Illusio

Much ado about an Elected President

2011-08-25T17:19:00.000+08:00

We hereby state our disinterest and lack of interest in the current election for the Elected President of Singapore.

We might as well vote for a potted plant or a mascot

As the minister of law Mr K Shanmugam has pointed out, the president can be very easily rendered powerless by the cabinet. If the minister - who speaks presumably for the prime minister on this issue - sees the eventual winner of Saturday's election as unsuitable for the post, all respect can go out of the window. The full letter of the law can be ridiculously and unreasonably applied to ensure the president doesn't even have leave to speak to the public on any issue, thank you very much.

Mr K Shanmugam is either the cleverest man in Singapore or its most stupidest man alive. In one single stroke, the minister of law shows any leaders of a future 'rogue government' how to bypass that famed "guardian of the reserves". Either the president is a superman with the power to clamp down the government or he is a potted plant whose presence and function is tolerated by the government. There are no two ways about it - and the law minister and the Ministry of Law has weighed in his legal interpretation that the president is as good as a potted plant. Or a merlion mascot.

The President is guardian of nothing

Once the elected president was the guardian of the reserves of Singapore. Then the constitution was changed so that the president is the guardian of only the current reserves. In one fell swoop, the government negated the meaning of the presidency - though the citizens of Singapore and even the candidates for its 4th election/selection seem unaware.

As 'defined' by the constitution, the current reserves is whatever the sitting government of the day has put in and the past reserves is whatever the government put in the previous parliamentary sessions. Even though the reserves are in fact the earnings of all Singaporeans, the president is only allowed to safeguard, have power and cognizance over the 'past reserves'.

That is all and well if you assume that 'reserves' are money that are locked up safely in a bank. They are not. A large part of our past reserves are in the form of physical assets (like state land) and investments (like shares bought by GIC). Yet investment income and interest is treated as current income, and so are proceeds from sales of land.

In practice, the distinction between past reserves and current reserves is a weak and manufactured one. Need to sell land to keep up or push down property prices? GIC sells off its stake in a bank? You just helped to convert past reserves to current reserves and now the president is guardian of less before the sale.

What does it matter that a president is not guardian of the current reserves? One can imagine a scenario where a rogue government comes into power tomorrow. Why should it rob the entire reserves, killing the goose that laid the golden egg? Why not use the current reserves to ensure that every 5 years come election time, it'll have a private war chest of pork barrel projects to throw at voters? While in between elections, its MPs vote themselves comfortable a pay raise that it will no doubt find some stupid reason to justify? Why should we even assume this isn't already done by the ruling PAP?

My friends, the president is either guardian of all the reserves or he is guardian of nothing. I would have endorsed any candidate who would fight for this in his election platform. No candidate has!

Bringing the gavel down on Workers Party I

2011-08-07T10:31:00.005+08:00

MSN builds campaign against WP and Sylvia Lim

There is an unfolding situation over at Aljunied-Hougang Town Council. No doubt it's been angled ever so subtly by the government-owned media in Singapore as the B plot and convenient distraction to its presidential election due to take place on 27 August. Like a carefully plotted campaign, Singapore's news media is content to put its citizens on a drip on this story, calibrating the slow release of information that may build up to an implied allegation of mismanagement or corruption in the AHTC as well as the original HTC.

The reporters have the full story but they will not release all of it, not all at once - even though they have the fullest access to the information for a long time. Their cynical exercise may be rightly dismissed as a ploy but what if the story does have legs?

Non-transparency? Improper procedures? Or something far worse?

Consider this: Almost immediately after winning the ward of Aljunied, the Workers Party's town council HATC employed a new managing agent without a tender. The managing agent is FM Solutions (FMSS).

What is even more peculiar is how Ms Sylvia Lim, the incoming MP for Aljunied and concurrently the chairman of AHTC and HTC before that, defends this decision. She alleges "the decision to award FMSS the contract without calling for a tender was due to the deadline set by the Ministry of National Development".

That's bizarre logic there, Sherlock! If there's a deadline that the town council can't meet, the most obvious thing to do is to retain the old managing agent temporarily for a year - not replacing the incumbent with a new managing agent!

We see no logic for WP to claim grounds for its extraordinary measures. During the last election, the Aljunied ward had the least amount of redrawing. We do not hear of other town councils having to enact such measures despite their greater turmoil and reorganisation.

What's even more bizarre is how the managing agent was formed and registered with ACRA only just - on 15 May 2011, to be precise. Yes, AHTC terminated the ongoing incumbent whose contract was still in existence so they could hire a managing agent that is literally brand new. According to ACRA reports, this entity was formed not long before the elections with a paid up capital of $500,000 for the expressed sole purpose of providing town council services.

Let's say anyone with access to competent polling would have known Aljunied would fall to the Workers Party. Let's say someone is enterprising enough to do pre-emptively sink half a million to form a company whose sole business activity is "town councils" to bid for the managing agent position with the new Aljunied Town Council. And hire 77 people on short notice. But that doesn't really make sense unless they're very certain they'd get the contract. And it makes even less sense if FMSS was formed just to contest for the sole tender of AHTC.

None of us would believe that a newly established, costly venture will be content to get a one year contract by the back door. For all intents and purposes, FMSS will be awarded the full contract next year by the AHTC and hence help the press build up its allegations of procurement corruption.

One director, five directors, how many key directors?

Now Sylvia assures us that its managing agent's "key directors have been in the field for an average of 20 years". I don't know what this sentence means. No one can know what it means because it means nothing. It's nonsense, gobbledegook, balderdash. Here, I'll hold your hand in this exercise.

What is an "average" and why is it a meaningful number? An average is the sum total of the attributes of all the units divided by the total number of units there are.

The statement "FMSS's directors have been in the field for an average of 20 years" would make sense in this case. But to say that its key directors (i.e. not all directors) have an average of 20 years tells you exactly nothing. It's an intellectually dishonest and cynical statement. It's intellectually dishonest because an average of a subset of a population says nothing about the population, and cynical because legally speaking, all the directors of a company are jointly accountable - key directors or otherwise.

FMSS has 6 directors in total. Which are its "key directors"? What is the average experience of all the directors in FMSS? These are questions we want answered!

Of course ACRA has all this on record. You'll also notice how FMSS suddenly increased from its original sole director, Mr Danny Loh Chong Meng, registering 4 more directors hurriedly on 16 June just after the press started reporting on WP town councils. Who are these mysterious men? Are they normal directors or key directors? Where did they work previously and how much experience do they have in town council management?

Of interest to us is of the 4 new directors found their way into FMSS, a certain How Weng Fan also happens to be a former secretary of HTC, the direct precursor of AHTC. Is this not already a conflict of interest? When did How Weng Fan stop being a secretary of HTC? Was that before or after the formation of FMSS? How many other directors of FMSS have rendered services for HTC in the past? How many of them have rendered exclusive services for HTC?

Now you see why the news media is preparing the ground with the initial charge of non-transparent procedure in the Workers Party's management of the Aljunied-Hougang town council? It's so it can lead to the eventual allegation of corruption in public procurement.

Love me tender, WP

In fact, Sylvia's logic is even more warped if you take into account the fact that AHTC did have the time anyway to call for a tender for four other contracts on 17 June, barely weeks after winning the ward. And again, it made this decision over the option of holding on to its existing contractors temporarily for a year. Yes, AHTC had so little time that it found the time to call for a tender for everything but a managing agent in this Classifieds ad.

It has so little time that the tender period from announcement to closing date is just 2 weeks - a quickie compared to PAP-held town council project tenders, which are normally 3 weeks to 1 month.

To town council service providers and managers, this should set off alarm bells. Players in the town council services industry need at least 3 weeks to compete competently for a tender because of the time frames involved to get the necessary documentation, certificates, and licenses from the Building and Construction Authority.

In a more bizarre note, the AHTC tender insists on a "pay first" scheme. Ordinarily (i.e. how PAP town councils do things), interested contractors attend the tender briefing to get an idea of the scope of work, the coverage and condition of the town council's area. Then if they feel they are up for it and are still interested, they'll pay the money for the tender documents.

In contrast, AHTC demands that interested contractors pay first to attend the tender briefing. Under what circumstances would any contractor take part in this ridiculous process? Your guess is as good as mine, dear readers.

If we assume procurement corruption, AHTC's shortened and backwards tender process will certainly benefit players who are certain they'll get the awards, i.e. players who have links to the town council. It would be interesting to note which companies won the tenders and who heads them. It would fit in with the same shortened and illogical awarding of the management agent contract to FMSS too.

Paul Krugman repudiates High Broderism

2011-06-07T09:15:00.001+08:00

The body of David S Broder lies cold in the ground where he is interred but Paul Krugman sees the need to repudiate the zombie idea of High Broderism, which sometime this decade had infected our very own Cherian George, now known as the apostle of High Broderism in the Archdiocese of Singapore.

Let's review what Cherian George wanted so badly, put in such eloquent words that half the blogosphere with less than half a brain clapped so wildly for:
1. Cherian George wants a fair and balanced blogosphere that he can award give gold stars to
2. In that heavenly blogosphere, the tone will be not too hot and not too cold but just right.
3. In that heavenly blogosphere, there must be a full "spectrum of views": for every anti-ruling party blogger, there should be a pro-ruling party blogger.

Let's review Krugman's own words, the central problem with High Broderism:

This gets at the heart of the current pundit problem. If you say that one of our two major parties has gone completely off the deep end, you’re considered shrill and extreme. But if you don’t say that, if you pretend that someone like Barbour is a reasonable guy with somewhat different views, then you’re fundamentally lying about reality.

Sure, Singapore is a one-party state right now. But we do have ministers like Tharman Shanmugaratnam who insist that the GST flat consumption tax benefits the poor. What do you want us to do to get our gold stars, Cherian George? Have enough bloggers to say that Tharman didn't fail Econs101 but he's merely a reasonable guy with somewhat different views?

And this is precisely what you'll get in the ideal blogosphere of Cherian George and David S Broder: rampant intellectual dishonesty.

Meet Cherian George, Singapore's apostle for High Broderism

2011-05-16T08:25:00.001+08:00

We have never been fans of Mr Cherian George. When we have actually deigned to speak about him, we have not been kind. He has never given us reason to be kind even today and we will tell you why. But you'll need to read his latest essay first.

Cherian George is Singapore's pale imitation of David S Broder and the apostle for High Broderism in the archdiocese of Singapore. For those unfamiliar with American political culture the late Broder was an American journalist who, for want of a better word, was an extremist centrist who made a career and pedestal for himself out of denouncing extremists on both ends of the political aisle.

What needs to be pointed out is that the absolute mid point between two extreme political positions is not necessarily the correct position to take, that the truth can lie closer to the left than it is to the right. Sometimes the truth has a liberal bias. And yet the Overton Window of 'acceptable opinion' has easily been gamed by arch-conservatives shifting their positions further right, with useful fools like Broder advocating a shift to the new centre while denouncing... the extremist leftists!

Now read Cherian George's article again, with the recognition of his unstated High Broderist agenda of advocating a centrist position when reality and logic does not warrant it.

Note for example how Cherian Broder complains of the rabidly anti-government to moderately anti-government stance of online chatter and blogs. He forgets that PM Lee's cabinet has committed several public policy failures over the past 5 years. We would question why Cherian expects the "right mood" for the blogosphere to be more centrist. We'd assume that even wonkish bloggers, say Mr Tan Kin Lian at theonlinecitizen, would see no choice but to critique PAP public policy. Reality does have an anti-PAP bias, people.

Note how cleverly he builds up his High Broderism to present us with a false dilemma which is as intellectually dishonest as it is an advertisement for his centrist at all cost ideology: "it is a mistake to put all our eggs in the government basket, it is surely also a mistake to put all eggs in the opposition or non-government basket."

There are so many things wrong with that statement. I'm happy to point out just two.

1. For an academic, George is surprisingly politically illiterate, conflating the PAP with the government and conflating the opposition with non-government. He forgets that the government includes the civil service talent which advised and implemented the public policy failures of the Minilee government over the years, that non-government talent extends far beyond the political opposition to the much wider civil society.

2. He conflates the singular PAP ideology and talent base with the multiplicity of that of the opposition. Putting all your eggs in a singular solution means you lose all your eggs if that solution proves wrong. Putting all your eggs in multiplicity of solutions doesn't mean you lose all your eggs... But clearly, Cherian George would love to mislead us with his imagery. Just saying.

Make no mistake about it: like the late David S Broder, Cherian George is putting himself up as the arbiter of moderate political discourse, a wise man who can put down any idea and position too radical in his eyes; even if reality, truth, and logic have a certain bias.

Modelling the Singapore elections II: Are Singaporeans stupid voters?

2011-05-15T17:55:00.004+08:00

Why do Singaporeans vote the way they do? What goes on in their heads when they cast a vote? Is the Singaporean voter a rational voter? Or did the Workers' Party and the general opposition call for a First World Parliament flounder embarrassingly, 81 to 6, because there isn't exactly a First World Electorate?

On 7 May 2011, it did turn out that there was an average 6.6% swing against the PAP, Aljunied GRC was lost, and the Workers' Party [WP] became the only opposition party in Singapore's 87-seat parliament, representing almost 40% of Singaporeans with their 6 seats.
Today, we'd like to grapple with three reactions to the results using hard numbers from this election:
1. The politically illiterate voter failed the opposition parties, handing the PAP yet another convincing mandate.
2. Because WP was the only opposition party that has won a GRC, it must have done something right.
3. The GRC system must go; it kicked out a decent minister and let in an airhead.

At first glance, the PAP national vote share of 60.1% and national average swing of 6.6% may suggest that Singaporeans are politically illiterate and as some cynics might put it - fully deserving of the authoritarian government they get.

In these five years, the average Singaporean worked harder, faster and cheaper for shrinking real wages while facing a skyrocketing cost of living in an increasingly crowded country whose infrastructure has not kept along with its immigration policy. In these past five years, Minilee's cabinet has proved itself stuffed silly with clowns who make public blunders of policy and speech and have earned the collective scorn of many. Yet when it comes down to a vote, the PAP was returned with a national average of 60.1% this year, down from 66.6% in 2006.

I present to you table 1: The swing votes of GRCs with unpopular ministers.

Things to note: In GRCs which had not been contested in 2006, I either take the average value of 66.6% as the baseline or 76.6% if the minister in charge was deemed a 'strong' minister with a great coattail then. If a ward has not been contested for more than 2 elections in a row before 2011, the minister is assumed to be a strong one.

(Persistent) groundwork and strong candidates have been advocated by Alex Au, who puts forth the theory that WP won its victory because it had these two principles where it won.

GRC, minister, portfolio	PAP % (2011)	PAP % (2006)	% swing	Party contesting	Groundwork	Strong candidates
Aljunied George Yeo (MFA)	45.3	56.1	10.8	WP	X	X
Marine Parade Goh Chok Tong (SM)	56.7	76.6	19.9	NSP	X	X
Holland-Bukit Timah Vivian Balakrishnan (MCYS)	76.6*	60.1	16.5	SDP		X
Moulmein Kallang Yaacob Ibrahim (Environment)	58.6	69.2	10.6	WP
Bishan Toa-Payoh Wong Kan Seng (National security)	76.6*	56.9	19.7	SPP		X
East Coast Raymond Lim (Transport) Lim Swee Say (NTUC)	54.8	63.9	9.1	WP	X
Sembawang Khaw Boon Wan (Health)	63.9	76.7	12.8	SDP
Tampines Mah Bow Tan (Housing)	57.2	68.5	11.3	NSP

General Observations

The list, as you will realise, is a rogue's gallery, a veritable who's who of the clown show in Minilee's cabinet. Where policy failures have been evident, these are the ministers responsible, and the GRC wards they head.

George Yeo and Mr Goh Chok Tong have been included in the list for comparative purposes - being the biggest losers of this election who are not clowns.

While the vote swing against the PAP has been remarkably consistent in most other wards, an analysis of these battleground wards may teach us a few lessons that other bloggers haven't gleamed yet.

1. Singaporean voters do punish unpopular ministers and policy failures. Note that the swing vote in these wards are in excess of the 6.6% national average.

2. The vote swing is independent of variables such as the opposition party contesting, whether it has done persistent groundwork either in the election or in the years before the election, or whether it fielded strong candidates.

3. Contrary to expectations, Singaporeans did not punish the PAP for its policy failures in cost of living issues (Mah, Yaacob, and the two Lims got off quite well compared to their clown cohort) - but very much for failures of performance, with Vivian Balakrishnan, Wong Kan Seng, and Khaw Boon Wan in a distant third suffering the largest drop in vote shares.

4. Note that Gan Kim Yong, the Minister for Manpower, and Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the Minister for Finance who failed Econs 101, outperformed the national average vote due to the opposition sending in their own clown shows.

4. What is the percentage of voters in Holland-Bukit Timah and Bishan-Toa Payoh who believe in the principle of accountability, that ministers should bite the bullet and resign for embarrassing blunders and incompetence? The answer is: not enough. The answer is also: 9.9% and 13.1% respectively.

5. In general though, the answer in other battleground wards range from 3-5% - which does show that although Singaporeans are mad enough about policy failure and the general steering of the nation by the PAP, they are unwilling to send a strong enough signal to the ruling party. Are Singaporean voters politically illiterate then?

Answering the 3 responses to the election

We now have enough hard numbers to answer all 3 responses

A. "The politically illiterate voter failed the opposition parties, handing the PAP yet another convincing mandate.

While the swing votes suggest there are Singaporeans who behave like rational voters in other democracies, the PAP victories in these wards still show that either i. there are more than enough politically illiterate Singaporeans
ii. understanding that Aljunied would fall, voters felt the PAP should lose a GRC, just not theirs, or
iii. The opposition did not push hard enough on the unpopular ministers.

B. "WP was the only opposition party that has won a GRC, it must have done something right."

The pattern of swing votes show that Singaporean voters in this election did not reward classic retail politics; they voted not for the brand of the opposition, the calibre of team it sent, or even whether that team put in the groundwork.

Instead, they show that Singaporean voters were participating in an election where there is in effect just one party on the ballot - voting for or against the PAP.

C. "The GRC system must go; it kicked out a decent minister and let in an airhead."

Aljunied was won because it was a low-lying fruit on the branch, easily flipping because of the national vote swing. We posit from the table that if the unpopular ministers had been running in single seat wards, Wong Kan Seng and Vivian Balakrishnan could have been wiped out if it had not been for the goodwill generated by their backbencher colleagues, who played their part as grassroots fix-it men.
The GRC system will be kept because it has proven that in good times, popular ministers lend their coattails to green, untested, unready candidates while in bad times, unpopular ministers are bolstered by their decent backbencher colleagues.

Bonus stage: Explaining Aljunied

Aljunied was polled by the PAP (or its hired agents) to be a respectably decent ward fronted by a not-unpopular, non-clown minister. In its projections - published by The Straits Times, Aljunied was expected to be lost by a narrow margin.

We suggest the following as factors that made Aljunied resemble the clown wards more:

1. Clown mentor Papalee's interference, threatening Aljunied voters with everything short of sending in the tanks to punish them if Aljunied flips to WP.

Like it or not, the electorate is getting replaced by younger voters who do not take kindly to this barbaric and backward form of electioneering.

2. Clown mentor Papalee's antagonism of Malay voters in Singapore prior to the elections.

Like it or not, Aljunied precinct is a largely Malay precinct in Aljunied GRC. For that matter, so is the east of Singapore island in general, which explains Alex Au's musings here.

We should also note that the offer to promote Zainal Abidin Rasheed to Speaker of Parliament - a largely ceremonial and toothless role in Singapore - was a clumsy and hamfisted bribe to the Malay electorate, who have sought for years to gain access to the PAP leadership so their community issues can be heard and considered seriously in policy making. That Zainul has since announced his retirement from politics altogether suggests that the Malay community's feedback to him was not entirely pleasant.

3. Lim Hwee Hua's attack on Low Thia Khiang's handling of Hougang Town Council's finances was spun - rightly or wrongly - as a smear campaign. What could have been the equivalent of an October surprise was defanged and turned back onto the PAP, with PR consequences.

Bonus stage 2: Explaining Marine Parade

To be honest, I like Mr Goh Chok Tong. In a cabinet of clowns let by a mentor who just can't shut his mouth, Mr Goh has provided the political savvy needed to navigate a changing Singaporean electorate. Soon enough, I will write a tribute post on him but that will have to wait.

Mr Goh's 19.9% vote swing is the worst result in this year's elections. To be frank, Mr Goh brought this on his head with his dogged defense of Ms Tin Pei Ling. The obviously unqualified and unsuitable political candidate had a negative coattail of her own that clearly tripped up Mr Goh.

Modelling the Singapore elections I: A call for electoral law reform

2011-05-09T04:07:00.002+08:00

Why do Singaporeans vote the way they do? What goes on in their heads when they cast a vote? Is the Singaporean voter a rational voter? Or did the Workers' Party and the general opposition call for a First World Parliament flounder embarrassingly, 81 to 6, because there isn't exactly a First World Electorate?

Despite being a parliamentary democracy based on regular, free, and fair elections, the psychology of the Singaporean voter has remained a black box for decades, preventing the scientific modelling of voter behaviour and trends. This is in part due to laws which prohibit the publishing of polls conducted during the elections period.

If information is a resource, this law prevents the monetisation of particular voting knowledge and hence excludes the participation of major polling organisations. In other words, there is no incentive for a polling organisation to conduct regular snapshots of the electorate.

If this information does not flow freely, the overall intelligence of the electorate is suppressed. In other words, the absence of regular, published, scientific polls reinforces the political illiteracy of an electorate; no one knows for sure - aside from parties who can afford their internal polls - what are the important issues, how the ground stands against various parties. No one knows for certain which demographics are truly in play, what the voter psychodemographics are, the issues pertinent to each demographic, and how to reach out to them.

Embarrassingly enough, Minilee and Goh Chok Tong had to admit that they didn't know what the young voter was thinking and that they didn't know the extent of the anger in the electorate until the election period was under way. From this, we can surmise that even the People's Action Party either does not possess adequate resources to accurately poll the electorate or the polling organisation it hires privately was frankly incompetent.

Taken together, this legal arrangement reinforces the political apathy and illiteracy of the average voter. Without access to knowledge on which national issues are at play, the average voter is atomised and individualised. This privileges election strategies that cater to the voter as a narrow-minded, selfish individual who responds to bribes such as housing upgrading, "grow and share packages", and so on.

The Straits Times and other mainstream media by default are the only entities in Singapore that can get away with conducting informal, unscientific polls and pass them off as credible studies during the elections period. These have very little credibility to academics and statisticians, while having the maximum sway over the average reader due to the pretensions to credibility of these studies.

The electorate, the ruling party, and the opposition parties need access to regular, published polling data so every side can make informed decisions in an election.
I therefore call on our legislators in parliament to end the ban on the publication of polling during the election period in Singapore, and hope you too can join me in this call.

One final question for GE2011

2011-05-07T02:35:00.000+08:00

As a voter, I will ask myself this as I enter the polling booth in a few hours' time.

Has my life improved in the past five years? Or do I count myself among the swathes of Singaporeans who had to work harder, faster, cheaper - while facing rising costs? Did the PAP's idea of their successful five years coincide with how my life went?

Do I see my life improving in the next five years under the incumbents? Do I see myself working even harder, faster, and cheaper in the next five years thanks to what the PAP considers as the right policies for Singapore?

That is all.

On Vivian Balakrishnan

2011-04-26T01:46:00.004+08:00

Vivian Balakrishnan and the video that cannot be named

Last week, Vivian Balakrishnan sounded like a sphinx speaking in riddles and conundrums. Singaporeans are used to the fury of People Action Party attacks on opposition candidates during elections but this time round, the attacks have started even before Nomination Day. Adding to the unseasonal and surreal atmosphere this year is Vivian's mysteriously-worded attacks and half insinuations on Vincent Wijeysingha, a likely candidate for the Singapore Democratic Party.

As previous targets Francis Seow, Tang Liang Hong, Steve Chia, and James Gomez will know, the attacks and scandals begin and suddenly the entire news - and the entire elections - for the next few weeks will seem to revolve around their alleged shortcomings, the attacks from the PAP rising to a crescendo, "Please lah, withdraw!"

Dr Vivian's attacks on Wijeysingha, courtesy of Alex Au:

I am not sure what [the SDP] strategy is. I would like to know whether they have confirmed that they are contesting, I would like to know their line-up. I can’t help feeling that part of the reason for their reticence is they have elements of their agenda they are not prepared to disclose and subject to scrutiny. Eventually, they will have to come out of the closet. (The Straits Times, 20 April 2011)

Dr Vivian Balakrishnan yesterday described the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) team running against him as ‘strange bedfellows’ who do not have a shared vision or ideology...In an interview with The Sunday Times, he said: ‘It has been brought to my attention – in fact it is the SDP which is suppressing a certain YouTube video, which raises some very awkward questions about the agenda and motivations of the SDP and its candidates.’ (The Sunday Times, 24 April 2011)

Why would an attack by a sitting minister on a very naughty opposition candidate be this cryptic? The PAP has never been shy from calling a spade a spade witness its blunt denunciation of Steve Chia in 2003.

Vivian Balakrishnan, the dog whistler

It's taken the blogosphere half a week to figure out the game. Vivian Balakrishnan alludes to the open secret of Dr Vincent Wijeysingha's homosexuality. He alludes to a video taken at a public forum where Dr Wijeysingha discussed issues which were then popularly discussed like the age of consent and the decriminalisation of gay sex in Singapore.

Why would this discussion - in the video, Dr Wijeysingha clearly does not take a stand on either these two issues! - be so horrendously evil? And why would it then warrant such a roundabout, mincing reference?

Vivian Balakrishnan is not a sage, nor a sphinx, nor a fool. He is putting into practice dog whistle politics - carefully parsing his words to target a key demographic. Balakrishnan is not speaking to the press or to the general public that reads The Straits Times.

He is speaking to a key demographic who is not in on the secret but can decipher it with clues like - an agenda, strange bedfellows, closets. He speaks to a demographic that will be spring into action because there is an insinuation of a gay agenda secretly planned by a gay politician who Vivian Balakrishnan simultaneously accuses of fooling his party on his motivations and is also in cahoots with his party to suppress this video.

Consciously or otherwise, Vivian Balakrishnan furiously dog-whistles the demographic consisting of Thio Su Mien, her co-coup leaders at AWARE, Derek Hong, and other concerned conservative Christians. The "Gay agenda", the spectre of homosexual politicians pushing to overturn legislation - an obvious wedge issue for an obvious demographic, dog whistled expertly by a coy minister of very few direct words.

Vivan Balakrishnan, the enabler of religious identity politics

Consciously or otherwise, Vivian Balakrishnan invites Feminist Mentor and conservative Christians to wage another round of their cultural war in Singapore's general election this year. Consciously or otherwise, Balakrishnan will make 2011 the first time in Singapore's history where the conservative Christian vote has wedge issues in the elections brought to their attention.

Vivian Balakrishnan can right now say he meant nothing, that he meant something else which he will not follow up at the present moment but will reveal when the time is ripe, etc. The fact is the wheels have been set into motion and no one can close this Pandora's box.

If a gay man like Alex Au can hear the dog whistle (even though he misconstrues it to be an ad hominem attack), Conservative Christians can likewise hear Balakrishnan's dog whistle shrilly calling. At best, this will be the year in Singapore's history that conservative Christians gel as a voting bloc. At worst - if the PAP allows Balakrishnan to make Wijeysingha this election's key target - this will be the year where a conservative Christian wedge issue becomes the key issue of a general election.

Vivian Balakrishnan - now, thou art Death, the Destroyer of Worlds

I was here when Thio Su Mien and her co-conspirators took over AWARE. I was here when Thio Su Mien and her co-conspirators had Singapore civil society under strain with their religious intolerance for secularism. I was here when it seemed we would no longer be at peace between peoples of different faiths, between believers and secularists.

I for one do not wish there to be a new cultural war between conservative Christians and everyone else. And yet if Vivian Balakrishnan continues his attacks, this will surely be an issue for conservative Christians. After all, who else would Balakrishnan count on to attack Dr Wijeysingha? His fellow cabinet colleagues, who tilted against the conservative Christian coup of a feminist organisation? Papalee, who thinks being gay is in the genes and can't be helped - and welcomes gay MPs? Goh Chok Tong, who went on record to say that gay civil servants are perfectly okay?

And should Balakrishnan succeed in making the sexual orientation of Dr Wijeysingha THE issue of this election, it is clear conservative Christians will rise up to the occasion - together with their leaders, who may feel obliged to weigh in especially when it comes to chusing politicians who may change the legislation. And should the conservative Christians rise up, will not their old foes in the AWARE saga - feminists, members of other religions, secular and agnostic Singaporeans rise up to counteract the perceived rise of religious politics in Singapore?

Perhaps Vivian Balakrishnan is pleased at the new cleavages he has wrought on Singapore society? Perhaps he is satisfied at the introduction of dog whistling to religious groups on wedge issues? Maybe he fancies himself a trailblazer but I see him as a sower of potential destruction in Singapore.

Will there be religious riots or even religious-secular riots in the future because of Vivian Balakrishnan's dog whistling? I'll make no bones about it - Vivian Balakrishnan's comments on Dr Wijeysingha constitute a threat to Singapore's long term stability as a secular, multireligious society.

I call on Vivian Balakrishnan to step down as a candidate in this election. You sir are not fit to be an elected representative of the people. Please lah, withdraw!

General Elections 2011: Retrocognition & recognition

2011-04-24T23:24:00.000+08:00

2011 will be a watershed year for Singapore politics. For the first time in its post-independence history, the opposition manifesto consists of bread and butter issues, its issues resonating with the common man in the street: jobs, wages, cost of living, the property bubble. For the first time in Singapore's post-independence history, the PAP argues on ideological terms, stating a belief in the unproven, unproveable goodness of immaterial concepts and slogans: leadership renewal, foreign talent, securing the future.

The PAP manifesto and platform for this year will cut no ground with the electorate - as other airy-fairy concepts from campaigns of yesteryear have failed with the electorate. The Singaporean voter was never swayed by an appeal to intrinsic goods like "democracy", "checks and balances", so what makes the PAP clown show think the same voter can be swayed by an appeal to how having "leadership renewal" or bringing in foreign talent will make things automatically better for his lot?

The opposition manifesto and platform for this year has already been written for them, out of pure necessity. Hard statistics tell hard truths; Singapore's mandarins may expend millions on international PR campaigns on its 'success story' but this comes with increased scrutiny from statisticians around the world - whose recent reports put in hard numbers the hardship that the average Singaporean has had to endure for the past 15 years of a failed expansionary economic policy by the PAP.

The profile of the Singaporean voter points towards an interest in hard numbers and the tangibles. For the first time in Singapore's post-independence history, the PAP is the party of highfalutin ideas nobody has the time for, and the opposition is the party of bread and butter issues.

This election is the PAP's to lose.

ASEAN diplomacy, Singapore style!

2011-03-10T09:07:00.002+08:00

Will East Timor be allowed to join ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian nations)?

Its application is sponsored by Indonesia, its former occupier. A few days ago, it appeared to be a done deal.

"We have visited all ASEAN countries and everyone has agreed politically that Timor can join," said Ramos-Horta.

That was then. Now, it seems the ASEAN members who have given East Timor's president assurances are backing away. The loudest dissenters, according to Barry Wan from The Straits Times, are a motley group consisting of Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Burma.

Their reasoning?

Singapore has been quite adamant that the prospective new member needs to prepare properly before it can join the bloc.

Cambodia, Laos, and Burma believe ASEAN cannot afford to accept a weak and poor nation as a member.

Vietnam believes accepting a weak nation will put ASEAN more firmly into the Chinese orbit.

In ASEAN, diplomacy is another name for international comedy.

Singapore's diplomats lobbied hard for the entry of the Indochinese nations into ASEAN in its last expansion, knowing full well that Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Vietnam were not properly prepared to join the grouping.

Cambodia, Laos, and Burma certainly didn't object to their own membership applications despite being already preyed upon by the Chinese model of mercantile capitalism prior to them joining ASEAN.

As part of the new Indochinese membership of ASEAN, Vietnam's diplomats and politicians should already know that their neighbours (let's say Burma at the very least) report dutifully to Peking the proceedings of each ASEAN meeting they attend.

East Timor, as a Southeast Asian nation with oil reserves, will attract Chinese diplomacy, development, and political influence whether or not it joins ASEAN.

ASEAN diplomacy deconstructed

Being China's second banana in ASEAN, Singapore will not want to see ASEAN fall further under or more obviously into the Chinese orbit because it means having to compete with 10 other countries who also want to be China's second banana in the region.

Similarly, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma are aware that East Timor is an oil-producing upstart. As a new country that needs to build its infrastructure from scratch, East Timor is terra firma and fresh meat for investment and development funds. The three Indochinese nations do not want China to divert its ASEAN warchest (spent partially on building railroads to connect Peking to Indochina) to this new nation.

As Vietnam's diplomats and leaders are aware, being earmarked as a Chinese satellite doesn't mean co-option as a Chinese ally. Vietnam's China policy consists of resisting Chinese political influence in its ruling party and state organs, while accepting Chinese money. Their opposition to East Timor's membership is motivated by the fear that East Timor will better Vietnam on its own China policy.

Will East Timor be allowed to join ASEAN? Even its biggest detractors in ASEAN think it would do just fine in ASEAN!

From civil service to political service

2011-03-08T09:52:00.004+08:00

If the leaders of the People's Action Party have been more than truthful, their star recruits for the next election will feature senior civil servants such as the former chief of the army and other permanent secretaries, directors, and assistant directors from various ministries.

Prepare for their bundling into strong Group Representative Constituencies, where their ascension from civil service to ~~political service~~ political mastery will be accomplished on the coattails of popular ministers and senior ministers of state.

Prepare for the attempts to convince that these senior civil servants have earned their right to take charge of public policy, that they have exhibited the skills to lead Singapore as the fourth generation of PAP's leaders.

If you have read my previous post, you'll understand that like Wall Street and its increasingly well-educated financiers and their complicated toxic instruments, the Singapore civil service produces increasingly well-educated bureaucrats who have honed to an art the skill of producing improbable KPIs.

In the Singapore civil service, success is measured through how creatively its bureaucrats can create creatively skewed KPIs. The more educated and scholarly the civil servant, the darker his arts of creating such toxic instruments. This trend will continue as long as Singapore's bureaucracy continues employing expensive, highly educated scholars for fast track promotions.

To allow the continued ascension into ~~heaven~~ parliament of Singapore's senior civil servants is to reward their innovation of inventing KPIs and statistics that have less and less correlation to the base reality. In time (if not now), the map will bear no relation to the territory, the statistics will bear no relation to what they measure, the representation of Singapore will bear no relation to anything existing in Singapore.

Senior civil servants are a dead-end product of Singapore's meritocratic system. Do not expect solutions or initiatives from them. I strongly urge the electors to strongly reject PAP GRC slates that include recent senior civil servants.

Wall Street Smarts

2011-03-06T10:32:00.002+08:00

This was your comparative reading for the week:

Wall Street Smarts by Calvin Trillin
Smart Guys and Wall Street by Paul Krugman

As your readings for the week have been suspended for the duration of Singapore's Silly Season, this will be a presentation instead.

What makes a theory valid?

Calvin Trillin is a humorist, not an economist. The essay is a tall tale told by a fictitious man. Wall Street Smarts exists in the realm of fable, establishing timeless truths (or morals) from fabrications.

Why was there a financial crisis in 2008? Trillin tells a story instead, which Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, endorses from his observation of graduate school and the financial service industry.

How do we measure the validity of a piece of qualitative research (or in this case, a qualitative essay)? Without recourse to charts and statistics, the idea expounded must be tested in terms of theoretical rigour, explanatory value (both in context and transferability), and credibility. The biggest test of whether a qualitative piece of reasoning is valid lies very much with its credibility - when deconstructed and restated in its barest axioms, would you be able to buy the explanation whether or not you agree with it?

Wall Street Smarts, restated

Why did the financial crisis of 2008 occur? One could point to the many economic explanations - overinvestment, market bubbles, toxic instruments. But why were overinvestment, market bubbles, and toxic instruments promoted? Why indeed were derivatives invented and then pushed the way they were?

Here, the economists have no answers because the question asks for an exogenous explanation for the crisis, which lies outside the boundaries of the economics discipline.

Trillin in effect proposes an explanation that turns the spotlight on the history of economics, the social anthropology of the finance industry, and the political economy of employment.

1. In the old days where finance was about selling actual industry, the financial services sector largely recruited from a hereditary class of bankers and financiers. Barriers to entry were not too high: a college education would have done it (plus either relatives or friends or classmates in the industry).

2. Owing to comparative lower prestige, the financial services sector did not attract the best, the brightest, the most ambitious, the most greedy.

3. The roots of the financial crises of the late 20th century and 2008 lie in the increase of prestige of the financial services sector, its attraction of the best and the brightest (etc.) graduates, and the increase in university tuition and student debt, and of course the balloon in executive pay in the financial sector compared to other sectors.

4. The last two factors create an industry fronted by innovative, ambitious, and greedy agents who were smart enough to invent complicated toxic instruments, fake products, massaged company accounts...

5. The financial crisis occurs because there is no longer any correlation between the healthy trade of toxic instruments and massaged numbers, and the health of the real economy.

Wall Street Smarts, Singapore civil service edition!

The next best test (other than the very subjective notion of 'credibility') is transferability. What other context, what other industry can we find a similar set of environmental factors?

We note that a post-independence strategy of the Singapore is its much-vaunted introduction of university graduates into its civil service. Gathering pace more in the late 1970s, the policy has morphed into the recruitment of scholars fast-tracked into senior posts and handpicked for politics by the ruling PAP.

Note the increasing salaries and bonuses for the civil service. Note the increasing salaries for MPs and ministers - which only began when the scholars started entering politics. Note the increasing reliance on complicated KPIs and statistics that no one can comprehend and therefore trust, note the trumpeting of dodgy rankings that somehow suggest Singapore is the best nation is this and that and the other. Note the anger from the ground about how far the trumpeted KPIs and rankings are divorced from the everyday reality and experience of normal Singaporeans.

Wall Street Smarts - not just a story that took place a long time ago in a country far, far away.

Tharman Shammugaratnam's crowning clown moment

2011-03-04T00:11:00.002+08:00

Economic illiterate or discombobulator?

Finance minister Tharman Shammugaratnam (PAP-Jurong) continues to perform his clown routine in parliament as he defends Singapore's budget for 2010.

Possible in light of strong criticism from the blogosphere, the minister admitted that yes, the GST is a regressive tax. However, it seems that is his knowledge of basic economics ends here. Tweaking the rate of the consumption tax will benefit higher income groups and foreigners more, he claims. Yes. That's what Shammugaratnam said -- reducing the rate of the GST will benefit the rich more because the bulk of the GST is collected from them.

Which part of regressive tax does finance minister Tharman Shammugaratnam not understand? Why will he not admit or acknowledge what any introductory econs text states baldly - that a consumption tax makes the poor pay a higher proportion of their income than the rich and that reducing the rate of a regressive tax will make the poor pay a lesser proportion?

Either finance minister Tharman Shammugaratnam is an economic illiterate and should be removed from his post forthwith, or the minister a glib discombobulator who thinks that Singaporean citizens and residents are economic illiterates and should be removed from his post forthwith.

Why Tharman Shammugaratnam will rather clown about than tell you the truth

In 2003, the GST was introduced to gradually replace income taxes, the complicated system of duties and levies, and corporate taxes as the main revenue source for the Singapore government.

The advantages? The global rich will be more likely to make Singapore their home or at least vacation home. Singapore, I suspect, has one of the world's more lenient tax regimes for the rich. Corporate taxes in Singapore are now the lowest in Asia, next to Hong Kong. Having to deal with less duties and levies lessens the red tape that corporations and entrepreneurs have to deal with.

The downside? The progressive tax instruments that existed prior to 1993 have all been dismantled -- progressive income taxes, corporate taxes, and levies and duties to target the rich. Wealth is redistributed from the poor to the rich in Singapore's post-1993 tax system.

Tharman Shammugaratnam and the PAP will go down defending the GST in the short to medium run as a reform of the entire system will take time and planning. They will go down insisting that the regressive tax structure stay in place (and the poor receive strategic state handouts). They will if necessary play dumb on the regressive tax structure because it constitutes the main revenue source of the Singapore government.

They will attempt to tweak the system and preserve the GST for as long as they can, unless the electorate speaks loudly, unless citizens and residents complain loudly and often, unless bloggers continue to expose the PAP's faulty and discombobulating defense of an indefensible regressive tax.

A chief clown for the clown show?

Tharman Shammugaratnam is the finance minister of Singapore. Goh Chok Tong and Lee Hsien Loong were the finance ministers of Singapore before they became prime ministers themselves.

Tharman Shammugaratnam is unfit to be the finance minister of Singapore. He is either economically illiterate, or a glib discombobulator, or an insincere leader who cannot level with Singaporeans. Tharman Shammugaratnam is unfit to be the next prime minister of Singapore.

In the coming general election, I strongly urge the electors to strongly reject Tharman Shammugaratnam (PAP-Jurong) and deprive him of the opportunity to further damage the poor and the middle class.

GST, inequality and regressive taxes: A Model Answer

2011-03-01T09:57:00.004+08:00

Joseph Henry Greene is part of the Citibank team headed by Johan van Oenen that made Goh Keng Swee and Singapore its first billions, betting the US dollar against the British pound. The team subsequently recommended that Dr Goh develop Singapore as a finance hub servicing the "Asian dollar market".

Here is Joseph Henry Greene on the subject of the GST just when the consumption tax was about to be set in place:

This sales tax which is coming on is regressive. Why the government would have a sales tax – which is regressive – at a time like this? It won’t hurt the people at the moment but if there should be any trouble in the future, it’s going to make the disparity between the very wealthy and the average working class of Singapore... It will cause a strain and it will exacerbate.

(Economic development of Singapore, Interview with Joseph Henry Greene. National Archives, Oral History Centre. 1994)

Here is a member of the economic literati telling you the GST is a regressive tax. Listen to him instead of the PAP clown show.

The PAP clown show continues! (GST edition)

2011-03-01T09:04:00.004+08:00

This is not your reading for the week. We are suspending your readings for this week and indeed for many months to come. That is because we are in Silly Season. Very Silly Season

The headlines say it all:
PAP MPs question who WP is trying to help
Cutting GST to tackle inflation would benefit rich more than poor, they say

excerpts:

PAP MPs on Monday hit back at Workers' Party chief Low Thia Khiang's broad-ranging attack on the Government's Budget. At least seven MPs from the ruling party stood up to disagree, as they questioned his call for GST cuts...

Mr Christopher de Souza (PAP-Holland Bukit Timah) and Prof Koo Tsai Kee (PAP-Tanjong Pagar) said that trimming GST would be more beneficial to the rich than to the poor

Said Mr de Souza: "High income earners, we know, consume more and therefore pay more GST."

In 2008, finance minister Tharman Shammugaratnam (PAP-Jurong) said that in absolute terms, the bottom 60% of earners here pay less than 25% of the total GST collected each year.

We can only come to one of two conclusions. Singapore is run by

1. A bunch of economic illiterates who don't bother to pick up any econs textbook, which will tell them a consumption tax (i.e. the GST) is a regressive tax.

2. A bunch of glib discombobulators who know that the GST is a regressive tax but refuse to acknowledge it as such. Instead, they work on the assumption that the electorate is composed of economic illiterates.

Finance minister Tharman Shammugaratnam will distract you by talking about absolute terms. He hopes you won't realise that no matter what the bottom 60% pay for their GST, they're still paying proportionately more out of their total income than the top 40%.

Christopher de Souza will distract you by saying the rich spend more and therefore pay more total GST. He hopes you won't realise that the rich spend a lower proportion of their income on consumption - and have a higher proportion of their income in savings - than the poor.

Prof Koo Tsai Kee will distract you by saying that the tax pool gets redistributed disproportionately to the lower income earners in the form of GST credits. He hopes you won't realise that he just conceded the inherent regressiveness of the tax, and that it requires annual government handouts (aka GST credits) to redress the balance or appear to redress it.

The PAP continues to run a clown show.

Whether they are economic illiterates or glib discombobulators, I recommend that the following current MPs be dropped from the PAP slate for the coming elections, and that if reselected to run, the electorate vote against such clowns:

Mr Christopher de Souza (PAP-Holland Bukit Timah)
Prof Koo Tsai Kee (PAP-Tanjong Pagar)
Tharman Shammugaratnam (PAP-Jurong)

Stupidity and disingenuity must never be rewarded.

The system gets the results it wants

2011-02-08T16:59:00.004+08:00

Your reading of the week: The Singapore Monitor interviews Ivy Goh Nair

Discussion questions:

1. What are the properties of a bureaucratic structure that simultaneously absolve individuals within the system from responsibility and accountability and hoist the same responsibility and accountability to other individuals?

2. Who has the function within the Singapore civil service to exercise oversight over this transactional system of shared/deferred/inferred responsibility and accountability?

3. How would this overseer function be expected to work - and how would it actually work out? Why would the two not coincide?

Underemployment in post-crisis economies

2011-01-28T08:37:00.005+08:00

Your comparative readings for the week

Ex-NUS graduate: I'm a failed product of our meritocratic system
In Japan, young face roadblocks
The curse of the class of 2009

Discussion questions
1. What is a labour market?

2. As a perfect market, how would we theorise it to work? In a perfect, rational world how would the labour market deal with a recession situation? How would a "recession graduate" experience this?

3. Consider the real world examples. Why does it not work perfectly? Can there be cultural, social reasons why a local labour market will never work perfectly?

The good and the godless

2010-12-05T13:19:00.006+08:00

Paul Tobin of the Humanist Society is outraged with The Straits Times Saturday feature on 27 November 2010, "God Wants You: Making faith cool".

With all due respect, Paul Tobin is barking up the wrong tree when he complains the feature expresses a "prejudice against those without any religious affiliation".

Pro-religious article or bad journalistic writing?

As a rule of thumb: never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. As a further rule of thumb: Straits Times journalists - even if they're not Dr. "I don't need no stinking research" Andy Ho - are generally incompetent even when it comes to journalistic standards.

All you need to do is to read through the entire 16-page feature from last Saturday. One will then invariably make the following observations and conclusions:

1. The author has a 16-page, multiple article feature written on youth outreach by religious groups.

1a. This is not a 16-page feature on youth and violence, or solving youth problems through religion.

2. However, the editor sees more readers being interested to read the 16-page feature if the lead article suggests the outreach is tied to the rise in youth gang violence and the current moral panic.

2a. In other words, the lead article of the feature has been tweaked to be 'relevant' to 'current issues'. Hence the throwaway references to youth violence and gangs. Even Matthew Matthews, the pastor-sociologist interviewed here, says *nothing* about violence and gangs, but about religiosity as a youth phenomenon.

3. But anyway, that's why the lead article states early on that the youth outreach efforts have been going on for years to engage gang-prone youth - even though the reports in the next 14 pages mention nothing about reaching out youths and gangs - merely reaching out to youths in general.

4. My proof? How about: the list of interview questions Lee Siew Hwa sent to one of her correspondents in her feature article - which would have been the same set of questions she sent to everyone else.

But what about the line about "losing a generation to godlessness", or losing youths to "cynicism, violence and even fanaticism" in the absence of religion?

If this were Lee Siew Hwa's own words, then we have a case for her apparent bias against atheism and whatnot. A more likely explanation: journalists of The Straits Times - following certain bad practices in second-rate newspapers from the west - do not feel the need to indicate that a particular line or lines of thought are actually quotes or paraphrases from interviewees.

So think: which interviewee(s) would have made a remark about generations being lost to godlessness? Which interviewee(s) from which religious group(s) covered in the feature would have equated the absence of religion to an absence in morality?

[Hat-tip to AngryDoctor]

The ultimate national day video project

2010-08-24T10:08:00.003+08:00

Your reading for the week at SINdie

Excerpts:

Before August ends, take a trip down with us through memory lane and look at a special set of videos. These videos have been around since 1985 and are influential in the way they have shaped our perception of ourselves, the places, the people and the systems around us.

MOE and sex ed: let the culture war begin!

2010-05-06T15:54:00.006+08:00

Last week, Singapore's Ministry of Education released its new approved sex education vendors list after a revamp and audit of external vendors and their programmes. Word has it that liberals and secularists in Singapore are concerned with the new list - 5 out of 6 of the vendors are linked to Christian organisations.

Should this be a concern? The ministry wants you to stop asking this question because "external vendors affiliated to religious groups are reminded not to proselytise or make reference to their religions during activities".

For Singaporeans who have been keeping tabs over the years of the objectionable content of the programmes by these vendors (showing the infamous Silent Scream video which shows gory abortion pics but doesn't say that these were pics of procedures now banned and from miscarried foetuses rather than aborted foetuses, requiring students to sign chastity promises, teaching that masturbation is morally wrong)... Well, let's just say that these Singaporeans won't buy MOE's Jedi Mind Trick that easily.

So have the fundamentalist Christians won this culture war? Should we all be worried that our children are going to be mis-educated in schools?

Interest; or Means, Motives, and Opportunity

Let us construct a hypothetical social field of sex education, where the players can be situated and bounded by their interest(s) and subsequent positioning and position-taking in the struggles of this field - which like all other social fields, are centred on who is a "legitimate" member and taking a "orthodox" stand.

Who would be interested to offer sex education in the institutional context of schools?
Who would be interested to offer sex education as a comprehensive subject?
Who would be interested in defining sex education as a normative subject, as opposed to a scientific subject?

I put it to you that the paucity of non-Christian and even non-fundamentalist Christian CSE providers is due to the lack of interest of any other factions (from the wider society, from the wider conservative majority, from even the varied Christian community) to offer sex education.

Out of society at large, it is the fundamentalist Christians are interested in sex education as a political issue. It is the fundamentalist Christians are most interested to see sex education taught as a subject in schools.

Sex education in schools is a narrow interest of fundamentalist Christians - and it should be no surprise that they constitute the bulk of the supply and demand for sex education in schools - and that the orthodox or consensus principles of sex education from these vendors are going to be the ultraconservative, with a hard Christian core.

The tyranny of the minority

Wider society may be conservative, but not all conservatives make an issue out of sex education or insist on a moralistic approach to sex education - aside from a tiny faction of fundamentalist Christians.

As demand and supply for this form of sex education is mostly from this small but vocal minority, I am scandalised that MOE has decided to allow these vendors to offer sex education to ALL schools in Singapore, a free platform to push their narrow philosophies on sexuality, which go further right than most conservatives in Singapore.

These sexuality programmes pander to such a small minority of Singaporeans, I am surprised that MOE is allowing these providers to push their programmes under the protection of the ministry, and even to charge money from it. As even retired Rev Yap Kim Hao has mentioned in the Straits Times forums, these CSE programmes are unlikely to be effective or informative or practical.

Why is MOE allowing taxpayers money (i.e from non-Christian and secular Singaporeans) to fund these clearly Christian, clearly impractical, clearly anti-educational programmes?

Whose philosophy? Whose transparency?

"MOE's philosophy on sexuality education is that it does not encourage nor promote masturbation, abortion and oral and anal sex."

MOE's sex education philosophy is counter to its stated objectives of tackling problems related to teenage pregnancies, STDs, sexual activity in teens.

Hardcore, ultraconservative sex education programmes have had a track record of abject failure. When GW Bush pushed them as a condition for aid to third-world countries, we have not seen data to show any relief in sex-related problems in these regions.

Instead of asking vendors for transparency, the Ministry of Education should be asked to be transparent - what groups did it consult to reach its philosophy of sex education? What criteria did it even use to say that these vendors' programmes are credible, truthful, or even "work"? Which other groups had approached the Ministry of Education and were rejected? Can the public examine the curricula and teaching material of these sex education vendors?

Officially, we live in a secular society. Even the ministers say so!

A growing list of distinguished ministers, senior ministers and deputy prime ministers and prime ministers of Singapore have made speeches and remarks over the past year about the secular nature of Singapore, repeating assurances that Singapore will never ever see the kind of cultural wars fought in schools and classrooms all across the US.

The Klever Kids at the Ministry of Education just made all these assurances worth precious little. I would like to ask Ministers Wong Kan Seng, S Jayakumar, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong just how committed they are to keeping Singapore a secular society, and in particular, keeping classrooms in Singapore free from religious activists pushing their narrow ideas of sex education.

Nobel Prize winner on immigration

2010-04-27T08:19:00.005+08:00

Your reading for the week

Paul Krugman, The Curious Politics of Immigration

Excerpts:

The [Republican] party likes inexpensive workers - and would really enjoy a huge guest-worker program that would both provide such workers and ensure that they can neither vote nor, in practice, unionize...

Open immigration can't coexist with a strong social safety net; if you’re going to assure health care and a decent income to everyone, you can't make that offer global.

There is only one party to vote for

2010-03-07T21:48:00.003+08:00

Your reading for the week:

Shirley Tan, "To the Memory of Goh Hung Chuan, PBM, my grandfather"

My grandfather sits by a stone table in the courtyard. As an aunt walks out of the main house, my grandfather calls: "Come."

Dutifully, she heads towards her father. Without saying a word, she picks up a red China graph pencil and marks a cross in a box next to the PAP logo. Then, she leaves.
Grandfather wets his right index finger with his tongue and wipes away the red cross.
Another aunt prepares to go to work. "Come," grandfather calls out to her.
This is repeated with every grown up aunt and uncle every day during that holiday which I spent with my grandparents.

I did not understand why until I was of voting age.

Grandmother told me: "Your grandfather also made me practise every day, so that there would be no mistake when we went to the voting centre. I would always be in front of him in the queue to collect our voting slips and we would time ourselves entering and exiting our individual booths. I would always show your grandfather that I had voted for PAP, before dropping my voting slip into the box."

Grandfather wanted his whole family to vote for PAP. So he schooled everyone who could vote that there is only one party to vote: PAP.

Story continues here.

Plausible deniability; or, are you stupid enough to buy their excuse?

2009-09-16T18:51:00.008+08:00

Being the first part in a series on the modus operandi and rhetorical strategies of Christians of a Fundamentalist Persuasion...

Barthes on Signs and wonders; or, How to mean more than what you say

... je suis chez le coiffeur, on me tend un numéro de Paris-Match. Sur la couverture, un jeune nègre vêtu d'un uniforme français fait le salut militaire, les yeux levés, fixés sans doute sur un pli du drapeau tricolore. Cela, c'est le sens de l'image. - Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1970, p.201)

The semiologist Roland Barthes is at his usual barber for his regular haircut. In his chair, Barthes is handed an issue of Paris-Match magazine while the barber attends to his task. On the cover that greets him, a photograph of a black soldier saluting the French tricolour. It is obvious, the myth and ideology, the PR line that this photo peddles. It is clear to any lay Frenchperson. But as a sociologist, Barthes proceeds methodically to explicate this intuitive, commonsensical reading of the photograph - and many others in the book:

The sign presented to us is that of a black soldier in a French army uniform saluting the flag. The wonder is its signification: French imperialism, French greatness, the idea that the French empire treats all its subjects equally, that there are no colonies but one all-embracing La Patrie. The image that forms the sign is carefully constructed and reconstituted as a beachhead so that it is co-opted into a secondary level of signification - one where myth and ideology is found. The denotation - what we see when we see the image - is that of a black person saluting the flag, but the connotation is that of French imperialism and greatness...

Semiotics: 101 ways to say what you mean and then deny you said it

The field of advertising may be seen as Practical Semiotics, where advertisers engineer innuendo and a surfeit of meaning to supplant the literal sign which is presented to their readers. And the joke goes that all advertising is about sex or selling the idea of attractiveness...

Take Zoe Tay's "I Swallow" ad, for example. In advertising, as it is with semiotics, there is always a fail-safe, a retreat position. Barthes calls this the alibi: "I wasn't being ideological, myth might innocently claim, I was somewhere else doing something innocent."

Accused of imperialism, the Paris-Match cover insists it is merely a photograph of a young man who happens to be black saluting a flag which happens to be a French flag. Accused of raunchiness, the beauty company insists it's just Zoe Tay saying "I swallow", nothing more. The halo of light about the head of George W Bush? An artifact of lighting in a photo, nothing more! The photographs of Obama in Kennedyesque poses? Just a mere coincidence...

When caught, the mythmaker says, "Remember, I didn't say it, I didn't imply it; you inferred it." The mythmaker denies, when caught red-handed, that objects and events always signify more than themselves; that they are always caught up in systems of representation and secondary meanings. The mythmaker appeals to our 'common sense' to take them for what they are, to say they only meant what they said and nothing more, to put on the outrage of someone who finds they are never taken for their word.

These denials are plausible enough inasmuch as they are take literally. Yet if understood within a methodical analysis of the conjunction of context, meanings and representations, signs and their significations are hardly ever unintended - and the denials lose all plausibility.

Plausible deniability; or, Fun with fundies

Singa Communications Limited, on 9 September 2009, unveiled its Singanews initiative at Kum Yan Methodist Church for an ATRIA "New Media Breakfast" event.

After the report was leaked online, the accusation floating around is that this news portal is a shill for Fundamentalist Christian (COOS) interests, despite claims by its directors that it is a secular organisation, that ostensibly, this has nothing to do with any Christian agenda.

Is this denial plausible? Have an entire faction of bloggers read too much into this un-launch?

Context is everything. Context is king. Context builds secondary-level meanings and significations above what is said.

The unveiling is not an official launch. It is not a soft launch either. This is a secret, closed door un-launch, given that this New Media Breakfast has gone unreported in the usual Christian blogs or even the Christian Post Singapore.

The New Media Breakfast is organised by ATRIA, which stands for "Apologetics through Rich Applications". Its modus operandi? "Evangelical apologetics focuses on presenting biblical realities evident in life is a reasoned explanation, and involves a researched defence of biblical truth. ATRIA widgets will invite an exploration of the foundations of faith that touch on areas as diverse as archaelogy, astronomy, biblical prophecy, spiritual experience and Christian lifestyle."

But maybe this image will give a fuller picture:

As a keynote speaker at an embargoed, explicitly Fundamentalist Christian conference organised by an organisation that nurtures fundamentalist apologetics, this news portal really wants to say we're reading too deeply - it's really secular.

In her keynote address, Thio seemed to have talked mostly about her experience with the media and the need for a more sympathetic media of their own and the need for Christians to speak out. You can read this as having nothing at all to do with the next keynote speaker's unveiling of a major secular news portal... but it will depend on how stupid you are.

All directors of Singanews, a secular portal, are Christians.
Matthew Yap (enough said?)
Basskaran Nair (identifies himself as a Christian and Christian philantropist)
Lee Chong Kai (Former All Saints Home CEO. Graduate of a "Rhema Bible Training Centre")
Victor Ho Kok Yin (director of Bright Arrows, 40% owned by COOS)

Singanews, a secular portal with a 100% Christian directorship, made the decision to have its unlaunch at a Christian media conference.

Singanews, a secular portal, chose to have its unlaunch at a church, to a group of Christians. As opposed to any other religious place of worship. As opposed to any other public area. As opposed to having a public launch.

You do the math.

Minilee NDRS decoded: 2009 edition!

2009-08-18T08:51:00.002+08:00

By now, it should be apparent that every Prime Minister has a different style of doing the NDRS and their major policy speeches: Lee Kuan Yew relished the details, seeking to win hearts and minds through logic and superior reasoning; Goh Chok Tong is fond of putting the issues on the table as questions and dilemmas - leading to observations and comments that these questions either present false dilemmas or are attempts in leading the question to very controlled and guided ends; Lee Hsien Loong is noted for painting in very broad brush strokes, leaving his ministers to fill in the details weeks and months after the NDRS.

In all instances, basic comprehension of the NDRS and subsequent analysis can only come about when one understands this rule instead of throwing a hissy fit and denouncing the speech as "strangely empty" or worse.

Here then is Minilee's NDRS decoded!

The economy

1. The economy is not expected to return to pre-crisis levels of health - Minilee did not use the word "boom" to describe the eventual recovery from this economic crisis. What the PAP promises, it delivers - and Minilee has not promised a boom, merely a recovery.

2. In fact for the short term, Minilee's economic team cannot foresee exactly what will happen beyond Q3 of this year. The situation is so murky that they'll only review just before the end of this year to figure out their plan for next year.

In other words: We have no green shoots. We are in a transitional period.

3. Singapore will be building 2 "National Continuing Education and Training Campuses" in Paya Lebar and Jurong.

In other words: The shrinking of Singapore's white collar jobs and subsequently its middle class will continue, no thanks to the economic crisis. Perhaps Minilee's team expect a permanent and protracted change in the type of jobs available in the emergent post-crisis economy. We cannot otherwise justify 2 *permanent* institutions for retraining otherwise.

In other words:

Structural employment of the former white collar class to continue.

Current crisis expected to affect Singapore as a financial hub - most white collar jobs lost here are in this sector, many other currently existing white collar jobs
are dependent on the financial sector.

Look forward to continued downsizing of the middle class, structural unemployment necessitating a trip to one of the two retraining centres, and a future of structural underemployment.

Religious and racial harmony

Yugoslavia was a model of religious and racial harmony. But when their economy went bad - as with other pieces of Eden in the world and in history - the racial and religious harmony evaporated, no thanks to the diminished authority of the state (imagine if all Singapore's government could offer you was retraining in a blue-collar job, or suggest you sue your kids for maintenance to pay your medical bills?).

With trust in the government plummeting and no solutions forthcoming, it is no wonder that Yugoslavians sought their answers in religion, or that unscrupulous and power-hungry actors sought to stoke racial and religious tensions and present themselves as leaders.

We suggest that Minilee's team, having seen the economic growth forecast for Singapore in the next 10 to 30 years, are worried that conditions are beginning to look ripe for radical leaders to radicalise susceptible segments of Singapore society. It is this economic base that will empower and embolden a culture war.

Looking to the future

Spending half an hour on a now-and-then photo slideshow?

In other words: It may be difficult to tell if Singapore has improved between the last 5 years and now, especially for the poor; but it's really easy to tell the difference between the last 50 years and now.

Of all the forecast improvements in Minilee's "future segment" of his slideshow, which ones hint at an improvement for the lot of the bottom 1/3 of Singapore's population?

RDS: The remaining issues

2009-08-11T22:09:00.003+08:00

Religious Diversity in Singapore is a collection of research papers originally presented in a series of workshops between 2004 and 2006 by the Institute of Policy Studies.

1. When is the line crossed? Cross-reading with recent comments on religious harmony

No restraining orders have been issued under the MRHA since it came into effect.

However, the Government came close to invoking it on a number of occasions to stop religious leaders from mixing politics with religion and putting down other faiths, Mr Wong Kan Seng, the Home Affairs Minister at the time, said in 2001.

The religious leaders stopped their activities after they were summoned and warned by the police and Internal Security Department officers, he said.

Had they persisted, the law would have been used against them.

- "Religious harmony: 20 years of keeping the peace", in The Straits Times, 24 July 2009.

Some argue that because no restraining order has been issued under the MRHA, it has been only a showpiece. Others say it worked mainly as a deterrent. What is your response?

Showpiece? Well, when I spoke in Parliament during the third reading of the Bill on Nov 9, 1990, I did foresee 'the best case scenario is that no occasion arises where we need to invoke this Bill'. I also said then that we will exhaust all other remedies, like advising, counselling, etc. So the best scenario has happened: We have not had to issue a restraining order under the Act.

That does not mean that we have no problems but rather that we have been quick to defuse the problems through active management, mediation and, where necessary, admonition, sometimes working with religious leaders.

So non-invoking of the MRHA does not mean that it is a white elephant or showpiece. It is part of our suite of tools to maintain law and order and communal harmony.

- "Jaya: Don't take harmony for granted", in The Straits Times, 24 July 2009

The Minister may make a restraining order against any priest, monk, pastor, imam, elder, office-bearer or any other person who is in a position of authority in any religious group or institution or any member thereof for the purposes specified in subsection (2) where the Minister is satisfied that that person has committed or is attempting to commit any of the following acts:
...
(d) exciting disaffection against the President or the Government while, or under the guise of, propagating or practising any religious belief.

- Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act, Chapter 167A, Part III (8)

Singapore has to be a "fun" city attractive to its own and open to the world, so they argue, albeit with moderation but evolution as time and tide of society norms change. In order to be globally attractive and competitive, society has to loosen up and be in tune and in line with the progressives, the so call (sic) "mature", so they say. In the midst of all these, for God's faithful people, Paul's sentinel call should be voiced and heard clearly once again: "Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God, without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life..." (Phil 2.14-16; also 2 Time 4.1-4). But don't get Paul wrong! He is challenging us to build up extra robust capacity over the childish level of debate and controversy, and it could not be more timely and urgent.

- John Chew, "Shaping of Maturity", Disocesan Digest, September 2003.

The claim here is essentially that this generation has become "crooked and perverse" because the government initiated a "childish level of debate and controversy" in favour of the "progressives" but has excluded the views of the religious communities because of formal secularism. This jeremiad - one of several that were preached from pulpits and published in the press - can have the effect of summoning a level of conservativism that goes beyond what is normally held by well-meaning and "right-thinking" individuals...

- Kenneth Paul Tan, in "Relgious reasons in a secular public sphere", RDS.

2. Recross: When is the line crossed?

Compare the following:

I. Anglican Bishop (Saint Andrew's Cathdral) John Chew's statement on the government creating a crooked and perverse generation above

II. "It's not a crusade against the people but there’s a line that God has drawn for us, and we don’t want our nation crossing that line." - Derek Hong, Anglican Pastor, COOS

III. "How then should Christians, as faithful watchmen and committed citizens living in secular democracies, respond to a political agenda driven by a godless philosophy which has harmful social and spiritual consequences?"

"She examines how the spirit of the anti-Christ, the spirit of lawlessness, manifests in the philosophy, morality and politics that shape our laws, systems and mindsets." - The blurb to Thio Li Ann's new book, Mind the Gap

What similarities do these 3 sets of speeches and speech acts have in common? What are their common rhetorical and philosophical ground, if any? Why was only one of these speakers/actors be called to apologise and retract their statement?

3. The rise of religiosity

What does the increasing rise of religiosity mean for Singapore? Various RDS authors recite 'increasing religiosity' as a fact to be dealt with. Only one RDS author has cited an actual survey that wasn't a population census that showed "rising religiosity" in Singapore - and a Straits Times survey at that.

If Singapore's leadership had decided to incorporate various religious groups in selective consultative policy-making, the question needs to be asked:

Where in the survey of rising religiosity that the political leadership and RDS authors love to quote, does it say that increasingly religious Singaporeans want their religions and religious leaders to play a role in policy-making?

Where is the survey that shows Singaporeans expect and find this desirable?

Where is the survey that shows Singaporeans, increasingly religious, want public policy to be brought in line with their religions' or religious leaders' interpretation of a good society?

Discuss.

MOE principal to present at Christian lobby seminar

2009-08-05T22:04:00.013+08:00

I draw your attention to the forthcoming GCF-RZIM Seminar on "Called To Engage - Being Salt and Light in the Public Square", scheduled on 8 and 10 August 2009 on the National Day weekend.

Note that in the list of speakers is a Mrs Belinda Charles, who may be identified as the principal of Saint Andrew's Secondary School, a government-aided institution of learning under the purview of the Ministry of Education.

The purpose of this seminar, as described in its publicity, appears to provide a theological justification for faith-based discussion in the public of controversial social and political issues; identify a list of social and political issues to be targeted by Christian activists; and to compel Christians to engage in such behaviour in the public sphere as a religious obligation.

Its goal, as stated in the PR materials, is so that "those in the positions of power will hear and respond favourably", i.e. to exert influence to align public policy with what this group considers as Christianity-approved ideals.

In other words, this is a seminar conducted by the Christian lobby to provide the justification for its existence, its lobbying tactics, and its lobbying targets.

I note the recent statements on the need for religious harmony by SM Goh Chok Tong, SM Jayakumar, and Mr Wong Kan Seng. In particular, SM Goh's statement that religious sentiments should be kept private and the secular nature of our state and policy-making be respected.

In light of this, I would like to seek the Ministry's clarification on the role of Mrs Belinda Charles in this controversial seminar, whose topic and timing is a direct challenge to our leaders' stance on religious harmony and the secular state.

I wonder whether the Ministry is aware of this seminar.

I wonder whether the Ministry approved Mrs Belinda Charles's participation and presentation at this religious seminar.

I wonder whether the Ministry vetted the contents of Mrs Belinda Charles's presentation.

Does the stand of Mrs Belinda Charles at this conference represent the Ministry's official stand on religion and public policy?

I look forward to the Ministry's clarification on this matter. Concerned members of the public - and inquiring minds - want to know!

Inquiring minds:
Ovidia Yu: "The list of speakers includes the principal of St Andrews Secondary School, a premier government-aided institution. Is this with MOE approval?"

Addendum:

(7 Aug)
As Ovidia Yu notes, Ravi Zacharias and his RZIM organisation is dedicated to training people around the world to "present Christianity as the only reasonable option by which people should live".

I am shocked and surprised that such a religious activist was even allowed into Singapore by our Immigration Department for the purpose of preaching and teaching other people his exclusionary, exclusivist vision of religion - which clearly is inimical to Singapore's pluralistic, multireligious and secular society.

I am shocked and surprised that such an organisation - dedicated to promoting an exclusionary, exclusivist view of religion - would be co-hosting any seminar in Singapore - and that the permit for this seminar was approved by the relevant authorities.

I wonder whether the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Immigration Department would comment on why Ravi Zacharias was allowed here in Singapore, for this expressed purpose during our National Day weekend, and why this event was allowed to proceed.

(9 Aug)
We note that VCF-NUS has pulled out its notice of the GCF-RZIM seminar. The link now shows up blank. Also, the event has also been scrubbed from its events archive.

If you wish to read the original text of the seminar notice, refer to Ovidia Yu's post, or look here or see here

Negotiating Christianity with other religions (RDS)

2009-07-14T22:01:00.004+08:00

Religious Diversity in Singapore is a collection of research papers originally presented in a series of workshops between 2004 and 2006 by the Institute of Policy Studies.

Negotiating Christianity with other religions: The view of Christian clergymen in Singapore, by Mathew Mathews

Mathews's paper presents the results of a survey and a series of in-depth interviews conducted by the author. The year the survey and interviews were conducted are not stated in the paper, although Mathews mentions the surveys were sent out during the period of Father Joachim Kang's trial.

We will not present interesting quotes from Mathews's paper. While Mathews's paper was entertaining, we do not place much emphasis or authority on this than we would do for the other 2 papers from RDS featured here earlier, due to a list of very major flaws.

Representativeness of data

The survey was sent to a random list of Protestant clergymen on the NCCS church directory and the Roman Catholic parish priest listing on the Catholic Church website for Singapore.

1. Issue of denominations

While Mathews mentions some beliefs and statements made in the interviews as being related to Charismatic and evangelical branches, his sampling does not provide for representing various denominations - whereas he ought to know that beliefs and statements be allied across certain denominations. The data presented in the paper's tables only correlate attitudes of clegymen to either their Protestant or Roman Catholic allegiance.

While Mathews mentions that denomination was a variable in his study, it appears he presents no findings that would make denomination an issue. This is surprising given the fact that various quotes, reported attitudes in his paper are prevalent and strong in certain denominations of Protestantism while holding no cachet in other denominations. A representative sample would need to be constructed by taking into account the actual percentage of denominational strength...

There is nothing in the appendix on the raw data collected that would allow us to reconstruct other tables based on denominations, or to see if his sample had overrepresented certain far-right denominations in Singapore, such as the Anglicans and the Methodists.

2. Construction of interview population: major caveats

A total of 57 in-depth interviews were conducted. It is unclear to us what Mathews was striving for here: clergy from mainline Protestant denominations and Roman Catholic priests were "at times... furnished by their respective denominations, though some denominations allowed the random selection of clergymen." On the other hand, "a snowballing technique was used to speak to a variety of... independent church ministers".

There is just a few ways you can conduct interviews and then claim that these represent the average view of the population at large. You can conduct a random sample. You could select a randomised sample - oversampling for variables like denomination and so on. You cannot construct a sample out of three or more different ways and then still claim the sample to be representative.

You could even attempt, like Mathews did, to "obtain clergymen who represented different age cohorts and had differing theological positions", but this method like snowballing, does not lead to a representative sample, it only gives you a sample from which to construct various communities of similar viewpoints and beliefs.

This point is important, especially when Mathews seems to have a penchant for slipping up and talking about "the majority of responses" from his in-depth interviews.

This point is most important, especially when Mathews makes claims about the overwhelming theological conservativism of Protestant clergy. We need only remember that snowball sampling means this: you introduce yourself to 1 or 2 key interview subjects who introduce a few more to you after their interviews, who in turn introduce yet a few more to you. It is quite odd to see Mathews talk about representativeness in the same breath as snowballing.

This point is most ultimately important, especially for those who attempt to correlate the tables provided by Mathews, to study how the 'moderate'-looking bell curves in the tables can translate to the deluge of overwhelmingly far-right, ultra-conservative quotes from his army of unnamed pastors whom he claims to represent viewpoints of the rest of the interview correspondents.

In this case, we cannot even say that the survey responses will be representative of the population, while his reported interview responses definitely cannot not be regarded as representative of the population of Protestant and RC clergy at large.

3. What were the interviews about?

In the appendix to his paper, Mathews provides the questionnaire and the scoring and computation method for his survey portion of the study. There is no mention of what questions or what general interview topic strategy was used for the in-depth interview portion of his survey.

4. Sloppy labelling

Mathhews calls "theological orthodoxy" in his footnotes as "agreement to the inerrancy of the Bible, the authority of the Bible in all aspects of life, the veracity of the miracles in the Bible and the belief that the Pentateuch was written by Moses and not by a later author". Yet in his appendix, these same items are called "Conservative theological beliefs (also known as a fundamentalist Christian position)". We are not sure how fundamentalism has now become an orthodox theological stand, but for this not to have gone unchallenged and corrected by Mathews's correspondents, does show the type of biased sample population he ended up constructing.

Questions:

Where are clergy trained in Singapore that makes them, as Mathews claims (but I do not believe), creates an overwhelmingly conservative environment for Protestantism? From a production of culture point of view, environments do not spontaneously come into being: they are nurtured by institutions - say theological colleges; groups of censors - say the opinion leaders and drivers of various denominations; gatekeepers - qualified clergymen still need to be appointed to parishes by higher boards in mainline denominations...

Which denominations did the more conservative, exclusivist, far right clergy come from?

Out of his sample size of 57 in-depth interviewees - ignoring the quotes that were obviously cherrypicked for the paper - objectively and statistically speaking what were the proportion of positive statements against negative statements on inter-religious efforts?

The Inter-religious Organisation of Singapore (RDS)

2009-07-07T21:51:00.003+08:00

Religious Diversity in Singapore is a collection of research papers originally presented in a series of workshops between 2004 and 2006 by the Institute of Policy Studies.

The Inter-religious organisation of Singapore, by Lai Ah Eng

Lai's paper presents a historical overview of the IRO's founding in 1948, its activities from that period to the present, with focus on its role in state-sanctioned nation-building, and the internal politics and divisions within the organisation.

Lai's quotes are taken from interviews she conducted with several IRO council and ordinary members between 2003-2006.

We present interesting excerpts from Lai's paper and comment when necessary. Names of key organisations, clergy and events as in bold, although like many papers presenting in Religious Diversity in Singapore, such details are often missing.

1. Interfaith and faith organisations and the Malayan Emergency

Set up officially on 18 March 1949 at the time of imminent independence from British colonial rule, the IRO claims to be one of the oldest interfaith organisations in the world... Its founding and early years had the support of several religious leaders and religious organisations, political leaders, public figures and the British colonial administration.

Like the founding of the NCCS a year earlier in 1948, the circumstances of the IRO's birth has been more than whitewashed in contemporary accounts. In order to understand the historical and social context, we need to look towards the Malayan Emergency. The British colonial administration encouraged and stage-managed the founding of faith and interfaith groups like these two, as a bulwark against the godless Communists of the MCP.

The second link we need to observe is the decolonialisation process: the prime movers and most active members in both the IRO and NCCS were largely colonials. The expat community in Singapore had, shortly before the course of the war and especially during their incarceration at Changi, experienced a common bonding and refuge in religion, which they saw as the universal answer to the world's problems.

It is hence understandable that shortly after its establishment, the IRO took on several social issues, often partaking actively in the nation-building effort, in a way that recalls a much stronger version of the wayang model of religious consultation, and like the NCCS of today, the IRO committed several instances of imperial overreach that may have contributed to its occasional periods of dormancy and disrepair:

Throughout the 1950s, it promoted religious education in schools, working with the MOE. In 1957, IRO members sat on a MOE Committee on religion and ethics in schools and subsequently contributed passages for reading at school assemblies. In the wake of a larger push towards making religious education compulsory in the late 1970s.. the IRO sent a circular on "the vital need for moral and religious instruction in our schools" to the MOE...

In its early years, the IRO occasionally took up issues related to morality and moral behaviour... For example in 1958, it sent a letter to the Chief Minister seeking stricter government control of crime films and literature as well as "obscene magazines" to "forestall growth of youth delinquency". In 1963, it issued a memorandum on the effects of films, television, radio and literature on youth's morals, particularly against "foreign patterns of love-making" and "sexy" songs, and called for the censure of love scenes and for moderate and decent entertainment.

Also watchful of media portrayals of religions during its early years, the IRO called for the censoring or banning of films considered offensive to religions (such as The Twin Swords (1965), The Great Buddha (1967), and Shaolin Temple (1982). In 1982 it even undertook the stand that all films with religious themes should first be vetted by the IRO...

The creation of moral panics, the whipping up of moral crises, the enthusiastic overextension of powers: in each case (the removal of RK by the government in 1989, the derision that followed its statements on censorship of the media), the organisation's seeming strength and activity quickly faded and its public profile beating a retreat whenever the 'crisis' resolved itself, was ignored or laughed off. Lai notes the IRO's current activity comes in the wake of 9/11, as well as the government's creation of Interreligious circles in 2002 (again the wayang model of consultation!).

Christians in the IRO: a model of good neighbours?

Although founded and then headed by leaders from the Methodist and Anglican churches in its early years, Protestant Christians have not been good neighbours at all, or particularly sincere in the interfaith effort.

Over the years however, Anglicans and Methodists have gradually distanced and disassociated themselves from the organisation and their churches' leaders have stayed away from it. As early as 1968, a letter was received by the IRO from the Anglican Church's Bishop of Singapore and Malaya clarifying that Anglican members of the IRO did not officially represent Anglican interests and that the government should not consider the IRO as the paramount representative despite its name...

One Anglican leader commented in private in 2005 that his Church should not be seen to be represented alongside the Taoist priest with "all his costumes and rituals" during joint prayers or even be involved in joint prayers...

Although the IRO's first president was the then Methodist Bishop of Malaya, the Methodist Church has not been active in the IRO and indeed has disassociated itself from the organisation...

As pointed out by one former council member of the IRO and a Protestant Christian leader, these Christian churches have increasingly grown away from their more liberal traditions, and become more conservative and evangelical and are therefore generally wary of inter-religious dialogue and interaction.

One has to wonder about the wisdom of allowing Protestant Christian leaders a place on the national pulpit, a voice in the media, and representation through stalking horses in Parliament. Why should we listen to Christian leaders and apologists who stress on the need for the freedom to religious speech, opinions, and involvement in public policy when they so clearly do not believe in sincere interfaith efforts and participation? Why should we take into consideration their representations of being oppressed by "militant secularists", if they have never put an honest effort into interfaith organisations? Questions, questions...

In contrast,

Catholics on the other hand have been increasingly involved in the IRO's activities although they came on board on a slow and delayed start... It was only after Vatican Council II in 1963, when the Catholic Church declared itself open to interfaith dialogue... that it became increasingly engaged in the IRO...

Under Sister Seow's presidency which came in the immediate post-September 11 years, several major interfaith events were organised to demonstrate the need for and to promote interfaith dialogue and understanding...

Failing the Dan Brown test

The Anglican and Methodist churches in Singapore: more conservative and intolerant than the Catholic Church.

... there are those whose theological orientation and interpretation are such that they would feel they are "dealing with the devil" if they engaged in dialogue and would not even step into the house of worship of another religion. Thus, in the case of some Protestant Christian churches, they have withdrawn from participation in the IRO and resisted attempts to be drawn into interfaith dialogue or interfaith activity.

The Anglican and Methodist churches in Singapore are to the Right of the Catholic Church on interfaith dialogue. Ordinarily, one would not associate "dealing with the devil" as a response coming from Methodist or Anglican clergy. But we're uniquely Singapore.

When the September 11 attacks took place, the IRO invited all religious leaders to a common prayer event it organised for the deceased and for peace but some Protestant Christian leaders declined. However upon being asked by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they attended a similar state event at the National Stadium during which the IRO conducted joint prayer rites...

Need I repeat this? Why do we give Christian leaders a national space to hoist their views on homosexuality, gambling, sex education, takeovers of NGOs - when they clearly do not want to share that space with any other religious group?

Global Christian Culture and the Antioch of Asia (RDS)

2009-07-05T22:11:00.008+08:00

Religious Diversity in Singapore is a collection of research papers originally presented in a series of workshops between 2004 and 2006 by the Institute of Policy Studies.

Global Christian Culture and the Antioch of Asia, by Jean DeBernadi

DeBernadi's paper, resulting from a series of interviews with key Christian leaders in Singapore in 2004 and research conducted between 1995-2005, presents a factual account of the growth of evangelical churches from the colonial period onwards. In addition, it delves into the tenets and modus operandi of "spiritual warfare", apparently a popular practice in American-style charismatic and evangelical churches in Singapore.

We present interesting excerpts from DeBernadi's paper and comment when necessary. Names of organisations, key clergy and events are in bold.

1. Which lineage of Joel's Army groups are Singapore's religious right planted, affiliated, nurtured by?

In the post-independence period, new waves of revival originating primarily in North America had enormous impact on English-educated Christians in Singapore. Many recall the staging of two major mass events in Singapore: the Billy Graham Crusade of 1978, which ensured the prestige and influence of American-style evangelical Christianity, and a national Bible Rally organised in 1982 by the Full Gospel Christian Businessmen's Fellowship. The latter cooperated with 100 churches to organise and sponsor the event, inviting Korea's Paul Yonggi Cho as the main speaker.

Because the FGCBF worked outside the parameters of regular Christian denominations, the group was highly successful in introducing to English-educated Singaporean Christians many practices associated with an emergent charismatic movement, including speaking in tongues and prophecy. But when participants attempted to introduce these practices into their churches, divisions arose, leading members to depart, often to join new independent church movements.

Contrary to DogEmperor's claim that Singapore's religious right is associated with Peter Wagner's NAR, we find that the seeds of Singapore's Christian Right and their subsequent 'declarations of independence' from mainstream denominations were planted by Paul Yonggi Cho and the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship, aka DogEmperor's "second branch" - and not by Wagner.

2. There is no non-evangelical Christianity in Singapore?

In North America, denominations that scholars typically categorise as mainline Protestant like Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans, and Presbyterians are internally diverse, with evangelical and non-evangelical wings. But Singaporean Christian leaders unanimously observe that in Singapore the non-evangelical wing of mainline Protestantism is virtually non-existent.

DeBernadi sadly does not detail which Singaporean Christian leaders she spoke to. Note that their unanimous observation does not quite gel with the historical account in point 1, where major splits occurred in Singaporean presumably mainline churches when few pastors sought to introduce new evangelical practices into congregational worship. However:

... The Anglican Church in Singapore has incorporated charismatic forms of Christian practices and engages in evangelical outreach... Meanwhile, Methodist Bishop Dr Robert Solomon recently provided leadership in the work of the Methodist Missions Society in five countries in the region, and was a leading participant in the Singapore Centre for Evangelism and Missions (SCEM) 2005 GoForth Missions Conference.

We can only speculate that DeBernadi seems to have momentarily confused evangelical Christianity, as defined by other scholars as a coherent faction within the political economy of Christianity, with what she defines in her paper, and the nominal meaning of evangelism in these two paragraphs, which run consecutively of each other.

3. Similarity of practices does not necessarily mean external control or a global conspiracy

Most of the innovative Christian teachings and practices that have passed around the world in the last decades of the twentieth century have passed through Singapore, including the spiritual warfare movement, the Health and Weath gospel, and the Alpha course... Singapore's Christian leaders are keenly aware that they may utilise innovative practices and teachings to mobilise interest and participation, and many make selective use of elements drawn from competing ideologies now in circulation.

4. Prayer evangelism: Good Christians pray for others?

During research visits to Singapore in 1997 and 1999, I found spiritual warfare to be one of the most discussed forms of prayer evangelism, and that many books and pamphlets on this and related topics were widely available in Singapore's Christian bookstores...

In one of his earliest publications on spiritual warfare, Wagner proposed that unconverted regions of the world were under the control of territorial spirits. Citing Biblical precedents, he proposed a constellation of practices to help Christians in their battle to overcome these territorial spirits.

George Otis' popular 1995 book, Strongholds of the 10/40 Window: Intercessors Guide to the World's Least Evangelised Nations, provides specific guidelines to identifying spiritual strongholds... There is no entry for Singapore but the entry for Malaysia proposes that intercessors pray over specific "Spiritual Power Points" like the Shah Alam Mosque near KL and Penang's Snake Temple and during spiritual events like the Hindu festival Thaipusam and the Islamic Ramadan.

Many Singaporean Christians interviewed in 1997 and 1999 were familiar with and favourably disposed towards the constellation of practices associated with the AD2000 and Beyond movement, including spiritual warfare, spiritual mapping and praying through the 10/40 window.

In response to these proposals, for example, a small interdenominational group of high-level Christian leaders, including charismatic Christians and Anglicans, conducted spiritual mapping of the island.

The date 9 August was the day of a coordinated event - Citywalk, whose organisers gave participants a set of six maps marked with walking tours of downtown Singapore that identified prayer points, including Parliament House, banks and financial houses, shopping malls and entertainment centres, as well as Sir Stamford Raffles' landing site and statue. The event ended with 'Citylight', a programme of coordinated prayer whose beginning was timed to coincide with the strike of the national anthem during Singapore's National Day Parade.

Who are these high-level Christian leaders? We must find them and charge them with SEDITION.

5. Exorcising the spirit of freemasonry and martial arts!

Practitioners of prayer evangelism and spiritual warfare vividly imagine the deities of non-Christian religious practice as demonic opponents whom Christians should seek to overcome in a war waged against dark principalities. Indeed, some charismatic Christians deem a wide range of Chinese cultural practices to be demonic, from martial arts and deity worship to traditional Chinese medicine, qigong and acupuncture.

At a recent ritual performed in Singapore, the ecclesiastically high-ranking participants exorcised the spirits of snakes, martial arts, freemasonry and colonialism...

Charismatic churches have no ranks, being denominationally non-denominational and lacking a rank structure. Sadly, the anthropologist DeBernadi does not provide denominations, names, and IC numbers of these seditious clowns.

Conclusion

DeBernadi's paper is a remarkable treasure trove, a detailed historical account of the development of the beliefs and practices of the evangelical and charismatic movements in Singapore. Just note that she does not seem to differentiate between the two movements, and alternatively speak of them as ideological forms and as nominatively evangelising-oriented movements - and may end up confusing the issue at times.

Eye on Christianity

2009-07-05T11:06:00.004+08:00

Groundwork to Rethinking Secularism II

What does it mean to talk about the radicalisation and self-radicalisation of Christians in Singapore?

If we are to examine if the impression holds true, what sort of data should we be looking at? Who or what do we need to focus on?

Radicalisation and Self-radicalisation: a production of culture approach

The two terms were used in the immediate post-911 years to explain the rise of homegrown, DIY terror cells in Southeast Asia. University educated, white collar adults with rational, scientific training and professions became more religious and adopted fundamentalist or extremist strains of their nominal religion - becoming religious radicals. Allegedly, they took their initial leaps into radicalisation not through peer influence, but from their own research on the internet.

Yet the website does not exist in and of itself. Where does its credibility come from but trusted intermediaries (like art critics appraising and promoting an exhibition or artist) who confer credibility, trust and legitimacy to the website and its message. The trusted intermediaries do not exist in and of themselves, but exist in relation to a framework of interrelated complementary and competing groupings: a discursive universe with real life funding, institutional backing and even state backing. Tthe spread of Wahhabi Islam in Southeast Asia is instrumental to understanding this point of view.

The self-radicalisation thesis is charming and captures imaginations easily. It is also a piece of pop psychology, an easily sensationalised, dumbed-down interpretation of complex processes documented elsewhere, i.e. not true.

For one thing, the thesis relies on a foundation of the discredited Secularisation Theory of 'societal development' - it assumes wrongly that modernity and spirituality are exclusive modes of human existence, and on an inevitability, an irreversible arrow of time: where modernity gains, religion and spirituality must decline.

Radicalisation, taken as a set of attitudes, beliefs, worldviews that induce a propensity towards certain actions and speech, is a form of culture that not so much arises willy-nilly from a tabula rasa slate of mind (read: a secular mind within a modern society), but a form of culture that is produced. There necessarily has to be organisations, institutions, intermediaries, activists and theorists that create, define, promote and police their brand of radical culture.

Eye on Singapore Christianity: gathering evidence for a radicalisation thesis

The government and media of Singapore have been loathe to describe, in the aftermath of the Aware takeover, Christianity and Christians in Singapore as becoming radical and self-radicalised, despite the unprecedented and outrageous actions taken by the crew lead by Feminist Mentor Thio Su-mien and the Anglican Archbishop's support of their actions, the blatant case of Chick tractarian 'evangelism', a screening of a pseudo-scientific anti-Darwin, anti-evolution 'documentary' at the Anglican Saint Andrew's Cathedral, and so on.

But if we are to talk credibly about radicalisation, we need to collate an repository of undisputed facts of not just the recent past but going back a few decades, of Christian clergy and congregations, inter-denominational and pan-denominational organisations, theological colleges, their links with the wider global movement, and their actions, activities, and speeches.

The repository will comprise:
First-hand material reporting on these (publications, pamphlets, articles)
Second-hand reports
Other analyses on Christianity in Singapore

This is the Eye on Christianity project.

Rethinking secularism I

2009-06-08T23:43:00.006+08:00

Secularism 1.0: The beta version Papalee would rather forget

Believe it or not, Singapore's wayang model of religious consultation isn't the first time the State had enlisted the religious communities in the nation-building process. This isn't the first time the State had its good intentions blow up in its face either. And guess what, the last time it happened, it involved teaching in schools too.

As they say, all this has happened before; all this will happen again.

I speak of the Religious Knowledge curriculum in secondary schools in Singapore, introduced as a compulsory examinable O-Level subject in 1982 and abolished in 1989. As with Goh Chok Tong's model of religious consultation, the Religious Knowledge was largely a wayang show.

The purpose of RK was peddled to the populace not as religious education, not even as moral education, but mainly as a "cultural ballast" to the bad influences of a rapidly Westernising society and what Lee Kuan-Yew perceived as deculturalisation and loss of traditional values (Straits Times, 15 March 1979). Of course, religious experts and philosophers were activated or enrolled by the state to produce multiple studies and panels to form a curriculum.

On a far more practical level, RK was seen by Singapore's leaders as a piece in their arsenal of tools to promote their vision of a communitarian society, to reinforce their ideology of society over self.

In particular, Confucian Ethics was hoped to be the default choice of Chinese students, unifying the various dialect groups through the 'grand tradition' of Confucianism, then touted by Lee Kuan Yew as the secret of Singapore's economic success.

Needless to say, things didn't work out that way. Confucian Ethics was one of the least popular subjects. Most Chinese students took Buddhist Studies. Bible Studies claimed more than 21.4% of students - and during the 1980s Christians numbered less than 10% of Singapore's population.

Most unfortunately for Lee Kuan Yew, the civil servants, and the panels of religious experts involved in forming the RK curriculum and training the teachers to deliver that curriculum, the failure was more severe than that. A study named "Religion and religious revivalism in Singapore" by sociologists Eddie Kuo, Jon Quah and Tong Chee Kiong directly implicated the Religious Knowledge courses in creating intense religious fervour and religious differences amongst students, and warned of the very real possibility of inter-religious conflicts in the long term.

And this is them being polite about it. And within 1 year of the study's publication, Religious Knowledge was phased out.

Unofficially though, let's just say that members of a certain religious affiliation in Singapore took the state sanction of "Religious Knowledge" to promote their strong-arm evangelising activities, which of course produced very vocal, outspoken, and strident students who put their classmates ill at ease.

To be completely impolite about it: Religious Knowledge was scrapped in schools because of the radicalisation and self-radicalisation of Christian students or students taking Bible Studies.

A modest proposal for GRC reform

2009-05-29T18:50:00.010+08:00

1. Decouple the political and administrative dimensions of Group Representative Constituencies

While efficiencies of scale were never put forward as a justification for the GRC scheme, it is clear that these efficiencies do exist, enabling town councils in GRCs to lower costs and build up million-dollar rainy day funds.

Thus, we propose that GRCs be kept.

We also propose that GRCs be capped at a size of 4, and for all SMCs to be scrapped entirely.

(Minilee's proposal to increase the number of SMCs and to cap GRCs to a maximum of 5 seats when the average size of GRCs is 5.4 would mean that the absolute number of minority representation in Parliament may yet again decrease)

We note that these efficiencies of scale exist independently of the political dimension of GRCs. This is a purely administrative side-effect of GRCs that will continue to exist regardless of party control.

2. Ditch the block ticket system for GRCs

Mathematically, as our GRCs stand: in a constituency of n available seats, the block ticket system ensures x(n) number of candidates where x is the number of parties contesting, but only x unique solutions, because the 'team' either wins all, or loses all.

The block ticket system of GRC voting ensures that the entire party slate wins, regardless of the unpopularity or perceived incompetence, actual gaffes and weaknesses of certain nominees. It creates a disturbingly high rate of walkovers, unelected representatives, ruling party MPs who have never faced a real contest - a situation that increasingly delegitimises the government of Singapore and its ruling party. In a country where voting is compulsory, less than half its population voted the last general elections due to walkovers. A semi-permanent swathe of citizens have never voted in their lives - a situation that increasingly delegitimises the idea of Singapore-style democracy.

As noted earlier, the sole constitutional justification for the GRC scheme is to ensure a healthy minority representation in Parliament. Nothing in the constitutional justification of GRCs says that the candidates contesting for a GRC must be bundled together.

Reforming GRCs

We propose the following set of changes that will restore the outcome of GRCs as intended by the constitution, as well as remedy the glaring weaknesses and unintended consequences of the "team wins/loses all" implementation:

For a n-seat GRC (where n is equal to or less than 4), there will be n unique winners, regardless of x parties contesting.

Each political party is free to nominate any number of candidates to the GRC.

For a n-seat GRC, each voter gets to cast their ballot for n-2 candidates on their voting forms. They are to choose exactly n-2, not more, and not less.

The winners are chosen thusly:
Top n-1 candidates with the most votes are elected, following which
From the pool of remaining candidates, elect the minority candidate with the most votes if there are none in the top n-1 candidates. Otherwise, elect the candidate with the most votes.

Implications of proposed GRC reforms:

There will be no bundling of candidates on the party ticket.

Each candidate will be judged on their own merit, preventing weak and untested candidates from riding on the coattails of Ministers. Each candidate will have to WORK FOR THEIR SEAT and prove they deserve to be elected. This is the trial of fire sorely lacking in Singapore's political system since its implementation of GRCs.

All parties are still free to present their candidates as a team; all voters are still free to vote straight-ticket ballots.

This proposal does not contradict the stated and constitutional purpose of the GRC system, i.e. ensuring minority representation in Parliament.

If the GRC system was to ensure minorities have a voice in Parliament, then the block ticket system should not be a sacred cow.

Other GRC reform proposals on the net:
Kent Ridge Common: Contesting GRCs the SMC way

Minilee's reformasi decoded

2009-05-29T17:33:00.005+08:00

The PAP is not out to have a clean sweep. What we are trying to offer is certainty of good government and good people in charge. So my message is this: Have your desire for opposition fulfilled, but never to the extent of changing the government.
- Goh Chok Tong, 3 May 2006

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

From Minilee's proposed changes, we may tease out a probable set of dictums guiding his co-option of political reformation. We're not so shocked that they're virtually unchanged from Goh's formulations and implied dicta 2 years ago.

1. The PAP does not have the calibre to govern in an open democracy.

2. In Singapore, the PAP decides how many opposition MPs Singaporeans are allowed. Now Minilee allows you to have up to 9 opposition NCMPs and 10 MPs with full voting rights. Be thankful!

3. The PAP will do what it can to prevent Singaporeans from electing opposition MPs to constituencies.

4. The PAP will never allow voters to change ruling parties.

After all, what sort of reforms would guarantee that ensure that "the government which is elected has a clear mandate to govern in the interest of Singapore"?

One that guarantees the winning party is a parliamentary supermajority?

How on earth does this "serve Singapore well now and into the future"? Minilee's reforms will only guarantee that if there is a change in government, it will definitely be the worst case scenario "shock result" that his father and party leaders have always been afraid of.

By creating a reformed system where any ruling party has a clear mandate, where ruling coalitions are unnecessary, where oppositions are never strong enough to hold the crucial 1/3 of Parliament seats, Minilee and the PAP are ensuring that any new ruling party has zero experience in essential democracy and parliamentary governance. Minilee's proposed reforms guarantee that any change in ruling party will be disastrous to Singapore.

An issue of statements III

2009-05-25T18:44:00.003+08:00

This article continues our ongoing analysis of the recent statements by faith groups on the Aware issue.

Slightly more than 8 days after the conclusion of the Aware EGM and 10 days since his first statement as NCCS President, Bishop John Chew released a pastoral letter reflecting on the Aware issue. Where his first statement as NCCS president clearly needed clarity in terms of what he really meant to say, this pastoral letter attempts to redress its predecessor's shortcomings - but not without creating even more confusion.

We will leave aside the specifics of John Chew's pastoral letter for the moment, for they are the least of John Chew's problems.

For whom does John Chew speak?

This refrain is starting to feel like a recurring punchline in a stand-up comedy routine by now. We have earlier resolved that John Chew has no legal and theological basis to claim authority or right to represent, advocate, or doctrinally define the stand of Protestants in Singapore.

Note this: An imperfectly written statement released by the NCCS President is "clarified" by the Anglican Diocesean Bishop. John Chew had previously aspired to speak and dictate policy for the Protestant community of Singapore. He released a statement giving the impression as such on the Aware issue, as NCCS President. And yet his follow-up and clarification (much needed, he claims in this letter, to allay confusion and breakdown in both the "Christian Church" and the Anglican Church) is made as a Diocesan Bishop and not as NCCS President.

This is of course highly irregular and improper procedure, the equivalent of political leaders wearing too many hats and putting on different hats at different times to participate in a single issue. Yet more practical problems and questions arise from John Chew's mystifying pastoral letter:

For whom does John Chew speak to and speak for in his pastoral letter?
Why does John Chew not take the opportunity to share his "clarification" on the matter as NCCS President, to all Protestants in Singapore?

Pulpits vs pastoral letters

"We do not condone churches getting involved in this matter; neither do we condone pulpits being used for this purpose": while this statement does not imply orders were actually given to ban preaching on the Aware issue from the pulpit, reports from our church-going readers and friends indicate that clergy in Protestant churches generally refrained from even commenting on the Aware issue on the Sundays before and after the Aware EGM in respect to John Chew's NCCS statement.

John Chew now appears to say: preaching about Aware from pulpit cannot, but pastoral letter can!

Are pastoral letters equivalent to preaching from the pulpit? What status does a pastoral letter from the Anglican Dioscean Bishop have? Was the Diocesan Bishop writing in his capacity as the head of the Singapore Diocese, or the pastor of the Saint Andrew's Cathedral parish?

A pastoral letter from the Bishop of Rome you will ignore at the peril of your Catholic soul.

A pastoral letter from the pastor or even moderator of a Presbyterian Church is merely the opinion of its writer, and not necessarily that of the writer's church, presbytery or synod unless indicated otherwise.

Most certainly a pastoral letter in the Anglican Communion resides somewhere in the middle - we urge Bishop John Chew to clarify the capacity in which he wrote the letter, the theological status of the pastoral letter, as well as explain why a lengthy explanation - implying that his original NCCS statement was poorly crafted and inadequate in communication - was released not as NCCS President but as just Anglican Diocesan Bishop. Why change hats halfway?

Clearly though, the state again felt the need to activate the faith spokesgroups, but this time, using the heads of the Lutheran, Methodist, and Islamic churches - none of whom bothered to agree with John Chew or reference his pastoral letter. Curious, no?

Taking clear sides now can, or: to hell with the secular-religious divide!

We note several instances in Chew's pastoral letter where he clearly takes a stand in the Aware issue, chooses his sides, and makes pronouncements on the Aware CSE programme to the extent of sanctioning Thio Su-mien's allegations:

We are grateful to God for MOE's swift suspension of external sexuality education programmes pending careful review...

If pastors around Singapore had refrained from even commenting about Aware and its sex education programme for weeks just because of John Chew's NCCS statement, they'd be kicking themselves in the foot now. Not only is Chew commenting on Aware, he's now tying Aware and homosexuality together. Not from the pulpit, but using a pastoral letter. SMART!

Our Christian social responsibility is to "seek the welfare of the city" (Jer 29:7). This includes the social and ethical considerations we bring to civil life and public discussion of fundamental social issues based on the beliefs and values of our faith.

How is this statement different from saying Christians must stop the nation from crossing lines God has drawn? I suspect John Chew will never illustrate this unless public pressure is exerted for him to explicitly clarify his position on the church-state divide, or even comment on Pastor Derek Hong's interesting theological formulation.

Similarly, as a man who chooses which reality to belong to, John Chew needs to be questioned loudly on whether he condones Hong's formulations of homosexuals and their supporters as the tools of Satan, as well as the status of Thio Su-mien as a prophetess, and whether he agrees with her reported view that abortion led to God's punishment of Singapore during the SARS breakout.

As unfolding revelations have shown, the group’s concern for a direction that AWARE was taking in terms of its agenda for redefining mainstream sexual ethics and social norms was not misplaced.

Almost a clear and unambiguous statement that Aware had a homosexual agenda, and Thio Su-mien was right all along, no? In what capacity does John Chew make this statement?

However one views the perceived involvement and the manner of their engagement of some courageous Christians in the recent AWARE saga, their costly effort has undoubtedly done our society a crucial service...

Bishop John Chew hearts Thio Su-mien. Well, the means may not have been ideal but John Chew clearly approves of the ends! And again, Chew hails from a reality where "means" and "ends" are not talked about, where improper conduct is only ethically difficult and challenging. What this says about him as a man of God and a leader of his church is interesting, to say the least.

An issue of statements II

2009-05-21T09:55:00.005+08:00

This article expands on ideas developed in these posts:
Singapore's wayang model of religious consultation
Imperial overreach: NCCS edition

A statement is much more than just a missive from a single source on a given topic. A statement does not exist in a vacuum; its meaning circumscribes and is circumscribed by other related statements in a field bounded by their common subject of inquiry, interrogative strategy, or discursive environment.

Bourdieuan discourse analysis treats statements as deliberate speech-acts stake out ideological positions, signal an investment of reputation and attention, by both participants and interested spectators.

Having first established Singapore's wayang model of religious consultation and confirming that this model and the "election" of the NCCS as official spokesbody is an unnatural state of affairs for Protestant churches, we now turn to the first wave of statements released for the Aware affair.

Statements of issue, statements of omission

First, the 30 April statement by Bishop John Chew, President of the NCCS.

While "we do not condone churches getting involved in this matter; neither do we condone pulpits being used for this purpose", it does not imply however that standing orders were actually given to ban preaching on the Aware issue from the pulpit.

Instead, Bishop Chew merely elaborates that the heads of NCCS member churches had merely "reiterated to their clergy the standing instruction on the proper use of the pulpit". What that standing instruction is on the proper use of the pulpit is unknown and unknowable. As the NCCS constitution helpfully points out, it is merely "an association of co-operating members, each of which determines its own policy and action." It is probable that the standing instruction may have made some reference to constrict clergy from discussing or promoting the Aware saga from their pulpit; it is likely that the standing instruction varies from church to church.

This continues in a mysterious claim that "our member churches are not involved in the present saga". What Bishop Chew denies in his statement is the existence of leaked emails as clear evidence of COOS involvement and the role of its pastoral staff in orchestrating the takeover, which had been floating around for days and were actually confirmed by Derek Hong before the statement went out. What he hopes we forget is Derek Hong's infamous pulpit speech about nations crossing lines set by God. Bishop Chew is appears to be someone with a high capacity for Jedi mind tricks, or very selective about acknowledging and dealing with historical facts.

Yet this isn't the end of the NCCS statement. Strangely enough, it continues in a defense of individual Christians and Christian churches to engage in public policy and social discussions, and ends with a call for "all [to] step back and give AWARE space to settle its own matters". Again, note John Chew's attempt to slide away from the main issue - that a certain faction of Christians had taken over Aware, and claimed to be acting individually. Either John Chew is speaking completely off tangent, or he has given Thio's faction a plausible excuse for their Aware takeover and future operations.

We point out John Chew's use of "public square", which exists mainly as a dog-whistle code from US religious politics. The only other politician who has gone on record as mentioning the "public square" in Parliament would be NMP Thio Li-Ann. Interestingly, Janadas Devan had already called out on Thio Li-Ann's dog-whistling there and then. Dr Bishop Chew's use of the dog-whistle code is unfortunate if he didn't intend to whip the radical fundamentalist Christian faction into a frenzy.

The reconstituting power of statements

John Chew's NCCS statement - timed way too late into the development of the Aware saga - was apparently so clear and unambiguous that the entire machinery of the state and its wayang apparatus had to be mobilised.

Archbishop Nicholas Chia, Archbishop of Archdiocese of Singapore: 'I agree with Dr John Chew... Secular organisations should remain secular. These organisations are secular and are not within our ambit."

Ustaz Palman Supangat, Chairman, Al-Iman Mosque: "i fully agree with Dr John Chew's statement. Religious and secular issues and organisations should not mix."

Ven. Kwang Sheng, President, Singapore Buddhist Federation: "I support the vfiews of Dr John Chew in the statement issued by the NCCS. Religious groups as institutions should not get involved in civil society organisations, and the pulpit should not be used in furtherance of such socio-political causes... We feel that organisations which are meant to be secular in nature... should always be kept secular, while other organisations with non-secular or religious stances are free to propagate them to their own members.

Rev. Master Lee Zhiwang, President, Taoist Mission (Singapore): "I concur with the views of Dr John Chew, NCCS, that the pulpit should not be used in issues like the leadership of Aware, which is a secular organisation. Religious groups should not be involved in this matter."

Note that each religious organisation leader clearly thought Dr John Chew had made a statement reaffirming the secular-religious divide. Some leaders who issued statements agreed with John Chew that religious organisations should play no part in socio-political causes. Most leaders indirectly commented on the importance of Aware being kept secular, even though Josie Lau and Thio Su-mien had insisted that their religious affiliations were incidental to their takeover operation.

Curious, no? Applying the wayang model to the first cycle of statements, we suggest that:

1. The State, eschewing direct intervention into the Aware affair, had hoped to solve it through the church-state consultation model promulgated by then-PM Goh Chok Tong.

2. Dr John Chew and the NCCS were tapped and nudged into action.

3. The statement by Dr John Chew was unsatisfactory and subtly defiant.

4. As a result, other faith leaders had to be brought into play, their statements cascading into the world's fastest attempt at historical revisionism, rewriting the intent and tenor of Dr John Chew's actual message, and guiding audiences to read it "correctly".

5. Secular society, secularism, the church-state divide: all omitted in Dr John Chew's NCCS statement, all reaffirmed in the other faith leaders' statements.

Imperial overreach: NCCS edition

2009-05-18T01:37:00.004+08:00

NCCS - nothing like MUIS

Certainly, the National Council of Churches of Singapore (NCCS) has benefited from the uniquely consultative style of the Singapore government in recent years, rising to occasion as a convenient spokesbody, representative, and leader for Protestants here.

Founded in 1948 by a group of British clerics and friends who served as POWs at Changi Prison, the Malayan Christian Council promptly faded into obscurity given the fact that these clerics left the region shortly after, and that there were a whole host of other ecumenical initiatives in Malaya. And not to mention, The Emergency.

To put it bluntly, the NCCS has a temporarily high profile today thanks to the opportunism of its exco members. Their actions have catapulted it to the public eye, above and beyond its natural capacity -

Signing the declaration of religious harmony
Issuing a statement on homosexuality
Issuing a statement on the casino issue
Issuing a statement to back the banning of the Mohammed cartoons
Issuing a private and secret letter to the MDA on The Da Vinci Code

Extra-legal powers and authority?

But who does the NCCS speak for? What manner of doctrine or public position can it enforce on Protestants in Singapore?

The NCCS was never intended to be a Protestant fatwah-issuing religious council. The President of the NCCS was never intended to be the leader of Protestants in Singapore. Yet these two misconceptions were held by many commentators on the Aware issue, regardless of which faction they supported.

We refer to the Constitution of the NCCS:

Article 3(iv): [the Council is founded] as an association of co-operating members, each of which determines its own policy and action.

Article 4(vi): [The objectives of the Council are] to provide an agency through which the Government of the Republic of Singapore may consult the Council on matters of common concern to its members.

Articles 4(v) to (vi) are amendments to the original constitution of the NCCS, giving credence to the Wayang theory of state-church consultation. (As an aside, we note that 4(vi) is a copy-paste-adaptation of Section 3, 2(a) of the 1968 AMLA act.) These amendments can be reasonably dated to the aftermath of the 1969 race riots in Malaya, whereupon the governments on both sides of the Straits instituted various faith councils to take part in the wayang process, and empowered the successors of the Malayan Christian Council as 'official' spokesbodies.

In Singapore at least, there was very little follow-up consultation thereafter, until the Goh administration reinstituted the wayang process with the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act in 1991 and to seek 'religious approval' of the human stem cell research through 'religious representation and consultation' in the Bioethics Advisory Committee, in 2001.

Our main concern is with 3(iv) of the NCCS constitution, which appears to explicitly contradict the organisation's spokesbody role. The same clause also appears to contradict the organisation's carefully cultivated impression having the unquestionable authority to advise Protestant Christians on theological or secular matters.

In reality, the President of the NCCS has no power to issue commands to the Protestant Christian population, set church policy, or to speak on behalf of NCCS member churches.

Don't believe me?

Ask the Methodists.

The General Conference, "which meets every 4 years, is the highest decision-making body of the MCS, led by the elected Bishop and an equal number of elected representatives (both clergy and laity) from each of the three Annual Conference..."
The People Called Methodist, 37

The General Conference is the only body that speaks officially for the church. "No person, no paper, no organisation has the authority to speak officially for The Methodist Church, this right having been reserved exclusively to the General Conference under the Constitution"
Discipline¶210

Ask the Presbyterians.

According to the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in Singapore, the Synod is its highest decision-making body, with unique powers to license and recognise preachers (18)(i) for its denomination, to represent the Presbyterian Church in external relations (48)(i) and make doctrinal decisions (48)(ii). It is the Synod who represents the Presbyterian Church externally, not any Moderator, and most certainly not the President of the NCCS.

In light of this, we question the placement of Rt Rev Tan Cheng Huat as NCCS Vice President and presumably its representative for the Presbyterian Church in Singapore.

Under the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in Singapore, the Moderator of the Synod is purely that: an administrative role in the 3rd level of the church bureaucracy. He calls meetings to order, is responsible for accounts, but when the Synod votes, the Moderator is an ordinary voting member; his vote is not a veto and not a deciding vote.

Under what right does a Moderator have to represent and speak for the Synod in the NCCS?

As far as we know: There is no "Moderator of the Presbyterian Church". The Moderator of the 35th & 36th Session Synod of the Presbyterian Church, 2009-2011, is Rev Phua Chee Seng. The Moderator of the 16th Session English Presbytery, 2009-2011, is Rev Keith Lai. The Moderator of the 17th Session Chinese Presbytery, 2009-2011, is Rev Leow Khee Fatt. We are unclear if NCCS meant the moderator of the synod, the moderator of a presbytery, or the moderator of a church known as "Presbyterian Church".

Will the "Moderator of the Presbyterian Church" please stand up and explain your strange, unusual, probably fictitious post - and just what you're playing in this organisation, and who is authorising you to play in the NCCS?

Singapore's wayang model of religious consultation

2009-05-15T14:26:00.009+08:00

Imperial overreach redux, or: haven't we been here before?

In the light of a second cycle of official statements coming from various churches and religious groups on the long aftermath of the Aware issue, it is clear that the matter is not closed, and will not be closed for some time. Despite their authority and positions, statements issued by various quarters more than a week ago lack the finality that was expected of them - hence forcing another wave of clarifications.

The church-state wayang

As a modus operandi, faith organisations have never played an active role in political and public commentary in the years of the Republic; one may cite certain remarks a political leader issued shortly after Operation Spectrum, or the general consensus on the church-state divide already existing in the entire region after 1960.

It is then highly out of the ordinary that faith organisations in Singapore have been issuing on a regular basis, official statements on all matters of public policy and social discourse in the recent years. We trace this torrent of statements to their zero point: a decision in 2001 by the Goh Chok Tong government to obtain the consent from various faith leaders before embarking on its life sciences and stem cell research industry.

Out of this need to have religious leaders to speak for their faith communities as part of a "look, I asked them, they didn't object strongly enough" consultation process, certain questionable innovations have arisen, erroneous impressions cultivated, and ambitions stoked.

Like a good old wayang, a series of legal and social fictions (in the sense that corporate personhood is a fiction) must be maintained in this 'consultative' mode of government.

1. Religions have a major say in public consultation (when the government decides they should be consulted, or be made to speak up on certain issues)

2. Religions must receive special legal protection against certain speech (to the point where observers have the impression that religious organisations have a veto over public discourse and public policy)

3. Religious leaders have authority to speak for and dictate the beliefs and attitudes of their faith communities

These fictions, especially the final one, don't seem to be immediately illogical; we expect Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (aka MUIS) to issue religious rulings that orthodox Muslims in Singapore would consider binding.

But does the President of NCCS have the authority to speak for, dictate the doctrinal stand, and issue commands to Christians in Singapore?

And moving further away from the religions of the book... do the statements from the President of a Buddhist Federation or a Taoist Society have any doctrinal, legal, or even institutional authority on self-professed Buddhists and Taoists in Singapore? To what extent do the Presidents of these societies receive the acknowledged leadership and authority from the members of their faith, which they fictionally 'speak for' and 'represent' in Singapore's wayang system of church-state relations?

The Aware saga has shown that certain consultative bodies may not be content with their mere consultative role, and aren't afraid of being seen by the larger polity as muscling their way into public policy and setting the terms of public discourse either publicly, through their 'individual' proxies, or through inaction to control these proxies.

Go to part 2 of this post

The gay agenda

2009-05-14T14:51:00.006+08:00

Yesterday, Aware. Today: the United Nations! Dun dun dunnnnn!

Full story here

Kampala - Ugandan Ethics Minister James Nsaba Buturo alleged on Friday that some United Nations member states were engaged in a covert campaign to spread homosexuality around the world.

"At the United Nations there are attempts by some nations to impose homosexuality on the rest of us," he told reporters. "We have learned that they want to smuggle in provisions on homosexuality."

He said he was particularly concerned about an ongoing UN conference on population.

"We got to learn from our sources that there are interests that want to use that conference to bring in issues that will protect homosexuals," he said.

Buturo spoke on Thursday to Uganda's UN ambassador and reminded him of the country's position that homosexuality is "unnatural, abnormal, illegal, dangerous, and dirty".

Disclaimer: This blog post is not meant as a commentary on Thio Su Mien, her takeover attempt of Aware through her G9, or the rhetoric the Thio camp has employed throughout the Aware affair.

Ladies and gentlemen, the homophobic playbook:

1. When members of an organisation plan to introduce provisions on homosexuality that do not outright condemn it as a sin, an abomination, or a practice out of line with the majority: There is a covert agenda to spread homosexuality.

2. An organisation planning to introduce provisions for non-discrimination on homosexuality = an organisation planning to protect homosexuals.

3. An organisation planning to comment, not unfavourably, on homosexuality/homosexuals: clearly acting under the influence of external interests.

Defending the right of Christians to discuss

2009-05-10T19:43:00.005+08:00

Do Christians have the right to engage in public discussion and national policy-making?

In what manner, under what circumstances and rules of conduct should Christians engage in public discussion and national policy-making?

Discuss.

The following comes from the bulletin board of a church that shall not be named. Please note this denomination is considered to be socially liberal and theologically quiet in relation to the rest of the mainline denominations in Singapore.

In recent years, there have been many developments in our social landscape that have affected our lives as Singapore citizens and more importantly, as Christian Singaporeans. Jesus calls us to live by kingdom values and to be the salt and light of the world (Matthew 5:13-16), as His witnesses, influencing and impacting our society for good, to the glory of God. This mandate, however, is very often privatized, confining to personal religious piety. As a result, many Singaporean Christians are shying away from engaging themselves in the discussion and decision-making process on social issues in the public arena. The recent controversy on sexuality education in our public schools has highlighted the apathy Christians share with the rest of society.

The Leadership Team believes that our call to Christian discipleship goes beyond engagement with Sunday worship and ministry activities. We believe that we need to connect our Sunday proclamation of faith with our practice of faith in the marketplace and public arena.

Therefore, we hereby invite all like-minded Christians, who have a burden or are burdened by the developments in our public policies and social landscape, to come and join us for an informal dialogue session for this purpose.

Update: No, the church from which this bulletin originated is not COOS. It is not a megachurch either. It's not a fundamentalist church either.

The 8th Germinal of Thio Su Mien

2009-05-09T17:07:00.006+08:00

Much of the revelations in the "On Aware's changing slant towards homosexuality and comprehensive sexual education in recent years" (now pulled off Aware's website after Feminist Mentor's G9 were deposed) centres on Aware's activities from 2005 to 2008.

For the first time, the Aware Mother's Day celebration included presentations of mothers with lesbian daughters, alongside normal and single-parent units.

For the first time, Aware chose a movie with a lesbian theme as its charity fundraiser.

For the first time, Aware invited a gay activist, Alex Au, to give talks to women on HIV.

And for the first time, Constance Singam herself participated in Indignation, Singapore's gay pride month, in a dialogue session with the lesbian community.

In the hardened hearts and blinded eyes of Thio Su Mien and COOS Pastor Derek Hong, this constituted a capitulation to the homosexual agenda.

Yet Constance Singam herself refused to bow to the demands of the gay and lesbian community. At Indignation's "Queer women within feminist Singapore", Singam refused to concede to the popular demand that Aware explicitly support the lesbian community, refused to have lesbian-specific programmes. Singam refused to acknowledge that lesbian rights were special and needed emphasis beyond Aware's general pro-women, irrespective of race, age, class stance.

If Singam were intent on allowing the gay conspiracy to hijack Aware, subvert it against family values, she ended up burning bridges with a large part of the lesbian community last August.

This alone tells us how much reality-based the concerns of Thio Su Mien and Pastor Derek Hong are.

It is difficult to believe that these two members of a mainstream Christian denomination looked at Aware's list of firsts without considering Constance Singam intended for 2008 to be Aware's outreach year for the lesbian community.

It is a community that has traditionally distanced itself from mainstream feminism and fallen outside its purview, despite the fact that all its members are women who ought to be accounted and administered to by feminist projects and help.

Christ-centred churches do outreach programmes as a matter of principle and religious calling. Yet I have never heard of churches being hijacked or having their purposes subverted by their outreach communities. Just as Constance Singam refused to compromise on her vision of feminism in the face of the lesbian community it outreched to last August, no church would compromise on its Christian values because of its outreach community.

This alone tells us the lack of Christ in the hearts of Thio Su Mien and Derek Hong, for them not to see what the list of firsts was really about.

This also tell us Constance Singam failed to communicate her outreach programme openly in Aware's literature and newsletters and to the public at large. Aware's record low membership and even lower number of active members in 2007-8 had simplified the organisation to the extent where Singam's decisions did not really need to be put forward for open discussion and explanation; in any case, Aware's undeclared outreach programme does not constitute good organisational governance and has now even engendered distrust in parts of society outside of COOS.

The road forward for Aware is very simple. All Constance Singam and Dana Lim need to do is to reaffirm their vision of a neutral feminism that cannot be held hostage to the gay and lesbian lobby while continuing their outreach to the lesbian community, to start an outreach to the Christian community without being held hostage to the Christian lobby. Eyes on all sides of the debate will be watching closely.

Inquiring minds want to know: Caine Teo and Ape Communications

2009-05-05T09:54:00.006+08:00

As we celebrate our victory over the forces of Feminist Mentor, we urge people to review their memories of that hard-fought battle. It was a difficult battle despite the one-sided result.

Over the past few days, we have received reports from people who attended the EGM at Suntec. As we review their accounts with the reports from twitter by articulate bloggers, the Wayang Party and The Online Citizen, it appears the battleground was stacked against their favour.

We draw attention to the events management company behind the EGM: Ape Communications, and its boss Caine Teo.

We direct the following questions to Ape Communications and Caine Teo, and encourage interested parties to send these in writing to Ape Communications, 32 Eng Hoon Street, Singapore 169780 or ask@ape.sg:

1. The original venue for the EGM was to have been Expo, right next to an evangelical rally.

As the event manager of Aware, was this venue choice your decision, or was it a decision on the part of the Aware exco?

2. At the EGM at Suntec, it appears that supporters of the Aware exco, clad in red t-shirts, had volunteered to set up and man the venue as early as 9am.

Was it your decision as event manager to allow only redshirt supporters to volunteer for the venue preparation?

Was it your decision as event manager to reject and eject the Old Guard and their supporters as volunteers for the venue preparation?

3. When the seating began, a huge group of redshirts were made to go into the hall first, as a collective. After which, the queue was operated in a first-come-first served manner.

As event manager, could you explain the rationale for the decision to let the redshirts enter the hall first?

4. When the EGM started, and for almost the entire duration of the EGM, microphones at the back and middle of the hall were turned off completely.

As event manager, could you explain why this was so? As events manager, could you justify this decision, as anyone who has attended corporate AGMs and EGMs will tell you it's bad form to turn off any microphone in a hall?

5. During the EGM, the microphones were constantly switched off in the middle of questions by speakers who interrogated the new exco’s policies and attitudes toward homosexuality.

Was control of the microphones under your purview as events manager? Could you explain why the microphones seemed to work in the interests of the exco, and not the members of the organisation?

6. We note the presence of AETOS Security Management Pte Ltd auxiliary police for the event. It is unfortunate that the overwhelming impression was that the AETOS personnel functioned more as the private bodyguards and enforcers of the will of the Aware exco, instead of keeping the peace and security on both ends.

Was control of the auxiliary police under your purview as events manager?
Could you explain why the AETOS personnel appeared to work under the orders of the exco, and not as security personnel?
Could you clarify the role under which AETOS personnel were engaged for the event?

7. At 9.10 pm, Josie Lau goes on stage with the statement "We have decided to graciously step down. We wish Aware all the best. I declare the meeting closed." And the microphones in the hall were all shut down following this statement.

As event manager, were you in charge of the microphones? If you weren't, who was?
As event manager, were you aware that as of her statement to step down, Josie Lau no longer had the power to declare the meeting closed?

8. On your girlfriend's blog (screencap here), she mentioned being privvy to "new and unpublished insights" about the Aware situation because of your involvement. She clarifies on her blog that you shared with her your worries and how your day went.

As event manager, did you discuss break client confidentiality in discussing the Aware issue with your girlfriend?

As event manager, were you provided information by the Aware exco that were in excess to what you needed to know? How much information did you pass on to your girlfriend?

9. As event manager, would you say that you have provided a fair, neutral, and unbiased event management for a highly polarised EGM?

For all readers who attended the EGM on Saturday: Do feel free to leave your impressions and additional questions of the event management on the blog, or email me through the usual channels. I will, with permission, reproduce them here, with names withheld upon request.

Updates:
6 May 2009: NMP Siew Kum Hong reports on his personal experience of the deliberately tilted playing field of the EGM and its wide variance from the law and practice of meetings.

An issue of statements I

2009-05-04T14:04:00.007+08:00

A statement on the point at issue

I would like to congratulate Constance Singam, new President Dana Lim and her executive committee for their success in retaking Aware.

Thank you, old guard, for remaining steadfast to your principles, for calmly and clearly telling and showing what you stand for.

Thank you, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Catholics, agnostics and atheists, for showing this was never an issue of faith, for telling us this had all to do with ethics, transparency, respect and diversity.

Thank you, old media, for showing there are some principles that we can all agree to care about.

Thank you, women of every social class and profession, for showing that you care enough about airy fairy ideals like ethics and transparency.

Thank you, mothers, sisters, and daughters, for transcending beyond conservative and liberal labels on Saturday. Thank you for showing that Feminist Mentor and her G9 are more of a religious splinter group than representative of any 'conservative Singapore society'.

Thank you.

Now that you've won, let me point out the road ahead of you.

I understand that Constance Singam and President Dana Lim intend to change the constitution of Aware. For good reason too: the illiberal, unprincipled and surreptitious takeover must never be allowed to happen again. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..."

Please don't declare the war is not over; it's barely begun.

The G9 has resigned, their supporters outnumbered. They remain on the membership rolls of Aware even now. All 762 to 755 of them, which by the way constitutes more than 1/3 of the organisation.

My understanding is that it takes a 2/3 majority to push through a change in your constitution. You do not have the numbers, should Feminist Mentor and her G9 regroup and play the role of "principled opposition". More alarmingly, should Feminist Mentor and her G9 decide to to play it by the book, they have more than the 1/10 membership to push for another EGM. And another EGM. And yet another EGM.

You have won with the support of 1411 members. Please cherish the numbers. Please make an effort to engage them, to sustain their interest in feminism, in helping other women in need.

The price of your victory is eternal vigilance.

If you and your supporters fall asleep, know that the 762 to 755 sleepers will be activated once more. If civil society falls asleep, we know there will be more than 755 sleepers, skilled letter writers, proxies and other minions available to take over their next NGO, push their next not-quite-transparent agenda, raise their next protest.

Remember, remember, the 2nd of May.

Aware's new events management company

2009-05-02T13:49:00.003+08:00

Sometime between a week and a month ago, the new Aware exco engaged the services of advertising agency Ape Communications as the event manager of its EGM for today.

From the New Paper:

Aware was informed yesterday afternoon of Singapore Expo's decision to withdraw the venue through its event management company, Ape Communications, and no reasons were given until this afternoon.

'Aware understands that its meeting cannot be held at the Singapore Expo for 'law-and-order' reasons.'

When pressed for more answers, Aware was not forthcoming.

Ape Communications too, declined comment.

So far, no one knows the conditions under which Ape Communications was hired, and how much its services cost.

Several questions arise, because Ape Communications is not an events management company; it's an advertising and branding consultant. Its subsidiary, Ape Productions, was only set up this January as an events company, and headed by one Caine Teo.

Ethics, client confidentiality, and the need to know basis

Though Ape Communications/Productions has been tight-lipped to the press on its role in the Aware saga, Caine Teo's girlfriend hasn't.

From Caine Teo's girlfriend's blog (screencap courtesy of Diodati):

Anyway, because of Caine, I've obtained new and unpublished insight to the whole issue. And all I can say is: "Don't judge until you've got all the facts right. The media is not always neutral."

I pray Saturday goes well.

Implications:

Ape Communications/Productions may have breached a serious code of client confidentiality if Caine Teo has indeed been passing on "new and unpublished insights" to his girlfriend on the Aware issue.

Further questions arise, such as why the new exco appears to have made Caine Teo its confidante and providing insights beyond his scope as an events manager for the organisation.

I welcome the explanations of Caine Teo, Ape Communications, and the new Aware exco on this matter.

Civil society in a secular society

2009-04-30T21:47:00.003+08:00

1. Lessons from Aware

Like a pebble thrown into a stagnant pond, the takeover of Aware continues to create ripples in Singapore society. If Aware's previous leaders were caught off-guard, Singaporeans too were caught flat-footed and intellectually unprepared to grasp the real issues at hand.

This has been a learning journey for all of us. If anything, we're learning the value of civil society. By examining our personal moral outrage provoked by the negative example of Feminist Mentor's takeover, we are all rediscovering the unspoken behaviour and fundamentals that nurture civil society and make for a healthy polity.

We are encouraged by the near-unanimous agreement between the blogosphere and the senior editors of the Straits Times on the value of civil society, and how the takeover offends every sensibility we hold about civil society to the point of threatening its very concept, if not its existence.

2. Anger and its solutions

The seething anger on the ground is fed by the realisation that despite breaking every tenet of civil society, Feminist Mentor and her G9 may walk away with the organisation scot-free, unaccountable to its stakeholders, avoiding all sanctions from any legal, state, or even clerical jurisdiction.

Operation Leper prefers to approach the issue this way: As this group of people refuse to play by the rules of civil society, they shouldn't be invited to play the game at all. Operation Leper urges you instead to work towards preventing their appointment to future leadership roles in politics, voluntary/social welfare groups, and NGOs.

Operation Leper does not support efforts to remove these people from their day jobs, intimidate them, or to send threats to them.

If you are angry, do write to them civilly to express your disappointment with their stealth takeover, their unilateral purges during the communications lockdown of Aware, or their short circuiting of civil discussion. Please do not send mail to their personal addresses. Please communicate with them directly, and not with their employers.

Operation Leper has to date issued a total of one boycott call, that of Lois Ng's Studio You Pte Ltd. Sam Ho rightly grasps our intentions: Studio You Pte Ltd is a company owned by Lois Ng. We object on moral grounds to the participation of this entrepreneur's participation in the takeover of Aware, and therefore call for the boycott of this entrepreneur's company and products.

3. That religious issue

Here at Illusio, a decision was taken not to allow discussions about the religious aspect of the takeover; recent developments and revelations have confirmed some of the theories and speculation floating around the rumour vines. The ban is now lifted.

One thing we note with unease is a growing discourse on the blogosphere arguing that religion has no place in pluralistic secular/civil society.

Let's look at what civil society entails again: it is the conglomeration of free, uncoerced human association and its set of relational networks. In a theocratic state, faith-based affiliation would not be an uncoerced human association, and hence not be part of civil society - whereas it will be, in a multi-faith secular society. Similarly in a modern state, the forces of capital are so totalising that they would not be considered part of civil society - whereas the various guilds and free trading cities of the Hanseatic League would be during their day.

Like it or not, religion is part of Singapore's multi-confessional secular society. People have the right to voice their opinions and beliefs, even if these are rooted in religious conviction. Civil and honest public discussion must be encouraged, even if certain speakers in the polity's discussions make their stand through a prism of their personal conviction.

The takeover of Aware and ensuing allegations of churches engaging in an Aware mass recruitment effort may suggest that certain religious considerations and affiliations are on the verge of becoming a totalising force, one that undermines the uncoerced associations and networks of civil society.

Currently, Singapore is a multi-confessional secular state. Its secularism should not be confused with the laïcité system practised in France or Turkey. A trend of the totalisation of religion may push the state to impose laïcité in the polity, to preserve its secular nature. And let me warn secularists and atheists that the experience of laïcité in France and Turkey has not been a happy one at all.

Aware EGM change of venue

2009-04-28T21:18:00.007+08:00

Post updated 30 April 2009

Official announcement here.

Aside from the change to Suntec Exhibition Hall 402 ~~Singapore Expo Hall 2~~, there are other things to note:

"Admission and registration would (sic) be from 12.00 noon to 2.00 p.m. on Saturday, 2nd May 2009"

This means people will be admitted into the expo hall beginning Saturday noon. If the hall should overfill by the time you arrive, good luck.

Because the Aware Constitution states that "At least one quarter of the total membership of the society or 25 members, whichever is the lesser, present at a general meeting shall form a quorum."

Be there at 12 noon or be prepared to face the possibility of being locked out because the hall is deemed full and the quorum has been reached.

"It is mandatory to show your NRIC for admission and registration."

And don't forget to bring your membership card, or a printout of your Aware registration and payment forms, please.

"Messrs Rajah & Tann have been appointed to act as AWARE's legal advisors to attend the EGM to be convened on 2nd May 2009 to address legal queries relating to, and raised during, the EGM including the matters intended to be transacted, AWARE's constitution and meeting law and procedure."

Aware's June 2006 constitution does not provide any guidelines concerning how the meeting should be conducted. Who decides which speakers are allowed to speak during the EGM? Who decides how much time is given to speakers? Who sets the rules for how the EGM will be conducted?

If there is a filibuster, will it be allowed?
If there is a no questions, no discussion, just vote meeting, will it be allowed?

Lawyers will be useful. Do you have one on your side?

A message from Josie Lau

2009-04-27T16:55:00.006+08:00

The silence is broken

Go to the link for her full letter. I'm just going to quote parts here.

Dear Valued Members

Since my election as President on 14th April 2009, I have received intense media attention. A group of AWARE members has gone public with various allegations and have called for an EGM for the specific purpose of removing me and my team. We have only been in office for less than 20 days.

You have been in office for less than 20 days, 20 days during which no one knew your agenda or programmes. 20 days during which sub-committee heads were summarily dismissed without explanation. 20 days of a communications lockdown following a bizarre AGM where you were elected by a coordinated vote of more than 100 new members, without explaining your agenda, programmes, or even where you came from ("Hi! Feminist Mentor sent me to take over your organisation!")

I am a woman seeking to serve other women in Singapore. Like you, I have struggles. I do not have all easy answers to the many hard questions that life throws up. No one does.

Your easy answer, if I recall during the press conference, was Blame the gays! Scary lesbians are taking over Aware! They're promoting sapphic depravities to our children in school, and encouraging them to explore their bodies!

However, we should not be passive where we can band together to work for positive change. There are many things worth protecting and fighting for.

Given your ferocity during the press conference as well as how much time you devoted to the evil lesbionic issue, we know what you are fighting for, Josie =D

We want to make a positive difference to your lives and to our society. A good place to start is to help the many distressed women affected by the current economic crisis.

Whatever happened to Project Wind Beneath My Wings, Josie? Did someone tell you it was out of step with the concerns of actually-existing women affected by the actually-existing economic crisis? That it sounded at best, a vanity project for FM and her G9? Why aren't you selling the virtues of Wind Beneath My Wings now?

We are dedicated towards continuing our role as an NGO to ensure the effective implementation of CEDAW standards. We want to see abstract standards translated into meaningful policies which directly affect our lives and well-being. We will constructively engage with all interested governmental and non-governmental agencies, to progressively bring this goal to pass.

Still no idea why Braema was summarily dismissed as CEDAW subcommittee head without reason. Given that FM's G9 had taken over AWARE for less than a week before the termination, and that you've never had any discussion or even meeting with Braema before terminating her, one has to wonder about your competence as a group.

I hope to see you at the upcoming EGM where we will present preliminary details of our programme and projects.

Wow. Just wow. Saying this now just begs the question: how exactly did you and your friends get elected/appointed to an exco without presenting any preliminary details of your agenda and projects? Why wait more than 20 days AFTER your election before anyone knows what your agenda and projects for Aware are? Why shouldn't we know this DURING your election?

AWARE belongs to you.

You, your fellow churchmates from COOS, and Feminist Mentor's network of concerned parents!

The law of eternal return

2009-04-27T12:14:00.007+08:00

1. I am proud to be Feminist Mentor's feminist mentor

As my readers know - and the random AnonyMouse trolls ignore - I was against the boycott of DBS during the FOTF Singapore affair.

Considering that there was no logical reason to sanction DBS for supporting FOTF Singapore in its honourable project to build a school for disabled children and its moderation into a progressive civil society actor, it was clear that there was no just cause for the boycott action.

Certain words uttered back then are now even more relevant than ever now, during this Aware saga:

The boycott campaign by the gay activists only serves to make such change and moderation impossible. Moreover, their actions can only encourage their opponents to stage reprisals in the same vein: namely, scuttling any positive social projects (HIV awareness, testing, drug subsidies, anyone?) by objecting to the mere presence of the gay activists and gay organisations involved in these projects.

According to the rulebook of Alex Au and his facebook minions, the proper response for anyone opposed to PLU activism is to scuttle any community service project *just because* of the involvement of the gay activists - despite whatever merits that community service project has, and despite its non-relation to gay activism.

This is the lesson that Alex Au and his facebook padres want to teach FOTF Singapore. This is the lesson that will undo the very concept of civil society.

And my warning and prediction has come to pass with the takeover of Aware and Dr Thio's rationale for her operation. In a strange way, I am proud to be Feminist Mentor's feminist mentor.

But just as I called for the seppuku of Alex Au and his gay activist allies, and their exile from activism of ANY KIND, I call for the seppuku of Dr. Thio and her group of 9, and their voluntary withdrawal from AWARE. If they do not heed this advice, Operation Leper will continue to monitor and block their appointment to future leadership posts in politics, voluntary/social welfare groups, and NGOs.

2. All this has happened before; all this will happen again

It is very charming how Feminist Mentor and her Group of 9 continue to conflate the ideas of democracy and due process with pro forma legal observances, fairness with legalness.

It's even more charming that Feminist Mentor and her Group of 9 insist the media and commentators not use the word "takeover" to describe their operation. What delicacy!

Any observer with a smidgeon of knowledge of recent history would realise that all this has happened before; all this will happen again. This knowledge, if widespread, would have been as much a source of embarrassment of FM's G9 as the republication of the addresses of their workplaces.

I speak of the venerable tradition of takeovers of churches and NGOs by other churches. Starting in the 1970s in America, it is practised by (1) ambitious para/megachurches, (2) political-church conglomerations, and even (3) the tiny parish next door that doesn't like the OTHER tiny parish next door.

Non-denomination and Episcopalian parishes as well as NGOs in the United States, UK, and Australia have been taken over in a predictable pattern that tends to include the following:

A sudden jump of membership prior to elections (3)
Surprise turnout overwhelmingly votes into office unknown candidates (3)
The first rationale of taking over: Previous leaders were incompetent, look at the declining membership over the years (1, 2; see Institute on Religion and Democracy)
Second rationale of taking over: Outrageous claims that previous leaders had a homosexual agenda (2; IRD)
After taking over: Purge all administrators, leaders of sub-committees (1, 3)
When questions continue to arise: Change the locks, call in more forces (3)

Of course, it's interesting to note that none of these actions constitute "Christian governance" as we understand it.

All this has happened before; all this will happen again. The least we could do is be intellectually honest and call a takeover a takeover.

Group of 9 comes clean...

2009-04-24T10:50:00.008+08:00

1. But are full of fail

After some weird events, the Group of 9 held a press conference very, very late last night.

Maybe we should call them Group of 10, now that Thio Su Mien has come out as the broker of the takeover, and acknowledged it was really a takeover.

I will leave Corinna Lim and the old guard to rebut the G9's hilarious inaccuracies and outright ignorance of Aware's programmes.

It's a laundry list of fail: at the top of my head, the G9/10 seems to interpret Aware's addition of outreach programmes to lesbian women as becoming a "single purpose organisation overly concerned with promoting lesbianism".

This is even more fail if we recall that just a few days earlier... Josie Lau described Aware as an overextended organisation with too many purposes: "What the new committee wants to do is that, like any good corporation, if you’ve diversified too much, consolidate."

Another high point of fail: mistaking the talk Constance Singam gave at Indignation 2008, hosted by Sayoni... as a talk hosted by SgButterfly.

The new exco's actions have been so surreal, Operation Leper is open to the idea that perhaps their members have proven that they are most suited to appointment as writers for sketch comedy shows on television. And more than open to the idea that it may have to rename itself as Operation Give Them The Noose. Or Operation Let Them Make Us Laugh On TV.

2. But demand privacy

But the most satisfying fail moment in the conference? The mention of Operation Leper. The Group of 9 alleged to have received death threats, invasions into their privacy, boycott calls, and then moved on to mention their objection to our initiative, because we named Lois Ng's company address.

We are surprised at their objection to the boycott. As civil society wannabe-honchos, I'm not sure they realise that boycotts are part and parcel of day to day life in the polity. I'm not sure Lois Ng realises that I got her company address from her company's website, as well as from Google and Google maps. This is all public information, and easily available. So is, for example, the list of vendors who carry her company's merchandise.

But there is a lesson to be learnt from all this - Aristotle has a nice saying which I'll paraphrase here: one's true character can be judged from how they behave when no one is looking.

Or when they think no one can see what they're doing.

Somehow, I do not think Lois's objections to having her company details published bode well about her character.

3. But there can never be reconciliation

The language at the conference would be a major indicator. I will leave other blogs to discuss the language used, verbal and otherwise.

Here, I would like to point out the conference fits within the strategy of G9/10. As observers have universally pointed out, the G9/10 modus operandi was that of stealth, non-transparency, silence, and stonewalling while holding the organisation to a communications lockdown during their ongoing purges of key sub-committees.

Why the conference then? Why the sudden loquaciousness, the sudden urge to make their motivations known, their condemnations of Aware's actions, when they have taken great efforts to hide all these at the takeover AGM, during the purge, and even towards the press in their earlier media interviews?

If they could afford to be this open and upfront now, why not earlier? Why not during the AGM? If they had been this open at the AGM, their victory by numbers would have far more legitimate, attracted much less condemnation, and their open discussion leading to the election victory would have been just a normal interaction of civil society.

The key lies in the final lines of the Channelnewsasia report:

The team will go ahead with the extraordinary general meeting planned for May 2 and is looking for a new venue to accommodate its burgeoning membership. It is now 880 and still growing.

The conference is the martyr video moment of the G9/10. Faced with certain defeat, they want the entire world to know why they did it, before their takeover goes down in flames. They want the entire world to know YES, it was a well-organised takeover, it involved going behind the scenes to garner support from various networks, and then mustering the necessary number of minions to vote them into the exco. And of course they want the entire world to know they did it for the greater good.

Classic martyr video moment, because they do know their own numbers, and these numbers do not account for the 880 figure staring at them in the face.

Classic martyr video moment, because the conference is their public call to arms, their last ditch attempt to rally the numbers from outside of their networks. Me? I'm surprised that they needed to do this. In a straight numbers fight, the Church is always able to out-recruit and out-organise any other secular civil society group or movement.

Implications? The depth and extent of active support for the G9/10 takeover is far less than we thought.

What does religion have to do with anything?

2009-04-22T01:11:00.003+08:00

It was never about religion

Gentle readers: from the blogs you've been reading about the Aware takeover, how many of them make religion the issue? How many of them invent religious epithets for the group of 9? As with Sam, we note the prevalence of hate speech against a certain religion in the dominant discourse, and express our disconcert and disapproval of the vituperative language. We note the use of a certain epithet used by a certain Mr Yawning Bread. We will not repeat or link it here, out of decency and taste.

The religious affiliation of the group of 9 are no concern ours. Do not mistake Illusio for any of the websites or newspapers attempting to make hay out of the religious issue.

All comments attempting to rake up anti-religious sentiment or discuss the religious persuasion of the group of 9 have been and will continue to be deleted.

At Illusio, the moral outrage comes from the manner of the takeover, the behaviour of the group of 9 at the AGM and after the AGM. The issue for Illusio is the non-transparency of the group of 9, its subversion of the democratic process, the undisguised hostility of its takeover, the purge it has conducted since assuming power, and its blatant disregard for the open rules of civil society.

To paraphrase someone: I know of no religion that will condone this!

What do you do with people like this? Some suggest Operation Leper sounds like a thousand angry sharks jumping over the blogosphere, that it is too vicious...

But what would you do to a group of 9 who has done all this?

They won fair and square, right? Right?

We note with concern the political illiteracy prevailing in the discourse of Aware, where it pertains to the oft-repeated claim that the takeover was 'democratic' or 'legitimate'.

We identify this as illiteracy due to the fundamental inability of these commentators to distinguish between a victory achieved by pro forma adherence to Aware's constitution and a victory achieved through a fair and transparent election.

A takeover of any NGO, society, church, or listed company must - out of pragmatic and strategic concerns - be pro forma legal. Yet a takeover where membership rolls have been stacked and leaders pushed through without any honest and open discussion (thanks to the numbers) can only be seen as morally illegitimate. Immoral, even. Or in civil society terms, very much unhelpful to the maintenance of its values of openness, fairness, and transparency.

The charge of political illiteracy is made also on the grounds that similar hostile takeovers of NGOs and church have been occurring for the past 2 decades in other countries, with the appropriate uproar and condemnation - and yet our commentators are content, even adamant on not seeing evil where it clearly lies.

Yes they won according to the rules. Corporate raiders also make sure they win according to the rules. NGO and church raiders also make sure they win according tot the rules. But clearly, there's a difference between following the rules, and resorting to every trick and subterfuge in the book while following the rules. The difference is how your victory smells.

But what would you do to a group of 9 who has done all this?

I know of one religion at least, that would say:

But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. Expel the wicked man from among you.

Even the Bible prescribes sanctions against the immoral.

Operation Leper: Lois Ng & Studio You

2009-04-20T10:45:00.003+08:00

Lois Ng was part of the group of 9 who took over the AWARE executive committee with the help of more than 100 surprise new members at its April AGM, in a non-transparent and hostile takeover that has extended to a full scale purge of key sub-committees and a communications lockdown in the organisation.

Operation Leper monitors who they are working for, which voluntary, social, or welfare organisations and enterprises they join, and who hires them - and suggests you too can exercise your power as a citizen to oppose and impose sanctions on the group of 9.

Lois Ng is a social entrepreneur who set up Studio You. The outfit is a registered private company operating in the charity/welfare sphere, employing people with disabilities to make products, which are then sold commercially at various places.

Their products include - wedding gift items, novelty items ($500 lacquered boxes with images of MM Lee on them), and various and sundry handcrafted tile items.

These items are sold at counters at Lim's Art & Living at Holland Village, The American Club, Shangri-La Hotel gift shop, Singapore Art Museum gift shop, Times NewsLink at Changi Airport Departure/Transist Lounge at Terminal 1.

Operation Leper advises supporters of civil society to
1. Boycott all Studio You products

2. Make written and verbal representations to Lim's Art & Living, The American Club, Shangri-La Hotel gift shop, SAM gift shop, and the Terminal 1 Times NewsLink counter.

a. Protest the non-transparent, hostile, and destructive takeover of AWARE; state your disapproval of the role the founder of Studio You played in this takeover;

b. Firmly and politely object to the shop's display of the Studio You merchandise;

c. Make known your refusal to buy the merchandise, and preference for the shop to withdraw its display of the merchandise.

Contact details:
Lim's Art & Living: 211 Holland Ave #02-01 Singapore 278967. Tel: 64671300
The American Club: 10 Claymore Hill, Singapore 229573. Tel: 6737 3411
Shangri-la Hotel Singapore: 22 Orange Grove Road, Singapore 258350. Tel: 6737 3644
Singapore Art Museum: 71 Bras Basah Road, Singapore 189555. Tel: 6332 3222
Terminal 1 Times NewsLink: Terminal 1, Departure/Transit East #021-01. Tel: 6543 0712
Studio You Pte Ltd: 1 Lorong 23 Geylang, High Point Social Enterprise Ark, Blk 4 #01-11/12, Singapore 388352. Tel: 9816 7747

Lois Ng and the group of 9 must never be appointed to future leadership posts in politics, voluntary/social welfare groups, and NGOs. Any voluntary, social welfare group, or NGO that hires them will be opposed by Operation Leper.

They have proven that they are more suited to appointment in condo management committees; let's help them get there and stay there, where their skills at organisation subterfuge will be much appreciated and sought-after.

Operation Leper

2009-04-18T13:03:00.011+08:00

With the outrageously illiberal, undemocratic, and unprincipled takeover of AWARE, the NGO is now headed by a group whose behaviour and modus operandi runs counter to the principles of civil society. No serious operator in Singapore civil society will see AWARE under its new, mysterious, unknown, sneakily-elected through a hostile takeover leadership, as part of civil society.

We do not know - though some are making the effort to guess - whose agenda the new AWARE exco is serving. We do not need to know, and we do not need to care.

Through their actions, they have declared war on the idea of civil society, preferring to teach us the lesson if you don't agree with your foes, you should just take them over instead of openly discussing your differences. And then pretending to be the aggrieved party while conducting a purge of the ranks during a communications lockdown in the organisation.

Civil society needs to send a clear and loud signal to these clowns that their behaviour is wrong, unacceptable, and intolerable.

I hereby announce OPERATION LEPER. Henceforth, we will constantly remind everyone about these people, monitor who they are working for, which organisations they join, and who hires them. These characters are poison to civil society. If they are hired or appointed by advocacy, voluntary, or political groups, we will oppose their employers. It is our intention to bar them from future roles in politics and civil society.

On the Operation Leper list are:
Josie Lau Meng-Lee (Vice-president of consumer banking group cards and unsecured loans, DBS)
Charlotte Wong Hock Soon (Principal, Renewal Organisation Effectiveness aka ROE, 61 Jalan Remaja, Bamboo Grove Park. phone: 6763 0312)
Jenica Chua Chor Ping (Management Consultant, SAP. hotline: 6890 1088)
Sally Ang Koon Hian (Partner, Sally Ang Ebenezer & Co, at 7 Temasek Blvd #06-03, phone: 68844146)
Maureen Ong Lee Keang (CPA, former SembCorp Logistics CFO)
Catherine Tan Ling Khim (CFA, exco member, CHIJ alumna organisation)
Irene Yee Khor Quin (CFA, Life Planning Associates, at 80 Marine Parade Road, #07-01 Parkway Parade. Phone: 6344 2781 email: service@lpa.com.sg)
Lois Ng (Entrepreneur, Studio You Pte Ltd, at 1 Lorong 23 Geylang, High Point Social Enterprise Ark, Blk 4 #01-11/12, Phone: 67477764)
Peggy Leong Pek Kay (Lecturer, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, School of Humanities)
Dr Alan Chin Yew Liang (General Practitioner, Lifeline Medical Clinic)

It is our desire that these operators never find appointment in any advocacy or voluntary organisations ever again.

AWARE: a civil society primer

2009-04-16T14:31:00.015+08:00

1. Where PN Balji doesn't get it, once again

A ~~paid hack for the whiteshirts~~ veteran journalist, P N Balji is now ~~a political appointee~~ the director of the ~~Asia Hack Academy~~ Asia Journalism Fellowship, a ~~quango set up for aggrandisement of the gahment and its hacks~~ joint initiative by the Temasek Foundation and the Nanyang Technological University.

As a journalist, Balji is clearly cognisant of the wider civil society in which AWARE operates. He comments on the recent stealth takeover during its AGM by a group whose motives, agenda, and rationale for launching the takeover have not been revealed to the media, ordinary members of AWARE, and least of all to attendees at the AGM. Claiming that "the ladies at AWARE do not seem to get it", Balji does a David Carradine, reminding everyone that it's all about clash of ideas!

The silly old guard who got outfoxxed and outgunned should not be "furious" "sore losers" - if they want to take back their organisation, they should engage in a clash of ideas! If the old guard are upset at the sneaky nature of the takeover, they must take them on and show why they are no good for the future of AWARE.

Silly, silly old PN Balji obviously doesn't get it, despite shaking his avuncular finger at the "old", "sore", "upset" "losers" (btw, NICE JOB slamming the old guard and casting them as emotional whacko females, MR BALJI!!!!1111 I luvs how subtle you can get!).

One wonders why he's preaching the good old civil society value, the clash of ideas, to the old guard. If I'm reading the esteemed Mr Balji right, the onus is on the old guard to commit itself to a clash of ideas and show AWARE members that it deserves to get the organisation back.

As opposed to having the onus on the new guard to commit itself to a clash of ideas at the AGM itself - instead of stacking the meeting with their minions and getting themselves elected without a candid discussion of what they stood for, how they differed from who they sought to replace, and why they were no good for the future of AWARE.

But just so you know, PN Balji has more issues with the old losers than the new interlopers.

2. Clash of ideas - once more into the fray

But bless the pox-ridden heart of PN Balji! Deep down in his black soul, the man realises the sanctity of civil society and its core values.

Let's review: civil society is the conglomeration of free, uncoerced human association and its set of relational networks, formed for family, faith, interest, ideology. These networks would include interest groups, various clubs, labour unions, social movements, citizen advocacy groups and others.

The health of civil society depends on its constituents to freely and civilly engage in the clash of ideas that PN Balji so cherishes. It doesn't matter who you disagree or agree with, out of whichever ideology or faith - what matters is the freedom to engage, disengage, to foster patterns of civility in the polity, to create a sphere of social action independent of any totalising force.

Let us apply to the case of the AWARE takeover, the concept of civil society and its basic requirement for an open, honest, protected clash of ideas.

Much of the online wanking tossers - gays, conservatives, pseudo shock jocks, or fashionistas simply trying to grab recognition as serious political commentators - have come up with praises for the takeover - it worked, things like that happen in condo committee AGMs, this shows they're organised and effective (AND READY ON DAY ONE!)

I would not have believed that there are people who could be more blind than the esteemed PN Balji. But what we have here, is a failure to understand the concept of civil society and its underlying fundamentals. Civil society cannot exist if people stop talking to one another. Civil society cannot exist if people resort to violence. Civil society cannot exist if people are more interested in secretive, numerical-based power struggles instead of the clash of ideas.

The new AWARE exco did not behave as if AWARE was a civil society group. They behaved as if it were some condo committee. The new AWARE exco were the opposite of open, refusing to explain themselves in the AGM, or to offer what they saw was wrong with the old gang, or right with themselves. The new AWARE exco gave perfunctory speeches about their belief in the tenets of feminism, so perfunctory no one believed it was their real agenda. The new AWARE exco shot first, then promised to talk later. We're still waiting for them to give a clear account of who they are, what they believe in, and what they intend to do with AWARE.

On a side note, I would like to express my profound regret about Charlotte Wong Hock Soon and Peggy Leong Pek Kay. Wong was a former sociology and anthropology lecturer at NUS, while Leong was a sociology graduate. It is extremely embarrassing for the Sociology Department of NUS, as for its graduates, that these two persons hail from the same department. One would expect, from the wealth of wisdom and teaching from sociology and anthropology, that this sort of hostile takeover is just not done, and runs counter to the spirit of everything we have been taught about urban society and the civic space. Shame on the both of you!

A parable and lesson for the whiteshirts

2009-01-17T09:09:00.005+08:00

Duly noted: taxi uncles setting MPs on fire, foreign non-talent workers deprived of wages (not even their fair wages), a full third of Singaporeans expecting to be retrenched, raised tempers at the shambolic job fairs ill-matching jobs to about-to-be retrenched white collar workers, and the unsurprising revelation that Shatec's casino school in China will most probably end up training the (obviously foreign) managers and heads who will boss around the (obviously local) low level flunkies who studied in Shatec's casino school in Singapore.

Aki's non-shrill anthropologist lecturer in university made a cryptic remark in class years ago:

Despite modern man's penchant for self-congratulation, urbanisation was never a recent invention. Look at history - more precisely, look at the dustbin of prehistory - and you'll find the great cities of Mezo and South America, the Indus valley, the floodplains of Mesopotamia, the plains of China and the jungles of Indochina: all rising in wealth, power and population until, for some unknown reason, these cities are suddenly abandoned, often without violence, and almost always without a trace of their former occupants.

And then: silence, for a few hundred years. Until the next brilliant mind invents the city again. We observe from written history that cities necessarily mean the accumulation of wealth, the specialisation of labour, the creation of class and caste, and hence social and economic inequality and stratification. And we merely speculate that urbanisation and what it entails can sometimes be too unbearable, the compromises too cutting and unliveable, and upon realising it, the people just simply walk away. Or pull down the stones, then walk away.

Der Mittler zwischen Hirn und Händen muss das Herz sein!

The liberal case for: rejecting the campaign to boycott DBS

2008-12-23T14:02:00.002+08:00

Because I'm an equal opportunity insulter of stupid ideas, whether they originate from the left or right.

It was easy to heckle at FOTF Singapore's delicate dance with its chapterhouse in the US. If you thought the doubleminded doubletalk from FOTF Singapore was bad enough, the gay activists are treading an equally fine line on the issue of casus belli. Self-serving is the only word that is appropriate to describe their current actions.

Consider: What on earth did FOTF Singapore do to enrage the activists into a boycott of DBS?

As far as we know, DBS has set aside a percentage of its Christmas promotion to send money to FOTF Singapore. That may have been sufficient for gay overlord Alex Au and his group of Young Turks on facebook, but for any liberal, this cuts no ice.

Consider what would be an iron-clad justification for a boycott. Perhaps FOTF Singapore has waged open war on homosexuals, liberals, and women seeking abortion for as long as it existed?

But then, the open, eternal war was that of the chapterhouse in America. The last time FOTF Singapore made public statement on homosexuality was in 2003. Its stupidity justifiably attracted criticism, derision, and jokes. As a proud reality-based liberal, I challenge gay activists to show evidence that the organisation has not ceased in its war against them in public since then.

Perhaps FOTF Singapore, in paying daily columns in Today newspaper written by its chapterhouse in the US, is guilty of spreading virulent hatred against liberals, gays and women seeking abortion? Well, I challenge gay activists to furnish actual instances and quotes where Today printed a hate article by James Dobson and chapterhouse FOTF. They will come up with nothing.

Everywhere you look, there is no reality-based, evidence-rooted just cause for the boycott. And having a just cause is that important, because presumably you're fighting for the moral higher ground - and not engaging in an intimidation contest to see who can marshal the loudest proxies to sink the opponents' share of public opinion.

Was this the right project to scuttle?

So, what did FOTF Singapore do to drive our beloved gay activists into shrill unholy madness?

It turns out that DBS, the Far East Organisation, and even the paleo-Christian (i.e. the only protestants here who have a death-feud with the evangelicals, non-denominations, and political Christians) Tangs (who used to open after noon on Sundays because it wanted to give its Christian staff time for church) made the decision to support FOTF Singapore for the building of a learning centre for children with learning disabilities.

Alex Au and his trigger-happy radicalised young turks on facebook should consider themselves very, very lucky to have gotten away with their stupidity. Only because FOTF Singapore is even more stupid than them, and missed out on a huge publicity coup to plaster photographs of the beneficiaries of the learning-disabled children, and cry out Alex Au and the gay activists hate Christmas, hate the family, and hate the learning centre for learning-disabled children.

So here's an educational lesson for Alex Au and his gay facebook movement: In the reality based world, banks and rich organisations work vet the charities by vetting the charity projects they sponsor. In other words, DBS, Far East Organisation, and Tangs are not idiots - of course they did specify what type of projects they would allow FOTF to use their money for.

Alex Au and his gay facebook movement, on the other hand, are the real idiots in this saga, for failing to do their homework on how charity funding works, or even to ask very nicely where the money would be spent.

I hope that liberals in Singapore have not been so silly as to get recruited as convenient proxies for the gay agenda in what is clearly an animalistic, to the death fight with FOTF Singapore and its FOTF chapterhouse. Liberalism would have died an ugly death here, if Au and his ill-informed minions led a larger group of even less informed liberal sympathisers to wage war on DBS.

Just causes and just desserts

No matter how much or little we buy into FOTF Singapore's plausible deniability, there was no just cause for the boycott action - if the funding for a school for the learning-disabled isn't clear or embarrassing enough to Alex Au's horde.

As questionable as FOTF Singapore fundamentally is, this special school would be the least tainted of its social projects to date. It has been rewarded with such a reaction from the gay movement.

As liberals, we are not interested in an eternal war with conservatives. On the contrary, we would applaud whatever progressive projects they come up with, and support these projects in the hope that it encourages conservatives to focus MORE on progressive issues in the future instead of culture war issues.

The boycott campaign by the gay activists only serves to make such change and moderation impossible. Moreover, their actions can only encourage their opponents to stage reprisals in the same vein: namely, scuttling any positive social projects (HIV awareness, testing, drug subsidies, anyone?) by objecting to the mere presence of the gay activists and gay organisations involved in these projects.

Once again, as before, I call for the seppuku of Alex Au and his gay activist allies, and their exile from activism of ANY KIND. They're a bunch of clowns who endanger the gay movement and discredit liberalism in Singapore.

The conservative case for: Rejecting Focus on the Family Singapore

2008-12-13T23:15:00.006+08:00

Elsewhere in blogland: a campaign to rail against the DBS sponsorship of the Singapore branch of Focus on the Family, spearheaded by Singapore's favourite gay overlord Alex Au and other more media-savvy activists. There is little to comment on the tired and self-serving propaganda battles between the gay activists and the family activists, except to note thus:

No religion please, we're Singaporeans

FOTF Singapore is a non-religious affiliate of the American evangelical FOTF founded by James Dobson.

The FOTF mother organisation in America has muscled its way into American politics and public policy. It is unashamed of what it sees as its religious mission to fight the cultural wars on the gays, liberals and their degenerate sexual mores, to protect its vision of a traditional family.

Yet the overseas branches of FOTF tend to display some reticence and even coy near-disavowal of the religious underpinnings of their pro-family activities and public policy positions.

As an exercise, you can search for full details of FOTF Singapore's charter here. You should find this:

1. To meet the heartfelt needs of families and to provide them with a legacy of solid marriages, stable homes, reverence for human life and sound moral principles that undergird the foundations of Family Life.

2. To publish, translate, produce, sell and distribute books, magazines, audio-cassettes, CDs, videos, films, radio and TV programmes, educational toys and other related resource materials relating to the promotion of Family Life.

3. To organize and promote talks, seminars, workshops, conferences, meetings, camps and special events and to train and provide counseling and mediation services on all matters affecting Family Life.

4. To conduct research, facilitate education and training on Family Life issues and to work with local and international institutions, organizations and government agencies to promote and propagate positive family values by whatever means and in whatever manner as may now or hereafter be available.

Compare with mothership FOTF's mission statement:

To cooperate with the Holy Spirit in sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as possible by nurturing and defending the God-ordained institution of the family and promoting biblical truths worldwide.
Vision:

Redeemed families, communities, and societies worldwide through Christ.

The conservative case against FOTF

There is something to be said about the variance between the charters of the local FOTF and its chapterhouse in the US. For anyone who expects consistency if not truth, it is intolerable that the branch organisation be seen to hide its true ideological allegiance and ties to its mother organisation.

At best, this variance may be seen as a cynical attempt to gently skirt the religious and ideological issue in a society where the US evangelical culture-political wars hold very little traction. At worst, this is the sort of deceit practised by peaceful charities linked to nefarious terrorist organisations. And somewhere in between, whoever drew up the charter for the Singapore branch clearly understood that the religious angle of FOTF would have automatically prevented a successful registration with the Registry of Societies - proselytism being a no-no in Singapore's charity landscape. What follows is a cynical exercise in bad faith...

"No, don't look at us with those eyes. We're not really the same conservative Christian organisation as the one that bears our name in the United States. Even though theoretically we're a branch of that same organisation... we're really independent of them. Don't even think about Focus on the Family when you think of Focus on the Family Singapore."

By its very existence, Focus on the Family Singapore has already succeeded in making fools out of the Registry of Charities. Because of what they've done, any questionable, dangerous, or undesirable foreign organisation may now set up a proxy branch in Singapore that bears the same name, admit to being a branch, and yet pretend it has shares nothing of the ideology and principles of the mother organisation.

As a conservative, I expect honesty and consistency from any activist group. As a conservative, I'm shocked and appalled at the level of obfuscation and bad faith mirror-dressing of Focus on the Family Singapore. In its disowning of the religious commission behind its charter, the Singapore chapter has turned its face against God in a misguided attempt to appeal to the authorities and religiously-apathetic locals here.

Know your organisation! Call to Action

I urge all Christian conservatives to contact the office holders of Focus on the Family Singapore, to question them about the sincerity of their efforts and to demand they make a clear stand on whether religion guides their hearts when they run this organisation, and to rectify their misleading, Christ-denying charter.

From the same MCYS search page, contact these publicly known officers and office holders of FOTF Singapore:

President: Joanna Koh-Hoe Su Yin. We know that however much she wants to come across as a president of a non-religious organisation, she has given a sermon at the non-denominational River of Life Community Church. We hope she has more pride in her religion and fess up unashamedly of how it should guide her organisation.

Office holders:
Lee Wee Min. A Malaysian by birth, Lee is the president of FOTF Malaysia and has been more above board in that group's operations, openly organising seminars at Subang Methodist Church and giving a lecture on "Covenant Marriage" in his FOTF Malaysia capacity at Indonesia's Lippo-group linked Harvest International Theological Seminary.

Soh Gim Teik. CFO of Sincere Watch Company. Also Director of WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature (Singapore) Ltd.

Ho Sun Yee. Former CEO of Singapore Heart Foundation.

Wong Siu Hong Alfred. Founder, Managing Director and Executive Director of Noel Gifts International Ltd.

Tan Thuan Seng. Former President of FOTF Singapore.

Queer women within feminist Singapore

2008-08-16T23:42:00.007+08:00

Part of Singapore's month-long gay pride celebration Indignation 2008, this talk might be its most important event as it best fits this year's theme of Building Bridges. Agagooga has declined to attend the talk due to his antipathy to the idea of feminists, but for the boy who grew up counting Murphy Brown (since 1989), Hillary Rodham Clinton (since 1991), and Ellen Degeneres (since 1994 - I loved the unconventional streak in her even before she came out) as his role models, this is a must-go event.

Ms. Constance Singam, current president of AWARE [Association of Women for Action & Research], Singapore’s leading advocacy group for gender equality, will shed some light on the place of queer women within the feminist movement. Where have we been?

Building bridges is terribly important. As is painfully clear with the years, the LGBT movement does not have much allies in the wider civil society. None vouched for PLU when it made its various attempts at formal registration. None fought alongside its members when they protested against the Liberty League and NPVC. When its NLB/Spell#7 event was pulled out by the NAC, none of the rest of civil society groups featured in the event came to its defense. During the 377A debate, the community could only count on the theatre community for its endorsement as a community, and on AWARE.

For me, this talk held the possibility that the recounting by Ms Singam would provide a guideline, some clues, or a blueprint for the LGBT community to build bridges to the wider civil society.

1. Perhaps I was naive, but only the L part of the community turned out in force. Maybe the men didn't need to learn how to build alliances...

2. Constance Singam made what amounted to a manifesto for civil society today. The statement may have eluded its audience, but I'll repeat it here for posterity (making allowances for imperfect memory and lack of access to the presentation slides):

We are engaged in a project to change the unsatisfactory [limited, intolerant] paradigm of Singapore society, to create a truly diverse, inclusive, and tolerant society

This is a core statement that any liberal civil society group in Singapore can affirm and base their future cooperation and coordination on. A future Singapore that is more likely to accept homosexuality would most probably be as likely to support non-discrimination of women, unfettered citizen participation in policy discourse, and so on.

This statement was the single most important gift Ms Singam gave to the LGBT community in attendance today. What follows is whether they see the point of building strategic alliances and cooperating with other groups on projects where their values and interests overlap, and standing up for other groups - even if it's not on an explicitly LGBT issue.

Questions and Answers

The Q&A session provided a clear picture of where the LGBT movement and AWARE stand, in relation to each other.

3. Classic feminism vs identity politics

Singam formulated AWARE's fundamental ethic as the support of diversity and rejection of all discrimination. That means supporting all women - regardless of race, age, class, gender orientation, and what have you.

Most interestingly, the response from the audience was to question the fairness of this adherence to "general diversity" - as I understand it, they wanted AWARE to
have lesbian-specific programmes and be explicitly pro-lesbian - because being just "pro general diversity" is apparently as good as being heteronormative.

I think I need to point out, on behalf of Singam, that look: AWARE is bound to serve ALL women. Its pro general diversity stand should be a guarantee that it will NEVER have an anti-lesbian agenda, and that the policies it champions will at least make Singapore better to live in, for the FEMALE part of any lesbian person.

Which brings me to the next observation: 4. AWARE is not the gahment.

The overall impression from all the beseeching of the audience was that they wanted AWARE to spoonfeed the LGBT community with all the answers [i.e. come out with explicitly in support of LGBT issues, formulate pro-lesbian policy recommendations, etc].

Unfortunately, this is not how civil society works. Every group has limited capital and manpower. Every group needs to have a clear set of objectives that mustn't be diluted. AWARE is your ally, not your maid. Their charter is to serve all women, without distinction. Without. Distinction.

In other words: there will be times when AWARE's goals and interests will overlap, intersect with the LBGT community's. That will be an opportunity to collaborate. And this is why they must be counted as allies in the wider civil society.

Further, it's troubling that the LGBT activists (whom Singam believes are more well-funded than AWARE) expect AWARE to do the spoonfeeding and heavy lifting for the community... when AWARE itself is direly short of funds and is probably overextended on the manpower front.

5. AWARE is not the oppressor of lesbians

I'm saddened that this point has to be made. Yes, AWARE's membership has lots of lesbians. That these lesbians have not deemed it necessary to declare their orientation, is not a BAD thing nor indicative of something rotten within the organisation.

A. AWARE's activist culture is general diversity. I take it to mean that they're a bunch of race-blind, age-blind, gender-blind people who would of course not see sexuality as something they should divide women with.

[I know it sounds weird, but what was Singam's idea of an ideal Singaporean man again? As I recall, Singam feels the ideal Singaporean man is the same as the ideal Singaporean woman; and that men can be just as feminist as women can be. In other words, AWARE's second-wave inclusive liberal feminism is completely at odds with the exclusive identity-based activism of latter-day activist movements]

B. LGBT activists in Singapore should be aware that there are gay and lesbian people who would very much prefer to dedicate themselves to other causes, or to swear allegiance to other, more general ideals like the betterment of all women, or to the liberal project. And that this isn't a wrong decision. Because in the end, everyone will still end up collaborating once in a while in the shared liberal project to change/subvert the dominant paradigm.

Brain surgery - what's inside the heads of homophobes?

2008-08-14T23:25:00.009+08:00

Part of Singapore's month-long gay pride celebration Indignation 2008, the eponymous talk attracted the attention and interest of Agagooga and myself. [Yes, we attended the talk together and I typed the notes on his laptop - happy picture of us live-blogging (or note-taking, as it turned out that 72-13 had no wireless@sg network) at event to come, courtesy of the official photographers from Sayoni].

Brain surgery - what’s inside the heads of homophobes? AnJ Ho will take you inside homophobia, to find out from the perspective of research: What constitutes homophobia? What’s the profile of a typical homophobe like, and what might make a difference?

There are several possibilities that suggest themselves from a title like this: as Agagooga points out in his blog post, it is highly provocative:

try turning it around: "Brain surgery - what's inside the heads of homosexuals". Surely, such an event would be labelled homophobic sooner than you could say "rim me now". Given that the theme of the festival is "Building Bridges: Indignation 2008", the title was especially puzzling.

To me, the title raised the possibility that the talk would about giving people who have negative attitudes towards homosexuality a bad name, and/or possibly raising up strawmen arguments of people unaccepting of homosexual (the aforesaid "homophobes").

As Agagooga points out, thanks to the saner heads of Sayoni and its event speaker AnJ, the worst of our fears did not come to pass. This is my report on the talk.

1. The psychological construction of homophobia

We were relieved that the talk consisted of a literature review of homophobia from the psychological perspective, and AnJ was more than qualified and trained to conduct this talk.

That said, being scientific wasn't really a guarantee against the potential pitfalls of the title of the talk: the study of homophobia by psychologists is apparently a new field, and a working definition of 'homophobia' (currently defined as a score in the Wright, Adams, and Bernat Homophobia Scale), hasn't been agreed on by the experts in the field - who are still in the process of fine-tuning their methodology.

Second warning sign: other researchers in this field have acknowledged that homophobia isn't even a real (clinical) 'phobia'. For simplicity's sake, we know that personal and public acceptance of homosexuality runs along a scale, but 'homophobe studies' makes the leap into turning a emotion-leaden phrase (homophobe) into... a subject of study.

Third warning sign: Sociologists of medicine and those familiar with Michel Foucault's Birth of the Clinic will recognise with discomfort from AnJ's overview of current Abnormal Psych research, the all too familiar strategy of grand medical science: the creation of a clinical scale for a brand new phenomena (homophobia); of a field of knowledge, with objects of knowledge, subjected to a medical gaze that asks: What are the answers a good (nonhomophobic) person should conform to and report?

Presumably anyone who disapproves of homosexuality in any way could be labelled as a diseased and unnatural "homophobe".

Of course this is highly problematic: More than a century ago, the psychological profession used a set of methods, strategy, and rhetoric to classify homosexuality as a condition; today, the psychological profession uses the same methods etc. to create new 'abnormalities of human psychology' to include "internet addiction" and now... homophobia.

I have no doubts that the researchers cited by AnJ were acting in the purest of motives - yet the studies cited are extremely troubling, and Agagooga raises doubts of the assumptions and methodology of the experiments carried out in "Homophobia and physical aggression toward homosexual and heterosexual individuals", as well as the validity of the questions used in the WAB scale, which I do not have anything new to add.

An interesting note about the alternate "functional theory" of homophobia - more time should have been spent to explain what's a functional theory and how this one differs from the rest of the night's offerings. My personal analysis of the slide: functional theory approach may explain 'homophobia' as a manifestation of boundary maintenance behaviour, but does not explain why it takes the form of homophobia specifically - this may mean homophobia is not a special condition and homosexuals aren't all that special - they're just being discriminated against like any other minority and out-group.

2. Profiling the homophobe

While other social scientists (notably Ronald Inglehart and his World Values Survey) have confirmed the correlation between lower acceptance of homosexuality with religion, age and education, I fail to see the wisdom in launching from this fact into a hatchet job on "conservatism", which the speaker blamed for the ills of racism, classicism, sexism, intolerance, inequality and authoritarianism.

Here's your history lesson of the day: the suffragette movement only gained traction when Susan B Anthony got the conservatives on board; the abolition movement was very much the effort of very religious people; the "solid (racist) South" used to be the province of liberal Democrats before they crossed party lines to join the Republicans. Last I heard, authoritarianism isn't the sole province of the conservative right.

This particular section of the talk was thankfully short, taking only paltry 3 slides of a total of about 20, and being the 3 of the slightest slides of the presentation. That the speaker got sufficiently carried away to raise the hatchet on conservatism or blame homophobia (note: not the same as 'low acceptance of homosexuality') on people being older, less educated, and therefore unenlightened... tsk.

3. Breaking news: Everyone's a little bit racist (should we pathologise them too?)

Lest readers think I'm being unfair to the speaker, allow me to report some of the Q&A responses from the floor: Several audience members told several anecdotes highlighting the point that LGBTs themselves make disparaging remarks about each other that straight people would be labelled homophobes if caught using.

A member of the audience also pointed out/weakly objected to the apparent rush to medicalise/pathologise homophobia as a condition.

I'm not sure if the speaker got the import of what these audience members were hinting. The dialogue that would have resulted would have served to clear up questions about the assumptions of homophobia studies for everyone, including Agagooga and myself.

4. Conclusion: Eye for an eye makes the world go blind: How not to build bridges

If the psychological profession used to create a homosexual subject, criminalise and pathologise 'homosexuality', it appears that the same profession is now being used to create a homophobic subject, to criminalise and pathologise 'homophobia'.

I'm flabbergasted. I don't get it. According to the banner on Sayoni, Indignation 2008 is dedicated to "Building Bridges". I don't get how this talk builds bridges, and who it will build any bridges with, given it ultimately did end up being about giving people who have negative attitudes towards homosexuality a bad name.

As a talk, it has succeeded in giving a fair overview of current research in the field of abnormal psychology, as well as avoid creating strawmen arguments for the opposition, but failed in the sense that:

99.9% of the audience already know how the opposition behaves, what they tend to say about the acceptance of homosexuality, and how to spot the opposition a mile off.

While interesting to know what motivates opponents of homosexual acceptance, the talk failed to develop strategies of building bridges and civil engagement with them.

While glib and entertaining, the stereotyping of 'homophobes' failed to suggest a way to divide and conquer, or to handle them.

If the speaker had prepared by searching for studies about acceptance/non-acceptance of homosexuality instead of homophobia (thanks, Alex Au, for sabotaging AnJ with just one line of advice!), and taken a far wider interdisciplinary perspective, it could have been a truly well-researched and informative talk.

Instead of building bridges, the talk ultimately did to 'homophobes' what had been done upon to LGBT; and embraced the eye for an eye logic of its title. That Alex Au persuaded AnJ to change the title of her talk to this is proof enough of its disturbing, incendiary logic.

Evidently several audience members got the dog-whistle too, and were infected with it: possessing a laptop on which we used to type notes during the talk, an audience member was jittery enough to mistake us for Christian fundies out to sabotage/picket the talk, and pointedly asked if "the two gentlemen in the corner [that is, myself and Agagooga] are from a religious organisation". I suppose that when you give your talk a name like that, people from the religious organisations will want to crash and picket your talk. Ergo: How does this build bridges?

Never mind that Agagooga and myself are natural allies of the LGBT community - Agagooga having been flamed and threatened by Christian fundies, while I have declared my opposition to the National Council of Christian Ayatollahs Singapore - if the two gentlemen had been any other blogger (aka "potential liberal ally") than Agagooga and myself, that one statement from the audience member would have cost the community our support, right there and then.

Again: By giving this talk such a name that somehow signals to audience members of possible 'enemy participants' and heightening their paranoia, how does this build bridges?

I'd disagree vehemently and gladly debate with anyone subscribing to stupid conceptions of homosexuality, but I'd defend their right to believe in such nonsense - rather than try to get them institutionalised, pathologised, marginalised out of the conversation and labelled as 'abnormal'.

Unlike Agagooga, I intend to attend more Indignation events, namely Queer Women within Feminist Singapore, on Saturday.

In other news:

2008-07-03T16:51:00.001+08:00

I'm back.

Friends with schizophrenia: an elegy

2008-07-03T15:59:00.008+08:00

At this point, I would have accumulated enough of his SMSes to launch a conceptual art exhibit at the Substation's gallery - that is, if I had saved them up meticulously. After all, they were lovingly and quite possibly painstakingly typed in the truncated, abbreviated, I'd like to buy a vowel please version of SMS English.

I could never comprehend his obsession with the luminous, or his urge to proselytise to me. But I believe you could feel his zeal, however incoherent, however obsessive, in those electronic scribblings. That, and the art of sending them 6, 7, 8 in a row, twice a week. At 2am at night. 9 in the morning. 10 in the evening.

All of them Bible verses. As far as I can tell.

And still the messages come. Despite my requests not to receive any. Despite my lack of replies. Even though I have not picked up a single phone call from him for months now. And he calls, every week or fortnight. Half an hour's worth of the phone, ringing, ringing. At times, I pick up the phone, just so I can hear him breathing through his mouth, uttering "Hello, Hullo?" for minutes on end. At times, my parents answer the phone, and he says nothing, then hangs up.

It was a long time ago since he was coherent and incredibly well-read. It was a long time ago since we played chess over the phone, chattered over epistemology. These days, he presents a list of 10, 20 verses from the Bible as way of opening a conversation.

"And what do you think of THAT", he giggles, as I drown my instinct to scream while I carefully perform an exegesis on each verse he has selected, because they aren't meant to be connected just like that. I'm not meant to do that, you see. He's supposed to be the one moved by God's presence in his mind as he speaks in tongues while pouring through the concordance dictionary for verses to throw at me.

I feel like I'm being flung lumps of dirt instead.

It does not occur to him that he is in no capacity to preach to anyone, much less proclaim that he is to be my spiritual advisor. There is, after all, a reason for ordained priests and seminaries.

He must have a sense of destiny. Or foreboding. Or whatever sense it is that schizophrenic patients experience, that the majority of them mistake for a religious feeling. It is this sense of destiny that was behind his attempt to convert a Malay inmate at IMH when he was recovering from one of his breakdowns. It is this sense of destiny that drove him to assault a cell group member, and get forcibly restrained for it.

It is this sense of destiny, I believe, that compels him to call me, to message me. It is this sense of destiny that I must meet face on by answering his phone call, one last time. It is this sense of destiny which compels him to tell me that he will continue calling me until I change my phone. Because he says his father stands beside him right now on the phone. Because he says he has the blessings of his pastor. Because he is willing to harass me, and pay the price for it - because he has nothing to lose.

But no matter. This is what schizophrenia does to its victims. Nothing as dramatic as taking away a person's self-realisation, a person's self... and his mind over the years. His schizophrenia kicked in at 16. I never had a proper conversation with him since 5 years ago. He only calls when his medication isn't working or when he's sliding into schizo land.

I once knew a Terence Brian Hobday. May God have more pity on his soul than he had on his mind.

Will it be cruel to change my number?

His cell number is +65 98194236.

I sent an email to Thio and all I got was this lousy T-shirt

2007-11-09T16:37:00.000+08:00

Part 2 of 2

I hope you're happy... I hope you're happy now! I hope you're happy how you've hurt your cause forever, I hope you think you're clever...

Poor Kway Teow Man is flabbergasted at why some gay activists say that even though the failure to repeal Section 377A was as expected, this was a sign of progress.

Why ye of little faith, have ye no faith in the Father of the Singapore Gay Equality Movement? Question not the judgement of the Bread That Yawneth! For assuredly, there is victory in defeat! Life in death! Honour in debasement! Just like how Alex Au finds victory in his failures to get gay interest group PLU registered as a society, our efforts to repeal 377A have resulted in a resounding victory that must be shouted from the rooftops and echoed in basement carparks! And you too of little faith and much naivete, yes you: Kway Teow Man, you too shall cheer along with us in this historic triumph that will be recorded in the annals of history, and recited by Singaporean schoolchildren of the future in their gay civics class!

Oh yes, indeed, the greatest achievement Alex Au has contributed to the victory of our cause is when NMP Thio Li-ann (whom Alfian Sa'at wishes would "douses herself with the petrol of her own rhetoric and lights the match unaided") became the victim of a second threatening note!

Oh yes, Alex Au, there's no need to be so modest =D "I will totally condemn any malicious letters. It's completely against the spirit of civil discourse and democracy", you say to Li Xueying. Oh no, don't you dare pile it on by saying you have "made it known in gay forums that any criticism should be issues-based rather than targeted at the person."

My leader, do not belabour yourself! We hear you loud and clear, and we get your nudge nudge wink wink!

O Kway Teow Man, look and learn! Rookie reporter Li Xueying clearly is no match for the witty wits of our esteemed repeal 377A commander in chief! He has run circles around her, for nowhere in the SIGNEL gay forum has he explicitly advised his legions of gay activists who dedicate themselves fully to the gay agenda that they have to be "issues-based rather than target at the person"!

In fact, in the entire month of October leading up to today, Alex Au has mostly posted without comment, several news articles and essays regarding gay issues in Singapore and around the world! In his only 2 posts where he does make any personal comment, it was to ask our 21st Keyboard Legions to find sources to corroborate or demolish a claim that Andy Ho made, as usual without citing his sources! And in the 1 week between Alfian Sa'at and the second threatening note, Alex Au has made a total of 0 comments on the issues of civility, civil discourse, or democracy in the gay forums!

O Kway Teow Man, look and learn from the matchless machinations of warmaster Alex Au! For clearly he no longer uses the gay forums to issue his pronouncements! No, open your mind, humble yourself in a mind of servitude, and direct your willing ears to the Bread that Yawns! Here you see the Warmaster's only pronouncement on malice, civil discourse and democracy in the light of the fight to repeal 377A!

For clearly, young KTM, as Alex's article is titled: there are LIMITS TO CIVILITY! Yes, the spirit of civil discourse has a limit. For the shrill stalking and malicious machinations of Thio on the 377A repeal has bent the mind of poor Alfian Sa'at and caused him to issue a somewhat embarrassing email to her... And who do we blame, young KTM? Of course the blame is with NMP Thio!

"I would not crown civility as supreme in all situations." Indeed so, my liege and lord!

"When the Religious Right (and this includes Thio) are out to bludgeon me psychologically, socially and politically, they don't deserve respect or civility from me. Nor from Alfian and thousands, thousands more." And indeed so, my liege and lord!

And it is no wonder, praise Alex Au, that the wise have heeded, and the willing have put into action Alex's desire that Thio and her Religious Right collaborators no longer deserve any civility or respect!

My friend, Alfian Sa'at did not do anything we should be ashamed of! On the contrary, his bold attack must be defended by pointing out that Thio deserves no civility nor respect - and that thousands more people should boldly attack her! Follow the footsteps and heed the pronouncements of our great leader Alex Au!

But seriously, the repeal 377A campaign doesn't need Thio Li-ann, the fundie churches, or a Parliament stacked with conservatve and Christian MPs as their enemies. They merely need Alex Au, and that is sufficient.

I weighed in the 377A debate and all I got was this lousy T-shirt

2007-11-08T20:39:00.000+08:00

Part I of 2

I hope you're happy... I hope you're happy now! I hope you're happy how you've hurt your cause forever, I hope you think you're clever...

Fellow conservatives, Professor Thio Li-ann has failed us all. I speak of course about her contributions in the 377A debate, of her fiery speech in Parliament and her defence of how fundamental religious viewpoints must be allowed expression in public policy making in the context of a secular society.

But wait, you say. Did the eminent Professor Thio, in her impassioned speech, not scuttle the gay agenda to repeal 377A, and halt our nation's slippery slide into the endorsement of homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle, gay marriages, and weekly gay pride beach parties at Sentosa? What can possibly be lacking in how Thio has served the conservative cause, you ask.

We must go back to the first principles: What is an NMP supposed to do? Who is Thio Li-ann, and why has she been appointed to serve as an NMP? Is she serving her role as an NMP, in a manner that adheres to constitutional and historical expectations of NMPs?

As the constitution states, the list of candidates are proposed by the public to the Special Select Committee, who eventually appoint the Non-Elected Member of Parliament.

The criteria for selection?

The persons to be nominated shall be persons who have rendered distinguished public service, or who have brought honour to the Republic, or who have distinguished themselves in the field of arts and letters, culture, the sciences, business, industry, the professions, social or community service or the labour movement; and in making any nomination, the Special Select Committee shall have regard to the need for nominated Members to reflect as wide a range of independent and non-partisan views as possible.

In practice, all NMPs have been chosen for their expertise in their respective fields, or for their leadership roles in civil society groups, special interest groups, or minority groups. Hence, the list of NMPs include Malay businessmen, law professors, the heads of aging associations, AWARE, environmentalists, and so on. These NMPs have steered Parliament through difficult issues, providing their professional views and unique viewpoints. This is a system that, despite serving to co-opt dissent and opposition into a "non-elected" representation scheme, works.

And then, we have Thio Li-ann. She's a law professor, an expert in constitutional law and human rights law. She's not uncritical of the NMP scheme, and very critical of the changes Parliament has made to the Elected Presidency since its creation. By all accounts, Prof Thio understands the role she is expected to play.

Back in her appointment to the non-elected seat, she proposes several areas of jurisdiction that she expects to advise Parliament on. They are all constitutional issues - "She wants to scrutinise legislation on the Elected Presidency, for example, and probe further into the mechanics and powers of the presidency." (Lynn Lee and Sue-ann Chia, "Looking forward to advance the debate", in ST Review, 9 Feb 2007)

Note there is no mention of her staking out the repeal of 377A as a platform she is interested in. Nor does 377A fit coherently in the bag of issues that her expertise should touch on. Yet for all this, Professor Thio's maiden speech in Parliament is a pungent, stinging attack on homosexuality. Yet for all this, her entire attack on homosexuality was based on the morality and moral repugnance argument. Her subsequent articles in the Straits Times defends her attacks as a legitimate expression of religious convictions in a secular state.

In the midst of all this, it is easy to forget that Thio Li-ann is an NMP selected for her expertise in the law. One would have expected, if Thio were indeed fulfilling her role as prescribed in articles 39.1.c and 44.1 of the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution of Singapore and as established in the practice of her predecessors, that Thio would have at least provided the one viewpoint and area of expertise that her colleagues in the entire Parliament could not.

But we haven't heard her speak from a legal or constitutional basis on the 377A debate. Astonishingly for a legal expert charged with educating the nation's future lawyers, there is not a bit of legal theory in it. Where, when we need her expertise most, is the legal reasoning whether to keep or repeal 377A? Where, when the debate is clouded with categorical morality arguments from the right and unbending liberal rhetoric from the left, is the voice of reason, the clear-headed and non-partisan voice of a law professor?

Instead, we find that we might as well have elected Pastor Kong Hee as the NMP, who could have given the same speech Thio gave in Parliament.

If there is a constitutional argument for not repealing 377A (note that I do have one for repealing 377A!), Thio Li-ann has not made it known. Shocking! She could well be batting for the gays, since her utter reliance on the moral repugnance argument suggests that there isn't a constitutional argument for keeping 377A.

The pro-377A faction doesn't need an Alex Au, a gay agenda, or a well-organised campaign as their enemies. They have Thio Li-ann, and that is sufficient.

The same problem, elsewhere

2007-11-05T10:20:00.000+08:00

UK politician steps down for questioning immigration policy

The row over the Midlands candidate was ignited after the Observer reported details of his column in the local Express and Star newspaper, in which he claimed that "we roll out the red carpet for foreigners while leaving the locals to fend for themselves ..."

Also related:
Intra-EU immigration patterns, via takchek.

One way to shift the focus of the debate, to neutralise the Whiteshirt playbook of maligning critics of its FT policy as revanchists playing up the politics of envy, is to note that the cosmopolitan/heartlander, FT/native debates and fissures... are a result of late capitalism under the sign of the elite global labour market... that creates the same problem and social fissures in every country.

We who despair over this country's ridiculously lax FT immigration policy do so not because we are parochial, near-sighted, and not cosmopolitan enough - but precisely because we are aware of how this problem is replayed in every country whose labour market is as free as ours.

The conservative case for 377A

2007-10-18T20:55:00.001+08:00

Gabriel Seah has recently argued that the energies of the state and the activist citizens of Singapore should not be spent on a campaign to repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code. The act criminalises homosexual sex as unnatural gross indecency, yet for all that it's worth, various leaders of the state (i.e. father and son) have stressed repeatedly that this law will not be enforced.

For male homosexuals in Singapore, a curious state of affairs now exist: the very acts that some say define their existence are illegal, yet these theoretical criminals are free to practise their lifestyle choices, free of legal persecution. J.Tan may froth at the mouth, alleging continued persecutions of homosexuals, but the fact remains - and is acknowledged even by Alex Au, leader of the gay equality movement in Singapore, that the only instances of prosecution since 1988 have been in cases involving minors, non-consensual sexual activity and public play.

Practically speaking, gay people can pretty much practise whatever they want, wherever they want, in the privacy of their homes or business establishments (clubs, spas, etc). They are free even now to strike up friendships in singles bars, attend the ubiquitous gay-themed plays at Theatreworks and other stage productions, and so on. We can no longer speak of active persecutions, only the usual restrictions against political organisation (aka registration of PLU) and perhaps civil marriage (a fight for another day) and inheritance and maintenance of spouse and surviving children (then again, HDB rules disadvantage single mothers too).

Yet for a conservative, this fine balance or legal impasse is intolerable. Singapore is first and foremost a nation run by the rule of law. That we as a populace observe its laws, that Singapore as a polity lays down laws and regulations, is the key to its success. Singapore is not a cowboy town, not a free-for-all; we are not ruled by strongmen and robber barons, for our laws ensure that Singapore is seen as a predictable and safe place to do business, and to nurture businesses.

Singapore, run by the rule of law, is seen as a well-run polity. Laws are reasonable and logical, otherwise they won't be laws. Our legislators make good laws, simplify complicated ones, and remove those that no longer serve the state.

Our leaders refuse to enforce Section 377A for moral reasons: Minilee believes that "some people are like that and some people are not. How they live their own lives is really for them to decide, it's a personal matter." In other words, this law is not enforced because it does not have a legal basis.

For it to remain on the books is to say that we have a law where the leaders forbid the police to enforce and the judges to administer. Given that we all agree not to enforce 377a, not repealing it means that we now proclaim to the world Singapore does not take its laws seriously - some laws will never be enforced because they are wrong and baseless, yet there they are on the statutes, as fully legal as every other law on the statutes...

If one law is seen to be unfair yet legal, legal yet unenforced, then we make a mockery of the system, and encourage people to think they too can decide which laws society should not enforce. Worse, we encourage a mindset where people disrespect the legal framework and undermine it. By letting one toothless law stay on the statutes just for show, encourages others to cherry pick other laws as possibly unfair, just for show, and deserving of flouting.

Because one law does not apply, others will be encouraged to rely on their own personal interpretations of the constitution, to discover for themselves other laws that should not apply. Then as every man becomes the law unto himself, the rule of law will no longer hold sway in Singapore, chaos and riots will break out, and Singapore will be finished.

Singapore must not just be seen as a place where the rule of law prevails, but where the rule of law must be seen to prevail. Given that Section 377A is seen as legally unsound, that it is unenforceable, that the guardians of the state refuse to enforce it, they must therefore take steps to ensure that the law is struck down, and Singapore's legal framework is not undermined by this unenforced law.

Sedition! Russian Edition

2007-10-04T20:38:00.000+08:00

Jonathan Eyal (read as "isle") is the research director of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, and also apparently the correspondent for the Straits Times Europe bureau in London. On most days of the week, Eyal has a doctorate in International Law and Relations, and is by all means a respectable military historian and analyst.

Of course, respectable is a relative term; as a respectable analyst and Eastern Europe specialist, Eyal was part of the intellectual community that facilitated and provided justifications for the conquest and occupation of Serbia, but still he did deconstruct the GWOT for the charade that it is.

What I do not get is how Eyal manages to be a ST correspondent on some days of the week. Note that whenever he talks about Europe, it is almost always through a libertarian set of glasses: Europe outside UK is almost always economically sclerotic, addled with overtaxed citizens paying for exorbitant and inefficient social welfare, losing the civilisational will to live in contrast to its immigrants and probable heirs, the Muslim immigrants. And so on, and so forth. While not supportive of Bush, Eyal has made a living supporting any European leader who supported Bush. And so on, and so forth.

Here's Jonathan Eyal on Putin's Power Play:

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has indicated that he intends to retain political influence when he steps down from the presidency... By accepting to lead United Russia - the country's biggest political formation - he could become the next prime minister.

It all sounds cleverly simple: a new figurehead president will be elected to respect existing constitutional provisions, while Mr Putin continues to run the show as prime minister...

Top powers will have to be granted to the government rather than the head of state. Furthermore, Russian prime ministers are not popular for long. They are expected to take controversial decisions..."

Eyal muses therefore that "Mr Putin... could become a kingmaker from the sidelines."

"But this scenario would be even more confusing. Governments and investors would have to deal with officials who, despite their formal titles, would have no real power, while the man really pulling the strings would have no official position."

I'm sure Jonathan Eyal would have realised that's how Sonia Gandhi is the leader of India even though she isn't the President of India.

And looking closer to who's paying for Eyal's bills, he might as well have saved us the sight of reading yet another "analysis article" (WTH is it that all his analysis articles are in the news section and not the op/eds?) if he just wrote a 4-word article:

Senior Minister Vladimir Putin

Malicious, mendacious, and meretricious

2007-09-26T20:47:00.000+08:00

Recently in the news, 3 major challenges facing Singapore getting some discussion in the current Parliament session.

1. The re-tweaking of CPF, the annuity, and the "Longevity Insurance"

Goodness knows why the government of Minilee has finally acknowledged that the average Singaporean is still unable to have any significant savings when they retire.

Of course, Minilee holds fast to the sacred tenet that Singapore Must Never Have Social Welfare - nevermind that Singapore's healthcare, education, public libraries, and housing are funded and discounted by the state in what appears to be classic social welfare policies. Instead, the Dear Leader reiterates that Singaporeans must continue to save on their own, with minimal support from the state, which will of course from time to time adjust and introduce a few schemes here and there.

"Oh most gracious Minilee, our poor cannot afford to feed themselves once they retire! What shall we do?"

"Let them eat their CPF savings and annuities!"

2. Employment of seniors

Not entirely unrelated to the fact that one can't retire in Singapore without sinking into poverty is Minilee's push for employers to start hiring seniors. Bravo!

But let's not forget that Goh Chok Tong had previously pushed for this idea as well, but without bothering to make it a compulsory law, because our leaders would rather be seen as pro-elderly, but not at the expense of business interests.

And so it is that Minilee has taken steps to assure business interests that even if he decides to draft a law to make them to hire seniors, they'll be sheltered from the worst. The compromise, apparently floated by Minilee, is to let companies only pay for the basic health insurance of elderly workers.

BASIC HEALTH INSURANCE. But aren't seniors more prone to developing complications if they fall ill? Ah, I guess Minilee wants to save companies from footing the bills when the seniors in their employ get seriously sick!

3. The optimal population and foreign talent

Not discussed in this Parliament so far, but take note that according to Dear Leader's great plan, we're 2 million shy of the optimal population of Singapore, and hence the need to import even more foreign talent.

Not wholly unrelated to the influx of FTs are a corresponding hike in rentals of private properties that these expats tend to exclusively go for. It's simple economics, but they're now complaining of the ridiculous rents, the hardship it's causing and might even begin to leave in droves.

Welcome to Singapore, I say! Now you Foreign Talents finally have a taste of what every local experiences on a daily basis: having to pay for lodging that eats up most of your savings! How do you suppose Singaporeans end up cash poor and asset rich when they retire? Again, it's simple economics, and now I hope FTs will finally realise why the hell Singaporeans complain so much about their government.

But just so you know, Minilee claims that it's not true Singapore is only for the rich.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the government of Minilee.

Holy real estate, Batman!

2007-09-14T01:07:00.000+08:00

Via Asiabuilders:

Capitaland joins with Rock Productions (aka the business arm of New Creation Church!) to build a $600 million lifestyle hub at Buona Vista...

Holy real estate, Batman!

"COME 2011, a futuristic-looking lifestyle hub with a 5,000-seat theatre, restaurants, shops, chill-out wine bars and even dance clubs will emerge in Buona Vista."

Guess who's going to use the 5,000-seat theatre? And will the alcoholic version of Cafe Galilee operate the wine bars? Inquiring minds want to know!

"Designed by Mr Andrew Bromberg of Aedas Hong Kong, it will have eight levels of civic and cultural space, and four levels of retail and entertainment space."

Yup, Rock Productions will manage the 8 levels of "civic and cultural space", which I bet is some crypto-fundie term for "NCC and NCC-related enterprises space"...

But heck, since Rock Productions invested 280 mil out of the 660, it gets a cut out of any rental profits that come out of the retail and entertainment space as well. Whaddaya know, the church has hit on a plan to accumulate fat profits, through its Jesus Mall!

Up next: Consumers for Christ! Or knowing the Singapore megachurch, Capitalists for Christ. Will someone be so kind as to deregister CHC as a non-profit religious group and start taxing the hell out of them like we do any other business?

Architectures of Control

2007-08-30T09:22:00.000+08:00

From the introduction to Architectures of Control:

Increasingly, many products are being designed with features that intentionally restrict the way the user can behave, or enforce certain modes of behaviour. The same intentions are also evident in the design of many systems and environments.

I usually add to my blogroll without much fanfare, but here's a site that I would make some noise about. And I'm sure Singaporean readers would find this fascinating - architectures of control exist everywhere in the world, and it's time we start recognising in our own landscape, geography, and urban design as well.

Need proof of this blog's mandatory reading status? You might want to begin with:

Casino design and slot machine winning chances
Why your third-party battery lasts shorter on a Nokia
The default choice in OSes, programmes, and Starbucks
How airports keep people moving

Founding legends

2007-08-28T12:13:00.000+08:00

Was vaguely aware of the Army Half-marathon run on Sunday; I had to wait twice as long for my bus to come from Marina. It turns out that a 25-year-old Captain collapsed and died after completing his run that morning.

That's tragic, but what can one expect from a sport whose founding legend involves someone dying after the run? The Greek soldiers were hardly a sedentary bunch; if they could collapse after a 22km run, anyone could - regardless of preparation or physical condition.

Everyone in Singapore had to read the founding myth of the Marathon as part of their second language/mother tongue syllabus - surely they must have learnt something?

Nazi board games

2007-08-24T10:07:00.000+08:00

Excerpts from the BBC:

Nazi board games under the hammer

A collection of Nazi era board games - including one where players are given points for bombing British cities - are being auctioned in the UK...

The rare trove of wartime board games also includes a version of Snakes and Ladders based on the exploits of U-boat captain Gunther Prien.

"They say a lot about the Nazis, and about the German regime. Our kids were still playing trains and Meccano and hopscotch and things like that. These show how the Nazis were determined that children as young as four or five needed to get into the swing of things."

The two word that come to my mind, though, are National Education.

Think about it, few other countries in the world incorporate national goals, ideology, and the official slant on current affairs into child education and childplay as much as Singapore.

One imagines the family of National Education learning tools that inhabit the same social space as the Nazi boardgames: The Fall of Malaya board game, Command and Conquer, SAF edition...

And for the wired generation, The Fall of Malaya/Japanese Occupation MMORPG!
Play as 3 factions! The Japanese 25th Army , the Malaya Command (i.e. Percival and his Australian and Indian minions), and the Communist irregulars!

Each faction has its unique strengths! Play as the Japanese with their Mobility doctrine, Malaya Command with its Manpower doctrine (easy recruitment from the Commonwealth), and the Communist irregulars with their Progaganda doctrine!

And of course, the moral of the game is: We must ourselves defend Singapore! Woohoo...

From the mouth of a scholar

2007-08-22T19:27:00.001+08:00

You just can't write these stuff up.

The Straits Times
Aug 17, 2007

President's Scholar follows in dad's footsteps

The money quote that appeared below the headline: 'I think the President's Scholarship is, more than anything else, responsibility. It tells you you can't slack off, but have to try to enrich yourself in as many ways as possible.' - Stephanie Koh 18, on what it means to be a President's Scholar.

Seriously. Scholars in Singapore now think their duty is to enrich themselves in as many ways as possible.

My friend the Samurai Blogger points out that not all President's Scholars end up in plum positions within the state bureaucracy, as it's not a bonded scholarship and recipients aren't ushered into academic paths by the scholarship. It's an unfair stereotype, he claims, that all scholars have silky smooth ride even if they are good.

Even so, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with some friends on National Day, shortly after watching the NDP, where my opposite number put forth the view that it is natural and expected that scholars are promoted to positions in the bureaucracy where they can prove and exercise their leadership qualities. That's another unfair stereotype for you.

And Straits Times coverage of "where are these scholars now?" basically conflates and celebrates these 2 stereotypes together: the worthy scholar who will one day lead us into the great future, the worthy scholar whose bond is surety of leadership and success, the scholar whose sole duty to the state, once they have received the scholarship, is to enrich themselves in as many ways as possible.

The Willow Tree

2007-08-22T09:03:00.000+08:00

From the Iranian director who gave Children of Heaven to moviegoers everywhere and Homerun to Jack Neo, comes a rare movie revolving around adult characters. One might be forgiven for thinking that this marks a move away by Majid Majidi from his trademark magic realist, sometimes rustic, but always emotionally effective directing style, but nothing can be further from the truth. Yet at the same time, The Willow Tree does offer a subtle and sophisticated philosophy of cinema to critics who say the director relies too much on trite metaphors and cliched symbolism.

In Majid Majidi's latest masterpiece, Youseff (Parviz Parastui) is a kindly and awkward university don who has been living with blindness since a childhood accident involving fireworks. It is not an uncomfortable life that Youseff leads: he has a loving wife who reads his students' thesis for him, as well as perform clerical tasks like typing transcripts of his essays, a child who adores him, and an extended family who is there for him, no matter what. Hampered by his disability, true and complete happiness eludes him until the man regains his sight through a cornea transplant procedure - and this is where the film begins in earnest.

From the setup, it's clear in advance how the film will roughly proceed: the rediscovery of the delights of sight, the end of Youseff's long childhood and innocence, and the deflating of his dreams of having his sight complete his happiness. What makes this film a piece of art are the eventual choices that the director makes to cover these plot points, out of the scores of far easier, emotionally hamfisted, or visually showy options available.

Take for example the representation of sight regained - in the hands of a showy, less creative director, you'd have lots of camera candy, distorted, oversaturated, or just overdone visual effects to present to the audience the world from the eyes of the formerly blind man. It's just the sort of cheap repertoire that gives cinema the reputation of being an overly literal medium, where every visual metaphor is unimaginatively direct. In fact, audiences only get to see directly from the eyes of Youseff about three times in The Willow Tree. What we see, and what is more important in this story, is how Youseff begins to see things for the very first time, and not what he sees. In a way, Majid is far more acquainted with the limits of film as a representational medium than any of the younger, MTV-inspired directors of this day and age. Yet there is no doubt that when you are watching Youseff see things anew, that there is a certain mood of exuberance and uncertainty that is conveyed, far better than any distorting lenses or filters. What Majid has done here is to create a highly symbolic, but anti-symbolist visual language - an achievement in itself. This visual language is paralleled and augmented by the director's painstaking efforts to evoke the lost sense of touch in cinema - the audience can only see Youseff grasp, grapple, play with surfaces and textures, but can never do so themselves.

In a way, the director's ironic treatment of the representation of sight and touch in film leads on naturally to the twist and the true story of the movie: the end of Youseff's prolonged childhood and his simultaneous loss of innocence. What is paradise to a blind man - will it remain a paradise once he regains his sight? What is love and care to a blind man - will his relation to his caregivers and loved ones remain the same once he is able-bodied and able to fend for himself again? Filmed at times as a tone poem, the transition to emotional drama that begins to take over is handled very well - as the film burst with ironies and seething with resentment, what's noteworthy is how Majid's script and directing is extremely subtle and restrained, compared to how a Mediacorp television drama would play out the exact same scenarios. And if this isn't enough, do note that the emotional drama is infused with a philosophical and melancholic touch, courtesy of Sufi devotional poetry by Rumi.

Acting-wise, this marvellous if subtle film is bolstered by the efforts of Parviz Parastui, who effectively plays two different roles that are not entirely separate from each other: the likeable if helpless, childlike don and the troubled but reborn, re-sighted man who grows in self-hood. Roya Taymourian shines, in a classic movie sense, as his onscreen wife - she compares well to a younger Lee Heung Kam!

The Willow Tree is a movie I'd recommend for arthouse fans, as well as any moviegoer hankering for some subtle fare after last month's summer blockbusters. Buy a ticket, take in the movie slowly, and you won't be disappointed.

More great moments in television history

2007-08-07T12:49:00.000+08:00

(Part 2 in a continuing series)

Very shortly after touching down in Singapore, Sir Ian McKellen begins to ask reporters for directions to the nearest gay bar. The climate of oppression against homosexuals in Singapore has either dissipated recently, or has always been a myth invented by certain activists - luckily for everyone, The New Paper, former (or supposed) scourge of many a gay agenda in the early 1990s, did not publish this headline in font size 42 on the front cover of the following day's issue:

"Ian McKellen, gay sex tourist?"

Lessons for gay activists

In part, the nonreaction and the unscandalised treatment of this affair could stem from the charm of Sir Ian. In just one day, the actor managed to continue his 20-year history of gay activism in Singapore with a fresh and winsome approach that must have endeared him to the journalists at Channelnewsasia (even if they had to feign some embarrassment) and Class 95FM.

Unlike the "father of the gay equality movement in Singapore", Sir Ian delivered his plea for delegalisation of section 377A with skill, style, and panache. At CNA, it was done in a jokey manner that still got the point across. At Class 95FM, Sir Ian repeated his query on gay bars in Singapore (the gay sex tourist joke becomes increasingly difficult to avoid!) to an amused Vernetta Lopez. Yes, he made an additional statement, about how antiquated Section 377A is - and left it at that. Short, sweet, and simple.

Ian McKellen's model of gay activism should be studied very closely by those who purport to fight for the community here. Alex Au would do well to note that Sir Ian did not have to be confrontational. He made his point without slamming the government and the civil service or calling them insincere liars, without slamming the Church or deriding the Bible, without insinuating that the civil service and church are in cahoots with each other, and without forcing security to throw him out of the building so he could prove to the world that indeed the state of Singapore has failed his test of tolerance. This is real activism, Alex. Look, listen, and learn!

Ian McKellen, pink tourist

And so, someone must have told Sir Ian of Singapore's gay bars. For days after his arrival, the actor made it a point to tell anyone who asked about his experience in Singapore, that this country has over 20 gay bars and pubs. That's something to put in one of those Lonely Planet guides.

Enterprising establishments which hosted Sir Ian during his stay in Singapore should seriously consider naming their bars or rooms after him. You know, like "The Sir Ian McKellen Room".

Even though Sir Ian cannot be the first pink tourist in Singapore, there's no better way to celebrate this actor. If Singapore has commemorated the stay of another LBGT artist for almost 70 years by naming a room in its most famous and oldest hotel after him, I can't see why we can't do the same towards this luminary.

Asian Boys Vol. 3

2007-08-05T23:25:00.000+08:00

At the end of Kill Bill Vol. 2, Uma Thurman as The Bride walks out of the mansion with her young daughter- not into the sunset, for that fate has been reserved for Bill (David Carradine). Instead, the lioness and her cub retire to a hotel where The Bride, resolved of the burden of her karmic duty, experiences joy mixed with an equal amount of sorrow, held together by tremendous relief.

Uma Thurman crying and sobbing next to the water closet, in a closet-like room

Asian Boys Vol. 3 is a theatrical adaptation as peculiar as the novel on which it is based. The 2-act drama takes Singapore's first published gay novel, Peculiar Chris, and does very different things to it in each act - the first half takes a playful, postmodern view on the original text, while the second "plays it for real", as a straightforward speculative continuation of the novel, almost 2o years on. What makes ABV3 a peculiar fish is how the concepts of these 2 acts struggle at odds with each other.

The idea behind Act 1 is a postmodern presentation of Peculiar Chris: Joe the author is himself a character in this play, in the process of completing Singapore's first published gay novel; amidst the reenactment of the novel's highlights, the author - doubling in the part of Chris - is on occasion reproached and interrogated by his muse and all other characters of the novel.

The metatextual repartee between the author and his subjects make up much of the wit in this act, but it is a wit that dulled by the simultaneous urge of the play to pay tribute to the landmark status of the novel. Act 1 is queer fish indeed; one cannot decide whether this is a somewhat straightforward adaptation of the original material, a gushing tribute to the importance of Peculiar Chris and Johann S Lee, or with the references to sometimes naive writing of a 19-year-old, a arch deconstruction of the novel. It is unfortunate, because the script fails to see through any of these 3 approaches far enough.

Armed with the best lines of the play (all taken from Peculiar Chris) and a playful and inventive approach, it's a mystery how Act 1 falls a short distance off the mark it should have reached.

This scene with Uma Thurman stretches for almost a full minute

Act 2 is a fresh beginning, a fresh approach: imagine if all the characters of Peculiar Chris were "real characters" existing in the current milieu. The setup is brilliantly done: Chris returns from the UK to a Singapore changed radically (at least for the gay community), and in revisiting old friends, finds himself embroiled in the politics of gay activists in the island, amidst a gathering movement for a repeal of Section 377A of the Penal Code, an upcoming talk by an ex-gay ministry, and the sacking of a gay teacher from MOE.

The setup is well-done and mostly carefully constructed, garnering laughs from its skewering of current affairs. However, what follows feels more like a pleasant evening at the 4th National Bolshevik Theatre for the People. Audiences will find themselves lectured at by several characters serving as mouthpieces for various ideological positions within the community - all shouting at each other. One must have a great reserve of patience to sit through the laborious and lengthy speeches, all telegraphed beforehand so you know when it's coming. One must have a great deal of curiosity for Singapore's gay politics to stomach through a Communist purge style denunciation of the class traitors, the fifth columns within the community. And above all, one must have a great deal of tolerance and forbearance for the out-of-control ranting and constant references to gay teachers sacked by MOE.

Well, you know what they say when art imitates life, but I'm very curious to know how Act 2 of ABV3 could have turned out if Alfian bin Sa'at had not had his unfortunate run-in with the Ministry of Education. Surely, a playwright who has more than 15 years of writing experience can do far better than the second act of ABV3.

The Bride rolls on the floor, at times laughing, at times sobbing

Looking at both acts, one realises that ABV3 is afflicted with the same problems as most of Alfian bin Sa'at's plays - often the latter halves fail to match the first halves, in terms of coherence as well as quality. Often, the two halves are more like 2 self-contained plays, conceptually complete in themselves. Now, there are 2 things I don't get in the play - two things that illustrate Alfian's continuing problems with the 2-act structure:

1. Act 1 ended with the muse revealing himself to be Chris, and inviting the Author to hop into Act 2 with him, to find out what happens to his characters after more than 10 years.
A. Where is the Author in Act 2?
B. Why, if Act 1 allows the Muse to deconstruct, comment on, and at times poke gentle fun at the self-seriousness and naivete of the Author and Peculiar Chris, does Act 2 not extend the same self-reflexivity?

2. Why does the play end with the Muse asking the Author how things will turn out in the end, when Act 1 ended with the Muse inviting to show the Author how things turn out in 10 years?

"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." The Bride whispers this gratefully between her tears and laughter

Let me make it clear that it is possible to like Asian Boys Vol. 3. It's a good play to watch if you haven't been exposed to the theatre, or if you're a gay person seeking some form of self-validation through the gay play, through community theatre. And even if you're not that way, Act 1 of ABV3 is probably one of the best postmodern adaptations ever attempted in Singapore theatre - it is far more sincere and authentic than certain other postmodern plays like the "Amazing Asia" production of Lear, for example. It's a pity that the level of invective in Act 2 may well de-endear any audience to the homosexual cause, and for queer people who are more comfortable in their skins, the artistic shortcomings of this play will be what they'd latch onto, instead of the fact that it's a gay play.

The Summary

Asian Boys Vol. 3, as a gay play and a piece of politicised community theatre, can only find justification for its existence from closetted and newly-out gay people who need to find justification for their existence from the play. There is something off-putting about the strident politics of this play - from its fast and loose attacks at the evil oppressive government1, the class traitors, the fifth columns, and the almost Marxist project of creating class consciousness: that gay people must act as a class-for-itself, and stop existing as a class-in-itself.

The disconcerting thing is how ABV3 leaves no room - no, glosses over entirely the existence of well-adjusted gay people who reject both a life spent in local gay activism and a life spent in clubs and saunas. In the universe of Asian Boys, in the politics of Alfian bin Sa'at, you cannot exist, you do not exist.

1. References were made in Act 2 to the police raids of gay saunas. The truth is, gay saunas are a legitimate business in Singapore and have been allowed to operate unmolested for much of their existence. There has been a grand total of 1 drug bust at a sauna. Once every 2 or 3 years following lurid sauna exposes by The New Paper, the police feel obliged to make general and cursory inspections - to check for alcohol licenses and serving of underaged customers. That hardly qualifies as a "raid", and this frequency hardly qualifies as a pattern of oppression. One could argue artistic license - except when this is a community play.

An announcement

2007-07-21T13:10:00.000+08:00

This isn't one of those things that I'm happy to have done; but
this isn't one of those things that I'm happier not to have done.

Theonlinecitizen replies

2007-07-11T02:29:00.000+08:00

Choo Zheng Xi, currently a law undergrad at NUS and the co-editor of theonlinecitizen, has replied via MSN. He is the original author who broke Alfian's story, advised Alfian to send in his essay on Francis under a pseudonym, and also published Alfian's op-ed piece "Should homosexuals be allowed to teach" as an uncredited article.

The sum of it: Choo Zheng Xi has refused to answer any of the questions raised almost 2 weeks ago. I am reproducing his reply, stating his refusal to reply, word for word here, with no additions, subtractions or alterations:

[01:47] choo: hey sorri dont think ile be replying to your piece
[01:47] akikonomu: i didn't expect you to
[01:48] choo: ok
[01:53] akikonomu: you see, i don't expect you to have what it takes to explain away that breach of journalistic ethics
[01:53] choo: more like i dont think i need to actually
[01:54] akikonomu: nope. because you can't explain it anyway
[01:54] choo: well you wouldnt know would you =)
[01:55] choo: honestly it'd give the issue more publicity than a non issue deserves
[01:56] choo: none of the grand total of 3 ppl ive asked to look at your piece thinks it matters
[01:56] choo: they're probably the only ppl who read it
[01:56] choo: if i'd replied
[01:56] choo: i might have doubled your readership
[01:59] *** "choo" signed off at Wed Jul 11 01:59:14 2007.

I would like to thank Choo Zheng Xi for taking the time to explain that an explanation isn't needed, and to take the effort to impress upon me that this is a non-issue.

Alfian writes in

2007-07-03T01:22:00.001+08:00

Mr Alfian Sa'at has emailed to clarify the questions raised in the earlier post, and I am reproducing his reply here word for word, with no additions, subtractions or alterations:

there is no big conspiracy. The story goes like this:

a) I file in the 'Francis' article for Trevvy.
b) Trevvy editors freak out; they think it's sensitive. They tell me they're not going to run it.
c) I consider passing it to Fridae (Which will piss off my eds, but I felt the story needed an airing. Francis needs to have people relating similar experiences with him, for people to step up and offer assistance, etc)
d) Someone from TOC is on MSN with me. I mention Trevvy spiking the story.
e) That someone suggests that I run it on TOC, but with a pseudonym. When I ask why a pseudonym, he says certain people in the blogosphere will just jump at it and accuse me of non-objective reportage.
f) At his insistence, I give him a pseudonym. 'Ramlah' is a silly drag name I have for myself; it's an inside joke among my friends.
g) Trevvy decides to run the article. But eds want to call it a 'parable' so as to cover their backsides.
h) Now Trevvy wants TOC to stop running it, claiming exclusivity.
i) It's messy. Ideally I would love to have the story on two different sites catering to two different readership profiles.

As to why I appear as various avatars for the articles (Alfian, Ramlah and one uncredited), much of it was based on editorial decisions rather than my own.

I wish to assure my readers and Alfian's friends that we have cleared the air between us, more than 3 days ago when he sent me this clarification. Notice that all outstanding questions posed to Alfian in the previous post have been cancelled. And I would like to note that 3 days since the poet and playwright explained the situation in his forthright and honest manner, we have heard not a peep from the editors of theonlinecitizen.

Here's what is really at stake: Suppose an article is reprinted several times over, with very minor differences, in multiple locations, but with different author names - or under no name at all - one might jump to the conclusion that either

a. there are different authors, and someone is clearly plagiarising from an original source, stealing someone else's intellectual work to pass off as their own, or

b. there is just one single author, who is running a sockpuppeting operation.

In the case of Alfian Sa'at, it appears that the editors of theonlinecitizen have clearly made a fool out of the poet and playwright - making him look either dishonest or conspiratorial, as either a plagiarist or a sock puppeteer.

Note that it is the editors of theonlinecitizen who have split Alfian's long article into 2 shorter ones - publishing the first under the pseudonym of Ramlah Abu Bakar, and the second as an anonymous article with no author attributed.

We are unclear why the editors of theonlinecitizen have chosen to do this. According to what Alfian has been told by the same editor, certain people in the blogosphere will just jump at it and accuse me of non-objective reportage.

I would understand this as an issue of a possible conflict of interest, i.e. "Some people would say Alfian's writing about Francis being rejected by MOE because Alfian himself was rejected by MOE". But here's the thing, and I hope the editors of theonlinecitizen pay attention: you do NOT deal with conflicts of interest by making the decision to withhold knowledge of the conflict of interest from your readers. An ethical journalistic source would actually *state* the conflict of interest, so that all readers can judge for themselves whether the article is fair and balanced, given the positioning of its author.

It's a simple, fundamental, publishing rule of thumb. Yet theonlinecitizen's editors have chosen to withhold information from its readers, to engage in deception (note the second article here is still uncredited, even after Alfian acknowledges authorship in his blog.

There is nothing wrong with conflicts of interest issues in writing, reporting, or opinion essays - that happens all the time. What is wrong is knowing that there's a conflict of interest, and then deciding to withhold that information from readers. The withholding of the fact is the real ethical issue - knowing who the person is, knowing his conflict of interest, and advising him to withhold his identity - so as to keep readers unaware of the conflict - that is not being open and honest.

It is to my regret that I find theonlinecitizen's silence on this issue most disturbing. That its editors had the arrogance to decide that its readers - and other blog aggregators who linked to those 2 articles - do not need to know the fact is most disturbing. That theonlinecitizen urges full disclosure on the part of the government and yet behaves as though they don't need to practice it themselves is most disturbing. And so it goes.

Compare and contrast. Discuss!

2007-06-29T19:33:00.000+08:00

This is Alfian Sa'at on Trevvy.
This is Ramlah Abu Bakar on The Online Citizen.

Compare. Contrast.

Question for Alfian Sa'at: ~~Are you the author of the Ramlah Abu Bakar article on theonlinecitizen?~~

Question for theonlinecitizen's editors: Were you aware that Ramlah Abu Bakar is Alfian Sa'at? If yes, when did you know? If you knew this, can you explain why you felt this fact had to be hidden from your readers?

Question for Alfian Sa'at: ~~Why did you submit your article to theonlinecitizen under a different name?~~

Question for Alfian Sa'at: In your trevvy article, the title identifies Francis's story as a parable. I understand parable to mean "a fictitious narrative". Could you explain what are the factual elements in your report, and what has been fictionalised?

Question for theonlinecitizen's editors: Did the editors verify the details of Rmalah Abu Bakar's article and sources? Is RamlahAbu Bakar's article presented as a journalistic piece, or a parable? Enquiring minds want to know!

This is Alfian Sa'at highlighting an "interesting article"
This is theonlinecitizen's op-ed

Compare and contrast.

Questions for Alfian Sa'at: Are you the author of "Should homosexuals be allowed to teach" on theonlinecitizen?

If no, could you tell us why you've plagiarised and incorporated this article into a longer essay?

If yes, could you explain why you have chosen not to be identified as the author of this article?

Questions for theonlinecitizen: Could you clarify who is the author of this essay?

Could you explain why it appears without an author name this time, instead of a pseudonym? Enquiring minds want to know!

No place I'd rather be

2007-06-25T22:08:00.000+08:00

Dick Lee points that some NDP songs are just crap, but my friend the Samurai Blogger points out that this year's NDP song by Kit Chan is really the pits. I'm of the opinion that anyone who watched the National Day broadcast must be working off some serious karma.

Today, though, for your pleasure (or not), we have a youtube clip of No Place I'd Rather Be, lyrics by Jimmy Ye.

Contrast this with The Duprees singing You Belong To Me.

The Samurai rightly points out the poverty of imagination behind the lyrics of our NDP - it is no more and no less than a second-rate, third-hand reworking of the lyrics of You Belong To Me. I believe, though, that the point isn't about the lack of originality of NDP songs, or their derivativeness. To arrive at an understanding of the true weakness of Kit Chan's NDP, we must adopt a very close examination of its text and that of its possible ancestor.

The lyrics of both songs share the same strategy: No matter where you go, your home will always be here. No matter how awed you are, or sold on the idea that you just might have a happier life elsewhere, your home is here. There's not other place you should be, because you belong here.

Now, for some reason, You Belong To Me is seen as a love song, while No Place I'd rather be is supposed to be a patriotic NDP song. But to me, the possessiveness and the "I don't care where you've been, you belong to me" thematic refrain of the first song puts it down as the anthem of a wife abuser rather than a lover, and from the other end, Kit Chan's No Place I'd Rather Be, comes across as the anthem of the abused wife, coming back for more.

The campaign to confer the martyrdom award to Alfian Saat

2007-06-11T21:00:00.000+08:00

An incident, a talking point, a concerted campaign

Dear readers, we've known for almost a full month that Alfian Sa'at has been sacked from his relief teaching post at East View Secondary School. Word travels fast, especially since the playwright took it upon himself to tell his friends, fans, and acquaintances about it. We are not unsympathetic to Alfian's loss of the beginnings of a meaningful vocation, but since he has made it a public matter and since it appears that there is an ongoing campaign involving various bloggers to turn this into an issue to bash the MOE, the civil service, and maybe even the PAP with, it falls unto me to urge caution - and more importantly, common sense.

The talking points seem to go like this:

1. Draw issue to Alfian Sa'at, prize-winning, decorated playright having lost his job
2. Draw attention to MOE's refusal to provide an explanation for his sacking
3. Hint heavily at an unofficial campaign of persecution
a. He was sacked because he is a politically troublesome creature: a liberal, radical, and a critical Malay
b. He was sacked because he is an openly gay person who has written gay-themed plays
4. Ergo, Alfian Sa'at is a martyr for the cause - whichever cause it is. All hail his staggering genius and mourn his unjust persecution!
5. Storm the Bastille, lads!

My dear friend, the Blogger Samurai, has an important dictum that I wish whoever is participating in the campaign to award the martyrdom award to Alfian Sa'at could drill into their memory: Never attack in anger. I, too, have another dictum that I wish could have guided the leaders of this coordinated web campaign: Never sacrifice intellectual honesty for political ends.

Is there an unofficial campaign of persecution? No one knows, and by definition it can't be proven, which means it plays up to the very angry and radicalised hordes on the blogs right now. But the campaign does itself and the blogosphere an injustice when its proponents pointedly miss out the most obvious and probable cause of Alfian's sacking - one that could be backed with more tangible evidence than 3a or b.

The case against Alfian Sa'at

It is always a good practice to go back to the source material when unsure of the facts. In this case, it would be a good idea to pay a visit to the playwright's blog. This act alone could have saved the ongoing campaign from guaranteed embarrassment, and its participants from any fallout of credibility, really.

We note the following 2 entries on 24 April and 11 May.

Both are entries where Alfian Sa'at blogs about his teaching experience.

excerpt from the first entry:

The din from the classroom was overwhelming; a tidal wave of restless yelps, red-faced bully laughter, the wailing of the freshly-smacked...a boy at the back gripped the sides of his table and screamed, 'I hate History!' A girl at the side of the class stared at me as if she was putting a hex on me; how in the world did she leave her house in the morning with eyeliner on? A boy ran out of one of the classroom doors and re-entered through the other, as if he was an actor rushing to make an entrance from the opposite wing. A girl was putting some green dye in her mouth, probably Art Class leftovers, and spitting foul green liquid at her classmates. A rosette of lurid green sputum bubbled on her desk. She was like Linda Blair in the Exorcist, but ten times worse, because I couldn't wave a crucifix at her and make her hair evaporate.

Now, I wouldn't know, but that sounds like extremely bad form for a teacher to blog about his students in a demeaning manner. This isn't so bad until you realise that we know who the teacher is, where the school is, and we can thus identify the students...

But it's more than just that, of course. Alfian Sa'at is a master playwright, and we admire his narrative abilities that are shown off here. But not quite - why is Alfian Sa'at adopting this passive-agressive love-hate tone towards his students? Like some colonial anthropologist studying a native tribe, he exclaims how much they drive him up the wall, and in the next breath tearfully admits how charming they are, in their impish innocence. Like some arrogant, patronising colonial anthropologist:

It is an illusion to think that the classroom is a homogenous neighbourhood. There are overlapping ghettoes.

Impossible how a member of an oppressed ethnic minority ends up conferring the word ghetto on the students of a neighbourhood school. But there we have it - an exoticisation, a romanticisation of the neighbourhood school students. Who are of course tamed by the redeeming quality of Art:

I have to constantly strain my throat to get them to quieten down, but I realised that when I draw on the whiteboard they are rapt, respectful. And thus I would sketch the faces of Brahmins and Shudras, the four Ministers of the Melakan Sultanate, the Shang dynasty Emperor. I would draw four-clawed dragons, cavemen, even the faces of some of the students, who would blush at the attention. I have had so many requests for drawings: Stamford Raffles, a character called Lady Xin, exhumed from her tomb, from their textbook, and even a hamster.

Alfian Sa'at teaches racial harmony, of the exoticised mythical peoples category.

And if that weren't enough, the second entry takes the cake:

12:40 pm - red river
I'm a relief teacher.
WHY AM I MARKING THE EXAM SCRIPTS FOR 16 CLASSES????????

You see where I'm getting at, hopefully? Anyone would be fired for blogging about their work and workplace in such a manner.

And if that weren't enough, remember this is a blog where Alfian Sa'at posts updates on his gay plays, his coterie of hangers-on, his adventures in New York - meeting up with self-exiled dissidents and telling the MDA "Fuck you".

A clear inability to apply common sense, to keep professional and personal matters separate, to behave professionally.

The moral of the story: Never blog about work in a negative manner

References:
Beware if your blog is related to work
Microsoft fires worker over weblog
Looming pitfalls of work blogs
Blogging on the Job

12 June update: The Blogger Samurai has spoken on the issue. Listen to him.

גם זה יעבור

2007-06-04T00:19:00.000+08:00

Gam zeh ya'avor: this too shall pass

Foucault's discourse theory places primacy on the zero point, the beginning point where a certain mode of discourse shaped from that time on how we see the world, describe it, and picture ourselves in it - such that we can scarcely think of any other way to see the world, describe it... that it appears as though from time immemorial we have always been seeing the world this way... naturally.

As an illustration, it is little known that "kiasuism" was coined in the late 1980s during a speech where a MINDEF general made fun of the go-getter characteristics of some soldiers in BMT. What is known is that since that zero point, that word grew to encompass and define everything that is Singaporean, that it is impossible to think of Singaporeans never being kiasu before - isn't it obvious they have always been in this state?

Hence, the Foucauldian project's obsession with zero points, with historical breaks that demonstrate that certain paradigms of thought, of social perception, weren't always so, and should never be taken as natural or commonsensical.

Gam zeh ya'avor: this too shall pass

Obsessed with beginnings, the Foucauldian project forgets that there are endings, that dominant modes eventually fall away; that, if certain social, political conditions, or a set of accidents could lead to a dominance in one form of discourse, that dominant discourse could very well pass away due to certain accidents - social or political. To gain a full understanding of political discourse, we must shift our focus from the zero point at its inception, and look to - and look forward to - the other zero point at its passing.

I'm going to build a list of political phrases that have fallen out of fashion in Singapore. These are well-turned phrases of closing off discourse, whose time have passed. It is important to remember, for those live in a city whose political nature seems unchanging, that seemingly unchallenge-able rhetoric have sell-by dates. After all, you can't use the same threats as people become more mature. Simply put, if the rhetoric is out of step with the populace, or too nonsensical, they will just make fun of it or even refuse point blank to accept such arguments - and hence such rhetoric is dropped from public discourse. From zero point to zero point, as it were.

The death of politicised phrases

Quitters vs Stayers
Died because: too many ministers had children who have settled permanently out of Singapore, including Goh Chok Tong's daughter.

Foreign talent
Died because: too many Singaporeans now realise it's just a disguise for foreign labour import substitution - even foreign labour and development specialists like Stephen Appold insist the foreign talent here "are not needed in the large number in which they are found".

Asian values
Died because: the Asian economic crisis of 1997 happened.

Unconstructive criticism
Died because: logically speaking I don't have to tell you to zip up your pants to point out that your fly is undone.

Boh Tua Boh Suay
Died because: no one agrees with George Yeo that criticising the leadership is tantamount to disrespecting the leaders. No one agrees with George Yeo that there is a natural hierarchy of order.

Helicopter vision
Died because: ministers in the Minilee cabinet were seen more as bumbling fools and incompetents making "honest mistakes" than infallible supermen.

OB Markers
Died because: fewer and fewer people believe that the government has the right to make up rules, stop discussions in their tracks arbitrarily, and issue red cards out of its ass.

And now, this too shall pass

This weekend, theonlinecitizen has released the full Attorney General's report (available in 4 parts) on its audit of over 12 ministries and statutory boards.

As the Blogger Samurai points out, the first lesson of political blogging is never attack in anger. Instead, we must use this unfortunate incident, this embarrassing report, to put to an end a particular dominant mode of thinking - that, for the sake of national competitiveness, ministries and statutory boards need not be subject to full transparency, oversight, and accountability to the public taxpayers. Instead of shrilling corruption and other accusations on the ministries, playing "Aha!" games with them, or like some political illiterates who conflate the ministries, the civil service, the government and the ruling party as a single entity, I suggest that the path of action for Singaporeans is clear, simple, and shrill-free.

It is time for us to reject, point blank, any future rhetoric designed to protect the operations of ministries and statutory boards from accountability and oversight. It is time for us to decisively and loudly remind our leaders that certain arguments just don't work anymore, and have lost their persuasive power. Softly but firmly insist "I don't buy your argument", and you shall see yet another political death, another political, politicised discourse fade into zero point.

Gam zeh ya'avor: this too shall pass