Did the Workers Party respond correctly to PM Wong's challenge?

It's been a long road, getting there to here. In 2021, Raeesah Khan (WP-Sengkang) attempted to besmirch the reputation of the Singapore Police Force in a speech to parliament. She falsely claimed she witnessed the police traumatise a victim of sexual assault. As it turned out, her party leader Pritam Singh found out it was a lie, allowed her to continue the lie for 3 months until she recanted it, then himself lied to the Committee of Privileges when it investigated her conduct, and was found out and referred to the criminal courts.

Pritam Singh was found guilty of lying and convicted in court, and his conviction conclusively upheld after appeal. And now the chickens are beginning to come to roost: Mr Singh was censured in a parliamentary motion of dishonorouable conduct unbecoming of a Member of Parliament and unsuitable to be the Leader of the Opposition.

Singapore prime minister Lawrence Wong quickly withdrew the privileges afforded to Mr Singh as the Leader of the opposition and invited the Workers Party to nominate someone else to the position. WP leadership mulled on the decision for nearly a week before rejecting the proposal entirely. Did it make the right decision?

King John surrendering his crown to the Pope's representative

Did the New Naratif Civil War destroy New Naratif?

In April 2022, New Naratif raised the alarm. For the very first time, despite several years of releasing "accountability reports" to his subscribers and the public at large, Dr PJ Thum, the managing director of the website and director of its holding company Observatory Southeast Asia Pte Ltd, admitted to a crippling financial shortfall. Subscriber numbers have been misreported, subscription fees not collected, leading to a corrected revenue shortfall of USD 40,000. Not soon after, he appears to have let go almost all his editorial staff. Even now, New Naratif's restructuring is still in progress as it pivots to a different business model, publishing angle, and reason for existence.

This is par for the course for any financially distressed enterprise—until the staff laid off by Dr Thum chose to fight it out in the public. They allege that Thum misled both his readers and staff. Thum accused the staff of attempting to subvert his management, and furthermore accused them of waging a disinformation campaign. The staff stand by what they said, noting that documented evidence (presumably in the reports and subscriber emails) supports their narrative, not Thum's.

English Civil War woodcut in pamphlet, c.1643

In a fit of madness, Thum and his former employees have fired off the equivalent of ICBMs in a mutually-destructive civil war. Both sides may refuse to issue further responses but the damage is done.

Keppel and Lava Jato corruption: Is there a cover-up in Singapore?

News of Keppel Offshore & Marine's (Keppel O&M) decade-long bribery in Brazil has filtered slowly into Singapore. The initial announcements in 2014 happened in a country far away. The denials by Keppel's chairman, a former cabinet minister, were robust enough. What really did happen? Investigations were taking place and Singaporeans were willing to give the benefit of the doubt, hoping that all would be revealed in due course.

It is only after investigations have been complete, record regulatory fines paid to anti-corruption agencies in Brazil and the United States that Singaporeans are beginning to realise the enormity of the situation (the enormity being Keppel's fine ranks number 7 in FCPA penalties, historically!)

Lava Jato involved international companies paying bribes to Petrobas,
kickbacks moved down the economic chain, and to also the ruling party and its coalition

But the response from Singapore's government has been most disappointing and a cause for concern.

Is corruption part of Singapore's foreign policy?

Singapore tolerates no corruption internally, especially within the ranks of its public service. Officials who are accused face thorough investigations by the Corruption Practices Investigation Bureau. Officials who are caught face fierce prosecution and lengthy jail sentences. Even the prime minister himself had to be exonerated by his fellow parliamentarians last year when his relations alleged he misused his power and state agencies to settle a personal dispute.

It is a fine set of principles to live by, garnering accolades for the tiny, resourceless island nation. Transparency International ranks Singapore 7th least corrupt in the world. Its intolerance of corruption makes it one of the most friendly places to do business as well.

Yet the recent corruption scandal involving Keppel Offshore & Marine in Brazil (a subsidiary of Keppel Corporation) raises questions about whether Singapore's intolerance of corruption overseas, despite the declarations by its prime minister that "the actions of Singaporean citizens overseas are treated the same as actions committed in Singapore, regardless of whether such corrupt acts have consequences for Singapore", and despite signing and ratifying a global anti-corruption agreement.

The corruption monster!

Blind men and the elephant: Chua Mui Hoong describes crony capitalism in Singapore

You've probably heard about the blind men and the elephant. In the dominant narrative, the moral of the story one should learn is the limitations to knowledge, how imperfect and incomplete information on the Truth may lead equally wise people to disagree on things. For my readers, I offer a counter narrative. The blind men and the elephant is an allegory for how things look to people who refuse to see what they're looking at.

Rethinking the haze and Indonesia

Tiny and rich Singapore flails comically when it comes to Indonesia and the haze. For all its claims to being a diplomatic giant on the world stage, Singapore fumed helplessly for the last 2 months as forests and peatland burned in Borneo and Sumatra.

It's a smog that gives Peking, Shanghai, and Hong Kong a run for their money. A smog that's more lo-fi, yet more poisonous. And according to both locals and expats, a smog that has more immediate effects on health. More importantly, Singapore's credibility as a vibrant cosmopolitan city and productive financial centre withers each day the haze lingers over its skyline.

Book Review: Freedom From the Press by Cherian George II

(Read Part I here)

The curious rhetorical device of Cherian George

Some time back, Cherian George published a book called "Freedom From the Press", where a cursory reading reveals that the good professor doesn't want you to take him seriously as an academic. In fact, we argue that he doesn't even take himself seriously as an academic.

We've made hay of a few instances where he resorts to misrepresentation and strawman arguments by summoning faceless, nameless critics out of thin air. But why is this important to us as an indicator of how Cherian George is unfit to be a respected academic, or even an academic at all?

Citations are important. When we read a non-fiction book by an author or academic who wants to be taken seriously, we want to know WHO said WHAT exactly WHERE and WHEN. That's so that we know the author didn't just make things up, or invent people out of thin air and put into their anonymous mouths lame arguments in order to discredit or divert attention from actually existing, stronger arguments.

Now, here's an experiment: try writing an assignment in first year university without proper citations. I'll bet every single dollar I have the professors will fail your assignment. But if you're "Professor" Cherian George, you'd get the entire embarrassment of a book published by the National University Press. And no, you wouldn't be stripped of your teaching post for doing shit like this - which amounts to technical plagiarism.

No comments necessary

And now for your entertainment and enlightenment, here are all the instances where Cherian George does his thing in FOTP. 

I will keep the commentary to a minimum because these excerpts speak very well for themselves the kind of academic Cherian George is. Take your time to read through these gems, then decide if Cherian George didn't just make things up, or invent people out of thin air and put into their anonymous mouths lame arguments in order to caricature actual critics and misrepresent their sensible and strong criticisms - none of which you will read about in his "book".

Your moments of Zen, or Cherian George forgets to cite actual (and respectable) people, actual publications!

For example, otherwise authoritative sources refer to the news publishing behemoth Singapore Press Holdings as "government-owned" when it is not. (p. 2)

(Interestingly on p. 10, Cherian George admits that yeah if you want to look at it critically, SPH is government-controlled.)

Most critics assume that SIngapore's system is unsustainable because it is undemocratic. (p. 7)

Equally dogmatic are those at the opposite end of the political spectrum, in whose eyes the PAP and its instruments are corrupt usurpers of the people's freedom and dignity. This group includes foreign critics with a barely concealed contempt for Singapore and its people... In their eyes, any attempt to analyse the press system in anything longer than a single, colourful, expleteive-deleted (or not) sentence is at best a waste of time... (p. 18)

By misidentifying the ways in which the government controls media and politics, analysts have arrived at erroneous conclusions. According to some, Singapore's unfree media system was supposedly incompatible with an open economy and First World standards of living; it would soon crumble beneath the weight of its own contradictions. Most of these predictions have been based on crude misconceptions about how the press is kept in check... (p. 25)

(There's an entire page's worth of this spiel -- all without citations, presumably because if you were serious to read actual critics and academics take apart Singapore's press system, those won't be the arguments they'd use. Search for Michael Barr's writings, for instance.)

Take any random group of Singaporeans and you will find among them those who appreciate life in PAP-run Singapore and who support strong, decisive government as an integral part of the formula that has provided security and high standards of living. (p. 25)

(Fascinating strawmen you have there, "Professor"!)

Unlike those who see Singapore's media system as a giant contradiction, I would go so far as to say that the PAP has been on the right side of history. (p. 26)

Critics of the PAP had predicted that Singapore's ambitions to be a media hub would be thwarted by its lack of respect for press freedom. (p. 42)

Yet, contrary to the cynics' view that the Singapore press is content with reproducing government handouts, Newscom citations encourage journalists to dig for exclusives and overcome barriers, including obstructive government officials. (p. 54)

Conventional wisdom holds that the PAP -- a regime armed to the teeth with the powers of coercion --- completely overwhelms any professional norms and ideals that the Singapore press may once have possessed. Critics view journalists in a state of unconditional surrender to the government. "They are running dogs of the PAP and poor prostitutes," said David Marshall in 1994. (p. 69)

(This one is interesting. "Conventional wisdom" as a strawman, followed by our usual nameless critics with extreme views, then backed up inexplicably by the late David Marshall, obviously taken out of context. The real-world criticism of SPH that Cherian George is caricaturing and hiding: the press may be 'professional' but is ideologically enslaved, that its reporters are consciously, willingly making up excuses to toe the PAP line. Like say, making up shit about OB markers in the press.

Or as Cherian George himself puts it in p. 48: Professional journalist's' love affair with 'objectivity' and their rejection of journalism's more activist past has made it easier for them to be turned into scribes for the status quo.)


Indeed, Gary Rodan observes that Singapore's media policy may have been partly influenced by a conscious desire to avoid Malaysia's mistakes. Admittedly, this is the kind of observation that enrages critical Singaporeans who would never concede that their press has any credibility. (p. 113)

Singaporean critics of the PAP want to believe that this backwardness is due to government repression. Such a claim would be an insult to media activists elsewhere. (p. 172)
(Here, we have not one but TWO groups of strawmen! Bravo, "Professor"!)

Most believers in democracy want and need to believe that Singapore is closer to the unstable end of the spectrum. They find it too disconcerting the idea that a modern state may have found a way to consolidate authoritarianism... (p. 201)

Opposition politicians and their followers are counting on the PAP's inertia to be its undoing, causing Singapore to succumb eventually to the tide of freedom. (p. 225)

Bringing the gavel down on Workers Party I

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

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.

From civil service to political service

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.

Tharman Shammugaratnam's crowning clown moment

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.

The PAP clown show continues! (GST edition)

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.

Malicious, mendacious, and meretricious

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!

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?

The peanut that launched a thousand ships

Even more non-moralistic musings on NKF

From today's Parliament proceedings, it appears more certain that the Minister of Health, Khaw Boon Wan, regards further regulations on charities to level up their governance and disclosure as unnecessary. In the wake of NKF's failed suit against Singapore Press Holdings, Balaji, the junior minister for health, stood by NKF, calling it an efficient organisation. Just to let everyone know where the government stands, supposedly, in its ideological crusade to turn everything into a free market?

The right tool for everything?

In the free market, the maximalisation of profit or surplus is the core value and natural behaviour of every firm. It's not the corporate structure of the NKF board, the salary and 12-month bonusese of its CEO, or even the method of fundraising that is fundamentally wrong - the assumption that the NKF should behave like a free market entity and build massive surpluses that is primarily at fault and entirely inappropriate in the charity industry.

The purpose of charity organisations is to raise funds to subsidise a certain group of disprivileged people, or for a particular cause - not to accumulate operating surpluses to the tune of hundreds of millions. A surplus either means that aid is not getting through to people who need it, or an excess amount of funds has been collected, above and beyond the requirements of the charity and its cause. A surplus means that there exists a huge inefficiency in the distribution of charity funds. Worse still, these surpluses are a reward for the effectiveness of NKF's excessive fundraising, and these surpluses are the captured funds of what should've gone to other charities. Beneath the unwavering support from Minister Khaw lies a reluctant understanding of this principle: during his press conference on 14 July, Khaw admitted the possibility that "NKF reserves may be diversified into other causes" - or simply put, the surpluses will be diverted to other charities that need the funds.

The logic of charity fundraising then, is different from free markets. While free market firms should maximise profits and surpluses (although some may choose to maximise revenue or market share), charity organisations should strive for a zero surplus, zero deficit model. It's an easy goal, really. For every charitable cause, there is an identifiable and clearly-bounded population of beneficiaries whose needs are predictable and more or less stable. Calculating the total amount of funds needed wouldn't require a genius.

Singaporeans must remain vigilant

The NKF has been getting away for several years with massive surpluses, inappropriate, fraudulent, yet legal practices - with some knowledge and approval of Parliament. Minister Khaw knew about the massive reserves and defended them last year. Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the government taxman, and the the commissioner for charities have all audited the NKF's books for years and found nothing objectionable or illegal. The government's intervention now is not an admission that its strong support of NKF was wrong, but a political expedient move to quieten the tide of discontent of Singaporeans. Operationally, I expect little to change at the NKF. Legally, the Minister has already said no to urgently-needed regulation.

To the high and mighty, the amount of money involved is peanuts. Singaporeans should be aware that these people will never fight for their interests. What is in the interests of the high and mighty, though, is the continued support of Singaporeans for NKF. NKF is efficient, it has many patients that still require care and funding (presumably having 30 years' worth of surpluses isn't enough), Singaporeans are generous and kindhearted, they say.

My advice to Singaporeans is simple: let the NKF die. Whether the charity industry is a free market or not, other charities will fill in the gap. The refusal of the high and mighty to let NKF go is surprising; even in free markets, firms are always set up and shut down, and no one sheds a tear for them.

He who lives by the peanut...

More non-moralistic musings on NKF

The NKF prides itself as a charity run on a commercial model. "Social entrepeneurship", according to its website - that translates into heavy marketing, tv charity shows, call centres, and the provision of a fleet of company cars for its CEO and so on (?!). Its supporters in Parliament tout it as the coming of the market economy into a traditionally not-for-profit sector, a Very Good Thing. The grounds for the expulsion of TT Durai and the board of directors as well as any future criminal proceedings should necessarily stem from evaluating its behaviour against the standard of commercial companies.

Again, in shorter form: the NKF and its Parliament supporters have always insisted on its status as a commercial (decode as "more professional") entity working in a non-profit sector. If the NKF were a registered company, would its actions have been legal and typical?

1. TT Durai had an undeclared commercial relationship with a NKF board member

From the Business Times archives,

Durai had a business relationship with former employee Matilda Chua when the NKF awarded a contract to an Indian call-centre company she represented. The NKF had contracted Proton Web Solutions to perform telemarketing work. Ms Chua, who is now a member of the NKF board, is the Singapore representative of Proton Web.

Mr Durai also failed to reveal that he had jointly invested with Ms Chua in another company, Global Net Relations, a company which was set up to perform call centre work and even operated out of the same premises as Proton Web at Suntec Tower. Mr Durai and Ms Chua were both directors in Global Net.

There are laws against this, of course. If the NKF was a registered company instead of a charity, this would've automatically warranted an investigation by Singapore's Commercial Affairs Department and its Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau. Durai and Matilda Chua would be eligible for jail terms, lengthy fines, and a mandatory ban from holding any directorship or board membership of any company for a number of years.

2. Durai lied about the extent of NKF's reserves

The NKF CEO went public during the charity's drives, stating that the NKF reserves were in danger of running out in 3 years, hence securing massive donations from Singapore's public. The truth was revealed in court under the questioning of Davinder Singh: NKF has reserves of 260 million SGD, more than enough to last the organisation between 30 and 40 years, as it current spends only 7 million a year subsidising patient care.

3. The board lied about the number of NKF beneficiaries

In a letter published in ST's forum page on April 9, 2004, Dr Gerard Chuah, chairman of NKF Children's Medical Fund, stated that NKF treats 3,000 dialysis patients a year. But answers given in Parliament in May 2004 showed that NKF treated 1,512 patients in 2003. And a letter from Mr Yong on the same date (sued by NKF for the following statement, now known to be a fact) said NKF treated about 1,800 dialysis patients.

Again, from the BT archives,

"You knew it was an error. Did you correct it?" Mr Singh asked Mr Durai, referring to Dr Chuah's letter.

"No, it was not material," Mr Durai replied.

The heads of CEOs have rolled for similar false statements about their accounts and reserves - Enron, Royal Dutch Shell, and so on. Some are even in jail. But what do I know? The NKF isn't a registered commercial company, it's registered as a charity. In Singapore, there aren't any laws demanding the same standards of corporate governance for charities or due disclosure and transparency of even the accounts books.

The entire NKF board, CEO, and even its patron (Mrs Peanut) may have stepped down, and the Government has been forced by public pressure to announce an investigation into the charity. During the press conference on Wednesday, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan said certain steps will have to be taken to restore public trust: the investigation will review accounting practices, funding needs, and pricing and subsidy policies. Decode (what the Minister did not say): the investigation will most likely not look into the criminal behaviour of Durai and his board.

The good Health Minister has reason to tread thinly - it isn't clear if Durai and the Board have broken any laws. It claims to be a very corporate charity, the Parliament praises it as a model for turning Singapore's charities into a market economy, and yet the Minister is reluctant to hold NKF to the standards and legal framework of a market firm. Interesting, no?

The penalties for deception by a company's CEO, board of directors, or for false statements on a company's revnue centre on one thing only: the sanctity of a market. A free market requires perfect information from its players. Only then can investors make informed decisions to allocate their resources to the correct companies. In deceiving the entire market, a company poisons the information flow, causing misallocation of resources and non-optimal results for the industry as a whole. This is why corporate entities are subject to strict regulation and are compelled by law to disclose information on their revenues and accounts - yet this is also why any non-capitalist market needs to have equally strict regulation as well.

Get that Man a Peanut!

Non-moralistic musings on NKF

... are hard to come by these days, with everyone baying for the hide of T.T. Durai, the National Kidney Foundation charity's CEO and rainmaker. Aside from Wang Zhen's posts on the matter, actually.

Readers of my series on the casino issue will know the contempt I have for solely relying on morality to win any argument. This post will similarly identify a non-moral grounds for action against the NKF, among other things.

He who lives by the sword...

Durai's successes in the 90s transformed the NKF from a typical small charity into a multimillion foundation, by forming an alliance wiht Mediacorp to produce frequent charity shows, a kind of circus performance by the country's television stars. While detractors believed the gimmick would soon tire out, Durai proved that the lure of cash, automobile and condo prizes, celebrity power, easy phone pledging, and the option to donate monthly through bank accounts would attract enough donations to make the charity shows a quarterly event.

It didn't take Singapore's ministers much time to honour the entrepeneur with national awards and trumpeting the arrival of a new paradigm for charities. Instead of begging or relying for goodwill, charities should conduct themselves as voluntary welfare organisations operating in a free market system. It doesn't take a genius to decode that into:

1. If every charity were run like a business, as NKF does, the government wouldn't need to partially fund 80% of Singapore's charities.
2. Well, tough luck if NKF happens to take away your donation dollar. It's a free market and you didn't compete hard enough.
3. It's your fault if you can't get enough people to donate to your cause. Don't come crying to the government (see statement 1).
And so on.

NKF has been the poster child for Singapore's unique "free market charities" model. He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword, and since Durai and NKF's board of directors have proudly forced their charity model on us for almost a decade, any condemnation should centre on how well they conducted themselves as a typical member of any really-existing "free market".

Hall of Shame and Notoriety

Flip Flopper Number 1



Via DFA 2.0, which identifies the most outrageous flip-flopper in American politics.

It was Dick Cheney, but not as you know him. Thirteen years ago, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney gave the keynote address at the Washington Insitute's Soref Symposium. The speech was titled "The Gulf War: A First Assessment" and you're not going to believe some of what he said.

"Should we have gone in to Baghdad? Did we leave the job in some respects unfinished? I think the answer is a resounding "no."

"I think the proposition of going to Baghdad is fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, and once we'd done that we'd have to put another government in its place."

"It is vitally important for a President to know when not to commit U.S. military force. How many casualties should the United States accept in (the) effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?"

"It's my view that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq."

This is the man who makes hopes to win an election by portraying Senator Kerry as a "flip-flopper." Read the entire transcript from the Washington Institute.

Flip Flopper Number 2



During the Legislative Assembly Debate on 15 September 1955 the Great Leader, then an ordinary assemblyman, said:

"If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him, when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law - if that is not what we always cried out against in Fascist states - then what is it?"

The same Great Leader, upon assumption of power in 1959, went on shortly to jail without trial, launch defamation suits, and bankrupt all his political opponents for almost 50 years.