TR EMERITUS

If the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic was a real war, then it is obvious that Singapore would be doomed by now. Touted by PM Lee as the “crisis of a generation” in his national broadcast in June last year, has anyone realized that there is no ex-general or medically-trained politician in the MTF? Is the PAP deliberately withholding their best politicians from this crucial battle for some strategic reason? The Singaporean-Factor: Defence and social cohesion, nurtured over many years through our collective effort in Nation Building, used to be the bedrocks that define our existence as a sovereign nation. That was when many Singaporeans looked up to our first generation of leaders and granted them the trust and respect needed to govern our country and overcome adversity. Ask any Singaporeans then and they can tell you about our Economic Plan by way of analogies, such as the importance of having a “Twin-Engine for Growth” or speak proudly of our Presidents, and almost everyone show high regards for political leaders like Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee, Devan Nair or Ong Teng Cheong. Through hard work, discipline and trust in the leadership of our First Cabinet, we prosper as a nation until a few politicians start believing that they are more superior and have been more instrumental in forging our earlier success than the rest of the nation. Absolute Rule – The PAP’s Way Or No Way: But the seed of our self-destruction was conceived just a couple of years earlier, before the First Cabinet collectively stepped down in 1985. Money politics became the new norms when the Pension Scheme for civil servants was replaced by a one-off gratuity while our National Savings Scheme (CPF) was turned into a Retirement Scheme. But for the privileged politicians and their subordinates in public service, their pay scales were revised upward, and upon retirement, they were further rewarded with a luxurious Pension Scheme, much better than any welfare state in the world. Can anyone ever forget how a Health Minister, after being paid millions in remuneration, have the audacity to openly boost about having a heart-bypass for a mere S$8 while the average Singaporeans are resigned to costly medical bills? From being a pragmatic and prudent society that is grounded in Confucius values, we traded away our value-system and started spending extravagantly. Our Singaporean Workforce was rapidly diluted with high influx of cheaper foreign workers while Permanent Secretary position in our ministries were reduced from being “equals” of ministers to being their subordinates. Mismanagement, Misjudgment & Miscalculation: Fast-forward, the follies of those politically-driven changes are finally being exposed by the pandemic. The old PAP that Singaporeans have trusted is gone, replaced by a corporate PAP in the form of SG Inc. We have unwittingly adopted the brutal culture of Corporate America because the majority of Singaporeans continue to give them a “blank cheque” at every general election, and many Singaporeans are finally getting a taste of its brutality for the first time. Truth be told, the caliber of the many of the 4G politicians are nowhere close to high performing Americans as the pandemic has shown us. By presuming that the pandemic will go away by itself, the government has been caught off-guard on several occasions, only to realize that even the mRNA-vaccination is proving to be ineffective and their strategy of herd-immunity is no difference than that of a mirage in the dessert. Against such a backdrop of failures, contradictions and growing discontention, it is only natural that concerned Singaporeans start questioning our government about the soundness of its strategy against the pandemic. Many Singaporeans, especially parents, wanted to know more about the many unknowns of the mRNA technology and its side-effects as infection and fatality rates start escalating despite our high vaccination rate of over 85%. It is wrong for Singaporeans to feel nervous when things are getting from bad to worse? Instead of providing answers and more data to reassure concerned Singaporeans, or putting more effort into finding out why some Singaporeans remain unvaccinated, it is totally absurd for the government to be dismissive, and instead, put the blame of the rise in infection on the unvaccinated and start implementing discriminating policy against them. When PM Lee made a remark at the end of the G20 Summit in Rome to the media early this month that Singapore is “making progress” when the reality is that our infection and fatality rates are soaring out of control, he was in for a rude shock when the EU placed Singapore on its list of travel restriction a week later, and subsequently, when Denmark disallows Singapore residents quarantine free travel access into their country. Concerned Singaporeans, like the EU and Denmark, are not gullible to fall for such political rhetoric. What Are We Fighting Exactly? What is troubling is that there is a massive difference between the official narrative and the reality on the ground. We spend millions stationing Safety Ambassadors at our hawker centres island-wide to control access but almost anyone can still walk into our hawker centres undetected through the many glaring physical gaps. We exact punitive punishments on fellow Singaporeans when they fail to keep to the prescribed safety measures but seem to be turning a blind eye when it comes to foreigners. A taxi-driver told me that every Sunday, he notices that foreign workers are bringing their FDW-girlfriends to budget-hotels across Singapore for a short-term stay of a few hours, and this is happening from Geylang to Tiong Bahru. He even told me that besides these rendezvous at budget-hotels, there are also several karaoke that are still openly flouting safety measures. How on earth can MOM, MHA, MOH and the other governmental agencies remain clueless about such blatant discrepancies that are happening right under their noses? Don't just take my words for it but do go around and see for yourself or ask taxi drivers about such exploits. So where is our government’s resolution in fighting the pandemic? In light of all these glaring discrepancies, who should we hold responsible for the recent rise in infection and fatality in Singapore - unvaccinated Singaporeans or those gallivanting foreigners and errand operators? Is there even a basis to be discriminating against the unvaccinated when the government cannot get its own act together in the first place? Is the MTF A Political Hot-Seat By Design? How on earth can the MTF or MOH be expected to manage our fight against the pandemic when other ministries and agencies are not taking their responsibility seriously? What is the probability that the MTF is being used by some of the PM-wannabes to get rid of their opponents? Who can concerned Singaporeans and parents turn to for help if our government continues to be dismissive of their concerns and needs for clarification? Shouldn’t Lee, as a former brigadier general, don his military amour once again and rally his legion of ex-generals and all his shortlisted PM-wannabes into the battle against the pandemic and save Singapore? In so doing, we can at least be assured that the “whole of government” will be as committed as Lee in his fight against the “crisis of a generation”. Until our government act in better faith, the Hard Truth is that more lives will be lost needlessly and Singapore will become more divided as a nation. Is this acceptable and do we still believe that Singaporeans deserve better?   Joseph Nathan      Read More →

One of the highlights of the Bloomberg New Economy Gala, which was held in Singapore on 17 November 2021, was an interview given by our Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Hsien Loong to John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg News. The entire crux of that interview was the fact that Mr. Lee made the point that it would not be easy to implement a wealth tax and that our tax system needed to be progressive and fair. More on the interview can be found at: [LINK] Photo: Ministry of Communications and Information For a nation that has spent the last two decades being all about “Attracting Wealth,” it was a something of a revolutionary step for our Prime Minister to even mention the topic of a “wealth tax” at a forum aimed at pleasing the international business community. One has to ask what was going on and most likely answer was the fact that this was an idea brought up by Dr. Jamus Lim, Member of Parliament for Sengkang GRC. Around two weeks before the Prime Minister gave the interview with Bloomberg, Dr. Lim proposed imposing a wealth tax on the richest in Singapore. Whilst Dr. Lim may be a member of the opposition Worker’s Party, he is also a highly respected economist, having worked at both the World Bank and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. So, it was impossible to tar Dr. Lim with the label of being a stary eyed socialist and the idea is now in open discussion. More of Dr. Lim’s proposal can be found at: [LINK] I will leave the merits of a “wealth tax” to the more qualified. I will however, touch on the fact that Singapore has been a fairly unequal society and the problem we face is not so much a question of attracting wealth but the type of wealth we are attracting. Whilst the government has tried its best to present Singapore as having a wonderful forward-looking economy based on innovation, the truth is much of the thinking behind Singapore’s economic structure remains stuck in the 1960s when it was essential to have a manufacturing base and our competitive edge was about being cheaper than the Western world (which Japan is included) and having a work force that would do as it was told. Our economy back then was based on the premise that we attracted rich outsiders who would give us the good things in life. Whilst the industries have changed, the thought process behind our economic development remains the same. This line of thinking has been programmed into the governing DNA. Whatever you talk about, the official answer will always revert back to this line of thinking. Why must we have casinos? Because rich foreigners will gamble their money here and give us jobs? Why must you have an open-door immigration policy? Because you need the foreigners to create jobs for the locals. Why must you house construction workers in tight, cramped and unsanitary conditions? Because the heavy industry that employs most of us needs cheap labour to be competitive. Nearly every pertinent question raised in the public sphere has been met with this line of thinking and the same goes for the issue of making the rich pay more tax. – Standard answer is that Singapore needs low taxes to make it attractive to the rich who will create a demand for all sorts of things which will create great things for the locals. Whilst this line of argument has had its merits, particularly during the boom years of the 80s, one has to ask if its relevant today. If you look at the wealth that we’re attracting, you’ll find it is doing what the local wealth has been doing for years – plonking it into very expensive real estate. Whilst I am not against investing in property per se, but if you look at Singapore (and Hong Kong), most of national wealth is tied up in property rather than in the stuff that creates jobs. If you look at the companies that make up the Straits Times Industrial Index, you’ll find that around a third of those companies are landlords. If you look at the Forbes list of richest Singaporeans, you’ll find that the “home-grown” are essentially landlords. Again, there is nothing wrong with being a landlord from a business perspective. However, from the socio-political-macroeconomic perspective, something is very wrong if landlords have a disproportionate hold of things and get to dictate national policy as has been seen with the dormitory owners. Think about it, Sir James Dyson’s biggest headline grabbing move was to buy an expensive piece of property in Singapore. This was hailed as “investment.” To be fair, Sir. James did move his headquarters to Singapore and there is a technology centre in Singapore, which will hopefully generate some of the “brain” work for the locals. Then, there is the example of Eduardo Saverin, a co-founder of Facebook who is famous for legal action against the main man at Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg). As well as buying property, Mr. Saverin has set up a venture capital fund. He has, however, done little in the way of skills transferring or getting involved in business himself. So, what have our foreign investors actually done? What have our local billionaires actually done for us? I’m not advocating a China style forced redistribution. However, what one should look at is making the tax system encourage genuine wealth creation rather than just making it easy for the world’s wealthy to plonk their money into stuff that doesn’t actually do much for the economy. This is where Mr. Lee and his team need to put on their thinking caps. Sure, we need to attract wealth but we need to see to it that wealth does not become lazy and goes into things that actually benefit the economy as a whole. If we need to “wealth tax” we should tax “lazy wealth.”   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able 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 →

Ong Ye Kung's stupidity seems to be getting from bad to worse, day by day! Even though the number of cases have been going down since the peak, we are still hovering around 2000 cases a day. European countries have put us on the high risk areas! Is this even a right thing for him and his incompetent MMTF to do when we are still in a mess? I have friends from JB working in Singapore who are unable to go back to visit their families because there is no such lane between Singapore and JB. Many of these Malaysian friends of mine have contributed to our economy but are facing emotional stress and loneliness from not being able to meet their friends and family. Instead, the government is choosing to favor CECA visitors over them! This is not a matter of being racist but something that is totally disconnected from the ground and reality. A few months ago, people in India were known to purchase fake vaccination certificates for as little as US$100. Not only that, these certificates were reportedly quite rampant as well. Are we not running the risk when some of these people can come in with a fake vaccination certificate? In addition, international media have blasted the Indian government for under reporting the number of covid cases by as much as 10 times. Can we trust that the situation there is under control when the hospitals are still over crowded? Bearing in mind that when the first delta variant first came into knowledge, this very same, as well as rather useless Minister Ong who was then Minister fro Transport had refused to ban visitors from the South Asian region. It was only after, a few weeks later that he was forced to concede that the Delta variant had "breached our defenses" causing a semi-lockdown which cost us billions in economic losses, and for small business owners to fall into despair. It is nothing short of madness that he is now starting accept visitors from India given the situation there as well as the fact that we cannot reliably ascertain the true vaccination status of incoming travelers. Who is going to take responsibility when something goes wrong? The PAP has always been quick to trade credit and pass the blame to external factors. With his lousy track record, I would not be surprised if the situation in Singapore gets worse because of this. I urge voters to restoundingly kick this clown out at the next General Elections!   Prabu * Article first appeared on Real Issues in Singapore .  Read More →