Won't Get Fooled Again: Just right for G20
The G20 summit in London last week reminded me of this song by The Who – Won't Get Fooled Again. The summit communique promised to tighten financial regulations so people don't fooled again and the world is saved from another economic collapse like the one we are witnessing now. The summit also issued an explanatory guide.
But it's best to take such resolutions with a grain of salt. For lightning never strikes twice in the same place. This time it was the subprime crisis that brought the global economy down. Earlier there was the dotcom bubble, which burst in March 2000 when the NASDAQ collapsed, and before that the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Who knows what will cause the next crash?
The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again has a healthy dose of scepticism. (The lyrics are at the end of this post.)
Incidentally, the Who -- much older -- performed Won't Get Fooled Again at the Live 8 concert in July 2005 to mark the G8 summit To Make Poverty History. It didn't.
A good read that recaptures that era is Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus mystery, The Naming Of The Dead.
But there is another reason why this song seems so appropriate to the times.
Won't Get Fooled Again appeared on the album, Who's Next, in 1971, according to Wikipedia.
1971 – that was a watershed year.
It was not just the year of the Bangladesh War.
1971 also saw a fundamental change in the international monetary system. It was more radical than what the G20 promised or delivered.
China now wants the dollar to be replaced by a new global reserve currency.
Something just as big happened in 1971. It involved the dollar and the gold – and President Richard Nixon.
Nixon is now remembered for the Watergate scandal and ping-pong diplomacy bringing together America and China.
He also changed the Bretton Woods international monetary system. See the post below.
Now back to the song and it's lyrics…
Won't Get Fooled Again
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
No, no!
I'll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie
Do ya?
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
There's nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26348.1
Thursday, April 9, 2009
The NMP who wants you to speak up
The NMP who wants you to speak up
NOMINATED Member of Parliament Siew Kum Hong, 34, had a new insight into the Singaporean psyche when he helped conduct a street poll last year.
He stopped Singaporeans in various parts of Jurong group representation constituency (GRC) and asked them if they thought there should be a by-election after one of their Members of Parliament, Dr Ong Chit Chung, died.
The reactions floored him.
Some just waved him off and said: ‘Don’t know.’
‘Others went: ‘Oh, got MP die ah?’,’ he recalls. ‘That was not surprising because many Singaporeans don’t even know who their MPs are.’
He was, however, perturbed by the many who knew but did not want, or dare, to respond. This group included those who thought that he and his fellow interviewers were from the People’s Action Party (PAP).
‘It never occurred to me that they would say: ‘I don’t want to talk to you guys, you are from the Government’. It’s amazing. Across the spectrum, Singaporeans are so afraid of so many different things.’
In the end, his poll showed that 56.8 per cent of 300 Jurong residents wanted a by-election.
The episode also made him realise one other thing: ‘Grassroots work is really hard, regardless of whether you are pro-government, anti-government or stand on neutral ground.’
The NMP, who announced last week that he is applying for a second term, adds: ‘I don’t think people have a good appreciation of how much time MPs spend on their work.’
It has been more than two years since the corporate counsel with Yahoo! Southeast Asia became an NMP.
He applied for it after being encouraged by friends and readers of a current issues column he used to helm for freesheet Today.
Introduced in 1990, the idea behind the NMP scheme is to allow citizens without party affiliation to take part in parliamentary debates without having to go through the electoral process. They are selected by a Parliamentary Select Committee; the most recent comprised eight MPs including one from the opposition.
When asked to assess his own performance so far, he says: ‘I hope I have been a credible speaker. I hope I have shown that there are some things that an NMP can do. And I hope I have made a political contribution.’
‘If Singaporeans believe in active citizenry, they need to speak up,’ he says.
He certainly has. In fact, he has earned a reputation for being one of Parliament’s most outspoken speakers - some say, even more vociferous than the opposition.
He has initiated debate on a whole range of ‘hot button’ issues - from ministerial salaries to the Films Act.
In October 2007, he tabled a petition to have Section 377A - which criminalises sex between consenting males - repealed. Although the petition was not successful, it launched a heated parliamentary debate which spilled out into the public domain - different speakers shepherded moral, intellectual and emotional arguments to argue for or against homosexuality.
In a blog entry on the saga, Mr Siew made it very clear why he launched the petition.
‘I really do it for myself, not for gays. If I have the opportunity to articulate my views but do not, then I would have let myself down.’
He tells The Straits Times: ‘If you don’t speak up politically, you won’t speak up in other areas in your life. You won’t tell your boss: ‘I think this thing would not work’.’
The Raffles Institution and Raffles Junior College alumnus reckons his ‘atypical education’ helped develop his questioning nature. He was picked to be in the gifted programme when he was in Primary 4 at Rosyth Primary School.
‘I was in the second batch of the gifted programme. The teachers were still experimenting as they went along. At that time, it wasn’t so rigorous and gave me the time and space to grow at my own pace,’ says the youngest of three children of an information technology manager and a hawker. His elder brother, 38, is an officer in the Singapore Armed Forces, and his sister, 36, is an operations manager in the oil and gas industry.
He says his political consciousness took root during his teenage years. It grew stronger after he became a law undergraduate at the National University of Singapore, when he spent a lot of time on the Internet, posting opinions and letters on websites such as soc.culture and Singapore21.
‘I also wrote many letters to the Forum pages. Quite a few of them took issue with government policies,’ he recalls.
After graduating, Mr Siew - who specialised in IP (intellectual property) and technology law at Rajah and Tann where he worked for four years - considered emigrating to New York for its more liberal arts and cultural scene.
But he stayed on, after realising that ‘maybe this place meant more to me than I thought, and maybe the other place wasn’t really as as attractive as I thought it was’.
‘Being Singaporean was an accident of birth. I was born here, I grew up here and I’ve benefited from being here. So I feel an affinity to this place, and owe it to myself and my country to do something.’
People, he says, often ask him if he has been hauled up for saying the things he does.
Even his mother, aged 61, gets worried sometimes. ‘She asked me: ‘Why do you always scold the Government? Lianhe Zaobao said you said this and your voice was loud and ringing and clear’,’ he says.
‘But nothing has happened to me. I don’t feel I’m under any surveillance. I don’t think my phone’s tapped,’ he says. ‘Just have the confidence that you’re sincere and honest, and reasoned. You can be controversial but be polite.’
Which is not to say he does not feel fear.
‘There is fear but I try to override that,’ he says, citing his questioning of the poor returns of CPF investments by the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) in September 2007.
‘The chairman of the GIC was there, the Minister Mentor was there. I was so petrified that MM would stand up and point out mistakes in my figures. But he didn’t.’
He adds: ‘I think you just need to be a man and get past the fear. What’s the worst that could happen? If he had stood up and corrected me, I would just look stupid. It’s not the end of the world to look stupid.’
He realises that some hardcore Government supporters may see him as cynical because of the issues he raises. ‘But the question is whether I am sincere, and I am. I say what I believe in, and I believe in what I say,’ he says.
That is why he is running for a second term even though, on principle, he is against the NMP scheme.
‘There is always the accountability question. You are not accountable to anyone since you are not elected,’ he says, adding that he started his blog (http://siewkumhong.blogspot.com/) to impose some degree of accountability on himself.
On the blog, he posts his speeches, questions and other material ‘in an attempt to be transparent’. Readers post their comments, and he replies to their queries. ‘If they are interested, people can see what I am saying and the responses I am getting, and whether I am making sense.’
He does not agree with the way NMPs are segmented, and tend to be pigeon-holed according to the issues they are supposed to represent, such as social services or the arts.
‘Inadvertently, you are boxing people into an area, and making them feel that they do not have the right to talk out of that box. Jessie, for instance, has a lot of things to say but she limits herself to sports,’ he says of fellow NMP Jessie Phua, who is the president of the Singapore Bowling Federation.
‘You should trust that MPs are smart people who have lots to contribute in all areas.’
In more ways than one, he says he is not ‘your typical NMP’. ‘A lot of them are establishment figures who have done grassroots work. I came in from the cold,’ he says.
He describes himself as strictly non-partisan, even where his interests lie. ‘I have made it very clear that I do not represent or pledge allegiance to any specific group,’ he says.
Therefore, he maintains, electoral politics are not for him.
‘If I go in, I go in to win. But if you play to win, you have to say things that you don’t believe in. That is the reality of electoral politics.’
He adds: ‘You can say all you want about being a constructive opposition, but you will have to snipe especially over popular issues.’ He insists he will not, on principle, criticise the goods and services tax (GST) or other things the ruling party has done right.
‘If you read all the literature, economists all support indirect taxation, and say that it’s the way to go, up to a certain point of course. And 7 per cent is not high.’
Anyway, he doesn’t think the PAP would ask him to its tea parties.
‘There’s certainly a seductive quality about change from within,’ he concedes. ‘But on the other hand, there are some fundamental things I disagree with such as the lawsuits and defamation schemes used to suppress dissenting views.
An MP’s job, he says, ‘is also a big one’.
‘Can I actually deliver and perform if I were seen as the party? I think I can contribute better, and more, from where I am,’ he says.
Two years as an NMP, he says, have made him realise several things.
‘A lot of people talk a lot, but not many would want to step forward, be counted or get their hands dirty.’
The barriers of entry, he adds, are much lower on the Internet where people gripe and take potshots at issues and people beneath the cloak of anonymity.
‘If you feel so strongly about something, come out and do it. Don’t just complain. Come out of your comfort zone.’
He says Singaporeans sometimes give MPs - whether elected or non-elected - less credit than they deserve.
‘I think we are all in the House trying our best to make a better Singapore. Of course, there are differences in how we get there, but that purity of purpose is what I think is important.’
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26347.2
NOMINATED Member of Parliament Siew Kum Hong, 34, had a new insight into the Singaporean psyche when he helped conduct a street poll last year.
He stopped Singaporeans in various parts of Jurong group representation constituency (GRC) and asked them if they thought there should be a by-election after one of their Members of Parliament, Dr Ong Chit Chung, died.
The reactions floored him.
Some just waved him off and said: ‘Don’t know.’
‘Others went: ‘Oh, got MP die ah?’,’ he recalls. ‘That was not surprising because many Singaporeans don’t even know who their MPs are.’
He was, however, perturbed by the many who knew but did not want, or dare, to respond. This group included those who thought that he and his fellow interviewers were from the People’s Action Party (PAP).
‘It never occurred to me that they would say: ‘I don’t want to talk to you guys, you are from the Government’. It’s amazing. Across the spectrum, Singaporeans are so afraid of so many different things.’
In the end, his poll showed that 56.8 per cent of 300 Jurong residents wanted a by-election.
The episode also made him realise one other thing: ‘Grassroots work is really hard, regardless of whether you are pro-government, anti-government or stand on neutral ground.’
The NMP, who announced last week that he is applying for a second term, adds: ‘I don’t think people have a good appreciation of how much time MPs spend on their work.’
It has been more than two years since the corporate counsel with Yahoo! Southeast Asia became an NMP.
He applied for it after being encouraged by friends and readers of a current issues column he used to helm for freesheet Today.
Introduced in 1990, the idea behind the NMP scheme is to allow citizens without party affiliation to take part in parliamentary debates without having to go through the electoral process. They are selected by a Parliamentary Select Committee; the most recent comprised eight MPs including one from the opposition.
When asked to assess his own performance so far, he says: ‘I hope I have been a credible speaker. I hope I have shown that there are some things that an NMP can do. And I hope I have made a political contribution.’
‘If Singaporeans believe in active citizenry, they need to speak up,’ he says.
He certainly has. In fact, he has earned a reputation for being one of Parliament’s most outspoken speakers - some say, even more vociferous than the opposition.
He has initiated debate on a whole range of ‘hot button’ issues - from ministerial salaries to the Films Act.
In October 2007, he tabled a petition to have Section 377A - which criminalises sex between consenting males - repealed. Although the petition was not successful, it launched a heated parliamentary debate which spilled out into the public domain - different speakers shepherded moral, intellectual and emotional arguments to argue for or against homosexuality.
In a blog entry on the saga, Mr Siew made it very clear why he launched the petition.
‘I really do it for myself, not for gays. If I have the opportunity to articulate my views but do not, then I would have let myself down.’
He tells The Straits Times: ‘If you don’t speak up politically, you won’t speak up in other areas in your life. You won’t tell your boss: ‘I think this thing would not work’.’
The Raffles Institution and Raffles Junior College alumnus reckons his ‘atypical education’ helped develop his questioning nature. He was picked to be in the gifted programme when he was in Primary 4 at Rosyth Primary School.
‘I was in the second batch of the gifted programme. The teachers were still experimenting as they went along. At that time, it wasn’t so rigorous and gave me the time and space to grow at my own pace,’ says the youngest of three children of an information technology manager and a hawker. His elder brother, 38, is an officer in the Singapore Armed Forces, and his sister, 36, is an operations manager in the oil and gas industry.
He says his political consciousness took root during his teenage years. It grew stronger after he became a law undergraduate at the National University of Singapore, when he spent a lot of time on the Internet, posting opinions and letters on websites such as soc.culture and Singapore21.
‘I also wrote many letters to the Forum pages. Quite a few of them took issue with government policies,’ he recalls.
After graduating, Mr Siew - who specialised in IP (intellectual property) and technology law at Rajah and Tann where he worked for four years - considered emigrating to New York for its more liberal arts and cultural scene.
But he stayed on, after realising that ‘maybe this place meant more to me than I thought, and maybe the other place wasn’t really as as attractive as I thought it was’.
‘Being Singaporean was an accident of birth. I was born here, I grew up here and I’ve benefited from being here. So I feel an affinity to this place, and owe it to myself and my country to do something.’
People, he says, often ask him if he has been hauled up for saying the things he does.
Even his mother, aged 61, gets worried sometimes. ‘She asked me: ‘Why do you always scold the Government? Lianhe Zaobao said you said this and your voice was loud and ringing and clear’,’ he says.
‘But nothing has happened to me. I don’t feel I’m under any surveillance. I don’t think my phone’s tapped,’ he says. ‘Just have the confidence that you’re sincere and honest, and reasoned. You can be controversial but be polite.’
Which is not to say he does not feel fear.
‘There is fear but I try to override that,’ he says, citing his questioning of the poor returns of CPF investments by the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) in September 2007.
‘The chairman of the GIC was there, the Minister Mentor was there. I was so petrified that MM would stand up and point out mistakes in my figures. But he didn’t.’
He adds: ‘I think you just need to be a man and get past the fear. What’s the worst that could happen? If he had stood up and corrected me, I would just look stupid. It’s not the end of the world to look stupid.’
He realises that some hardcore Government supporters may see him as cynical because of the issues he raises. ‘But the question is whether I am sincere, and I am. I say what I believe in, and I believe in what I say,’ he says.
That is why he is running for a second term even though, on principle, he is against the NMP scheme.
‘There is always the accountability question. You are not accountable to anyone since you are not elected,’ he says, adding that he started his blog (http://siewkumhong.blogspot.com/) to impose some degree of accountability on himself.
On the blog, he posts his speeches, questions and other material ‘in an attempt to be transparent’. Readers post their comments, and he replies to their queries. ‘If they are interested, people can see what I am saying and the responses I am getting, and whether I am making sense.’
He does not agree with the way NMPs are segmented, and tend to be pigeon-holed according to the issues they are supposed to represent, such as social services or the arts.
‘Inadvertently, you are boxing people into an area, and making them feel that they do not have the right to talk out of that box. Jessie, for instance, has a lot of things to say but she limits herself to sports,’ he says of fellow NMP Jessie Phua, who is the president of the Singapore Bowling Federation.
‘You should trust that MPs are smart people who have lots to contribute in all areas.’
In more ways than one, he says he is not ‘your typical NMP’. ‘A lot of them are establishment figures who have done grassroots work. I came in from the cold,’ he says.
He describes himself as strictly non-partisan, even where his interests lie. ‘I have made it very clear that I do not represent or pledge allegiance to any specific group,’ he says.
Therefore, he maintains, electoral politics are not for him.
‘If I go in, I go in to win. But if you play to win, you have to say things that you don’t believe in. That is the reality of electoral politics.’
He adds: ‘You can say all you want about being a constructive opposition, but you will have to snipe especially over popular issues.’ He insists he will not, on principle, criticise the goods and services tax (GST) or other things the ruling party has done right.
‘If you read all the literature, economists all support indirect taxation, and say that it’s the way to go, up to a certain point of course. And 7 per cent is not high.’
Anyway, he doesn’t think the PAP would ask him to its tea parties.
‘There’s certainly a seductive quality about change from within,’ he concedes. ‘But on the other hand, there are some fundamental things I disagree with such as the lawsuits and defamation schemes used to suppress dissenting views.
An MP’s job, he says, ‘is also a big one’.
‘Can I actually deliver and perform if I were seen as the party? I think I can contribute better, and more, from where I am,’ he says.
Two years as an NMP, he says, have made him realise several things.
‘A lot of people talk a lot, but not many would want to step forward, be counted or get their hands dirty.’
The barriers of entry, he adds, are much lower on the Internet where people gripe and take potshots at issues and people beneath the cloak of anonymity.
‘If you feel so strongly about something, come out and do it. Don’t just complain. Come out of your comfort zone.’
He says Singaporeans sometimes give MPs - whether elected or non-elected - less credit than they deserve.
‘I think we are all in the House trying our best to make a better Singapore. Of course, there are differences in how we get there, but that purity of purpose is what I think is important.’
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26347.2
The futility of speaking up in a totalitarian one-party state
The futility of speaking up in a totalitarian one-party state
In a full page interview with the Straits Times, NMP Siew Kum Hong urged Singaporeans to speak up if they believe in active citizenry.
With due respect to Mr Siew, he is one of the more credible NMPs around. In fact he initiated many debates on controversial issues which the elected opposition MPs had conveniently chosen to turn a blind eye to such as the losses incurred by GIC.
Though he had earned himself a reputation as an outspoken NMP, what did he achieve politically in the end? In spite of the issues he had raised which were debated in Parliament and given extensive publicity by the media, the status quo remains.
Nothing ever changes in Singapore once the ruling party has made a decision. Parliament is a mere “wayang” which they can easily do without. What’s Parliament to them when they can decide whether it is in their interest to hold a by-election? What’s there to “debate” when the key decision-makers had already made a decision?
Active citizenry is a myth in a totalitarian one-party state like Singapore where the rubber-stamp Parliament passes legislation according to the wimps and fancies of a tinpot dictator with scant regards for public opinion.
When the Prime Minister first mooted the idea of setting up casinos in Singapore, there was a huge backlash. Many MPs, including some vocal PAP backbenchers voiced their opposition against the proposal. What happened eventually? They simply bull-doze it through.
Again in 2007, there was widespread opposition to the PAP’s proposal of raising their own salaries by over 80% to peg it to the 8 highest earners in the private sector. There was literally no support on the ground even from the PAP grassroots. So what? The unpalatable pay hike was still forced down our throats.
Let’s admit it. The PAP HATES active citizenry. It doesn’t like any form of opposition to its rule. All it ever wanted is to have a subservient, docile and in a way brainless, unquestioning and unthinking populace to make life easier for itself. Since they work solely on “trust”, we are expected to trust them to run the country with little accountability or transparency.
The interview with NMP Siew is nothing more but another publicity gimmick of the state-controlled media to paint a positive image of the PAP as an understanding, tolerant and liberal government.
Mr Siew quoted himself as an example to insinuate that as long one is sincere, honest, and polite, the PAP will reciprocate in kind. Has he forgotten about Francis Seow, Jeyaretnam and Tang Liang Hong?
The PAP is not fixing Siew yet because he is not a threat to them. If Siew set up his own political party and start campaigning for the PAP system to be overhauled like Jeyaretnam, he will find his trivial mistakes made 10 years ago being dredged out, sensationalized and he will soon be out of job.
There’s no need to be polite with political hooligans like some leaders in the PAP. We speak up not to engage them, but to expose and embarrass them for who they really are - a bunch of shameless shenigans taking taxpayers’ monies to serve their own party’s partisan interest at the expense of Singapore’s.
For those of you who disagree with me, ask yourself why so few Singaporeans are willing to step forward to join politics. The PAP can easily solve the problem by abolishing the GRC system, refrain from launching defamation suits against opponents and liberalize the media. It is absolutely in the interest of Singapore to have a more pluralistic political landscape, but of course it is against the PAP’s own interest to do so. What is good for the nation isn’t necessarily good for the party and when a choice has to be made, the party’s interest will easily override that of the nation anytime.
While I respect NMP Siew for his courage to step forward, I do not share his enthusiasm and belief that speaking up will make any difference in a totalitarian one-party stalinist state like Singapore where the seat of power still lie pretty much in the hands of one power-hungry man who simply refuse to go away though he has overstayed his welcome.
Not too long ago, the Malaysian Barisan government behaves like a rogue state to its own citizens like the PAP government too, ignoring the pleas from the ethnic minorities to perpetuate racist policies in order to maintain its political hegemony.
After its customary two-thirds majority was denied by the opposition in the general election last year, it now has to eat the humble pie and listen to the electorate. It is even singing the tune of the opposition in a desperate attempt to win back lost ground.
The only way to make the PAP sit up and listen to us is to vote in enough opposition into Parliament to deny them their customary two-thirds majority. Only then will the PAP MPs start to pay attention to what NMP Siew is saying. Otherwise he is merely speaking to a stone wall.
When will we have a strong, credible and fearless opposition in Parliament to check on the PAP? It will forever be a dream unless the PAP system is completely dismantled and the people will have to heap political pressure on the PAP either to reform itself or get forced out of office by the sheer might of People Power which explains why ridiculous laws will be introduced soon to forbid public assembly of one person. (this is not a grammer mistake, it is the truth)
We do not believe in engaging the PAP and neither do we encourage netizens to step out of the cloak of anonymity to score some meaningless “credibility” points. It is a pure waste of time and will defeat the purpose instead as it will inevitably cause one to impose self-censorship on one’s speech.
Speak up only when we have real bargaining power in Parliament and not now under the thumb of a fascist state which pays lip service to democracy and will not hesitate to ride roughshod over us as and when it desires.
We have a Prime Minister who openly proclaimed he will fix the opposition if more of them were to be elected into Parliament, one who defended the merits of a one-party state and whose father threatened to send in the army if the opposition gains power via a “freak election”.
A leopard never changes its spots, and don’t pin any hopes on its cub too. I sincerely wish NMP Siew all the best in his second application for another NMP term. Unfortunately, his presence will do nothing more other than putting the opposition MPs like Low Thia Kiang to shame.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26347.1
In a full page interview with the Straits Times, NMP Siew Kum Hong urged Singaporeans to speak up if they believe in active citizenry.
With due respect to Mr Siew, he is one of the more credible NMPs around. In fact he initiated many debates on controversial issues which the elected opposition MPs had conveniently chosen to turn a blind eye to such as the losses incurred by GIC.
Though he had earned himself a reputation as an outspoken NMP, what did he achieve politically in the end? In spite of the issues he had raised which were debated in Parliament and given extensive publicity by the media, the status quo remains.
Nothing ever changes in Singapore once the ruling party has made a decision. Parliament is a mere “wayang” which they can easily do without. What’s Parliament to them when they can decide whether it is in their interest to hold a by-election? What’s there to “debate” when the key decision-makers had already made a decision?
Active citizenry is a myth in a totalitarian one-party state like Singapore where the rubber-stamp Parliament passes legislation according to the wimps and fancies of a tinpot dictator with scant regards for public opinion.
When the Prime Minister first mooted the idea of setting up casinos in Singapore, there was a huge backlash. Many MPs, including some vocal PAP backbenchers voiced their opposition against the proposal. What happened eventually? They simply bull-doze it through.
Again in 2007, there was widespread opposition to the PAP’s proposal of raising their own salaries by over 80% to peg it to the 8 highest earners in the private sector. There was literally no support on the ground even from the PAP grassroots. So what? The unpalatable pay hike was still forced down our throats.
Let’s admit it. The PAP HATES active citizenry. It doesn’t like any form of opposition to its rule. All it ever wanted is to have a subservient, docile and in a way brainless, unquestioning and unthinking populace to make life easier for itself. Since they work solely on “trust”, we are expected to trust them to run the country with little accountability or transparency.
The interview with NMP Siew is nothing more but another publicity gimmick of the state-controlled media to paint a positive image of the PAP as an understanding, tolerant and liberal government.
Mr Siew quoted himself as an example to insinuate that as long one is sincere, honest, and polite, the PAP will reciprocate in kind. Has he forgotten about Francis Seow, Jeyaretnam and Tang Liang Hong?
The PAP is not fixing Siew yet because he is not a threat to them. If Siew set up his own political party and start campaigning for the PAP system to be overhauled like Jeyaretnam, he will find his trivial mistakes made 10 years ago being dredged out, sensationalized and he will soon be out of job.
There’s no need to be polite with political hooligans like some leaders in the PAP. We speak up not to engage them, but to expose and embarrass them for who they really are - a bunch of shameless shenigans taking taxpayers’ monies to serve their own party’s partisan interest at the expense of Singapore’s.
For those of you who disagree with me, ask yourself why so few Singaporeans are willing to step forward to join politics. The PAP can easily solve the problem by abolishing the GRC system, refrain from launching defamation suits against opponents and liberalize the media. It is absolutely in the interest of Singapore to have a more pluralistic political landscape, but of course it is against the PAP’s own interest to do so. What is good for the nation isn’t necessarily good for the party and when a choice has to be made, the party’s interest will easily override that of the nation anytime.
While I respect NMP Siew for his courage to step forward, I do not share his enthusiasm and belief that speaking up will make any difference in a totalitarian one-party stalinist state like Singapore where the seat of power still lie pretty much in the hands of one power-hungry man who simply refuse to go away though he has overstayed his welcome.
Not too long ago, the Malaysian Barisan government behaves like a rogue state to its own citizens like the PAP government too, ignoring the pleas from the ethnic minorities to perpetuate racist policies in order to maintain its political hegemony.
After its customary two-thirds majority was denied by the opposition in the general election last year, it now has to eat the humble pie and listen to the electorate. It is even singing the tune of the opposition in a desperate attempt to win back lost ground.
The only way to make the PAP sit up and listen to us is to vote in enough opposition into Parliament to deny them their customary two-thirds majority. Only then will the PAP MPs start to pay attention to what NMP Siew is saying. Otherwise he is merely speaking to a stone wall.
When will we have a strong, credible and fearless opposition in Parliament to check on the PAP? It will forever be a dream unless the PAP system is completely dismantled and the people will have to heap political pressure on the PAP either to reform itself or get forced out of office by the sheer might of People Power which explains why ridiculous laws will be introduced soon to forbid public assembly of one person. (this is not a grammer mistake, it is the truth)
We do not believe in engaging the PAP and neither do we encourage netizens to step out of the cloak of anonymity to score some meaningless “credibility” points. It is a pure waste of time and will defeat the purpose instead as it will inevitably cause one to impose self-censorship on one’s speech.
Speak up only when we have real bargaining power in Parliament and not now under the thumb of a fascist state which pays lip service to democracy and will not hesitate to ride roughshod over us as and when it desires.
We have a Prime Minister who openly proclaimed he will fix the opposition if more of them were to be elected into Parliament, one who defended the merits of a one-party state and whose father threatened to send in the army if the opposition gains power via a “freak election”.
A leopard never changes its spots, and don’t pin any hopes on its cub too. I sincerely wish NMP Siew all the best in his second application for another NMP term. Unfortunately, his presence will do nothing more other than putting the opposition MPs like Low Thia Kiang to shame.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26347.1
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
G-20 makes it worse
Apr 8, 2009
G-20 makes it worse
By Hossein Askari and Noureddine Krichene
The contrast between the Group of 20 summit communiques of November 2008 and April 2009 is striking. While the first communique recognized that the surest way to restore economic growth was to rely on capitalism, international cooperation and the private sector, the second abandoned these principles and called for unprecedented fiscal-cum-money intervention to restore growth.
US President Barack Obama was not present at the November meeting; his absence, however, created uncertainty among leaders regarding the course of G-20 policy. With Obama leading the April G-20 summit, the group has been pushed to the far left.
While a G-20 subgroup continues to enjoy robust economic growth, large external surpluses and sound financial systems, the largest subgroup, ironically composed of leading industrial countries, continues to suffer from self-inflicted wounds - namely, it has bankrupted its own financial system thanks to expansionary fiscal and monetary policies and unprecedented credit booms in the past decade.
These policies have now led to gigantic bailouts that will imperil fiscal balances for some time to come, guaranteed bank debts, and to calls for public-private bad banks to buy toxic assets. Economic performances in this group have deteriorated between the two summit dates.
US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's aggressive monetary policy and anti-depression doctrine has pushed interest rates to zero and resulted in the US unemployment rate jumping from 4.3% in 2007 to 8.5% in March 2009. Similar disasters have plagued the UK, the European Union and Japan. Thanks to unrestrained fiscal-cum-monetary policy, these advanced industrial countries are now experiencing contracting output and rising unemployment.
Frustrated by impotent fiscal and monetary stimuli, this group has desperately pushed cheap and unconditional fictitious loans, created from thin air, on developing countries - the international equivalent of the subprime market - in the hope of creating markets for their industrial products. Hence, after saddling their domestic subprime with debt, these G-20 countries have turned to bankrupting developing countries with purely counterfeited money. Such a strategy, while dangerously inflationary, will export unemployment to these developing countries, blow-up their banking systems, trap them in another debt cycle and impair their development process.
The communique reads:
We are undertaking an unprecedented and concerted fiscal expansion, which will save or create millions of jobs which would otherwise have been destroyed, and that will, by the end of next year, amount to US$5 trillion, raise output by 4%, and accelerate the transition to a green economy. We are committed to deliver the scale of sustained fiscal effort necessary to restore growth ... Our central banks have also taken exceptional action. Interest rates have been cut aggressively in most countries, and our central banks have pledged to maintain expansionary policies for as long as needed and to use the full range of monetary policy instruments, including unconventional instruments, consistent with price stability ... Taken together, these actions will constitute the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus and the most comprehensive support programme for the financial sector in modern times. Acting together strengthens the impact and the exceptional policy actions announced so far must be implemented without delay. Today, we have further agreed over $1 trillion of additional resources for the world economy through our international financial institutions and trade finance ... We will conduct all our economic policies cooperatively and responsibly with regard to the impact on other countries and will refrain from competitive devaluation of our currencies and promote a stable and well-functioning international monetary system.
Undeniably, the communique reads as one of Obama's election stump speeches, with the heavy economic and financial imprints of his economic advisor Larry Summers, now Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Bernanke. At home, with a view to creating 4 million jobs, Obama has launched the largest-ever stimulus program at $787 billion; his budget deficit, at $1.85 trillion or 13% of US GDP, has shattered all records and pushed US public debt to unsustainable levels, while the Fed has been creating money out of thin air in the trillions of dollars.
Bernanke has pushed the US monetary policy on a course with incalculable economic costs that could end the era of dollar as a reserve currency. The outright monetization of Obama's fiscal deficits could send the US dollar to record lows and unleash the worst inflation in recent US history.
With Obama's unsound financial policies replicated by the rest of the world, it is impossible to forecast what the state of the world economy will be before the next G-20 meeting. Although G-20 experts were predicting 4% real economic growth, they forget that the private sector had never been subjected to such economic uncertainty and fear. In such a dire financial setting, it is impossible to predict what will be the state of the world economy in the medium-term. How is it possible to regain control of fiscal and money discipline? The G-20 has failed to restore confidence for a growing economy but has instead paved the way towards growing chaos.
The communique stipulates that "Taken together, these actions will constitute the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus and the most comprehensive support programme for the financial sector in modern times."
The G-20 experts failed to realize that over the past decade leading industrial countries have been experiencing the most expansionary policy in their history, yet the "Harvard multiplier" has so far been working in reverse. They forgot these same expansionary policies led to speculation and bankruptcies, pushed oil prices to $147 per barrel, triggered energy and food protests around the world, disrupted airline industries, trucking and marine shipping, played havoc with real economies, and finally ended up with a global economic recession.
Intensifying fiscal and monetary assault will eventually revive the nightmares of 2008 and could cause more financial disorder. While the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has renounced a previously announced 4.2 million barrels a day cut in oil output with a view to stabilizing oil prices and supporting global economic recovery, the G-20 wants to stoke oil prices. With oil prices reflecting persistent upward pressure, prospects for world economic recovery could become dim.
The G-20 experts seem oblivious to the ravages already caused by monetary and fiscal expansion and seem to deny simple truths characterizing these policies. Namely, large fiscal deficits reduce real savings, crowd out private investment and undermine economic growth. Second, monetary expansion has regularly caused speculation and banking crises. Zero interest rates will erode real capital and strangulate banking and financial intermediation.
A simple economic principle evaded those experts: the real aggregate demand is downward sloping: a depreciation of money in the form of a rising general price level depresses real output. Some call it long-term stagflation. In particular, in recession, monetary policy finances pure consumption loans and depletes savings and investment - both necessary for economic growth. It contributes to deepening recession and strengthening inflationary expectations.
The communique announced a world gold rush: "Today, we have further agreed over $1 trillion of additional resources for the world economy through our international financial institutions and trade finance."
The G-20 applauded Mexico's request for $40 billion under the International Monetary Fund's newly created flexible credit line, irrespective of past Mexican debt crises and the country's inability to service its debt. In this atmosphere, maybe the G-20 would even applaud a multi-billion request from Zimbabwe!
While domestic banks should lend against good collateral, conditionality with international loans was meant to enhance the chance of repayment. When conditionality is removed, a lender has no reason for blaming the borrower. All countries will be washed with billions of dollars in reserves created out of nothing and will spend furiously with fake money that has no real counterpart.
With oil reserves depleting in most countries and oil output stacked at 86 million barrels per day, the impact on oil prices will be obvious. In the same vein, with depleting food stocks as noted recently by the head of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization and pressures on the limited cultivable land, the effect on food prices could be overwhelming. Developing countries will have to run large fiscal deficits and expand domestic money supply to absorb new reserves and mountains of unconditional low interest loans.
When this cheap booze is all gone, they will be left with bankrupt public treasuries, dysfunctional domestic banking systems and a splitting hangover. As in the 1980s and 1990s, their economies will be in a dire state of disintegration, with boatloads of people sinking on their way to finding jobs elsewhere.
The communique became totally far-fetched in stating: "We will conduct all our economic policies cooperatively and responsibly with regard to the impact on other countries and will refrain from competitive devaluation of our currencies and promote a stable and well-functioning international monetary system."
This statement is certainly betrayed by a furious war among leading central banks in competitive devaluation and unorthodox monetary expansion. Each leading central bank has been endeavoring to depreciate its own currency and avoid any appreciation; interest rates have been cut to the lowest seen in the past three centuries. Exchange-rate instability has been at about its highest.
How monetary stability could be promoted in a system of floating rates is a question that may elude economists, with G-20 experts holding the secret! The blunt contradiction is inescapable in this statement: "Our central banks have also taken exceptional action. Interest rates have been cut aggressively in most countries, and our central banks have pledged to maintain expansionary policies for as long as needed and to use the full range of monetary policy instruments, including unconventional instruments." The more central banks engage in exceptional action, the more instability and contraction of trade volumes will be inflicted on the world economy.
Under the nostalgia of the George W Bush credit boom, the G-20 wanted to create an Obama credit boom at even far greater scale than has existed in modern times. The Obama team is beating the drums and making everyone dance the world over. Financial regulation becomes totally irrelevant when central banks are in pursuit of destroying currency. The world is now doomed to medium-term economic instability. So many uncertainties loom ahead. The inflationary consequences of G-20 approach could be devastating and may push vulnerable countries to the brink of starvation as seen in 2008.
Obama was elected to implement change. Unfortunately, his policy gurus have decided only to intensify previous financial policies and spread them far and wide. When insanity spreads you can only hide your sanity. Spreading insanity around the world is itself insanity. The G-20 could have spared the world economy unnecessary suffering. Unfortunately, it chose the continuation of financial disorder. The world cries out for private investment and growth, while the G-20 creates fake money and impairs growth.
Hossein Askari is professor of international business and international affairs at George Washington University. Noureddine Krichene is an economist at the International Monetary Fund and a former advisor, Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26431.1
G-20 makes it worse
By Hossein Askari and Noureddine Krichene
The contrast between the Group of 20 summit communiques of November 2008 and April 2009 is striking. While the first communique recognized that the surest way to restore economic growth was to rely on capitalism, international cooperation and the private sector, the second abandoned these principles and called for unprecedented fiscal-cum-money intervention to restore growth.
US President Barack Obama was not present at the November meeting; his absence, however, created uncertainty among leaders regarding the course of G-20 policy. With Obama leading the April G-20 summit, the group has been pushed to the far left.
While a G-20 subgroup continues to enjoy robust economic growth, large external surpluses and sound financial systems, the largest subgroup, ironically composed of leading industrial countries, continues to suffer from self-inflicted wounds - namely, it has bankrupted its own financial system thanks to expansionary fiscal and monetary policies and unprecedented credit booms in the past decade.
These policies have now led to gigantic bailouts that will imperil fiscal balances for some time to come, guaranteed bank debts, and to calls for public-private bad banks to buy toxic assets. Economic performances in this group have deteriorated between the two summit dates.
US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's aggressive monetary policy and anti-depression doctrine has pushed interest rates to zero and resulted in the US unemployment rate jumping from 4.3% in 2007 to 8.5% in March 2009. Similar disasters have plagued the UK, the European Union and Japan. Thanks to unrestrained fiscal-cum-monetary policy, these advanced industrial countries are now experiencing contracting output and rising unemployment.
Frustrated by impotent fiscal and monetary stimuli, this group has desperately pushed cheap and unconditional fictitious loans, created from thin air, on developing countries - the international equivalent of the subprime market - in the hope of creating markets for their industrial products. Hence, after saddling their domestic subprime with debt, these G-20 countries have turned to bankrupting developing countries with purely counterfeited money. Such a strategy, while dangerously inflationary, will export unemployment to these developing countries, blow-up their banking systems, trap them in another debt cycle and impair their development process.
The communique reads:
We are undertaking an unprecedented and concerted fiscal expansion, which will save or create millions of jobs which would otherwise have been destroyed, and that will, by the end of next year, amount to US$5 trillion, raise output by 4%, and accelerate the transition to a green economy. We are committed to deliver the scale of sustained fiscal effort necessary to restore growth ... Our central banks have also taken exceptional action. Interest rates have been cut aggressively in most countries, and our central banks have pledged to maintain expansionary policies for as long as needed and to use the full range of monetary policy instruments, including unconventional instruments, consistent with price stability ... Taken together, these actions will constitute the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus and the most comprehensive support programme for the financial sector in modern times. Acting together strengthens the impact and the exceptional policy actions announced so far must be implemented without delay. Today, we have further agreed over $1 trillion of additional resources for the world economy through our international financial institutions and trade finance ... We will conduct all our economic policies cooperatively and responsibly with regard to the impact on other countries and will refrain from competitive devaluation of our currencies and promote a stable and well-functioning international monetary system.
Undeniably, the communique reads as one of Obama's election stump speeches, with the heavy economic and financial imprints of his economic advisor Larry Summers, now Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Bernanke. At home, with a view to creating 4 million jobs, Obama has launched the largest-ever stimulus program at $787 billion; his budget deficit, at $1.85 trillion or 13% of US GDP, has shattered all records and pushed US public debt to unsustainable levels, while the Fed has been creating money out of thin air in the trillions of dollars.
Bernanke has pushed the US monetary policy on a course with incalculable economic costs that could end the era of dollar as a reserve currency. The outright monetization of Obama's fiscal deficits could send the US dollar to record lows and unleash the worst inflation in recent US history.
With Obama's unsound financial policies replicated by the rest of the world, it is impossible to forecast what the state of the world economy will be before the next G-20 meeting. Although G-20 experts were predicting 4% real economic growth, they forget that the private sector had never been subjected to such economic uncertainty and fear. In such a dire financial setting, it is impossible to predict what will be the state of the world economy in the medium-term. How is it possible to regain control of fiscal and money discipline? The G-20 has failed to restore confidence for a growing economy but has instead paved the way towards growing chaos.
The communique stipulates that "Taken together, these actions will constitute the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus and the most comprehensive support programme for the financial sector in modern times."
The G-20 experts failed to realize that over the past decade leading industrial countries have been experiencing the most expansionary policy in their history, yet the "Harvard multiplier" has so far been working in reverse. They forgot these same expansionary policies led to speculation and bankruptcies, pushed oil prices to $147 per barrel, triggered energy and food protests around the world, disrupted airline industries, trucking and marine shipping, played havoc with real economies, and finally ended up with a global economic recession.
Intensifying fiscal and monetary assault will eventually revive the nightmares of 2008 and could cause more financial disorder. While the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has renounced a previously announced 4.2 million barrels a day cut in oil output with a view to stabilizing oil prices and supporting global economic recovery, the G-20 wants to stoke oil prices. With oil prices reflecting persistent upward pressure, prospects for world economic recovery could become dim.
The G-20 experts seem oblivious to the ravages already caused by monetary and fiscal expansion and seem to deny simple truths characterizing these policies. Namely, large fiscal deficits reduce real savings, crowd out private investment and undermine economic growth. Second, monetary expansion has regularly caused speculation and banking crises. Zero interest rates will erode real capital and strangulate banking and financial intermediation.
A simple economic principle evaded those experts: the real aggregate demand is downward sloping: a depreciation of money in the form of a rising general price level depresses real output. Some call it long-term stagflation. In particular, in recession, monetary policy finances pure consumption loans and depletes savings and investment - both necessary for economic growth. It contributes to deepening recession and strengthening inflationary expectations.
The communique announced a world gold rush: "Today, we have further agreed over $1 trillion of additional resources for the world economy through our international financial institutions and trade finance."
The G-20 applauded Mexico's request for $40 billion under the International Monetary Fund's newly created flexible credit line, irrespective of past Mexican debt crises and the country's inability to service its debt. In this atmosphere, maybe the G-20 would even applaud a multi-billion request from Zimbabwe!
While domestic banks should lend against good collateral, conditionality with international loans was meant to enhance the chance of repayment. When conditionality is removed, a lender has no reason for blaming the borrower. All countries will be washed with billions of dollars in reserves created out of nothing and will spend furiously with fake money that has no real counterpart.
With oil reserves depleting in most countries and oil output stacked at 86 million barrels per day, the impact on oil prices will be obvious. In the same vein, with depleting food stocks as noted recently by the head of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization and pressures on the limited cultivable land, the effect on food prices could be overwhelming. Developing countries will have to run large fiscal deficits and expand domestic money supply to absorb new reserves and mountains of unconditional low interest loans.
When this cheap booze is all gone, they will be left with bankrupt public treasuries, dysfunctional domestic banking systems and a splitting hangover. As in the 1980s and 1990s, their economies will be in a dire state of disintegration, with boatloads of people sinking on their way to finding jobs elsewhere.
The communique became totally far-fetched in stating: "We will conduct all our economic policies cooperatively and responsibly with regard to the impact on other countries and will refrain from competitive devaluation of our currencies and promote a stable and well-functioning international monetary system."
This statement is certainly betrayed by a furious war among leading central banks in competitive devaluation and unorthodox monetary expansion. Each leading central bank has been endeavoring to depreciate its own currency and avoid any appreciation; interest rates have been cut to the lowest seen in the past three centuries. Exchange-rate instability has been at about its highest.
How monetary stability could be promoted in a system of floating rates is a question that may elude economists, with G-20 experts holding the secret! The blunt contradiction is inescapable in this statement: "Our central banks have also taken exceptional action. Interest rates have been cut aggressively in most countries, and our central banks have pledged to maintain expansionary policies for as long as needed and to use the full range of monetary policy instruments, including unconventional instruments." The more central banks engage in exceptional action, the more instability and contraction of trade volumes will be inflicted on the world economy.
Under the nostalgia of the George W Bush credit boom, the G-20 wanted to create an Obama credit boom at even far greater scale than has existed in modern times. The Obama team is beating the drums and making everyone dance the world over. Financial regulation becomes totally irrelevant when central banks are in pursuit of destroying currency. The world is now doomed to medium-term economic instability. So many uncertainties loom ahead. The inflationary consequences of G-20 approach could be devastating and may push vulnerable countries to the brink of starvation as seen in 2008.
Obama was elected to implement change. Unfortunately, his policy gurus have decided only to intensify previous financial policies and spread them far and wide. When insanity spreads you can only hide your sanity. Spreading insanity around the world is itself insanity. The G-20 could have spared the world economy unnecessary suffering. Unfortunately, it chose the continuation of financial disorder. The world cries out for private investment and growth, while the G-20 creates fake money and impairs growth.
Hossein Askari is professor of international business and international affairs at George Washington University. Noureddine Krichene is an economist at the International Monetary Fund and a former advisor, Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26431.1
JBJ's was the good fight
JBJ's was the good fight
OCT 8 — One of my most vivid memories of the late former Singaporean opposition leader Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam dates back to 1986. I was waiting in a car, with my mother, outside the dull grey walls of the Queenstown prison, while my grandfather – Joshua Samuel Mahadevan, Jeyaretnam's elder brother – was inside on an unannounced visit.
I remember being in a hopeless muddle about the whole situation; in my five year-old mind prison equated to "bad guy", yet I couldn't imagine my granduncle being anything close to a bad guy.
He was certainly strange: a larger-than-life character, with his dry Gray's Inn inflections and formidable muttonchops, who addressed children with a benevolent formality that always left me weirded-out and thrilled.
But a bad guy? My grandfather often couldn't see the point of Jeyaretnam's struggle; I don't know much about what transpired between the brothers that day in Queenstown, but I do know that my grandfather asked a question – why? Why go to these lengths?
Mercifully Jeyaretnam only ever went to prison once, and for a month; some of his countrymen have been far less fortunate.
However, the relative absence of prison time in Jeyaretnam's life seems to me to indicate not his enemies' sense of right and wrong, but the results of their analyses into the costs and benefits of martyring him.
He was never a particularly good politician, although I mean that more as a compliment than anything else – his stubbornness and his principles almost always superseded his pragmatism. His belief was that any compromise with a tainted system was tainted by association.
The battle that Jeyaretnam waged in Singapore predates Singapore itself, and is one of the perennial problems of government – where do you draw the line that limits state interference in individual lives?
On the one hand stands the liberal ideal of individual freedoms, and on the other stands the need for security.
For Jeyaretnam, no amount of security was worth the sacrifice of individual liberties to which Singaporeans have grown accustomed, while for his nemeses within the ruling People's Action Party, security and prosperity (particularly their own) are paramount over individual rights.
The English school of value pluralism philosophers, which includes such luminaries as Isaiah Berlin, Joseph Raz and John Gray, accurately describe these wrestling values as incommensurable – that is, they cannot be measured on a common scale.
It's impossible to say how much liberty we ought to forego for how much security, and vice-versa – it would be like determining how much time you should spend reading Shakespeare as opposed to listening to Stravinsky.
Even worse, one value seems to necessarily benefit at the expense of the other – so, for example, life in a multiracial society is genuinely more secure when freedom of speech is curtailed to bar racist statements.
Seen in this light, the PAP argument starts to make sense. I used to vehemently deny Singaporeans the right to have an opinion on issues of right and wrong, demanding that they first stare long and hard at the injustices tattooed all over their national visage.
If any of them put forward the old PAP line that a tiny country needed an iron fist to make up for its vulnerable position, I would declare that if they thought life was all about money in the bank and entertainment on the TV screen, then they deserved to be sheep.
Still, just because I want a larger sphere of liberties, and a less powerful government, and am willing to accept as trade-offs potential inefficiency and loss of economic impetus, doesn't mean that Singaporeans should feel the same way.
Ultimately, if these are incommensurable values, then Jeyaretnam's fight was merely a good fight, rather than the good fight.
Harry Lee Kuan Yew, founding father, ex-Prime Minister, ex-Senior Minister and current Minister Mentor of Singapore, has always maintained that because of the country's precarious position, individuals have to give up their own liberties in the interest of keeping the state together.
That wasn't the final word, though – in giving up their liberties, Singaporeans submit to a directing will.
And since the PAP is essentially a construction of Lee Kuan Yew's will, the message drilled into Singapore has basically been: Harry Lee knows best, he will guide you in the best possible direction, so just listen and obey.
Of course, Lee has a habit of fraudulently presenting this as an aspect of "Asian values", which are supposedly incompatible with "western-style" liberties, yet the underlying argument is logically sound.
If I know what's best for my people, then even if they don't know it themselves, they're best off doing things my way.
In some ways they're actually freer if I decide things for them. This is an ugly aspect of a particular conception of liberty, which Berlin referred to as "positive liberty" – the idea that a person should be free not only from outside control, but from the control of their own "lesser" faculties, such as their lustfulness, weakness of intellect or short-sightedness.
Many of the harshest dictatorships in history have had their ideology backboned by a concept of positive liberty, wherein people are coerced into accepting the command of leaders who "know best". Singapore, as the world's only economically successful fascist state, is no exception. The history of the island republic is in many ways the history of Lee's will bludgeoned into others, as outlined in books such as Chris Lydgate's Lee's Law and Francis Seow's The Media Enthralled (Singapore Revisited).
Lee himself, quite tellingly, loved employing the terminology of mental illness to describe Jeyaretnam – calling him "disturbed", and in need of "psychoanalysis" – to my mind, Lee genuinely believed that Jeyaretnam's obsession with individual liberties was some kind of perversion that impeded the One True Reason.
The troublesome fact remains, though, that if Singaporeans accept this state of affairs, then however silly it may seem to me, I cannot really call it wrong.
Coercion, or the threat of coercion, is integral to most societies, after all.
Furthermore, at least on the face of things, Singapore is a democracy, and there has never been any indication of vote-rigging in the electoral processes – the government seems to prefer rigging everything but the vote – so if enough citizens are willing to accept their lack of liberties, then that's up to them.
Jeyaretnam always evinced a remarkable amount of faith in Singaporeans, saying that "the strength is in the ordinary people".
He adhered to the tenet of John Stuart Mill's liberalism, that people should be allowed to do and say whatever they wish, provided that they bring no harm to others.
Of course, the PAP argued that the nation could come to much harm if people were to do and say as they wished, but Jeyaretnam always maintained that what Lee and Co were most scared of was not that harm may come to the nation, but to their own stranglehold on power. He believed not only that Singaporeans were fit to govern themselves, but also that they wanted self-government, badly enough that if the PAP were only shown to be vulnerable and crooked, the public would take back the power without hesitation.
The instrument the PAP has employed to bully Jeyaretnam and others like him is the law; their usual strategy is to target it at the point of interpretation – the judiciary – to ensure that the reading of the law is favourable to their case. Lydgate writes of one Singaporean judge who ruled that PAP leaders had not broken a law prohibiting politicians from being within a 200-metre radius of polling stations on election days, because they had been inside a polling station, and not within a 200-metre radius of it.
The PAP's litigious contrivances were always cruelly ironic, because Jeyaretnam loved the law far more than he ever loved politics.
He believed strongly in the judiciary's duty to protect citizens from the state, through independent and honourable legal interpretations. No matter how much the courts were used against him, he always submitted to due procedure, and respected the legal system – perhaps, some would say, a little too much. Funnily enough, it was Jeyaretnam's unremitting respect for the law that finally made clear the PAP's disrespect for it.
The more he fought, the more ridiculous their rulings and lawsuits became, and the more the truth – that they value their own interests above any law – became naked for all to see.
Jeyaretnam believed that to lead Singaporeans down the path to self-government, he needed to battle from within the legal system, to show them that they can stand up for their rights as individuals.
So he devoted his life to applying his personal principles of individual sanctity, democracy and judicial integrity against the PAP, principles that Lee Kuan Yew himself vowed to break. "I will make him beg for mercy", he once said of Jeyaretnam… but it was a battle that Hatchet Man Harry could never win; Jeyaretnam carried his principles intact to his dying day.
I have always had my doubts about Jeyaretnam's faith in Singaporeans.
Three years ago I finally worked up the guts to ask him the question that my grandfather had asked in Queenstown prison: why? Why fight for people who don't fight with you, who aren't grateful, who don't even seem to understand what it is you're fighting for? They seem to have happily swallowed the PAP's prescription of sugar-coated pills, so why fight for them? With a faintly bitter smile, he said, "But surely those are the people for whom you should be fighting the most."
In the aftermath of his death I have seen an overwhelmingly reverent, and even remorseful, tone in the condolence messages and posts on many Singaporean blogs and forums.
There have even been pledges to never forget the values that Jeyaretnam fought for, and attempts to have his life officially commemorated. His faith in and his fight for the common Singaporean may yet bear the fruits he never lived to see.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26332.1
OCT 8 — One of my most vivid memories of the late former Singaporean opposition leader Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam dates back to 1986. I was waiting in a car, with my mother, outside the dull grey walls of the Queenstown prison, while my grandfather – Joshua Samuel Mahadevan, Jeyaretnam's elder brother – was inside on an unannounced visit.
I remember being in a hopeless muddle about the whole situation; in my five year-old mind prison equated to "bad guy", yet I couldn't imagine my granduncle being anything close to a bad guy.
He was certainly strange: a larger-than-life character, with his dry Gray's Inn inflections and formidable muttonchops, who addressed children with a benevolent formality that always left me weirded-out and thrilled.
But a bad guy? My grandfather often couldn't see the point of Jeyaretnam's struggle; I don't know much about what transpired between the brothers that day in Queenstown, but I do know that my grandfather asked a question – why? Why go to these lengths?
Mercifully Jeyaretnam only ever went to prison once, and for a month; some of his countrymen have been far less fortunate.
However, the relative absence of prison time in Jeyaretnam's life seems to me to indicate not his enemies' sense of right and wrong, but the results of their analyses into the costs and benefits of martyring him.
He was never a particularly good politician, although I mean that more as a compliment than anything else – his stubbornness and his principles almost always superseded his pragmatism. His belief was that any compromise with a tainted system was tainted by association.
The battle that Jeyaretnam waged in Singapore predates Singapore itself, and is one of the perennial problems of government – where do you draw the line that limits state interference in individual lives?
On the one hand stands the liberal ideal of individual freedoms, and on the other stands the need for security.
For Jeyaretnam, no amount of security was worth the sacrifice of individual liberties to which Singaporeans have grown accustomed, while for his nemeses within the ruling People's Action Party, security and prosperity (particularly their own) are paramount over individual rights.
The English school of value pluralism philosophers, which includes such luminaries as Isaiah Berlin, Joseph Raz and John Gray, accurately describe these wrestling values as incommensurable – that is, they cannot be measured on a common scale.
It's impossible to say how much liberty we ought to forego for how much security, and vice-versa – it would be like determining how much time you should spend reading Shakespeare as opposed to listening to Stravinsky.
Even worse, one value seems to necessarily benefit at the expense of the other – so, for example, life in a multiracial society is genuinely more secure when freedom of speech is curtailed to bar racist statements.
Seen in this light, the PAP argument starts to make sense. I used to vehemently deny Singaporeans the right to have an opinion on issues of right and wrong, demanding that they first stare long and hard at the injustices tattooed all over their national visage.
If any of them put forward the old PAP line that a tiny country needed an iron fist to make up for its vulnerable position, I would declare that if they thought life was all about money in the bank and entertainment on the TV screen, then they deserved to be sheep.
Still, just because I want a larger sphere of liberties, and a less powerful government, and am willing to accept as trade-offs potential inefficiency and loss of economic impetus, doesn't mean that Singaporeans should feel the same way.
Ultimately, if these are incommensurable values, then Jeyaretnam's fight was merely a good fight, rather than the good fight.
Harry Lee Kuan Yew, founding father, ex-Prime Minister, ex-Senior Minister and current Minister Mentor of Singapore, has always maintained that because of the country's precarious position, individuals have to give up their own liberties in the interest of keeping the state together.
That wasn't the final word, though – in giving up their liberties, Singaporeans submit to a directing will.
And since the PAP is essentially a construction of Lee Kuan Yew's will, the message drilled into Singapore has basically been: Harry Lee knows best, he will guide you in the best possible direction, so just listen and obey.
Of course, Lee has a habit of fraudulently presenting this as an aspect of "Asian values", which are supposedly incompatible with "western-style" liberties, yet the underlying argument is logically sound.
If I know what's best for my people, then even if they don't know it themselves, they're best off doing things my way.
In some ways they're actually freer if I decide things for them. This is an ugly aspect of a particular conception of liberty, which Berlin referred to as "positive liberty" – the idea that a person should be free not only from outside control, but from the control of their own "lesser" faculties, such as their lustfulness, weakness of intellect or short-sightedness.
Many of the harshest dictatorships in history have had their ideology backboned by a concept of positive liberty, wherein people are coerced into accepting the command of leaders who "know best". Singapore, as the world's only economically successful fascist state, is no exception. The history of the island republic is in many ways the history of Lee's will bludgeoned into others, as outlined in books such as Chris Lydgate's Lee's Law and Francis Seow's The Media Enthralled (Singapore Revisited).
Lee himself, quite tellingly, loved employing the terminology of mental illness to describe Jeyaretnam – calling him "disturbed", and in need of "psychoanalysis" – to my mind, Lee genuinely believed that Jeyaretnam's obsession with individual liberties was some kind of perversion that impeded the One True Reason.
The troublesome fact remains, though, that if Singaporeans accept this state of affairs, then however silly it may seem to me, I cannot really call it wrong.
Coercion, or the threat of coercion, is integral to most societies, after all.
Furthermore, at least on the face of things, Singapore is a democracy, and there has never been any indication of vote-rigging in the electoral processes – the government seems to prefer rigging everything but the vote – so if enough citizens are willing to accept their lack of liberties, then that's up to them.
Jeyaretnam always evinced a remarkable amount of faith in Singaporeans, saying that "the strength is in the ordinary people".
He adhered to the tenet of John Stuart Mill's liberalism, that people should be allowed to do and say whatever they wish, provided that they bring no harm to others.
Of course, the PAP argued that the nation could come to much harm if people were to do and say as they wished, but Jeyaretnam always maintained that what Lee and Co were most scared of was not that harm may come to the nation, but to their own stranglehold on power. He believed not only that Singaporeans were fit to govern themselves, but also that they wanted self-government, badly enough that if the PAP were only shown to be vulnerable and crooked, the public would take back the power without hesitation.
The instrument the PAP has employed to bully Jeyaretnam and others like him is the law; their usual strategy is to target it at the point of interpretation – the judiciary – to ensure that the reading of the law is favourable to their case. Lydgate writes of one Singaporean judge who ruled that PAP leaders had not broken a law prohibiting politicians from being within a 200-metre radius of polling stations on election days, because they had been inside a polling station, and not within a 200-metre radius of it.
The PAP's litigious contrivances were always cruelly ironic, because Jeyaretnam loved the law far more than he ever loved politics.
He believed strongly in the judiciary's duty to protect citizens from the state, through independent and honourable legal interpretations. No matter how much the courts were used against him, he always submitted to due procedure, and respected the legal system – perhaps, some would say, a little too much. Funnily enough, it was Jeyaretnam's unremitting respect for the law that finally made clear the PAP's disrespect for it.
The more he fought, the more ridiculous their rulings and lawsuits became, and the more the truth – that they value their own interests above any law – became naked for all to see.
Jeyaretnam believed that to lead Singaporeans down the path to self-government, he needed to battle from within the legal system, to show them that they can stand up for their rights as individuals.
So he devoted his life to applying his personal principles of individual sanctity, democracy and judicial integrity against the PAP, principles that Lee Kuan Yew himself vowed to break. "I will make him beg for mercy", he once said of Jeyaretnam… but it was a battle that Hatchet Man Harry could never win; Jeyaretnam carried his principles intact to his dying day.
I have always had my doubts about Jeyaretnam's faith in Singaporeans.
Three years ago I finally worked up the guts to ask him the question that my grandfather had asked in Queenstown prison: why? Why fight for people who don't fight with you, who aren't grateful, who don't even seem to understand what it is you're fighting for? They seem to have happily swallowed the PAP's prescription of sugar-coated pills, so why fight for them? With a faintly bitter smile, he said, "But surely those are the people for whom you should be fighting the most."
In the aftermath of his death I have seen an overwhelmingly reverent, and even remorseful, tone in the condolence messages and posts on many Singaporean blogs and forums.
There have even been pledges to never forget the values that Jeyaretnam fought for, and attempts to have his life officially commemorated. His faith in and his fight for the common Singaporean may yet bear the fruits he never lived to see.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26332.1
Malaysia's opposition hails election wins
Malaysia's opposition hails election wins
Posted: 08 April 2009 1929 hrs
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KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia's opposition celebrated Wednesday after big wins in by-elections that it said showed voters rejected Prime Minister Najib Razak who was sworn in last week.
The votes were the first test for Najib and his ambitious agenda to reform the ruling party UMNO -- which represents majority Muslim Malays -- and repair ties with the nation's ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities.
Analysts said they provided a snapshot of the public mood one year after the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional coalition was humbled in general elections that saw the opposition gain unprecedented ground.
"It is a referendum on the Barisan Nasional government, on its inability to carry out promises and reforms since the March 8 elections," opposition leader
Anwar Ibrahim told a press conference.
"Normally the trend is the moment a new prime minister comes... the sentiment lifts, but it didn't happen this time," he said. "It is a major setback not only to Najib but a major change in the thinking of Malaysians."
Anwar said the results of the polls showed that support for the opposition alliance had increased since the 2008 elections, when the opposition won five of Malaysia's 13 states and a third of seats in parliament.
The Barisan Nasional lost two of three by-elections held Tuesday, including a high-profile ballot in northern Perak state for a seat in the national parliament, which the opposition won in a landslide.
The opposition also won a hotly contested vote for a seat in the state parliament of northern Kedah.
In a consolation prize, the coalition won a seat in the state parliament in Sarawak on Borneo island, with a convincing majority that showed it remains the dominant political force in the under-developed region.
Najib's reform promises have been greeted with caution, as his predecessor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi failed to implement his own pledges to tackle corruption and repair race relations during his six years in power.
Analysts said the new leader must now quickly implement policy changes, which will illustrate that he is serious about reform, and win back voters before the next general elections due by 2013.
"What it means is that there is no honeymoon. Malaysians want their changes to happen now, and he cannot expect that rhetoric alone will carry the day," said Ibrahim Suffian from the Merdeka Centre polling firm.
Muhyiddin Yassin, who is expected to be appointed deputy premier when Najib names his Cabinet on Thursday, played down the results of the votes and said it was too early to judge the new administration.
"This is not a referendum on the leadership. Maybe the feel-good factor of the leadership of Najib has yet to sink in with the voters," he said, according to state media.
But Koh Tsu Koon, president of the Chinese-based Gerakan party, which is a member of the ruling coalition, said the results should serve as a call to action for the Barisan Nasional, which has dominated politics for half a century.
"Admittedly, the results showed BN has yet to turn the tide in regaining support from the people, especially the non-Malay voters," he said in a statement.
"We should look at the results as a reminder to BN to effect reform more concretely. If so, it might well be a blessing in disguise for BN in the long run."
- AFP/ir
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26318.1
What is wrong with our Charities?
What is wrong with our Charities?
In Singapore, there are three ways for leaders to make a lot of money. One way is the government (or government linked corporation like CapitaLand). Another way is to use religion like the New Creation Church. The third way is through charities like the old NKF.
This recent scandal is a combination of the last two where you have Buddhist monk Shi Ming Yi being arrested for financial irregularities. (Why would a monk need $20,000 a month?!) Well this is not the only thing the monk lied about. It seems that he also lied about his academic qualifications too! For a man who claims to follow a religion that denies the material world, he seems to follow it really well (money and ego). Skeptic finds this contradiction unfathomable, just like he doesn't understand pedophillic Catholic priests who renounced sexual pleasures.
So don't be fooled by external appearance. Just because some people wear robes (while others wear all white during elections) doesn't mean they can be trusted.
But this post is not about deception, this single incident is just a symptom of a bigger problem that plagues our society. There is little transparency and an entitlement mentality from our Government and it is this attitude that seems to filter down to the masses.
"However, when the core leadership is clean, corruption can be gradually diminished. Both must be prepared to take on the big ones in the highest echelons of the government. This is most painful to do, as I know from experience.Corruption has to be eradicated at all levels of government. But if there is corruption at the highest levels of a government, the problem can become intractable." Lee Kuan Yew (see link for full full speech)
Lee Kuan Yew hit the nail on the head when he said that bad habits become intractable when the people at the top practice them. If we see little transparency at the top, we'll see people hiding their accounting books at the bottom. If we see an entitlement mentality by our ministers at the top, we'll see a similar mentality by the directors of our charitable organisations. It is strange that Lee cannot see that this situation is also applicable to the current generation of PAP leaders.
Ren Ci Hospital wasn't the first charity scandal in Singapore and Skeptic predicts it won't be the last. The CAD is only a reactive tool that can be used to treat the symptoms when they flare up from time to time. The only way to remove the root cause of this problem is to tackle it at the top.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26406.1
In Singapore, there are three ways for leaders to make a lot of money. One way is the government (or government linked corporation like CapitaLand). Another way is to use religion like the New Creation Church. The third way is through charities like the old NKF.
This recent scandal is a combination of the last two where you have Buddhist monk Shi Ming Yi being arrested for financial irregularities. (Why would a monk need $20,000 a month?!) Well this is not the only thing the monk lied about. It seems that he also lied about his academic qualifications too! For a man who claims to follow a religion that denies the material world, he seems to follow it really well (money and ego). Skeptic finds this contradiction unfathomable, just like he doesn't understand pedophillic Catholic priests who renounced sexual pleasures.
So don't be fooled by external appearance. Just because some people wear robes (while others wear all white during elections) doesn't mean they can be trusted.
But this post is not about deception, this single incident is just a symptom of a bigger problem that plagues our society. There is little transparency and an entitlement mentality from our Government and it is this attitude that seems to filter down to the masses.
"However, when the core leadership is clean, corruption can be gradually diminished. Both must be prepared to take on the big ones in the highest echelons of the government. This is most painful to do, as I know from experience.Corruption has to be eradicated at all levels of government. But if there is corruption at the highest levels of a government, the problem can become intractable." Lee Kuan Yew (see link for full full speech)
Lee Kuan Yew hit the nail on the head when he said that bad habits become intractable when the people at the top practice them. If we see little transparency at the top, we'll see people hiding their accounting books at the bottom. If we see an entitlement mentality by our ministers at the top, we'll see a similar mentality by the directors of our charitable organisations. It is strange that Lee cannot see that this situation is also applicable to the current generation of PAP leaders.
Ren Ci Hospital wasn't the first charity scandal in Singapore and Skeptic predicts it won't be the last. The CAD is only a reactive tool that can be used to treat the symptoms when they flare up from time to time. The only way to remove the root cause of this problem is to tackle it at the top.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26406.1
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