TR EMERITUS

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi boldly walked away from the the jewel of global free-trade agreements - the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on 4 Nov 2019. Even without India, the proposed RCEP will be the world's largest trade pact involving 10 ASEAN member states, China Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, which altogether contribute one-third of the world's gross domestic product. India firms and farmers immediately applauded PM Modi's move to reject the RCEP trade deal.The country's largest dairy producer Amul thanked the premier for "supporting livelihoods". Amul said, "Your vision of supporting their livelihood (farmers) will help in doubling their incomes and make India stronger.". Modi could not jump into the lucrative trade pact because the opposition Congress Party under Sonia Gandhi and others had organized protests in all districts of the country from 5 to 15 Nov, and a big rally in New Delhi to stop his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from signing the RCEP. He decided to play safe by opting out of the trade pact and not allow it to jeopardize his political future in India. This is possible because of the political narratives in India. The political will of the Indian voters is very strong - strong enough to topple the Congress Party, led by the Gandhi family and related people, which has ruled India for 51 out of 71 years of independence. The Gandhis themselves ruled 36 of those years. The younger Indian voters no longer care much about the Gandhi brand name and dare to exercise their political power if their economic interests and livelihoods are threatened by the ruling government party. Compare this to the signing of the India- Singapore Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) in 2005. The negotiation of this agreement was led by current DPM Mr Heng Swee Keat (as then Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Trade and Industry). Even though the CECA offered substantial benefits and liberalized employment conditions to the detriment of Singapore's PMETs in the first agreement (as we know now),the Singapore narrative was and still is that free trade agreements are generally beneficial to Singapore's economy, businesses and the labour market. Never mind if some sectors of the working population are disadvantaged but overall, Singapore as a small country, benefits (so goes the local narrative). The second review of CECA was completed in June 2018 without any changes to the chapter of labour movement. The third review, started in Sep 2018, is underway under the Minister-in Charge of Trade Relations Mr Iswaran. I am not hopeful of any changes to the chapter on labour movement because this is what matters to the Indian ruling party government to secure more employment opportunities for its people. This is understandable as the Indian narrative is first and foremost, to protect domestic interests like local industries and jobs and look for new markets for its own citizens. Singapore's narrative is to open up the country as much as possible to allow free flow of trade, finance, technology and human talents because the narrative is that the country is too small to survive without an open-door policy. As a result, from 2005 to the present, there was no real engagements raised (the gains and losses) in and out of Parliament regarding free trade agreements signed between countries. I could not recall any MPs raising parliament questions regarding CECA. Nor was it reported in the state media on the benefits of CECA for Singapore and Singaporean workers. Without real political oppositions in Parliament, all such trade agreements could be easily wrapped up and filed away, unlike Modi who felt the political risk if he tried to push India into RCEP. Hence, the PAP ruling party government can keep on re-emphasizing the narratives which serve them well such as: "A manpower policy that advocates hiring "Singaporeans first' will not benefit the economy in the long term," said Senior MOS for Manpower Amy Khor (May 2014) "FTAs have created more jobs for S'poreans." - Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing (Nov 2019) Singapore has signed 24 FTAs to date and it seems none has attracted any serious attention from Singaporeans because they all have accepted the narrative that all such FTAs are good for them. With the Election coming soon, it pays for fellow Singaporeans to be more perceptive and critical of the narratives that are put to us by the ruling government party. The danger is that Singaporeans become complacent in evaluating the ruling government party's performance because they come to believe and trust the narratives are good for the country and people.   Kok Ming Cheang      Read More →

One of the more sordid political sagas that we have seen in Singapore over the last decade was the sale and lease-back by 14 PAP Town Councils of their IT system to a PAP-owned shell company, Action Information Management Pte Ltd. The justifications put forward by the PAP after the sale came to light were unsatisfactory to say the least, and while I do not believe the Party or any MPs profited financially from the deal, the PAP’s actions were symptomatic of their arrogance and culture of impunity. One of the most basic decision tools taught in any corporate ethics class is the newspaper test – Before taking any course of action, ask yourself what the reaction would be if it were published on the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper? Would you still do it if that action were public rather than secret? AIM obviously failed the newspaper test but none of the 82 PAP MPs or hundreds of other appointed Town Councillors said anything. Admittedly, scholar-generals don’t come from private sector so maybe they have never gone through compliance training, but at least some of the rank-and-file MPs and Town Councillors do work for MNCs and should have been able to see the conflict-of-interest issues jumping out of the AIM deal. But no one saw anything or said anything. Or perhaps even ordinary MPs and Town Councillors did not know about AIM. Which would itself be a damning indictment of the level of governance of PAP Town Councils. I’ll skip over the whitewashing of the PAP’s actions by MND and go straight to the striking-off of AIM four years after the scandal first broke. Striking off is basically a means of closing a company by declaring to ACRA that the company is no longer in business and has no more assets or liabilities. The legal formalities were complied with and AIM officially struck off the company register in July 2016. I was stunned, therefore, when Andrew Loh reported on November 2 that AIM had been restored to the the company register. While it is prefectly legal for companies to be restored after being struck off, this was extremely surprising because when AIM’s directors, all former PAP MPs, requested for AIM to be struck off in 2016, they must have already decided that there was no further use for AIM, and also made a declaration to ACRA that the company was no longer in business. What would make them want to revive the company after two years ? Searching for AIM on ACRA’s website gave two hits, one for a restoration notice and one for the original striking off. The first link showed that AIM had been restored on 28 Nov 2018 but ACRA’s business entity search tool still showed AIM’s status as struck off. Which was it ? Was AIM actually restored or not ? The answer came on 15 November as I was digging around ACRA’s website and discovered that the listing of companies deregistered in 2018 had changed. Whereas the original list had 71 entries, the new list only has 42 entries and AIM is not on the list! Somehow or other, ACRA must have uploaded an incorrect listing of restored companies and nobody noticed for almost a year. That then leads to the question of whether ACRA discovered the mistake on their own or whether they were informed of it by some people who follow Andrew’s posts very closely. Either way, it is quite embarassing for an Agency whose job it is to make sure that business entities file their reports accurately and on time. The bright side of this is that AIM appears to still be dead but it is disconcerting that ACRA could make mistakes like this. I have submitted an inquiry to ACRA asking why there were two versions of the 2018 Restorations document but haven’t received an answer yet. Addendum Another anomaly with regard to AIM is that ACRA’s website does not mention when the First Gazette Notification for its striking off was published. Ordinarily, ACRA will publish a First Gazette Notification that a company will be struck off and the striking off will take effect after 60 days if no objections are received. Out of the 1,495 companies that were struck off on the same day (4 July 2016) as AIM, all but one were included in the May 2016 First Gazette Notification. The one exception was AIM. Admittedly, I am only referring to the summary documents published on ACRA’s website. Legally, only the official Government Gazette counts and it’s quite likely that the first notice of AIM’s striking off was published in the Government Gazette in May 2016 but ACRA just missed it out when it compiled the list for publication on its own website. Unfortunately, the Government Gazette is paywalled and is extremely expensive so I haven’t been able to check yet. [Could someone with an eGazette subscription help me to check what were the actual dates of the First and Final Gazette Notifications for the striking off of 199103607Z ACTION INFORMATION MANAGEMENT PTE LTD?] Ngiam Shih Tung *The author blogs at https://stngiam.wordpress.com/ .  Read More →

I’ve KPHBed (HK: Int’l media coverage shows PAP got point on media?) that the ang moh media (including my favourites, FT, Economist and BBC: yup I’m an anglophile) exaggerate the severity of the violence (especially police “brutality” in HK). Only two people have died despite Rules of engagement that in July were consistent with best international practice—rubber bullets fired only below waist height, tear-gas used to disperse not to kettle—have been thrown out of the window. Beatings at the time of arrest have become commonplace, sometimes escalating to frenzy. On November 11th an unarmed protester was shot in the stomach at point-blank range. And all this with impunity. Officially, only one officer out of over 30,000 has as yet been suspended for any action against a protester. and [P]rotesters have vandalised (or, in protest slang, “renovated”) state banks, Hong Kong’s biggest bookseller (which is owned by the Liaison Office) and restaurants with sympathies assumed to lie with the Communist Party. Rioters now set fires not only on the streets but inside buildings. On November 6th a pro-establishment politician with known links to the triads in Yuen Long was stabbed in broad daylight. People fear being attacked simply on the basis of being Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese. Nihilism is trumping romanticism: “If we burn, you burn with us”, a rebel slogan from the climax of the Hunger Games saga, has gained currency. Earlier this month it was given awful form when a bystander confronting protesters was doused with something flammable and set on fire (he survived). So I’m glad that the Economist owned up in an article (above quotes also from said article to show up its reporting): The violence of the Hong Kong protests, and of the response to them, is hardly remarkable by international standards. Much worse has happened in Baghdad, Beirut, Santiago and Tehran over the past months. https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/11/21/hong-kong-stares-into-the-abyss-amid-growing-violence I’m not saying that the violence from both sides in HK is reasonable. It is unreasonable but let’s keep things in perspective especially police violence. Many years ago when I was a student in the UK, I watched a Panorama documentary showing the French riot police at work and in training. They were a bunch of thugs with the sheriff’s badge. Another Panorama documentary I watched years later about the UK miners’ strike in the 80s, showed that even ordinary policemen can get carried away when confronted with violent, angry crowds. I remembered the scenes where the police beat their plastic shields with their truncheons like Roman legionaries, before charging. Tribalism at work. Related post: HK protests: Surreal moments     Cynical Investor Cynical Investor blogs at Thoughts of a Cynical Investor      Read More →