TR EMERITUS

I MOVED into Potong Pasir estate two years ago. Contrary to Mr Tan Kam Weng's perception ('Things have changed in Potong Pasir - for the worse'; yesterday) of the decreasing standards of maintenance since its MP Chiam See Tong suffered a mild stroke, I find little evidence of any significant decline in the area that I am living in. In my block, the lifts and surrounding areas are cleaned daily and the corridors are washed and fumigated every month with diligence. Recently, I sought help from the town council to remove a chained and abandoned bicycle, and it was promptly addressed. Compared with the other estates I have visited and resided in, Potong Pasir is relatively well-maintained though it lacks generous funding from the Government. The issues Mr Tan raised, like the one on playgrounds, are noticed in other housing estates too. Potong Pasir estate may look old as much of its infrastructure needs to be overhauled. But this should not be associated with the estate's management by Mr Chiam and his town council. This is because of the refusal of the ruling party to include the estate in upgrading projects as many of its constituents have been voting for the opposition. Given the limitations, Mr Chiam and his team are doing a remarkable job.   Liew Kai Khiun    Read More →

Dear Temasek Review I refer to the article “Police report against relief cabby: Real Threat or Mere Paranoia?” published in the Temasek Review on 8 June 2010. The author was referring to the case of 52 year old relief taxi driver Mr Teo Kian Seng. Mr Teo had been charged in court for allegedly threatening the ruling People’s Action Party Member of Parliament (MP) for East Coast GRC (Group Representation Constituency) Mr Lee Yi Shyan at a MPS (meet the people session). The writer has criticized the Mr Lee for being too harsh on Mr Teo. In this article I shall elaborate on how the action taken against Mr Teo fits into the PAP Group (PAP and its allies) election strategy. East Coast GRC originated in the 1988 General Election (GE) when the single seat wards of Bedok, Tanah Merah and Kampong Chai Chee were merged to form Bedok GRC. In 1997, Bedok GRC was expanded and renamed as East Coast GRC. Over the years, one thing had remained consistent. The GRC had revolved around the leadership of Bedok Ward MP Professor S Jayakumar (born in 1939). Professor Jayakumar had been an important Cabinet Minister for 3 decades. As of 2009, he was Senior Minister (SM) and Coordinating Minister for National Security. Together with Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew (born in 1923) and another SM Goh Chok Tong (born in 1941), SM Jaya formed the inner elderly trio in the Prime Minister’s Office.   While the vocal critics had been very unhappy about MM Lee’s continued political presence and questioned SM Goh’s relevance, SM Jaya had largely remained unnoticed. At the constituency level, he was also needed to maintain the support of older pro-PAP Group voters. In 2009, government statistics showed that Bedok housing estate had the highest number of elderly persons in Singapore with 31 000 residents aged 65 and above.   Therefore Mr Lee Yi Shyan’s priority was to follow the footsteps of SM Jaya. In addition to those aged 65 and above, Mr Lee was likely to think of how to maintain the support of the 51-64 age category. When economic problems started to materialize in 1997, many of these people thought it would be a cyclical downturn. As of 2009, it appeared more were beginning to wonder if there was something fundamentally wrong with the PAP Group. Faced with the possibility of more older hostile residents, the PAP Group would have to figure out the right mix of hard and soft measures. Should the 51-64 age category voters drift towards a protest vote, this could be a big problem for the PAP Group. The local younger 21-35 age category already had a strong inclination to vote against or even out vote out the PAP Group.   In the 2006 GE, the PAP Group won 64% of the valid vote in East Coast GRC. Statistically it would be unlikely the PAP Group could lose this GRC. However, the PAP Group would not want to take any risks in this context. While vocal critics had mentioned GRCs where the PAP had won by a smaller margin (50% to 55%) from 1988 to 2006, Bedok GRC was forgotten. In the 1988 GE, the PAP Group won only 54.9% of the valid vote in this GRC.   A hypothetical loss of East Coast GRC in a future GE is more than a just a loss of seats. The GRC contains the current PAP Headquarters (HQ) at Blk 57B New Upper Changi Rd. Furthermore in the 2006 GE, the opposition Workers’ Party team was led by Mr Chia Ti Lik, a former Young PAP activist. The prospect of losing the party HQ land to a party quitter is likely to be cause great unease to the PAP Group.   The decision by the PAP Group to refer Mr Teo’s case to a legal court may seem harsh. However Mr Lee Yi Shyan is not paranoid. He is simply taking precautions. His conclusion is that a hard measure will neutralize critics among the 51-64 age category. To him, a soft approach will embolden these critics instead and result in an anti-PAP Group vote swing.   Yours truly Mr Chua Yuankai The writer is a long-term underemployed and marginalized local-born Singapore citizen who once aimed to become successful in Singapore. Currently he is thinking how to survive.  Read More →

Recently, two foreign professionals, Swiss national Oliver Fricker and Briton Lloyd Dane Alexander broke into SMRT Changi Depot and vandalized a train with graffiti. Fricker was arrested a few days after a video of the vandalized train appeared on Youtube, while Alexander has fled the country. The Singapore government has since put in an extradition request to the British government for him to be brought back to Singapore to stand trial.  Despite the obvious breach in security, SMRT staff still allowed the vandalized train to operate, oblivious to the true nature of the so-called “work of art” on it, at least until the video appeared on Youtube. This by itself is astonishing: what is more shocking is that apparently SMRT’s security staff failed to notice the huge hole in the fence the two vandals cut in order to enter the depot. That at least was the impression that the company gave, seeing as how it took them two days to file a police report over the incident. After all, one would logically expect them to report any major security breaches such as this one to the police immediately instead of waiting for a public uproar to take place first. The vandalism itself is not really an issue. While still a criminal act, nonetheless, at worst it was nothing more than a harmless (and admittedly highly artistic) prank. Certainly, while the two miscreants responsible should be appropriately punished for it, the government has clearly missed out on the real issue here, namely what sort of security does SMRT have in place at its premises that two bored young men could make a complete fool of it publicly. In all honesty, the two men had actually done Singaporeans a monumental favor with their stunt. If they had not pulled it off, ordinary Singaporeans would have remained blissfully oblivious to the wholesale complacency and slipshod security within SMRT. If nothing else, it shows just how stupid if not outright dangerous the “deaf frog” mentality espoused by high-ranking government officials such as NTUC chief Lim Swee Say can really be. The fact of the matter is that problems don’t go away simply because top officials choose to ignore them or any criticisms of their policies. Instead, they simply fester on and grow in scale until events such as these expose them publicly. And sometimes these events can have humiliating or even catastrophic consequences such as the stalling of the Singapore Flyer or the collapse of Nicoll Highway. Predictably, SMRT does not view it this way. Miffed at being publicly humiliated, the company has engaged in a major damage control exercise. There’s just one slight problem: unable or unwilling to admit its errors, the company’s attempts at damage control has only succeeded in raising heckles even more, even bordering on farcical. In fact, the excuses it has come up with to explain the debacle away can easily be summed up in three words: dumb and dumber.   Dumb: Allowing the vandalized train to be put into service instead of being taken out for a thorough inspection. After all, given the elaborate nature of the graffiti, it must have taken some time for it to be sprayed on. If the culprits had meant to carry out something worse than a mere prank, they would have had ample time to sabotage the train. Putting it back into service without a thorough inspection shows blatant complacency on the company’s part at the very least.   Dumber: The company’s explanation that its staff thought that the graffiti was an officially-commissioned “work of art”. So what was SMRT really trying to say here, that its own personnel don’t know what was actually happening in the company? If this really was a public relations campaign of some sort, one would expect that at the very least, staff from the Corporate Communications, Rolling Stock and Traffic departments would be kept informed of it. After all, the Rolling Stock Section is responsible for carrying out maintenance of the trains, the Traffic Department operates them and the Corporate Communications Department would orchestrate such a campaign. Surely they must know then that this was no such artwork.   Dumb: The shoddy security at the depot that allowed the two perpetrators to pull off their stunt. Are close-circuit television systems installed at the depot? If so, then why weren’t they reviewed daily? This at least would have exposed the breach in security immediately. And how exactly do the security guards carry out their patrols that they could miss out on a gaping hole in the fence? Or did they in fact notice it and simply ignored it or dismissed it as nothing? If this is the case, then this beggars the question of what sort of training the guards received, and what sort of drills if any the company puts them through. And it definitely raises the question of how the company selected the security service in the first place and how it reviews the security service’s performance.   Dumber: SMRT President Mdm Saw Phaik Hua’s comment that the security breach showed why it was vital that the public should maintain vigilance at all times. In case she didn’t realize it, the train wasn’t vandalized while it was in service; it was vandalized while parked in Changi Depot, which is scarcely a public place. Does she actually believe it would be possible for members of the public to spot troublemakers in action in a facility that they have no access to when her own security service failed to do so? For that matter, according to the company’s spokespersons, the train was allowed to be put into service because the staff thought that the graffiti was a work of art similar to that commissioned by SingPost on its post boxes to promote the Youth Olympic Games. If this is really the case as they claim, then how on Earth does Mdm Saw expect members of the public to recognize an act of vandalism on the trains when the company’s own staff cannot? And for that matter, doesn’t this prove that she should shoulder a far greater share of the blame than ordinary commuters? After all, unlike members of the public, she has access to Changi Depot where the crime was committed, and she definitely would know if the graffiti was supposed to be there or not.   Dumb: The ludicrous excuses the company came up with to explain the debacle as listed above. Dumber: That anyone in the company would actually believe that ordinary Singaporeans are stupid enough to believe the ridiculous nonsense that they tried to pass off as explanations for this debacle. SMRT should realize that the public’s confidence in it has been badly shaken by this incident. One can hardly fault any member of the public for this, for one would shudder to think about what sort of dire consequences there could had been had the two pranksters been terrorists out to sabotage the trains instead. This is especially so since JI mastermind Mas Selamat Kestari had actually targeted Yishun Station for a terrorist bombing attack, so it is not simple paranoia on the part of the public. It is of paramount importance now for SMRT to act swiftly and prudently to restore the public’s confidence in itself; unfortunately, the company appears bent on insulting the public’s intelligence in its overzealous attempts to divert blame from itself instead. And the company’s response to this whole fiasco can be summed up in three words: dumb and dumber.   Tan Keng Leng       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 →