TR EMERITUS

The history and the consequences of Black Death in the 14th Century is well recorded. I want to emphasize two points. 1. The social consequences of the plague [Black Death] on society came to be profound. The high mortality rate resulted in a drastic decline in the labor force. Wages rose for both agricultural and urban workers. The survivors of the Black Death generally had a higher standard of living than before the plague. This was a phenomenon that occurred in both urban and rural areas. The crisis caused by the Black Death led to many changes in the economy, in response to the fall in the population. Because of the labor shortages, there was a move from labor-intensive farming such as cereal to livestock and increase both in industry and agriculture more labor-saving devices employed. [ 1 ] 2. The world was turned upside down by the Black Death. The mental outlook of people changed dramatically. Previously, people assumed that the world was fixed and God-ordained. The Black Death overturned old certainties. As we have seen the plague and its devastation undermined religious orthodoxy and beliefs. People at the time were no longer willing to accept the status quo. This change manifested in the numerous political revolts of the time. [ 1 ] And as I make some comparisons, we should be mindful of the current geo-political landscape, the rise of Trump and Brexit, Modi and Xi. The world was also already moving away from globalization. Covid19 exposed the fumbling governments of the world. And none more so than PAP. From the ‘gold standard’ of confronting the pandemic to being accused of racism. [ SCMP ] [ The Guardian ] It is really funny when you think back to what the PAP response was when asked to restrict the hiring of foreign workers. PM Lee and PAP had warned about xenophobia. That our prosperity depends on more foreign input. Singapore belongs to all he said. Anyone with a critical mind knows that PAP’s economy is dependent on exploiting foreign workers. [ Eastasiaforum ]. It is easy to decipher that the economy is to cater to GLCs/Temasek/GIC even though the SMEs are the ones hiring upto about 70% of workers. After the Little Indian riot on 8 Dec 2013, the workers were repatriated without trial. ‘Minister for Law and Foreign Affairs K. Shanmugam had said earlier that if such cases went to court and the repatriation decision became judicial rather than administrative, then "every foreigner is entitled to stay here at taxpayers' expense, housed here at taxpayers' expense", with cases possibly taking a year to conclude.’ [ ST ] So PAP is not xenophobia at all, is just that they have decided to use administrative tools rather than the judicial route. Is just that we don’t really want to feed these Indian workers if we give them a fair hearing. How much are we spending now? All because of PAP oversight. Now they are beautifying the oversight because their neo-capitalists counterparts realize what PAP is really about. Principles and their high horse morality is naked, not a pretty sight at all. And what did Josephine Teo said about apologising to the migrant workers? “I have not come across one single migrant worker himself that has demanded an apology.” This is a surreal answer, coming from the depths of insincerity. They think the migrants are daft now? Is it not likely given their social position, the migrants would be fearful of being repatriated? And this Chan Chun Sing was laughing at how HK handled the Covid19. LOL. You know, this is the type of hubris that shrouds PAP leadership. Not pride but proud. Not bestowed the wisdom of humility, they are braggarts. The Black Death had changed the economic and political model of the 14th century, from feudalism to the Renaissance. The power of labor and merchants destroyed the aristocrats and nobility. This globalization that had encouraged PAP via Temasek/GIC to subjugate Singaporean workers in order to have better access to India and China no longer holds true. This is a recession that PAP cannot fix given its ideology of elitism and authoritarianism. The PAP model which is the globalization model depends on continuous future growth. The financials that are our assets are a muddled- complicating string of IOUs governments-banks-corporations-labor that depend on interests and principles being paid by future growth. As workers of the world are removed from jobs, as investors have no confidence, as the global community moved away from investing to preserving capital, the PAP model will tank. Many nations are embarking on universal income, they are contemplating nationalization of key private corporations to save jobs (example-SIA), governments running huge debts as the new normal of debt to GDP ratio increases. Whereas, during the 14th century when Black death occurred, the economy could return to ‘normal’ quickly because it was mainly local agriculture and goods, for Covid19 the process will be difficult, and indeed we should watch out for political upheaval on a global scale. Singapore must consolidate, forget about the 5th airport terminal, forget about the increase of mrt lines, increase food security, repatriate capital for universal income and build goods locally to reduce reliance on the global supply chain. Invest in start-ups that can be located in Asean, with conditions of hiring a certain number of Singaporeans. PAP’s model of exporting capital and ever expanding market would no longer work.   BK      Read More →

The New Year message by late Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) in 1982 was to have a wholly Singaporean workforce by 1991. The reason he cited was that it was not desirable socially, politically and economically to depend on a large migrant workforce, citing the examples of France, UK and even West Germany, which had large migrant workforces and were facing huge social problems. Other the other hand, he noted that Japan did all the dirty work and heavy lifting itself and the workers were more productive and society had no social problems or riots. In that new year message, he said that work permits would not be renewed the following year and would be allowed to expire. Thus all non-traditional work permit holders will leave by 31 Dec 1984 except for construction and shipyards which had until 1991 to be wholly Singaporean. Companies had to upgrade, mechanize, automate, computerize, make better use of their manpower, or relocate. A few years earlier, in the 70s, then finance minister, Hon Sui Sen also said that having a large foreign workforce was not desirable, it was better to depend on ourselves. But despite our founding father’s reservations about foreign workforce, we are today deluged with foreigners. What happened? A few years after LKY’s bold pronouncements in 1982, Singapore experienced its first major recession. Economic growth suddenly contracted to negative in 1985 after enjoying rampant growth the past two decades, including the preceding year. This was due to a combination of factors including high labour cost, over building in the preceding few years resulting in a property glut and a recession in the western economies. Singapore set up an economic review committee chaired by then Minister of State for Trade and Industry, a rather young Lee Hsien Loong, and responded by slashing labour cost, cutting corporate tax and personal income tax of high earners, employers contribution of Central Provident Fund as well as deregulating and privatizing (no doubt influenced by the Neo-liberal movement in the US and UK) many government entities except those related to defence and utilities. As a result, Singapore Airlines, DBS, SingTel, SMRT, Capitaland, Keppel Corp, Semb Corp and etc, as we know them today, were spawned and their holding company, Temasek, grew into a behemoth. Economic growth slowly picked up in 1986 and from then on growth picked up again. But in the process, the inflow of foreign workers was relaxed and worse still, with a vengeance, so that the proportion of foreign workers before the early Eighties, which was below 10% shot to almost a third within the next decade, and still growing. Why didn’t LKY put a stop to it, feeling so strongly about the ill-effects of depending on foreigners?   Foong Swee Fong      Read More →

Those intriguing five words were sent via WhatsApp by a friend recently. On reflection, they carry more weight than meets the eye. As is commonly known, SOP stands for Standard Operating Procedure – a very big thing in the civil service and the armed forces. If we go back to the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak, the government was earning high praise for its response. There was an SOP that the multi-ministry task force and Ministers could follow – a carry over from SARS on how to handle a pandemic. SOP says testing and contact tracing It boiled down to two things – aggressive testing and meticulous contact tracing. This was enough to contain the virus at the early stage and they thought victory was in sight. But COVID-19 is not like SARS and once it started to morph into something far bigger and more complicated and unpredictable, the Ministers couldn’t keep up because they had no SOP to fall back on. Which explains why in the days to come, we would hear Ministers lamenting being misled by the World Health Organisation on mask wearing, being deprived of the benefit of hindsight, being unable to see one step ahead, and being unaware that a cluster could turn into many clusters and then one big explosion. In retrospect, we now see that this is exactly how SOP Ministers would react. SOP for circuit breaker – can’t go wrong Then they announced the circuit breaker. This is where SOP Ministers could once again excel because there is an SOP to follow – aggressive implementation and enforcement followed by extensive media publicity. Send as many officers out there as possible to catch people in the act of flouting the rules. Then publicise like crazy their misdemeanors and the penalties they face to scare people into staying home. No foresight needed. No quick thinking and anticipation called for. No risk of being caught off guard. Just follow SOP. Every National Day is an SOP playbook To have the best appreciation of how SOP reliant our leadership is, we only have to look at what happens every National Day. During the National Day parade, there is without fail a heart-stirring moment of a video clip of Lee Kuan Yew saying something with fire in his belly – this is to convey a sense of nostalgia to older Singaporeans while serving as a teachable moment for the younger ones. And at the National Day rally, while giving the report card on Singapore, the Prime Minister would invariably hark back to how Lee Kuan Yew and his comrades succeeded against all odds, especially in defeating the communists to bring about independence for Singapore. To underscore the gravity of events of more than half a century ago, the Prime Minister might even pause and struggle to choke back tears. All three Prime Ministers have used the same script. Tears are optional but the script remains the same. It is a tried and tested SOP.   Augustine Low      Read More →