TR EMERITUS

In an interview with China's Xinhua news agency, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong proclaimed rather unshamedly that many officials from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have visited Singapore in recent years to learn from its "experience." "During the past few years, thousands of Chinese officials have visited Singapore on study trips, to learn about our development experience and adapt appropriate policies to China's national conditions. Many Singapore officials travel to China to update ourselves of the rapid advancements all over the country," he said. [Source: Xinhua] As a matter of fact, China also sends its officials to learn from other countries like United States, Japan and Germany as well. It is probably interested in the unique Singapore experience of having a liberalized economy being run by a totalitarian one-party government which controls all institutions of the state such as the bureaucracy, police and media. Last year, PAP strongman Lee Kuan Yew boasted to a visiting Chinese delegation that all grassroots organizations in Singapore such as Community Clubs and Residents Committees are "part of the PAP", which would have made Lenin and Mao proud. PM Lee is currently on a 8-day official working trip to China and will visit the municipalities of Chongqing and Shanghai, and the cities of Changsha (Hunan province), Wuhan (Hubei province) and Suzhou (Jiangsu province). He is accompanied by his wife Ho Ching, Members of Parliament Dr Teo Ho Pin, Mrs Josephine Teo, Mr Michael Palmer and senior officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Trade and Industry, and the Economic Development Board. The exact cost of the entire trip is not revealed. Besides official trips, there is also an increasing number of exchanges between the CCP and the PAP which are enemies in the 1960s. A week ago, the PAP sent a delegation consisting of 46 MPs and cadres to China to "learn" from the CCP.   Please join our Facebook page here and invite your friends to do so to create awareness of the current affairs affecting Singaporeans. Please use our online web form to contact us.  Read More →

A Singapore PR by the name of Lau Chin Seng was charged in court today for pushing a policeman, Channel News Asia reports. The 26 year old, who is working as an assistant electrical engineer pleaded guilty of pushing the policeman Corporal Mohamad Yusoff down a flight of stairs as he was about to be apprehended for possession of contraband cigarettes. Lau has since pleaded guilty and will be sentenced next Monday. It is not revealed how long he has been working in Singapore. Assistant electrical engineers are usually diploma holders who assist engineers in their tasks. In recent years, Singapore has accepted an increasing number of them and other PMETs on "S" passes who are allowed to compete directly with Singaporeans for jobs which can otherwise be taken up by them, thereby depressing their wages. As a result, the starting pay for Singapore engineers has remained stagnant at around $2,300 for the last ten years or so as they can be easily replaced by cheaper "foreign talents" from overseas though it is debatable how a technician can be qualified as a "talent". Official statistics about the crime rate among foreign workers, PRs and new citizens are scanty, but there are frequent reports of them committing crimes in the papers. For example in December last year, a cleaner Liu Gui Ling, 37, a Singapore permanent resident from China, was jailed for nine weeks for throwing two lighted match sticks at a fish farm. (read article here.) The PAP regime doesn't appear to mind having criminals as PRs and new citizens so long they are more "hard-driving" and "hard-striving" than locals. During the National Day Rally speech of 2006, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong raised eyebrows when he said Singapore should get an illegal PRC immigrant caught twice for flouting the rules back here: "I give you one example where I wish we had got the fellow. A Chinese illegal immigrant came to S’pore. We found him, we kicked him out. He changed his passport, he got back in. When next we found him, he was running at least five hawker stalls, he was employing at least 11 PRC Chinese......But unfortunately because he was a second-time illegal immigrant, we had to throw him out again. So one day we should get him back and we should get other people like that to come back and to come to S’pore, because they have the spunk, the drive, and they will make it with sheer grit and get to the top one day." [Source: Straits Times]   Please join our Facebook page here and invite your friends to do so to create awareness of the current affairs affecting Singaporeans. Please use our online web form to contact us.  Read More →

Dear PM Lee, I refer to your National Day Rally speech televised live on 29 Oct 2010. You said there is a trade off between high growth and the acceptance of more workers. However, we should not grow for growth's sake but should seek prosperity instead. Many first world European cities do not resort to the mass importation of workers to sustain their strong economies and their high standards of living. There is no reason why we can't be likewise. You said the winning design of the Duxton plain site has led to it becoming one of the most sought after HDB projects in Singapore. In case you're not aware, existing flats around the Duxton plain are also amongst the most sought after in Singapore. Nearly all record HDB transactions come from that area. So it begs the questions of whether Duxton Plain is most sought after because of a winning design or because of its location. You said foreigner influx is not uncontrolled because we have dependency ratios and foreign worker levies. But having those measures in place does not guarantee that the control will be well functioning just as having drains doesn't guarantee that floods will be well controlled.   You said Texas' many immigrants contributed to its vibrancy as well as its cutting edge in medical research. There are many European countries that do not have as many immigrants and yet are also at the forefront of scientific research. You said Texas benefitted from immigration even as neighbouring states like California and Arizona have tightened up. But the per capita GDP of both California and Arizona are higher than that of Texas. So being open to immigrants did not make Texas better than California or Arizona. You referred to Microsoft's setting up of an office in Vancouver, Canada across from Redmond, USA as an example of how Canada has benefitted from liberal immigration policies and how the US has suffered from its strict policies. But what exactly are those benefits to Canada and those losses to the US? As far as employment of citizens in rich software development jobs is concerned, neither Canada nor the US will benefit because the bulk of those jobs are going to foreigners regardless of whether the office is in Canada or the US. The most tangible benefit therefore has to be the auxilliary services to these foreigners in terms of the sale of groceries, meals and other daily expenses. These are largely low value added jobs. So if our concern is on the high value added jobs that Microsoft offers, then it makes no difference whether the office is in Vancouver or Redmond. You said we should cheer for our national sportsmen even if they are foreign born because when they win, the Majulah Singapura is played. When Ben Johnson won gold in 1988 and the Canadian national anthem was played, no doubt all Canadians cheered. But when Ben Johnson was subsequently found to have cheated and stripped of his Olympic Gold medal, it means all the cheering had been in vain. So playing the national anthem doesn't automatically warrant cheering. Ultimately, the people must feel the legitimacy of the victory. You said we have given $400 million to 400,000 workers on Workfare and that that's a lot of money. But on average, each worker gets only $1,000, a pittance compared to SM Goh's wife's definition of peanuts. You said we have 22,000 new flats coming along but we don't have 22,000 new couples getting hitched every year. Nevertheless, there is a huge backlog of couples who are currently putting up at their parents' homes because they hadn't been able to secure a place of their own. If you add those backlogs, 22,000 many not be sufficient. You referred to MM Lee's generation of leaders as the founding fathers who built our nation. You are wrong. There is one and only one founding father of Singapore and that is Sir Stamford Raffles. Our nation did not suddenly spring up from nothing in 1965. Behind 1965 were many more years of toiling without which 1965 would not have been possible. You said the people who came before MM Lee's generation had separate loyalties to different countries. Are you saying that Lim Bo Seng who died for Singapore while fighting the Japanese had no loyalty to Singapore? While Lim Bo Seng fought the Japanese, your father worked for them instead. Now, as we celebrate national day, Lim Bo Seng is all but forgotten but your father has become the 'founding father'. We should not whitewash the contributions of the Singapore pioneers who came before MM Lee. If the conceiving and championing of a Malayan identity is an important contribution of the so-called 'founding fathers', then it seems odd that our first Chief Minister, Mr David Marshall was not even mentioned at all. There was hardly any fight for independence as far as MM Lee and his comrades are concerned. No blood was shed by him or his comrades. Also, there is no fighting of 'communists' as far as the term 'communist' is concerned. Even until today, even after locking them up and robbing them of their most fruitful years of their lives, we still have not been able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they had been 'communists'. Yet we continue to label them as 'communists'. So it is important to not just remember our founding fathers properly but to recognise that they span many generations stretching all the way back to 1819.    Ng Kok Lim  Read More →