TR EMERITUS

The Government announced that the number of babies born last year was the second lowest on record while the fertility rate dropped from 1.16 children in 2017 to 1.14, apparently the lowest on record. Fertility rates have been dropping globally except in Africa. The global fertility rate has halved in the last 50 years as infant mortality rates have dropped and the opportunity cost of having children for women has increased. However Singapore’s rate is one of the world’s lowest and well below the replacement level of around 2.1 children. There are many policies the Government could adopt to encourage Singaporeans to have more children. Among developed countries Sweden, France and New Zealand have fertility rates close to replacement levels. Both Sweden and France have adopted policies encouraging women to have more children. I have advocated paying mothers a cash child allowance of $300 per child per month and it was part of Reform Party policy at the last election. This would cost initially about $2-3 billion p.a. and make sense purely on cost-benefit grounds if it led to a rise in the birth rate since more children would mean more workers in the future to support an aging population. We should also make pre-natal care and hospital stays for births free. However when I suggested this policy the PAP team in West Coast attacked it as being unaffordable and fiscally irresponsible. Our statutory maternity and paternity leave is also extremely stingy compared to other developed countries despite the increases in 2017. When it comes to welfare the PAP are always quick to argue that we are a very poor country but then will turn around and boast about Singapore’s artificially high GDP per capita. Even fiscal incentives to women to have more children are tainted by LKY’s crackpot eugenic theories. The Working Mothers Child Relief is specifically targeted at encouraging better-off working women to have more children up to a maximum of $80,000 being shielded from tax. Presumably LKY intended to encourage Chinese women to have more babies to offset the higher birth rates among Malays and Indians. The Baby Bonus Child Development Account also rewards those who already have more resources since it provides for the Government to match parental savings up to $3,000. Resources should surely be targeted at the children who have least. While the Government makes statistics on child poverty hard to come by, Tommy Koh’s assertion a few years ago that a third of children go to school without breakfast is probably accurate, even though he was forced to retract it. The Government is relaxed about native-born Singaporeans failing to reproduce themselves and eventually dying out because it can always, at least for now, replace them with immigrants from the poorer parts of the world. Presumably once Asia’s population peaks it will turn to Africa, whose population is still growing very fast. Here is what Josephine Teo said in March 2018: “At around the current rates of immigration, we are close to achieving the same effect as if we had full-replacement TFR. Therefore, we do not expect any major changes to our immigration policy presently. In other words, with a moderate level of immigration, we can prevent the citizen population from shrinking in the long term.” The Government is relaxed if native born Singaporeans die out. In fact it prefers it that way. As we all know, grateful new citizens are more likely to vote for them. Since the Government is a free rider since it does not have to pay their education costs they are a net contributor to revenues from day one. Foreign workers also help to skew Singapore’s GDP per capita ratio ( by pushing up the ratio of employed workers to total population since they usually do not have any dependents) and thus bamboozle gullible foreigners into believing in the Singapore economic miracle. Some might argue that the immigrants contribute by augmenting the worker to retiree ratio which is often cited as a reason for current policy. However senior citizens receive almost no benefit from the PAP Government and almost half have inadequate incomes after retirement. I advocated a $500 per month pension payment but that was also dismissed as far too costly. As I have speculated before, perhaps the PAP’s ultimate goal will be to have 90% of the population consist of transient workers and expats while the remaining 10% are the PAP elite including those connected to the ruling dynasty, rather like the oil-rich sheikdoms of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait. At that point it will no longer be necessary to save for a rainy day and our sovereign wealth funds can be wound up and the proceeds distributed among the few Singaporeans left. That is, if there is anything left after a few more years of enjoying the benefits of the PM’s wife’s legendary investment skills.   Kenneth Jeyaretnam * The author blogs at https://kenjeyaretnam.com/.      Read More →

While I cannot agree more with the Prime Minister who said that Singapore must treasure its racial and religious harmony in a Facebook post on Sunday (July 21), it is the Prime Minister’s People’s Action Party (PAP) government who are guilty of making race and religion divisive fault lines in Singapore. The question is whether the PAP Government practices what it preaches or do they speak with forked tongue? Singaporean’s are still today not one united people despite 60 years of nation-building since 1959. Race and ethnic divisions have never been so pronounced in Singapore as they are today. The PAP Government is certainly responsible for engineering and maintaining the ethnic divide. Race-based politics and policies are not the way forward for Singapore. There are many initiatives and policies that have been put forward by the PAP Government that emphasise and demarcate a worsening racial, ethnic and religious divide between the various communities in Singapore. Deeds not words; Judge the PAP Government by their actions and the truth will make itself known to you. Don’t get taken in by the PAP Government’s empty words. Look instead at what they in fact do. The place to start in identifying their deeds is in the policies they champion. Here are just some of the more obvious policies that entrench the racial and religious divide: Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others (CMIO) classification system The Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others (CMIO) classification system inducted into the National Registration Identity Cards (NRICs) of all Singaporean citizens and Permanent Residents by the PAP Government for use to classify people by race has quite literally entrenched and demarcated us into static ethnic group silos with the net effect of preventing any possible fusion of the various ethnic groups in forging a common National Identity by the policies inherent division of people into 3 ethnic groups. In Singapore racism is systemic in nature thanks to the PAP Government’s race-based segregation of Singapore society. One must acknowledge the highly racialised character and development of Singapore society along racial lines arising out of the CIMO racial classification system. We need to acknowledge the distinctive segregated social worlds that have been created by this racial classification system. The race classification model is irrelevant and unhelpful because the more you emphasise one’s ethnicity and the culture brought here from far away lands a long long time ago, the less opportunity and space we will have for a distinctive identity across ethnic groups to develop. Another problem with this ethnic race-based approach to diversity through the CIMO classification system is its rigidity and inability to meaningfully include those like your kids who don’t fit into the model including mixed-race children. The question to ask is whether the CIMO classification system lends itself towards the creation of a racially harmonious society or a divisive one? Ethnicity Based Self-Help Groups The ethnicity-based self-help groups policy also entrenched the divide into the CDAC, SINDA, MENDAKI and The Eurasian Association for no good reason. There is clearly an inherent contradiction between the idea of self-help groups and a unified approach to “national integration” or otherwise tackling common nationwide family dysfunctions and poverty not to mention the adverse effects on national unity that arises from a race-based approach. Mother Tongue Language The Mother Tongue Language (MTL) Policy is motivated by the socio-political objective to divide the people along racial and linguistic lines. Languages define identities and create communities and therefore cultures within them. Why talk about treasuring harmony when you do what you can to entrench fault lines and division? One entire Singapore ethnic groups forced marginalisation can be traced to the MTL and CIMO policies. By forcibly classifying most Peranakans as Chinese, Baba Nonya children were forced to learn Mandarin instead of their Baba Melayu mother tongue resulting in the forced sinofication of the Baba Nonya community and the existentialist crisis this ethnic group faces today. This is certainly not treasuring our racial harmony, is it? Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) The Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) was justified and implemented in 1988 to allegedly ensure adequate minority representation but what it does instead more significantly is to politicise race and create an unnecessary race-based political system. The PAP has created the need for minority representation in the first place that they now say needs to be fixed by a race-based group representation political system. If we truly had the racial harmony the PAP says they treasure why is it that we need minority representation? The need for a GRC is simply a symptom of a disease which the PAP spread. Special Assistance Plan (SAP) School System The Special Assistance Plan (SAP) School System which is indefensible for being the antithesis or exact opposite of the multiracial and multicultural Singapore the PAP pontificates in that these schools are bastions of mono-cultural “Chineseness” without any meaningful multiracial mix of students in these schools; creating an elite group of Chinese Mandarins. Where is the racial harmony in such schools? Chinese Prime Minister Policy The Chinese Prime Minister policy is just pure unadulterated institutionalised racism. The real question is to ask: why? Why do Singaporeans prefer the country’s top leaders to be of the same race as themselves if there is the treasured racial harmony the Prime Minister waxes lyrical about? Race-Based Presidency The race-based Presidency that the Prime Minister and his colleagues in the Government championed again further entrenched race-based politics into the highest office in the land that then has led us to a remarkable inflection point in our nation’s history that simply does not inspire racial harmony in the least but rather has sowed racial discord with so many voicing their anger over the railroading of this Constitutional farce. HDB Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP) The HDB Ethnic Integration Policy(EIP) that mandates a quota for minorities in HDB estates, so as to prevent racial enclaves from forming would not have been necessary if the PAP Government has done its job in promoting our national identity instead of entrenching the divide between the people the way that they have deliberately and methodically created the problem in the first place to serve their diabolical self serving political interests. From the policy examples, I have set out it is clear that the reality is that theirs is the politics of division with policies that do not go beyond race and religion but are squarely centred within these fault lines. Their policies do not disregard race they politicise race and religion every chance they get; deeds not words. Let’s make no mistake about the hypocrisy of the fact that it was the PAP Government who were the chief architects in entrenching the race and religious fault lines to start with and continue to do so at every opportunity they get in the name of multiculturalism and diversity. The PAP Government pay lip service to our National Identity championing instead of a divided “multicultural” future for Singapore. It’s time to cut the Gordian knot that binds our identities with places we came from once upon a long time ago. The more we identify as Chinese, Malay, Indian or any other racial group the less we identify ourselves as one united people regardless of race language or religion. It’s as simple as that Race and ethnic divisions have never been so pronounced in Singapore as they are today with their divide and rule policies. Race-based politics is not the way forward. Singaporeans must vote for a unified future.   Khush Chopra        Read More →

This year, out of 93 recipients of PSC scholarship, 9 are polytechnic graduates. Mind you, this is regarded as a big jump from recent years. In the past two years, only a single scholarship went to someone from the polytechnics. In 2016, the number was three. In 2017, 24,210 students graduated from the five polytechnics (figures for 2018 and 2019 are not yet available), Assuming that the polytechnic student output remains unchanged as 2017, the award of scholarship to 9 polytechnic graduates by PSC is like a drop in the ocean. The majority of the top 5 to 10 percent of the polytechnic cohort in 2019 who managed to clinch a place in one of our local universities are likely to have to use their parents CPF savings or secure a commercial bank loan to further their studies. There is also another segment of the cohort who failed to obtain a place in a local university and they have to go to a foreign university to pursue university education. Many of such poly students have done very well academically and return home to work. The cost of an overseas university education is exorbitant and the average Singapore parent will have to struggle very hard to find the funds to send his or her children abroad to study. I have read several postings by parents in such a dilemma. My Malay barber has to sell his 3-room HDB flat in a central location and move to the Jurong area in order to secure the funds to send his eldest son to Australia to pursue a tertiary education. He told me his second son also wanted to further his studies but he has to disappoint him as he does not have another HDB flat in good location to sell off. While we know that the number of PSC scholarship awarded each year is small, and only a small percentage of local students in polytechnics and universities are fortunate enough to have one, the number of government and government-related company scholarship given to foreign students and the annual budget spent on such foreign students are in hundreds of million dollars over the last 10 years or more. The Minister for Education, in response to a parliamentary question filed by NCMP Leon Perera, said that "the total government spending for this group of international students comes up to around $130 million a year, which is 1 per cent of MOE's annual budget of $13 billion." Yet, MOE has not, to my knowledge, issued a report, detailing the actual amount spent and how the foreign students' scholarship scheme has benefited Singapore. The critical question is: why does the government seems so generous in educating foreign students in our local educational institutes and yet so tight-fist in extending financial help to local students in polytechnics and universities. Even in JCs, not all students have the means to study at their leisure as I know some even have to work in fast-food shops and giving tuition to earn their daily expenses. Frankly, the actual amount the government spent on educating foreign students in Singapore schools, JCs, Polytechnics and universities is not clear at all. Why is the MOE reluctant to provide a complete report for public information? We only learnt about this from Ministers' replies to parliamentary questions raised by opposition MPs and NCMPs. According to Minister of Education Mr Ong Ye Kung, "Every education system in the world will provide some support to international students, and Singaporeans are also benefiting from foreign sponsor-ships for their studies." Minister Ong, please tell us which country set aside about S$130 million or 1 per cent of its annual Education budget to finance the education and schooling of foreign students? So far, I have not known of any Singapore student going to an overseas university for a degree course, on the host country's budget. In 2014, in reply to WP MP Mr Png Eng Huat's parliamentary question, then Education Minister Mr Heng Swee Keat said "the tuition grants for international students comes up to about S$210 million per year." Does it mean that MOE spends at least $340 million each year on scholarships and tuition grants for foreign students in tertiary education? In Jan 2018, there are four fewer JCs (with merger of 8 JCs into 4) with an assurance that the chance of a student getting a seat in a JC will not diminish. Is it? Some JCs have up their cut-off points for admission in 2018. More serious, I was told by Normal and Express students who sat their O-Level examination, that their Form Teachers and even Principals advised them to opt for ITEs and polytechnics instead of going to JCs, If this is a policy directive from the higher-ups from Education, the implications are serious for the future of our own students. If more students opt for ITEs and polytechnics, who will take up the places in the JCs? The answer is obvious. About 70-80% of a JC cohort goes on to university while only top 5-10% polytechnic graduates can qualify for a place in a local university. In the next 3-5 years, I believe there will be less applicants to local universities as less went through the JC route. Who will take up the vacancies in local universities? In India, the Ministry of Education of Singapore is inviting applications from Indian students for the Singapore Airlines (SIA) Youth Scholarship 2019 for 2 years of pre-university studies in selected junior colleges of Singapore. Under this education scheme, about 25 to 50 students from all over India are chosen to study in one of the JCs. There must be deeper policy objectives behind this scholarship and tuition grant scheme to educate foreign students so liberally at tax-payers' expense. The Peoples Voice will seek a clear change in this foreign students' scholarship policy. While having a certain diversity of student population has its merits, there should be a much higher priority to use the annual Education budget to help and develop local student talents in all critical areas to meet Singapore's long-term needs. In fact, there are enough foreign students who left Singapore immediately upon graduation (and the MOE and university administrations can't do anything to recoup the money spent on them), to tell the government that this current policy of free funding the education of foreign students indiscriminately, is unfair to our local students and their parents. We work for change for a better Singapore.   Kok Ming Cheang      Read More →