TR EMERITUS

I will be straight talking with my comments. Just >2 months ago, lhl told our nation, "no need to wear mask if you are not sick". He is not just another Ah Beng or Ah Seng but the Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore and many people trusted what he said and heeded his advice. Even until today, many Singaporeans still continue to heed his advice. In the accompanying picture, lhl along with Grace Fu, Ng Chee Meng, Maliki Osman and others were all seen wearing mask sitting around a big table. I ask if they were all sick and if the answer is yes, then why were they not resting at home and if the answer is no, then why were all those pap ministars and others slapping lhl on his advice? Now that lhl has quietly U-turned on his wearing of mask stance, as a citizen, I find it to be most irresponsible and poor leadership on his part and for him, the highest level for failing to also alert and remind Singaporeans to wear mask, or even better still, to make it mandatory to wear a mask whenever people leave their houses. I suspect that lhl doesn't have any realistic idea just how packed and crowded our mrts and public buses can sometimes be and any talks, if any, of safe-distancing onboard them is just 'talk cock and sing song' from their ivory towers. The next best thing to protect our citizens from Covid-19 community spread when they are travelling on public transport would be to make sure that everybody mask-up. The late Minister Mentor was as towering figure, a figure of confidence, strength and very reassuring. Lhl, on the other hand, is very, very far cry when compare to the late MM, to put it mildly. He is washed-out. Any lesser leader would have, by now, encouraged his/her citizens to mask up when they go outside and not quietly putting on a mask himself but leaving many of his unthinking citizens behind, still unsure, still fumbling and still believing what they were told but risking their lives daily on an ill-informed advice. All those talks of leaving no one behind lalala are by now, so hollow and embarrassing busted balloons. Although it has not been conclusively proven that wearing mask protects one from getting infected with Covid-19, still when millions upon millions of mainland Chinese, South Koreans, Taiwanese and Japanese etc are wearing mask daily on one hand and their Covid-19 infection rates are under control on the other, some relationships between the two must be suspected. Dear citizens, please mask-up when you go out for your own safety and the safety of your loved ones. And never forget that masking up is not a magic bullet. Continue to practise safe-distancing, avoiding crowded places and washing of hands with soap are all equally important. Stay safe and always think of your family. Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →

I remember hearing Donald Trump being described somewhere as “Political Chemotherapy.” At that time, I didn’t quite appreciate that description but as I sit at home reading news of the daily outbreaks of the coronavirus and the Trump administrations mishandling of the outbreak, I am gaining a greater appreciation of that description. Trump’s latest tirade is against the World Health Organisation (“WHO”), which he’s described as being “China-Centric,” and has recently declared that he intends to cut funding to the WHO. It’s stating the obvious that his tirades against the WHO at a time when the outbreaks of coronavirus cases in the USA (434,144) is more than the cases in the next three highest places (Spain – 148,220, Italy – 139,442 and Germany -113,296) combined is unhelpful and counter-productive. However, Trump has helped to remind us that the world has been, for far too long, unhealthily dependent on America and American leadership. America has been the key to every world issue. If you want security, get the American military to set up a base in your region. If you want economic growth, export to America. If you want advanced technology, send your brightest to an American University. I live the example of this – Singapore and the ASEAN region as a whole went from poverty to wealth in a single generation because our business model was simple – sell goods to America and the American fleet that was parked in Subic Bay meant that all of us in ASEAN refrained from getting involved in military conflicts with each other. America remains the biggest funder of global organisations. Just name a global body and you’ll find that the US is inevitably its biggest funder and “world bodies,” providing “world solutions,” mean “American bodies,” and “American solutions.” If Donald Trump’s tirades against the WHO should do anything for us, it is to make the rest of us understand that we can no longer look to America for leadership and solutions to global problems. Somehow, the world has to solve its own problems. Global bodies like the UN, IMF and World Bank in particular have to find a way of not being dependent on the American tax payer and being at the mercy of what we’d call America’s increasingly dysfunctional political system. Ironically, the greatest beneficiary from the Trump Administration may be the world’s favourite bogyman – China. While China’s companies have a large domestic market to cushion them from a global battle with the US, many of China’s businesses realise that they cannot depend on it. Ren Zhengfei, Huawei’s CEO has gone out of his way to become a global diplomat, trying to show the benign face of Chinese capitalism and more importantly, Huawei and other Chinese firms have become painfully aware of their dependence of the US to provide the necessary parts for their business and so rushed to develop their own technology. China may end up shooting up the technology food chain because the Trump Administration gave it a need to do so. The inevitable global fall out against China as a result of the coronavirus will force it to restructure a few things. Brand China will need to contribute more to global organisations in future, rather to do business while letting America fund and protect the rest of the world. The European Union, likewise, will need to look towards doing more for its own defense rather than waiting for America to do it for them. I’m old enough to remember when the former Yugoslavia went to the dogs. I sat in the UK (then part of “civilized” Europe) while people were slaughtered in Europe. The French and Germans remained either unable or unwilling to send a force into their own backyard to stop atrocities that the modern generation had only read about in history classes. America will suffer from the Trump Administration’s incompetence and the rest of the world will suffer along with it. However, as we go through the social and economic pains, we should learn to find our own independence and not to rely on a great power. Leadership is necessary but we need to learn to survive and thrive in spite of it rather than because of it.   Tang Li *The author blogs at http://beautifullyincoherent.blogspot.com/     .  Read More →

The are no two ways about it. The secret stays secret. Workers’ Party chief Pritam Singh tried again in Parliament this week, asking to be enlightened about the size of Singapore’s reserves. Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat considered the question superfluous, telling the story told before of why it could not be answered, for national security and strategic reasons. He told Pritam off: “It is neither in the interest of Singapore or Singaporeans to repeatedly ask about the size of our reserves. We are in the middle of a storm, and I’m very disappointed that Mr Pritam Singh has used this occasion to raise this question again.” We can trace it all back to more than 20 years ago, when President Ong Teng Cheong’s dispute with the government started after he ordered a report on the national reserves. He was met with a stone wall, the government declaring that it would take 56 man years to produce a dollar and cents value of its assets. As President Ong would later recount: “I had a job to do, whether the government liked it or not . . . You see, if you ask me to protect the reserves, then you’ve got to tell me what I’m supposed to protect. So I had to ask.” After his six-year term ended (1993-1999), President Ong was told that the cabinet would not support him for a second six-year term. He maintained that he did not need the cabinet to support his re-election bid, but an anguished and dispirited President Ong eventually decided not to contest against the government’s candidate S R Nathan. So it doesn’t matter whether you are the President of Singapore, vested with veto powers over the spending of national reserves or the leader of the opposition elected into Parliament to be a bridge between the people and the government. You can ask till the cows come home but you will still not get an answer. The size of Singapore’s reserves – like the salary of Ho Ching – shall remain a state secret.   Augustine Low * The author is a proud but concerned citizen. Voicing independent, unplugged opinion is his contribution to citizen engagement.      Read More →