TR EMERITUS

At the start of the month, our Ambassador-At-Large, Professor Tommy Koh caused a bit of a stir among the chattering classes when he stated that he believed that Singaporeans were a snobbish lot who look down on the poor. More on Professor Koh’s remarks can be found here. On the face of things, it appears that Professor Koh is being a tad unfair to Singapore and Singaporeans. Snobbishness is not unique to Singapore and there may be a case for saying that if Singaporeans are snobbish, it is because we are a product of snobbish cultures (British, Chinese, and Indian). Then there was actually a valid point raised by the Artful Arse Kisser in his Facebook rebuke of Professor Koh, which is the fact that there are certain jobs in the world that are not and will never be well paid and overworked – waitering comes to mind. However, while Snobbishness is not unique to Singapore, Professor Koh was right to raise the topic of snobbishness and if you look at the abundance of everyday examples, you might say that “snobbish” is too light a word to describe things and the issue here is not so much whether the rich look down on the poor but the fact that if you look at the main issues facing Singapore today, you will inevitably find that its not a case of there being winners and losers but a case of only a few being allowed to live. As with most things in Singapore, it stems from something good taken to an extreme that it became not so good. From the moment we got booted out of the Malaysian Federation in 1965, our first Prime Minister became a man with a mission to show the world that Singapore with no size, resources, or anything else to speak off would be a “winner” in every sense of the word. It was drilled into every Singaporean kid that you had do whatever it took to climb the top at school, get into the best universities in the world and become a superstar for a multinational or in the government. Nothing wrong with wanting to win. The people who want to win usually do. However, it has reached a point where the winners have now changed the game to prevent anyone from entering the game. While wanting to win is perfectly understandable, it is not a birth right or the reward for passing exams. A winner is only winner because he or she has withstood competition. In boxing, there is Mohammed Ali, who is called “The Greatest.” He didn’t get this because he had the best win-lose record. He got it because had had great battles against equally capable opponents like Joe Frazier and most notably George Foreman, who was younger, fitter and considerably stronger. The mentality that winning is a birth right or for greater accuracy in the Singapore context “exam right” has created a host of magical circles, where money and respect from status comes easily. The formula is simple – pass the exam, get into a magic circle and stay there. You will meet and breed with your own kind and in a way, you get isolated from the laws of nature. Think of our ruling party, which has been there from day one of Independent Singapore. The party has been there for so long that it doe not see itself from being different from the government. Nobody bats an eyelid when the ruling party talk about “Majulah PAP,” which is adapted from our national anthem of “Majulah Singapura.” [LINK] This obsession with the magic circle is not limited to the ruling party. Anyone who has dealt with Singapore’s media duopoly will realise that this mentality goes down the line. The ruling party talks about Singapore being “Too small to support a two-party system,” and its businesses (particularly the media ones) used to talk about the market being “too small for competition.” Professional bodies have become gatekeepers of the “exam right” mentality and entrance into magic circles. Professionalising means making people take more exams. Twenty years ago, property and insurance agents needed to take a single exam to get a license. These days its at least five or six exams for the right to earn a commission income. While there’s an argument that this was supposed to weed out the crooks, the reality is that it has limited entry into the profession and ensured that passing exams has become more important that serving customers. In law and accountancy, the regulatory bodies create ways to ensure that magic circle means magic in rewarding the circle rather than solving problems. “This can be seen in the perpetuation of that most glorious incentive for sloth – time costs and time sheets. Believe it or not, when I was once ticked off for saying I had no issue with receiving part payment based on success. Professionals are not people paid to solve a problem because they know more about a topic. They are encouraged to ensure those problems become more complicated (how else will they get paid). Our system of magic circles needs a support system. However, the people in the magic circle are so obsessed with being in the magic circle and making entry into the magic circle difficult so that their egos are never bruised, that instead of seeing the support system as being a means of keeping the magic circle magical, it seen as an inconvenience to be acquired on the cheap. Everyone wants to be in the magic circle. Nobody wants to be the support world, which explains why the people in the support system inevitably come from places where ill treatment and low pay in Singapore is considered a golden ticket to a better life – which makes the possibility of being in the support system that much scarier for people in magic circles. I realised this when I dipped my toe into the support system when I joined the Bistrot. I needed money and the Bistort stabilised my income. However, I noticed people in Singapore’s magic circles, had a problem with me. They couldn’t understand how someone who was obviously from magic circle land would be seen in support system land. To me, the logic of bad paying job better than no job was obvious. However, I know people who got booted out of magic circles and found more dignity in begging friend for a drink than in stepping a few toes into the support system. Never quite understood how this worked until someone explained that when you can no longer afford to be in a magic circle, your world collapses and everyone deserts you. So, not being seen in the support system means that you might have a chance of getting back into the magic circle. Magic circles can be very comforting but there is something fundamentally wrong when our need to be in a magic circle prevents us seeing a world beyond that. Take the following story as an example. Why do such stories make the news? Are we at the stage where the support system has become so frightening that we run away from it? That should not be the case. If you are an educated person with a functioning body, you should be able to survive beyond a magic circle. You should be proud of parents who worked in the support system to put you in the magic circle. If your kids feel ashamed that you don’t have the markings of someone in the magic circle, you should question the way you raised your kids. Magic circles are comfortable, but they are bad for you. If we are to be a long lasting prosperous society, we will need to disrupt the world of magic circles.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able 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 →

I tuned in to the PM’s National Day Rally speech hoping to hear something of significance, like more help for hard pressed Singaporeans trying to make ends meet and provide for their children. True to form, LHL said nothing that was of any help and instead talked about his grandiose plans to transform Singapore some twenty or thirty years into the future. He waxed eloquent about Tuas Port, Terminal 5 and Paya Lebar New Town. Forgive me if I fail to get excited but instead of projects that will only be completed in the 2030s and 2040s and that seem designed to for foreign consumption and to impress sycophantic and naïve Western politicians and media, Singaporeans needed to be hearing about what support the Government would be providing now. As per usual PM Lee glibly trotted out from nowhere fake or highly misleading figures about the amount of financial support the Government was giving to households this year. He claimed that this year alone a middle-income family with 2 young children in a 4 room HDB could expect an additional $2,200 in support while a lower income family in a 3 room flat would get $3,700. He cited “cash payouts, U-Save rebates, S&CC rebates, CDC vouchers, and MediSave top-ups and more” LHL failed to give a breakdown of his alleged support. But his figures are highly disingenuous if not deliberate falsehoods. He of course omitted to mention that his Government has increased GST from 7 to 9% adding 2% to household budget costs by 2024. U-Save rebates give back maybe 10% of the increase in utility costs due to skyrocketing energy prices while SingPower is on track to make record profits as is Singapore Petroleum. CDC vouchers are worth much less than face value because they can only be spent at certain shops including PAP-controlled NTUC Fairprice. S&CC rebates are a tiny fraction of the increase in value of the land on which HDB estates sit and which will revert to the Government when the lease runs out or can be acquired through SERS at much less than its real value. What good are Medisave top-ups when the Government prevents you from using your Medisave for routine medical expenses and as a result Medisave balances have reached over $100 billion and are still growing rapidly year after year? The money in your Medisave is tied up and lent to GIC and indirectly to Temasek while you receive about 3% less than inflation. Inflation has plumped up corporate profitability and as the biggest business owner the PAP Government is the major beneficiary. The total amount the Government has set aside to help Singaporean households this year is only about $1.5 billion. This is a rounding error of less than 0.1% of any reasonable estimate of what the reserves should be ($2-3 trillion) if they’ve been competently invested over the last 50 years, even if we don’t include, as we should, the value of the 90% of Singapore’s land that the Government owns. It claims the Net Investment Returns Contribution ($22 billion in 2022) is tangible evidence of the benefit that the reserves provide to Singaporeans but as I have frequently pointed out most of this has frequently disappeared into trusts and endowments, the accounts of most of which are not available to the public and whose expenditures are not overseen by Parliament. Many years ago I highlighted the fact that billions of dollars were allocated to the Productivity Fund and that a few years later this had mysteriously been spent without seeming to have any effect on productivity. Parliament and the public were not told how the money had been spent but it was directly under the control of the PM. After I called out the fake NIRCs that were disappearing into trusts and endowments LW started reducing the amounts allocated to long term funds but at the same time he rapidly increased health, defence and education expenditures. Health expenditures have risen to the point where the Government appears to be spending as much per capita on Singaporeans’ health as the National Health Service in the UK where all treatment is free from cradle to grave. Much of the billions allocated to health is handed out to the corporatised health entities, SingHealth and National Healthcare, whose accounts are hidden behind a paywall and not overseen by Parliament. A substantial proportion of this money may be routed back to Temasek and GIC, resulting in a circular money flow in which no money never leaves the reserves. The fact that LW refuses to deny this is very worrying. Reform Party previously proposed that Singaporeans should receive a $300 per month per child credit and a $500 seniors pension. This would cost only about $6 billion, so under a third of the Net Investment Returns Contribution. However this is too timid and does not go far enough to help Singaporeans. We now propose that the NIRC be paid directly to Singaporeans as a form of basic income. In the case of those below 18 the money would go to their mothers. If we were to divide $22 billion among 3.5 million citizens that would be a payment of approximately $6300 per citizen. A family of 4 would have a basic income of $25,000, over 10 times as much as LHL’s dubious claims of support of $2200. At a stroke we could abolish poverty in Singapore and give a big boost to domestic consumption. If this is impossible, because the reserves are illiquid or the PAP Gov has lost them through bad investments, then it needs to be held accountable. There is an important lesson for Singaporeans. In democracies most of the news media are full of gripes from citizens about exorbitant utility bills, skyrocketing food prices and incomes failing to keep pace with inflation. That’s what democracy is about-ensuring your elected representatives come up with solutions to your everyday problems. Instead you’ve allowed LHL and the PAP Gov to feel no pressure at all to help you out. When LHL talks about how great it is that Singaporeans are united and trust their leaders what he really means is that you acquiesce in his autocratic rule and are taken in by an Opposition that fails to do its job in holding the Government to account. You give him an easy ride so he thinks he can relax and talk grandiosely of huge projects that won’t be completed in many of your lifetimes instead of coming up with practical ways to help you and raise your living standards. In his talk of Terminal 5, Tuas Port and Paya Lebar New Town he resembles no one more than Prince Salman of Saudi Arabia, who similarly unconstrained by domestic opposition, recently proposed a thousand foot high city built as a continuous wall through the desert. Conspicuously absent from his speech was any mention of climate change and policies to adapt to it despite this being one of the most pressing challenges facing our country. The subtext behind LHL’s mega projects and huge new towns is that he is preparing to boost the population of Singapore to what has always been the PAP’s stealth target of 10 million or more. He cares more about foreigners and attracting so called foreign talent (most of them with inferior qualifications to you) than he does about looking after your welfare. He needs a continual influx of new citizens from poorer countries to keep him and his family in power forever. So when LHL starts talking big about his vision for Singapore in 50 or a 100 years, don’t be taken in. Ask him and his MPs why more can’t be done to help you and your families now and what’s happened to the reserves. If he can’t or won’t provide satisfactory answers you need to vote him and his party out. We at the Reform Party will never stop striving to hold the Government accountable and to find out where your money has gone. Take back your country from this bunch of self-serving hypocrites and liars who take advantage of your misplaced trust to pay themselves and their relatives hundreds of millions of dollars out of state funds year after year while cynically using claims of a Singapore spirit to justify their continued absolute rule.   Kenneth Jeyaretnam   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 →

In any society, but especially in one as diverse as ours, both culturally and religiously, balancing individual liberty against the ideal of equality presents daunting challenges. Perhaps Mr. Tong can explain large-scale moral and political change of this sort (repeal Section 377A), without having to evoke the efficaciousness of reasons. There is no evidence that those changes resulted from reason. More likely they resulted from avoiding the most important relevant questions of all: Is homosexuality itself morally, socially, and culturally acceptable? Without answering this question, we cannot answer the following question: Is homosexuality something that institutions (whether state, church, or community) should encourage by condoning and sanctioning it via a redefinition of marriage? I just simply continue to be amazed at how such a phenomenal, God-sanctioned institution, marriage, is being so torn and reduced to some form of equality-based rights for members of the same sex. One of the reasons that marriage is so meaningful is that it has a mythical dimension (to put it bluntly) rooted in the complimentary otherness of sexual difference, as well as in its procreative form. These things don't translate into a same-sex scenario. The poetry is off. Does this matter? Yes. "Man and wife" is a moral narrative that supplies meaning to our bodies and desires, that shapes and regulates them instead of congratulating us after the fact for happening, spontaneously. There should be two distinct classes of 'marriage'-----civil and church-based. Under the former, with any and all religious prohibitions removed, anyone can marry------gays, lesbians, bigamists, polygamists. In any combination or number. Three persons or thirty could marry, but for legal purposes, a 'primary' spouse could be designated as the beneficiary when it comes to employer or governmental policy. By the same token, religions and their churches should be free to choose those whom can marry within their walls and under their precepts. Thus, they are not denying anyone the legitimate right to marry, nor are their precepts being violated. Fair----for everyone. Fighting for a state-defined definition of the word and the institution seems to imply that the state should have more power over us (and that the state adds value above our religious institutions, which they want the government to get out of for nearly everything else) and that it is a more legitimate institution than they would claim if this were a different argument. By not lifting the whip when Parliament votes to repeal the law seems to be saying, though, that religious beliefs should have no importance in political discourse, citing civil rights as an instance and saying, "what mattered for their political argument was that the principle of equal human rights has wide appeal among citizens of a democracy, regardless of their religious views." This may be true pragmatically, but I expect a leader to behave according to a shared sense of morality, based on some mixture of religious, philosophical, and cultural beliefs, and not simply according to what has "wide appeal among the citizens." I want to have leaders with the courage to stand against the majority, not too often, but when necessary. I'm sure I will not always agree with their conclusions, but I still think this "vision" element is an essential part of leadership. So anyone can worship the devil for all I care as long as that doesn't mean he/she wants other people to do so or creates policies based on his/her personal devil worshipping assumptions!   Sjorne Shen      Read More →