TR EMERITUS

Feedback from Ismael Ketura: One area that I will recommend that the Singapore government to improve is the issuance of autopass/ VEP and update of insurance and roadtax of foreign vehicles in the autopass. Previously before the Covid pandemic , if your car did not possess autopass or your roadtax was expired, you can visit the LTA office at Singapore CIQ and few ladies at the LTA offices will assist to verify your roadtax and within few minutes new autopass will be reissued or your autopass will be updated. The ladies need only to verify the Malaysian road tax disc and need not verify the vehicle ownership document and also the vehicle insurance document. Malaysian road tax validity was already made to match the last date of your vehicle insurance coverage. After the Covid pandemic , a new process was put in place .You have to apply on line and you have to upload the vehicle road tax image, vehicle certificate, and the vehicle insurance document. If your name did not match or your insurance company did not match, or some other particulars did not match, your application will be rejected and you need to apply again and need to wait again until the LTA offices processed it again. I am wondering why LTA requested for three documents ( road tax, ownership certificate, certificate of insurance) if the vital item to verify was the validity of road tax. By simplifying the process to only upload the image of the vehicle road tax , the process will eliminate a lot of unnecessary errors and unproductive processes and will hasten the process of approval. Once approved, an email will be sent by LTA requesting the applicants to collect the new autopass card at LTA 's outsourced company in Jalan Tun Abdul Razak, Johor Baru. Why not courier it to the address as requested by the applicants instead of directing them to collect and the hassle collecting at LTA's outsourced company at Jalan Tun Abdul Razak. . I am also suggesting, for urgent issuance, applicants can go to LTA's outsourced office in Jalan Susur and a new autopass can be issued after verification of the applicant road tax . For urgent issuance and autopass personalisation, additional charges can be imposed to cover the outsourced company's operation cost . There will always be some incidents , some vehicles arrived at Singapore CIQ without autopass or their road tax not updated in the system. The current practice to send them back to to Johor. Why not process their application at the LTA's CIQ but to impose higher charges than the charges imposed by LTA's outsourced company. By doing the above, I think the issuance of autopass and renewal of vehicle road tax can be carried out in a more efficient manner and at the least cost. I have gone through the current hassle, it was a nightmare.smael Ketura said. Here are my views: 1. I agree with Ismael. The earlier LTA protocol is adequate. LTA can issue the autopass for each vehicle without the insurance and ownership documents. The vehicle is already registered with the Malaysian authority. There is no need for LTA to duplicate this work. 2. The purpose of LTA is to collect revenue for the use of the road in Singapore. This is facilitated by the autopass. 3. LTA is probably concerned that the vehicle should be adequately insured for third party liability. The foreign driver can provide proof of insurance when an accident occurs. If the vehicle is not insured, it can be compounded. 4. Alternatively, LTA can levy in the daily fee a component to cover the third party insurance in Singapore. This fee can be $3 a day. This will transfer the settlement of liability to an insurer in Singapore. I understand that there were problems faced with third party claims against Malaysian insurers. 5. We should revert to the previous arrangement to reduce work for LTA and hassle for the owners of Malaysian vehicles. 6. LTA should allow the owner to get an autopass on the spot on payment of a modest fee and submission of the road tax disc.   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →

They (MOH) finally confirmed the "first Vax death" but still claim that "it is very rare". [LINK] There are many sudden deaths of heart attacks and strokes right after vaccination (V) not being recognized as V injury but look at the data and statistics! There were Excess Deaths due to heart issues and strokes in 2021 and 2022! Most common excuse used is "pre existing conditions". Let me say this, if a young and healthy man could be so adversely affected by V with Myocarditis that he died from it, wouldn't people with weaker hearts due to preexisting conditions be more vulnerable? Why didn't MOH put up cautionary note to people with such pre existing conditions or even exempt them from V instead of forcing everyone to V via VDS and the evil No Jab No Job rule? The coroner took almost 2 years to complete for this case but it was a significant signal as it's a death highly suspected to be causes by V. MOH should apply the highest precautionary protocol as it has done to many other drugs, either pause it or send out cautionary note to the public or exempt people with pre existing heart conditions from V! The assumption that the V will only cause heart problems to young people and rare while ignoring the risks to those with pre existing conditions is not logical at all. This is especially so when many people of all age groups have suffered heart palpitations and such symptom may have bigger impact on heart patients. I don't expect MOH and its "experts" to know everything about this new technology of mRNA but at the very least, they should take a more cautious approach to an inadequately untested technology instead making too many unwarranted and unsupported assumptions when no long term data is available! It is a matter of life and death. As public policy it is always best to err on the safe side. We have seen the high Excess Deaths rate in 2021 and 2022. It is time to exercise the highest precautionary measures towards V by halting it and initiate a thorough investigation on the real impact of V. This is what a responsible Gov should do instead of pretending nothing has happened or self hypnotizing that the mantra "Safe and Effective" still stands. When they called me in for interrogation by POFMA OFFICE more than a year ago, they question me why I am "anti Vax". I said I am not Anti Vax at all but the mRNA technology is just too new and there wasn't any long term safety data. Most importantly, even in 2021, the signals of numerous suspected V injuries are just too strong to ignore! In the interest of the Public, they should not be forced to take the V via VDS and evil rule of No Jab No Job. That has always been my position. Ignoring all these signals and instead pushing everyone to V may result in catastrophic consequences. I would say the nearly 22% of Excess Deaths in 2022 as compared to 2020 may be a very strong signal that indicates something is very wrong with the V. I would strongly urge MOH to HALT the V program altogether now and carry out a thorough investigation of the V. Stop putting lives at risk.   Goh Meng Seng      Read More →

Article 12 of our Constitution states that all are equal before the law and all are entitled to the equal protection of the law. The PAP ignore this just as they have passed so many derogations to the fundamental liberties supposedly enshrined in our Constitution as to make it worthy of the best examples from Communist countries like the Soviet Union and the PRC. Today in Parliament Indranee Rajah gave nonsensical reasons why the six senior management figures at Keppel Offshore and Marine (KOM) could not be prosecuted. She said there was insufficient evidence yet surely all the evidence is in the public domain and the KOM accounts. The payments to “consultants” were presumably authorised by the senior management and disclosed to the Board and it must have been clear that they were given in return for the large sums awarded in contracts. If at least one of the individuals had entered into a plea bargain, as reported by Indranee in Parliament, presumably with the Brazilian and US authorities (Indranee inexplicably refuses to name the jurisdiction) then that individual has admitted guilt. Yet Indranee went on to say that: “When this individual was investigated by CPIB on his return to Singapore, he denied knowing that commissions paid to the agent in Brazil were paid out as bribes,” Surely senior management are responsible for what happened on their watch whether their sins were of omission or commission and whether carried out with their knowledge or not. Plea bargains in other jurisdictions should not prevent prosecutions in Singapore. The PAP Government does not hesitate to apply extraterritoriality when it comes to punishing Singaporeans for actions committed abroad even though they are not breaking any laws in those countries, as when the National Olympic Committee fined Joseph Schooling and Amanda Lim for consuming cannabis in Thailand. The Prevention of Corruption Act 196O also explicitly states: The provisions of this Act have effect, in relation to citizens of Singapore, outside as well as within Singapore; and where an offence under this Act is committed by a citizen of Singapore in any place outside Singapore, he may be dealt with in respect of that offence as if it had been committed within Singapore. I would hazard a guess and say that the Government’s reluctance to prosecute might have something to do with the likelihood that the KOM Six have covered themselves by getting their superiors to sign off on the payments and that they have the evidence to implicate individuals higher up in the chain. During the period when the bribes took place these include Lee Boon Yang, a former Minister of Defence and later Minister for (Dis)Information who left Parliament in 2011 and in a triumph of meritocracy was immediately appointed Chairman of Keppel and of LHL’s private media monopoly and re-election committee, SPH Media Holdings (he probably did not even have to move office as SPH Media Holdings takes its orders directly from the Ministry of Information as well as the PM himself). Loh Chin Hua, the CEO of Keppel, is of course a Government scholar and a board director of EDB. It is a given that all of the other Singaporean directors, as in every GLC right to the top at Temasek Holdings, all have connections to the PAP or are FTs singing their praises. The one thing they will have in common, apart from their generally mediocre academic record and rapid elevation in proportion to their closeness to the inner circle of LHL and his wife, are their unshakeable beliefs in their inalienable right to share in the state money train and their fake meritocratic superiority. These so-called “natural aristocrats” were in all likelihood aware of what was going on in broad brushstrokes while carefully keeping anything that could connect them with the payment of bribes out of the paperwork. If the non-execs claim they were not aware then they were either negligent in the performance of their duties or there was fraud going on at KOM and Keppel, which would be all the more reason to prosecute. Why were contracts and payments to consultants not reviewed by the companies’ compliance departments and red flags raised? Also. given the size of the payments, it is hard to believe that news did not reach the senior management of Temasek, who have a significant stake in KOM’s parent company and no doubt have control extending well beyond its size, as with so much of the corporate sector in Singapore. A public trial might even prove embarrassing to Ho Ching who as CEO was at the top of the chain at the time. Where was Worrying the Government might also be the fact that prosecution might bring to light other corrupt practices at our state-owned companies, either directly through the trial or through emboldening whistle blowers. Certainly it is hard to believe that this was just an isolated incident where bribes were paid to win contracts, though it may be the only one that has come to light and which the US Department of Justice has become involved. The PAP Government are undoubtedly eager to sweep this under the carpet and avoid the embarrassment of a public trial as well as to protect their own people. There has even been an attempt in the state media to spin this as absolutely par for the course in much of the rest of the world and an unfortunate cost of doing business, the implication being that the KOM Six were just doing whatever was necessary to win business for Singapore Inc. and were more heroes than criminals. This is what the public are being asked to read It would have been helpful for Indranee to reveal what bonuses were paid to the Six on the back of the corruptly obtained contracts but these were undoubtedly substantial. Nor did the Opposition press, and Indranee did not provide details as to whether there had been any attempt to recoup at least some of the losses from the US$450 million fines the companies agreed to pay as part of the deferred prosecution agreement. The fact that the companies involved had to pay several times the value of the contracts won through paying bribes should illustrate the real economic harm the executives involved did to the companies involved and to Singapore. The derisory slap on the wrist and the weaselly and disingenuous reasons given by Indranee as to why the KOM Six could not be prosecuted just serves to illustrate the double standard of justice in Singapore and that. like Animal Farm, those connected to the PAP’s inner circles, with LHL and his wife at the centre, are more equal than other Singaporeans before the law. By contrast, small fry get prosecuted to the fullest extent for small acts of corruption and jailed, often for long stretches, to illustrate Singapore’s supposedly zero tolerance approach (see here, here and here). JBJ was prosecuted repeatedly even to the extent of the AG appealing his acquittal, jailed and deprived of his Parliamentary seat for what the Privy Council ruled a non-existent offence and a grievous miscarriage of justice yet the Government has refused to reverse his conviction. Singaporeans may finally be waking up but are still all too ready to give the PAP the benefit of the doubt when it comes to corruption. Until we have a new government that will not change.   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 →