TR EMERITUS

Putting Singaporeans First Former presidential candidate Tan Jee Say has formed a new political party - Singaporeans First Party (SFP) - together with 10 other members. A press conference was held this morning (25 May) to announce the birth of the party. As its name suggests, the aim of the party is to put Singaporeans first. In a statement released to the media today, the founding members of SFP said: People are important. They are the soul of a nation. For the past 50 years, Singaporeans have become secondary to the relentless pursuit of economic growth. The nation has lost its soul. We need a new vision that puts Singaporeans at the heart of the nation. The vision of a fair society with strong families and a confident people with high self-esteem. A Fair & More Equitable Society In its statement, SFP noted that the elitist policies of the PAP have turned Singapore into a highly divided society with extreme inequalities of wealth and income between the rich and the poor and a shrinking middle class squeezed in between. "Singapore has now become the most costly city in the world. Singapore citizens are faced with expensive housing options, high healthcare costs, unreliable and expensive public transport, and a system of education that encourages families to supplement school curriculum with private tuition at great expense," SFP observed. SFP said that at the same time, real wages have fallen or virtually stagnated for large groups of Singaporeans, making it difficult for many families to cope. SFP wants to remake Singapore's society with policies that turn Singaporeans into masters, not slaves, of economic growth. It wants to put the interest and well-being of people first before the pursuit of economic growth. "We will create a fair society with new policies to rejuvenate the economy and generate good jobs that pay fair living wages. At the same time, we will strengthen welfare services comprehensively and significantly in healthcare, education, housing and transport," it said. SFP advocates the removal of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), "a regressive tax which imposes an unfair burden on middle and lower income Singaporeans as it raises their basic cost of living significantly". SFP does not see the need to impose new taxes in other areas to make up for the loss of GST revenue, if GST is done away with. It does not see the need to raise other taxes for at least the next 10 years even if social spending is increased significantly. The Economy SFP proposes restructuring the economy by making it much less dependent on cheap, low-skilled foreign labour as it depresses Singaporean wage levels, lowers overall productivity, sustains low-skill industries and adds to overcrowding. SFP will review the need to give very favourable foreign worker quotas to certain industries that are highly dependent on foreign workers. It said: This special treatment is unfair to other industries and distorts our manpower policies. For example, shipyards employ 100,000 foreign workers out of a total workforce of 120,000. We should also question the desirability of promoting industries that harm social mores and destroy families. Are casinos worth the price in terms of costs to society and families? They also depend significantly on low skilled foreign labour in the entertainment and food & beverage sectors. They may contribute to the GDP but do not add to our social advancement or the development of wholesome skill sets. SFP will place a high priority on developing Singapore businesses e.g. small and medium enterprises (SMEs) into major regional and global firms. SFP sees education and healthcare as 2 sectors that are sustainable over the long term. It wants to especially develop and increase local expertise in these areas. SFP also wants to aggressively help SMEs overcome the problem of high business costs by reviewing the sale and rental policy of industrial factories and space. SFP posed the following questions: Have our planning and land allocation policies favoured the landlords and building owners such that our rental costs continue to rise unchecked? Has the policy of encouraging ownership of industrial property resulted in high rental? In fulfilling its vision of putting Singaporeans first, SFP said that local enterprises must be encouraged to give priority to the employment of Singaporeans across all sectors but particularly at PMET and senior management levels. Foreigners should only be hired where specialist skills are missing in Singaporeans. In particular, SFP calls for government-linked companies to start the ball rolling by "enrolling more Singaporeans in executive and management positions". Another policy SFP feels disadvantages Singaporeans is the national service (NS) obligation of Singaporean men. After 50 years of nationhood, SFP thinks it is time to review the 2-year NS obligatory period in the light of technological progress and new methods of organisation and training. "Can the national service obligation and annual reservist training be shortened meaningfully so that our Singaporean men are not disadvantaged in the workplace?" SFP asked. Supporting Strong Families The ultimate solution to the persistent problem of manpower shortage is to raise the fertility rate from about 1.2 to well above 2, SFP said. In this regard, Singapore must reduce substantially the cost to families of having more children by granting more and bigger child allowances and providing free education from pre-school to university. Childcare facilities should be heavily subsidised. SFP said: Work should not take too much time away from the family. This can be achieved if jobs and services are available near home. Hence offices, workshops, schools, pre-schools, childcare centres, clinics, hospitals, health clubs, cinemas, shops should be located in the community so that they can be reached within 15 minutes. These facilities should be decentralised throughout Singapore so that criss-cross travelling can be minimised and women do not need to travel far from home. Flexible working arrangements can be better organised to accommodate the needs of housewives and active seniors. We will provide the substantial funds needed to redevelop existing housing estates and transform them into vibrant self-contained communities where families live, work and play with jobs, services and entertainment provided near their homes. SFP believes that Singapore can develop a robust and internationally competitive economy without a high dependence on foreign labour as many countries have shown e.g. Denmark and Finland, both of which have a similar population size to Singapore of about 5 million. Establishing a Strong Safety Net There is currently no social safety net of any significance, SFP said. "Once a person loses a job, he loses everything - no unemployment insurance, no healthcare, no savings for retirement. All this adds to the emotional insecurity and a lowered sense of self-esteem," SFP noted. A strong safety net will prevent Singaporeans from falling into insecurity, despair and indignity. SFP proposes establishing a strong social safety net with the following 3 features: truly affordable universal and comprehensive healthcare insurance, unemployment insurance, and an old age pension provided by the state outside of the inadequate CPF SFP figures that the massive financial surpluses accumulated in the last 4 to 5 decades are more than sufficient to provide a strong safety net for Singaporeans. Mr Tan Jee Say (second from right) with Dr Ang Yong Guan (rightmost) at the party's unveiling. (Photo:Yahoo) The 11 founding members of SFP are: Dr Ang Yong Guan, psychiatrist and ex-grassroots leader Michael Chia, retired engineer and volunteer social worker Fahmi Rais, communications professional and ex-Young PAP and Legislative Assistant Fatimah Akhtar, architect Dr David Foo Ming Jin, chemist, logistics professional and ex-Young PAP Jamie Lee Swee Yan, certified SAP IT professional and project manager Winston Lim, architect and town planner Dr Loke Pak Hoe, Director of 3 multinational educational companies Tan Jee Say, financial adviser, ex-civil servant, banker and fund manager David Tan L K, educationist, and ex-grassroots leader Tan Peng Ann, social entrepreneur, retired SAF officer and ex-PAP grassroots leader The new party is made up of passionate Singaporeans who want to see the country put its citizens first. Many of the founders have been active politically and within the community. Of the 11: 8 are ex-civil servants 6 are ex-scholars 5 are ex-grassroots leaders 3 are ex-PAP members A reader told TRE when he first heard of Tan Jee Say forming a new political party: yes i feel they really want to serve the people, i mean they can jolly well just sit back, shake legs with their accumulated wealth and watch the world go by, in fact they don't really need to deal with anything now. why come forward and be accused and mocked at by sporns... for being an attention seeking whore. some sporns really ganna sai. sometimes i wonder why do this kinda 'chi li bu tao hao' stuff for sinkees. ('ganna sai' = like shit; 'chi li bu tao hao' = 吃力不讨好 = thankless)  Read More →

This is a short article to briefly discuss Roy Nerng's point on the interest earned by GIC and Temasek, and how interest earned by the sovereign wealth funds should be given back to Singaporeans. While on the surface, this is a very beneficial scheme, it actually hurts the lower income and it benefits the higher income earners. It is therefore very important for Singaporeans to seriously consider the implications of Roy's relentless push for increasing CPF interest rates. You may ask: how so? Well, lower income Singaporeans tend to have (1) no CPF contribution, or (2) very low CPF contribution (because they have low salaries, duh). Even if the CPF interest rates are increased, the benefits to them are actually negligible. This is especially so if you consider the fact that a sizeable portion of low income Singaporeans has difficulties meeting the Minimum Sum. So seriously, will increasing CPF interest rates really help these Singaporeans?! On the other hand, it is not unusual to see Singaporeans earning a higher income VOLUNTEERING to INCREASE their CPF contributions (under the Voluntary Contributions scheme). To be frank, 2-4% is akin to fixed deposit, and, because they are savvy, they can use CPF money to invest anyway. I mean, increasing CPF contributions doesn't hurt them, they have enough spare cash lying around anyway, why not? Especially since CPF pays better than the bank's interest rates? If you increase CPF interest rates to about 6 percent (which is VERY high and quite close to the returns on stock market), those earning higher income will just 'park' more money in CPF and earn more interest lor. Remember: they have no difficulty meeting the Minimum Sum. Once they reach retirement age, they can just withdraw all the excess beyond the Minimum Sum and live the rest of their life in comfort. What about the rest of the Singaporeans who have difficulty meeting the Minimum Sum (and thus cannot fully enjoy the higher CPF interest rates)? Or what about those who are employed in contract/daily-rated jobs which have no CPF contributions? What will they stand to gain from Roy’s policy? While I am leaning towards reducing the age of withdrawal/Minimum Sum, increasing CPF interest payable to ordinary Singaporeans actually harms the lower income instead. It will actually increase the rich-poor divide that Roy is so strongly against! So please Roy, do yourself (and all of us) a favour and think through your ideas before advocating them so fervently. Ming (disgusted @ Roy) * Submitted by TRE reader.  Read More →

The leader of Britain's UKIP party, Nigel Farage, celebrates with newly elected councillors in Basildon. (Photo: Reuters) (24 May)   Britain’s UK Independence Party surged to its best ever performance in local council elections on Friday, boosting the hopes of Nigel Farage’s anti-EU and anti-immigration group for the European parliament polls. Farage said his party were now “serious players” after taking votes from the three main parties, posing a headache for Prime Minister David Cameron ahead of general elections in May next year. Elections for some local council in England and Northern Ireland were held on Thursday alongside the European parliament vote, the results of which will not be announced until Sunday. “The UKIP fox is in the Westminster hen house,” a beaming Farage said on Friday as the first results came through. Read more: www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1519227/britains-anti-immigration-party-ukip-surges-local-elections  Read More →