TR EMERITUS

I refer to the article 'Malaysia PM Muhyiddin set to resign in audience with King after failure to regain majority' (ST, 16 Aug). In this connection, a friend Ying (not her real name) casually mentioned to me that Singapore' leadership succession does not look too good at the moment after DPM Heng Swee Keat stepped down as successor, slightly more than 4 months ago. Political analysts who are familiar with Singapore's political situation would know that there are 3 men who are widely regarded as the forerunner to Singapore's premiership (Who will be Singapore's next PM with Heng Swee Keat stepping aside?; ST, 23 Apr). Each of them, arguably, has had arguably, a somewhat strong setback not seen in the 3G leaders, in Singapore's history. Chan Chun Sing appears to have in a way, a rather strong public dislike ('An Attempt to Understand Why So Many People Dislike Minister Chan Chun Sing', RICE media 15 Dec 2018). What will this translate into when the electorate goes to the polls? A friend whom I spoke to believes that should Chan be named as the successor before the GE, then he may possibly, not be too surprised, if the PAP loses (at least) 1/3 of its seats. Mind you, GE2020 shows that at least 2 GRCs and 2 SMCs in which the incumbent won by less than 5%. Ong Ye Kung lost his first election battle in Aljunied in GE2011 against a WP 'A-team'. He subsequently took part in GE2015 under Khaw Boon Wan's Sembawang stronghold. With less than 7 years of political experience. So, it is hard to see how he may be able to obtain the 'buy in' of the majority of Singaporeans. Also, it appears that Ong believes that a one party rule may be the way for Singapore to succeed. However, this may not be so relevant in recent times anymore, given that the PAP has shown that they do not have a monopoly of talent, especially in the way the 4G leaders have handled the pandemic. Will the people remember this again? Lawrence Wong may therefore, arguably, appear to be the strongest choice at the moment. However, Wong appears to have 'only' 10 years of political experience - less than 5 of which were in key ministries. In addition, he was only opted into the PAP's CEC for the first time in Nov 2020. What does this say about his popularity within the party? With no clear successor in sight and a very short runaway till the next GE, will Singapore too, possibly face a situation of weak leadership whereby the Government may have not enough time to build a support base?   Leong Sze Hian      Read More →

We have a national agenda to vaccinate Singapore. However, we need to question ourselves by what means do we go about achieving this. Do we push it at the cost of dismissing suspected vaccine injuries? Are we not transparent so that public remains unsuspecting but uninformed? On issues of vaccine, the Singaporean is already disadvantaged towards an informed consent. Few Singaporeans even knew that vaccines can result in injuries. They have never heard of Marcella Gruelle, Hannah Poling, Jesse Gelsinger, where politics concerning vaccination resulted in scandals. They did not know of the VICP where billions have been paid out to vaccine victims. Nor have they read about vaccine injuries in failed campaigns in Japan, Philippines, India, Africa, US and many European countries etc. Singaporeans are 'blissfully' unaware. We seem to have zero cases of vaccine injury in our history. There would never be a need for vaccine injury recourse. Vaccines could do no harm - this perspective seem held by not just the commoner but the medical community here. Therefore, I was thankful when at the announcement of our Covid-19 vaccination campaign, our authorities / experts, i.e. Kenneth Mak, admitted to the possibility of anaphylaxis that could come from the Covid-19 vaccine. They also announced the roll out of the VIFAP! Gratefully, it is the first "recourse" for vaccine victims I have heard of here. Perhaps now our narrative about vaccines can shift towards more scientific perspectives? Unfortunately, as we move along our vaccination campaign, I began to see that our engagements are characterized by shameful name-calling and manipulative rhetoric. I began to see an invisible strong hand that pushes the official narrative (which is not wrong in itself) but also unfairly crushes dissenters' perspectives and more. Let's start with the Media. According to The Straits Times, it is implied that alternative sources of information about Covid-19 vaccine is comparable to misinformation sprouted by extremists, like that of "yoga-beats-Covid" Baba Ramdev. This "all-or-nothing" rhetoric divides Singaporeans by positioning the vaccinated and the unvaccinated at extreme ends - with nothing-in-between. One is safely informed because he listens only to official experts' narratives. The other is misinformed because he had researched more into things and therefore fallen prey to conspiracies. As a critical thinking educator, I have never heard such flawed assumption that to research is to become misinformed. Surely there are those who know how to make the distinction between conspiracies and science, and who seek to inform others in a responsible manner. Yet consider headlines by Today and ChannelNewsAsia like this: "The Big Read: Conspiracy theories, scientific misinterpretations, plain ignorance abound in Covid-19 infodemic." One can imagine why such a title is crafted. One of its statements read: "Tracing the roots of misinformation to their sources would likely reveal one of several motivations behind its spread: These include political and ideological reasons, commercial profit, mischief, but also cases of genuine misunderstanding". Don't overlook the mouthful of accusations. Between childlike compliance and malicious misinformation, there is little in-between. A Mr Jake Goh is mentioned from the first sentence of "The Big Read" as an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. This impression builds up further into that of an extremist, as Mr Jake Goh's "best friends" had to remove him "from their Facebook friends list." An "administrator of two Telegram groups that discuss Covid-19 and vaccine injuries", little was discussed about why Mr Jake chooses to painstakingly reach out to suspected vaccine victims. Instead, the article immediately reminds readers of Mr Jake's redundancy because his Telegram groups are formed "despite the fact" that the Pfizer vaccine is "authorised" by the government and assessed to be "safe and efficacious" by experts. It is ironical that "The Big Read" on misinformation fails to look into evidences of the injured, but dismisses the compassionate guy who does that, filling up the exact gap left by the media. If such is the level of (un)thinking our media seeks to educate us about misinformation, what is the level of discernment such agenda-driven articles can build in us? Nothing. Blindly believe everything you are told is not discernment. And to brand those who had read up more as malicious extremist with an intent to misinform? Such engagements by the media strike fear and dishearten those who sincerely seek to engage with good intent. Even more hurt are the victims with burning, unanswered questions. Without providing valid answers, what right does anybody have to pigeon-hole us? Such rhetoric divides, isolates and eventually justifies hate and discrimination. Disappointingly, such "all-or-nothing" language was also used by some figures of authority. Dr David Lye, Director of NCID, who sits on the Expert Committee on COVID-19 Vaccination, started a Facebook post stating, "Why fake science and anti-vaccine groups are dangerous in a pandemic". So if you are not in agreeement with Dr Lye, you are "fake-science", "anti-vaccine" and "dangerous." Nothing-in-between. Dr Lye wrote, "Some of these were from a group of doctors including.. a Dr Oon Chong Jin," who Dr Lye described as "a private cancer specialist who championed hepatitis B vaccination in Singapore." But how can anyone who had "championed hepatitis B vaccination" be anti-vaccine? Dr Onn and Dr Lye may have different positions about the Pfizer vaccine, but their disagreement should not have justified ad hominem attacks. Both are experts in their own rights. However, in critical thinking 101, everyone commenting on this debate can be assumed to be biased until proven otherwise. Dr Oon, who prefers Sinovac, believes that the mRNA vaccine will be increasingly ineffective against Covid-19 variants. Official reports have already highlighted this probability. Dr Lye disagrees with Dr Oon's belief in Sinovac, saying that there is "little data to confirm" the vaccine's effectiveness. New reports have since emerged from Indonesia that suggests Dr Lye's caution about Sinovac is correct. Both ought to be free to engage by means of reasoning so truth is propelled forward. Dr Lye's rebuttal should have been the beginning of a robust debate based on logic, science, and statistical data. Instead, the post was uncharacteristically rhetorical. When Dr Lye asserted that children and teenagers should vaccinate even though they "do not usually have severe COVID", his premise is basically - because they "can infect adults." Yet Dr Lye emphasises: "mRNA vaccines are one of the most effective COVID vaccines. They reduce symptomatic COVID by 95%.." If the vaccine is really as effective as described, why worry about unvaccinated kids? Vaccines have not wiped out the possibility of infection anyway, as seen from the outbreak at MINDSville@Napiri, which should have consisted of mostly vaccinated residents and caregivers. Why then is 'children can infect adults' a good premise to vaccinate children? Especially when there is a lack of safety data from Pfizer's own trial: 2,260 teenager participants studied for 2 months, and only half of them actually received the vaccine - this small sample of 1,100 teenagers now justifies the strong roll out to vaccinate 400,000 Singaporean teenagers. Suspiciously, Dr Lye alluded to "a wealth of data from the US, UK and Israel on their safety", but conveniently neglects corresponding data on adverse effects from these same countries. E.g., U.S. government site VAERS has already recorded more than 5000 deaths and 25,000 serious injuries. How could Dr Lye square these ground reports of injuries with "the vaccines are safe for children"? In fact, Mr Jake Goh's Telegram group, the SG Suspected Vaccine Injuries Team, has compiled at least 16 cases of deaths as of 28th May 2021, with several dozens of severe injuries. These cases have mostly been dismissed on the basis that no evidence confirm the injuries to be a result of the vaccine, yet these same doctors could not disprove that the vaccine could have contributed to it. Why haven't any local experts addressed this elephant in the room in a responsible manner? With unanswered questions of this nature, it will not be fair for anyone to engage in hateful rhetoric. People are already in paranoia. Vaccinated family members are restricting unvaccinated parents in the same household from getting near to their children. Many are vaccinating out of the fear that they could be discriminated against e.g. from traveling, work, social settings. Now, if you do not vaccinate but wish to worship God as a congregant, you have to be PCR-swabbed - weekly. Some wonder if regular swabs could hurt their nasal cavity. It's not unfair to wish for less invasive procedures like the breathalyser test. Our government must also consider that without an exit plan in sight, how much longer before increasing curbs result in poor mental health, or oppress the basic freedom to worship? Asking these questions should not make one guilty or hated. At certain point, Singaporeans must learn to live above our fears. We must also align our beliefs to science that can be verified and exchanged in an open arena, based on reasons, not rhetoric. The real skill to cultivate against misinformation is not childlike compliance, but discernment. With discernment, one could have picked up how in Dr David Lye's post, he cherry-picked a redundant point on Ivermectin - about a fraud company's data that has nothing to do with reality - to debunk evidences about Ivermectin's success. Or that Dr Lye sufficiently cautioned on the need to "watch out for side effects" for vaccines using "old technology" but seemed totally dismissive about possible side effects of mRNA vaccines. Dr Lye cannot not know about these facts that I mentioned, like the data on Ivermectin or VAERS. Neither could he not know that he had cherry picked a negative point about Ivermectin to debunk all the other evidence for it. By calling this out, I have not shown that I am more qualified than Dr Lye in science (far from it). What I have instead pointed out is the likelihood that Dr Lye is biased towards his narrative and therefore selective in the information he shares and withholds. This selectivity had led to loopholes. Let's make this picture larger. Can Singapore make a mistake because we decidedly choose to stand by our national vaccination agenda? The answer is yes. We cannot have two priorities at one time. Either we prioritise justice and truth and encourage reasoned scientific exchanges, or we prioritise the vaccination agenda and guard against every dissenting view. Politics therefore, must be considered in the larger picture discussion. Experts need to build trust not by cherry picking what they want to say or toll politically correct narratives. They build trust by answering real questions, addressing legitimate concerns and demonstrating reliable trustworthiness. It doesn't help that in recent weeks, conspiracy theories about Fauci misusing his connections for vested interests have been found to be likely true. It seems if there is a narrative to upkeep, truth does get sidelined. So contrary to claims, truth does not just lie with institutions. It also belongs to independent doctors and scientists who discover what work in a crisis, statisticians who observe real world data without conflict of interest, critical thinkers who question with an independent mind, and truth seekers who search for answers. Sadly, sometimes, truth emerges from even the unfortunate injury or death of a vaccine victim. Genius can make mistakes. Experts can contradict. Teachers can be wrong. As long as critical questions remain unanswered, one cannot claim to be exhaustive in all truth to the exclusion of reasoned alternatives that are accompanied by evidence. Throw politics, money, power, security, fear and social pressure into the mix, we should therefore not think we could be spoon fed if we want to be informed. Discernment, not childlike compliance as "The Big Read" suggest, is the real skill we need to cultivate. In closing, I will leave 3 unanswered questions below that experts must answer, or otherwise, the gaps are so jarring that it is disturbing why our authorities have not sought to close it. *** Suspected Vaccine Injury Cases The biggest elephant in the room. Every injury and death following vaccination, other than anaphylaxis, seems to be unfairly dismissed. Why? Heart attack, blood clotting is a recurring pattern. Mr Yak's case, which I wrote about, and the latest, is Andrew Tan's. Consider this case too, of which the patient had "full bloodwork" cleared for a knee replacement surgery - but suddenly had a aortic clot following vaccination. The increase number of heart inflammation issues among the young following vaccination points in the same direction. Consider too Charlene Lin's, Jo-ann Tan's cases. Unexplainable adverse reactions on perfectly healthy persons. One suddenly lost her ability to walk and the other lost his senses. The evidence is clear - all of them had sudden injuries following vaccination. Yet most have not been acknowledged for the Vaccine Injury Financial Assistance Programme payout. In the name of public interest and safety, can our experts examine these cases with more public scrutiny? Can independent stakeholders be called in to assess ethical considerations for VIFAP payout? Can "suspected vaccine injury" cases and figures be made known to the public in the name of transparency? 2. Ivermectin and it's "undeniable" evidence Dr Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA vaccines (and DNA vaccines), who has almost 100 peer-reviewed publications resulting in over 10 patents and about 7000 citations, has claimed the evidence on Ivermectin as "undeniable". India, whose Covid-19 infection crisis was all over the news weeks ago, has resolved their crisis by permitting the use of Ivermectin (though politics is back at play). These are two of many evidences, a number of which are already referenced in this petition which advocates for Ivermectin to be used in Singapore. More info about Ivermectin and how it emerges as a solution among many doctors, can be found here. Now that vaccination does not seem to be a plausible exit plan from infection from Covid-19 variants, Dr Lye needs to substantiate our reluctance to explore Ivermectin with reason and wisdom. Or they must bear the responsibility for compromising Singaporeans if a plausible solution was already plainly in sight.         3. The "spike protein" controversy and others Ever since research by Salk Institute showed that the spike protein of Covid-19 virus alone was enough to cause disease, shouldn't experts be concerned with the next inevitable question: wouldn't the mRNA vaccine spike proteins act likewise? Vaccine researcher Byram Bridle has already confirmed that the spike protein of mRNA vaccines will get into our bloodstream and accumulated in our organs. Dr Robert Malone corroborates Byram Bridle's findings and raised cautions against CDC's advisory that the vaccines are safe for pregnant women (3:50min). He also suggested that spike protein in the bone marrow can lead to possible long term effects of leukemia and lymphoma in "6months, 3 years or 9 years.." (4:40min). Can our experts confirm if the vaccine's spike protein is a toxin right now? If they are unsure, why rush pregnant women, girls and teens to be vaccinated? MOH reported "some 2,000 individuals.. experienced "severe adverse reactions" after the first dose". That's a pretty high severe adverse reaction rate of 0.1%, if we assume 2 million first doses to have been delivered at that point. Are our benefits still outweighing the risks? Have our local experts also examined hidden numbers pointed out in Peter Doshi's review: "3410 cases of "suspected but unconfirmed" Covid-19 cases; "371 individuals" who were excluded from the efficacy analysis? Will our experts' over-confidence, collective assurances, shape our narrative into an impregnable impetus that has to deny future vaccine injuries? *** PS: Just as I finished my article, Dr Lye made another post seeking to debunk Dr Robert Malone's caution to pregnant women (3:50min). Note that Dr Lye provided only 1 study for that. The other study helped made up the numbers, but it actually didn't fit the the subject matter. And for that 1 relevant study he provided, I provide the screenshot here. This is the paper you will see. Check the part I highlighted in the red box. It says in emphasis: "This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice. If this "preprint" is what Dr Lye banked on to approve vaccination for our pregnant women, he would have contradicted the scientific caution of the preprint i.e. "research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice." Is this what he should provide out of his arsenal of studies to reassure Singaporeans? The selective science that Dr Lye relies on is most worrying. And the rhetoric he continues to use to debunk other experts, including someone as esteemed as Dr Malone, just goes to prove whatever I had mentioned in my article.   Leo * Article first appeared on vow.sg.    Read More →

Sometime in April of this year, I decided to write a piece on a quote by Prince Charles, the heir to the British Throne, which was entitled “ALL THE TIME I FEEL I MUST JUSTIFYMY EXISTENCE.” I felt that the quote was post-worthy because it summed up a fact of life and the fact that a man who didn’t have to worry about money was conscious of that was worthy of my few cents of comment. The vast majority of us need to work to put food on the table. Work involves justifying one’s existence to a party paying the bills. Business people are always trying to prove that their product or service makes life better for customers. Employees constantly need to prove that they are of a value to the system. In a funny way, this is easier when you’re at the bottom of the food chain. If I take myself as an example, my value to my day-job boss is simple. I am strong enough to lift boxes of documents and I don’t have an issue traveling to industrial estates. To my restaurant job bosses, my value is simple – I’m the guy who brings food from the kitchen to the table. I’m not terribly well paid because it’s been argued that the value of my job (particularly the night one), because the theory is that anyone can do the job I do, and probably at a cheaper price. Hence, to do the job I do, my value needs to be a little more than just moving dishes from point-to-point. Immigration laws protect me in as much as I have the right citizenship and employers need a certain number of locals on the payroll to hire “exploitable” labour. I also do things like I do my best to push booze sales so that I can tell my employers that I make them enough money to pay myself. It’s easy for me justify my value because it’s easy to describe what I do. However, its also easy for my employers to remove me. They just need to feel that business has slowed and that they can get someone cheaper. Should that happen, removing me from my sources of income would be fairly easy. However, it’s a different story as you climb higher up the food chain. What exactly does a CEO or a minister do to justify his or her existence to an organization? It’s hard to pin down the individual at the top’s efforts have a direct effect on anything in particular. However, the argument goes, that whatever people at the top are doing, its exceedingly valuable and the value they provide is something only they can bring and therefore worthy of a lot more pay than whatever people at the ground are making. We’ve used this argument for the longest time in Singapore whenever it comes to talking about government salaries. The answer that the people at the top “create value,” which means that the rest of us have jobs to go to and therefore get to have a better life than we would have otherwise. In Singapore, the argument goes that we need to have the world’s highest paid ministers because we need to attract super competent people to run the show and we don’t want them to turn corrupt. We also argue that we need to share the brains between the public and private sector so that all sides of the economy benefit. I’ve argued on many occasions that I don’t disagree with this on the surface. Why should the bright and brainy not enter public service and get well paid for it. Why can’t smart public servants be tapped to run public listed companies if they can deliver value? Where I do question this policy is on two fronts. Firstly, are we really getting the best and brightest and what happens when they fail to deliver “value.” Let’s take the “CEO’s” job as an example. Modern management theory has it that a CEO is appointed by shareholders to make them money. In the USA, this has led to the use of stock options, which are supposed to make a CEO’s interest aligned with the shareholders who have hired him (they’re usually men). This has created multimillionaires across the board and whenever someone talks about outrageous pay of CEO’s when compared to the average worker, the retort is that the bulk of the CEO’s pay is from stock options and the CEO is only taking a fair share of the wealth he helped to create for shareholders (which does include mutual and pension funds, which workers invest in). Since, this has been the standard measurement of people at the top, let’s see if this applies to Singapore’s top brass. Have they created vast amounts of wealth that their American counterparts claim to have done? Let’s take Mr. Ng Yat Chung, the CEO of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), who is about to do his shareholders a service by selling the company to another Singapore government-controlled conglomerate called Keppel Corporation (Keppel). When the story broke on 2 August 2021, it was mentioned that the offer by Keppel provided SPH shareholders with a 40 percent premium of the last traded share price of $1.50 per share. The report can be found at: [LINK] So, it looks like Mr. Ng has done what few imagined would be possible in the current market – he’s delivered “value” or “created wealth” for the shareholders who hired him. As a former Chief of Defense Force (CDF), you could argue that by creating “value” for SPH’s shareholders, Mr. Ng has proven the Singapore government’s point of the need to share “value-creating” brains between the public and private sector. Unfortunately, if you look at things more closely, Mr. Ng hasn’t exactly done that. When Mr. Ng took over as CEO of SPH in September 2017, SPH’s shares were hovering at around $2.76 per share. At the time of the announcement of Keppel’s take over, the share price was hovering around $1.88 per share. If you look at the chart of SPH’s historical share price, it’s very noticeable that SPH’s share price has been on a gradual decline from the day Mr. Ng took over. If you look through the share price of SPH in the years that Mr. Ng took over, its very clear that what Mr. Ng has done has been to manage the decline of SPH rather than to create new value adding paths to prosperity for SPH. One can argue that Mr. Ng was unlucky in the sense that the main business of SPH has been in the print media, which has been on the decline for over a decade. You could argue that it’s just an industry trend and Mr. Ng had bad luck. When the announcement came in May 2021 that SPH would be hiving off its media business into a non-profit company, the government came to his image repairing issue. Our Magically Unconflicted Writer and Enforcer of Laws went as far as to say that there was nothing wrong with governments helping out media businesses: [LINK] Unfortunately, Mr. Shanmugam is not exactly correct as can be seen by a comparative share price of some other media companies. Take News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch, which has seen its share price rise since 2017 when the share price hovered around US13 per share and at the time of writing now trades at around US$23 per share. [LINK] Of course, News Corp has a variety of businesses and is an international company, so one can argue that its TV and radio business does offset whatever happens in the print business. However, if you look at another company, whose business is to publish a news paper for a financial centre, you’ll also find that the picture does not favour Mr. Ng’s management of SPH. The New York Times Company Limited, which publishes the New York Times saw its share price go from roughly US$18 per share in September 2017 to roughly US$43 per share in its most recent trade. [LINK] How did these companies expand and grow in tougher markets, whereas SPH failed to grow and in fact declined in its domestic market? There’s no way Mr. Ng could not have seen that his main flagship product was declining in a three-year period and that he could have taken some remedial action. Are the people on the top really creating value for the rest of us or are they playing semantics to make us assume that some form of value is being created. It’s a question that we could all do well to consider.   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 →