TR EMERITUS

From our Correspondent The rising prices of new and resale HDB flats has led to an outcry from citizens for government intervention. Since the first quarter of 2007, the HDB resale price index has increased 35.3 per cent and is now at a record high. The recent launch of Punggol Residences by HDB also fetch record prices for 4 and 5 room flats in the vicinity.  In spite of the relentless price increase, the government remains adamant that HDB flats are affordable. The Senior Minister of state for National Development Grace Fu even commended on the rise in asset value as "healthy" as flat owners now earn more from sale of their flats. In an article titled "Squeezed even harder", Chew "urge the Government to reconsider the income ceiling of $8,000 as a criterion to be eligible for the Central Provident Fund (CPF) housing grant, which has been in place since 1994." (read letter here)  He proposed a series of measures to help the "sandwich" population such as increasing the income ceiling of $8,000 and the supply of new public housing. His thoughts were echoed by Mr Trevor Tan who wrote: "Two failings come to mind - that public housing has become too correlated to the private market, and that HDB has not regulated its supply in line with immigration and demographic trends." The prices of new HDB flats are pegged to around 70% of the prices of resale flats in the same precinct. Resale flats remain in demand despite the price increase in recent years due to the influx of immigrants. This explains its paradoxical rise when the private property market is going downhill. 85% of Singaporeans live in public housing built by the government. Though they were meant to be cheap and affordable to the masses, price hikes in the last decade has kept them increasingly out of reach to the lower income group. For the price of a 3 room HDB flat, one is able buy a bungalow in Johor just cross the Causeway.  Read More →

By Seah Chiang Nee from The Star POLITICS is one of the things that have changed least in Singapore. Over a quarter of a century, the economy has been restructured, the demography has changed; new people have come and old trends have gone – pretty much of everything else, except perhaps politics. It seems to have remained relatively as it had been. For many elderly conservatives, that may not be a bad thing, since it also means stability and continuity. But faced with an uncertain world and a demanding new generation, the People’s Action Party (PAP) could be heading for a tougher time winning elections in future. As its founding leader, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew once painted it: The next two elections should be no problem, but after that, anything goes. Now with the economic crisis affecting more families, the PAP has obviously been pondering how best to fight in order to stay in power. It’s a tough act as it strives to achieve a balance between rising – and contrasting – demands from various segments of society, from educated youths and disgruntled workers to poorer Singaporeans. For 50 years, the PAP has been winning elections to stand as one of the world’s few undefeated political parties, but with the help that power and incumbency has bestowed upon it. So what is its strategy to stay relevant? Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong apparently wants to change the Constitution to have a Parliament with two components. The first is the normal 84 elected legislators who debate and pass laws and the second, a less significant, non-elected segment with watered-down rights to improve debate. This second force of 18 will comprise nine nominated MPs, chosen from a cross-section of non-partisan Singaporeans and up to nine non-constituency MPs (NCMPs) from the opposition camp. As an example, if the next election were to throw up only two opposition winners, then the best seven losers will qualify as NCMPs. In recent weeks, the pro-government press has been playing up the role of nominated MPs as well as the desirability of appointed Cabinet ministers. All these have one thing in common. They downplay the importance of opposition parties in Parliament or in Singapore’s political system. PAP party member Xu Kaixian wrote in Petir, the PAP organ, that democracy does not necessarily need the presence of opposition. “Currently, any deviation from Western-style democracy is denounced as authoritarian. But should that be the case?” the writer asked. “Wouldn’t it be better if each country practised a democracy which best suits its situation? Is there really a need for democracy in Singapore to mirror the West’s?” Adding to this is a suggestion by PAP backbencher Hri Kumar Nair that Singapore consider appointing Cabinet ministers who are not MPs or may not even be members of the ruling party. The Government appears to be telling young Singaporeans: You want debate, we’ll give it to you; you want Parliamentary democracy, you can have it too – but not necessarily through elections or a two-party system. It apparently thinks it can satisfy their aspirations for greater debate and opposition in Parliament – without the PAP losing any seats. Lee Kuan Yew has always been wary about the potential dangers of one-man-one-vote system. Last year he warned that “a freak election” could wipe out Singapore’s success. This could happen if voters became bored and decided to give the vociferous opposition a chance out of ‘light-heartedness, fickleness or sheer madness’. “In five years, you can ruin this place and it’s very difficult to pick up the pieces,” he said. Last November, his PM son said that a “two-party model cannot work” in Singapore, and it is “much better off with one dominant party”. Since then he has stepped back a little by saying that “Singaporeans want national issues to be fully debated.. (so we should) improve our political system to encourage a wider range of views in Parliament, including opposition and non-government views”. Lee’s measures have generally been well received as a positive development. Critics, however, call it a sham reform that tries to manufacture a fake opposition, instead of freeing the environment to allow it to grow. “It is an attempt to tell Singaporeans that they could safely vote for the government without being deprived of an opposition voice,” an opposition member said. “The nature of Parliament should not be changed. It is after all a legislative body of representatives that should be freely elected by the people, not appointed, nor nominated,” he added. PM Lee is facing an increasing call from young Singaporeans for freer politics and lesser government controls. This was reflected in a speech by newly nominated MP Viswa Sadasivan, appealing for the government to “let us take a chance on our people, on ourselves.” He said: “In my view, it is the duty of a responsible government to help evolve a political climate that encourages greater interest and participation from the people. “If not, people are likely to feel increasingly alienated and disenfranchised resulting in apathy and, worse, cynicism. I fear this is already happening.” Balanced against this is the other point of view expressed by Lee Kuan Yew in 2006: “Please don’t assume that you can change governments. Young people don’t understand this.” On another occasion, Lee said: “Without the elected President and if there is a freak (election) result, within two or three years, the army would have to come in and stop it.” So far none of the younger political leaders has repeated this warning. Source: The Star  Read More →

By Ben Bland from Asia Sentinel When the Singapore police nailed four suspected members of a loan-sharking syndicate on July 21, they seized the usual paraphernalia: mobile phones and prepaid SIM cards and the time-honored tools of intimidation such as paint to be splashed on the doors of bad debtors and superglue to lock them inside their apartments. But while loan sharks – or Ah Longs as they are known – have long been a ubiquitous presence on Singapore's sprawling public housing estates, this gang is one of a growing number taking bully-boy tactics to the next level. One of the members, according to the police, had been sending bullets to borrowers in an attempt to scare them into paying up. The syndicate, which police said was responsible for more than 600 harassment cases, were said to have also been terrorizing the wider community by starting fires outside the apartments of bad debtors. Cynthia Phua, an MP from the ruling People's Action Party, told local media in a recent interview that the level of harassment in her constituency in eastern Singapore has surged. "It is also more violent," she said. "We are seeing things we did not see before, like petrol bombs and innocent neighbors being harassed." In a city-state that proudly boasts one of the lowest crime rates in Asia, such violence was once rare. But, worryingly for the government and the vast majority of the population who live in the public housing estates, it is becoming increasingly widespread as the economic crisis forces more people to turn to loan sharks. Although overall crime fell slightly in the first half of the year, the number of reported cases of loan sharking and harassment more than doubled to 9,395, according to the Singapore Police Force. The number of people arrested for such offences doubled to 417, with a sharp rise in the number of young people getting involved in loan shark gangs. One in five of those arrested for loan sharking and intimidation was aged 19 or under, compared with just one in 10 in the first half of last year. The police are particularly concerned about the increasing involvement of teenagers, acknowledging that it has become one of their "key crime concerns" this year. While Singapore's loan sharks rarely resort to the sort of extreme tactics practiced by their counterparts in Macau and Hong Kong – kidnapping and sometimes murder, or pouring petrol under the door of someone in arrears and lighting it - they are well-versed in the language of intimidation and fear. The Singapore Ah Longs spray graffiti on the walls of common areas identifying bad debtors, threaten their family members and vandalize their cars and apartments. Although they target the debtors and their families, they spread fear throughout the community, not least because the junior loan shark runners often go after the wrong people. The government has blamed this crime wave on the deteriorating economic climate in which gross domestic product fell by 9.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009 and 3.5 percent in the second. The tough times for the loan sharks' prey, the police say, are exacerbated by the fact that many of the younger debtors end up joining the syndicates as runners when they can't afford to repay their loans. And the terms are steep, normally a usurious 40-50 percent per month if the luckless borrowers can meet the agreed payments, i.e., if they borrow S$800, they pay back $1,200 after five weeks. They are the lucky ones. Defaulters are met by a demand that the borrower pay the full amount as a penalty charge. The annual rate can thus easily top 1,000 percent. Earlier this year, Wong Kan Seng, the minister for home affairs, said he was considering making it a criminal offense to borrow from unlicensed money-lenders. However, social workers and organizations that help victims of loan shark harassment are largely opposed to this approach, insisting that it would criminalize the desperate and the needy, who only borrow from Ah Longs because they have no other sources of credit, and drive the problem further underground. "Most of the people who turn to loan sharks are from low-income families and they usually borrow small amounts like S$200 or S$300," explains Ravi Philemon, a voluntary social worker and the executive director of a charity for the mentally-disabled. "You shouldn't criminalize people who have no choice but to turn to the loan sharks to buy food and clothes for their families." Philemon argues that if the law is brought in it will stop victims of loan shark harassment from going to the police for fear that they themselves will be arrested. "This would reduce the number of people reporting loan shark harassment to the police but would not solve the basic problem," he adds. Reverend Tan Lye Keng, who runs the One Hope Centre, a Christian organization that helps gambling addicts and loan shark victims, points out that most people only seek outside assistance when the intimidation and fear reaches a tipping point. "Being chased by loan sharks is a very traumatic experience and many people come to us in a hopeless state, feeling they have no way out," he says. "But we try to instill hope and let them see that they can have a future. The proposed legislation to criminalize borrowing from loan sharks may lead to more suicides and more people joining loan sharks gangs as a runner." Philemon believes that the root cause of the problem is a lack of sources of unsecured credit for less well-off Singaporeans. He cites the case of one family that wanted to set up a food stall and had no other alternative than to borrow from a loan shark. When their business faced cash-flow problems, they defaulted on their repayments and the amount they owed spiraled from S$20,000 to S$90,000. They were eventually forced to sell their flat earlier this year and now live in a tent in Sembawang Park, on the northern coast of Singapore. "We need to make loans available to lower-income families and if the banks won't lend at the moment then the government should," he argues. While some Singaporeans borrow from loans sharks to fund new businesses or tide them over in a tough month, many also get into debt because of gambling. Around 90 percent of the harassment victims who seek help from the One Hope Centre are in trouble because of gambling debts. Reverend Tan has found that they key to resolving the problem is not fighting the loan sharks but negotiating with them on behalf of his clients in order agree on a mutually-acceptable repayment plan. "Some are quite understanding and sympathetic because they feel they're running a business, even if it's illegal," he says. "We're not seeking to combat the loan sharks, but to provide hope amidst hopelessness and assistance to deal with gambling and loan-shark problems, enabling individuals and families to resume normal life." The Singapore Police Force declined to comment on the loan shark issue and the proposed new law, claiming that Asia Sentinel was "not an accredited publication in Singapore," although the author is fully-accredited as a foreign correspondent by the government. Source: Asia Sentinel  Read More →