP Sin Boon Ann to express their unhappiness and to ask for the construction work to be halted. They have three worries: that the value of their flats will drop, security problems and the rental flats blocking wind to theirs. Mr Sin conducted a half an hour dialogue session with angry residents yesterday afternoon to allay their concerns. He urged Tampines residents to spare a thought for needy Singaporeans in the community as there is a dearth of rental flats to meet rising demands. The construction of the flats will proceed as planned and is scheduled to be completed by the beginning of 2012. It is not known if they will really be rented to Singaporeans or foreign workers eventually. HDB has converted two blocks of flats in Toa Payoh lately to rental flats for foreign workers from the Resort World Sentosa Integrated Resort. Dr Paul Cheung, a former Chief Statistician of Singapore, also proposed HDB to rent out flats to foreign workers who may not be able to afford private apartments during an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of HDB. Tampines GRC is helmed by National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan who is becoming increasingly unpopular among Singaporeans for his housing policies. At least three opposition parties have indicated that they will compete in Tampines GRC in the next general election to give Singaporeans a chance to assess Mr Mah's mixed track record. In response, MM Lee Kuan Yew retorted that Tampines residents must be "daft" if they cast a protest vote against Mr Mah over rising prices of HDB flats which has caused widespread frustration, resentment and anger on the ground. News source: Lianhe Wanbao  Read More →

An extract from The Economist Given that democracy is unlikely to advance,  these days, through the military of economic preponderance of the West, its best hope lies in winning a genuinely open debate. In other words, wavering countries, and sceptical societies, must be convinced that political freedom works best. So how does the case in defence of democracy stand up these days? As many a philosopher has noted, the strongest points to be made in favor of a free political contest are negative. Democracy may not yield perfect policies, but it ought to guard against all manner of ills, ranging from outright tyranny (towards which a "mild" authoritarian can always slide) to larceny at the public expense. Transparency International, a corruption watchdog, says that all but two of the 30 least corrupt countries in the world are democracies (the exceptions are Singapore and Hong Kong, and the are considered semi-democratic). Autocracies tend to occupy higher rankings on the corruption scale and it is easy to see why. Entrenched political elites, untroubled by free and fair elections, can get away more easily with stuffing their pockets. And strongmen often try to maintain their hold on power by relying on public funds to reward their supporters and to buy off their enemies, leading to a huge misallocation of resources. Yet it is easy to find corrupt democracies - indeed, in a ramshackle place like Afghanistan elections sometimes seem to make things worse. Or take the biggest of the ex-Soviet republics. Russia is authoritarian and has a massive problem with corruption; Ukraine is more democratic - the forthcoming elections are a genuine contest for power, with uncertain results - but it too has quite a big corruption problem. What about the argument that economic development, at least in its early stages, is best pursued under a benign despot? Lee Kuan Yew, an ex-prime minister of Singapore, once asserted that democracy leads to "disorderly conduct", disrupting material progress. But there is no evidence that autocracies, on average, grow faster than democracies. For every economicall successful East Asian (former) autocracy like Taiwan or South Koera, there is an Egypt or a Cameroon (or indeed a North Korea or a Myanmar) which is both harsh and sluggish. The link between political systems and growth is hard to establish. Yet there is some evidence that, on average, democracies do better. A study by Morton Halperin, Joseph Siegle and Michael Weinstein for the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), using World Bank data between 1960 and 2001, found that the average annual economic growth rate was 2.3% for democracies and 1.6% for autocracies. Believers in democracy as an engine of progress often make the point that a climate of freedom is most needed in a knowledge-based economy, where independent thinking and innovation are vital. It is surely no accident that every economy in the top 25 of the Global Innovation Index is a democracy, except semi-democratic Singapore and Hong Kong. What about the argument that autocracy creates a modicum of stability without which growth is impossible? In fact, it is not evident that authoritarian countries are more stable than democracies. Quite the contrary. Although democratic politicians spend a lot of time vacillating, arguing and being loud and disagreeable, this can reinforce stability in the medium term; it allows the interests and viewpoints of more people to be heard before action is taken. On the State Fragility Index, which is produced annually by George Mason University and studies variables such as "political effectiveness" and security, democracies tend to do much better than autocracies. Tito's Yugoslavia was stable, as was Saddam Hussein's Iraq - but once the straitjacket that held their systems together came off, the result of a release of pent-up pressure, and a golden opportunity for demagogues bent on mayhem. At the very least, a culture of compromise - coupled with greater accountability and limits on state power - means that democracies are better able to avoid castastrophic mistakes, or criminal cruelty. Bloody nightmares that cost tens of millions of lives, like China's Great Leap Forward or the Soviet Union's forced collectivisation programme, were made possible by the concentration of power in a small group of people who faced no restraint. Liberal democratic governments can make all manner of blunders, but they are less likely to commit mass murder. Amartya Sen, a Nobel prize-winning economist, has famously argued that no country with a free press and fair elections has ever had a large famine. And research done by CFR scholars found that poor autocracies were at least twice as likely as democracies to suffer an economic disaster (defined as a decline of 10% or more in GDP in a year). With no noisy legislatures or robust courts to hold things up, autocracies may be faster and bolder. The are also more accident-prone. For all its frustrations, open and accountable government tends in the long run to produce better policies. This is because no group of mandarins, no matter how enlightened or well-meaning, can claim to be sure of what is best for a complex society. Autocracies tend to be too heavy at the top; although decisions may be more easily taken, the ethos of autocracies - their secrecy and paranoia - makes it harder for alternative views to emerge. Above all, elections make transfer of power legitimate and smooth. Tyrannies may look stable under one strongman; but they can slide into instability, even bloody chaos, if a transitioni goes awry. Free elections also mean that policy mistakes, even bad ones, are more quickly corrected. Fresh ideas can be brought in and politicians thrown out before they grow arrogant. Source: The Economist  Read More →