The Anti Neo-Democracy Theorist

From my recent trip to Shanghai, I realized there were actually elections on Fudan University. Pretty interesting election posters. Who says Young Educated Chinese cannot cope with democracy?

Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?”

Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?”

Vanity asks the question, “Is it popular?”

But, conscience asks the question, “Is it right?”

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

As usual some exaggeration but interesting points. Merry Christmas!

Governing in new era a different cup of tea
Star, Malaysia
December 18, 2005
Insight Down South By Seah Chiang Nee

WHEN Devan Nair died aged 82 last week, a whole new generation of 20-year-olds who had hardly heard of him were wondering what the lavish praise was all about.

Television broadcast regular flashbacks of the life of the former People’s Action Party (PAP) titan. Newspapers were full of accolades from political leaders.

Their bafflement was understandable. For two decades since the former president and trade union leader left for a life in exile in Canada, the political leadership and, of course, the Singapore media, had rarely mentioned his name.

Those born after 1980 had grown up with little or no knowledge of the man who once ranked alongside historical figures like Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee and Sinnathamby Rajaratnam.
It was as though Nair’s achievements never existed until his death.

Anyway, many Singaporeans are not very informed about their country’s contemporary history. Before he became Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong said he was shocked when he was told of a Singaporean graduate telling an American that the republic was never a part of Malaysia.

That was blamed on the education system that emphasised on science and math.
Nair’s death served a purpose albeit not a very palatable one for the ruling party. Despite its overwhelming control of Singapore, it, too, like political parties in other countries, has its own share of internal squabbles.

In 1981, Nair was appointed to the ceremonial post of president. Within three years, he ran afoul of the then PM and suddenly resigned.

He became Kuan Yew’s bitter critic, accusing him of creating a repressive regime and an elitist who linked genetics with intelligence that demeaned the republic’s Indian and Malay minorities.

Kuan Yew said he left to get treatment for alcoholism and released information that was not flattering to his one-time comrade.

Nair said he was forced to resign because of his regular questioning of Kuan Yew’s policies.
A source told a foreign correspondent that he began drinking heavily because “he felt trapped and frustrated” as president. “But Nair was also seen by Lee as a potential source of opposition to his rule,” said the source close to him.

He is, of course, not the only Kuan Yew colleague to fall out with the PAP.

Another was the late Ong Teng Cheong, who was elected president with special powers, and who clashed with the Cabinet over interpretation of these powers.
He was bypassed for a second term. His death also raised a wave of public adulation for standing firm on his principles.

Then there was former PAP chairman Dr Toh Chin Chye, who left in 1988 under a cloud following disagreements with some of Kuan Yew’s authoritarian policies.
He had opposed the 70s population control and abortion, saying the official prediction of zero growth by 2030, if it adhered to a two-child policy, was too optimistic.
It failed to consider the impact of political policies on behavioural patterns, he said. Government policies, including abortion, had cost Singapore at least 250,000 babies.
Toh also opposed government’s role in business. Merely listing government companies on the stock market was not privatisation. “It means washing its hands off business and ceasing to compete with the private sector,” he said.
During his final years, he had advocated allowing Singaporeans a greater say on how the state should be run.

Not long ago, I had a chance meeting with Toh, who was worried about the apathetic, materialistic generation the government had raised. He said, “They are too fearful to speak out even over the most routine disagreement. How can ideas flow? How can you have a great country?”

Kuan Yew had prevailed over most of the clashes of ideas within the PAP whenever they took place and generally Singapore has emerged the better for it. The party had survived them by keeping them within the confines of the party headquarters.

Leadership disagreements were rarely given an airing in the media as they did elsewhere. When they happened, the newspapers generally ignored the views of the dissenters.
In the past, whenever Kuan Yew removed a colleague, it was accepted as wisdom and done in the national interest.

Today, the public is less accepting.

One writer, “matmati”, found this out when he lashed out at former Workers’ Party leader J.B. Jeyaretnam, a bankrupt who was sued by the government.

When he saw Jeyaretnam selling his books at City Hall, the writer said: “He looks like a mentally deranged, dishevelled hair, glassy-eyed, sick, aged orang utan. I believe he is losing it rapidly and will be completely senile in one or two years’ time.”
Instead of support, he drew strong public condemnation, including from people who say they are PAP voters.

Scrobal said, “You seem to get upset and emotional about these things. Get a grip. Only a few have the gall and the gumption to take on the monolith and we should be grateful for that.”

Another writer, johnboy_sg said: “That is a very tasteless comment. He was willing to take on the whole PAP monolith because he believed it would lead to a better Singapore. It ruined him and yet I feel a great respect for him.”

These public sentiments concerning PAP dissenters like Nair, Ong Teng Cheong and JB Jeyaretnam show how politics is shifting in the minds of the new generation.

They show that, after ruling independent Singapore for 40 years, the PAP will find that governing in the new era isn’t easy at all.

o Seah Chiang Nee is a veteran journalist and editor of the information website littlespeck.com

Only 10cents out of 1 dollar to patients

Too much to take it. Too many questions to ask. Too much lack of check and balances. Too much one person power.

Government to press for charges if criminal breaches found at NKF
By S Ramesh/Asha Popatlal, Channel NewsAsia

Related News »
• NKF’s weaknesses went unnoticed even with audits: Health Minister
• New NKF working to rebuild public trust
• Charities say NKF report will result in more transparency among VWOs
more>>

SINGAPORE : The government says it will press for charges to be made where there have been criminal breaches at the National Kidney Foundation, in the wake of a damning auditors’ report on Singapore’s largest charitable organisation.

Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan revealed this in a news conference on the government’s response to the report.

He also accepted auditor KPMG’s sharp comments on the role of the regulators, saying the problem will be fixed within three months.

He added the government also has to take some responsibility for letting this matter drag on.

Chairing a much-awaited news conference on the KPMG report on the NKF, Mr Khaw noted the auditor has not pulled any punches.

But the priority now is to collectively learn from the episode and act on it.

He says there will be no cover-up and where there have been criminal breaches, the Health Ministry will push for charges to be made.

He said anyone found in criminal breach will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Next, NKF will be cleaned up.

There is now a strong board and management in place, and they are delivering results.

Mr Khaw was also pressed further on whether any action will be taken if only ethical and not criminal misconduct is uncovered.

He said, “Let’s not speculate … I don’t want to comment on criminal investigations which are ongoing.”

The KPMG report also criticised shortcomings by regulators.

Mr Khaw said the government has learnt a sharp lesson from this episode and will close the gaps in the current system.

Said Mr Khaw, “On the government’s part, we accept KPMG’s sharp comments on the regulators. There were many agencies involved, each with its specific roles and responsibilities. This created a lack of clarity in the regulatory structure, which became vulnerable to exploitation. We will fix this within three months. This may require legislative changes.”

He added that a balance has to be struck between regulatory rigidity and operational flexibility.

He said most volunteer organisations were run by good and decent people and going ahead, the sector could not be treated like they were all crooks.

“My big worry now is all the regulators will knee-jerk tighten and tighten and overreact. Do we want that way to manage charities? We could tighten up, assume everyone is a crook or potential crook and treat every VWO that way and treat every chairman and CEO that way, because I can no longer trust you, because I may suddenly be hit by something like this,” Mr Khaw said.

The Minister urged Singaporeans not to lose sight of the original NKF and its accomplishments as for a quarter of a century, it was a model of success for voluntary organisations.

Mr Khaw said, “I do not know when the NKF began to shift its strategic focus and, along the way, lost its moral compass. It might be in 1999 or thereabouts, when it progressively transitioned from a society to incorporation as a company in 2001. Around that period, I understand that the regulators did occasionally receive informal but often anonymous feedback on the NKF. Where appropriate, regulators did follow up on the complaints. Criticisms were set aside after the NKF leadership was able to convince the regulators that they had not done anything improper.”

At the end of the day, Mr Khaw stressed that it was important to remember that ultimately the NKF was a non-governmental organisation, and that primary responsibility lay with the Board of Directors.

Still, he said that with an entity as large as the NKF and one that had patronage from many Government leaders, the Government had a heavier responsibility to make sure it was properly run.

“We failed in not doing so earlier,” he said.

Mr Khaw added that the new Chairman Gerard Ee and most of his directors will stay on to complete the transformation of NKF over the next three years.

The NKF saga unfolded earlier this year when a defamation suit initiated by its CEO Durai led to disclosures about his pay and other renumerations.

Growing disquiet over the issue was followed by the appointment of KPMG, a leading accounting firm, to look at the operations of the NGO.

The result was a 300 page report released on Monday which pointed to several highly questionable management practices. - CNA /ct

Half Truths or elements of truth?

“Asians Don’t Hug”

Eric Ellis on the background to the hanging in Singapore last week of an Australian drug-dealer

Spectator, London

December 10, 2005

Singapore

NO one outside Singapore’s steeltrap judiciary knows for sure whether Darshan Singh hanged Nguyen Tuong Van, of Melbourne, in Changi on Friday 2 December. A week earlier, Darshan said he’d been sacked as chief hangman after a series of embarrassingly gruesome articles had appeared about him in the Australian press. But his masters insist he wasn’t sacked.

The confusion was not what you’d expect in Singapore, a place that is in most things obsessively efficient. But we do know that 72 year-old Darshan has seen off about 850 criminals in his 40 years as hangman. He is something of a world champion at this particular discipline.

One detail about Darshan that especially worried Australians when it was reported down under, was that he had toasted his 500th victim with a bottle of Chivas Regal with jailhouse colleagues. He is clearly a man who takes pride in his job, and sees no reason for sentimentality or false modesty. ‘With me,’ he says, ‘the prisoners don’t struggle. I know the real way. If it’s a raw guy, they will struggle like chickens, like fish out of the water.’

Darshan may well be a monster, but he has been a loyal servant of Harry Lee Kuan Yew, Asia’s self-styled Philosopher-King, across whose autobiography Margaret Thatcher scrawled ‘He Was Never Wrong’.

Many Australians would take issue with Lady Thatcher. They certainly do with Lee. For months before the execution of Nguyen, debate raged in Australia about the rights and wrongs of capital punishment. But in Singapore’s state-controlled bubble, the hanging barely registered a blip. Nguyen was one of the 30?0 criminals Singapore admits to killing every year.

No one is suggesting Nguyen wasn’t guilty.

In December 2002 the then 22-year-old, born in a Thai refugee camp to a Vietnamese mother fleeing communism, was caught in Changi airport on his way from Cambodia to Australia with 396g, or 14oz, of pure heroin. It was his first trip abroad. He said he was only trying to clear the gangland debts of his twin brother, a heroin addict. The Singapore police said that the heroin, which Nguyen carried strapped to his body, was enough for 26,000 hits, though Australians estimated it was only enough for 6000 hits. Whatever the case, he had more than 15g of heroin, which is the level at which the death sentence is mandatory in Singapore.

It was all very shocking to those not familiar with Singapore. It’s such a nice, clean, sterile place. When Australians realised that Singapore challenged Iran for the world record in per capita executions, there were calls for boycotts of Singapore Airlines and of Optus, which is Australia’s second-biggest telecom provider and is owned by the Singapore government. Australians were not sufficiently outraged, however, actually to change their mobile subscription from Optus to the lumbering Australian-owned Telstra. That would have involved far too much inconvenience and frustration.

Singapore can survive the outrage, anyway.

As prime minister from 1959 to 1990, Lee was a close ally of both Australia and America in the Cold War, and more recently, as Senior Minister, he has earned the admiration of both Canberra and Washington by helping to drive Islamic terrorists from Singapore. In five times seeking clemency for Nguyen, John Howard dogwhistled to the abolitionist half of his electorate, who praised his humanity.

Singapore dogwhistled back, praising Howard for his ‘polite’ protest. That’s when Nguyen was doomed.

Not all Australians were against the hanging. Some, especially in the ‘Deep North’, have long wondered why Australian justice can’t be more, well, Singaporean. A Darwin pensioner, Keith Sauerwald, offered to fill in for Darshan if the hangman was dismissed. Darshan himself, meanwhile, has threatened to sue the prison service for wrongful dismissal.

If he does sue ?and of course he will only be able to sue if he has indeed been sacked ?he will be the rare bird who challenges Singapore’s unwritten ’social contract’ with the Lees, under which compliant Singaporeans essentially agree to eschew high-minded things like democracy and human rights in return for never-ending wealth. Foreign investors like this arrangement too, and love it that mostly Chinese Singapore isn’t Indonesia ?sprawling, poor and Islamic. No other nation in ‘difficult’ Asia gives as good an impression of San Diego as Singapore; Singapore Inc delivers skilled labour and superb infrastructure, and its illiberality is among its chief corporate attractions. This is Disneyland with the death penalty, the only shopping centre with a seat in the UN, a real-life Truman Show, Asia Lite ?the clichés about Singapore tend to ring true.

Still, this hanging has undoubtedly tarnished Singapore’s glossy veneer. For one thing, it was conducted with almost unbelievable cruelty. Nguyen’s mother pleaded with the Lees for a last hug of her boy. They refused, but on the day before he died they relented somewhat and, as a favour to Howard, she was allowed to squeeze her condemned son’s hand and ruffle his hair through his cell bars. And Singapore is hypocritical as well as cruel. The city state hangs wretched first offenders like Nguyen but then plays Switzerland to Burma’s money-laundering druglords and mollycoddles big business: the chairman of the government committee convened to oversee corporate governance sat on more than 50 company boards.

Singapore insists, meanwhile, that it’s Asia’s ‘arts hub’, but what kind of arts hub insists that playwrights ?and there aren’t many in Singapore ?must submit their scripts for approval to an Orwellian ‘media development authority’? Free speech is as badly treated on the street as it is in the theatre. Those who take their soap boxes to Singapore’s ‘Speakers’ Corner’ must pre-register with the state, and gatherings of concerned citizens ?the few that actually take place are photographed by government spooks.

True, there are elections in Singapore, but ballots are numbered and votes can be traced.

The last two parliamentary polls were won by Lee’s People’s Action Party long before polling day because more than half the seats weren’t contested, and the PAP controls all but two of Singapore’s 84 parliamentary seats.

President S.R. Nathan secured his second term in August when the government-appointed presidential elections committee ruled his three opponents ineligible. The Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, is Lee Kuan Yew’s eldest son. Members of the Lee family run Singapore’s biggest public company, direct its two leading government investment agencies and the finance ministry.

The press is tame. The Straits Times, started long before Somerset Maugham went out East, rivals Pravda for its obsequious adherence to the party line. I once asked the editorin-chief, Cheong Yip Seng, about rumours that his newsroom was studded with former members of Singapore’s secret police. He gleefully named them. ‘Why not?’ Cheong beamed.

‘These guys have good analytical minds . . . they are all kindred spirits.’ When the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders recently placed Singapore 140th of 167 on the world press freedom index, it was Cheong’s paper they were reading and quite possibly the columnist Andy Ho, who a week before Nguyen was hanged wrote a long-winded essay supporting capital punishment. When one enterprising Aussie television hack asked Ho for an on-camera hug in lieu of the one his government had denied Nguyen’s mother, Ho uncomfortably provided one, with the qualifier that ‘Asians don’t hug’.

With this following news, maybe elections would be later rather than sooner

PM Lee on overseas leave from Dec 15-25
By Melvin Yong, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will be on overseas leave from 15 December to 25 December 2005.

During his absence, Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng will be the Acting Prime Minister from 15 to 19 December 2005.

Deputy Prime Minister Prof S Jayakumar will be the Acting Prime Minister from 20 to 25 December 2005. - CNA

Surprising remarks by Mahathir!

‘I believe that the country should have a strong government but not too strong.

‘We need an opposition to remind us if we are making mistakes. When you are not opposed you think everything you do is right,’ he said.

The Straits Times
Dec 12, 2005
Speak up or society will rot, Mahathir urges

KUALA LUMPUR - PEOPLE must ’stick their necks out’ and speak up if they see something obviously wrong, says former Malaysian prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

‘My fear is that if people fail to think and criticise that which is wrong, then the society will rot,’ he said during the question-and-answer session after giving a talk on Current Issues In Malaysian Politics on Saturday.

Tun Dr Mahathir noted, sadly, that Umno was not behind him when he exposed ‘the abuse of power’ in the issue of approved permits (APs) for the import of cars into the country.

Tun Dr Mahathir said the tendency to not criticise even when things went wrong could be due to Barisan Nasional securing more than 90 per cent of the parliamentary seats in last year’s general election.

‘I believe that the country should have a strong government but not too strong.

‘We need an opposition to remind us if we are making mistakes. When you are not opposed you think everything you do is right,’ he said.

On the reported RM158 million (S$70 million) pre-tax loss by Proton for the second quarter of this year, Tun Dr Mahathir, who is Proton’s adviser, said: ‘I am surprised that a company which was doing well suddenly reports losses. It is difficult to believe that it was because they purchased (motorcycle maker) Agusta.

‘If Agusta had debts, then the purchase price would have been lower. Why did Proton buy it for a higher price? There must be a mystery here and we have to get to the bottom of it.’ — THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK

An interesting commentary in TODAY

The front door’s open, the backyard’s locked
To be global, must we rethink our conservative outlook at home? News Comment We set you thinking

Terence Chong

IF Singapore’s policy-making style had to be summed up in a phrase, it would be selective globalisation: The conscious effort to encourage certain forms of globalisation and discourage others.

The Government, on one hand, encourages economic globalisation through the synchronisation of local financial regulations and policies with international standards and, on the other, it energetically protects an Asian “conservative” society from the ills of satellite dishes, pornographic magazines and other unwholesome global commodities.

This constant oscillation between being globally open and locally particular has given rise to the Singapore paradox.

The city-state enjoys its status as one of the most globalised countries in terms of migration, global finance and telecommunications. Yet it regularly garners criticism from international human rights institutions for its insistence on its own brand of politics, whereby certain civil liberties are curtailed in view of local multi-ethnic and multi-religious realities.

The practice of selective globalisation expresses the need to remain globally connected for the sake of nothing less than national survival and the desire to retain certain notions of tradition and conservatism that protect specific interests.

For the most part, the Government has succeeded in juggling the often conflicting demands of the local and the global. Nonetheless, three events this year suggest that this may have ramifications for its global city ambitions.

In June, the Government denied fridae.com, a gay portal, the entertainment licence to hold its annual Nation Party. fridae.com responded by moving its annual bash to Phuket. Ordinarily, this would not have been an issue but for the fact that the Government acknowledges there are homosexuals in the civil service, thus making the licence withdrawal look like a step backwards.

fridae.com’s pullout may have mollified the majority of conservative Singaporeans, which was the objective, but it does little to show the international community that the city-state is culturally exciting.

In the words of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, if we are only contented with being the cleanest and safest city, then the “with-it” world will pass Singapore by.

There was also an unexpected poke in the eye. In his farewell speech on Oct 11, the out-bound United States Ambassador Frank Lavin mildly criticised the Singapore Government for its repression of political expression. He also recounted his embarrassment at being asked by local police if he wanted to press charges against the demonstrators protesting outside the US embassy over the Iraq war. These remarks were surprising in a post-Clinton era, and are significant in light of the Singapore Government’s strong support for the Bush administration’s “war on terror” campaign and the Iraq war.

Lastly, but no less surprising, was Warwick University’s decision not to set up a campus in Singapore. After months of deliberation and feasibility studies, the British university, renowned for its research excellence, declined the Economic Development Board’s invitation, citing its concern over both financial costs and the lack of academic freedom in Singapore.

This marks the first time a potential investor has publicly cited Singapore’s famed out-of-bounds markers, its emphasis on non-confrontational academic analysis and the Government’s intolerance for dissent, as reasons for not coming.

These three incidents suggest an important lesson: A nation-state and a global city require a different management ethos. Conventional arguments for cultural and ideological protectionism may sit well with the character of nation-states, but they are increasingly incongruent with the functions of global cities.

And since a global city becomes one only when others recognise it as such, all global cities require cultural legitimacy from the international community of transnational professionals, creative class and international opinion-shapers who have the power to confer it recognition.

The competition to distinguish one’s self as a global city is, in reality, the competition to win legitimacy and recognition from this international community.

The fact that Singapore’s survival as a nation-state depends on its status as a global city means the Government has little choice but to constantly shift gears between the national and the global when it comes to policy-making, thus compelling it to send mixed signals to this international community.

Casinos are allowed but satellite dishes are not; topless cabaret shows are permitted but civil disobedience is not; and the list goes on. These discrepancies are at the heart of the dilemma facing Singapore at the dawn of the 21st century.

Globalising at one’s own pace and terms may be prudent for a small nation-state but how much of this prudence can an aspiring global city afford?

The writer is a Fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies.

What’s your view? Email us at
news@newstoday.com.sg

Interesting-One question asked by TIME to Mr. Lee Kuan Yew in the latest edition of TIME Asia

TIME: Singapore is a more modern, more sophisticated, better educated society than the UK. Young Singaporeans are bright, smart, lively. They can take it, they can take a noisy marketplace of ideas.

LEE: Look, I don’t meet them so often now. My son does. Let him decide. It’s his call

Was unable to post the last 2 weeks as I was in Shanghai and blogspot, just like many other websites, was blocked in China.

Had a very fulfiling time in Shanghai to say the least…Wouldn’t talk much about it except that I learnt a lot and was humbled by the vast expense of knowledge out there about China, its history and its ever changing polity.

I also realized that China is opening up even furthur and in my opinon, very positive and significant. Three small observations:

1) Lonely planet’s and english guides’ about China’s sensitive political informations like the 1989 Tiananmen Incident are no longer being white-out or pasted over.

2) One new book entitled “Conflict and Uncertainity-Political analysis of Middle Stratum in Chinese Society” written by Zhang Wei, a Chinese Academia came out in Shanghai bookstores- include frank assessments of this impact on future democratization and the future of marxism in China.

3) Archival materials are becoming more open, less sensitive and very useful in understanding China.

So China is changing…What about other countries?