TR EMERITUS

The announcement of closure of Singapore Turf Club (STC) by 2027 does not bother me one bit as I do declare I am not a punter. This news, however, jotted my memory in a few ways back when horse racing was at its old Bukit Timah grounds. I recall elder brother telling me when I was a little kid that the two most prestigious clubs in any prominent cities is not golf clubs, but horse racing and yacht clubs. Well there goes one prestige for Singapore. In my youth I spent some time bunking at a house at Bk Timah some distance away from the turf club. In the wee hours of 4 or 5am in the mornings I would be awakened by some muffled voices over a megaphone. I was told those were horse trainers going through morning routines. Then the dreaded weekends when Bk Timah road traffic was jam-packed with punters in all shapes and colours. Whilst I am no punter, I was a weekly visitor on Mondays …. to work. I was a junior audit clerk with Turquand Young and my Monday task was to witness the incineration of used bet slips by club officials. Almost all Singaporeans will simply receive the news with some nostalgia. That's about it. All will accept the explanation of falling attendance as the cause and conversion of the land for housing as a positive. None will question the veracity of the decision which seemed out of the blue, nor reflect on a time in the distant past when there was a power-grab by the government. STC was a private club founded in 1842. Some time in late 1980s, the government grew uncomfortable of a private club holding immense wealth and huge plot of prime land. It’s a secretive club and no one from the public has any idea the amount of undistributed wealth it had accumulated over 150 years. Should it decide to dissolve one day, it would have certainly made several Jeff Bezos then. It had such potential political power it needed to be controlled. The government tried to put its man on the board. The job fell on the Minister of Law, the affable Eddie Barker. STC snubbed the government and Barker did not get the votes. Back then. I was already a PAP watcher and thought STC was finished. As predictable as the sun rising in the morning, the government almost immediately created the Singapore Totalisator Board in 1988 and set up the Bukit Turf Club as agent to operate the horse racing and 4D operations from STC which was dissolved in the same year. Adding insult to injury to old members, in 1994 Bukit Turf Club changed its name to STC. Was there equitable distribution by STC members upon dissolution, I have no idea. Whether it was the most audacious wealth grab, confiscation or redistribution, I leave it to you to decide. A hint lies in the massive social spending by the Board as it embarked on an incredible donation spree in the years following its creation. I am not making any moral judgment, simply narrating past events. The 120 hectares of land will eventually be added back to the government’s land bank for future needs. For the $500m sunk into the Kranji race course development, it’s about throwing $20m to the wind each year for last 2 decades. Trust a bunch of government appointees to run an 180 year old institution into the ground. William Henry Macleod Read, who started the club in 1842, must be turning in his grave.   Patrick Low * Article first appeared on Down The Rabbit Hole.      Read More →

I have resigned to being laid-back, unobtusive and tranquillity in mind. I think I have done enough to bait the vaunted PM Lee Hsien Loong the only regret being his stubborn refusal to give me a public apology for his father's sin against me. This may be a divine proclivity. However, Lee Hsien Long showed uncanny foresight in picking Lawrence Wong as his successor Lawrence Wong excelled among the 4-G leadership and his emergence as the prospective prime minister is what divinity may have foreboded. He has shown eloquence and oratorical skills equal if not surpassing Lee Hsien Loong .I was quite sceptical but nevertheless impressed by his effusive gandiloquence to solidify and unite the people and gave him a deserving adulation on my website.The only sticking point may be his PM-in-waiting may be an eternity. President Halimah Yacob's tenure will terminate in September and is quite vainglorious in thinking of standing for re-election. She has her aficionados who obsequiosly flattered her to such a dizzying height that she cold have succumbed to her egotism of invincibiliity. But what must have haunted her is the plethora of detractions of her performance of her presidency as six years of wastage. This must have greatly rattled her as it pointedly dawned on her of the consequences of a defeat. She has to face the ugly fact and not to take the perilous risk. So she is happy and thank Allah by renouncing her dream of standing for re-election. The uproar over the tenancy of two magnificent Rideout Road government bungalows by two PAP ministers to me may be said to be a storm in a teacup.That this could provoke a masssive grotesque caricature of improbity by the two ministers shows how easy it is to rouse the people's feelings.The two ministers may be faulted for wanting to flaunt their affluence and grandeur vanity with an abject lack of humility but this is for the electorate to decide in the next poll. It is premature to denigrate the role of Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean who is appointed to investigate any irregularity. We should wait for the results. Workers' Party shows incomprehensible haste in the expulsion of a senior cadre Daniel Goh for some opague reason. When there is obviously a dearth of talents in the party. It appears to be linked to the misconduct of Raseeah Khan and the party secretary-general Pritam Singh has been shown to handle he issue very badly. Daniel Goh had apparently incurred the wrath of Pritam Singh in his persistent questioning of Pritam Singh's competency Lim Tean is in the news again in forming a People's alliance of four opposition parties to contest the next general election. He has as his team mate the formidable Kenneth Jayaretnam. What is significant is the absence of Workers's Party and Progress Singapore Party in the Alliance.in order to make up a united front. So is Lim Tean's People's Alliance going to compete with PAP or the WP and PSP?   Yoong Siew Wah * The author was the Director of Singapore’s Internal Security Department (ISD) from 1971 to 1974. He was Director of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) in the 1960s, and had a distinguished career in the Singapore Special Branch in the 1950s. Mr Yoong has granted TR Emeritus exclusive right to his memoir, to be published on an independent website (work in progress), upon his passing.     Read More →

SM Tharman Shanmugaratnam Two thoughts came to my mind when I read in the CNBC and Bloomberg online news that SM Tharman Shanmugaratnam (TS) will run in the upcoming presidential election. I welcome the news. So far, only TS has confirmed his candidacy. TS needs no introduction. He is eminently qualified for the 2 executive roles of the President of the Republic of Singapore. Qualificationwise, characterwise, integrity, international standing/reputation and the state of his health, I believe that almost nobody can fault him. It would be Singapore's good fortune if TS becomes our President. We live in a real world. 'Truly independent' lalala... can only be found in utopia. If I am given a chance to vote and I am a Chinese Singaporean, I will vote for TS to be my President. Next, our electoral Group Representation Constituency (GRC) system. GRC system was introduced in 1988, ie, >30 years ago. The rational given by the pap government then for having a minority candidate in every GRC was that people tend to vote along racial lines and good minority candidates on their own may not be elected. Singaporeans were sold that rational. The rest is history. For many years, I beg to differ. Anyone who knows our electoral history well enough must know that many past minority electoral candidates such as old guard ministers EW Barker, S. Rajaratnam, Dr Ahmad Matter, S. Dhanabalan and Major Abbas etc all had beaten their Chinese opponents on the back of majority Chinese support and won. Even the late opposition leader, JB Jeyaratnam, won against a pap Chinese candidate, Pang Kim Hin in the 1981 Anson by-election. If TS wins in the coming presidential contest at the polls and not by a walkover, it will further reinforce my belief that Singaporeans are largely politically colour-blind and they will support good minority candidates like they have supported TS at the polls to become our new President. Having observed over the years, I conclude that good minority electoral candidates are able to win on their own merits and there is no need for them to hang onto the coattail of ministers in order to enter Parliament. I believe that I am not alone in having that belief. We shall see the result of this year's presidential election. Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →