The Anti Neo-Democracy Theorist

Heart Wrenching?

The Straits Times (Singapore)
February 27, 2006 Monday
HEADLINE: Ex-political detainees want their story told

BODY:

FORMER union official Tan Jing Quee lost to the late Mr S. Rajaratnam by just 220 votes in the September 1963 General Election in Kampong Glam.

A few weeks after that election, the former Barisan Sosialis candidate, then 24, was arrested for his involvement in pro-communist student and trade union activities, and detained for almost three years without a trial.

Yesterday, Mr Tan, now 66 and a lawyer, along with former political detainee Michael Fernandez, 72, shared their experiences with a rapt, predominantly young audience of about 200 at a forum that lasted almost three hours.

Titled Detention-Writing-Healing, the landmark event was held at the Esplanade Recital Studio. It was organised by The Necessary Stage as part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival.

Both men called for more light to be shed on their fellow ex-detainees’ contributions to Singapore’s struggle for nationhood, and on the reasons for their detentions, if Singapore was to be a more open, democratic society.

‘Did we resort to violence? Was there any physical threat to the political leadership? Why were we incarcerated?’ asked Mr Fernandez.

He urged a general amnesty for all ex-detainees and for them to be recognised as loyal citizens, contributing to Singapore’s progress.

Mr Tan spoke of how people who asked him what life was like in detention assumed that a political detainee had an easier time than a convicted prisoner did.

But detainees’ treatment at the time, he said, was ‘a clear attempt to humiliate, demean, dehumanise - there is no other explanation’.

Their detention, added Mr Fernandez, aimed to ‘break us physically and mentally’.

He also sketched out in detail how he was force-fed when he and other detainees went on a hunger strike in 1971, saying: ‘Some of you have seen on TV what’s happening in other countries. Very few have seen what happened to us.’

Mr Fernandez was detained in 1964 for his participation in pro-communist trade union activities, and released in 1973. He kept a journal using newsprint-like toilet rolls, a copy of which was shown yesterday.

Mr Tan was released in 1966. He said: ‘There’s an entire generation whose lives are destroyed but many discovered new directions, reaffirming some basic human value.’

The discussion, chaired by social activist Tan Chong Kee, included poet-playwright Robert Yeo, who loosely based the lead character in his collection of plays, The Singapore Trilogy, on Mr Fernandez’s life.

Former detainee and journalist Said Zahari, 77, who now lives in Kuala Lumpur, was scheduled to be on the panel but could not travel because of poor health. He nevertheless hopes to visit Singapore later this year.

‘The healing process is not just about the detainees,’ said Mr Tan Chong Kee, but affects the entire nation. This is because their detentions have made Singaporeans afraid to talk about politics.

How will the next GE coverage be?

The Straits Times (Singapore)
February 26, 2006 Sunday
SECTION: NEWS

LENGTH: 478 words

HEADLINE: Media ‘too timid’ in election coverage: Panellist

BODY:

THE way the mainstream media covers elections came under fire yesterday at a forum on politics at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Mr Viswa Sadasivan, chairman of TV production company The Right Angle Group, suggested that journalists today are more timid than they need be.

‘There is so much room to manoeuvre. I don’t think we need to be looking over our shoulders all the time. The media needs to play less safe,’ he said.

Mr Viswa, a former current affairs producer with the then-Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), took to task today’s journalists and editors.

Unlike their predecessors, he said, they fail to push the envelope. He contrasted this to his own efforts when he was in charge of elections coverage at SBC in the 1980s. He pushed for and saw through the broadcast of a debate between the People’s Action Party and opposition party leaders, he said.

Mr Viswa, whose company’s clients include government agencies, also chairs the Feedback Unit’s political development group and sits on the Media Development Board.

Of today’s journalists, he said: ‘The media does not have enough strong leadership, enough people willing to take a stand.’

‘The media could do with a lot more guts,’ he added.

He also accused the press of not giving the opposition fair coverage.

He said that, in reporting on the Workers’ Party manifesto, they had focused on the Government’s labelling of four of its proposals as ‘time bombs’. He claimed that many points in the manifesto were not captured in media reports, a point that Nominated MP Geh Min later agreed with.

With Mr James Gomez of the Workers’ Party looking on, Mr Viswa accused the media of having a habit of making opposition politicians look bad by taking photographs of them from a low angle and in dim light.

‘You don’t have to make opposition members like James look like bicycle thieves,’ he quipped.

He said he hoped to see ‘a lot more critical commentaries’ during the next general election.

Several NUS students also raised issues of online freedom and expressed concern about the charges brought against three racist bloggers under the Sedition Act.

Dr Gillian Koh, of the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), said young bloggers should not worry about expressing themselves freely as the racist bloggers constituted an extreme case of hate speech online.

Commenting later on Mr Viswa’s comparison of the political reporting of the past with that of today, IPS acting director and veteran media watcher Arun Mahizhnan said: ‘In terms of the space offered to political views, I have to say that a lot more is available now compared to the 1970s and 1980s.

‘There is also a much greater diversity of views expressed, particularly in the print and new media like the Internet.

‘I don’t see the same diversity in the broadcast media, perhaps due to constraints in the medium or programming philosophy.’

William Han

NUS panel on Election Feb 25 2006

The Sunday Times
February 26, 2006 Sunday
SECTION: NEWS

HEADLINE: Lack of political choice harmful: Forum panel;
Panel members say more contests during elections needed or voters might lose ability to choose

BODY:

PANELLISTS at a political forum yesterday lamented the lack of political choice in Singapore and said this would hurt the country in the long term.

They said it was important to have more contests during elections or voters might well lose their ability to make such choices.

Nominated MP Geh Min was one of six panellists at the forum on ‘The (In)Significance of Political Elections in Singapore’, organised by the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) political science department.

She said she had never voted in a parliamentary election in her 55 years.

While she gave the People’s Action Party Government due credit for consulting widely and trying to refine itself into the kind of government people want, she said what it did not give Singaporeans was diversity and choice.

‘There is a rather depressing effect. No matter how diverse the views of those they attract into the PAP, they undergo some kind of transformation into ‘homo-PAPsters’,’ she said.

Also on the panel was Mr James Gomez, second assistant secretary-general of the Workers’ Party (WP).

He spoke about the WP manifesto, titled You Have A Choice, and said the opposition party’s aim is ‘to make elections meaningful and participatory for all Singaporeans’.

Dr Geh and Mr Gomez were joined on the panel by Dr Gillian Koh of the Institute of Policy Studies, Professor Kirpal Singh of the Singapore Management University, media company chief Viswa Sadasivan, and lawyer and former Nominated MP Chandra Mohan.

Dr Koh said while some Singaporeans may not think elections important, the PAP takes the polls very seriously and ‘cares and fights for each and every vote’.

Dr Geh agreed: ‘They compete against themselves. What do you expect from people whose favourite game is golf?’

During the 90-minute question-and-answer session, a dozen participants rose to ask questions about alternative media such as blogs, student politics and the Elected Presidency (EP).

One NUS political science student asked Mr Gomez why the WP seeks to abolish the EP. It could try instead to get its candidate elected as president as this might be easier than winning a GRC.

Mr Gomez said the WP opposed the EP as its stand is that Parliament should be the supreme political body and not subject to checks from the President.

Mr Chandra Mohan pointed out that it was also very difficult to find someone who would qualify to be a candidate in the presidential elections.

‘Probably no one in this room qualifies,’ he said to an audience of about 200.

He read out the criteria as stated in the Constitution, which requires potential candidates to have extensive executive and financial experience.

By the Government’s own estimates, between 700 and 800 people in Singapore qualify.

On the issue of student politics, two NUS students stood up to voice their dissatisfaction about the university’s recent announcement of fee hikes, which they said was done without consulting or informing the student union.

WP member Goh Meng Seng, who was in the audience, said the WP had asked about setting up an affiliated student group on campus but was dissuaded from doing so.

He asked NUS council member Chandra Mohan for his stand.

The lawyer said he was for the idea and urged the WP to write in to the council with its request.

Prof Singh said his research into creativity reinforced Dr Geh’s argument on the need for diversity and choice.

‘Creativity can only take place where you allow opposition,’ he said.

williamh@sph.com.sg

A most interesting interview. It is good that Singapore have people like Philip Yeo who focuses on building innovation in Singapore. I am rather discomforted at his jokes though:

“At the end of the interview, he strides out briskly to keep his lunch appointment with a group of newly returned A*Star scholars - new slaves, he jokes. As they exchange greetings outside his office, he asks them: ‘Who built the Great Wall of China? Who built the Sphinx and the pyramids?’ Before they can reply, he chuckles: ‘Slaves! Slaves! So, remember, slaves are very important!’

February 25, 2006 Saturday
SECTION: RAFFLES CONVERSATION

LENGTH: 1751 words

HEADLINE: The scholar groomer;
His may be the vision behind Singapore’s Jurong Island petrochemical hub and the Biopolis, but the inimitable Philip Yeo tells ANNA TEO his legacy will be solely and entirely the scholars he is moulding

BODY:

YOU can barely see the glass top of the long table in Philip Yeo’s meeting room next to his office. It is covered almost entirely with mounds and mounds of paper, files, books and paraphernalia - notably, laminated copies of news clippings on A*Star and the biomedical sciences, including an entire recent TheStraits Times Forum page on the debate about GPA (grade point average) requirements for A*Star scholars.

‘This may look like chaos, but there is system to it,’ he says of the piles on the table. ‘Everything about what I do is in some newspaper or other article. You want to know about A*Star, it’s all here, plus all the scoldings, it’s all there, plus calling the boys wimps, here,’ he adds, picking up various files and chuckling. ‘I’m a repository.’

Over the next couple of hours, he is to dart to and fro around the room, and from table to his computer next door and the adjacent library, to retrieve a poster or document or book from his shelves - systematically categorised and chock-full of hardbacks on subjects from evolution to Persia - even as he launches into a range of topics, from scholars and scientists to democracy, corruption and, yes, ancient Persia.

Civil servant extraordinaire in more ways than one, Mr Yeo indeed could never be a pen-pushing bureaucrat behind a desk. Ever on the go, to keep occupied he needs various side jobs, or ‘hobbies’ as he calls them - over and above his main work, which is currently as chairman of A*Star (Agency for Science, Technology and Research) and Singapore’s biomedical science architect. And hobbies for him mean nothing less than mega-scale projects like building a resort in Bintan or overseeing an industrial park in Ho Chi Minh City or, lately, chairing the board of stem cell research firm ES Cell International, a company he created several years ago.

Not one to flinch from speaking his mind or standing his ground in the face of criticism, he has over the years also drawn more than his share of controversy, famously over his stance on bond-breakers, on the need for PhD training in R&D work, for branding Singapore boys ‘whiners and wimps’ and, more recently, for A*Star’s rigorous scholarship standards.

Last month, while preparing to speak to local university students, he wanted to title his talk ‘Do You Really Want To Be A Test-Tube Cleaner, Part Two’, to continue the debate he started three years ago when he said that, without further PhD training, Singapore science graduates would be good only for washing test-tubes in the laboratory. But he was advised by some of his young scholars that using the same controversial headline might just divert attention from the essence of his message.

Clearly, the indomitable Mr Yeo - who will turn 60 in October - has no qualms revisiting contentious old ground, not when it comes to issues he believes strongly and passionately in. Like why Singapore must produce more of its own PhD pool if it is to move up to high value-added R&D industries; the value of scholarships as an investment in Singapore’s future; and why public-funded scholars must be held to exacting standards.

‘Before I came here, there was no emphasis on PhD education. What did I do? I came out with a statement - bachelor’s degree, wash test-tubes. You go to my labs, all the PhDs are Chinese . . . Singaporeans are all test-tube cleaners.’

As for the fracas over GPA standards, 85 per cent of A*Star’s 108 National Science Scholarship holders who sat for their exams in Fall 2005 achieved GPA scores of 3.8 and above, or First Class Honours.

Mr Yeo, who knows his scholars - their backgrounds, interests and all - almost like his own kids, cites among the girls one who got a 3.997 GPA - a whisker short of the perfect 4.0 score.

‘You know why 3.997? She got A-minus for ballroom dancing,’ he notes. Another scholar also just missed a perfect GPA because of, this time, Greek mythology. ‘So why are Singaporeans kao-peh-kao-bu?’ he bristles, half-chuckling, using a Hokkien term for rant and rave.

And far from churning out one-dimensional book-smart academic nerds, his scholars are all-rounders with varied interests from diving and kick-boxing to mythology, and yes, ballroom dancing. Strong Type-A characters, just like his son, says Mr Yeo: ‘Can study and still got time to go play pool and chase girls.’

Eugene Yeo, 28 - who did his PhD in brain and cognitive science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under a Lee Kuan Yew Scholarship, and is now a research fellow at the Salk Institute in California - is, like father, a hyper over-achiever. On his website he lists his interests as marathons, triathlons, sailing, photography, piano, pottery, sketching, rollerblading and skiing.

The senior Mr Yeo asks: ‘So do I lower my (scholarship) standards to please the critics? Nothing doing! It’s not their money!’

His is a well-known track record through Singapore’s defence, technology and economic development sectors, but Mr Yeo probably has his own list of ‘work highs’. As logistics director in the Ministry of Defence in the 1970s, he and his team bought computers for Mindef by ‘clandestine means’, so as to get around some government procurement red tape. ‘In the tender submissions to MOF (Ministry of Finance), we checked and avoided the use of the word ‘computer’ in every line and paragraph.’

So minicomputers were described as ’small business machines’, IBM mainframes as ‘intermediate business machines’, while a mini supercomputer was labelled ‘calculating machine’.

The National Computer Board that he would go on to set up in 1981 eventually equipped all ministries, government departments and junior colleges with ‘now legal’ computers.

At the Economic Development Board, where he became chairman in 1986 in the wake of a recession, he launched, along with a monthly road show in key overseas markets, an eye-catching advertisement in the international press: ‘Who would be mad enough to invest in Singapore in a recession?’

With the multi-billion investment dollars that rolled in over the next decade sprouted Singapore’s semiconductor and wafer fab industries. And in the mid-1990s, the idea of creating an offshore chemicals and petrochemicals hub - now Jurong Island - was conceived as he hovered in a helicopter over seven south-western islands on a trip home from Indonesia’s Karimum Island.

Incidentally, the aerial view - by copter flights or by satellite images - is how Mr Yeo likes to track the progress of his projects as they take shape and form over months.

‘So when people talk of helicopter view, I do that every day lah,’ he says, reaching out for several large framed, some poster-mounted, photographs of various stages of Jurong Island and the Biopolis in the making. ‘I believe in pictures! It’s hard to see on the ground. So all my planning is based on these aerial pictures. Maps are not the same.’

But, for all his work in defence, computerisation, technology, the biomedical sciences and all, the ‘job’ he deems most significant is the grooming of talent and future leaders through scholarships. ‘People don’t understand. My most important job, which I supervise personally, is this,’ he says, holding up an A*Star scholarship poster.

‘I’ve done weapons, I’ve done semiconductors, so what? The most important part of my work is not the Biopolis building, Fusionpolis - all these are infrastructure, anybody can do it. At the end of the day, these are fixtures, over time they can become obsolete. But this is the most important of A*Star’s work,’ he emphasises, referring to the scholarships.

Mr Yeo, himself a Colombo Plan engineering scholar and Harvard MBA holder, also awarded scholarships in his previous organisations - Mindef, NCB, the former Singapore Technologies Group, Sembawang - but A*Star’s will be the biggest scale yet, and going all the way to PhD too.

The aim is to produce 1,000 PhD researchers, and to date, more than 500 have been identified, all of them hand-picked by Mr Yeo.

‘These 1,000 kids - 10 to 15 years from now, they’ll be all over Singapore, they will run this place. Even if just 20 per cent of them make it, the top 200, they will go anywhere, need not be science. They could be running the universities, they could be politicians, they could be running EDB, anything, why not ? What I’m trying to create is the multiplier effect. For the legacy is the people and not the buildings, not even the industries, who cares?’

He cites people like George Yeo, Lim Hng Kiang, Peter Ho, Tan Chin Nam, David Lim, Lim Swee Say, Ko Kheng Hwa, Lim Neo Chian, all now in leadership positions in the political or public sectors.

‘They were all my officers in Mindef, from the day they started work, they grew up with me. I can give you a long list of slaves,’ he chuckles. ‘So it’s not all my work per se, I leave a lot of these slaves behind who continue to work. I’m the only perm sec (permanent secretary) in the whole of Singapore government to have collected a lot of people, for better or for worse.’

He adds: ‘Whatever industry I do, the most important job is people (development). So the most important legacy is not the biomedical sciences or physical sciences, at the end of the day. It’s to train the next generation of people.’ The challenge in managing talent, he says, is how to keep them focused. As for himself, ‘I can do 10 things at the same time and yet still compartmentalise them’, he declares. ‘My key competences are in always generating new ideas, that’s it, and I look for people to do. Then when things get into trouble, I kachau (poke in) a bit.’

But everyone is different, and he recognises that few, if any, are like him, in terms of personality, temperament, management style, work philosophy, vision and all. ‘As I said, I’m not indispensable but I am irreplaceable.’ For that matter, so is everyone else, he points out, because there is no one else exactly and entirely like oneself, short of a clone.

There is a difference between succession and replacement, he adds. ‘Why should people object and say - oh, Philip Yeo’s ambitious and arrogant . . . huh?? Fundamentally, I can’t stand fools,’ he laughs, breaking into one of his many big guffaws.

At the end of the interview, he strides out briskly to keep his lunch appointment with a group of newly returned A*Star scholars - new slaves, he jokes. As they exchange greetings outside his office, he asks them: ‘Who built the Great Wall of China? Who built the Sphinx and the pyramids?’ Before they can reply, he chuckles: ‘Slaves! Slaves! So, remember, slaves are very important!’

End of Thaksinomics?-Will the Democrats win the GE?

The Business Times Singapore February 25, 2006 Saturday
HEADLINE: Thaksin dissolves parliament, calls new poll;
General election set for April 2 as opponents plan mass rally tomorrow

BODY:

THAI Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra put his job on the line yesterday by announcing the dissolution of parliament. The consequent general election will be on April 2, a royal decree said last night.

Tomorrow, the embattled premier faces a planned mass rally expected to attract hundreds of thousands of anti-Thaksin protesters. The authorities earlier feared that it could turn violent.

The recent political turbulence follows the sale by the family of the billionaire prime minister of its controlling stake in the Thai telecoms conglomerate Shin Corp to a group of investors led by Temasek Holdings, the Singapore investment company, for $3 billion. No tax was paid on the sale, because of the way it was constructed.

Dr Thaksin’s electoral gamble follows little more than a year after the landslide victory of his Thai Rak Thai party in the Feb 9 election last year.

‘I have dissolved the parliament,’ Dr Thaksin said last night soon after his audience with Thailand’s revered monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Prior to the announcement, local administrators and police spoke of their fears that tomorrow’s Bangkok rally might be violent, as was the case when a similar number of protesters gathered in 1992 to overthrow the military regime of Suchinda Krapayoon. But Dr Thaksin’s move means the threat is much reduced. Organisers said that the rally will go ahead as planned.

Dr Thaksin is sitting on a huge parliamentary majority - which he is now putting at risk. His party won 377 out of the 500 seats, the highest number of seats won by a single party since Thailand transformed from an absolute monarchy in 1932.

‘After intense discussions with people who think of the country’s well being, we have concluded that it is in the best interest of the country to return the power to the people,’ he said on a national television.

‘I leave the decision to the masses to decide if they want me to serve them or not. The outcome of the April 2 election will be a decisive one as it will not just decide who the winner is but will decide on which kind of system the people want to go ahead with.’

He was referring to the ongoing demands for changes in the Constitution by some sectors of the society, stressing that the current one had been in place for the past nine years and had helped put in a strong government for the first time in the country’s history.

Political pundits have been saying that an election would be the best way for Dr Thaksin to clear the air and move away from the storm of controversy surrounding the share sale, even if public resentment about the Shinawatra holdings moving to foreign ownership, coupled with corruption allegations against the party, bring about a reduced parliamentary majority.

The move is being viewed positively by most analysts, although they warn that the election is likely to mean a delay in a proposed 1.8 trillion baht (S$74 billion) programme involving various mega-projects in Thailand.

‘Parliament dissolution is a good decision by Thaksin in an attempt to keep him in power,’ said Anusorn Limmanee, political academic at Chulalongkorn University. ‘He will definitely win the election with his popularity in provinces in the northern, north-eastern and central regions, even though his support in Bangkok has declined.’

Besides the controversial share sale, Dr Thaksin has been facing attacks over media freedom, ministerial ethics, education reforms, planned sales of shares in public utilities, and Muslim unrest in the south. Rallies criticising him have been held in Bangkok almost every week since November.

Korn Chatijavanij, deputy secretary-general of the main opposition Democrat party, told BT: ‘Our aim this time is to go for the win.’ The party is having an emergency strategy meeting this morning.

Under the Thai Constitution, a minimum of 200 members of the opposition is required for a motion of censure against the prime minister. The combined strength of the opposition from last year’s results was only 124 members.

The decision to go for snap polls will also help Dr Thaksin weed out dissidents from his party.

Maybe is time we should put Singaporean or Human Being in the Race Column of our NRIC? Multi-Racialism and Celebration of Culture continues to be very very important in most countries in the world, especially Singapore!

STRAITS TIMES

February 24, 2006 Friday
SECTION: LIFE! - LIFE MAILBAG

LENGTH: 370 words

HEADLINE: Excuse me, are you a Singaporean?

BYLINE: Robert Rigg

BODY:

I REFER to Cheong Shuying Sheela’s letter (Not All Are Race-Blind, Life!, Feb 17) on racial relations.

I agree with her - Singapore is more race-conscious than any other country I have lived in.

I am from England and have lived in France and Bermuda. I have lived here for the past 22 years.

It is my pet peeve that so few Singaporeans refer to themselves as Singaporeans - they are either Malay, Chinese, Indian or ‘others’.

People in London, for example, do not talk about their race but their nationality, when asked.

Recently, the newspapers in Singapore reported a dialogue attended by community leaders and students, where Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that racial integration among Singaporeans is improving.

But the stories on O-level results in the newspapers that day quoted the top Eurasian and Malay students on how their success came about.

Does no one see the persistent pattern of race-consciousness here, except those who have to put up with it every day?

People, for example, consider that I am married to a Malay. I think I have married a Singaporean.

People also wonder about the racial background of my two children but, to me, they are Singaporeans.

Until every person starts to see himself or herself as Singaporean, the country will forever remain race-conscious.

Prue Harrison

I believe Singapore will open up even more because people in the government know that is good for Singapore-but perhaps only after the election

Financial Times
January 18, 2006 Wednesday
Asia Edition 1
SECTION: ASIA-PACIFIC; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 765 words

HEADLINE: City state could pay the price for its restrictions on free speech Fears are growing that political curbs will affect Singapore’s competitiveness as it seeks to rebrand itself as a centre for innovation. John Burton reports

BYLINE: By JOHN BURTON

BODY:

The opening of a light-rail commuter station would be a routine event in most countries, but the inauguration of a suburban stop for Singapore’s MRT system last weekend drew attention because of its role in a growing debate about free speech.

Residents near the Buangkok station had been lobbying for more than two years for its opening after SBS Transit decided to mothball the already-built station because usage was expected to be low, and this would cause operating losses for the transport operator.

The visit of a government minister to the area last year provoked a cheeky protest, with cartoon cut-outs of a white elephant posted around the closed station greeting his arrival.

Singapore’s no-nonsense government took the matter seriously. The police launched an investigation to try to identify the culprits and issued a warning to local grassroots leaders.

The police still had their eye on the troublesome area even after the government decided to open the station. A plan by a group of female high-school students to help raise money for charity by selling white elephant T-shirts at the station’s inauguration ceremony was seen as a potentially subversive act.

The police warned the students that if they wore the T-shirts “en masse, it might be misconstrued by some as an offence” since Singapore bans protest demonstrations.

The students complied by not wearing the T-shirts, although they were allowed to sell them, and issued an apologetic statement saying: “We are in no way attempting to judge or condone the Buangkok MRT incident.”

Singapore’s approach towards public protests has been influenced by the old Chinese saying that “a single spark can start a prairie fire”, or what Catherine Lim, a local novelist and social critic, describes as the government’s “nip-in-the-bud-ism”.

The episode would appear to bolster claims by critics that Singapore still has far to go to achieve an open society that tolerates differing views.

The debate on free expression comes as concerns are being raised about whether political curbs will affect Singapore’s future economic competitiveness as it seeks to rebrand itself as a global centre for creativity and innovation.

The government of Lee Hsien Loong claims it is promoting increased political openness, but critics say the pace of change remains slow.

Ms Lim says in spite of the apparent economic success of Singapore’s alternative model to liberal democracy, it threatens to create a monolithic society that lacks the flexibility to handle new challenges.

“I’ve come to believe with a heavy heart that even if the government wanted to do something about it, Singaporeans are so used to the government making decisions for (them), any major change will be viewed with alarm,” she told a recent forum at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies in Singapore.

The issue of whether Singapore is being damaged by public apathy has been raised by a recent financial scandal at the city-state’s largest charity, the National Kidney Foundation, which enjoyed strong government support.

When several people alleged that funds were being misused, they were successfully sued for damages by T.T. Durai, the NKF head. The government failed to probe deeply into the allegations until a libel case filed by Mr Durai against a local newspaper led to a trial that revealed discrepancies in the charity’s management.

Critics have focused on the incident as an example of a lack of checks and balances in Singapore and the risks faced by whistleblowers.

Singapore also suffered a setback in its quest to become a regional educational centre when Britain’s University of Warwick decided not to open a branch campus in the city-state because of worries about academic and political freedom.

Government officials say political openness should be seen in the context of good governance and not as an end in itself. Singapore should be “cautiously radical rather than ideologically revolutionary” on political freedom because of its multi-ethnic society, Vivian Balakrishnan, a former dissident turned government minister, told the ISEAS forum.

But George Soros, the US financier who is supporting global democracy initiatives, recently told a Singapore audience that countries lacking transparency and free debate faced the risk of a public backlash during economic turndowns. The warning comes as Singapore is suffering from increased social inequalities between rich and poor.

Although Mr Soros said Singapore was not an open society, it “is a prosperous society, and prosperity and open society go together. So I hope that Singapore will become an open society.”

Interesting Article from the ST

February 17, 2006 Friday
SECTION: Review - Insight

LENGTH: 946 words

HEADLINE: Sometimes, the opposition deserves credit too

BYLINE: Laurel Teo

BODY:
WHEN Mr Chiam See Tong wanted to overhaul some lifts in his ward, Potong Pasir, and have them stop at every floor, the official response was no.

Impossible, too expensive, the opposition MP was told. The conclusion was based on sums derived from the Housing Board’s formula. Never mind that Mr Chiam protested he could do it more cheaply - his way.

That was in 2004. Listening to Mr Chiam’s exchange with then minister of state for national development Cedric Foo, I wondered why the Government wrote off his proposal so quickly.

Less than a year later, the People’s Action Party Government announced it had found a cheaper and easier way to install lifts. It would test this so more people can get lifts stopping on their floor. Amid all the cheer felt by home owners, especially older folk, did anyone remember Mr Chiam and his failed bid earlier? My guess is, probably not.

I’m not suggesting the Government pinched Mr Chiam’s method, whatever that might have been. Was it spurred to find a better way to upgrade lifts, just in case Mr Chiam beat the PAP to it? I don’t know. But if the HDB was already researching a better way to upgrade lifts then, Mr Foo didn’t say so.

In the contest for ideas, no one has a monopoly. But what bothers me is that the opposition rarely gets credit where it deserves it. Opposition players also seem to give in too readily in this tussle. Whether through lack of political acuity or dexterity, or for some other reason, they seem unable to seize the advantage.

The PAP, on the other hand, has never been shy to say so when it suspects the opposition of adopting its methods. When Mr Steve Chia first popped up on the Other Side, endowed respectably with a university degree, remisier job and sensible stance, party leaders paid him a compliment: He was ‘almost like a PAP candidate’.

More recently, when the Workers’ Party (WP) came up with its manifesto, PAP leaders made it known that the WP seemed to have ‘copied’ some of its ideas from the PAP.

But inspiration, I suspect, could go both ways or even converge.

Take freedom of speech, or even the freedom to hold a public talk without having to apply for a licence. For years, the opposition and civil society activists have been campaigning on this front.

Finally, in 2004, the Government relented and allowed public talks without a licence - but only indoors.

The PAP may regard these as entirely separate matters - it sees the activists’ efforts as a call for unbridled freedom, while the latter is a gradual easing up of the public sphere. But one wonders whether, without the activists’ agitation, the change would have come as soon.

While the PAP may often scoff at the opposition’s claims and moves, more often than not, there is a kernel of truth in what the underdogs have to say or do. And this is something I suspect the PAP knows only too well, something it may do well to heed.

The opposition’s dilemma is that it often has trouble developing its ideas to fruition, or even finding a good way to solve the very problems it highlights. And sometimes, while opposition figures start out with good intentions, they end up tangled in a knot.

During the last general election in 2001, the WP looked like it had hit on something good when it sprung its ‘New Poor’ catchphrase on the electorate. But it failed to flesh out its ideas more clearly, and ended up taking a beating from the PAP which was only too quick to slam the WP for its lack of solutions.

But that was a time when thousands of jobs were lost, when pay was stagnant or cut, when the future looked grim. I don’t think one can deny there was a growing group of Singaporeans caught in the lower-middle-class squeeze, who would feel some sort of resonance with the New Poor slogan, however vague it turned out to be.

So while the PAP may disagree with and try to demolish the WP’s rhetoric, the sentiments highlighted by the latter are another matter altogether. And the PAP would do well to figure out how to nip any such unhappiness in the bud.

Likewise with the WP’s most recent suggestion to scrap the ethnic policy quota in HDB estates. It argues that the policy makes it difficult for some Singaporeans to sell their flats.

The proposal was immediately labelled a ‘time bomb’ by the PAP, which focused on the threat the end of such a policy would pose to the multiracial balance here.

The debate reached Parliament, where National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan took pains to explain the need for such a policy. He cited statistics to show that not so many people - only 300 each year after all - have problems selling their flats. And for those who do suffer, it is ‘a sacrifice that Singaporeans must be prepared to make to safeguard racial harmony in our society’, he said.

What remained unsaid, however, was that it is perceived as a policy that penalises minority home owners, who have a more limited pool of potential buyers. They can sell their flats, yes, but at what price? Often, not as high as what their Chinese neighbours would get, going by many anecdotes.

So the real question on the minds of some Singaporeans is, why should the minorities be penalised over a policy meant for the larger good of Singapore?

Unfortunately, the WP did not care to drill to the core of the issue, which is about an inequity.

Again, what may seem a reckless proposition - to do away with the quota - has its roots in a very real unhappiness.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Government comes up with a way to redress the downside of this policy, without having to scrap it entirely.

I wouldn’t be surprised either, if no one remembers the WP when this happens.

huei@sph.com.sg

Many thanks to the Freeman Foundation who sponsored the event-had a genuinely good time.

Back from the inaugural East Asian Studies Undergraduate Conference in Denison University, Ohio. Had a good time meeting like-minded undergraduates across the USA interested in East Asia and hearing very inspirational professors sharing about issues regarding East Asia. Prof Peter Bol from Harvard was simply simply superb, clear (inspirational) on his presentation on neo-Confucianism and China. The papers presented ranged from history to political science to anthropology to art history to economics to literature of East Asia.

Presented my first paper ever in a conference. Was glad that the presentation went okay and that questions were manageble.

Papers ranged from

“Chinese Intellectual Property Law and the New Economy”,

“Human Rights and Democratic Consolidation in Post-Authoritarian South Korea” to

“Between Silence, Peace and Healing: The Hiroshima Peace Park” and my favorite:

“Social Dislocations and Cultural Encounters: The Jewish
Communities of Treaty-Port Shanghai” (Very interesting research of Baghadi Jews from Iraq to China-seems like groundbreaking emerging research!)

My paper was on

“Examining Early Showa Ideology from the Fortuitous Kokutai Clarification of Minobe Tatsukichi’s Organ Theory”

The work done by these undergrads were very good, considering many did it for their senior thesis (not like me lah). Some actually went to Korea, Japan and China for field research. I wish I could easily do it too by taking a time machine back to history..haha

Met a fellow Singaporean there too. Was surprised considering that not many Singaporeans young people are interested in East Asia especially on its politics and history.

Had an interesting debate on why most Singaporean students are economic majors in liberal arts college.

So much more about the conference. Will probably blog more about it if time permits…..=)

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