TR EMERITUS

At this point, I wish The Workers Party or the Singapore Democratic Party is running Singapore. We talk about how we need an experienced team to run the country. But you look at Taiwan, President Tsai Ing-wen has only been president for 4 years but she and her government has managed to defend the country from COVID-19. They have a solid team of people to head their coronavirus response because they put people who knew their stuff in charge of the team. The Health Minister is medically-trained, and the doctor who headed their SARS response team and is advising the current team, is now also the Vice President who was also a doctor trained in epidemiology. Their team is not run by cronies or past principal private secretaries of the prime ministers. Their team isn't focused on wanting to look good, or wanting to keep the economy running at the expense of citizens and people's lives. You know, I was wrong. When I saw the PAP managed to keep the coronavirus at bay initially, I thought, ok, so maybe, even if their priorities are economic, at least they will ensure the health system will cope with COVID-19. But I was wrong. Their economic thinking was so short term, they couldn't plan ahead for how COVID-19 would become a long term challenge, where they would have to discard their economic priorities, to refocus and clamp down on the community spread. They became unclear, and couldn't respond fast enough. They were paralyzed. For weeks, they kept thinking economy, face（面子）, pride. And so, they failed. And now, their mistakes are starting to show. They didn't want to close schools because they wanted to keep the economy open, to look like they were still successful in containing the coronavirus. But they weren't. They didn't want to close schools because they said the low-income will be impacted, because they didn't invest enough in our social infrastructure to protect the poor and the vulnerable, and our society. They couldn't implement social distancing on the MRT trains because they didn't want to lockdown, and they didn't build enough public transport infrastructure to cope with the rising population. They couldn't lockdown because workers were paid so little that there will be mass hardship when workers lose their jobs, and because there is no unemployment protection. They brought in migrant workers, treated them with no dignity and stuffed them into unsanitary housing that now the coronavirus is spreading like wildfire in these places. Singapore only has 330 isolation beds, which can be increased to 500. And estimates put critical beds at 300-odd. But there are now more than 2,000 COVID-19 cases and Singapore's health infrastructure is breaking under the seams. And with one of the least number of doctors relative to the population among advanced countries, the PAP simply didn't invest enough in the healthcare system to cope either with the pandemic or with the population growth. For some questions, it is a matter of hindsight. Should we lockdown after 2 cases, 20 cases, 50 cases or 100 cases? But for some questions it's simply a lack of planning and prioritization. The Worker's Party and the Singapore Democratic Party had warned that Singapore needed to invest in its social infrastructure. We needed unemployment benefits, we needed higher wages, we needed to strengthen the public transport infrastructure, we needed to invest in the people. Heck, it wasn't just the opposition. It was also academics, civil society, and people who were persecuted by the PAP who pleaded for the government to invest in the social infrastructure. We were ignored, persecuted and silenced. And the rest of us thought things were fine. Until it is now exploding in our faces. And this is only a pandemic. What if it was war? What if we face another major crisis? Will the PAP still care to focus on protecting their investments and economic interests? Will they run away if their economic interests cannot be protected? After all these, I honestly cannot say I trust the PAP to do the right thing to protect Singapore or Singaporeans. Their priorities are simply in the wrong place. Taiwan shows that what you need is not a so-called experienced government. If Taiwan is still run by the KMT (which was in government for 50 years or so before there was a change in presidency to another party), you can be sure that the current KMT would not have been able to defend Taiwan as well as the DPP government has. For one, the KMT would have made the same mistake of being too close to China and not closing its borders early enough. It is therefore political choice that allowed Taiwan to try out a new political party, on the basis that they could not trust the other party anymore. It is political choice that forced the parties to do better, and to respond to the people's needs. It is political choice that allowed policies to be developed in response to people's needs. COVID-19 helped us realize how our current system cannot deliver. And it is up to us to decide, knowing that we need a better system, how that system can be delivered. Do we keep going on the idea indoctrinated to us that we should quietly follow what we are told to do, believing that they know best? Or do we realize that if we keep silent, one day our interests will also be forgotten. And what is done will not be in our interest. Something for us to think about. Something for us to remember. We do not want to be too scared to change, that when a crisis happens again, we will have to live in fear again.   Roy Ngerng      Read More →

This Is Absolutely Scandalous And Disgraceful! Sending Masks To Korea And Not Singapore! Those dishonourable PAP IBs are always lying through their teeth to deceive and misinform Singaporeans. Their latest lie is that masks which were produced by ST Engineering’s 2 production lines in Taiwan were prevented from leaving Taiwan because of the Taiwanese ban on the export of masks which came into effect on 24 January. Please listen to the video where a Taiwanese Minister debunks these lies of the PAP IBs. From my understanding of the video, which is in Mandarin, and please feel free to correct my translation if you think it is inaccurate, ST Engineering applied for the export of these masks on 3 occasions in January, namely 7,13 and 22 of January. These masks did not have the Taiwanese approval certification, so I infer from that that they could not have been used in Taiwan anyway. All the masks covered by these applications left Taiwan, with the last batch leaving on 29 January. But this last batch of 50,000 plus masks was shipped to Korea! Why were masks produced by ST Engineering shipped to Korea instead of to Singapore????? For over 2 and a half months since the virus crisis stated, Singaporeans have been scrambling to procure masks, with most people unable to purchase them because of a grave shortage in our country. The mask has now been proven to be a vital piece of equipment in the fight against the spread of the virus. The 2 production lines belonging to ST Engineering were shipped back to Singapore on 12 February. Being a shipping lawyer, I know the sea voyage from Taiwan to Singapore will not take more than 7-9 days. It is now approaching mid-April but there is not a whimper of whether production has started or when it will start. On 21 February, The Straits Times ran an article about how a group of Hong Kongers led by a film-maker by the name of Tang, had set up a mask factory to meet the shortages of masks in the territory. The group expected their & machines to start production by April. What is the reason for the delay in production of masks in Singapore?   Lim Tean      Read More →

Of the 233 new Covid-19 cases that was announced early this morning, 167 are unlinked cases and 167 unlinked cases mark the largest unlinked cases in a single day. The only consolation is that there were no imported case and unless and until we have no imported cases for >2 weeks continuously, it is too early for anyone to jump for joy. Asking people to work from home whenever possible and asking people to stay at home etc are all the right measures, however, we are facing very persistent and stubborn increase of local unlinked cases and that is where the greatest danger lurks. Our options to counter local unlinked community spread are not many. Apart from sending people for Covid-19 testing, appealing to the good sense and co-operation from members of the public, we are basically only left with mandatory enforcement. Right now, our enforcement efforts are seeing some small early successes but the odds are stacked very high against them. Just this morning, I saw 2 men sitting on a low wall, one wearing a mask and the other unmasked chatting. I would like to see a lot more frequent, firmer and tougher enforcement efforts all over Singapore. Reasons such as elderly boredom or ignorance mustn't be entertained anymore. In any case, ignorance of the law is no excuse. If our local community spread cannot be effectively put under control because of weak leadership helming the taskforce, Singapore will have no choice but to prolong the Circuit Breaker (CB) duration. That cannot be in anybody's interest. In conclusion, I would like to urge Lawrence Wong and his taskforce to change the name from CB to Lockdown. Have the courage to call a spade a spade. Calling it a lockdown clears the air or any ambiguity and the lack of seriousness from anybody. I bet that most people would rather bit the bullet and get over with it once and for all than for the government to later on, needs to further extend its CB duration. Don't ever let the mask flip-flop episode of no need to wear mask if you are not sick to not against the wearing of mask to must wear a mask when you are out of the house fiasco repeat itself with the CB, not calling it a lockdown to the extention of CB and finally calling it a lockdown. Under this useless pap government, it has alearly lost plenty of credibility. In our hokkien parlance, it is called they have lau ka kwee kor alearly. Anyway, it doesn't have too much credibility left to lose. Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →