TR EMERITUS

Tharman for me is suspect because of his affiliation to globalist elites. Has he been bought and paid for by the WEF? Is he one of those that Klaus Swab meant when he boasted WEF has infiltrated the cabinets of many countries in the world? All his brilliance and financial ingenuity count for nothing for me to take a chance on someone whose heart and soul is aligned to the interests and designs of an organisation so well beloved by 1% of the world’s billionaire inhabitants but feared and detested by the rest. Not to forget his nonchalance of state secrets led to his being charged under the Official Secrets Act. A forgiving system saw him let off the hook with a slap on the wrist and a too big to fail, or too important an official to loose mentality, saw no negative impact on his HR report card. Putting state secrets and WEF together is pretty worrisome for me. As for Ng Kok Song, he may have no party allegiance, but he hails from the same incestuous closely-nitted network of the Singapore Inc crowd. He is a blackface trying hard to gain street cred with HDB hinterlanders. His sudden appearance is highly suspect. Has he ever uttered a word in support or in sympathy of lesser folks in the CECA debacle, in Hyflux or mini-bond investment fiascos when small fries got burnt? Or voiced the pain of the man in the street protesting the 2% GST hike and HDB prices? He strikes me as one who has been called upon to do national service for a system that he served well and in turn been treated extremely well. Kok Song worked for decades as CIO for GIC. He exited GIC in 2014 to set up his own Amanda Investment Fund. Which company lets an employee go set up operation and pumps billions of dollars for him to kick start his game unless blue tie network really means something. I am happy for his success, but I don’t like to be fooled. Kok Song, like Tharmand, has a Gordian knot of establishment bondage they cannot cut loose. Their claims to an independent presidency lacks credibility. Now for Tan Kin Lian, he gives me headache. I see a lot of his FB posts and I want to be brutally frank here, no pussyfooting for me. In private I have often commented his posts on serious issues seem to display a lack of depth in his world views. Most of his posts have been kitchen variety inconsequential types. I tolerated his posts because there is a quality of cuteness and innocence to them. Overall, it reflects sincerity and a man connected to the ground he walks on. Who am I to say how he should connect with his Facebook followers. But for me, the problem is twofold which can come back to haunt him now that he is seeking higher office. One, sometimes he lets his guard down and careless in his comment that can be misframed in ways he never intended, such as that ‘pretty woman’ thingy currently going the rounds. Two, the pettiness of subject matter does not exactly speak well for one aspiring for high office. Of the three candidates, Kin Lian has his heart in the right place. He has real concerns for the ordinary people on the wrong side of the economic miracle of Singapore. For this concern, he seems to see a larger role in the office of the presidency. There is no executive role for the president other than the narrow scope set out in the Constitution and other legislation as well as the protection of minority rights. I for one has consistently tried to deflate this well-intended but misguided expectation of Kin Lian whenever I see him stray into this topic and I think he does not take kindly to my comments. He has constantly made the point he will discuss with the Prime Minister and guide ministers in matters where public voices can then have a better influence on policies. In other words, he sees the president’s role as a back-up loop connecting public voices to the Executive. Kin Lian gave the assurance he is non confrontational and will approach this in the spirit of respect and team building and will work with the government of the day. Apparently he failed to understand 2 things here. Firstly, he is out of scope, and secondly, bringing a counter opinion to the Executive sets a potential collision course. This underlies a dangerous misunderstanding of the role of the Office of the President. The president’s role is not to act as a counter check on the government. The separation of duties is very clear, something Kin Lian does not seem to grasp. In this respect, I feel the Elections Board made the right decision in truncating that part of his speech where he had strayed outside the scope of presidential duties. The Board did well in releasing an explanation of their action in timely fashion. So with Kin Lian I am conflicted. I see a well meaning good man. Stature wise he is nowhere near Tharmand, personality wise I am afraid he trails behind both Kok Song and Tharmand. As regards the overhyped custodial role of state reserves, all three candidates are equally up to the task from experience but will similarly work in the dark like all past presidents. There is something about someone growing into the office. Should I vote with my heart and trust Kin Lian to grow into the office, or vote from adulation of a highly esteemed senior politician who harbours ideological philosophy prepared to bequeath Singapore sovereignty to international cabal of global elitists, or better yet, for someone who benefited tremendously working his entire life for the system and now suddenly professes to have the independence to represent the other side.?   Patrick Low * Article first appeared on Down The Rabbit Hole.      Read More →

Tan Cheng Bock and Tan Jee Say were seen out on walkabout with Tan Kin Lian this morning and both of them endorsed him. As neither of them are elected representatives it’s perfectly acceptable for them to make personal endorsements. However at the same walkabout TCB also described the criticism of Tan’s “pretty girls” Facebook posts as “gutter politics”, to quote AsiaOne. I want to be clear here. Calling TKL out for public posts he made is not gutter politics. Women having a voice of their own and voicing out what they feel is also not gutter politics. I would describe gutter politics as the surreptitious surveillance video of Nicole Seah and Leon Perera that mysteriously surfaced at a convenient time for the PAP as gutter politics. Their affair had been over for a year at that stage. TKL had posted these photos by himself. He clearly saw nothing wrong in taking photos of women in shorts and singlets and drawing people’s attention to them. Many of the Opposition parties, including Reform Party, have active and vocal Women’s Wings. He disenfranchised them in one stroke when he doubled down on his posts. It is the commentators saying that the women who objected were ugly or jealous that really dragged our into the gutter and showed us to be a backward nation out of step with the modern world that only pays lip service to its national pledge. However this could have been and should have been a learning moment for TKL. He apologised shortly after his nomination but his apology was also a form of doubling down. “I did say there are some pretty girls, but the pretty girls take the effort to dress up to be attractive. When I say that they are attractive, most of them actually feel quite happy,” “But in case some other ladies, after reading this, think that they are uncomfortable, I want to apologise to them,” And he then went into a long spiel about the timing and the number of people who had seen his post over the last ten years. I’ve got news for him. In the last ten years he hasn’t stood for President and people thought he had retired in the interim. It’s now that the interest is intense. In the time since 2011 also the PAP have started to fracture, the PM’s grip is weak, he hasn’t yet secured the succession for his son and the citizens have much greater access to the internet and the experience from travel abroad and are unafraid to use it. In other countries such as the UK, during a candidate’s selection process candidates are asked to give permission to a third party agency to trawl through a candidate’s internet history and see if there is anything that raises flags. You can’t delete anything on the internet but this way they can at least get ahead of any negative publicity if they decided to proceed with the candidate. I believe that the PEC should also do this but if Tharman wasn’t disqualified for breaching the Official Secrets Act then clearly their scrutiny leaves a lot to be desired. Here’s what TKL could have done. Before going into this arena he should have put together a team of advisers and that should have included women, or at least one woman not his direct blood relative. It should have also included reputable people with gravitas from at least the two main ethnic minority communities. He didn’t do that and the fact that he applied last minute is no excuse. Once these posts had become a public issue he should have requested a meet with AWARE. I also feel that AWARE could have asked to meet him first before this blew up to explain how his behaviour impacts on all of our women and given him a chance to make a proper informed apology, put it behind him and move on with a new “AWAREness”. In an ideal world a joint statement would have been issued. Thus Singapore comes together and moves forward rather that gets bogged down in division. Instead of that today we have this car crash commentary by TCB today. Dr Tan said that he’s sad that the “political landscape is in such turmoil and, despite saying that Singaporeans want transparency, described the criticism of Tan’s “pretty girls” Facebook posts as “gutter politics”. Clearly he seems in favour of censoring the internet. The reason Singapore’s political landscape is in turmoil is mostly because of the lack of a new generation of leaders. TCB’s comments today have shown me beyond doubt that he and PSP are mired in the past. What he wants is a PAP in his image from some imagined halcyon days. PSP has always been and will never be anything other than PAP 2.0, but one that looks backwards not forwards. Despite this I do hope that they take a couple of GRCs at the next election and that in combination with the other parties on the Opposition benches they can deprive the PAP of a two-thirds majority. Ng Kok Song made a comment along the lines that political parties shouldn’t endorse candidates. He should know about not mixing up politics. When he was at MAS he made sure I couldn’t have a career there and that was purely a political decision. This was proven when in a blind test my cv was selected, I was interviewed and I was employed by a financial institution, because the CEO being from England didn’t know what my name meant. Meanwhile Ho Ching, who has no business commenting, as she remains an active executive with Temasek at the moment, has put up a comment by The Kritical Spectator calling Singaporeans who vote for TKL insane. Nothing could be dragged further into the gutter than calling the supporters of eligible political opponents insane. This shows that the PAP has nothing but contempt for a large swathe and probably the majority of the electorate. Her ties to two of the candidates are as well hidden as PSP’s ties to the other. She should be made ‘aware’ of FICA and get sanctioned for spreading the Polish PAP IB. We’ve had a long history of this in Singapore. Many of my supporters are aware that her father-in-law called my father mad. I can assure you he was compos mentis till his last breath. I think they did something similar to Chee Soon Juan. TCB is throwing his weight behind TKL because he’s hoping to capture some supporters for the PSP. I haven’t yet thrown my weight behind anyone in my individual capacity. It’s not for me to speak for Reform Party and as a party we wouldn’t endorse. But I have had negative personal interaction with two of the other candidates and knew one well at university and I wouldn’t trust them to look after the jar of coins I keep on a back shelf in the kitchen. The PAP is being brought dragging and screaming into conflict with the modern world’s demands as it struggles to keep on doing business as usual, censoring citizens with rule by law, insisting ownself check oneself isn’t a travesty of good governance whilst defending its status as a haven for banking secrecy and dirty money. Have we all got a little overexcited? The EP is a sham brought in by the PAP out of fear. It’s not worth this much comment. At least TKL has said he would call for a Commission of Inquiry which is a better response to calls for transparency and accountability than I’ve ever had from Tharman or previous EPs. Whatever you think TKL embodies, electing him would send a clear signal to the PAP that they are living on borrowed time as far as the electorate is concerned. It might be too much to hope for but a TKL Presidency might finally force the Government to reveal more about the size of the reserves and the justification for not being able to spend more on investing in the people. So a vote for TKL is a vote against PAP arrogance and being taken for granted and treated like fools.   Kenneth Jeyaretnam   About the author: I’m a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That’s why I’ve never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I’m quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don’t work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I’m a liberal. I’m not sure what the middle think of me. I don’t think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I’m a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I’m not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean.      Read More →

One of the biggest issues facing Singapore these days is a proliferation of scams. Although we’re not having babies, we are clearly getting screwed left, right, centre and sideways. Some of the scams are really sophisticated. With today’s technology, its easy for you to fake official documents. However, while large sophisticate scams make sexy headlines, the truth is that a good number of scams actually involve the telling of impossible tales. I think of a group which asked my small firm if they could liquidate a company. When I interviewed the guy, he said he was told that if he lent the company money, they would lend it to the banks who would then pay a higher interest rate than what they were paying on deposits. The company would then split the difference. I then probed and asked if the company was regulated by the central bank or any other regulatory authority. The answer was no. Made the guy repeat the story several times, where upon he said “that sounds really bad.” The story on its own would not have been so bad had it been left to the group of professionals who invested. The tragedy was that scam artist managed to get their initial investors to get their elderly relatives to sell their assets to invest. Hence, not only did a group of educated professionals get scammed, a group of pensioners ended up getting screwed too. Scam artist operate on the same rationale that most businesses run on – which is, why stop it when it’s generating money. So, when you get a call from a US number claiming to be from this or that government agency and wonder “who the hell would fall for this. “– the answer is obviously enough people. Another example of a scam was best summed up by the Old Rogue (bless his soul). It was called “Buy a job.” The Old Rogue’s idea was simple – pay me a sum of money and then you go out and make us much money as you can. Again, you might ask – who falls for this? The answer as is shown, is obviously plenty of people: Why do otherwise intelligent people fall for tall tales? I guess the answer is greed and an inability to look beyond the glitz. I’ve had to stress to my mentee on more than one occasion that he needs to look less at the glamorous condos or the flashy cars and how they so and so managed to afford the glamorous condo and/ or the flashy car. As a rule of thumb, scammers know that they have to look good and make it a point to make you think that they are credible. Let’s face it, a man who has the appearance of doing well, always sounds that bit more credible. So, they key is to never get caught up with the outward appearances of success. So, when you look at a flashy car, ask yourself how it was paid for. Is the person in that flashy car asking you to pay for it?   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able to meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →