TR EMERITUS

Mr Goh Meng Seng, secretary-general of the National Solidarity Party (NSP) has sold his HDB flat and will donate about $20,000 to $30,000 to NSP, to help especially its younger members contest the elections that are due by February 2012. The 50-year-old businessman declined to disclose the sale price of his four-room flat in Serangoon North  but according to the HDB’s website, the resale price of such flats in his neighbourhood for the past five months has been between $330,000 and $384,000. His wife who is working in Hong Kong (where she lives with their 7 years old daughter) supports his decision. He will move in with his 81-year-old mother and sister at their four-room flat in Ang Mo Kio, he said. Explaining his donation to NSP, Mr Goh said that he has to  'lead by example.’ Citing opposition leaders such as NSP president Sebastian Teo and Workers’ Party chief Low Thia Khiang, he said both have dipped into their pockets to pay for election expenses of their parties’ candidates. He estimates each candidate will need to spend $10,000 on campaigning, on top of the election deposit which was $13,500 in the 2006 election. His party’s funds are not enough to pay these costs, he said. Half of the funds are contributed by its 17-member central executive council and the rest comes from the sale of its newsletter, published twice a year. Most of it is used to pay the monthly rent of about $1,000 for NSP’s headquarters in Jalan Besar, he said. The party was in the news recently when its vice-president Christopher Neo received a summons for illegal hawking of its newsletter. The party has asked the National Environment Agency for a meeting to resolve the matter, he said. Mr Goh says he plans to contest in Tampines GRC and, if he wins, he will buy a flat there. ‘I want to be a full-time MP and be close to the ground,’ he said.   Andrea  Read More →

Dear Temasek Review and The Online Citizen. 1. I read your articles every single day and can usually find excellent, even brilliant articles. 2. I believe that you are being read by most of the online Singaporeans. While you should not be complacent and should continue every effort to reach out to more online Singaporeans, I believe that those Singaporeans who seldom or never go online are missing out on your great articles. So why not compile your best articles, maybe update them if necessary, and sell them to the public, especially Singaporeans? 3. Two bookshops that readily come to mind are Kinokuniya at Takashimaya Shopping Centre in Orchard Road [for details see http://www.kinokuniya.com.sg/ ]. Another bookshop that comes to mind is Select Bookstore in Tanglin Shopping Centre [see http://www.selectbooks.com.sg/ ]. These 2 bookstores often carry Opposition books including those authored by Dr CHEE Soon Juan, Francis Seow, Dr James GOMEZ, the late Joshua Benjamin JEYARETNAM who compiled his Parliamentary Speeches into an excellent book, so you should do the same. 4. In addition to these 2 bookstores, you can also ask all the Opposition Parties to sell your book at their election rallies. Most Opposition Parties [except, notably SDP] have no books of their own to sell and will happily sell yours, maybe for a small cut of the profits. Profits are not important but reaching out to the hundreds of thousands of rally goers who always attend Opposition rallies is foremost in importance. Once you reach them just once through your book, they will visit your website regularly, thus driving a whole new group of readers to your website. 5. Hope you can do it before the election. Regards,   Robert Ho  Read More →

Having been founded in 1957, the Workers' Party (WP) is the oldest opposition party in Singapore's political scene that is still active. It was launched by Singapore's first Chief Minister Mr David Marshall with socialism and an equal society for all as its core values. This faith in the original objectives continued to guide the party under Mr J B Jeyaretnam, who took over the leadership in 1971. Under the late JBJ, as he was popularly known, the party gained mass support from all sections as well as all main racial groups in Singapore. But what has become now of a party that was the champion of the underdogs? The WP of today has morphed into nothing but a mere empty shell without any direction. It is a pity that one of its Central Execuitive Committee (CEC) members is even boasting that he had voted for the PAP in the last elections in 2006, while the CEC member himself had contested against the Prime Minister in the Ang Mo Kio GRC. Not only that, the WP has become the mirror image of the authoritarian PAP. It has, since the stepping down of JBJ in 2001, been transformed into a party dominated by a particular ethnic group. It is really disgusting to see that the WP has transformed itself into a political party advancing its original socialistic principles but championing some perceived cause of a section of society. In the recently elected CEC of the party, there is only 1 additional Malay in the lineup, bringing the number of non-Chinese to a mere 2 persons. There are no Indians in the CEC either. This is a far cry from the WP's glorious past of being a well-represented multiracial party. Even the retention of 2 non-Chinese could be due to the mandatory need to field so-called “minority” candidates in the GRC scam. The speed and the shift that WP has had since the Low Thia Khiang – Sylvia Lim duo's is a great blow to the very constitution and the national pledge of our country. Is it possible for the WP under its present leadership to project itself to be a party believing in ideas like “regardless of race, language or religion” as extolled in our national pledge? Surely, we can't expect much from a party which has its Youth Wing entirely comprised of Chinese. It's a shame that the Workers' Party that had the vast majority of people supporting it has been turned into a refuge for a particular race. When will the day come for WP to regain its lost glory to be a truly Singaporean party When will we be seeing a WP where affairs of the day are conducted in a language understood by all Singaporeans? It is disgusting to witness meetings of WP carried out entirely in Chinese. I'm sure David Marshall and JBJ would be grieving in the netherworld if they knew what has happened to the party they both dearly cherished.     Richard Tang About the Author: Richard Tang is a 37 year old Singaporean currently living in Canada. His father was a supporter of JBJ and used to follow him on his election campaign trails back in the 80s. Richard hopes that JBJ’s struggle and sacrifice will not be in vain, and focuses writing on hypocrites in Singapore.   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 →