There are many lessons to draw from the AWARE episode. While areas like steeplejacking or religious versus secular space in NGO are pertinent but I see also other more interesting aspects from my perspective of a "lapsed citizen"'.
2 worlds of Singaporeans collided at the Aware EGM. Not religious versus secular but 2 types of citizenry and their differences were so glaring it was blinding.
Legitimacy and authority
Josie, TSM, and their supporters were clearly more deferential to authority and hierarchical in their approach in life. Josie and the exco first expected to be shown this deference by their official position and by their credentials (as opposed to their passion, conviction or clarity of their own views whatever those are). I have read some comments by others that this is a miscalculation on their part. I dont think its a miscalculation, They may genuinely think their credentials alone would remove any doubts on their capabilities and were caught off guard when it did not resonate with the crowd. Some of the original AWARE members have equally impressive credentials but I dont think that is how they define themselves.
Josie and co are certainly not alone in this view of what gives them legitimacy. Verifiable or otherwise, it is widely accepted that Singapore society values academic excellence as a proxy for intelligence, success, wealth and therefore a higher right to rule and to lead over others.
Josie and co assumed their official postions allowed them to dictate how the meeting will be conducted without taking into account the original impetus for the mtg - that more than half of the original April AWARE membership had petitioned for their removal and that was the nature of the EGM they were presiding over. The underlying arrogance resulted in a team that was clearly unprepared to manage the meeting, mount their own offense/defense or even plan for an unfavourable voting outcome.
When their legitimacy was not accepted by the crowd (exasperated by their own mismanagement early in the mtg), they clearly crumbled and did not know how to regain any semblance of control of the EGM - the task of controlling the crowd ceded to the petitioners who ended up stepping into a void and took over to try to marshall and calm the crowd from the floor.
TSM make a similar mistake as Josie and her team, perhaps only amplified by the higher expectations on her given her self outed role as the puppetmaster.
They were very Singaporean in their view of how they thought the world should work and where is their rightful place in the world. It was just that there are apparently more than one definition of being Singaporean.
Submissiveness and (overly) respectful of hierarchy
While impassioned speakers come to the mic one after another and spoke their mind, Josie and the exco repeatedly asked for the "right of reply, coz its only fair" instead of just taking the mic time they had to actually reply! They were strangely waiting for the crowd to give an ok signal for them to start replying. I was amazed - it was perversely submissive behaviour. None of Josie's exco look or behaved like they were comfortable leading in any environment other than in a hierarchical manner where they can govern by official authority or within clear structural framework.
They spent more mic time asking for the right of reply than actually seizing the opportunity to respond to any of the criticism leveled at them. Not hearing a reasonable defence from them is probably the anticlimax of the whole afternoon.
By their behaviour, they strangely deferred to the crowd which became the more dominant force in the room. Josie and team effectively bowed to authority and waited for permission to speak, a permission that never came. They were meek as sheep in spite of their daring coup de'tat that culminated in the need for an EGM.
I doubt many of the people who spoke or were in the crowd would have quietly sat there if the roles were reversed. We would have fought back instead of being cowed.
They were meek like what Singaporeans were supposed to be. Again, the Singaporeans on the floor provided the contrast that not all Singaporeans are meek.
Individuals and the Independent Spirit
The supporters of the petitioners were boisterious and of independent spirit. The original petitioners thru We Are Aware had sent information ahead of time requesting that supporters let the petitioners lead and raise topics at the EGM. I read that as they were asking us to refrain from going to the mic and give the mic time to the official petitioners.
I recall having an instinctive resistance to the idea of anyone telling me not to speak or presuming to speak on my behalf. From the queue of people going to the mic, I was glad to see that many other people at the meeting were ignoring that suggestion.
I queued for about an hour and 45 mins to get into the hall. I also had my queue broken up once and had to rejoin another part of the queue before finally making it into the room. People came singly or in groups of about 2 to 3. Anecdotally, most do not seem to know any of the original AWARE members. They were individuals.
They supported the original AWARE's position on the vote but they did not necessarily deferred to their authority either. They cheered when they hear familiar names (and then strained their necks to see the faces coz they dont seem to be able to recognize the familiar AWARE faces) but were not about to sit quietly and only let the "old" AWARE speak on their behalf. They had something to say and they were making a beeline to queue for the one open mic on the floor.
For those of us who had hosted and sat through countless meetings/conferences where we beseeched people to ask questions at the mic, it was remarkable how the queue of people who wanted a turn at the mic never seem to end. They queued, spoke their mind and were more eloquent than anyone could have hoped or expected.
For civil society to continue to develop, our citizens need to participate in a contest of ideas and be willing to (re)imagine what is the society they want to live in and that they wish their children to inherit. The ability and willingness to step forward to express themselves as individual citizens who have a collective stake is key for ideas to surface and to persuade others to coalesce around a definition of society acceptable to all. I was reminded by sharp contrast public figures and politicians in Singapore who could not articulate their views or form arguments with clarity, passion or conviction, let alone persuade and inspire citizens.
Individual citizens rising beyond the concerns of daily bread and butter issues to bother about something that does not hit the pockets directly. I was reminded of the energy you find in schools, energy and passion we are often expected to lose as we graduate to adult life and hunker down to focus on earning a living.
The lapsed citizen in me always believed such Singaporeans exist in sufficient quantities because it is in the human spirit, I just never experienced an occasion of physical gathering of such scale (campus society, hall meetings and electionns not withstanding).
AWARE has been handed a great gift - the gift of potential renewal if they can harness the energy of these new members.
The lessons though I think are all political. In the larger political sphere, where they are not just women but Singapore citizens, what do they care about, who represents and leads these citizens and who can represent and lead them?
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28024.326
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Give us better statistics on employment
Give us better statistics on employment
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
Jewel Philemon
It was a warm and humid Vesak Day afternoon. About 40 people had gathered to hear ‘a few good men’ press home their point at the Speakers’ Corner that there needs to be more protection in place for the Singaporean worker.
“Why are companies more willing to recruit foreigners over Singapore?” asks Mr Leong Sze Hian. “Because foreigners have no CPF, their pay can be less. Their women workers will never get pregnant and go on maternity leave. There are less issues. The playing field is not right”, Mr. Leong Sze Hian was the first to urge the government to protect the Singaporean worker.
Mr. Leong believes that it is a misconception that Singaporean workers are choosy. He cites a recent newspaper report to make his point that the retrenched and unemployed Singaporean is even willing to take a drastic pay-cut. “There are currently twenty seven thousand registered Singaporeans who are unemployed. How many are the unregistered? Three quarters of the unemployed are not registering!” he tells the gathering. Mr. Leong says that there is a lot of fuzziness in the statistics released by the government agencies. He asks for the statistics to be further broken down so that further information can be gleaned. For example, he asks, “What kind of jobs are the local worker shunning?” With better break-down of the statistics, the job-market could be better tailored towards these people, he says.
Mr. Andrew Loh, who facilitated the event, provided real life testimonies of retrenched and unemployed people. After Mr. Leong’s call to the government agencies for greater transparency in releasing appropriate data so that the unemployed could be better helped, Mr. Loh read a heart-wrenching letter from a supporter of the event. The letter-writer said she could not come to the event because she was going to New Zealand to be with her children. Both she and her husband had been retrenched within months of each other. Now, the entire family, along with their two children, are contemplating leaving Singapore for good.
“About 9,000 have been retrenched last year; how many of these are women?” asks Ms. Braema Mathi, president of NGO, Maruah. She spoke in support of the women who have become unemployed in this recession. She notes that in a recession it is the manufacturing sector which retrenches people first and she wonders if women were disproportionately affected in this crisis since the manufacturing sector employs mainly women as production operators. She too echoed the call of Mr. Leong to release clearer statistics and data. “In this moment of crisis”, she says “all parties including the government have got to work together on a platform of trust to pull the nation out of recession.”
“With properly broken-down statistics and data, we can create solutions!” she said.
“Where is the police?” teased Mr. Gilbert Goh, the founder of transitioning.org, a group that helps the unemployed and the retrenched. “A lot of my friends whom I asked to support this event did not come because they are afraid of being arrested.” Mr. Goh dwelt at length on “age-biased hiring and said that it is not good enough to ‘discourage’ such practices of the employers, but that the government should create policies which would make such hiring practices illegal in Singapore. He said that he has many anecdotal evidence that workers as young as thirty-five were being discriminated against by employers. “If you are unemployed, the government says ‘go for training’ and if you qualify they give you financial assistance and training allowances; but is this enough?” he asked.
“I was quite disappointed in the turnout today”, started Mr. Ravi Philemon. “But then I thought, perhaps the unemployed and the retrenched have got just enough money in their EZ Link card to go for the next interview”, he said, to a round of applause and laughter. “Although they are not here in person, they are surely with us in spirit.” He urged those that present to take heart in making their concerns and voices heard for the unemployed in this crisis.
Mr Philemon spoke at length on the need for unemployment insurance and drew rounds of applause from those present. He related a recent webchat session he had with the Manpower Minister, Mr. Gan Kim Yong. He told the minister that Unemployment Insurance should be a matter of rights for the workers and that workers should not be dependent on handouts in the form of allowances and aids. He said that Unemployment Insurance gives the retrenched and unemployed worker a sense of financial security, that it encourages domestic consumption which keeps the economy going at an acceptable level, and that it also gives financial institutions the added assurance to keep on lending even in the event of an economic crisis.
The ‘few good men’ may be holding another similar event in a few months’ time.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28796.1
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
Jewel Philemon
It was a warm and humid Vesak Day afternoon. About 40 people had gathered to hear ‘a few good men’ press home their point at the Speakers’ Corner that there needs to be more protection in place for the Singaporean worker.
“Why are companies more willing to recruit foreigners over Singapore?” asks Mr Leong Sze Hian. “Because foreigners have no CPF, their pay can be less. Their women workers will never get pregnant and go on maternity leave. There are less issues. The playing field is not right”, Mr. Leong Sze Hian was the first to urge the government to protect the Singaporean worker.
Mr. Leong believes that it is a misconception that Singaporean workers are choosy. He cites a recent newspaper report to make his point that the retrenched and unemployed Singaporean is even willing to take a drastic pay-cut. “There are currently twenty seven thousand registered Singaporeans who are unemployed. How many are the unregistered? Three quarters of the unemployed are not registering!” he tells the gathering. Mr. Leong says that there is a lot of fuzziness in the statistics released by the government agencies. He asks for the statistics to be further broken down so that further information can be gleaned. For example, he asks, “What kind of jobs are the local worker shunning?” With better break-down of the statistics, the job-market could be better tailored towards these people, he says.
Mr. Andrew Loh, who facilitated the event, provided real life testimonies of retrenched and unemployed people. After Mr. Leong’s call to the government agencies for greater transparency in releasing appropriate data so that the unemployed could be better helped, Mr. Loh read a heart-wrenching letter from a supporter of the event. The letter-writer said she could not come to the event because she was going to New Zealand to be with her children. Both she and her husband had been retrenched within months of each other. Now, the entire family, along with their two children, are contemplating leaving Singapore for good.
“About 9,000 have been retrenched last year; how many of these are women?” asks Ms. Braema Mathi, president of NGO, Maruah. She spoke in support of the women who have become unemployed in this recession. She notes that in a recession it is the manufacturing sector which retrenches people first and she wonders if women were disproportionately affected in this crisis since the manufacturing sector employs mainly women as production operators. She too echoed the call of Mr. Leong to release clearer statistics and data. “In this moment of crisis”, she says “all parties including the government have got to work together on a platform of trust to pull the nation out of recession.”
“With properly broken-down statistics and data, we can create solutions!” she said.
“Where is the police?” teased Mr. Gilbert Goh, the founder of transitioning.org, a group that helps the unemployed and the retrenched. “A lot of my friends whom I asked to support this event did not come because they are afraid of being arrested.” Mr. Goh dwelt at length on “age-biased hiring and said that it is not good enough to ‘discourage’ such practices of the employers, but that the government should create policies which would make such hiring practices illegal in Singapore. He said that he has many anecdotal evidence that workers as young as thirty-five were being discriminated against by employers. “If you are unemployed, the government says ‘go for training’ and if you qualify they give you financial assistance and training allowances; but is this enough?” he asked.
“I was quite disappointed in the turnout today”, started Mr. Ravi Philemon. “But then I thought, perhaps the unemployed and the retrenched have got just enough money in their EZ Link card to go for the next interview”, he said, to a round of applause and laughter. “Although they are not here in person, they are surely with us in spirit.” He urged those that present to take heart in making their concerns and voices heard for the unemployed in this crisis.
Mr Philemon spoke at length on the need for unemployment insurance and drew rounds of applause from those present. He related a recent webchat session he had with the Manpower Minister, Mr. Gan Kim Yong. He told the minister that Unemployment Insurance should be a matter of rights for the workers and that workers should not be dependent on handouts in the form of allowances and aids. He said that Unemployment Insurance gives the retrenched and unemployed worker a sense of financial security, that it encourages domestic consumption which keeps the economy going at an acceptable level, and that it also gives financial institutions the added assurance to keep on lending even in the event of an economic crisis.
The ‘few good men’ may be holding another similar event in a few months’ time.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28796.1
The American Banana Republic and the Zombie Economy
The American Banana Republic and the Zombie Economy
May 11th, 2009
By David Goldman
Don’t zombies come from places where they grow bananas?
Over a year ago (in a “Spengler” essay) I characterized Barack Obam as a third world anthropologist profiling the United States:
Obama profiles Americans the way anthropologists interact with primitive peoples. He holds his own view in reserve and emphatically draws out the feelings of others; that is how friends and colleagues describe his modus operandi since his days at the Harvard Law Review, through his years as a community activist in Chicago, and in national politics. Anthropologists, though, proceed from resentment against the devouring culture of America and sympathy with the endangered cultures of the primitive world. Obama inverts the anthropological model: he applies the tools of cultural manipulation out of resentment against America. The probable next president of the United States is a mother’s revenge against the America she despised.
Was that an exaggeration? We will find out, but Obama has gone a lot further than any of his predecessors toward making America a banana republic. I spent part of the late 1980s and early 1990s globe-trotting with the notion that the Reagan economic revolution could be exported. My then business partner, the late Jude Wanniski, had coined the phrase “supply-side economics” to characterize Robert Mundell’s economic recovery plan. Jude had sold the plan to Jack Kemp, as I wrote last week at the First Things blog after Jack’s sad passing.
We set out spread the supply-side gospel everywhere. I spent months in Mexico and Russia, and shorter visits to Peru, Nicaragua and other venues. For the most part it failed miserably: what was lacking was the rule of law. Contracts mean nothing in banana republics, or rather, they mean what the top honcho says they mean. No-one wil commit capital except on the basis of a political deal that establishes a monopoly. That’s why telephone calls in Mexico cost several time what they do in the U.S., and one of the world’s two or three richest men (telephone czar Carlos Slim) comes from a poor country.
Obama is proceeding on the banana republic model. As Edward Jay Epstein wrote last week at the Vanity Fair blog, “the Czar’s rules apply.”
Consider the sad case of Chrysler. Its troubles became manifest in 2007, when it was owned by the German auto giant, Daimler, and it was unable to come to terms with the United Auto Workers labor union (UAW). Rather than suffer more losses from an unfavorable union contract, Daimler decided to rid itself of Chrysler by handing over 80 percent of its ownership to Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity fund named after the mythical creature guarding the doors of hell…
Chrysler then borrowed $10 billion from a banking syndicate, led by J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs, to fund its operations. The loan was secured by mortgages on Chrysler’s real estate, manufacturing plants, patents, and highly profitable brand licensing rights. (Jeep alone earned $250 million a year licensing its name to toys, clothes, and other products.)
The lenders assumed (incorrectly, as it turned out) that their secured loan, which was senior to any other Chrysler debt, would be protected even if Chrysler went bankrupt, since the iron rule of bankruptcy held that secured loans get fully paid before unsecured loans. Without this rule, financiers would be reluctant to lend money to corporations on their assets.
What these lenders had not reckoned on was the political power of the UAW, especially after the 2008 Democratic landslide.
[snip] The solution that…the administration endorsed involved dividing Chrysler into two companies—an old Chrysler, which would be saddled with the debts, and disappear, and a new Chrysler, to which all the valuable assets would be assigned, including those that had been mortgaged to the senior secured creditors.
The major banks, of course, backed the administration. They are able to issue debt guaranteed by the FDIC at rates just slightly higher than the Treasury itself — a quarter of a trillion dollars worth to date. They have the TALF plan to unload securitized assets, and the Fed providing a backstop bid in the trillions for structured product. They remain profitable thanks to the administration, which in effect dictates how profitable they can by telling them how much capital they need to old. They look very much like banana-republic banks operating under a government subsidy.
What about the other secured lenders to Chrysler? As Michael Barone wrote in today’s Detroit News,
But my sadness turned to anger later when I heard what bankruptcy lawyer Tom Lauria said on a WJR talk show that morning. “One of my clients,” Lauria told host Frank Beckmann, “was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.”
Lauria represented one of the bondholder firms, Perella Weinberg, which initially rejected the President Barack Obama deal that would give the bondholders about 33 cents on the dollar for their secured debts while giving the United Auto Workers retirees about 50 cents on the dollar for their unsecured debts.
Non-cooperative lenders (that is, lenders not part of the big banking monopoly) received death threats. The White House is not making death threats, to be sure — only threats of destroyed reputations — but when the President of the United States denounces lenders as “speculators” in the midst of a painful economic downturn, he helps to create an atmosphere in which violence is not unimagineable.
It isn’t just Chrysler, of course. As I’ve reported before, loan modification, cramdown and so forth have destroyed investors’ confidence in the viability of collateralized mortgage lendng.
Nothing like this happened under Roosevelt, let alone Jimmy Carter. Obama has traded the loyalty of captive commercial banks for the rule of law in capital markets. It will take many, many years to undo the damage.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28776.1
Monday, May 11, 2009
Upfront: with Dr. Gwee Li Sui
Upfront: with Dr. Gwee Li Sui
Foreword
Dr Gwee Li Sui is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore (NUS). He has been teaching a wide array of courses including introductory world literature, 18th-century fiction, poetry and criticism in NUS for the last 6 years. His current research interest includes 17th and 18th century literature, British and German Romanticism, Modern German literature, Singaporean literature, and last but not least, Reformation and Modern Theology.
Dr Gwee came into prominence at the height of the AWARE saga when his written notes on the topic were widely publicized. In his writings, he provided from the Christian perspective an opposition voice to the religious-motivated infiltration of AWARE by a group of like-minded individuals from the Church of Our Saviour. The Kent Ridge Common is indeed honored to feature an email interview with Dr Gwee.
We sought his thoughts on the pertinent issues surrounding the AWARE saga, asking the questions that you the readers have wanted to ask all along
KRC: Do you agree that Christians today have to support liberal viewpoints actively or be castigated? If it does happen, do you think that it is natural for democratic societies to cause different groups to attempt to moderate to centrist views? How can secularists and the religious harmonise with each other?
Dr. Gwee: This question involves a central misconception I want to correct here. Respecting the space for civility among people with different worldviews and lifestyles does not need to result in the erosion of conservative religious values. Its establishment may require everyone to observe clear rules of engagement, but it does not oblige a person to compromise his or her own set of essential beliefs. This should be made clear from the start. There has always been good historical and theological basis to state that pluralism and the cultures of, say, Christianity and Islam are not at odds.
aware2 What I want therefore to get us to see is that the fear of conformity itself is a dangerous subtler way of “moderating to a centre”. It compels people to band together in self-elected groups and forgo what is unique in their own value systems for a more primitive vision of exclusiveness. In this vision, the world becomes too neatly organised in binary terms (good/evil, us/them), and then a whole range of features familiar in the history of politics reappear. There is nothing new about crusades, divine mandates, hidden demons, enemies, betrayers, and so on. Their simplicity conversely explains why so many forms of fundamentalist expressions feel and sound alike.
Allowing the space for others to believe differently is thus not just something one should welcome: it also brings with it benefits to one’s own belief system. For example, if I lived in a religiously homogeneous community, what would I have learnt about my fear of difference and my need to defeat fear with love? Also consider how a pluralistic space can enable me to have faith more radically or, rather, more purely. If religion is the business of one’s soul, what secularism allows is the work of clarity to be pursued individually from within and not by a convenient definition against something or someone else. One becomes a more inwardly involved and more focused believer.
KRC: There has been talk of encouraging Miss Josie Lau’s group to start their organisation to advance their own interests. Assuming that they start a women’s organisation with a similar philosophy as that of their church, the Church of Our Saviour, how do you think such an organisation will fare?
Dr. Gwee: I have no insider’s knowledge into the affairs of AWARE or the Church of Our Saviour and can only make general guesses here. I am not sure if Miss Lau and friends will go on to form their own advocacy group, but it will be very telling if they don’t. A failure will play into the persistent suspicion that their goal has been the neutralisation of an organisation they deem to have liberal leanings all along. In other words, there might be no real affirmative content to the takeover: the team could have less desire to understand the range of issues confronting diverse women than to push a myopic, value-laden, and vengeful focus. If this is true, the irony shouldn’t be lost that a covert sabotage of society is what its supporters continue to charge AWARE of.
Miss Lau’s team is no doubt thrown into a terrible dilemma now. It has a moral obligation to follow through what it has claimed to be a noble collective wish to serve women and their families. But to set up a faith-based organisation for women, new questions will emerge. Given its highly publicised origin, the group may end up attracting people who already favour the same set of values that the team holds. So how wide-reaching such a body can be is as much a concern as what it will do on a day-to-day basis. Will it take up the work of counselling any woman in need, seeking redress for others, and affirming broad-based women’s rights, what has made AWARE respectable? Or will it focus more on mounting regular assaults on what it identifies as liberal incursions into mainstream society, playing a kind of unimaginative nemesis of AWARE? In other words, will it assume a real constructive role or a mere reactionary one?
KRC: Do you think this AWARE episode would set a precedent for churches or Christian groups to adopt an anti-homosexuality stand? Should a Singapore church even adopt an anti-homosexuality agenda like their counterparts in the US? Why?
Dr. Gwee: I hope that this AWARE episode will get each church or Christian group to consider how it feels about homosexuals and whether it wants to be openly exclusive, actively inclusive, or quietly inclusive. Being quietly exclusive is the only option I do not see as helpful enough to be encouraged. To be sure, positions can vary further: the conflation of Christianity with anti-homosexuality is not as universal as particular voices in this saga have made it out to appear. It is nonetheless true that many believers in Singapore consider homosexuality more a matter of choice even when there are gay Christians and at least one gay church here. How each Christian decides to engage this small community is another open issue.
Indeed, homosexuality – and a range of issues such as abortion, surrogacy, and euthanasia – make the present time an exciting one for Christians in Singapore. We may be redrawing the lines of Christian disagreement, and these are real despite the needless discomfort some have with the fact. Internal differences have been as old as the Christian Church, and they manifest themselves in historical moments from the early Councils to events tied to the Reformation and the current diversity of Christian struggles across the world. We have to aim to reclaim such a space for divergence as Christianity’s heritage and strength, what can contain different takes on the way to practise God’s unconditional love. The abstract idea of Church itself was this early neutral all-inclusive space in which Christians could affirm both their unity and their diversity.
US influence on our churches is definitely stronger now than it has ever been at any point in Singapore’s history. It is therefore important that believers be conscious of this import in the way they worship, think, and behave and be encouraged to revisit Church history with an open mind. What cannot be helpful is a triumphalist attitude that treats the most recent Christian trends as also the most positive and privileged. It is rather painful to hear some believers talk about the events involving AWARE and their aftermath as being a battle between “traditional” Christianity and “postmodern” society. This idea that what we see as dominant in Church life today has been around for a long time needs to be examined critically. Even the current obsession with the social implications of homosexuality has a short history here.
KRC: The AWARE issue has seen a spike in membership. Do you think that these new members were there for the hype or will they be committed to the long-term future of AWARE?
Dr. Gwee: This question reminds me of another one which Miss Lau’s team used as a means to legitimise its spectacular power grab. It asserted that AWARE under the Old Guard deserved what it got since it was slack enough to have allowed its own members to become apathetic and not show up at the AGM. This was an brazenly poor excuse: just because my family members fail to appear for reunion dinner doesn’t make it right for a neighbour to kick me out of my own home. So, when, by the same measure, others help me to reclaim my space from these “trespassers”, the gesture must be read in a very particular light.
The main issue should be cast not in the form of a question but as evidence of hope; it shouldn’t keep us dithering on whether people came just out of the hype but should get us to celebrate how they did come. These individuals have chosen to participate in what many have felt to hold their personal sense of society at ransom. If the new members then go on to be involved in a number of AWARE’s activities, it can only spell good for the organisation on the whole. But, even if they don’t, my respect still goes out to them for having taken the time, money, and effort to do what mattered when it mattered. They rightly refused to let their own passivity weigh on their conscience should things in Singapore make a turn for the worse as a result.
KRC: Much criticisms have been directed at the way audiences heckled Miss Josie Lau’s team, i.e. the booing and catcalls. What would this episode spell for the chances of conflict resolution between Miss Lau’s team and the rest of the AWARE membership?
Dr. Gwee: Here is one irony that never fails to bother me when mostly Christian critics still complain about Miss Lau’s team being treated badly at the EGM. They are expecting an unorganised crowd of individuals from all walks of life to behave with the kind of decency denied to others by a small Christian team while in office. The better call would have been to ask each person to examine his or her own conduct from the perspective of another from a different camp. In any case, I am quite sure that there has been a lot of ground-level technicalities that didn’t become common knowledge, and these could explain the day’s rowdiness more precisely.
But I want to read all this in yet another light: what we have seen may effectively be two modes of civil behaviour whose conflict affects the way we can make objective sense of the EGM. From this perspective, both parties have been equally polite and rude but not on the same terms. The regimental quietness of one side reflected its own values of solidarity, discipline, respect for real and perceived leaders, peaceful conduct, verbal politeness, and all that. The nature of civil engagement, however, is messy by nature: it is full of open disagreements, rhetoric, wit, claims to good sense, and little triumphs. Its spirit of civility lies not in outward form but in a respect for another to be vocal and open and to challenge.
These essentially cultural differences point to the difficult task of reconciliation ahead. The central qualities all parties should have are a willingness to sit at the same table and talk and a transparency of procedures. In this respect, Miss Lau’s team is still found wanting: it should show all its cards and engage in open discussion without fear of ideological “contamination” or “unholy” compromise. But as long as AWARE keeps these individuals informed and involved, there is a lot of hope in the matter yet. Remember: only extend the fact that roughly a third has voted in favour of the now-deposed team, and you will see that diversity is exactly what the newest ex-co has inherited. Whether it can now take the hard walk of inclusiveness it preaches remains to be seen and certainly to be wished for by all of us.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28024.303
Foreword
Dr Gwee Li Sui is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore (NUS). He has been teaching a wide array of courses including introductory world literature, 18th-century fiction, poetry and criticism in NUS for the last 6 years. His current research interest includes 17th and 18th century literature, British and German Romanticism, Modern German literature, Singaporean literature, and last but not least, Reformation and Modern Theology.
Dr Gwee came into prominence at the height of the AWARE saga when his written notes on the topic were widely publicized. In his writings, he provided from the Christian perspective an opposition voice to the religious-motivated infiltration of AWARE by a group of like-minded individuals from the Church of Our Saviour. The Kent Ridge Common is indeed honored to feature an email interview with Dr Gwee.
We sought his thoughts on the pertinent issues surrounding the AWARE saga, asking the questions that you the readers have wanted to ask all along
KRC: Do you agree that Christians today have to support liberal viewpoints actively or be castigated? If it does happen, do you think that it is natural for democratic societies to cause different groups to attempt to moderate to centrist views? How can secularists and the religious harmonise with each other?
Dr. Gwee: This question involves a central misconception I want to correct here. Respecting the space for civility among people with different worldviews and lifestyles does not need to result in the erosion of conservative religious values. Its establishment may require everyone to observe clear rules of engagement, but it does not oblige a person to compromise his or her own set of essential beliefs. This should be made clear from the start. There has always been good historical and theological basis to state that pluralism and the cultures of, say, Christianity and Islam are not at odds.
aware2 What I want therefore to get us to see is that the fear of conformity itself is a dangerous subtler way of “moderating to a centre”. It compels people to band together in self-elected groups and forgo what is unique in their own value systems for a more primitive vision of exclusiveness. In this vision, the world becomes too neatly organised in binary terms (good/evil, us/them), and then a whole range of features familiar in the history of politics reappear. There is nothing new about crusades, divine mandates, hidden demons, enemies, betrayers, and so on. Their simplicity conversely explains why so many forms of fundamentalist expressions feel and sound alike.
Allowing the space for others to believe differently is thus not just something one should welcome: it also brings with it benefits to one’s own belief system. For example, if I lived in a religiously homogeneous community, what would I have learnt about my fear of difference and my need to defeat fear with love? Also consider how a pluralistic space can enable me to have faith more radically or, rather, more purely. If religion is the business of one’s soul, what secularism allows is the work of clarity to be pursued individually from within and not by a convenient definition against something or someone else. One becomes a more inwardly involved and more focused believer.
KRC: There has been talk of encouraging Miss Josie Lau’s group to start their organisation to advance their own interests. Assuming that they start a women’s organisation with a similar philosophy as that of their church, the Church of Our Saviour, how do you think such an organisation will fare?
Dr. Gwee: I have no insider’s knowledge into the affairs of AWARE or the Church of Our Saviour and can only make general guesses here. I am not sure if Miss Lau and friends will go on to form their own advocacy group, but it will be very telling if they don’t. A failure will play into the persistent suspicion that their goal has been the neutralisation of an organisation they deem to have liberal leanings all along. In other words, there might be no real affirmative content to the takeover: the team could have less desire to understand the range of issues confronting diverse women than to push a myopic, value-laden, and vengeful focus. If this is true, the irony shouldn’t be lost that a covert sabotage of society is what its supporters continue to charge AWARE of.
Miss Lau’s team is no doubt thrown into a terrible dilemma now. It has a moral obligation to follow through what it has claimed to be a noble collective wish to serve women and their families. But to set up a faith-based organisation for women, new questions will emerge. Given its highly publicised origin, the group may end up attracting people who already favour the same set of values that the team holds. So how wide-reaching such a body can be is as much a concern as what it will do on a day-to-day basis. Will it take up the work of counselling any woman in need, seeking redress for others, and affirming broad-based women’s rights, what has made AWARE respectable? Or will it focus more on mounting regular assaults on what it identifies as liberal incursions into mainstream society, playing a kind of unimaginative nemesis of AWARE? In other words, will it assume a real constructive role or a mere reactionary one?
KRC: Do you think this AWARE episode would set a precedent for churches or Christian groups to adopt an anti-homosexuality stand? Should a Singapore church even adopt an anti-homosexuality agenda like their counterparts in the US? Why?
Dr. Gwee: I hope that this AWARE episode will get each church or Christian group to consider how it feels about homosexuals and whether it wants to be openly exclusive, actively inclusive, or quietly inclusive. Being quietly exclusive is the only option I do not see as helpful enough to be encouraged. To be sure, positions can vary further: the conflation of Christianity with anti-homosexuality is not as universal as particular voices in this saga have made it out to appear. It is nonetheless true that many believers in Singapore consider homosexuality more a matter of choice even when there are gay Christians and at least one gay church here. How each Christian decides to engage this small community is another open issue.
Indeed, homosexuality – and a range of issues such as abortion, surrogacy, and euthanasia – make the present time an exciting one for Christians in Singapore. We may be redrawing the lines of Christian disagreement, and these are real despite the needless discomfort some have with the fact. Internal differences have been as old as the Christian Church, and they manifest themselves in historical moments from the early Councils to events tied to the Reformation and the current diversity of Christian struggles across the world. We have to aim to reclaim such a space for divergence as Christianity’s heritage and strength, what can contain different takes on the way to practise God’s unconditional love. The abstract idea of Church itself was this early neutral all-inclusive space in which Christians could affirm both their unity and their diversity.
US influence on our churches is definitely stronger now than it has ever been at any point in Singapore’s history. It is therefore important that believers be conscious of this import in the way they worship, think, and behave and be encouraged to revisit Church history with an open mind. What cannot be helpful is a triumphalist attitude that treats the most recent Christian trends as also the most positive and privileged. It is rather painful to hear some believers talk about the events involving AWARE and their aftermath as being a battle between “traditional” Christianity and “postmodern” society. This idea that what we see as dominant in Church life today has been around for a long time needs to be examined critically. Even the current obsession with the social implications of homosexuality has a short history here.
KRC: The AWARE issue has seen a spike in membership. Do you think that these new members were there for the hype or will they be committed to the long-term future of AWARE?
Dr. Gwee: This question reminds me of another one which Miss Lau’s team used as a means to legitimise its spectacular power grab. It asserted that AWARE under the Old Guard deserved what it got since it was slack enough to have allowed its own members to become apathetic and not show up at the AGM. This was an brazenly poor excuse: just because my family members fail to appear for reunion dinner doesn’t make it right for a neighbour to kick me out of my own home. So, when, by the same measure, others help me to reclaim my space from these “trespassers”, the gesture must be read in a very particular light.
The main issue should be cast not in the form of a question but as evidence of hope; it shouldn’t keep us dithering on whether people came just out of the hype but should get us to celebrate how they did come. These individuals have chosen to participate in what many have felt to hold their personal sense of society at ransom. If the new members then go on to be involved in a number of AWARE’s activities, it can only spell good for the organisation on the whole. But, even if they don’t, my respect still goes out to them for having taken the time, money, and effort to do what mattered when it mattered. They rightly refused to let their own passivity weigh on their conscience should things in Singapore make a turn for the worse as a result.
KRC: Much criticisms have been directed at the way audiences heckled Miss Josie Lau’s team, i.e. the booing and catcalls. What would this episode spell for the chances of conflict resolution between Miss Lau’s team and the rest of the AWARE membership?
Dr. Gwee: Here is one irony that never fails to bother me when mostly Christian critics still complain about Miss Lau’s team being treated badly at the EGM. They are expecting an unorganised crowd of individuals from all walks of life to behave with the kind of decency denied to others by a small Christian team while in office. The better call would have been to ask each person to examine his or her own conduct from the perspective of another from a different camp. In any case, I am quite sure that there has been a lot of ground-level technicalities that didn’t become common knowledge, and these could explain the day’s rowdiness more precisely.
But I want to read all this in yet another light: what we have seen may effectively be two modes of civil behaviour whose conflict affects the way we can make objective sense of the EGM. From this perspective, both parties have been equally polite and rude but not on the same terms. The regimental quietness of one side reflected its own values of solidarity, discipline, respect for real and perceived leaders, peaceful conduct, verbal politeness, and all that. The nature of civil engagement, however, is messy by nature: it is full of open disagreements, rhetoric, wit, claims to good sense, and little triumphs. Its spirit of civility lies not in outward form but in a respect for another to be vocal and open and to challenge.
These essentially cultural differences point to the difficult task of reconciliation ahead. The central qualities all parties should have are a willingness to sit at the same table and talk and a transparency of procedures. In this respect, Miss Lau’s team is still found wanting: it should show all its cards and engage in open discussion without fear of ideological “contamination” or “unholy” compromise. But as long as AWARE keeps these individuals informed and involved, there is a lot of hope in the matter yet. Remember: only extend the fact that roughly a third has voted in favour of the now-deposed team, and you will see that diversity is exactly what the newest ex-co has inherited. Whether it can now take the hard walk of inclusiveness it preaches remains to be seen and certainly to be wished for by all of us.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28024.303
A True Cognitive Cultural History of Singapore, and the present need for foreign talent – in brief
A True Cognitive Cultural History of Singapore, and the present need for foreign talent – in brief
I really don’t understand Singaporeans’ surprise or incredulity in the face of increased foreign workers coming in to take their jobs. Sherlock Holmes once said that a true logician will be able to look at a drop of water and from there, extrapolate the existence of the ocean even if s/he had never know of its existence. An exaggeration it may be to our currently and relatively underdeveloped minds, but the principle is sound.
As I’ve said to sim and v, amongst others, before, any government has 2 choices, one, keep the people perspectivally and intellectually docile so that they can reign in perpetuity whilst maintaining an academic elite to produce the ideas (i.e. China is a quintessential case in point), or don’t impose intellectual constraints on the people and risk political longevity. Apathy has to become a part of the culture for this to succeed. And with apathy, perspectival docility, near-sighted pragmatism, penchant for the familiar, intellectual sloth, decline in generic curiosity, etc, are both effects and causes. Now how would such a people fare in globalised economics. I wonder how many people realise that there is a cultural cause, that is politically-induced, that led to India producing IT professionals amongst others whilst China was producing factory workers. In the case of Singapore, an intellectually docile people would be fine for the manufacturing phase of its development, but not when it comes to the demands of global intellectual economy. That is when the people will be told to seek their fortunes abroad, price themselves competitively, and also see an influx of the ‘foreign talent’ to circumvent the docility of the locals – which was constructed to minimize the kind of empathy that might threaten political longevity.
The Progressives vs The Traditionals - the 2 races of Singapore Past
Most of the ‘young-uns’ these days don’t know that Singapore was extremely different in the 70s and 80s. The intellectual economy was yet to be ‘centralised’ back then (i.e. China centralised it 2000 years ago and kept the masses of its inhabitants numb and relatively perspectivally and intellectually docile thereafter – which also explains why it is the longest running state in recorded human history.). In fact, the intellectual economy was being increasingly run by the Christian/Catholic/English-speaking sector. It is not because of ‘Jesus Saves!’ that this was the case. It was simply because there was more cultural collusion amongst different ‘races’ in church as opposed to other faiths which saw people of a singular ethnic group practicing a singular and historical religion. So in church, we had the cultural and perspectival inter-breeding of Eurasians, Chinese and Indians. 3 cultural perspectives were coming together – with the most vibrant being the Indians and Eurasians…with the Eurasians bringing in the ‘vibrant’ and ‘western’ component, and the Indians bringing in the intellectual and perspectival side of things. The Chinese in the aforementioned milieu benefitted greatly from this. Thus, it was not surprising that significant opposition in Singapore began to come from the Catholic quarter.
Back then, these people disavowed much association with their ‘race’ and generally lacked fluency in their ‘mother-tongues’. Thus, they were more open to other ideas as they were not insecurely biased toward their ‘own race and culture’ simply because they looked like Chinese, Malays or Indians. For myself, and as a consequence, I grew up without a conception of race. I only knew that there were intelligent and vibrant people, and that there were people who weren’t. I also realised in primary school that the top classes were mainly populated by English-speakers, who, whilst being adept in their 2nd languages, spoke English most of the time. At that time, more and more people began to conform to the perspectival and linguistic standards of this sector of society. Inter-ethnic mixing was also on the rise. People began to shy away from speaking their ‘mother-tongues’ as it denoted a penchant for the familiar and hence, ‘backward’. People were becoming culturally and perspectivally vibrant and had an intelligent opinion on many things.
‘Singlish’ (local style English) then, was also a mix between English, Malay and Mandarin/Hokkien as opposed to the present where it is generally a mixture of only Chinese and English. (I believe that the colloquial style of English indicated the degree of cultural integration) In fact, we now have 3 variants of Singlish as opposed to the past. The Chinese have a ‘Chinglish’ that comprises mainly Chinese and English; the Malays have a ‘Malglish’ that comprises Malay and English; and the Indians, an ‘Indglish’ that comprises Tamil and English. This is ‘integration’ taken a paradoxical wrong turn mate.
I wonder how many of the 4 or 5 million in this country, including its ‘great’ intellectuals, and so-called oppositional voices, realise this. If you didn't then you're as much a part of the problem that you're attempting to address. It indicates the existence of a perspectival deficiency that is a product of socialisation within this milieu. It will certainly have a host of other negative effects on your analyses, understanding and perceptions in a host of other situations. Ever tried to put a fire out with a flame? Exorcise thyself. As I've always said, it's easier to suggest a solution than to not be a part of the problem. That's the guideline I've always applied on myself. The best I can hope for is to decrease my culpability so that my problem-identification and solutions will be more accurate. The question, 'What's wrong with the world' must always be accompanied with, 'what's wrong with me'. Both have to be asked and incrementally addressed and resolved simultaneously. It is a never-ending quest, but has to be undertaken by those whom are truly interested in changing the world for the better. If not, it is simply self-indulgent vanity.
Cultural Clampdown Singapore
Anyway,
It was then (80s onwards) that a cultural clampdown began to occur in singapore. Street signs were named in ‘hanyu pinyin’ terms (romanised Chinese words); a potential Indian Prime Minister was passed over for a Chinese one; the ‘speak mandarin it’s cool’ or ‘speak mandarin it’s an advantage’ campaigns picked up pace; the SAP (Special Assistance Plan) schools which provided advanced education for mainly Chinese students finally began to come to fruition and began to produce acculturalised Chinese to take over the economy; there was increasing critique in the newspapers of ‘western values’ vs ‘asian values’ with increasing emphasis on Confucian/Chinese values thereafter; being different was increasingly frowned upon with police checks on people dressed differently; impromptu behavior was checked on by banning breakdancing in public even if it was in the void deck of flats in the 80s (I remember my being surrounded by 3 policemen whilst I was in the midst of a ‘backspin’ on a cardboard under my block one afternoon; separate cultural channels were created as opposed to the singular channel broadcasting the productions of different cultural productions – with the Indians not getting a channel until recently…Indians previously shared a channel with arts and cartoons; the initiation of a ‘mother-tongue’ policy that forbade the various ethnic groups from studying each other’s languages as a 2nd language in schools (my brother and sister, before this, studied Malay, whilst I studied Mandarin); the Chinese were spoken of by the government as ‘pragmatic and hardworking’; Chinese culture began to be celebrated in central locations whilst the celebration of other cultures were left to old ethnic enclaves such as Geylang (for the Malays) and ‘Serangoon Road (for the Indians); grander celebrations were promoted for other Chinese festivities (where I live, there are celebrations planned by the Resident Committee for Chinese New Year and the Mid-autumn Lantern festival but none for the Indian and Malay festivals); there was a major clampdown on the oppositional elements in the Catholic quarter; the ‘Zoo’ radio of Indonesia that played different types of music was blocked in favour of the local radio station that generally played only one type of music; English speaking dramas began to mainly comprise the Chinese as opposed to ‘others’, or with ‘others’ being accorded stereotypical roles that did not represent their true social characters, i.e. ‘serves you right’; public advertisements, and advertisements by corporations, and government-linked corporations only showed one ethnic group; cultural difference in school was eradicated for the stated purpose of ‘integration’ whilst only one culture and language of one ethnic group was promoted in the media and in the public…..
The above are some of the ways that singapore took the monocultural route. We could say that Singapore experienced what China did in 221 b.c. when ‘chinese’ was associated with the ‘one way’ system of Qin Shih Huang Ti as opposed to the ‘many ways’ system of the Chou era. In other words, from the late 80s onwards, Singapore, perspectivally-speaking, moved from the Chou era to the Qin era; or the Indian era to the post-Chou era; or the democratic era to the ‘Asian democratic’ era. Quite an amusing way to look at it isn’t it.
The consequence
In a cockleshell, Singapore moved to a monocultural era which can be likened to a child reared to only appreciate one type of food, friends, environment, culture, perspective, dress-style, thought, language, etc.
What do you think that is going to do to the child’s perspectival development. How do you think such a child is going to contend with novelty. Such a child is always going to go back to the familiar if given the chance. Such a child is going to reflexively discount anything new or different. Such a child is going to be more slow in processing new information. Such a child is not going to be able to sense things from different angles. But such a child will certainly not be a threat to the political longevity of any party. Thus, for instance, the longevity of the nation-state of China. Way before the west came up with the idea of the nation-state in perspectival form, China already was. The government does not have to maintain it. The people have been diminished to not want anything out of the familiar. Thus, China might always be as it always was.
Well, as I’ve always said, when we take the nation as one family, we can easily tell what’s going to happen in all situations given the dominance of this child and the methods used to rear it – what I call cognitive cultural analysis. That is why dear Singaporeans, singapore now needs ‘foreign talent’. That is why your jobs can’t be protected. The only way to protect yourself from ‘foreign talent’ is to make the methods by which talent is produced not foreign to your culture simply because it is someone else’s culture. But for that, the people must truly me the mistress and master of the political realm. When you abdicate this to the few, your complaints thereafter come across as the annoying whining of an evicted poodle. You have confused your progress in the past for the validity of a ‘one way system’. But you forget, the methods for success varies with the degree of success in varying arenas. What is a boon in one, is a disadvantage in another. It takes far-sighted pragmatism to realise this I’m afraid. It doesn’t take much intellect to advance your economic situation at the manufacturing phase, but the unfettered development of your intellect during this phase will enable you to occupy the forefront of development in the relatively intellectual and creative phase thereafter. If not, being ‘copycats’ is the best you can be.
‘Foreign talent’ is such an innocuous sounding word isn’t it. But, essentially, it refers to people who, being brought up under different cultural conditions, will be able to do things which people of other cultural conditions will necessarily require time to do given the deficiencies they will embody given their different cultural milieux. And people from the most variable cultures are generally the most equipped to be ready come what may, and do well when it does. Most people are not going to accept this as it threatens the identity upon which they base their sense of self-efficacy on – which is why I threw aside my ‘Indian’ identity when I was 18 in favour of basing my personal culture on the best elements of all cultures. But, when we base our sense of self-efficacy on nothing else but the ability to take on cultural elements of the verifiably self-efficacious of other cultures, that is when we are going to be more than we can otherwise imagine to be.
Singapore took a wrong-turn from the 80s onwards. Without critical and unbiased cultural introspection, we are going to be complaining more about its effects instead of doing something about the foundations upon which it is based, and upon which we base our present sense of self-efficacy. If it is not for present apathy and self-absorption, we will find that we will have little to complain incessantly about in the future. Ask yourselves what forms of apathy in the past has led to your present predicament. And then ask yourselves what forms of apathy you are exhibiting in the present. Both inquisitorial ventures will go far in addressing the conditions upon which your present and future complaints would be based. If not, it will cease to be an intelligent discussion, and just simply annoying.
Think about it.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28813.1
NMP Dr Thio Li-ann on her mother Dr Thio Su Mien
| Mother's Day Tributes | |||||
| I'm proud of her courage | |||||
| NMP Dr Thio Li-ann on her mother Dr Thio Su Mien | |||||
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AT THE height of the AWARE furore, my mother asked whether she had disgraced me by her infamy.
I hugged her and said I was proud of her courage in standing up for her principles and grace in facing uncouth opposition. I expect nothing less from her. She is a woman of integrity who taught me to always champion what is right, good and just, even if this attracts flak. My mother gave her children the space to be individuals and to follow their own paths. She did have a mean streak and petrified me as a child by singing the songs of Cruella de Ville. She worried for me when I burnt midnight oil studying. The day before my PSLE, she asked me to play squash with her! I used to come home from primary school crying because of the cruel remarks by my mathematics teachers. My mother wanted to confront them, but I begged her to desist. I think she regrets this as I became quite withdrawn because of my academic failings.
We are quite different, my mother and I. She is outgoing, practical and sociable. I am more introspective, melancholic. However, perhaps I ended up a constitutional law professor due to osmosis, as she was pregnant with me when she lectured public law. My father excelled at creative storytelling, but my mother held me rapt with her childhood tales of the Japanese occupation in Malaya and how a British soldier gifted her with her first taste of chocolate. She told me stories about Robin Hood, King Arthur, which fed my love for English literature. I used to sneak off with her dog-eared copy of the Oxford Treasury of English Verse and imbibe the poetry. As a busy lawyer, my mother was often pressed for time. Still, she noticed details and was mesmerised by how BJ, my puppy, would stare at butterflies for hours. We were mutually intoxicated by the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. I made my mother laugh uproariously with my renditions of Mr Collin's vanity and Catherine de Burgh's pomposity, complete with angmoh accent. My mother took me along during her many overseas business trips. When I was 10, she brought me to Denmark's Elsinore Castle and told me about Hamlet and King Claudius' ghost. I suspect my subsequent love for Shakespeare can be traced to this. She regaled me with the criminal trials of David Marshall and introduced me to the leonine man himself in Paris when I was 13. As adults, my mother and I have become close friends. Our common interest in history, theology and archaeology has inspired recent travels to Jerusalem, Patmos and Istanbul. My mother tolerated my rebellious adolescence when I would lock myself in my room and practise my electric guitar riffs - loudly. She rejoiced when I obtained a place at Oxford University. She entered heated debates with me when I disavowed atheism and became a Christian as a law undergraduate. I think she may have regretted teaching me to think independently! Today, she has a deep faith and lives it. My mother has a tender heart and I have seen her sacrifice hours counselling many hurting people. From her, I have learnt and received the joy of unconditional love. Happy Mother's Day, Mum. I love you and am awfully proud to be your daughter. |
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28024.299
Mas Selamat: Dead-end trails in hilly Johor
| Mas Selamat Caught | |||||
| 'Jalan Selamat' Dead-end trails in hilly Johor | |||||
| Photojournalist ZAIHAN MOHD YUSOF gets on sports bike and surveys possible escape routes taken by terrorist Mas Selamat while on the run | |||||
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RECCE REPORT 1
Johor location: Oil Palm Plantation on the outskirts of Bandar Nusajaya.
This would've been the shortest escape route for Mas Selamat.
Landing at the oil palm plantation would allow him the 'perfect cover' due to its vastness. Nobody ventures there except oil palm workers, said Mr Mastur, a 25-year-old Indonesian who works on the estate.
The place is deserted as it is hilly, damp and mosquito-infested.
But this route is not without its difficulties.
On the Singapore side (Sungei Gedong), Mas Selamat would have been faced with the long fence along the live firing area.
This would have prevented him a direct line of sight to the plantation.
Also, once across, he could get lost.
Said Mr Mastur: 'He would have to depend on good navigational skills to get out of here safely. During my first year working here, I got lost many times. Every bend in the estate looks the same. You can walk the whole day and not bump into anybody. It was scary for me at first.'
Mas Selamat would also need to be an expert at finding food as there is hardly anything edible in the palm estate.
'There's no village here. The only source of food would be wild boars and snakes. And you're unlikely to find a clean source of water here,' he said.
Perhaps Mas Selamat sought help from workers in the estate.
Mr Mastur added: 'The illegal workers may not know who Mas Selamat is.
'(Even if they did) they wouldn't dare to make a police report for fear of being arrested themselves.'
If Mas Selamat was able to reach the estate's main road, lorry drivers or bikers would not mind giving a stranded person a lift.
Who knows, an unsuspecting motorist could have given him a lift all the way to Skudai, less than an hour's drive away.
RECCE REPORT 2
Johor location: Malay village in town of Nusa Jaya, about 30 minutes' drive from Second Link.
This old Malay village looks like an ideal place for an escapee to lie low.
Families and homes mean there's food, clothing and shoes that can be begged for or stolen.
It is very close to Singapore. So close that from Johor fisherman Umar Fiee's home, you can clearly see the sloped jetty where seafood is loaded onto awaiting lorries at Lim Chu Kang in Singapore.
On some days, Mr Umar, 64, said he can hear the live firing exercises near Poyan reservoir.
He has even made the watery journey himself.
In the '60s, he and his friends used to challenge each other and swim across to Singapore.
Said Mr Umar, a father of six: 'Back then the rules were more relaxed. We had no passports.
'But the trick is not to start too strong, you need to pace yourself when swimming. It usually took me about an hour.'
Nowadays, when Malaysian fishermen like Mr Umar stray too close to Singapore waters, the Singapore Police Coast Guard or soldiers tell them to turn back.
Mr Umar believes Mas Selamat could have taken advantage of outcrops like Pulau Sarimbun to take a breather.
Or he could have rested at one of the many mussel harvesting kelongs before deciding where to land.
'Unlike the Singapore kelongs, we do not keep dogs. So Mas Selamat's presence would not be detected.'
Yet, the stretch of 8km along Kampung Sungei Melayu, which is a hotspot for illegal immigrants trying to swim into Singapore, is not without danger.
Mr Umar said bodies have been found entangled in fishermen's nets, the result of 'failed attempts' to cross the straits.
Just two years ago, a female China national was a victim, he recalled.
As for food, Mas Selamat could've eaten fruits growing wild, or stolen from homes.
He said: 'Kampung people trust each other. So we leave our clothes drying out in the open. We seldom lock our doors. And there is almost no activity when it gets dark here.
'If Mas Selamat had been spotted, we would definitely know that he is not from around here.'
But most kampung folk may not be aware who Mas Selamat is or what he has done. He would've been just another passer-by.
Mr Umar said because of the lax security, bicycles and motorcycles have gone missing in the village. With a stolen getaway vehicle, Mas Selamat would have been able to find his way out of the kampung to the highway some 10km away.
From there, Skudai is less than 20km away.
RECCE REPORT 3
Johor location: These sit on the left and right of Causeway respectively.
In order to land on this stretch, Mas Selamat would have to start swimming from Woodlands, which Malaysian authorities believe he did.
Unlike the other two spots, this is built-up urban landscape, with a coastline dotted with food stalls, picnicking crowds and parked cars.
There is a bus service that plies up and down Jalan Skudai, the main artery heading northwards into Malaysia.
Despite the distance, with the help of currents, Mas Selamat's swim across the Johor Strait would be less taxing, said Mr Mohd Shafie, 26, a cleaner at the beach.
He said: 'Every morning, I find oil drums, plastic containers, styrofoam boxes and bottles along the shore. If he had been among these items floating in the water, no one would've seen him.'
The advantage of this destination is that Mas Selamat would've been able to quickly blend in the crowd once he reached the shore.
'There is a city mentality here. Nobody cares who you are. If Mas Selamat put a baseball hat on, he would look like an average person in the city,' said Mr Mohd.
That makes this landing point an obvious stop, which is probably why Singapore Coast Guard patrols seem to be more frequent.
Added Mr Mohd: 'I have seen secondary school students swimming from Stulang Laut to the half-way point between Malaysia and Singapore on the Johor Strait.
'They can get there in about 25 minutes before the Singapore Police patrol boats warn them to move back into Malaysian waters. Mas Selamat would've needed a lot of luck.'
Trail of a fugitive...
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