TR EMERITUS

Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam From the day he announced his presidential candidacy, the media has been gushing about how popular Tharman Shanmugaratnam is. The Straits Times was first off the block, saying that “Mr Tharman’s popularity could deter other hopefuls from throwing their hat into the ring.” TODAY reported that race was not an issue in this open presidential election “because Mr Tharman has a broad appeal that cuts across racial groups.” Political pundit after political pundit have also spoken of how Tharman’s popularity makes him a formidable candidate. But they all seem to be looking at it in a vacuum. Popularity aside, what about suitability? Let’s try and distinguish between the two. Tharman had to resign from the People’s Action Party (PAP) government to contest the presidential election. And ever since, he’s been trying to distance himself from the PAP government, saying he would not be on the same team with them if he were President. Why the need to distance himself from the PAP he served for more than 20 years? This shows his eagerness to come across to the people as his own man, independent of the shackles of being a PAP man. Jumping into the fray, Ho Ching said in a Facebook post that the role of the President is “not to be an independent voice.” However, this does not square with what her husband, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, has expressed. In a letter accepting Tharman’s resignation, PM Lee said he was confident that Tharman, as President, would exercise his “custodial powers independently” and carry out his duties “with the independence of mind.” Why the need for PM Lee to emphasise independence not once but twice? What all this goes to show is that it is not a natural progression, and not a natural fit for Tharman to be President. His popularity does not equate to his suitability for the office of the presidency – the PAP will always be in his DNA, and his independence will always be questioned. The PAP knows too well the difference between popularity and suitability. It wasn’t so long ago that a segment of Singaporeans were clamouring for Tharman to be Prime Minister. But the word from the PAP was that Singapore was not ready for a non-Chinese Prime Minister. Is it fair to infer that although popular, Tharman was not considered suitable to be Prime Minister, and the time was not right for him? Having bypassed him for the post of Prime Minister, the PAP wants to leverage on Tharman’s popularity by endorsing him for President. Ironically, the people can now make the same distinction the PAP once made – popular but unsuitable. Even if Tharman is as popular as they say he is, the fact remains that he is simply not suited for the role of President because of this: Singapore can do much better than yet another PAP person as President.   Augustine Low      Read More →

Lee Hsien Loong's People's Action Party (PAP) government began in 2016 its radical reforms to the elected presidency, a rush job of the highest order. A case was made out for the necessity of the changes at the beginning of the year, a thoroughly respectable constitutional commission was convened, public and expert feedback was canvassed through the commission, the commission's report and recommendations pored through and discussed in cabinet, the cabinet's proposed Bill drafted as a response and debated, the Bill read twice and passed in parliament, the expected constitutional challenges and their respective appeals heard and fended off—all in an attempt to ensure the 2017 election would be run under new order rules. (Note: the exercise still ended missing a crucial deadline: Dr Tony Tan's presidency lapsed before his successor was elected.) In justifying its shifting of the goalposts to engineer its win, Lee has forgotten what was really wrong with the office of the elected presidency to begin with, and has failed to fix it. Bob the Builder would've done a better job fixing the elected presidency Was the elected presidency flawed from the start? The elected presidency is an office rife with internal contradictions, some of which were built in as features, and others introduced right in its infancy. As with the previous presidential election, various PAP ministers this year have sought to "remind" candidates and the public that they have been greatly mistaken about the roles and powers of the elected president. In actuality, the PAP itself made up the president's roles, powers, functions on the fly, often contradicting their original vision. The original concept: A president who can say no In the aftermath of the 1984 general election, Rajaratnam castigated the electorate for blackmailing the PAP, while Lee Kuan Yew thought long and hard about the possibility of a "freak election result" that would one day send an opposition party into power, a "rogue government". Perhaps no one dared to educate Papalee on how elections work; assuming an election is legal, clean, and fair, no result it generates is ever a freak result and every government it elects is the government. The only freak in the room is the man who thinks he has written the constitution to ensure that his side always wins. If that day should come, Papalee reasoned in parliament in 1988 when prime minister Goh Chok Tong delivered his EP White Paper, his Singapore would be saved by a separately elected president who would veto a rogue government's impulse to raid the reserves to hand out goodies and bribes to win future elections. You know, like enacting what the nation-building press bluntly calls an election year budget by throwing free cash at people in the form of one-off items like GST vouchers, Pioneer generation packages, Medisave top-ups, New Singapore Shares, and Economic Restructuring Shares, all while railroading attempts by the president and the public to scrutinise Singapore's reserves. The reality: A president who can say no, but... For all Papalee's political paranoia about the electorate kicking out the PAP and political fantasy of a PAP-approved or former CEO president safeguarding the nation and reserves from a "rogue government", reality set in almost immediately when Ong Teng Cheong, the first elected president, decided to test the powers of his office by a compilation of Singapore's reserves and assets. The PAP government, headed by Goh under the eternal tutelage of Papalee, balked. And the clawback began. Goh's cabinet clarified the role of the president and how he was supposed to function in a series of White Papers after Ong's request: government would create a presidential council of advisers, he would have to seek their advice and they would have to concur for a veto to go through. Ong's account to the now-defunct Asiaweek magazine paints the clawback as a mere clarification of procedures. Yet it is telling that Ong had to "press" the government to "finalize" principles and procedures of the presidency only after the government of Goh and Papalee denied his request. In the previous presidential election, certain PAP ministers have gone as far as to bluntly state that the president can be very easily rendered powerless by the cabinet. The elected president is a second-rate ceremonial president Today in practice and by declaration of the minister of laws, Singapore's head of state is not allowed to have a political agenda, must be consulted by and checked by a panel on reserve powers. In any other country, this would describe almost to a T, the theoretical powers and limitations that belong to the constitutional monarch in dominions of the Commonwealth (aka the royal prerogative), or to the ceremonial presidents taking her place in some former colonies of the Commonwealth. That is, a head of state who gives assent to Bills passed by parliament, reads out a speech (written by the head of government) opening each parliament session, gives assent to senior civil service appointments. Certain ceremonial presidents also give assent to the budget. In the exercise of the royal prerogative or the presidential prerogative, the head of state is advised by a privy council or its equivalent (usually comprising the cabinet, the head of the opposition, and the head of the civil service). For all the costly window dressing and constitutional amendments through the years, the evolution of Singapore's elected president has been to regress towards the mean, to the tried and tested forms of ceremonial presidency. Except in Singapore, the elected president has less powers than a ceremonial president. That's right: the elected president cannot withhold assent from "core constitutional bills". Presidency as sinecure for loyal ministers and senior civil servants Singapore's presidential recruitment ad asks for a seasoned executive, while the job description is as far from executive as possible. The recruiter claims the equivalence of executive decision-making and civil service consensus-by-committee skills, while the reality of the job diminishes any independent, contrary, executive impulse. Assuming one meets the eligibility criteria, why would a CEO (with the stress on executive) choose to be advised on a day-to-day basis by a panel of senior and retired civil servants or the cabinet to concur with every decision and request of the government? The presidency then devolves into a tool for rewarding loyal ministers and senior civil services. You know, to ease ministers out, to exit the political arena. And to give senior civil servants a sinecure after their mandatory retirement. In either case, the office falls to the characters who by virtue of their political or bureaucratic careers, are least expected to be independent, to exercise their role to check on the government, much less exercise their constitutional right to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn. It is said that the man in the street cares not for the office of the president. The man in the street may be right but has not articulated his feelings that the presidential office is one riven with so much internal contradictions and continued disappointments that there is no reason to give it due attention. Internal contradictions not important? None of the internal contradictions inherent to the elected presidency and the PAP's tinkering of the elected presidency were addressed in the most important reforms to the office to date. One might even say that these internal contradictions have served the People's Action Party so well, they have become incapable of understanding the public contempt for this politicised office. One might even say: this great affective divide, coupled with the PAP's immense self-regard, has fuelled the party's insistence to rework the presidency further in their favour.   Patrick Low * Article first appeared on Down The Rabbit Hole.      Read More →

Mdm Ho Ching In a Facebook post today Ho Ching told Singaporeans not to harbour the illusion that the Elected Presidency is any kind of independent check and balance. The primary role is that of a head of state, representing Singapore as a nation and state, and the symbol of unity for our people. The secondary role for which the election is to be held is to hold a second key to help safeguard our reserves and the integrity of our key institutions. It is not to be an independent voice, a check on govt, or an ombudsman to all the woes and ills of society. So what exactly is the point of the Elected President? Particularly as the carefully drawn criteria make it all but impossible for a non-PAP endorsed candidate to win. Where one might succeed the Presidential Elections Committee stands ready to do the PAP’s bidding and reject the candidate using undisclosed criteria. “Not of sufficient moral character” was used to keep JBJ out of the race despite his false conviction having been overturned by the UK Privy Council and the disqualifying period having been completed. Similar criteria have been used to keep the PM’s own brother out of the race, or at least the strong hint that he will be rejected should he dare to apply. The point is that of course a PAP President is not going to act as any kind of check and balance. They will just treat as a nice little earner prior to retirement, an opportunity to collect another nine million dollars for doing nothing. Some Singaporeans may have got excited thinking that Tharman is some kind of liberal who should have been PM but for LHL’s Chinese supremacist views. Tharman happily accepted being some kind of house slave to LHL in return for a swelling bank balance and the opportunity to rub shoulders with the global financial elite like Christine Lagarde and Timothy Geithner. Besides as I explained in my last but one blog Tharman was a leading and willing participant in the dark arts of fake accounts and false Budget accounting used to trick Singaporeans into believing that their Government has no money and will collapse if ordinary Singaporeans don’t tighten their belts, cut back and pay more taxes. True to form, Ho Ching goes in for a rant against voters in general, and Singaporeans in particular, for being greedy short termist individuals with no impulse control who would deplete the reserves if they were allowed to by the Government: But then when we design an election system to safeguard the reserves, this is typical at odds with the desires of the electorate. Why? Bcos most electorate would want the govt to spend more and not less, to subsidise this or that, or to make this or that free, not to prevent a spendthrift govt from raising tbe reserves. This 3rd generation syndrome of not having gone through hardship to earn the money is very real for families and for nations. The gimme-gimme syndrome takes hold as the 3rd generation eyes the national kitty as a freebie, instead of thinking of the reserves as their heritage and legacy which they must in their turn add to and strengthen for their own future generations. This is straight PAP playbook dating back fifty years. I well remember the reaction to my dad’s victory at Anson from LKY and Goh Chok Tong was that Singaporeans had a low threshold of pain. I wouldn’t ordinarily give Ho Ching’s ramblings much oxygen. Whatever position she has is through her husband and marriage into the dynasty. However it’s a fair representation of the entitled views of the PAP elite and display a remarkable lack of self-awareness. Her husband,Minilee, thinks of Singapore as his heritage and legacy including the kitty, which he controls by having his wife as CEO of Temasek while he is Chair of GIC. She and her husband are undoubtedly plotting to put a third generation of Lees on the Dragon Throne after having despatched his brother into exile. Her attitude is shared by all the PAP elite, Ministers, spouses and their offspring who regard state resources as a gigantic milk cow whose teats they think they alone are entitled to suck on. They create a huge bloated state sector, ensure they and their friends and family have a monopoly on all the top jobs and pay themselves outrageous salaries. They keep the most outrageous a state secret. As a public service, instead of ranting against Singaporeans as lazy welfare dependents, it would be good if Ho Ching would tell us how much she and her husband arranged for her to be paid over the last 20 years. What was the size of the estate they inherited from LHL’s parents and where is the money invested? Are there any conflicts of interest you have not condescended to tell Singaporeans about? Most egregious of all is the Ridoutgate scandal, in which two senior Ministers, thinking no one would find out and if they did would be too scared of them to raise it, helped themselves to two enormous and palatial state properties on undisclosed rents, rents that are almost certainly massively out of alignment with the rents for similar private properties on much smaller land areas. This mispricing likely created an arbitrage opportunity between the rent they were paying and the rent they could get on their own GCBs, proving yet again that, as JBJ said, the PAP are skilful at managing their own personal fortunes even if they can’t help Singaporeans struggling with the austerity for which there should be no need. Meanwhile Singaporeans are lectured by the likes of Indranee Rajah and Desmond Lee on the need for them to pay the maximum prices for the land on which BTO flats are constructed lest they drain our precious reserves. Ho Ching of course talks about the need to safeguard the reserves and not only hand them over to the next generation but add to them. But the Government refuses to tell us what the reserves are and the reasons why we need to keep adding to them when the native born population is declining rapidly. Why should Singaporeans be forced to go without to hand over trillions of dollars in financial reserves (over $10 trillion if you include the land owned by the state which was stolen from the people) to new immigrants whose parents didn’t go without to accumulate them. Ho Ching also gaslights Singaporeans about the Swiss: The Swiss for instance is one such society, highly conscious that there is no free lunch. They rejected the idea of fewer working hours with higher minimum wages for instance. And by a very large majority. There is no national minimum wage in Switzerland and it varies by canton. In Zurich the minimum wage is CHF23.90 per hour (or CHF4,000 per month). This is about $36 per hour or $6,000 per month. This contrasts with about $7-10 in Singapore under the PAP’s fake Progressive Wage Model and considerably less for many Singaporeans not covered by it. Of course the Swiss work considerably shorter hours than Singaporeans as well (38 as opposed to 45 or more). Singaporeans shouldn’t need Ho Ching to remind them that the Elected Presidency is just a comfortable semi-retirement for old PAP Ministers, a chance for them to collect a useful additional $10 million or so to pay for a few more round the world cruises or luxury holidays when they finally decide to call it quits. It doesn’t even have anything to do with safeguarding the reserves or holding a second key. Ex-Finance Ministers like Tharman are unlikely to call for rocks to be turned over and a light to be shone into dark corners when they were complicit in designing a fake Budget and system of accounting to hide revenues and resources from Singaporeans. They intentionally presided over a system which aimed to present a dismal picture of the Government’s finances and convince ordinary people, many of them desperately poor, of the need for belt tightening and making do on one meal a day in the midst of plenty. In fact I have done more to safeguard the reserves and see that they are utilised for the benefit of Singaporeans than any President apart from maybe Ong Teng Cheong. In 2012 I demanded Parliamentary and Presidential approval for conditional loans to the IMF which the Constitution clearly requires. Our judiciary removed my right to sue the Government saying their their main role was to “greenlight” the executive, even if what they were doing was illegal. The President slept through all of that and did not even comment. Singaporeans need to lose their romantic illusions about the President, including Tharman, and instead be prepared to vote this government out Otherwise the only people who will continue to enjoy free lunches at your expense are LHL, his family and the PAP.   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 →