TR EMERITUS

Veteran opposition leader and MP for Potong Pasir Mr Chiam See Tong will be celebrating his 25th year as an MP together with his constitutents this Saturday. The event will be held at an open field near Block 119 along Potong Pasir Avenue 1. The expected turnout is 1,000 people, including leaders of other opposition parties. The dinner costs $30 per person. According to the organizers, 90 per cent of the guests will be Potong Pasir residents, an indication of the Mr Chiam's enduring appeal and popularity. Mr Chiam first won the seat during the 1984 general elections by beating PAP candidate Mah Bow Tan. He garnered 60.8 per cent of the valid votes. From 1985 till 1991, Mr Chiam is the sole non-PAP MP in parliament. Despite everything the ruling party had thrown at him including dangling a $100 million upgrading carrot to Potong Pasir residents in the last election, Mr Chiam continues to hold his fort. Potong Pasir estate, which is built in the 1970s, should have its flats and amenities upgraded if not for the pork-barrel politics dished out by the PAP which denies crucial estate upgrading to opposition wards as a "punishment" for its constituents for not supporting them. Mr Chiam had expressed his desire to step out of Potong Pasir and lead a team to contest in a nearby GRC in the next election due by 2011. His seat in Potong Pasir is expected to be defended by his wife Lina Chiam. Interviews conducted by the Chinese paper Lianhe Wanbao suggest that voters are ambivalent towards his plan. While many agree that he has served the constituency with dedication, they also say that they will not transfer support to his wife automatically. The losing PAP candidate for Potong Pasir in the last two elections Mr Sitoh Yee Pin, who found fame with his weekly sharkfin porridge breakfast for the residents has been keeping a low profile. It is not known if he will be attending the dinner. Mr Sitoh garnered a respectable 45 per cent of the votes against Mr Chiam during the last elections. Observers feel that he will stand a higher chance this time if Mr Chiam is not standing due to his long-standing grassroots work at Potong Pasir over the last few years. Since the GRC system was introduced in 1988, no opposition party has managed to breach what is considered a "PAP fortress". The closest they came to winning on is during the 1988 elections when the Workers' Party Team comprising of Francis Seow, Dr Lee Siew Choh and Mohamad Yakcob won 49.1 per cent of the votes in Eunos GRC. Eunos GRC was to give the PAP another close scare in the next election when another Workers' Party Team led by Jufrie Mahmood won 46 per cent of the votes. As a result, Eunos GRC is "dismembered" and absorbed into neighboring GRCs in subsequent elections. Given the PAP's entrenched positions in the GRCs and the "kiasi" mentality of Singaporeans, Mr Chiam's chances of winning one is unlikely to be high especially with the introduction of a series of electoral "reforms" by PM Lee to increase the number of non-PAP MPs in parliament to twenty including nine NCMPs or the "besst losers". Voters will be enticed by the PAP's "two in one" package which allows them to vote for a PAP MP to serve them at their constituency and a non-PAP MP to speak up for them in parliament at the same time. The disingenuous move is meant to curb the growth of the opposition at the grassroots level since only elected MPs are able to mobilize the resources in the community and not NCMPs. Whatever the result, Mr Chiam is guaranteed a place in parliament after the next elections whether as a MP or NCMP given his standing among Singaporeans.  Read More →

According to a report by Business Times on 8 December 2009, Keppel Land said that it has two granted options to purchase units in Marina Bay Suites to a director of Keppel Land and his wife, and a director of Keppel Corporation (KepLand's parent company) and his wife. Mr and Mrs Niam Chiang Meng have bought a 2,045 sq ft four-bedroom unit at the development for $4.6 million, or $2,238 per square foot. Mr Niam is a KepLand director. Mr Niam Chiang Meng is the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Community, Youth and Sports. Prior to his appointment in 2005, Mr Niam served as Chief Executive Officer of the Housing and Development Board from 2002 to 2004. A PAP MP Mr Alvin Yeo Hirn Hai have also bought a 2,680 sq ft four-bedroom unit for $6.5 million, or $2,442 psf together with his wife. Mr Yeo is a director of Keppel Corp. Mr Yeo is also a Member of Parliament for Hong Kah GRC. The Marina Bay Suites is a luxury condominium project built in the prime district of Marina Bay, just a stone throw away from the soon-to-be complete Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort. A 99-year leasehold project, it is constructed jointly by Singapore's Keppel Land and Hong Kong's Cheung Kong Holdings Limited and Hong Kong Land. Together with other projects such as The Sail in the vicinity, the Marina Bay Suites is one of the most expensive condominiums in Singapore to date. Only the very rich and expatriates are able to afford a unit there. In other first world countries, it will be near impossible for a civil servant or MP to buy such a high-end condominium with their modest pays. However, Singapore's ministers and top civil servants draw the highest salaries in the world. A Superscale grade (SR9) civil servant is expected to get an annual salary of $338, 100 this year, or $28,175 a month. (Source: Press release from Public Service Division, 26 Nov 2009) Being senior civil servants in the top echelon of the civil service, Permanent Secretaries are probably pay more. In comparison, the median pay of the average Singapore worker is only $2,600 a month. Singapore MPs are given a monthly allowance of around $13,000 a month on top of their full-time jobs. It is not uncommon to see MPs like Mr Alvin Yeo holding directorships in state-linked companies such as Keppel Land. For example, former Minister for Information, Acts and Communication Dr Lee Boon Yang was recently appointed as a non-executive Chairman of Keppel Corporation though he was trained as a vet. When the issue of MPs holding multiple directorships was raised in parliament a few years ago, it brought a chorus of protests from some PAP MPs. PAP MP John Chen, who holds 8 directorships said: "I don't think that there should be a cap on the number of directorship that a person can hold." His colleague Wang Kai Yuen who holds a record 11 directorships added: "It's not for the money because some of the companies pay me as little as $10,000 a year"  In Singapore, there is no clear distinction between the government and the private sector. Many of its major blue chip companies like DBS, Singtel and SIA are actually "pseudo-state" companies owned by either one of the government's sovereign wealth funds - Temasek Holdings or GIC. As such, personnel can be transferred seamlessly from the state-linked companies to the government and vice-versa and more than often not, they all belong to the same clique with affiliations to the ruling party. Current Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong was a former CEO of NatSteel, a government-linked company. The Chairman of Singapore's sole print media company SPH is Dr Tony Tan, a former deputy prime minister. While there is nothing wrong in civil servants and MPs purchasing private properties, one cannot help wondering if such highly paid senior officials and representatives of the people are able to empathize with the hardships faced by ordinary citizens on the ground.  News source: Business Times, 8 December 2009      Read More →

OPINION During a speech made at the fifth Asia Economic Summit two days ago, Singapore deputy prime minister Wong Kan Seng said that good governance and strong leadership are the critical elements which underpins how the Singapore government steers its future forward. According to Mr Wong, the Singapore government has distilled a set of principles on governance and leadership to guide its decision and policy-making over the years. He listed five principles that the island republic applied successfully to run the city-state, namely, “Good, Clean Governance”, “Integrity and Meritocracy”, “Anticipate Change and Stay Relevant”, “Do What is Right, Not What is Popular” and the final one is “Leadership is Key.” There was no mention about the collective will and rights of the people. What if the people do not agree with the government? Will it still go ahead and do what it thinks it is right? And how can we be sure that it is right all the time? Mr Wong's views encapsulate the mindset of the PAP which has promulgated a patriarchal if not autocratic form of government during its reign for the last fifty years - that the (economic) welfare of the people takes precedent over their political rights. In the 1986 National Day rally, then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew said of his priorities in nation-building: "What are our priorities? First, the welfare, the survival of the people. Then, democratic norms and processes which from time to time we have to suspend." The misperception that democracy is not compatible with good governance was perpetuated over time by the state media leading to a gradual numbing of the political consciousness of the citizenry which has grown to be completely clueless about their political rights as citizens. Lee was to lecture a Japanese audience in Tokyo 6 years later that "Western" values of freedoms and liberties of the individual are not relevant to Asian societies: “With few exceptions, democracy has not brought good government to new developing countries…What Asians value may not necessarily be what Americans or Europeans value. Westerners value the freedoms and liberties of the individual. As an Asian of Chinese cultural backround, my values are for a government which is honest, effective and efficient.” He was soon proven wrong a few years later when South Koreans voted for a democrat Kim Dae Jung to be its president and Taiwan made the final transition from a one-party state to a two-party system when Chen Shui Bian from the opposition Democratic Progressive Party won the presidency. In 2004, Indonesia held its first free presidential elections which saw a former general Susilo Bambang-Yudhyono winning it and ushering a series of democratic reforms into the nation's political system. Malaysia's ruling Barisan Nasional coalition was denied its traditional two-thirds majority in the 2008 elections and just this year in Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party was voted out of office after more than fifty years. As the above examples have shown clearly, "democracy" isn't a western value, but a universal one which is critical to good governance and strong leadership of every nation. Democracy is not an ideal form of government, but it is the least of all evils because it allows the people to partake actively in the political life of their nation, to have their opinions heard and reflected in the policy-making process and more importantly, to enable a diversity of views from across the political spectrum to be expressed within the constitutional set-up of the nation which facilitates sharing and orderly transfer of power from one group to another. An aware, alert and active citizenry, supported by a free press, a robust civil society and an independent judiciary is the cornerstone of "good, clean" governance. The government deliberates and decides on policies which will affect countless of people who are therefore in the best position to assess its performance. What a government thinks is good for the nation may not be shared by its citizens. A government which does not listen to the people will tend to make mistakes with disastrous consequences for future generations. For example, the government introduced the "Stop at two" policy in the 1970s to decrease the ballooning population of Singapore. It faced opposition from Singaporeans who were keen to have larger families back then, but was able to push the unpopular policy through because the people had no power to resist it and neither was there an opposition in parliament to force the ruling party into a debate on the issue. Families who had more than two children were fined and denied education subsidies for the third child. Women with little education were encouraged not to have children and to get themselves sterilized. The policy was implemented rather hastily and its spectacular success turned out to be a catastrophe now that our fertility rate has dropped below the replacement level and we have to import large number of foreigners to boost Singapore's population thereby creating another set of problem altogether. Had the government taken a step back then, solicited more feedback from the people and studied the long-term implications in detail, it might have tweaked the policy to avert the situation we find ourselves in today. In the same speech, Mr Wong said that Singapore had also been consistently ranked among the top five least corrupt nations the past few years, and the scores in the survey were the result of a systematic effort by the government over the past 50 years, to weed out corruption. While the efforts of the Singapore government to tackle corruption deserved to be praised, it is achieved largely because its founding leaders are honest, clean and incorruptible themselves rather than the strength of the Singapore political system itself. When the father is in the house, every child will be quiet and obedient but the moment he leaves, all hell will break loose. Human nature is unpredictable. Greed is inherent in every man and woman. The best bulwark against corruption is to have an institutionalized system of checks and balance in place to detect, expose and punish corrupted leaders and civil servants. It cannot be based solely on trust alone, as according to Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugarathan. It is highly worrying that there is no opposition in parliament to hold the ruling party accountable, no free and independent media which dares to publish the wrong-doings of government leaders and no civil society to keep the people abreast of the current affairs of the nation. The Singapore opposition is perenially weak, divided and ineffectual. There is only one print media company in Singapore which is controlled by the ruling party. All the grassroots organizations are under the charge of the Prime Minister who is the Chairman of the People's Association and the Home Affairs Minister has the power to shut down any NGOs deemed "detrimental" to the nation's interest. Furthermore, the independence of the Singapore judiciary has been questioned by the esteemed International Bar Association Human Rights Institute and the economy of the nation is dominated by major state-linked companies owned indirectly by the government via its two sovereign wealth funds. The over-concentration of power in the hands of a few in Singapore is a ticking time bomb. So long as its leaders are decent, honest and well-meaning individuals, Singapore will be able to practice "good governance" backed by "strong leadership" because it will be a breeze running a country when everybody sings to its tune including the subdued "opposition" in parliament. What if a scheming, unscrupulous and dishonest leader is allowed to slip through into the establishment undetected in the future after our senior leaders have left the political stage? Who is going to expose him/her from power when he/she potentially controls every single institution of the country? Until Mr Wong or the Prime Minister answers this crucial question, nobody can guarantee for sure that Singapore will continue to enjoy years of good governance in the next few decades. Singapore's archaic one-party system is grossly incompatible with its exalted status as a first-world economy. We are a long way off from building a system with clear separation of powers between the executive and the legislative as well as independent institutions outside the government which can check on possible abuses of power. Absolute power may lead to good governance and strong leadership temporarily, but it will also corrupt absolutely in the absence of democratic principles and practices.  Read More →