TR EMERITUS

This piece of commentary is unlikely to interest most netizens, however, it interests me enough to post my thoughts as a concerned citizen. Singapore's key exports fell by 20.1% in August, 11th straight month of decline- CNA online 18 September 23. The latest non-oil domestic export (NODEX) decline comes hot on the heel of a 20.3% decline in July and another 15.7% contraction in June. August numbers are worse than a Reuter poll forecast. NODEX covers a wide range of economic goods and services and they include electronic products, disk media, pharmaceutical products and ship structures and much more. Life is alrearly tough and struggling and increasing so for a growing number of our citizens and with another 1 percentage point of GST increase next year, their fears and plights are transparent until even the blinds can literally see. It makes me angry everytime when I remember that pap ministars know how to pay themselves very, very well but when things don't go well like our continuous free falling NODEX numbers which must affect companies' bottom lines, workers' pay and job security, they are quick and clever to point to it being a world wide phenomenal, overall weak external demands and not their faults and incompetence lalala... Any competent and capable government will find a way through and find a way out and a medicocre and weak government like what we are having will find excuses. 11 straight months of NODEX decline for a small trading nation whose external trade is 3 times our domestic trade is seriously no joke. I wonder if our millionaire pap ministars are wriggling their fingers, busy counting their million dollars salary, busy suing people and congratulating each other more than thinking of how we can savage the situation in real, effective and meaningful ways given the very fat political salaries that they know how to pay themselves over the decades. Anybody can hold the helm when the sea is calm but the seas are not calm now. In our hokkien lingo, I ask if they are only a jia pa tan si lot (eat full wait to die)? Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →

I have always wondered how the Elections Department of Singapore (ELD) which is a department of the Prime Minister’s Office shift boundaries of constituencies and even disappear some constituencies. Anson was one constituency that disappeared soon after it was won by opposition leader, Mr J.B. Jeyaretnam in the by election of 1981 and then the general election in 1984. The loss of Anson after 16 years of uninterrupted solo control of parliament was unacceptable by the prime minister. Anson was therefore wiped out in the general election of 1988 even though the PAP had a couple of years before built a splendid Peranakan styled community centre for the residents. It was a cowardly act but who cares? After all, winning is the most important part of politics and governing without any opposition is ideal because it could do whatever it likes and cover up any embarrassing mistakes. Thus with the intent of learning how gerrymandering is done, I volunteered to be a polling and counting agent at the recent Presidential Election (PE). I have written about my experience as a polling agent in a nursing home. Now I write about being a counting agent. COUNTING CENTRES There were 2,709,455 registered voters and 215 counting centres. That worked out to an average of about 12,602 votes to be counted at each counting centre. The actual number was smaller as only 93.41% actually voted. I was a counting agent at Bedok Green Secondary School (Bedok Green). With me was Mr John Tan. We arrived at the school before 7.30pm as we wanted to witness the testing of the counting machines. Unlike commercial banks with solid counting machines, the ELD’s machines were flimsy and slightly bigger than the hand. Place a stack of mock and numbered ballot papers into the slot, tighten the plastic clip and press the button. The machine starts flapping the paper. Sometimes it stalled and the officer had to re-start the process. The number of paper counted is reflected on the machine. If the machine and the numbering of the paper tally, then it is in order. The quantity that can be counted is about 100. Thirteen machines were thus tested. After some difficulties, the machines were all certified as good for use. It is funny that the ELD bought 13 flimsy machines instead of perhaps 2 good quality machines that can reliably count more than a few hundred votes at a time and last more than ten years. Bedok Green has 4 large tables marked A, B, C and D. Each table was allocated to count the votes of one polling station. One polling station can serve the voters of a particular estate or a few blocks of flats. The total number of votes at each polling station is between 2,000 to 3,000. (This figure is derived by dividing the total number of voters and the total number of polling stations). Thus it is not difficult to know from each table, how many voters from several blocks voted. Extrapolate this to a general election. The prime minister would know exactly how blocks of flats or estates voted. Voters of blocks of flats or condominiums that voted for the opposition can thus be shifted to a constituency where the majority had voted for the PAP. The votes become diluted and the chances of the PAP winning would be secured. Gerrymandering is super easy for the ELD as the number of voters at each polling station is at most about 3,000 and clearly identified at the counting centres. The only uncertainties lie in new estates with new voters who are children of Singaporeans. I suspect new citizens will vote for the PAP. In Bedok Green, each of the 4 tables counted between 2,000 to slightly over 3,000 votes. The total counted was 11,350. This number excluded all invalid votes. I suspect each counting centre has about this number of votes. This presidential election will add some statistics for the ELD to fine tune the voting pattern of General Election 2020 and gerrymander for the coming election. For the opposition parties, I don’t know if they have statistics culled from the Presidential and General Election of 2020. I doubt they have counting agents for all the counting centres to record the numbers and analyse how they voted in the last General Election. In this PE, civil society promised to produce a report on the voting pattern. Let’s see what comes out of it. SAMPLE COUNTS Incidentally, the sample count is derived from randomly picking out 100 valid votes from each table. It is pretty accurate. I encourage every citizen to participate in the coming general election. Be a polling or counting agent for any candidate. It will be good if the opposition is able to field polling and counting agents for the whole of Singapore and analyse the numbers.   Teo Soh Lung      Read More →

I’ve spent a good portion of my working life in the media, both as a creator and seller of stories on the PR end or writing them from the publication side. In those years, I’ve realized that as far as media is concerned, there’s one uncomfortable truth – personalities sell. This truth is regardless of the topic and thanks to social media, we’re becoming even more personality obsessed. There was a time when “celebrity” was restricted to the world of entertainment. These days everyone is a celebrity. Let’s face the basic fact – it’s far easier and therefore fun to talk about personalities. The Trump era in American and by extension World politics was the prime example. Everything was focused on the personality in the White House. Say what you like about the man but he had a way of getting people to talk about him, whether it was good or bad. Everyone in the media by extension everywhere else talked about him. Political discourse inevitably went around his orange tan or whether you thought his bluster was actually based on anything. Nobody actually seemed to care to discuss the policies he was proposing. We, as a species, are bitchy. As mentioned, I spent half my working life in and around media. So, yes, I’m guilty of gossiping and even writing about people (I’m not important enough for Ng Yat Chung to care about what I’ve written about him). Funnily enough, being a bitch isn’t limited to the media. In Singapore, professional circles are so small that personalities end up getting discussed at all sorts of “professional” gatherings. This bitchiness is so prevalent that I’d actually worry if people were not saying things about me behind my back – it would be a sign that I was totally irrelevant. Whilst its second nature to “civilized people” to “bitch” about each other, there’s a slight problem with this. The easy topic is actually the most distracting. It’s so easy to talk about people that the people you are “bitching” about become the main thing that you think about. Then, when all you think about is the people you are bitching about, you lose interest in doing anything else in between the hum drum of ordinary life. There has, as far as I know, never been a study on the correlation between bitchiness and the collapse of civilizations. However, there would be case for it. The Millenia of Chinese Imperial Courts filled with eunuchs, for example was probably so bitchy with everyone in court bitching about each other than nobody realized that society had stagnated or that the “White Devils” asking to trade actually had far more advanced technologies that could damage everyone else. So, if we can’t talk about each other, what else can we talk about? Well, I did something vaguely intelligent last week and made an appointment to catch up with my former battalion Rece officer this week. Ours was a very unusual friendship. We meet in the armskote room at 23SA. I was the Orderly Sargent (COS) on duty trying to get the arms cleared. He was the battalion Duty Officer (DO). He had gone through the US Military Academy at West Point and graduated seventh in his class. I, by contrast, should have failed my specialist course, had they been allowed to fail me. The caliber of personalities was very clear and I got a dressing down. Never raised his voice but the battery (Company equivalent in an Artillery Unit) duty officer, who had cleared the arms previously, was summoned and everyone in battery line was exceedingly sympathetic the next day. We didn’t really keep in touch. He had his career in the army and I went onto ORD, go to university and start my freelancing journey. However, he left the army and got in touch with me. Our friendship started to develop in the post-phase of his career because, while we didn’t meet often, our meetings were and remain sessions for discussing issues that matter to us and bouncing ideas as what we can do. Our coffee session at the Tower Club was no exception: With Mr. Christopher Lo at the Tower Club In the years since the military, I’ve understood that it wasn’t just the rank that made him my superior. It was the level of conversation that he brought to me that made him my superior. People and personalities were never the main focus of our discussions. What makes the discussions I have with him different to the people I deal with in the course of my professional life is that personalities are never the main topic. Our main topic is ideas. So, yes, talking about personalities can be a lot of fun. If anything, it becomes the focus on life when you work in an organization that becomes the centre of your life. Offices, be they bureaucratic or corporate are hives of discussions on personality. Hence, they are grossly unproductive. However, once you get people away from their little holes, you get them to think of things beyond the personalities. You get them to think and talk about ideas that excite them. As my favourite data analytics entrepreneur states – Innovation doesn’t happen in big companies. The big companies have to buy small ones to get innovation. Silicon Valley works because people get together to talk about and get excited by ideas. In a bureaucracy, people get turned on by talking about other people whom they can either build up or trash according to their convenience – hence such organizations do not grow. Clearly it is best to look for the people who want to talk about ideas that excite them rather than the personalities.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able to meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →