TR EMERITUS

I do not like the democracy that is practiced in America and other countries that follow their system. It is a flawed system. It does more harm than good. It gives the impression that the people can choose their government. In practice, they get the same kind of government, although the elected people may change. They generally get corrupt and incompetent leaders. The corrupt politicians like their "democracy". They know how to play the system to their advantage. They know how to win elections. After they get into power, they know how to use their power to their advantage, and to benefit their political sponsors. They know how to change the law, to entrench their power. They pass laws that do not respect justice and honesty. There is another system of "democracy", not practice by America and its followers, that produce better leaders and better economic and social outcomes for their people. Hehehe. I shall not say what is this better "democracy" here. OK. I shall describe it in a separate post.   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →

In 2008 when he founded the Reform Party, JBJ famously asked the question whether the citizens of Singapore enjoyed any more freedom than the people of Belarus and North Korea. Although that might have seemed a bit of a stretch then, certainly in the case of North Korea, the recently passed Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act (FICA) certainly puts Singapore firmly on that path and reinforces the totalitarian nature of LHL’s regime. FICA is all-encompassing in its scope and deliberately vague, giving the Minister enormous discretionary power to remove any content the Government does not like from the internet or social media and to force social media companies and internet providers to take down accounts or restrict access to anyone so designated. The Minister is also able to issue anticipatory directions, where he suspects that an individual in Singapore is going “to engage in online communications activity in Singapore.” The only reason the Minister has to give is that it is “in the public interest” which is drawn so widely that it is basically whatever the Government says it is or any “foreign interference directed towards a political end.” Very conveniently a political end is any effort directed at changing a law or influencing Parliament or even public opinion so LHL’s Government now has another tool in its formidable armoury of repressive legislation to shut down civil society activism on the grounds that they are influenced by NGOs or civil society in other countries. It is clear how this will work in practice. Attempts to drag Singapore out of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth can now be made illegal because they are influenced by foreign input. For example campaigns to abolish capital and corporal punishment and to bring Singapore’s laws into line with those in advanced countries can be shut down by the Minister because they benefit from contacts with foreign NGOs and activists. The same goes for campaigns to reduce carbon emissions in the cause of stopping climate change. Any contact between Greta Thunberg and local activists will become illegal. Some critics have already said that it will harm academic ties with institutions in other countries, a process of cutting Singapore off from free academic institutions that has already started with the closure of Yale-NUS. But its implications go way beyond this. The law as it stands is anti-innovation, anti-science and anti-business. Imagine foreign research which undermines the PAP’s rationale for a particular policy. Attempts to partner with foreign academics to bring it the attention of Singaporeans would become illegal. The intention behind this totalitarian piece of legislation seems to be to cut SIngapore off from the world and put it behind high walls. like the former Communist states of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the Chinese and Russian Empire, which forbade contact between their peoples and foreigners without the permission of their rulers. Their empires extended over millions of square kilometers but LHL’s little empire only extends over some 740 square kilometers. This legislation makes a laughing stock of the Government’s oft reiterated insistence that SIngapore must remain a global city open and connected to the world. However to put in its historical context it is just the logical extension of previous pieces of legislation designed to ensure that Singaporeans did not receive access to alternative views and even access to basic information. This started when LKY closed the last independent media outlets, The Singapore Herald and The Eastern Sun, and brought in the Newspapers and Printing Presses Act (NPPA). This effectively made all print media in Singapore state media.This was followed by the Broadcasting Act in 1994 which made it illegal for Singaporeans to own satellite dishes giving them access to foreign TV stations unfiltered by the state monopoly broadcaster (which has morphed into Temasek subsidiary MediaCorp). However the control of the PAP state over its citizens was eroded to a small degree by the arrival of the internet and social media though the Government quickly established its own army of trolls, probably outsourced to cheap labour countries. But a nascent free online media that was timidly starting to ask a few mild questions and raise a few concerns about Government accountable has clearly been upsetting LHL for some time. The new FICA has to be seen as part of the Government’s attempt to reassert its mind control and brainwashing over Singaporeans after the Protection from Online Falsehood and Manipulation Act (POFMA) was judged to be insufficient (and held the PAP Government up to ridicule as when Heng Swee Keat tried to shut Singaporeans up on the subject of Ho China’s salary by issuing ridiculous POFMA notices in rapid succession, a farce I made fun of here. While the new Maintenance of Racial Harmony Act might look on the surface as an overdue attempt to end discrimination, its real intent and purpose will be to actually reinforce and legitimize discrimination against minority Singaporeans in all spheres of life by saying that the publication of statistics undermines racial harmony because it points out institutionalized racism which abounds in Singapore. FICA also serves the objective of a totalitarian state that there should be no possible independent economic base of opposition to the regime. What LHL hates and fears above all is that there should be no other potential power bases and that no one should be able to make a living without his approval. When The Real Singapore was shut down and its principals prosecuted and jailed, what really upset the Government was that they were able to monetise their views and were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. This is probably less than 25% of a Minister’s salary but still LHL and the PAP do not want anyone who is not a Minister, spouse, relative or crony (many of whom are foreigners working for Temasek, like Stephen Forshaw who libelled me on Twitter) to make that kind of money if they live in Singapore unless they are constantly singing the praises of LHL and citing fake statistics. Certainly any opposition to the regime can be very bad for your business. LHL has things better than China’s Xi Jinping, who has belatedly decided that too much wealth is escaping the grasp of the Chinese Communist Party and that this might in time lead to opposition to his rule. In response Xi is energetically crushing the tech tycoons and bringing them to heel in the name of curbing monopoly and redistributing wealth. Some of you might be taken in by the examples given by the Government of foreign interference in domestic politics, like Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election and their attempt to influence the election in Trump’s favour. However there is no evidence that such interference actually changed the result of either that election or the 2020 election. But Trump’s lawyers advanced wild conspiracy theories about state actors from Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba hacking into US voting machines in swing states as proof that the 2020 election was fixed and that Trump actually won and should therefore refuse to step down. However no evidence was produced and his lawyers were laughed out of court and eventually censured. LHL, like Trump, would try and play the foreign interference card if he was voted out and might even mount a coup to stay in office. After all he has enough ex-military men in his Cabinet. The Government has produced no evidence of foreign interference in Singapore’s elections yet it has always sought to play the foreign bogeyman card, going back to the 1972 election when a PAP MP slandered JBJ and the Workers Party by saying they had received $600,000 from abroad. FICA will allow the PAP to fine or imprison its opponents on the grounds of shadowy foreign actors without any independent means of appeal. One has to appeal to the Minister in the first instance and then to a review tribunal whose members are appointed by the President on the advice of the Cabinet, which means by LHL. There have been some commentators, notably P J Thum, who have said that FICA will give the Home Affairs Minister, Shanmugam, enormous power. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the power relationship in SIngapore. LHL has absolute power and Shanmugam is merely his puppet, a Renfield, so to speak. He can be removed at any time. FICA will of course only be applied against critics of the PAP and LHL. Foreigners who sing the praises of the Government, such as Dominic Cummings (no doubt looking for lucrative employment after being sacked by Boris Johnson) will be rewarded lavishly. Nobel Prize winners like Stiglitz, who write nonsense about how poor Singaporeans receive more help from their Government than poor Americans do from theirs, will continue to receive first class junkets to speak in Singapore. Barrack and Michelle Obama will continue to be paid enormous fees for giving short speeches, funded in a way that cannot be traced back to LHL. Singaporeans’ money will continue to be used to buy sycophants and toadies abroad who will lavish praise on LHL and the supposed quality of his Government. With this piece of legislation, rushed through SIngapore’s rubber stamp Parliament with minimal debate, LHL’s Government have put Singapore firmly in the same camp of China, Russia, North Korean and Belarus. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) have rightly called FICA “a legal monstrosity with totalitarian leanings”. It is not only totalitarian but has the potential to damage local science, innovation and business. Singaporeans will come to regret that they have given LKY and then his son such absolute power which he will never relinquish willingly. In response to such a chilling piece of Orwellian legislation it is appropriate to end with this quote from 1984: “Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.”   Kenneth Jeyaretnam   I’m a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That’s why I’ve never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I’m quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don’t work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I’m a liberal. I’m not sure what the middle think of me. I don’t think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I’m a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I’m not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean.      Read More →

I’ve often said it but Singapore is one of the hardest places to discuss political commentary because of the surface of things, everything looks relatively good. Even with Covid exposing gaps in the government’s basic operations, things still look relatively good when compared to most parts of the world. It’s not just the people from the developing world of India, Vietnam, China and Bangladesh who are singing our praises. Its now reached the state where people from the advanced nations of the USA and Western Europe who look at us with the “what are you complaining about,” look whenever we, the natives imply that our native land is less than perfect. Covid death rates seem to support that. Singapore has reached a record high of 142 deaths. Everyone who dies of Covid or Covid related issues makes the news. In the USA and Western Europe, the death rate has long since become a statistic and they talk about comparing the death rate to the number of people killed in wars. To give credit where credit is due, much of the success we enjoy is due to competent and honest government. Whilst Mr. Lee Kuan Yew did make a few mistakes a long the way, one cannot argue against the fact that he did get many things right, such as his insistence on keeping government honest. I think of the Emirati businesswoman who told me, “Singapore washes the face of the Oriental.” When it comes to things like government competence and honesty, we rank alongside the world’s best like the Scandinavian countries instead of our regional neighbours (which inevitably means we need be judged by higher standards). There has, however, been a problem with all our past successes, which is the fact that its lead to an unhealthy political culture of “father-knows-best.” Sometime in the early 1980s, Lee Kuan Yew got his colleagues to retire in the name of “Leadership Renewal.” Instead of being the “first amongst equals” or the man who took care of the politics so that intellectuals he respected could get on with the business of nation and institution building, he rebranded as “Father-of-the-Nation,” or as a former president alluded to – “God.” Mr. Lee became a consultant to the developing world in national development, a contributor to Forbes Magazine and “Senior Minister,” in the cabinet of his successor and later on “Minister-Mentor,” in his son’s cabinet. As old adage went, we were a very Christian nation run by the Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Goh. As far as the rest of us were concerned, Mr. Lee was running the show till the day he died – let us not forget both former President Tony Tan and former Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong recalled how he told them not to come to him but to allow him to come to them because their respective offices needed to be respected. As a “God-King,” Mr. Lee had one failing – he wasn’t a god and he died. Whilst Mr. Lee had proved effective enough, he left behind an unhealthy political culture that one can only called “deference to the God-king.” In way, this hasn’t been much of a problem. Things were relatively smooth under his successor Mr. Goh Chok Tong and to an extent, still are. However, Mr. Lee’s status of being a “God-King,” came from his ability to deal with issues of the 1960s and 1970s,” which by his own admission were relatively simple. Our neighbours were really under developed and so there was no competition. Information was easy to control – the cost of a long-distance phone call was a luxury expense. This isn’t the case today. Problems are more complex. Information or misinformation travels at a click of a button. Our neighbours are also rising up and the competition of investment actually exist. The problems of 2021 cannot be solved by the solutions of the 1960s “God-King.” Yet, we have a political “God-King” culture, which implies the public has to ultimately defer to the “God-King.” I take the consistent debate on Section 377A, the section that criminalises annal sex between men. The government takes a position of keeping the law but promising not to enforce it. Our Prime Minister states “Legal Ambiguity” is best, which is runs contrary to the concept of “Rule of Law.” One merely has to rely on the benevolence of the “God-King.” A more recent example, was the run up to the reading of the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act or “FICA.” Much was made about the ten-hour debate in parliament. However, the real debate ended up on Facebook between an academic group and the Ministry of Home Affairs, in which the Ministry stated that it was simply not possible for the bill to be abused in its current form. Mr. Remy Choo, Director of Peter Low & Choo LLC and a qualified lawyer with over a decade of experience, underlines the key problem with the Ministry’s Facebook position – it’s non-binding. Guarantees of non-abuse through public pronouncements and Facebook pages are dependent on the integrity of the person making them. Singapore should look at communities that have a tradition of “God Kings” as an example of how to manage a “God-King” culture. First there was Bhutan, which was founded by a Tibetan monk called “Zhabdrung.” He was by all accounts a very brilliant man. However, he believed that he would rule forever because as per Buddhist belief, he could reincarnate and keep himself in charge. The system didn’t work and the Penlops of Trongsa had to establish the modern Bhutanese monarchy as we know it today. Bhutan’s fourth king took things even further when he imposed democracy on the population and insisted writing a clause that allowed parliament to sack the King. A brilliant political unifier of a nation – however, failed at reincarnating to rule in perpetuity Then, there’s the 14th Dalai Lama, leader of the Tibetan people in exile. As with Buddhist belief, the Dalai Lama is a “reincarnation” of successor and for centuries, ruled Tibet as a “God-King.” Whilst His Holiness (as a matter of disclosure, I am Karma Kagyud buddhist) has gained fame for his teachings in the Western world and earning the Chinese Communist party’s ire, his main achievement has been to impose democracy on the Tibetan community in exile and to remove himself from political administration. Born to be a “God-King,” but understood dealing with God and Men were separate issues So, here’ the point – if “God-Kings” in cultures that have venerated “God-King” for centuries are making moves to separate “God” and “King,” shouldn’t we be doing the same instead of enforcing the culture of the “God-King?”   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 →