Disadvantageous Mandarin
Thursday, 19 March 2009
A response to MM Lee
KJ
There is a lot to be said for Singaporean-Chinese, myself included, to be ascribed a ‘mother tongue’ that is not really my mother’s (or for that matter, my father’s), one that we have to learn from scratch, in effect as a second-language, and one with which we have little affinity.
What is more lamentable is the fact that these decisions are borne out of unquestioned, state-mandated economic necessity, and subsequently implemented with such swift ruthlessness. Cold, hard-headed decisions that, without our realizing, put a stopper to our personal relations and halt our life stories. How many times have I found great difficulty in conversing with my grandparents, who were by then too old to abandon their original tongues and acquire new ones, while I on the other hand had been discouraged from speaking in their native ones (i.e. my real mother tongue[s]), and force-fed a foreign language called Mandarin.
Singapore prides itself on arriving from ‘Third World to First’ in one generation – (have we really?) – this is the same reason for our extraordinary ability to extinguish our rich southern Chinese heritage, one that is as old as centuries if not the millennia, in a single generation.
Is this something that we, that is to say, Singaporean-Chinese, in the name of economic achievement should be proud of?
I doubt that our ability to speak Mandarin has been, as MM Lee would have us believe, a ‘key advantage’. As academic Linda Lim remarked in an interview with the Straits Times last week, our self-appointed role as conduits to China and India is counter-productive, if not redundant. And after expending so much energies and resources into its teaching and learning, how many of us are truly proficient in Mandarin, beyond the rudimentary phrases needed to get one past the wet market?
Having to master both English and Mandarin without a ‘natural’ cultural-linguistic environment that is necessary for one to be proficient in either language has resulted in us floundering in both. Drowned in this process is our chance and ability to master our true ‘mother-tongues’. It is well-known that the Mainlander Chinese and the Westerners constantly mock our lightweight grasp of Mandarin and English, and, for those doing business in China, they are taking Mandarin lessons to make up for their linguistic lack. Beneath these foreign mockery is the sneering at our cultural ignorance, superficiality, and philistinism. Further, if the ability to speak Mandarin is such an economic asset, why do our education policies prevent our non-Chinese compatriots from learning it? And should Singaporeans be learning Mandarin just so we can ‘bring value-add to China’?
Such vulgar economic justifications for ‘national survival’, for learning languages, for effacing cultures.
Whatever the material benefits I might reap by way of Singapore’s ‘economic usefulness’ to the rest of the world, I derive no dignity in being treated as a cog in a machine, as a means to an end. I would gladly trade, pardon the pun, GDP growth with the ability to speak my native language (it is neither English nor Mandarin) even if it is the most economically unviable language in the world. For that matter, I would be proud to be a Singaporean even if it is the poorest country there is around. What consolation does it bring, to be able to speak to 1.3 billion Chinese all over China if I cannot even engage in a proper conversation with my own family?
That is not to say we should not have encouraged the learning of Mandarin. But it certainly could have been implemented in a less mechanistic manner, and for less utilitarian reasons. It is for these very reasons that we do not want to, or we are unable to, appreciate the value of a language and the beauty inherent in all languages, that exist beyond the jargon and jarring phrases of multinational companies and Internet data banks and global financial-speak.
The choice of languages learnt need neither be government-sanctioned nor mutually-exclusive. Contrary to what the government and the media would like us to think, we are not the only country that adopts a bilingual policy. But compared to other such countries, we are far from being as successful. Learning from them, we might realize that mastering Mandarin need not have come at the expense of our ancestral tongues. Our lack of fluency in multiple languages is not just due to biological limitations (which is far from being a fact). Ill-conceived, flip-flopping government policies and crass economic rationale for learning (or un-learning) languages have contributed to this predicament too.
In two generations Mandarin would be our mother tongue, proclaims MM Lee proudly. But with our appalling level of proficiency in Mandarin, it is not hard to foresee how much and what kind of a ‘mother tongue’ it is going to be. It will probably not be much.
Is the sole value of a language its ‘usefulness’? I don’t think so. On the one hand, use-value is subjective, personal, and should not be decided for me by, of all things, the state. On the parallel, the value of language is in language itself. Languages do not appear out of thin air – we human beings create them, keep them alive, and they live for a simple reason – above being basic tools of communication, they are expressions of our emotions, our humanness. Expressions that, like culture and the arts, live outside the world of money.
We would have been better-off leaving our language habits alone, and letting our ‘adulterated Hokkien-Teochew’ languages evolve on their own. And why not? Languages, like cultures, are living things and they evolve all the time. And over time, our aesthetic sensibilities are honed along with our constant polishing of our tongues, and from where the beauty and poetry in the language emerge. This is true for all languages, from the first grunt in the dark cave eons ago, to the final stanza in the gilded library just now. And why, our Singlish vernacular might one day become high language too, with its inimitable trove of stories and sonnets. If only we would let it, and let our local poets light the way.
But of course, such frivolous pursuits have no place in a country where economic necessity and cultural cringe must prevail. While the sun of the British empire might have set, and the Middle Kingdom’s might yet arise, it seems as long as the ruling regime’s socio-economic ideologies persist blindingly, Singaporeans will always remain colonial subjects, servants to capital.
The way we have gone about picking ‘winning’ languages and experimenting with them as one would in a laboratory, it is what kills language. But not only that – as fellow TOC contributor Deng Chao noted recently, what is wiped out is more than our Teochew, Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hainanese languages. Gone with them would be the irreplaceable and age-old cultural treasures of folklore, poetry, aphorisms and histories, riches that are later infused with the tropical air of the Straits Settlement – a natural confluence of cultures. What is wiped out will be life itself, supplanted by the mediocre, the vulgar and the kitsch.
One day I might become a grandparent too, but what would the world be like then? I do not want to punt on the vagaries of the market or the flow of global finance. I certainly do not want to be enslaved by them. Small as Singapore is, there nonetheless are things that do not and cannot have a price tag. The ability and the freedom to speak, for instance. Invaluable things.
Am I romanticizing the village?
But how did the village come to be something pejorative in the Singaporean imagination?
What kind of a city are we still building anyway?
Looking at my grandparents, I do wonder what their Singaporean world has been like, for them to one morning find themselves strangers in their own land, unable to be understood and unable to understand, the foreign chatter on the streets, and recounting life stories in a voice whose sweetness their loved ones would never know.
And how much are Singaporeans and our nation, for all our economic growth and material riches the poorer for it, living on benighted money, leaving our history behind?
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24547.1
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Risks of Unchecked Export-Driven Growth
Risks of Unchecked Export-Driven Growth
Singapore's basic economic strategy of surviving by tapping on the global economy by attracting foreign investments to Singapore and exporting our goods to international markets is flawed. Goldman Sachs said in a client note on Thursday that, "We reiterate our view that Singapore has one of the highest exposures to weakness in external demand, because of its high ratio of exports to GDP and the high portion of exports-driven domestic demand". The brokerage firm has lowered its forecast for Singapore gross domestic product for 2009 to -8 percent from -4 percent previously as the US economy is expected to contract further in the year, curbing already weak demand for Asian goods.
In Singapore, consumption composes only 40 percent of the GDP versus at least 55 percent in other developed Asian economies. With globalisation, more players have entered the "export-driven" economic playing field. Good skills are offered at lower wages by these players. This globalisation will only continue to progress faster than ever as the pace of technological advancement continues to accelerate. Many jobs that have been lost during the past recessions are gone forever. Many more will be lost in the current depression. Structural unemployment is here to stay for a long time. We cannot continue to bury our heads in the sand by claiming that "The fundamentals of our growth model are sound". Although Singapore supposedly 'bounced back' three times within the last ten years from comparatively milder crisis, the current global mayhem makes it increasingly unlikely that Singapore's export-driven economy is going to 'bounce back' any time soon.
How do we rise up and meet the challenges of this crisis? Fairness and equality do matter as we attempt rise up to meet this economic challenge. There is an imperative need for new, appropriate economic policies to be drawn; bearing in mind the connections between society, environment and the economy. We cannot continue to rely on continuing growth to provide sufficient finance for public services, or on market mechanisms to ensure their efficiency – because financial markets are less reliable than ever; because markets only reflect and cannot repair inequalities. Unchecked export-driven growth puts everything we hold dear at-risk.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24646.1
Singapore's basic economic strategy of surviving by tapping on the global economy by attracting foreign investments to Singapore and exporting our goods to international markets is flawed. Goldman Sachs said in a client note on Thursday that, "We reiterate our view that Singapore has one of the highest exposures to weakness in external demand, because of its high ratio of exports to GDP and the high portion of exports-driven domestic demand". The brokerage firm has lowered its forecast for Singapore gross domestic product for 2009 to -8 percent from -4 percent previously as the US economy is expected to contract further in the year, curbing already weak demand for Asian goods.
In Singapore, consumption composes only 40 percent of the GDP versus at least 55 percent in other developed Asian economies. With globalisation, more players have entered the "export-driven" economic playing field. Good skills are offered at lower wages by these players. This globalisation will only continue to progress faster than ever as the pace of technological advancement continues to accelerate. Many jobs that have been lost during the past recessions are gone forever. Many more will be lost in the current depression. Structural unemployment is here to stay for a long time. We cannot continue to bury our heads in the sand by claiming that "The fundamentals of our growth model are sound". Although Singapore supposedly 'bounced back' three times within the last ten years from comparatively milder crisis, the current global mayhem makes it increasingly unlikely that Singapore's export-driven economy is going to 'bounce back' any time soon.
How do we rise up and meet the challenges of this crisis? Fairness and equality do matter as we attempt rise up to meet this economic challenge. There is an imperative need for new, appropriate economic policies to be drawn; bearing in mind the connections between society, environment and the economy. We cannot continue to rely on continuing growth to provide sufficient finance for public services, or on market mechanisms to ensure their efficiency – because financial markets are less reliable than ever; because markets only reflect and cannot repair inequalities. Unchecked export-driven growth puts everything we hold dear at-risk.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24646.1
The Merlion is Back
The Merlion is Back
Two and a half weeks ago, lighting struck the Merlion. Singapore’s most famous (and most fake) tourism icon had to be closed for repairs.
The Merlion is now spouting water again. Not only that, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) will also be studying lightning protection measures for the Merlion Park to prevent similar incidents from happening.
For any foreign readers of my blog, it was big news in Singapore when lighting struck the Merlion on Feb 28. The half lion/half fish sculpture is almost a symbol of Singapore.
Personally, I always find it stupid looking but a lot of people liked it. So you stupid looking fake icon; Welcome Back!
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24539.1
Two and a half weeks ago, lighting struck the Merlion. Singapore’s most famous (and most fake) tourism icon had to be closed for repairs.
The Merlion is now spouting water again. Not only that, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) will also be studying lightning protection measures for the Merlion Park to prevent similar incidents from happening.
For any foreign readers of my blog, it was big news in Singapore when lighting struck the Merlion on Feb 28. The half lion/half fish sculpture is almost a symbol of Singapore.
Personally, I always find it stupid looking but a lot of people liked it. So you stupid looking fake icon; Welcome Back!
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24539.1
Cracks appear in Lee Hsien Loong's mantle
Mar 20, 2009
ASIA HAND
Cracks appear in Lee's mantle
By Shawn W Crispin
While a populist backlash against perceived corrupt bankers and financiers mounts in the United States, all is comparatively calm in financial hub Singapore, where the state and finance sector are virtually one and the same.
Yet some analysts wonder whether the deepening downturn could eventually spark popular calls for political change to the People's Action Party (PAP)-led government, similar to the mass mobilizations that ousted Indonesia's and nearly toppled Malaysia's entrenched authoritarian regimes amid the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong faces Singapore's worst economic crisis since it achieved independence in 1965 and some analysts believe his handling of the downturn will determine largely his future staying power as premier once his influential 85-year-old father, Minister Mentor and national founder Lee Kuan Yew, eventually passes from the scene.
The senior Lee warned earlier this month that gross domestic product (GDP) growth could contract by as much as 8% this year. As one of Asia's most open economies, where exports of goods and services last year accounted for around 145% of GDP, Singapore has been especially hard hit by the collapse in global trade. Investment bank Credit Suisse estimates every 10% lost in goods and services exports will through first round effects shave 7.2% off Singapore's GDP.
But it's Lee's government's financial management, particularly its role in running the Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC), Temasek Holdings PTE, and, perhaps most crucially, the Central Provident Fund, which is drawing more critical attention. Earlier this month the Straits Times reported that GIC's assets, often roughly estimated at US$300 billion, had fallen by around 25% off their peak of last year.
The state-controlled newspaper quoted the senior Lee saying that GIC had invested "too early" when it took stakes in early 2008 in Swiss investment bank UBS and now diminished US banking giant Citibank. Until a recent preferred to common stock swap, GIC had lost 80% on its Citibank gambit.
Singaporean eyebrows also rose earlier this year when Temasek chief executive officer Ho Ching, the wife of Prime Minister Lee, announced she would step down from her post in October and be replaced with an Australian national. Temasek executives have said that her resignation is not related to the investment company's recent financial performance, which in historical terms has tanked.
The sovereign fund shed 31% of assets' value between April and November 2008, driving its portfolio down to US$127 billion, according to a Ministry of Finance report made to parliament. Some analysts expect even worse when the sovereign fund announces its total annual results, expected in the weeks ahead. The senior Lee was quoted saying in the local press that there was "no equal" inside Temasek to the outside Australian national candidate appointed to the post, but later backtracked on the comment.
The mentor minister's flip-flop about Temasek's top management capabilities struck some as odd, considering the sovereign fund had until recently claimed to have earned an average 18% in total annual shareholder returns. It's notable in retrospect that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in a 2006 report, inquired Temasek managers whether they "took into account the impact of its investment on the overall economy's exposure to sectors and countries".
Temasek officials responded that the outward expansion was done "cautiously and selectively, overseen by an independent board". Authorities also told the IMF then that "disclosing further information on GIC's operations and financial position was difficult because of strategic reasons, but underscored that such investments were largely in liquid assets and undertaken with sufficient internal oversight".
The IMF said in an August 2008 report that GIC's and Temasek's operations "do not appear to undercut the formulation or conduct of domestic policies", though this assessment was made before government officials revealed the extent of their recent losses.
Pension questions
Opposition politician and political scientist James Gomez, for one, believes that the mounting crisis has exposed flaws in the government's economic management. He says that while Temasek's and GIC's losses have not overtly affected the day-to-day lives of most Singaporeans, they could eventually impact on the Central Provident Fund (CPF), a state-run compulsory social security program.
The CPF board has consistently said it only invests funds in "risk-free" government bonds and bank deposits, but both opposition and PAP politicians have contradicted those claims. Opposition politicians, including Low Thia Khiang, have questioned whether the funds paid into the CPF actually provide a de facto cheap source of finance for GIC in particular to invest abroad.
GIC officially acknowledges that it invests overseas some of the proceeds raised from government bonds. However, the government does not publicly release information on assets held abroad or data on the position of the consolidated public sector, according to the IMF. That's historically raised criticisms that could intensify in the months ahead as the economy weakens. Opposition MP Low was quoted in the Straits Times in September 2007 asking in parliament whether the "government short-changes Singaporeans by giving CPF members 3.5% of the interest rate while the GIC makes 9% and pockets the balance of 5.5%".
Gomez says that because there is no clear evidence to show that CPF funds have disappeared with GIC's and Temasek's recent losses, there has not yet been a public reaction against the two investment funds' management. However, he contends there is a growing "disquiet" about the various mechanisms the government has since 2007 put in place to delay CPF disbursements to the population, including a rise in the minimum retirement age.
Those measures are a reflection, some believe, of the CPF's weak financial position, which analysts say has been hampered by a pro-business government policy in recent years to substantially reduce employers' payments into the scheme. The IMF said in 2006 that "steps are needed to increase income replacement rates for retirees relying on their [CPF] savings". It's not apparent - three years later and amid the country's worst ever economic crisis - that those recommended steps have been taken.
There are other areas of potential popular agitation, including a nagging perception, expressed on blogs and among the political opposition, that top government officials are grossly overpaid. In April 2007, ministers received a 60% pay hike, bumping their pay to an average of US$1.2 million per year. Prime Minister Lee's salary jumped at the time to the Singapore dollar equivalent of US$2 million. The official pay hikes were justified by a compensation system created in 1994 by the senior Lee, then premier, that pegged top officials' salaries to what they might earn at the same level in the private sector.
Then, the senior Lee strongly defended the hefty pay hikes, warning the previous month that without them "your jobs will be in peril, your security at risk and our women will become maids in other people's countries". With the global downturn, at least the first of those dire warnings has come a cropper for many Singaporeans, though there are no indications yet government ministers' salaries will be cut back in line with rising global discontent over perceived corruption in top level corporate compensation packages.
Prime Minister Lee has responded to the mounting economic crisis through vigorous fiscal pump priming. The government's 2009 budget entails fiscal measures, including a heavy dose of off-budget loan guarantees, which amount to 8% of GDP, the largest such percentage in Asia. Underscoring the potential depth of Singapore's crisis, the fiscal package is nearly twice the amount as a percentage of GDP the government mobilized in the wake of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Half of the fiscal cash is expected to be injected into the economy this year, according to Credit Suisse.
Whether this will be enough to keep rising social discontent from morphing into calls for political change and greater government transparency is still unclear. Opposition politician Gomez contends that most Singaporeans are "too fearful too express their desire for political change" in light of the government's notoriously harsh handling of its critics, including the use of crippling defamation suits to bankrupt opposition politicians.
He believes that the government's fiscal strategy amounts to "cash handouts to mitigate criticism", which, he concedes could still work in Singapore's materialistic society. But Singapore's wealth has recently greatly diminished, perhaps more than many realize, and as the global economic crisis bites deeper at home, it's possible that desperate Singaporeans look to pin the blame on Lee's government.
Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor. He may be reached at swcrispin@atimes.com.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24529.2
ASIA HAND
Cracks appear in Lee's mantle
By Shawn W Crispin
While a populist backlash against perceived corrupt bankers and financiers mounts in the United States, all is comparatively calm in financial hub Singapore, where the state and finance sector are virtually one and the same.
Yet some analysts wonder whether the deepening downturn could eventually spark popular calls for political change to the People's Action Party (PAP)-led government, similar to the mass mobilizations that ousted Indonesia's and nearly toppled Malaysia's entrenched authoritarian regimes amid the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong faces Singapore's worst economic crisis since it achieved independence in 1965 and some analysts believe his handling of the downturn will determine largely his future staying power as premier once his influential 85-year-old father, Minister Mentor and national founder Lee Kuan Yew, eventually passes from the scene.
The senior Lee warned earlier this month that gross domestic product (GDP) growth could contract by as much as 8% this year. As one of Asia's most open economies, where exports of goods and services last year accounted for around 145% of GDP, Singapore has been especially hard hit by the collapse in global trade. Investment bank Credit Suisse estimates every 10% lost in goods and services exports will through first round effects shave 7.2% off Singapore's GDP.
But it's Lee's government's financial management, particularly its role in running the Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC), Temasek Holdings PTE, and, perhaps most crucially, the Central Provident Fund, which is drawing more critical attention. Earlier this month the Straits Times reported that GIC's assets, often roughly estimated at US$300 billion, had fallen by around 25% off their peak of last year.
The state-controlled newspaper quoted the senior Lee saying that GIC had invested "too early" when it took stakes in early 2008 in Swiss investment bank UBS and now diminished US banking giant Citibank. Until a recent preferred to common stock swap, GIC had lost 80% on its Citibank gambit.
Singaporean eyebrows also rose earlier this year when Temasek chief executive officer Ho Ching, the wife of Prime Minister Lee, announced she would step down from her post in October and be replaced with an Australian national. Temasek executives have said that her resignation is not related to the investment company's recent financial performance, which in historical terms has tanked.
The sovereign fund shed 31% of assets' value between April and November 2008, driving its portfolio down to US$127 billion, according to a Ministry of Finance report made to parliament. Some analysts expect even worse when the sovereign fund announces its total annual results, expected in the weeks ahead. The senior Lee was quoted saying in the local press that there was "no equal" inside Temasek to the outside Australian national candidate appointed to the post, but later backtracked on the comment.
The mentor minister's flip-flop about Temasek's top management capabilities struck some as odd, considering the sovereign fund had until recently claimed to have earned an average 18% in total annual shareholder returns. It's notable in retrospect that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in a 2006 report, inquired Temasek managers whether they "took into account the impact of its investment on the overall economy's exposure to sectors and countries".
Temasek officials responded that the outward expansion was done "cautiously and selectively, overseen by an independent board". Authorities also told the IMF then that "disclosing further information on GIC's operations and financial position was difficult because of strategic reasons, but underscored that such investments were largely in liquid assets and undertaken with sufficient internal oversight".
The IMF said in an August 2008 report that GIC's and Temasek's operations "do not appear to undercut the formulation or conduct of domestic policies", though this assessment was made before government officials revealed the extent of their recent losses.
Pension questions
Opposition politician and political scientist James Gomez, for one, believes that the mounting crisis has exposed flaws in the government's economic management. He says that while Temasek's and GIC's losses have not overtly affected the day-to-day lives of most Singaporeans, they could eventually impact on the Central Provident Fund (CPF), a state-run compulsory social security program.
The CPF board has consistently said it only invests funds in "risk-free" government bonds and bank deposits, but both opposition and PAP politicians have contradicted those claims. Opposition politicians, including Low Thia Khiang, have questioned whether the funds paid into the CPF actually provide a de facto cheap source of finance for GIC in particular to invest abroad.
GIC officially acknowledges that it invests overseas some of the proceeds raised from government bonds. However, the government does not publicly release information on assets held abroad or data on the position of the consolidated public sector, according to the IMF. That's historically raised criticisms that could intensify in the months ahead as the economy weakens. Opposition MP Low was quoted in the Straits Times in September 2007 asking in parliament whether the "government short-changes Singaporeans by giving CPF members 3.5% of the interest rate while the GIC makes 9% and pockets the balance of 5.5%".
Gomez says that because there is no clear evidence to show that CPF funds have disappeared with GIC's and Temasek's recent losses, there has not yet been a public reaction against the two investment funds' management. However, he contends there is a growing "disquiet" about the various mechanisms the government has since 2007 put in place to delay CPF disbursements to the population, including a rise in the minimum retirement age.
Those measures are a reflection, some believe, of the CPF's weak financial position, which analysts say has been hampered by a pro-business government policy in recent years to substantially reduce employers' payments into the scheme. The IMF said in 2006 that "steps are needed to increase income replacement rates for retirees relying on their [CPF] savings". It's not apparent - three years later and amid the country's worst ever economic crisis - that those recommended steps have been taken.
There are other areas of potential popular agitation, including a nagging perception, expressed on blogs and among the political opposition, that top government officials are grossly overpaid. In April 2007, ministers received a 60% pay hike, bumping their pay to an average of US$1.2 million per year. Prime Minister Lee's salary jumped at the time to the Singapore dollar equivalent of US$2 million. The official pay hikes were justified by a compensation system created in 1994 by the senior Lee, then premier, that pegged top officials' salaries to what they might earn at the same level in the private sector.
Then, the senior Lee strongly defended the hefty pay hikes, warning the previous month that without them "your jobs will be in peril, your security at risk and our women will become maids in other people's countries". With the global downturn, at least the first of those dire warnings has come a cropper for many Singaporeans, though there are no indications yet government ministers' salaries will be cut back in line with rising global discontent over perceived corruption in top level corporate compensation packages.
Prime Minister Lee has responded to the mounting economic crisis through vigorous fiscal pump priming. The government's 2009 budget entails fiscal measures, including a heavy dose of off-budget loan guarantees, which amount to 8% of GDP, the largest such percentage in Asia. Underscoring the potential depth of Singapore's crisis, the fiscal package is nearly twice the amount as a percentage of GDP the government mobilized in the wake of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Half of the fiscal cash is expected to be injected into the economy this year, according to Credit Suisse.
Whether this will be enough to keep rising social discontent from morphing into calls for political change and greater government transparency is still unclear. Opposition politician Gomez contends that most Singaporeans are "too fearful too express their desire for political change" in light of the government's notoriously harsh handling of its critics, including the use of crippling defamation suits to bankrupt opposition politicians.
He believes that the government's fiscal strategy amounts to "cash handouts to mitigate criticism", which, he concedes could still work in Singapore's materialistic society. But Singapore's wealth has recently greatly diminished, perhaps more than many realize, and as the global economic crisis bites deeper at home, it's possible that desperate Singaporeans look to pin the blame on Lee's government.
Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor. He may be reached at swcrispin@atimes.com.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24529.2
An Orchid by Any Other Name
An Orchid by Any Other Name
I refer to the article ‘Thein Sein gets an orchid’ (TODAY, 19th March 2009)
When I first read from the TOC (The Online Citizen) that the visiting Myanmar PM will get a new orchid strain named after him, instantaneously I felt rather uncomfortable.
This is because I was trying to reconcile between two viewpoints: Firstly, Singapore should uphold diplomatic necessities in administering formal protocols to a head of state. Secondly, Singapore should not bestow such honour in the first place to a dictator whose military junta committed horrendous acts of oppression against its own people.
Originally, I thought it should be still 'alright', since it is merely to give an unknown orchid a name. BUT when I read from the TODAY’s article that previous foreign dignitaries with orchids named after them include former South African President Nelson Mandela. The implications behind such an honour bestowed upon Thein Sein simply caused my blood to boil.
Especially so when recipients bestowed upon such honours will be equated to a symbolic rung alongside Nelson Mandela. This is simply not right. Dictator Thein Sein characterizes the very oppression which Nelson Mandela spent decades in confinement cell resiliently opposing to.
Disappointedly, our MOFA itinerary team overseeing foreign dignitaries’ visits should have thought of this irony and not had given Thein Sein such honour in the first place.
I am of the view that, the said orchid ought to be given a re-name. This orchid by any other appropriate name should be so much more tasteful than its current one.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24528.1
I refer to the article ‘Thein Sein gets an orchid’ (TODAY, 19th March 2009)
When I first read from the TOC (The Online Citizen) that the visiting Myanmar PM will get a new orchid strain named after him, instantaneously I felt rather uncomfortable.
This is because I was trying to reconcile between two viewpoints: Firstly, Singapore should uphold diplomatic necessities in administering formal protocols to a head of state. Secondly, Singapore should not bestow such honour in the first place to a dictator whose military junta committed horrendous acts of oppression against its own people.
Originally, I thought it should be still 'alright', since it is merely to give an unknown orchid a name. BUT when I read from the TODAY’s article that previous foreign dignitaries with orchids named after them include former South African President Nelson Mandela. The implications behind such an honour bestowed upon Thein Sein simply caused my blood to boil.
Especially so when recipients bestowed upon such honours will be equated to a symbolic rung alongside Nelson Mandela. This is simply not right. Dictator Thein Sein characterizes the very oppression which Nelson Mandela spent decades in confinement cell resiliently opposing to.
Disappointedly, our MOFA itinerary team overseeing foreign dignitaries’ visits should have thought of this irony and not had given Thein Sein such honour in the first place.
I am of the view that, the said orchid ought to be given a re-name. This orchid by any other appropriate name should be so much more tasteful than its current one.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24528.1
Life would be much easier if I am not PM
March 19, 2009
Life would be much easier if...
 |  | PM Lee (left) is responding to a question from BBC's correspondent Johnathan Head, about the role that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and Ms Ho Ching had in the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation and in Temasek Holdings. -- PHOTO: BBC |
Here's the Q&A:
JONATHAN HEAD: Your own family has been quite involved in two of these funds. Your wife until recently ran Temasek, your father's deeply involved in GIC. Is there a risk that when the news is bad, as it has been over the past year for these funds, that people will tend to blame your family rather than look at the institutions?
PM LEE: I think the way you put it is not the way things work in Singapore. The Minister Mentor is chairman of GIC not because he is my father. It's because he is the best man for the job and he has been chairman since he was Prime Minister.
And Ho Ching is CEO of Temasek not because she's my wife but because the chairman of Temasek, who's Mr Dhanabalan, and the board decided that they wanted to appoint her as CEO.
And they are there as long as they are effective, performing, and if they don't perform, well, they have to take the consequences.
JONATHAN HEAD: Perception is important in politics and in difficult times like this, do you think, in retrospect, it might have been better if your family had a lower profile?
PM LEE: (laughs) Life would be much easier for me if the Minister Mentor was not my father and Ho Ching was not my wife. But they are there. This is the way Singapore has worked. I think Singaporeans have understood that this is how the system works and they will render judgment when elections come.
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AYG mascot unveiled
March 19, 2009
AYG mascot unveiled
| By Jonathan Wong | ||
 | | A name-the-mascot contest is being run jointly by The Straits Times and the AYG organising committee (Saygoc). The first contest coupon will appear in Friday's edition of The Straits Times' sports section. --ST PHOTO: ALPHONSUS CHERN |
THE mascot for the upcoming Asian Youth Games was unveiled on Thursday at Velocity@Novena Square by Mr Teo Ser Luck, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Community Development, Youth and Sports, and Transport.
Symbolising values of friendship, excellence and respect, the mascot for the June 29 to July 7 Games is still unnamed.
A name-the-mascot contest is being run jointly by The Straits Times and the AYG organising committee (Saygoc). The first contest coupon will appear in Friday's edition of The Straits Times' sports section.
Names should be original and not more than five words.
The contest begins on Friday and closes on March 27. Winners will be announced on April 15.
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