TR EMERITUS

By Chua Yuan Kai I referred to the letter “Confrontational model not for Singapore” written by Mr Patrick Tan which was published in the Straits Times on 6 April 2009. Mr Tan was referring to a dispute inside the opposition Singapore Democratic Party (SDP). The dispute resulted in its Secretary-General Mr Chiam See Tong leaving the SDP. He was succeeded by Dr Chee Soon Juan who held the post ever since. Mr Tan praised Mr Chiam for playing the role of constructive opposition. At the same time he criticized Dr Chee for trying to set up a confrontational parliamentary system. He also quoted former Chinese senior leader Mr Deng Xiaoping’s words. Mr Deng had remarked it did not matter whether a cat was black or white so long it caught mice. Using these words, Mr Tan argued the type of political system did not matter so long it worked. According to Mr Tan, dominance by a single group promoted unity, harmony and prosperity. In Singapore, the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) is more than just a political party. It has allies in the civil service, government-linked companies and the trade unions. This PAP Group exists in every aspect of life in Singapore. We shall now examine Mr Tan’s assertion of unified harmony within the context of the PAP Group’s immigration policy. The concern about the proactive immigration policy started during the Asian financial crisis in 1997. The response from the PAP Group was that existing locals would not be affected. It reinterpreted history by arguing just about everyone in Singapore was of immigration origin. Being of foreign origin became fashionable. The PAP Group did not mention that by using this argument, it could also be considered as a foreign regime. The proactive immigration policy had a negative impact on existing locals on various aspects of life. To use Mr Deng’s words further, some locals began to doubt if the cat was catching mice effectively and efficiently. As socio-economic problems worsened, these sceptics became more vocal. They began to describe the PAP Group as equivalent to a bunch of monopolistic fat cats. Foreign immigrants also became the subject of criticism. Meanwhile, some immigrants expressed bewilderment at the PAP Group’s policy of accelerated integration between locals and foreigners. To them, Singapore was simply a place of doing business and working for a certain term before moving on to elsewhere. In particular, senior company directors which had an earlier history of hiring locals became upset when they were accused of taking away jobs. This was problematic as information from these people could be important in understanding the employment market. The guiding principle behind the immigration policy was the emphasis on results. Anyone who lost out in the competition had the sole responsibility to sort things out. In particular the PAP Group felt it had no obligation to help disadvantaged locals. Assistance would be very limited and the PAP Group would have the final say on who should the recipients. The social price for such supreme individualism was of little concern to the PAP Group. The PAP Group could do what it liked partly due to the dependency attitude of certain older locals. These locals venerated the PAP Group’s unofficial supreme leader Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. As socio-economic pressures mounted, more people also sought spiritual solace through religions. The PAP Group mainstream media had already reported on the existence of certain religious tensions. This had been corroborated by ground experience of various persons. A British-based correspondent, Mr Abdul Gafoor, compared the dominance of the Lee family in Singapore to that of the Pahlavi imperial house in Iran from 1925 to 1979. Both were established relatively recently and were not related to historical ruling houses. In addition, the countries ruled by them had undergone a certain period of economic development. To ensure continuous rule, the Pahlavi regime suppressed the secular socialist liberal opposition. When religious clerics became an opposition force, the Pahlavi regime found it harder to suppress them. Iranians became reliant on political religious ideologies. In 1979, the Pahlavis were overthrown and a theocracy was sent up. In Singapore, the social culture does not permit a critical examination of religious ideas and their leaders. Should these leaders become an opposition, the PAP Group may start to regard Dr Chee as a gentle moderate. In conclusion, I suggest Mr Tan and other PAP Group supporters consider the following questions: Has the PAP Group created confrontation between locals and immigrants? Has the PAP Group created confrontation between the individual economic haves and the individual economic have-nots? Has the PAP Group caused a religious revival which can lead to more confrontation between various communities?   About the Author: 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 →

Dear Sir, I read your report on ContactSingapore's effort in recruiting Taiwanese nationals to come to Singapore for work. I have one point to for you to analyze: In contactsingapore's website: http://www.contactsingapore.sg/industries/financial_services/programmes/ GIC (Government Investment Company) is arranging a 'Young Professionals Programme (YPP)'. The one-year YPP propramme is conducted in Singapore. It starts with 5 weeks of intensive classroom training in finance, economics, and investment analysis. I am very surprise this recruitment call is only found in contactsingapore's website. Not even in www.gic.com.sg or any other local job search engines. I maybe wrong, but it is plain to see that GIC wants to give free training to foreigners while new graduating students in Singapore are not entitled. Thank you, Chan Hoe  Read More →

[email protected] The Football Association of Singapore (FAS) has recently launched their Strategic Plan for 2010-2015, setting key goals and identifying strategic areas for improvement. The overall target is to propel our national football team to be the top ten in Asia by 2015. Implications On the surface, this renewed target is a much toned down version of the Goal 2010 plan, which was laid down in 1998 with the target to take Singapore to the World Cup by this year. The media has often judged Goal 2010 as an utter embarrassment to FAS and perhaps the Singapore government, so it is perhaps imperative for FAS to set more reasonable targets this time round. With a target of just being the top ten in Asia, it means that our national team would not be expected to qualify for the 2014 World Cup, or perhaps the 2018 edition as well. After all, unless there is an overhaul in FIFA’s allocation to World Cup slots, only five to six Asian teams will go to the next two FIFA World Cups at best. Also, this target indicates that qualification to the 2015 Asian Cup will be necessary to make the target a successful one. The Lions have already missed out on the 2011 Asian Cup, so with up to 16 slots in 2015 available for grabs, the Lions will be expected to qualify to be able to call themselves “top ten in Asia”. The Route There Football, like any sports, is all about relative performances. With interest, investment and time, most football teams will get better. To leapfrog other teams in Asia, Singapore will need to outperform them, moving forward at an even faster pace. According to the latest FIFA world rankings, Singapore is ranked 127th in the world and 20th in Asia. In terms of ASEAN teams, we are ranked third, behind Thailand and Vietnam. The Vietnamese are also the defending champions in the ASEAN Football Championships (Tiger Cup), so it is somewhat misleading on FAS’ part when one of their key goals is to “…… and maintain our position as the top ASEAN team”. In a nutshell, to be in the top ten, Singapore will have to surge ahead of ten other Asian nations and reach the world ranking of around 94. Using the latest FIFA data, the ten teams between Singapore and that tenth Asian slot are, in ascending order, Vietnam, Yemen, Korea DPR (North), Thailand, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan, Qatar, Syria, Oman and Uzbekistan. It will be reasonable to expect that Singapore will be able to overhaul both Vietnam and Thailand in the coming years. Our chance will arrive come the end of this year, when we will compete in the 2010 ASEAN football championships. We had won this competition three times before and will need to show that we have the capability to do it again. UAE, Qatar and Oman are rich-oil nations with football-mad population. They are expected to pour much more money into football development in the coming years. Their domestic clubs are known to use their huge financial resources to draw top European players and will continue to do so. That can only improve the standard of their football. Qatar, in particular, has an open policy to naturalise foreign born players. Recently, a Senegalese, a Uruguayan and a Brazilian had donned their national colours and they are likely to pursue this avenue to improve their national team. North Korea is perhaps in the different class from all other teams in this spectrum. They are going to play in the 2010 World Cup and their ranking will improve dramatically. Their currently position outside of the top ten in Asia is more likely to be due to the fact that they do not play friendlies against top nations because of political reasons. And the current tenth team in Asia is Uzbekistan. In June 2008, they came to Singapore and destroyed the Lions 7-3 at the National Stadium, despite playing under very unfamiliar conditions. Their national team have players currently plying their trade in top leagues in Russia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. Oh, also, ex-FIFA World Player of the Year Rivaldo is currently playing in the Uzbekistani domestic league and is being coached by ex-World Cup winning coach Luiz Scolari. This gives a good indication of the level of investment that is being made in football there. Goal Alignment The challenges to reach top ten in Asia are clear and evident. However, that is not to say that it is just a pipedream. On the other hand, there is very little to suggest that the “strategic areas” identified will bring us there. There will be a focus on FAS to improve football science and medicine and to leverage on the use of IT. It must be true that a lot of the teams above us in Asia have already been doing that for the past decade. There is also talk of re-establishing friendly tournaments and invite top nations around the globe to play the Lions. However, friendly tournaments are often nothing more than exhibition matches and there is nothing FAS can do to ensure that visiting teams actually play competitively against our national team. Analysis Our editorial team has identified two major areas where we can improve and perhaps give us a fighting chance to reach top ten in Asia. Firstly, there should be a structured program in FAS to help our budding talents move overseas to play competitive football at a very young age. Our Indonesian-based players, namely Noh Alam Shah and Ridhuan Muhammad, are excelling in the Indonesian League and their success in a short span of time showed that our local boys can compete at a higher level.  FAS can grant scholarships to young players who had excelled at various age groups and send them to top academies around Asia or even Europe. Not every one of them will make it professionally, but a couple of years of experience in a world class academy can do no harm to the players. Secondly, the funding into the S-League needs to be increased significantly. At the present, only a handful of clubs locally have the resources, reputation and ability to recruit top foreign players. The quality of foreign players can be a crowd-drawer and will be essential to a young league like our own. As noted in a previous article, there should be a reduction of 100% foreign teams in the S-League, a renewed effort to reinstate local teams and provide them with the relevant funding to compete at the initial stages. There is also a clear lack of corporate support in the S-League. Globally famous local companies like SingTel, DBS and Creative are not known to pump financial resources into the S-League over the years. If only a company like SingTel can purchase a local team and provide them with proper funding. Such corporate-football business models formed the foundation block of domestic leagues in Japan and Korea back in the 1990s. Do you agree with our analysis? As always, we will like to hear from you. Related reads: Singapore National Football Team: Let’s talk about statistics Heartbreak for Lions S-League Insight: FAS fails to learn from past mistakes  Read More →