Living with myths I: The Singapore Story

Being a review of the opening act of a year-long project

New Singapore History, its challenges, and its reply

It would be interesting to consider Living with Myths as a counterhegemonic programme to preempt the PAP's self-celebratory propaganda on the eve of Singapore's 50th anniversary as an independent state.

The keynote presentation by Dr Hong Lysa focused on the recent remarks in public by Hong Lysa, Loh Kah Seng and Thum Ping Tjin on one hand and Weichong Ong, Alex Au, Kumar Ramakrishna, Tan Tai Yong, and Kishore Mahbubani on the other about the role and dangers of a revisionist historiography of Singapore.

Is "revisionist history", pace Au, a futile attempt to resurrect old quarrels that are irrelevant to modern Singapore? Or is it, pace Ramakrishna, either a naive and uncritical oppositional reading of history borne out of a desire to oppose at best, or a persistent "cherry-picking of the historical record" at worst? Can the revisionist project poisoned by political intent, according to Tan, or perhaps by insinuations of political intent? Is the place of revisionist historical research only to supplement and strengthen Singapore's success story by telling of its failures and rejects? Does it exist at the expense of national security and social cohesion, as Ong claims but never quite explains how it might happen here or indeed has happened anywhere at all?

By collating these statements and responding to the implied critique to the historical research just resulted in the debunking the PAP narrative of Operation Coldstore, Hong presents not a triumphal project but one whose legitimacy is questioned by the Singapore establishment and purported institutional gatekeepers who speak on its behalf.



Hong's (and Edgar Liao's as well) defense of this project is equally institutional. However revisionist, the research is still based on verifiable historical facts, archival records, interviews, and memoirs; however revisionist, New Singapore History utilises the processes, analytical tools, and logic of good historical research; however revisionist, the project is not political, the researchers being motivated to do good history, not politics - even if the research may have potential, immediate political consequences.

Forgetting the myths of history

We note the delegitimising charges of 'historical revisionism', writing 'alternate history', and the crude political scaremongering of 'Historical Research can be a Threat to National Security or Social Cohesion' are all accusations that assume certain myths of history.

It is all fine for Hong and Liao to present summaries of papers that have debunked certain myths of Singapore's history; I would go further to situate the two camps in the historical-cultural-academic field playing for the stakes of academic legitimacy and reputation, each side investing their position by promoting different myths of History. I would go as much as to say that myths of history are best identified, explained, and debunked by taking an audience through a history of how history has been written.

These myths of history are evoked in the establishment's challenge to New Singapore History and its response:

1. History is written by the victors. That is, only victors have the right to write right history, and legitimate history concerns itself with victors, explains why things are the way they are.

2. History as a dynastic record. That is, one can only pass judgement on a group of historical, political, or social actors when their time in the sun has passed. Evoked in Hong's anecdote about the professor who stopped his volume of Singapore history at 1957 and didn't continue with a second volume because 1957 was when the PAP came to power.

3. History as a master narrative. That is, the idea of a primary, orthodox history that is supplemented by lesser accounts that serve to give a "fuller picture", but can never overturn established consensus and understanding of the past.

4. History as a stable narrative. Implied by 1-3.

5. History as research by historians. That is, it's only a proper history if it's written or directed by academics, but not by political and social actors themselves. Evoked by Hong's description of certain New Singapore History publications as memoirs that enrich the historical record and can guide the research of a historian, but do not qualify as good history.

Ideally, the seminar series needed to open with a brief survey of the development of History as a discipline (i.e. the history of writing history), to expose the role of writing history with the role of mythmaking and ideological formation. These preliminaries are necessary to understand the contention over "myths of history" as a contest over the mythology of history.

More importantly, these preliminaries illustrate that really-existing history, even in Singapore, involves constant, if not periodic revision and often by state actors as a political process of rehabilitation, exclusion, and boundary maintenance; that really-existing history is both political and social; that modern historical research often fills in deliberate gaps of previous narratives and is thus misconstrued as "revisionist" or "alternative".

Enter the myth-killers

Most importantly, these preliminaries would easily disprove the biggest myth of history that exists in Singapore: that history is a master narrative. Hong identifies passages in Lee's political biographies that appear overdefensive about minor issues, only to make sense in the context of recently declassified Colonial Office reports.

I would have used this (and other instances) to establish that there is no such thing as a master historical narrative arising ex nihilo. In the schema of critical theory, all narration and writing (including history as a narration, and the writing of history) is intertextual. Every "primary" text is already influenced, answering to, denying, being undermined by, or delegitimising previous and parallel narratives and discourses. While politicians are committed to maintaining the primal state of innocence of doxa, historians (and the historical endeavor) are committed to treating all texts as co-equal, if not co-complementary, alerting to readers the existence of competing possibles and the sum total of the alternatives not chosen by the established order.

Given that Singapore history appears to have more than its fair share of omissions, and that much of it has been written by a young group of leaders perhaps too eager to justify their actions and policies, and too willing to tie them with the development of a national identity, it is hardly a surprise that the unearthing and declassification of archives has provided material to fuel New Singapore History, and why it has come under attack from the Singapore establishment and its appointed gatekeepers in academia.

Never again, PinkDot

I'm not attending PinkDot this year. This is coming from someone who has attended every Pinkdot except the one where Broadway Beng was engaged to provide the entertainment. This is coming from someone who has their fair share of gay and lesbian friends.

I made the decision last year after reading Alfian's criticism of the pinkwashing at Pinkdot, after hearing from various friends of the Pinkdot organisers' heavyhanded censorship of community booths and disrespect of the LGBTQI community's diversity and needs.

Which is the real PinkDot mascot? 

Why is PinkDot promoting fear and ignorance?

Why bother attending PinkDot if this is the day where instead of being safe and free, LGBTQI activists suffer the most censorship and oppression, and at the hands of PinkDot organisers?

My activist friends reported the organisers lecturing that this event is not for them, not for the benefit of the LGBTQI community, but for the benefit of appearing safe and unthreatening to mainstream Singapore and their straight allies. And so: a complete gag on safe sex. Straight people will freak out if you give out condoms and safe sex brochures and talk about safe sex! Please say as little about activism on this day itself. It's too confrontational! No one really needs to hear the plight of transsexual sex workers, much less their rights. It's too alternative! And please give us all your brochures to vet. We demand it.

Why bother attending PinkDot if, instead of encouraging diversity and non-judgemental attitudes, PinkDot organisers are the ones who promote the fear and ignorance of real LGBTQIs, and their issues, concerns, needs, diversity?

If Lawrence Khong and the Wear White campaign didn't exist, PinkDot would have to invent them from scratch

We're under attack! Shut up and stop criticising us!

This year, I wonder if PinkDot organisers and the LGBTQI community at large are just papering over issues that need to be addressed and allowing attacks from the religious right to band the community together in the absence of an authentic, living vision.

If not for the wear white campaign and the attacks by conservative Christian pastors, my activist friends would be making more criticisms of pinkdot, inspiring their brethren to actually promote diversity and tolerance within the LGBTQI community, and to question their motives for turning up, wearing pink, or feeling happy that PinkDot has now got corporate banking sponsors.

If not for these attacks, someone would've risen up by now to condemn the hiring of security personnel by PinkDot organisers and exposed it for a fascist, if not a cynical PR move that it is.

Whoever would have thought that a pride event would need to hire its own thugs and goons, who will either harass people who look different or out of place today, or rough up a vocal protestor criticising PinkDot either from the left, or from the right?

No one in their right mind would think for one moment that the "Wear White" or "LoveSingapore" campaigns would be interested to crash Hong Lim Park today. "Wear White" wants to send a signal in the mosques. Lawrence Khong applied to have his event at the Padang. None of them wanted a confrontation, none of them wanted to be in the same space as PinkDot.

And yet PinkDot plays up the so-called attacks, fosters a siege mentality, all to justify the wasteful, immodest, and immoral hiring of mercenary thugs at today's event. Because in their bizarro universe, PinkDot's cheerful and peaceful picnic atmosphere either doesn't exist or is so fragile (despite a turnout of 3000 people on average) that a few protestors would create a riot. What does this say about the PinkDot organisers' perception of the LGBTQI community? That they can be prodded into violence? That they could never react to opposition in a Gandhian manner? What does this say about PinkDot's liberal credentials?

Most of my LGBTQI activist friends have said no to PinkDot's invitations to set up community booths this year. I guess they must be very tired of censorship and oppression. And maybe disappointed that the organisers of the most successful LGBTQI event are themselves the biggest homophobes in Singapore.

Most of them will still be attending the picnic. I will be boycotting PinkDot completely because their KPI is the turnout for the event. Until such time that PinkDot is run by a committee of intellectually honest people whose put the interests of LGBTQI people first, I will not attend any future PinkDot.

"Daddy where is your car & who are all these poor people?"

From a realist point of view, public policy is never really about discovering via best methods, optimal outcomes for the public at large, but what fits the planner's ideology.

We put a spotlight on Singapore's transport policy to identify the ideology—a set of commonsensical assumptions so commonsensical their existence is not denied but unacknowledged—through which the Public Transport Council's (PTC) modelling of the transport system and its pricing and funding calculations are mediated.

In his Straits Times op-ed of 25 May 2014, PTC chairman (2005-2014) Gerard Ee defends the PAP government's current orthodoxy regarding transport fares: i.e. it is right that PTC-approved annual transport fare increases have nothing to do with service standards, and if the public wants better service standards, it ought to pay a premium over the annual fare increases.

That the chairman of the PTC thinks this way is not cause for consternation. He is after all no economist or a transport analyst or expert. He heads a council that is mandated to approve fare hikes by Singapore's bus and train monopolist, and not a research institute for transport policy studies.

But look: the chairman of the PTC lives in a bizarro universe where it is unrealistic for commuters to expect actual quality of service improvements in the face of state-guaranteed transport fare increases. In the reality where we live, it is unrealistic for monopolistic transport operators to enjoy state-guaranteed transport fare increases while failing to prevent near-guaranteed service deterioration every year.

This tells you something about the world-view, the ideology, the ontology of the crafters of Singapore's transport policy and the messenger they've tasked to convey their views to the public via an op-ed piece in yesterday's Straits Times.

And if you read his op-ed piece, it turns out Gerard Ee insists that the annual fare increases have been all about the bus and train monopolies investing in infrastructure. Clearly, Gerard Ee lives in a bizarro universe where the monumental series of train breakdowns of 2012-2014 weren't caused by the train monopolist failing to invest in infrastructure and maintenance for a decade.

Still, that's not a cause for consternation.

What's a real cause for consternation is Gerard Ee's vision of public transport:
"If you treasure your time and comfort, you pay a premium—there are premium services. If you value your time and comfort even more, buy a car. And then ultimately, get a chauffeur."

THEM'S FIGHTING WORDS!

In just 2 sentences, Gerard Ee's words betray the ideology lurking behind the dry, values-free tables and numbers that prop up current transport policy implementation. In just 2 sentences, Gerard Ee talks about public transport in terms of personal wealth. In just 2 sentences, Gerard Ee ties transport service—the idea of getting there in time and in comfort—with personal wealth.

In just 2 sentences, Gerard Ee whitewashes the very public failures of Singapore's transport policy: the inability of highly profitable monopolists to get people anywhere on time, and the chronic overcrowding and overloading of public transport infrastructure.

In just 2 sentences, one may infer that in the minds of Singapore's policy planners, public transport is a program for the poor, and a poor program because the poor can't afford better service and shouldn't be spoiled by good programs.

This patronising, elitist mindset is not too different from that of one Anton Casey, who riled half of Singapore with his allegedly offensive joke about public transport being for poor people.

And this narrative of the undeserving poor, the paths which cannot be taken for reasons too esoteric for the public to appreciate, is an ongoing habit of Gerard Ee. He has in the past publicly rejected outright lower transport fares for the elderly (while wearing his other hat as chairman for an active aging body), and concessions for polytechnic students (while wearing his PTC hat).

His successor, former judge Richard Magnus, is no better. Like Ee, he is no transport expert. For 2014, Magnus has excluded the poorest 20% from the PTC's transport fare calculations because they should be able to pay for public transport after taking into account the subsidies and handouts they get elsewhere. It is our opinion that this methodology necessarily makes transport more expensive than it would be if fare increases had to take into account the ability of the poorest 20% to pay for it.

Once you identify the ideological root of Singapore's public transport policies, you may begin to also understand the ideological blinkers behind the PTC's blanket refusal to consider several suggestions for fare subsidies and the government's automatic dismissal of several transport reform suggestions.

This is a pity, not only for Gerard Ee's credibility—public transport policy is beginning to turn, and his public pronouncements of "thou shalt not go there" will be forever remembered and measured against these reversals—but also for the fact that the son of Ee Peng Liang, the "father of charity in Singapore", seems to see public transport as a program for the poor, and a poor program.

Valar Morghulis

So yes: Papalee dies.

Religion in the public square: 2014 edition

"Churchmen, lay preachers, priests, monks, Muslim theologians, all those who claim divine sanction or holy insights, take off your clerical robes before you take on anything economic or political. Take it off. Come out as a citizen or join a political party and it is your right to belabor the government, but use a church or a religion and your pulpit for these purposes and there will be serious repercussions."
-- Lee Kuan Yew, 1986

And then we have Lim Biow Chuan, MP since 2006, active lay preacher and worship leader at Ang Mo Kio Methodist Church since 1993

Why is Lin Piao allowed to be a PAP MP when he has refused to take off his clerical robes?

Imperial overreach: Singapore Health Promotion Board edition

or: How not to write a FAQ on sexual health

Singapore's Health Promotion Board released an advisory on sexuality and sexual health last year. Perhaps due to the design of the website, no one (not even LGBT activists or the self-appointed moral guardians of Singapore) took notice. Till recently. Then all hell broke loose.

Like so many, I did not think the ensuing fracas to be important, interesting, or worth investigating. The usual suspects either accused the FAQ to be a promotion of the gay lifestyle or defended the FAQ as fact based, evidence based writing. It sounded like another episode in the ongoing culture war between vocal liberals and conservatives suddenly finding their voice in a post-Papalee, internet-enabled Singapore.

Yes, having the national health body write up an entire FAQ on homosexuality is a milestone for conservative Singapore. Just that this is the wrong milestone.

Imperial overreach explained

"Trust me, I'm a doctor"

A cursory examination of the controversy and outcry against the Health Promotion Board's FAQ reveals three sets of interrelated questions or accusations, which I summarise here:

Does the FAQ highlight LGBT health issues or does it promote an LGBT social reformist agenda?
Is the HPB reaching out to LGBTs as a health board or is the HPB reaching out to mainstream society on behalf of the gay agenda?
Should the HPB be an advocate for health, an advocate for LGBTs, or an advocate for the moral majority?

We identify the public disquiet as a backlash against the HPB's imperial overreach. That is, the HPB appears to have exceeded its mandate as a health advisory board and ventured beyond their core competency in health and medicine in their advisory. This is no small matter: a public organ that is seen to promote the agenda of any one faction of the populace (liberal, conservative, or radical) will lose the trust of the entire populace, and lose its credibility and effective ability to serve the public.

The HPB seems to have forgotten the sordid history of the Family Planning and Promotion Board, a public organ that instead of offering sound advice on family planning, embarked on a crusade to sterilise women at a young age, especially targeting the poor. The HPB should note that the FPPB no longer exists, and is not remembered with fondness for its zealous social engineering.

But you can't trust a health promotion board if it's less interested in promoting health,

and more interested in social crusading

HPB vs NHS: a tale of 2 LGBT health advisories

In its defense, the Health Promotion Board claims the brochure was meant as “a one-stop resource to provide factual information on sexuality and sexually transmitted infections/HIV prevention from a public health perspective.”

In the absence of actual health practitioners and experts wading into the discussing, we therefore accept HPB's challenge to a trial by combat, and name as our champion the UK National Health Service (NHS). The choice is fair; the NHS is the direct analogue of Singapore's Health Promotion Board, and it has also published in English an advisory on LGBT issues, easily accessible online. The weapon of choice shall be their respective FAQs on LGBT health. The contest shall be determined by the accuracy and factualness of their FAQs, and whether their FAQs have been written purely from a public health perspective.

And for your reference, It's NHS's Gay health: the issues vs HPB's FAQs on sexuality. Go, open them side by side in separate browser windows. Read them, and we can discuss more.

A thorough reading of both NHS and HPB advisories shows up stark differences in their approach towards "LGBT health". The NHS tells you right from the start

If you’re gay, lesbian or bisexual, by being aware of your health risks and having relevant health checks, you can stay healthy and reduce your risk of illness... Research shows that people with same-sex partners may have a higher risk of contracting certain conditions, for instance lesbians may have a higher risk of breast cancer and gay men are at higher risk of HIV.

Unlike the HPB, the NHS doesn't tell you what homosexuality is, who's a homosexual, whether it is an identity or a behaviour, whether it can be cured, whether it's normal or not, whether it's a phase, to what extent sexuality can be fluid. That's not important from a public health point of view and that's not what the NHS as a health advisory body is interested in.

NHS simply says: if you're LGBT, here are the top issues concerning your health. If you're a sexually active gay woman, these are STDs you should screen for. If you're a sexually active gay man, here are the STDs you should screen for. Aside from HIV/AIDS. At the final 15% of its FAQ, the HPB tells you about AIDS. It says nothing else about other STDs that gay people may more prone to pick up, compared to mainstream people, nothing about the higher breast cancer risks of gay women.

Now tell me, if you were LGBT, whether you'd prefer to get your health advisory from the NHS or the HPB?

NHS tells you that depression affects LGBT people more than mainstream people, some of which is caused by bullying or homophobia, but some of it is self-inflicted because gay people can be their worst enemies. Then it tells you where to seek counselling. HPB tells you it's wrong to label people as gay and best let homosexuals come out of the closet on their own. Aside from this not being a public health issue, it's not a medical fact either. Labelling, as social scientists will tell you, occurs all the time in everyday interactions and is an integral part of social construction. You can tell people not to label others, but really... (and let's not get into the phenomenon of how people label themselves actively)

Do we need to know what homophobia is? Perhaps. Is homophobia a fact? Is it a medical fact? Is it the business of the Health Promotion Board to tell us? No.

When put side by side with the NHS advisory, the deficiencies of the HPB advisory become very apparent. As written, this is more a LGBT advocacy and education FAQ than a LGBT health advisory. As written, the HPB seems more interested in changing social opinions on LGBTs than offering a "one stop resource" of the health education and needs of LGBTs.

In contrast, the NHS advisory manages to provide timely, relevant, and appropriate health resources and advice regarding LGBT health without being contentious, controversial, or venturing out of its core competency. In contrast, the approach taken by the NHS advisory is more suited to Singapore.

Where the Health Promotion Board should provide timely, concise, and relevant health information for LGBTs, it seems to have written an advisory for the mainstream public and occasionally, parents with LGBT children, with the goal of changing public attitudes towards homosexuality. It's a good cause but one that HPB is not mandated to champion. And since it has, the public organ now reeks of institutional overreach.

As written, the HPB has let down LGBT people in Singapore, whose health needs and education are far better served by reading the NHS advisory and portal. I suspect the same for Singapore's mainstream society as well. I offer these criticisms in the hope that the HPB may take the NHS LGBT advisory portal as a working model so that it may offer what the LGBT community needs (in terms of health advice) instead of what it wants (in terms of social change).

Reason #65665872 why Roy Tan is the next worst thing for the gay rights movement in Singapore

Back in 2005, Roy Tan, a gay activist in Singapore, made a suggestion which has not gone unnoticed on our blog. He said with some glee: "We should consider making use of the Sedition Act to stop any local online homophobia dead in its tracks."

Now in 2013, Roy Tan is one of the signatories to the citizens' petition to the AGC, affirming Alex Au's right to free speech or something like that. Sure didn't take too long for the gay rights movement's most ardent supporter of repressive sedition laws to turn into its most ardent supporter of the right to free speech.

But wait, there's more. Back in 2005 after Roy Tan made a statement that, if taken seriously, would set back free speech, it turns out that Alex Au's reply was:

"Would the same Sedition Act be applicable in cases of hate speech targeting gay people? I think yes. Clause 3(1)(e), after all says, "feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore."

He goes in for the kill, and suggests that the White Elephant guerrilla installation piece at Buangkok MRT be investigated under the Sedition Act. And if Alex Au's statements were taken seriously, there would be no opening of the Buangkok MRT station -- and no Samantha Lo today because certain types of art. according to Alex Au, are SEDITIOUS.

Meet Alex Au, the worst thing to happen to the gay rights movement in Singapore, a man who has never been a friend of free speech and artistic expression.

And one more thing: Roy Tan is parsimonious with the truth. Since 2011, he has been banned from Wikipedia for a whole host of rules violations including lack of citations, lack of permissions for images, non-neutral point of view writing, conflicts of interest, using wikipedia for promotion, and treating his created pages as a personal website.

Alex Au's Cell Block Tango: "He had it coming"

As you may know, the Attorney-General's Chambers has initiated contempt of court proceedings against the blogger Alex Au. In addition, there is a statement calling the AGC to drop its case against the author of Yawning Bread, signed by prominent activists, online news journalists, academics, artists -- and other assorted poseurs.

Fair disclosure: I was approached to sign this. On a strictly professional level, I offered my services to edit an early draft of the text. On a personal level, I have not signed this statement and do not intend to.

I do not believe Alex Au's case warrants a campaign against the AGC. Nor should it galvanise Au's supporters to make hysterical, unseemly, and unhelpful comments about an "Operation Coldweb" that are sure to damage the integrity of the judicial process in the eyes of the public.

Simply put, Alex Au had it coming.

I have been blogging since 2003. Alex Au has been been writing online since 1996, back when Yawning Bread was a website and not quite a blog. Over these 10 years (and 10 years is a long time to get to know someone just from their writings alone), we know Alex Au to be, on occasion, an irresponsible, intemperate writer itching for a fight with the authorities over real or imagined slights, whipping up campaigns of manufactured outrage. And we have called him out on that time after time, over the years.

There was that time when Alex Au incited readers in a mailing list not to bother with civility or respect when dealing with the Christian Right in Singapore, and pretended he said the complete opposite when asked by the press. There was that time when Alex Au organised a Facebook campaign to boycott DBS for donating to the Focus on the Family charity. And another time when Alex Au organised a hate campaign against the National Volunteer and Philanthropic Centre (you know, the one where the good Mr Gilbert Goh's Transitioning.org has its offices!), claiming the NGO was either led by Christian fundamentalists, actually not independent at all, or financially suspect.

We could go on but I hope you get the idea. Alex Au is the sort of blogger who is reasonable and responsible on the whole, and then on occasion transforms into the poster child of the Nasty Internet that the ministers keep trotting out whenever they urge for more online regulation.

How a simple, commonplace judicial procedure that happens all the time in every other country, rescheduling court hearing dates so cases and judgements don't contradict each other, gets turned into a conspiracy theory ascribing ulterior motives to the sitting judge -- you have to really hand it to Alex Au.

So of course there is now a legal test: the case is now before the supreme court to decide whether, in this day and age, the judiciary can be scandalised, given the exact words Alex Au used in his article.

Alex Au had it coming. And I have no doubt he wanted it this way. And if the petitioners really believe that Singaporeans are mature enough to discuss judicial procedures without scandalising the court, they ought to give the court credit for being mature enough to decide that. Shouldn't they?

[Addendum, 2 December 2013: It is important to note that the Supreme court has granted the AGC leave to initiate a contempt of court suit against Alex Au. To date, the AGC has not filed the suit against Alex Au, although the proceedings began with their application for leave to the Supreme Court.

Hopefully the several people whom Alex Au claims are "keen on raising funds to help defray my costs" have not actually begun to raise funds. To do so would be most improper. For Alex Au to mention all those details about raising funds while neglecting to admit that the AGC has not yet taken action against him (and may never) despite being granted permission by the Supreme Court is typical of Alex's failings.]

Tharman, oh Tharman, a clown minister art thou

I kid you not.
http://leongszehian.com/?p=3821
http://www.euromoney.com/Article/3265239/Finance-Minister-of-the-Year-2013-Singapores-Tharman-Shanmugaratnam.html

Time to ditch the NDP

First ever parade at the Padang Red Square

We bring to your attention Channelnewsasia's report on the 2013 Singapore National Day Parade, and its figure of 27,000 celebrants.

Figures on attendance and participation in previous years' NDPs have not been officially collated; nonetheless a rough gauge can be gleaned from the headlines and reports from The Straits Times. In 1966, the participant figure was 23,000. In 1969, 30,000. In 1986, it swelled to 70,000 at the National Stadium. In 1997, ST decided to report only on the spectators (as opposed to everyone at the NDP, including the contingent and performers), which they pegged at 60,000.

From these numbers, a few statistical observations emerge.

Singapore's population has increased from 1.65 million in 1966 to over 5 million in 2012. Yet the attendance at its National Day Parade appears to have plateaued on the eve of the Asian Financial Crisis and declined steadily since, and shrinking to early independence era numbers. As a percentage of total population, attendance figures haven't just returned to early independence era figures; they have plummeted far below that.

Despite the NDP being telecast on every free-to-air channel ever since its inception, the Media Development Authority and its predecessors do not publish viewership figures. We only have anecdotal reports that people have been tuning in to the NDP far less these days.

Since 2002, the cost of putting up the National Day Parade has increased almost every year. We're not certain if the punchline ought to be this: As fewer people (both absolute and as a percentage of total population) turn up each year to watch the NDP, the cost of the NDP has been going up (both absolute and per audience).

Ditch the NDP now, I say!

Why watch the NDP anyway?

People need to question why NDP has so much military hardware porn

 
"No need lah. It's the same every year." - anonymous

"My preoccupation wasn't the audience at the parade. They were the converted... It's actually the rest of the Singaporeans who are thinking, 'Ah, another propaganda event.'" - MP Chan Chun Sing

I have neglected to say that lower audience numbers may be due to declining interest -- or they could be the direct result of venue capacity, or due to an interaction between the two.

But to read MP Chan Chun Sing's thoughts on his 2009 parade, one might come to the idea that the SAF possesses statistics which show a steady tapering off in the numbers of "the converted" which predates the New Normal. But why?

It can't be because the NDP is the same every year. The NDP has to be the same every year. You'll agree too if you see it as a secular ritual commemorating nothing less than the State itself. The ritual serves to recreate the social and political order in mystical and symbolic terms, to reify the official narrative(s) (Singapore: from fishing village to cosmopolis and nation, for example) as a spectacle, an assault on the senses, ready to be consumed by awed and numbed citizen-units whose sole contribution is to stand up to sing the year's NDP song (which fails as a patriotic song if it can't be sung in unison by a crowd).

The sequence of each National Day parade follows the logic of military
protocol: a school choir sings; hundreds of provost guards march; ministers
arrive; spectators stand as the prime minister appears; guards salute as the
president arrives with a fanfare; the national anthem is played; the president
inspects the guards; the show begins with gun salutes, military stunts, fly-past, drive-past, and march-past.
- Leong Wai Teng, "Consuming the nation: National Day Parades in Singapore", New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 3, 2 (December, 2001): 5-16.

Well-travelled observers will no doubt seize on the striking similarities between the military pornography, authoritarian fetish, and spectacle addiction of Singapore's NDP to similar displays in Soviet Russia, the DPRK, and other post-communist relics of the world.

If there is a gradual but terminal decline in interest in Singapore's NDP, it can only be a symptom of a far greater malaise; it could very well be that Singapore has come of age, that top-down secular rituals, mass displays, the performance of grand national narratives are no longer effective means of directing a people towards a shared national consciousness. Perhaps, if the NDP planning committee were sharp and farsighted enough, they'd be asking what kind of national consciousness we'd get if they applied a bottom-up approach instead.

I still won't watch an NDP but I'd watch this

Oh look, even the Russians do reenactment spectacles these days

If the priestess of Ise were in charge of the NDP planning committee, I'd scrap the NDP entirely. Its time has come and gone.

Instead, I will give you a non-NDP, an anti-NDP. Imagine from dawn till dusk, several roving camera teams tasked to find out how people are spending their 9 August. As you tune in over the day, you'll see actual people, actual events actually happening right now on national day...

In Singapore, with Singaporeans working (or having a rest), celebrating (or refusing to, or celebrating something else entirely), taking a break from life or having to deal with life. Singaporean citizens and PRs, FTs and tourists. We'd watch Gilbert Goh's Hong Lim Park celebration, fly to the Botanic Gardens for the Pink Picnic...

Outside Singapore: emigres, expats, exiles. Former guest workers now back in their home countries or working elsewhere.

We'll see the aged grandmother who still needs to sell tissue on National Day, the foreign maid who used to work in Singapore on a pittance, a group of ah bengs hanging out at AMK Central spoiling for a fight, a fever-wracked middle class, middle age man desperate to find a clinic open on National Day. We'll hear from the ra-ra patriots, and maybe say hi to Francis Seow and Tan Wah Piow after all these years.

Imagine all this, in 5 minute segments. It'll be quite literally one Singapore, many stories. And it will be truth in advertising. And I'd watch that.

The total hypocrisy of Ng Eng Hen on Total Defence

Beatles drummer Ringo Starr goofing around on a US tour.

This is also the image Ng Eng Hen evokes in his speech.

When one takes into account other social engineering campaigns in Singapore, Total Defence seems to have fared not too shabbily. For one, it hasn't been discarded as a policy failure like population control's "Stop at two", derided as horribly deluded like the moral panic infused campaigns against long hair and rock and roll, or treated as benignly irrelevant like the courtesy/kindness campaign and its beleaguered former mascot, which 'announced' its 'retirement' earlier last month.

One cannot blame Singapore leadership's attempt to keep relevant the Total Defence campaign. There might be a bit of inevitable eye-rolling at the laboured DRUMS acronym Ng employed to highlight the threat of misinformation on the internet. It would be churlish to claim that the entire social-psychological positioning of Total Defence is to instill an atmosphere of paranoia ever-readiness in the population, yet this is precisely the riposte of the blogosphere to minister Ng Eng Hen's recent speech on the online threats to Total Defence.

Even I would find it hard to disagree with the defence minister that a campaign of misinformation may bring a nation down on its knees. One would not need to be a student of Clausewitz, Napoleon, Sun Tze, or Soviet Maskirovka to realise that armies have indeed been brought down by disinformation and deception.

No, silly! You can't really bring down a country with disinformation these days

Granted, the minister's speechwriters have not caught up with the idea that modern democracies are not armies. The benefit of an open, mature democracy is its vibrant, free media, whose professional ethics, ideals, and competing political positionings will enable writers and readers to expose manipulations and untruths in any single disinformation campaign.

If the minister were serious about Total Informational Defence, he would be the first to urge Minilee and the MDA to free the internet, to free government control of Singapore's print media, to repeal the infamous Newspaper and Printing Presses Act. In a mature democracy with a robust, open media market, it is nigh impossible to spread disinformation.

Indeed in the modern day, disinformation campaigns are more a tool of authoritarian governments with unfree presses to influence domestic opinion. To which the priestess of Ise will give the same advice: the Total Defence of the citizenry in an authoritarian state depend on having a strong and free press - digital and print.

Ng Eng Hen: Still the wrong man for the job

One hopes perhaps that the amorphous blogosphere and its horde of angry commentators simply reacted this way against Ng because he is the wrong man for the job.

Perhaps netizens do remember that under Ng Eng Hen, the Ministry of Manpower massaged statistics to give the impression of a lower unemployment rate - and was caught out on it by none other than the Financial Times.

Our more perspicacious readers will recall in 2009, ST reporter Li Xueying's reports of Ng Eng Hen heading the PAP's New Media committee to "mount a quiet counter-insurgency" to counter criticism of the party and government in cyberspace - using PAP members and operatives masquerading as members of the public to engage in online forums. They may do well to note that social media professor Kevin Lim called the campaign an astroturf operation. We wonder if the current crop of "Internet Brigades" on facebook are the current face of that very same counter-insurgency whose mendacious actions seem to have written the manual on DRUMS.

Having overseen such disinformation operations (some of which are still ongoing) himself at the Manpower ministry and the PAP New Media counter-insurgency, Ng Eng Hen is the last person on earth who should deliver a lecture on how disinformation online can destroy a country. The blogosphere will NOT be lectured on disinformation, rumours, untruths, misinformation, and smears by this man. Not now, not ever.

What does conflict of interest really mean?

This is business as usual

But if you wear too many hats

Or if you are both the left and right hand

You're really playing games with public funds

Conflict of interest is very easy to understand, very easy to identify

Here's the egghead definition and its restatement into simple English, courtesy of the Journal of Business Ethics (39:1-2, 67-74). It is:

"...a situation in which a person has a private or personal interest sufficient to influence the objective exercise of his duties as say, a public official, an employee, or a professional.

Simply put, a conflict of interest occurs when your obligations to a party or the greater public could be influenced or compromised by self interest, a prior commitment, competing loyalties, or an inability to be objective."

On the very specific issue of town councils, the Victoria state ombudsman says in its 2008 report "Conflict of interest in local government": 

"Those interests may be pecuniary... or non-pecuniary, such as the interests of the official's family or other close associates, or organisations to which the official belongs."

That is to say, conflict of interests occur when you:

Give contracts to friends, party members, or family members;
Are both the drafter/approver of contracts as well as the bidder for a contract;
Are both an employee of local government as well as a shareholder or director in a company engaged by local government; or
Oversee for the town council the work you carry out for the town council.

To put it even more simply: conflict of interests happen when you wear too many hats; or when you are both the left and the right hand when the key principle in corporate governance is never let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.

To put it for dummies: conflict of interests happen when you're not independent.

So what happens when there is a conflict of interest? The standard advice given in all governance textbooks is to recognise it; disclose it; then remove yourself from the decision making and ideally from the entire discussion.


No exemptions for the PAP and WP; or, a plague on both your houses!

We do not wish to rehash the details of the AIM saga, the FMSS saga, or the Jurong town council saga. But here's what happens when we apply everyday standards of corporate governance, as well as international norms (as represented by the Victoria ombudsman's report on conflict of interest in local government) to Singapore's town councils.

AIM: owned by party members - conflict of interest
FMSS: owned by "friends" and supporters - still conflict of interest


FMSS: directors and shareholders are also employees of town council - conflict of interest

AIM: awarded contract by party member, precisely because he knew AIM was party owned - conflict of interest

Esmaco Town Management Services. GM of town council is MD of company hired as estate manager - conflict of interest!

It does not matter if he was appointed GM after his company got the contract. In corporate management, all we are interested in is whether 1. he reported the conflict of interest and 2. whether he reported the conflict of duty, and 3. whether he has recused himself from evaluation and overseeing the work carried out by Esmaco.

Still more conflict of interest issues in WP's AHTC?

Khaw Boon Wan raised (13 May 2013, Straits Times) and Sylvia Tan acknowledged (14 May 2013, Straits Times) that FMSS is owned and operated by party supporters, not party members.

Leaving aside this very clear-cut textbook conflict of interest, we'd like to ask WP three more questions.

1. Can WP confirm that no party member or their family or associates have ever been awarded a WP town council contract or sub-contract?

2. The shareholders and directors of FMSS are also employees of the town council, who is their client. Leaving aside the conflict of interest, can WP tell us who at the town council then oversees and supervises the work of FMSS?

3. As town council managing agent, has FMSS sub-contracted to any party who has a conflict of interest - i.e. any WP member; relatives of WP members; FMSS shareholders and directors themselves; town council members; relatives or friends of FMSS shareholders and directors; relatives or friends of town council members?

What the MND review really means

How does one conduct a comprehensive review while wearing blinkers?

Headed by one Mr Tay Kim Poh (apparently a deputy secretary in the Ministry of National Development), the MND team found that the PAP-AIM deal was

1. Not illegal
2. Followed due process and did not represent a conflict of interests

We have already predicted in February that the deal would not be illegal, though the ownership of AIM by PAP would fall under a grey area. The deeper issue of political financing and political donations were not addressed by the "comprehensive" MND review, which only strove to investigate the deal through the blinkers of the Town Council Act.
We've already pointed out that Singapore's regulatory framework of political parties with respect to these two issues is at odds with international legal norms, which ban political parties from owning private enterprises.

Further, it's only through very imaginative acrobatic manoeuvrings that MND could find the deal in accordance with due process and free from conflict of interests. MND had to accept that being town councils, appointments and contracts will be, can be, and can be allowed to be preferential, can be parcelled out as political appointments.

By allowing this, MND in effect says that certain practices which could end the political career and legacy of... let's say a former mayor of Paris, would be perfectly legal and above board in Singapore because we allow that local government is, by nature, "politicised".

Implications of MND's findings

1. The civil service or at least the team headed by Tay was simply incompetent, and utterly stupid.

2. The civil service or at least the team headed by Tay lacked independence, and had become politicised. They were charged by the prime minister to conduct a comprehensive review and turned up a heavily blinkered review.

Whether there was self-censorship or behind-the-scenes political pressure, this may cause some to conclude that the civil service is either very openly batting for the ruling party or intimidated by the prospect of having to investigate the party. The MND review may ironically further undermine public trust in the system.

3. The MND review legitmises the idea that local government in the form of town councils are held to lower standards of corporate governance and due process, and higher thresholds of conflicts of interest than the private sector. This is the gateway to open preferential contracts, clientelism, and procurement corruption.

In light of all these, we at Illusio again renew our call for the Town Council-AIM deal to be investigated fully by the Auditor-General of Singapore and the Register of Societies. We further call upon the Minister for National Development to step down and for his deputy secretary to be censured by the head of the civil service for publishing a review that holds local government to lower standards than the private sector.

The Ministry of National Development comprehensive clown show

We examine the Ministry of National Development's oft-delayed, long-awaited review of the transaction between the People's Action Party's 14 town councils and Action Information Management, published on 3 May 2013 (PDF link), in light of the parliament sitting on 13 May 2013.

Whatever happens on Monday—a dramatic showdown headed by a bold opposition, a comedy of missed chances authored by an underperforming opposition, or a grotesque self-interested bipartisan agreement to sweep all embarrassing issues under the carpet—the ruling party and the establishment press will declare the sitting a fitting closure to a contentious debate, and call for the citizenry to lay aside their misgivings, move on, and to reinvest their blind trust in a to-be-reformed town council system.

We present this post so our readers can see for themselves on Monday whether Monday's debate is the real thing, a clown show, or pure political kabuki.

Will Monday's parliament session be a farcical pie fight?

Follow the breadcrumbs with Illusio!

The issues as we see it

The public disquiet in the streets, online, and in social media over the AIM affair stems from several concerns:

1. Conflict of interest of the political variety. In the tender process, PAP-appointed party member Ho Pin Teo basically gave the contract to a company only he and other senior party members knew was "owned" by the party and managed by fellow party members. This was special knowledge of a relationship that could not have been found in any public record.

2. Questions of procedural irregularities and non-transparency
a. conflict of interest not reported in town council's annual report on the AIM contract deal(s) amounts to a breach of due diligence.
b. Teo's reason for awarding the contract - that he knew the special status of AIM - was not reported in the town council annual report. This may be perfectly legal within the bounds of the town council regulations, but amounts to another breach of due diligence.
c. non-transparent tender for a contract of no viable commercial value, which basically is one of the criteria for determining procurement corruption (whether legal or illegal).

3. Political trust, legitimacy of the PAP.

How did the PAP come to own a private business and not have the business declare its true ownership or even declare its ownership? Is this legal?

Even if legal, is this a circumvention of laws on political donations in Singapore, and completely at odds with international legal norms on political financing?

Can the people place their trust in the PAP if it owns a clandestine business empire and is legally entitled to own a clandestine business empire?

How can a political party manage become so secretive when the laws regulating political parties (i.e. the Political Donation Act, Societies Act) are written to ensure they operate with transparency and scrutiny?

Note that the majority of these three sets of concerns are ethical and procedural, not legal.

The issues as MND saw it

1. MND reviewed the external audits of the PAP town councils but not AIM's audit reports. It accepts the town councils' assertion that AIM made no profit, that whatever was paid to it was to cover its operating costs... It should have just reviewed the annual audits of AIM instead.

2. MND clears the town councils of any illegality. The public outcry was about ethics, transparency, politicisation of town councils, and conflict of interest.

3. MND clears the town councils and Ho Pin Teo of any conflict of interest only because MND accepts that town councils will have political conflicts of interests, that party MPs will engage party-affiliated companies to manage their town councils—and then pretends these aren't really conflicts of interests that matter.

Strangely enough, MND exonerates AIM. Reason? The company actually developed the TCMS in 1996, so it had a track record prior to the tender in 2010. MND however doesn't ask why AIM was even given the 1996 contract, as a $2 company with STILL zero staff in 1996.

MND, investigating with blinkers on

By refusing to acknowledge the real reasons for the loss of public trust in the system, the MND's review is unlikely to restore this trust.

It is clear that MND's investigation falls far short of popular expectations, even far short of Minilee's directive for a comprehensive review. It has stuck to a purely legalistic review, only of the town councils - leaving AIM and its political affiliations out of the picture. By not questioning AIM and its political affiliations, it obviously does not find any procedural irregularities with a senior PAP member awarding contracts to a company whose PAP affiliations were not public knowledge.


It has not found any conflict of interests because it already accepts as a matter of principle, that political conflicts of interests will arise and are encouraged by the current town council system.

We at Illusio believe that MND's blinkered report fully justifies our stand that it was the wrong agency to investigate the town councils. We call upon the Auditor-General of Singapore and the Registrar of Societies to launch an independent investigation to audit the PAP Town Councils, AIM, and the People's Action Party, to ensure full transparency, to identify weaknesses in the legislation and regulation of town councils and political financing, and to suggest measures that will restore Singaporeans' trust in the political and town council system.

The Singapore population white paper clown show

The priestess of Ise has no interest in publishing a review of the Singapore government's white paper on population. There is no proper white paper to speak of, none constructed with care and intellectual honesty to deserve a point by point response.

Just look at this image of an empty train station on page 53, or any of the strangely depopulated urban landscapes, or any of the skylines of Singapore that take up half of every page in the white paper. This is how its authors think they can sell a policy that will change Singapore completely, forever.

We do not exaggerate. Donald Low of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy  has this to say:

There was very little scholarship and academic rigour in the report. There wasn't even a References section to show what research the writers of the paper had done, what social science theories they relied on, what competing theories/frameworks they looked at. There was also a surprising lack of rigorous comparison with other countries that have gone through, or are going through, a similar demographic transition. If this was a term paper, I would have no qualms failing it - whether or not I agree with it.

That's coming from a think-tank insider who would normally be involved in crafting policy and white papers for the powers that be.

To weigh the merits of Low's outburst, which surely breaks an unspoken code of honour between Singapore's government and its local think-tanks useful idiots, we present for comparison:
Singapore's population white paper (PDF link)
Australia's white paper on their response to the Asian Century (PDF link)
UK's white paper on marriage equality (website, multiple PDF links)

The most obvious differences:

1. Singapore's white paper does not have an introductory address.

The politician who is in charge of it has chosen not to take responsibility for what is a very unpopular policy proposal. Can you guess who it might be? It's not the minister for national development, since the national population and talent division is a department under the Prime Minister's Office. Yet according to the division's website, it's not headed by any minister in the PMO but Teo Chee Hean, the minister for home affairs. What an amazing organisational structure NPTD has! Who really answers to whom? Inquiring minds want to know!

2. As Donald Low points out, the discussion in the 87 pages of Singapore's white paper is sorely lacking in rigour, as though its authors really don't want to be taken seriously. There exist references and footnotes; they merely say "DOS", no year, name of publication so it's one big fail. No bibliography. And of course, no cross-country, longitudinal comparisons.

3. The UK's white paper is a series of documents: a green paper soliciting consultation from stakeholders (March 2012), a white paper addressing specifically actual feedback from said consultations (December 2012), and better yet, easy-to-read versions of the white paper and factsheets for those who get a serious case of tl;dr.

Note the timeline between publication of the UK white paper, a period of further public consultation, and its debate and passing in parliament. For comparison, Singapore's population white paper had one week between publication and debate in parliament.

White paper an intellectual paperweight despite an increasingly educated and contentious middle class

So what if Singapore's white paper has no methodology, framework, assumptions, or models shown? So what if its figures and recommendations come out of a black box? The average Singaporean may not understand, may not be interested in the debate beyond their visceral reaction towards the 7 million figure.

This argument is borne of ignorance and the bigotry of low expectations. The Australian and UK white papers accommodate all sorts of readers from expert academics, policymakers, interested citizens to the disengaged reader. Australia's white paper alternates between easy to digest summaries and thick, deep statistical modelling. The UK's controversial and contentious social policy proposal is couched in the simplest, clearest, and most direct language, as though its authors are content to hide nothing from its arsenal of statistical wizardry, and leave everything to critics and supporters alike.

In contrast, Singapore's proposal is a one-note affair, content to chug along for 87 pages in the spirit of an MLM or timeshare brochure where the workings and assumptions are hidden from any reader who may decide to question it.

Third world white paper for a first world nation?

Perhaps the largest problem of a white paper with no methodology, framework, assumptions, models shown is this:

Outside of the Prime Minister's Office, both PAP MPs and opposition MPs have no cognition what lies in the black box of assumptions and models used to generate the seemingly unsubstantiated figures and projections in the white paper. Parliamentarians on either side of the aisle are for all intents and purposes flying blind - making unsubstantiated critiques, counter-proposals, and endorsements of a white paper based on workings and rationales they do not and cannot comprehend.

And yet here we have it: 5 days of passionate debate over the white paper, after which there will be a vote.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Singapore parliament clown show.

The Workers Party, led by Mao Chen Show, have put forward an alternate proposal with an alternate target population figure, and an alternate extrapolated GDP growth figure. These are all based presumably on the same assumptions and statistical modelling of the white paper, that no one knows about aside from its unnamed authors.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the WP clown show.

The People's Action Party has its usual pretense of a reasoned debate to show it's hardly rushing to implement a white paper despite the one week gap between publication and parliamentary debate ("How many foreigners are working in essential services?" Shouldn't this be in a white paper?).

The most embarrassing thing is how one after another, PAP MPs will line up to scrutinise and then endorse a white paper whose assumptions, models, even policy credibility remain unknown to them even at the end of their questioning. In contrast, when faced with activists, tertiary students, and the general public in various dialogue sessions, certain PAP MPs are infamous for demanding to know the exact models, theoretical frameworks, and assumptions - and then dismissing these alternative policy proposals from activists and critiques from the general public out of hand anyway.

While demanding such high standards of Singapore's activists and their critiques and alternate visions, the MPs of the People's Action Party are content to blind themselves when it comes to a proposal that would not pass muster from their exacting standards had it not come from the Prime Minister's Office.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the PAP clown show.

A white paper with no methodology, framework, assumptions, models shown is a paper that shortchanges the legislation, a white paper that reduces the legislature to a bunch of grossly overpaid chattering monkeys, a white paper that brooks no real debate or challenge, that depends on passage by a legislature unable to ascertain its true merits.

Modelling the by-elections: What was the real vote swing against the PAP?

Previously on this blog, I conducted a post mortem of the 2011 general election because Alex Au had made several claims about groundwork and campaigning being essential in determining voting outcome.

I disproved Au's claims through available electoral data and statistical modelling and explained the GE2011 results in several GRC contests to show that the Workers Party had in fact underperformed relative to other opposition parties in contests in wards with highly unpopular ministers, that Aljunied was simply won because of the 6.6% average vote swing against the PAP, and that the average voter in 2011 was simply voting for or against the ruling party.

Although Alex Au has not quite acknowledged our corrections of his thought, his analysis of the Punggol East by-elections attempt to explain the Workers Party win over the People's Action Party, the Reform Party, and the Singapore Democratic Alliance by analysing the swing vote.

His conclusion? There was a 10.83% swing against the PAP since 2011.

A swing to the left, a swing to the right

We argue that Au mistakes the eventual result of the Punggol East by-election to comprise solely of a swing against the PAP. Again assuming the Punggol East voter is simplistically voting for or against the PAP like in 2011, we in addition propose a more sophisticated model of the Punggol by-election vote as an aggregate of two swings.

Aggregate swing = sex scandal + vote against PAP

Given the public uproar in the intervening months against the various sex and sex and corruption scandals, we posit that a sex scandal results in political costs for the incumbent. But how many votes does a sex scandal cost?

We look towards the Hougang by-election, where WP's Yaw Shin Leong resigned from his party and vacated his seat in parliament following a protracted sex scandal.

As it turned out, the WP won Hougang with a marginal change in vote share.

GE May 2011 Hougang SMC: PAP 35.2%%
May 2012 Hougang SMC: PAP 37.92%

For the moment, let's all be naive and simplistic. In an opposition ward of more than 20 years, highly insular and loyal Hougang voters in a by-election one year after a general election are unlikely to change their voting preferences and attitudes towards both the incumbent party and the ruling party. If so, the cost of a sex scandal leading to a by-election is merely 2.7%. This conclusion may be surprising but we note the relative absence of public outrage against the sex scandal in the run-up to the by-election.

Note however the public outrage against the prime minister's initial refusal to call for a by-election, the constitutional challenge that followed, and the positive reaction to Kenneth Jeyaratnam's call for donations online to defray the costs of the case. These factors in addition to the breakdowns in infrastructure since 2011 and the outbreak of the underaged sex scandal would have caused a small swing against the PAP, which would then offset the real cost of a sex which would be at say about 5%, causing an aggregate shift of 2.7%.


Two swings in the same direction

Let's now look at the Punggol East by-election.
Aggregate swing = cost of sex scandal for incumbent + 'national' vote swing against ruling party

GE May 2011 Punggol East SMC: PAP 54.54%
Jan 2013 Punggol East SMC: PAP 43.71%

Here, the incumbent is the ruling party so the final swing of 10.83% is an aggregate of two swings working in the same direction. Taking the projected real cost of a sex scandal as 5%, the actual vote swing against the PAP in Punggol East since 2011 is about 6%. This is our naive estimation.

Now if we take into account local issues that caused unhappiness in the ward - such as unfinished construction projects, inadequate and shoddy infrastructure works that make Sengkang feel more like a slum than Potong Pasir, and the high property prices in the ward - the actual vote swing against the PAP would be far less than 6%.

In other words, we're positing that in Punggol East,
aggregate swing = cost of sex scandal for incumbent + cost of local issues + 'national' vote swing against ruling party

And yes, we're saying that if you did the math before the by-election, you would have put good money to bet on a PAP loss.

Now, we're not saying Alex Au is politically illiterate. He's actually more aware and informed than the average Singaporean but it seems that again, the task has fallen to the priestess of Ise to correct Au's political mis-diagnosis!

The roads taken to a by-election

On the eve of cooling off day, I make no prediction on the by-election for the ward of Punggol East but instead offer everyone a platform for reflection for their words and actions, the paths they chose to take to herd public opinion and potential voters for the vote on Saturday.

We don't need opposition unity

Perhaps overcompensating for the loss of the multi-cornered presidential election last year, online commentators, bloggers, and alternate media groups were more than eager to declare the Workers Party the natural candidate to contest the People's Action Party in Punggol East.

Whatever the merits of this argument, which has just about as many holes in it as Singapore's take on the concept of meritocracy, online commentators, bloggers, and alternate media groups saw their role to cajole, intimidate, castigate, ridicule, and in essence bully the Singapore Democratic Party, the Reform Party, the Singapore Democratic Alliance, and their supporters into dropping out of the contest, in the interests of "opposition unity" and the apparent mandate of heaven for the Workers Party.

In the best of worlds, the blogosphere ought to be a vanguard of society. It may not be representative of the public (not to say the voting population of Punggol East), but it can lead public discussion, shape responses and criticisms to policies.

We at Illusio question the mobilisation of online resources to be unleashed as attack dogs on RP, SDP, and SDA. As a vanguard, the power of the blogosphere has been underestimated and misused. Long after the nominations were tendered and the by-election was under way with rallies held, my online colleagues continued to expend much effort attacking the RP and SDA. Now if these two parties are that obviously non-contenders, why did the attacks persist till 22 January?

I do not enjoy calling my fellow Singaporeans political illiterates. Yet many of the loudest voices of this fortnight seem to forget the political narrative: the PAP is on a long downhill slide in popularity and it is far more effective and economical for the political blogosphere to drive up the negatives of the PAP during this by-election instead of driving up the negatives of their non-preferred opposition parties.

They have forgotten their power as the vanguard to set the national issues for this election, their power to force agendas onto the political incumbents. Because of this curious blindness and muteness, the major national level issue of AIM-gate only surfaced, brought up half-heartedly at the WP rally last night - 3 days before the election.

Again, I do not enjoy calling my fellow Singaporeans political illiterates. What appears to be elite strategy to leave major issues of an election unexamined till the eve of the election is pure unadulterated utter stupidity. It is a strategy designed to not make major issues count in an election. Where the blogosphere could have pushed the agenda on both the PAP and WP, to accelerate the timeline so that this major issue has sufficient time to percolate into the considerations of voters, by and large it chose not to.

This particular argument applies to the SDP as well. Whatever merits its decision to pull out of the election, the SDP is not excused from continuing to speak out against the policy failures of the ruling party, and driving up its negatives.

We hope the blogosphere at large will reflect on their mis-steps in this by-election, get themselves a real political education, and do better by 2016.

The PAP clown council political funding reform show

As the author of Illusio, I have only one operating principle:  the priestess of Ise never opines or offers analysis proffered elsewhere. Weeks or months after the eruption of a cause celebre, find much to say that no-one has pointed out, or an angle from which no-one has approached. It is not to keep a dead issue alive but to examine if consensus has been manufactured, a status quo hurriedly agreed upon, a veil and a gag brought down to shutter the eyes, the ears, the mind of a public unaccustomed to inquiry.

Over the last 3 posts, we have offered a thorough (though not exhaustive) analysis of the PAP-AIM town council clown show. No other blogger so far has walked you, dear Reader, step-by-step through this tangled web. It is one thing to say there is a conflict of interests; it is yet another to show you where that conflict lies, which part of it is legally actionable and which part merely unseemly, and at which point in the procurement process that conflict arose.

From a legal and procedural analysis of the PAP clown council-AIM scandal in our previous 2 posts, we ascertain that:
1. It is not in fact illegal for the PAP to own, directly or indirectly, the company AIM. It is also not illegal for AIM to be 'owned' indirectly by a different entity.
2. Both AIM and the PAP are not legally obliged to indicate to the general public the status and details of ownership. (*AIM would have to disclose this to their appointed auditors, nonetheless.)
3. As it stands, the law is silent on whether the conflict of interest between AIM and the town councils should have been reflected.

Nevetheless, Minilee has called for the Ministry of National Development to investigate fully the clown counil-AIM deal to ensure that 'trust in the system' is maintained.

Decoding Minilee, it should be apparent to Singaporean observers that for all the legalistic posturing by Teo Ho-pin, whether the clown council-AIM deal was technically legal (arguably true) or whether international standards of corporate governance had been adhered to (arguably false, see our immediate previous post), the mere fact that the clown councils engaged AIM to be a middleman to deal with the previous contractor NCS is enough to compromise trust in the system.

Perhaps people will eventually find the eloquence for their supposed disquiet and ask: Why do our laws permit a political party to financially back companies so that these companies accrue political advantage in financial dealings?

Follow the money trail

Last post, we left off with the question: What happens to the money AIM earns from its contracts with the town councils? Will the Ministry of National Development even investigate that?

In a procurement audit involving potential conflict of interests, it is a general rule to ask where the money goes. While Teo Ho-Pin is not a shareholder or director of AIM and Chandra Das and his co-owners and directors at AIM are not officials or employees of the town council, it remains that all the parties involved in the procurement deal are members of the PAP.

We have argued that Dr Teo issued a tender for a contract that was financially unfeasible and did not make business sense, and that AIM was awarded the contract on the sole merit that it was a PAP-owned or PAP-backed company. In other words, AIM accrued business advantage from its political affiliation to the extent that it could be the sole bidder, be a dormant company that had no public track record, put in a late bid. Yet it won the contract because Dr Teo, unlike most other Singaporeans, knew the political affiliation of AIM, and said that was sufficient cause to award the contract to AIM.

But what happens to the money AIM earns from its contracts with the town councils? On his part, Das acclaims that he doesn't take a single cent as salary, share dividends, or directorship fees from his position in AIM. That is curious until we read PAP's party constitution, which states in Article X:

No member shall except for professional services rendered at the request of the Central Executive Committee, receive any profit, salary or emolument from the funds or transactions of the Party.

We hypothesise that as party members who are shareholders and directors of a company backed by a letter of guarantee by the PAP, Das and his party colleagues, former and present shareholders and directors likewise, are subject to this stipulation.

But where does the money go to then? Who does it belong to? Does it sit forever in Action Information Management in trust of the People's Action Party? Or does it go eventually to the People's Action Party?

Note that if the earnings of AIM go back to the PAP, then it may be argued that it is Teo who has committed a legally actionable conflict of interest. By awarding the contract to AIM, which he knows to be PAP-backed, he has made it possible for AIM's income deriving from the contract to be transferred to the PAP (of which he, Das, and the AIM shareholders and directors are members), thereby awarding financial advantage from the deal ultimately to the PAP and its members.

Political financing reform drastically needed

A reading of the Political Donations Act affirms the extensive strictures limiting donations to political parties. There are limits to how much money a political party may receive from companies and other organisations, the nature of companies. Parties are required to account to minute detail the donations they receive each year.


Yet as the PAP clown council-AIM affair illustrates, there are sufficient loopholes in the laws of Singapore to allow political parties to 'own' private companies indirectly, and the incomes derived from these are, as a result of lacunae and silences in the law, not subject to scrutiny. Further, we now know that as written, the laws do not require political parties to declare even if they do indeed own indirectly private businesses, much less clarify on the legality of such arrangements.

To regain public trust in the system, a relook at political financing regulations needs to be performed. We believe that the Ministry of National Development does not possess the mandate and has not been tasked to examine this particular issue.

I suggest interested readers do their own research on the international legal norms concerning political ownership of private corporations.

The clown council-AIM affair is not a purely administrative matter; the conflict of interests ultimately rests on whether undue political advantage was accrued by AIM and whether undue financial advantage was accrued by the PAP. If this were illegal in the eyes of the law, it stands that there can be no damage to the people's trust in the system. The damage to the people's trust in the system stems from the possibility that such conflicts of interests are apparently not illegal as the law currently stands.

Hence, I call upon the president of Singapore to convene an independent board of inquiry chaired by the Auditor-general of Singapore and the Registrar of Societies to investigate the issue, and not the MND. Only these two regulators may request for a full and public account from the PAP of all private enterprises it directly owns or indirectly backs and the incomes derived thereof, and to ensure that these incomes are indeed reflected in the accounts of the PAP, and do comply with the Political Donations Act, (I)(3).

With the surprise revelation of AIM's ties to the PAP, the PAP's refusal to disclose whether it owns other companies, and AIM's refusal to disclose the details of other financial dealings it may have had in the past, it appears there is a legal loophole for a political party to own, however indirectly, private enterprises without traditional transparency and accountability mandated elsewhere in the law. Several lacunae in the law have coalesced such that these standards of transparency appear suspended when it comes to the very special case of political financing, where a party owns private enterprises.

Singapore's elected parliamentarians and other politicians must take this issue seriously and urge for a new Political Financing Bill that will clarify these blind spots currently existing in the law, and to harmonise Singapore's political financing regulations to internationally-accepted norms.