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
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