The Anti Neo-Democracy Theorist

Time to account to the People of Singapore

By Geert De Clercq

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who has been in office nearly 12 months, may call elections later this year, media and analysts said on Saturday.

A parliamentary election does not have to be held until mid-2007. But the city-state’s pro-government Straits Times daily quoted several analysts and a member of parliament as saying they expected Lee — son of founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew — to seek his own mandate as early as the last quarter.

Lee was handed power in August 2004 by Goh Chok Tong, who was prime minister between Lee senior and Lee junior.

“PM Lee has been in office a year and shown he is a capable leader. It would be a good time to get public endorsement of his time in office,” the Straits Times quoted veteran member of parliament Mohamad Maidin Packer as saying.

Chen Hwai Liang, press secretary to the prime minister, told Reuters: “The prime minister has said earlier that elections will be held before they are due.”

A precedent for early elections was set in 1991, when Goh called an election just nine months after he was handed power.

Analysts say that to secure strong leadership, Lee must at least match his party’s tally in the last poll in 2001, when Goh won 75 percent of the vote for the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), which controls all but two seats in parliament.

COMFORTABLE MAJORITY

While there may be uncertainty about the margin, analysts say there is no doubt that the PAP, which has swept every election since independence in 1965, would win a comfortable majority against a fractious and cash-strapped opposition.

“The opposition is too weak and not seen as an alternative to the government,” Cherian George, author of “The Air-conditioned Nation”, a book on Singapore politics, told Reuters.

The Straits Times quoted political watcher Viswa Sadasivan as saying “the ground is as sweet as it possibly can be” for Lee.

“After the London blast, people are obviously going to be more conservative with their votes and will vote in the stable ruling party,” Sadasivan said.

But it quoted other analysts as saying that the Singaporean public may harbour resentment over the Lee government’s decision to allow casino gambling, an issue that generated a rare wave of protest in the tightly controlled island state.

In recent weeks the government has also been embarrassed by a scandal surrounding the country’s leading charity, the National Kidney Foundation, whose chief executive resigned following uproar about his pay and perks.

Analysts say the Singapore economy’s rebound — it grew an annualised 12.3 percent in the second quarter from the first after contracting in the first quarter — and a series of measures to boost the real estate market would help the PAP.

“Sentiment 12 months down the road is expected to improve on the back of a stronger feel-good factor on the property market and on the economy front as well. So somewhere towards the year-end and into early 2006, could be the time for elections,” Song Seng Wun, senior economist at CIMB-GK, told Reuters.

Sent to ST Forum on July 26th but not published

CCTV and its potential issues

I refer to ST July 25th 2005 article on “More CCTV cameras for housing estates.”

The widespread proposed installation of CCTV around Singapore isquestionable. There are few issues which I hope relevant authorities wouldaddress.

The first issue is the issue of privacy. Is CCTV surveillance less invasive of privacy than alternative means of surveillance? Is CCTV surveillance advantageous to all or at least to most of the people who are giving up theirprivacy?

The second issue is the presence of a check and balances. Would the public be informed about who is monitoring the cameras, what use is to be made of the tapes and how long they are to be stored? Would there be an independent audit to ensure that the uses of such devices are not abused?

The third issue is the larger issue of effectiveness. Does CCTV surveillance not simply drive a problem from one area into another area that does not have video surveillance? Does CCTV surveillance fulfill an important purpose such as reduction of risk of physical harm or other illegal activities and not simply the control of nuisance such as panhandling? Would CCTV not be used as part of a data-matching program for purposes other than surveillance for the reductionof crime of the area in which it is installed?

The last issue is the philosophy behind the use of CCTV surveillance. It is true that the creation of a police state with CCTV surveillance everywhere will eradicate crime and terrorism. In George Orwell famous book, 1984, we see that a totalitarian government in the future could abuse the use of CCTVsurveillance. Would Singaporeans then want to live in such a city?

Wayne Soon

A very well written article by my brother

July 29, 2005

FRIDAY MATTERS

Moving up: Does school system help?

By Soon Sze Meng

WHEN Singapore became independent in 1965, it committed itself to the ideal of meritocracy and rapid social mobility.

People believed that the sons and daughters of labourers might eventually rise to positions of wealth and even political influence. Many of the wealthiest and most powerful among us today rose from humble origins, as our society rewarded intelligence and hard work.

However, there is a danger that continuing to adhere to the model of meritocracy that has served us well so far will lead towards increasing social inequality and slowing social mobility. This has happened in many countries larger, wiser and older than ours.

If this turns out to be the case, Singapore’s rising tide of economic success will raise only the luxury yachts in Sentosa Cove, leaving behind the bumboats of Clifford Pier.

This has already begun to happen. The recent Household Expenditure Survey tracked income changes between 1998 and 2003. It found the average monthly household income of the lower 40 per cent of Singaporeans remained unchanged or declined. At the same time, the household income of the top 20 per cent increased by almost 12 per cent.

Household incomes of those living in private property are now about three times as much as the incomes of the 85 per cent in public flats.

Does this increasing income gap suggest declining social mobility in Singapore? Social mobility is the degree to which an individual’s social status may change throughout the course of his life in a given society.

Even without comprehensive studies of social mobility in Singapore, it is not hard to see that institutions which previously worked so well to increase social mobility may now become barriers to it.

Take primary education as an example. Some primary schools are much more popular than others, because parents believe these schools give the child a head start in the meritocratic educational system. Some primary schools thus have 10 times more applications than available spaces.

The primary school registration process gives preference to applicants with siblings and parents who are studying or have studied in the school.

This legacy preference gives more educated, wealthier Singaporeans - usually alumni of the most popular schools - easier access to these schools for their children. Properties around the most popular schools are highly sought after and increasingly expensive, giving wealthier Singaporeans a better chance to send their children to these schools.

Also, there appears to be a higher proportion of students from the lower-income households in the less academically challenging streams.

An Insight feature in The Straits Times on July 9, ‘Can bottom-rung kids climb up?’, cited 2001 figures from the Education Ministry showing that 72 per cent of the students in the Normal stream lived in four-room or smaller HDB flats. In sharp contrast, only 16 per cent of students who qualified for the Gifted Education Programme lived in these flats.

It is not difficult to imagine that the advantages of having more educated parents can help explain this disparity between the socioeconomic backgrounds of Normal stream and GEP students. Such parents can coach their children personally, or devote greater resources for tuition and enrichment classes.

It would be sad if our publicly funded education and scholarship systems end up increasingly being of more benefit to students from better-off homes. Based on interactions with overseas scholarship students, I observed that a significantly greater proportion of these students live in private housing as compared to the general population.

These scholarship holders, who benefited from their publicly funded education, will probably perpetuate the cycle by being the parents of the next generation of scholarship holders.

Given that education is the key driver for social mobility in Singapore, these trends do not bode well for social mobility.

The education system, which was previously unbiased, may increasingly offer greater benefit to the more educated and well-off Singaporean.

Declining social mobility may also lead to increasing social stratification in Singapore.

The top 20 per cent of our population lives a different life from the rest of the country. Some anecdotal examples: Better-off Singaporeans interact with their peers in their country clubs, alumni associations and fine dining establishments. Comfortably ensconced in their cars, they may not understand the inconvenience of waiting and jostling for space in public buses and trains. Those who have always lived in private condominiums rarely, if ever, have to deal with graffiti or urine in their lifts, the way HDB residents do.

The Government is already channelling increasing resources into initiatives such as skills retraining to improve social mobility.

However, as our nation matures, we need also to think of how we can help to increase social mobility as private citizens.

We need to be aware of the consequences of widening income gaps and how Singaporeans from different socioeconomic levels live in Singapore.

Those who have benefited from the meritocratic education system should channel energies and time to helping the less well-off better their lives. Only with this mindset and the will to act on it, can we be certain of celebrating another 40 years of nation building.

The writer, a graduate of Stanford University, is due to pursue an MBA at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Guest writers alternate with Chua Mui Hoong in this weekly column.

Now let’s hear from NUS and NTU

For SMU students, the world is their oyster

I REFER to the suggestions by Mr Wayne Soon on how local universities can give undergraduates more global exposure (’Equip undergrads for exchange programmes’; ST, July 22).

The Singapore Management University (SMU) provides a premium tertiary education where students are taught by experienced faculty hired from prestigious overseas universities in a seminar-style environment. Students enjoy maximum personal attention in our participative American-style pedagogy which brings out the best in each of them by encouraging critical thinking and rigorous learning.

SMU, however, goes beyond bringing the world to our students’ doorstep. Close to 40 per cent of them get the opportunity for a variety of global exposure. Many of our students spend a term or two in foreign universities under our overseas exchange programmes. By the end of this year, SMU would have signed partnership agreements with 100 foreign universities in all continents.
The situation in SMU is unique - every student who applies for overseas exchange will be granted approval. Many are also heading to non-traditional destinations like Mexico, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

SMU students also benefit from other opportunities for global exposure, such as internships in overseas companies, community service in foreign countries and work and travel arrangements to experience employment abroad. In 2002, SMU started a programme called Business Study Missions where students get to explore overseas business opportunities, write case studies on how business is done there and appreciate the cultural sensitivities in a foreign environment. Our students have gone on Business Study Missions to Silicon Valley, Spain, China, India and Thailand.

From the beginning, SMU has believed that overseas exposure challenges perceptions, enriches the mind and sharpens communication skills. It is an integral part of our degree programmes to steer our students towards divergence of thinking.

By the next one or two years, half of the SMU student population would have experienced some form of global exposure.

Prof Tan Chin Tiong Provost, Singapore Management University

Liberty under siege!

The recent annoucement that the London Police has wrongly killed an innocent person on the train which was a “suspected terrorists” should ring alarm bells everywhere in this world.

How long must people realize that delegating more powers to the government and the police is counterproductive to the society in the long run? We can’t simply be reactionary when a terrorist strike happen. We mustn’t lose our wits and start letting our political leaders take away our civil liberties because authorities simply do not have the power to handle overly great responsibility. A democratic society hinges on the limits of “legimatate use of violence”.

Terrorism should be tackled at its roots..poverty, extremism and misunderstandings between civilised powers. To feed the poor, to heal the sick, step up on diplomacy and postive propanganda and to give comfort to people is more important that simply creating a survilleance state with unlimited powers.

The Patriot Act is yet another example of this overrectionary policy…..

Sigh…We got to stop terrorism. MORE IMPORTANTLY, WE GOT TO STOP OURSELVES FROM LIMITING OUR OWN CIVIL LIBERTIES WHICH THE TERRORISTS WANT US TO!

Published in the Straits Times Forum on July 22, 2005
July 22, 2005
Equip undergrads for exchange programmes
THE move by Education Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam to encourage undergraduates to go overseas on exchange programmes is timely (’Half of undergrads to spend time overseas’; ST, July 19).

Exposing undergraduates to overseas cultures will sharpen their thinking, writing and public-speaking skills, create essential global networking opportunities as well as develop cultural sensitivity and flexibility.

However, the new globalised economy demands students who are not merely rote learners and well trained in specialised skills. Education systems such as the United States’ demand students who are able to think critically, write well and engage in frank exchanges.

Thus, the three local universities should look into three areas. First, the extension of successful learning techniques and practices developed in the University Scholars Programme and other specialised programmes to the general student populace.

This is to encourage students to develop critical-thinking, writing and speaking skills needed to succeed when on overseas exchange programmes.

Second, to increase the subsidisation of students who wish to go for overseas programmes.

Third, to encourage overseas Singapore students who study in the partner universities to share their experiences with local students.

Wayne Soon

I do not want

I do not want my child to live the lies that I live.
I do not want my child to ask me why he cannot vote.
i do not want my child to ask me why he cannot make a difference.
I do not want my child to see a psychologist if he cannot handle his schoolwork.

I want my child to be free.
I want my child to tell me he cannot wait to vote.
I want my child to tell me where he made a difference.
I want my child to enjoy learning.
I want my child to love the country, the family and him/herself.
I want the best for my child.

Do you?

Defend Liberty!

I never like Tony Blair very much but after today’s speech about exhorting Londoners to get on with their lives despite four blasts, he is exhibiting leadership qualities and rationality worthy of a good PM of United Kingdom. If we alter our lifestyle to be what the terrrorists wants us to be, then the terrorists would have won! We should hold fast to our already limited civil liberties and show the terrorists that we can live in a free and democratic society despite terrorism. If terrorists thrives on fanatism and misunderstandings, then we should attack the root cause of terrorism without restricting severely civil liberties. I hope the government does not limit our civil liberties to fight terror. We do not need a police state to fight terrorism!

What lot are we?: “!”

Youths in Singapore were systematically depoliticized through a few measures such as (1) the learning of a sanitized version of Singapore History, (2) the discouragement of political discourse within campus, (3) the widespread self-censorship phenomenon in schools, (4) the emphasis on the hard sciences and mathematics in our curriculum, (5) the non-offering of subjects such as sociology and politics at both the O-level and A-level and (6) the infusion of unique Asian values that emphasis country before community before self and by extension taught to frown upon liberal democracy.