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 Singapore's leadership succession planning a myth?

The People's Action Party (PAP) has been Singapore's sole ruling party for more than half a century. The PAP ruled Singapore since self-governance in 1959, its federation with Malaysia in 1963, and independence in 1965. It is accepted wisdom that Singapore's leadership transitions are carefully managed: a prime minister is 'chosen' by peers of their cohort, serves for more than a decade, and stays on to guide the next prime minister and their cabinet as a "senior minister".

The managed succession of Singapore's political leadership is a fairy tale and urban legend eagerly consumed by the gullible and the politically illiterate.

PAP upgrades its own Upgrading Carrot

 
Uniquely Singapore inception

Minilee is expected to dissolve parliament some time after the NDRS. Nevertheless, campaign season has already begun: the opposition has resolved its coalition talks to great success, and all parties have begun unveiling their candidates.

Trust the PAP to trot out more upgrading carrots. They've already begun in Sembawang, Tanjong Pagar, Jalan Besar, and Bishan-Toa Payoh. Presumably, some MPs did not got the party memo, which upgrades the HDB upgrading carrot into the GRC master plan carrot (see media reports on Tanjong Pagar and Jalan Besar).

Valar Morghulis

So yes: Papalee dies.

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.

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.

Minilee's keyboard kommandos - exposed!

In 2007, ministers in the PAP government were tasked to set up a 'counter-insurgency' against their online critics. No one paid them attention. No one bothered to read them. If anyone knew which websites they were operating, no one bothered to publicise their writings.

An Aside: What we've learnt from our 2 years on Facebook

That's all changed in the past few years thanks to a more social media and in particular, the rise of Facebook. I'll admit here that like a few other, better-known bloggers, I made the decision to move my commentary online.

Over the months, I discovered that there is a price for giving up anonymity, of having your multiple online personalities and networks all collapse into one. But more importantly, I discovered that Facebook just isn't a natural space for writing long analyses and getting a true public to read them and participate in commentary.

You could write a long, thoughtful post exposing a policy failure. But for reasons of privacy, you're not going to place your profile on public mode. Yet you wrote this precisely so the public could read it, right? You could count on your friends to share your note, so slowly it goes out into the Facebook public. Great. Now there will be some discussion. Most of which will be one-liner comments thanks to Facebook's social engineering constraints. How many of your friends shared that post? There will be that many fragmented discussions to your piece. And how many of their friends in turn bother to share it? Well.

When it comes down to the line, we're not exactly sure if we have that much of a wider reach by moving to Facebook. We're not even sure if moving to Facebook actually promotes greater discussion than posting direct to blogs. We certainly don't believe that Facebook is a medium that encourages deep and sustained discussion in one consolidated place that blogging does. So we're back.

PAP's Facebook Counter-insurgency

What we did notice straight away was how the counter-insurgency on Facebook as its battlefield of choice. As identified by Singapore Hall of Shame, groups like Fabrications Against the PAP are prominent in disseminating their propaganda against public accusations of the PAP's policy failures.

As much as I'd like to protect their rights to free speech, I am not impressed by how often they would resort to going on the offensive against opposition politicians using the odious tools of misinformation, misdirection, and non sequitur. And since this was a feature of Facebook that when you 'subscribe' to your favourite politicians' pages, you can see every post where they're tagged, you could see how often FAAP tagged Chee Soon Juan, Kenneth Jeyaratnam, Low Thia Kiang, Tan Jee Say, and others in posts that had nothing to do with them, just so FAPP could spam your Facebook feed. It's frankly obnoxious and borderline passive-aggressive.

They seem to be doing very well. In 2007, the Straits Times reported that this online counter-insurgency numbered around 20. Reports by Singapore Hall of Shame and Littlespeck put the current count in October 2012 at over 260.

I suppose we should expect that kind of low-down behaviour from a PAP counter-insurgency. But did any of us predict that these Keyboard Kommandos would be so brazen as to offer to buy Internet user IDs from account holders?

Questions for PAP's counter-insurgency ministers and MPs

TO: Messrs. Dr Ng Eng Hen (Minister for Defence, MP-Bishan Toa Payoh), Lui Tuck Yew (Minister for Transport, MP-Jalan Besar), Zaqy Mohamad (PAP-Choa Chu Kang), Baey Yam Kam (MP-Tampines), and Ms Josephine Teo (MP-Bishan Toa Payoh).

1. Please clarify if you are still chairing the PAP New Media committee, and its media strategies and new media capabilities subgroups.

2. Please clarify if your New Media committee has had any hand in organising, funding, briefing, training, advising, or otherwise providing material support to the groups on Facebook identified as New Compass and Fabrications Against the PAP or persons who are its members.

3. In light of their clearly partisan, well-organised activities and a burgeoning membership that suggests strong funding and professional organisation, would you recommend to Minilee to gazette these groups as political associations?

4. In light of their scheme to solicit Facebook accounts for the purpose of identity impersonation, we appreciate if you offer to condemn this scheme as criminal and unethical in light of your own party's sincere efforts to engage in a real Singapore Conversation with all citizens.

5. In light of an actually existing Singapore Conversation as started by your own government, we appreciate if you additionally disband your "quiet online counterinsurgency". Its raison d'etre and modus operandi are incompatible with the goals of your Singapore Conversation.

I love quoting myself from 2007

"But there's only one meaning of insurgent that is implied when you use "counter-insurgent", really. The member of an irregular armed force one... And how one takes action against insurgents (i.e. guerrillas) is simple: you dispense with all rules of war and adopt a black ops manual. Adopting unconventional warfare is a must. Against the Vietcong, napalm their forests. Execute them. Against local bloggers, take on anonymous identities and destroy the blogosphere through disinformation and ghostwritten propaganda."

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.

A modest proposal for GRC reform

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

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

Thus, we propose that GRCs be kept.

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

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

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

2. Ditch the block ticket system for GRCs

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

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

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

Reforming GRCs

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

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

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

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

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

Implications of proposed GRC reforms:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Minilee's reformasi decoded

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

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

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

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

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

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

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

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

One that guarantees the winning party is a parliamentary supermajority?

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

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

The vile and malevolent Ng Eng Hen

Khaw Boon Wan may be the stupidest man in the Singapore Cabinet, but his sheer destructive capability is dwarfed by the sheer mendacity and malevolence of his colleague Ng Eng Hen.

The illustrious Mr Ng is, after all, the labour minister who wanted to reclaim jobs for Singaporeans - in the marine, nursing, and cleaning industries. He is the same man who runs a ministry that won't let anyone know the real unemployment rate in Singapore. And yes, he's also the man who chairs the PAP's covert blogger operation.

However, Ng Eng Hen has just about outdone himself this time, in a rare application of massive stupidity in wrong-headed public policy that can only bring about the apocalypse - witness his "new initiatives to lure talented professionals".

Q: How on earth does he want to lure talented professionals (read "foreign talents")?
A: By luring them even before they are talented professionals!

The Work Holiday Pass scheme of Singapore is aimed at young students and graduates from overseas, according to the Channelnewsasia report. It is open to those aged 17 to 30. There will be 2000 places available a year. "A positive experience of living and working in Singapore under the Programme would encourage some of them to work here when they graduate, or at a later stage in their careers", says Ng Eng Hen.

There are, to put it mildly, some problems with this scheme. How on earth are we luring foreign professionals by extending visas to college students? Apparently, the phrase "talented professional" has become so debased that anyone could qualify, even before they enter the workforce, or gain the experience that sets them apart of elite professionals - i.e. the type of foreign talents that Singapore should really be going after.

Unlike the Work Holiday visas offered by the US, Canada, UK, or any other country, Singapore's WHP has virtually no conditions and restrictions on what sort of jobs the applicants can apply for, or how much they are allowed to earn. One non-obvious implication of this uniquely singaporean Work Holiday scheme is this: in effect, it introduces 2000 foreign undergrads into the short term labour market. Given that fresh local graduates in recent years tend to spend about a year working in contract or temp jobs - a sign of a shift in the labour market to contract work - it means that these 2000 young students will compete directly for the same jobs as local grads.

How should we put this into context? According to Singapore's Department of Statistics, in 2005 there were 3,500 graduates from local universities. So... picture dumping in 2,000 foreign students and fresh grads into the labour market right now. Is there any wonder that I consider Ng Eng Hen to be the most destructive and malevolent man in the Cabinet?

I've always wondered about how sincere our leaders are about their love for foreign talent - ooops, "talented foreign professionals" - and whether Singapore really needs so many of them. Stephen Appold has wondered the same thing, and actually bothered to find out. The final report is gruesome in its details, and even horrifying in its conclusions, written 2 years ago:

Arguably, university-educated migrants are not needed in Singapore at all. Less controversially, they are not needed in the large number in which they are found... Despite the high employment growth, an expanding surplus of university graduates has been chasing the available jobs with predictable effects: slower salary increases, the downward filtering of graduates into less-desirable jobs, the erosion of the relative income advantage of educated labour.

And the 2,000 visas for young students and graduates will just make it even worse. Ng Eng Hen aims to further depress wages and destroy local graduates!

Update (12 noon)

So the University of South Wales has shut down operations barely 3 months after its new buildings opened to students here. It's not economical, its dean says, to run the place given the drastically lower-than-projected student rate - and there's the matter of MOE and the Singapore government not allowing UNSW to reduce its operations and retool plans for a lower student intake. WTH. IMPEACH Ng Eng Hen! Impeach Ng Eng Hen now!

Of course, the moral of the story is still the same.

Despite the high employment growth, an expanding surplus of university graduates has been chasing the available jobs with predictable effects: slower salary increases, the downward filtering of graduates into less-desirable jobs, the erosion of the relative income advantage of educated labour.

It's a lesson that might actually explain the reason for UNSW's failure to attract students. Greater implications - if potential university applicants are aware of their drastically reduced rewards, the downward filtering into less-desirable jobs... then Singapore is just about finished as an education hub - no uni can attract a sustainable amount of local or even foreign grads. The domestic economy and labour market just simply don't have the space.

References: Appold, Stephen J. "The weakening position of university graduates in Singapore's labour market: Causes and consequences", in Population and Development Journal, 31, no. 1 (Mar 05): 85–112.

Minilee's keyboard kommandos

A few months after last year's General Elections, I had a private conversation with a few friends about the state of the local blogosphere. Despite its vaunted, almost mythical and most certainly mythologised role in provoking interest in politics and the elections, it was really in a vulnerable state. Without the election-fueled controversies, the blogosphere had no strong common focus. With comments on blog posts written increasingly by anonymouses interested in one-liners and non sequiturs, the blogosphere's power to serve as a clearing house for ideas and a broker for honest, sustained and serious discussion was diminished. (This would be partly why I stopped blogging for a time)

We concurred that it was high time for a power grab, with both major political parties establishing easy beachheads in the blogosphere. It's not that there's anything wrong with cabinet ministers and opposition members blogging, but we expected both parties to operate through proxies instead this time round. Perhaps they would set up a groupblog or an online magazine, then solicit members or guest contributors to nurture talents - without announcing in public about who is behind the blog/magazine. Actually it's an open secret amongst members of the Young Republic that a certain opposition party has done exactly that. Comparing it to the public efforts of the P65 blog, we thought the PAP had the cleaner hands...

Until now.

Li Xueying puts it this way in today's Straits Times:
PAP moves to counter criticism of party, Govt in cyberspace

The People's Action Party (PAP) is mounting a quiet counter-insurgency against its online critics. It has members going into Internet forums and blogs to rebut anti-establishment views and putting up postings anonymously.

Sources told The Straits Times the initiative is driven by two sub-committees of the PAP's "new media" committee chaired by Manpower Minister Ng Eng Hen. One sub-committee, co-headed by Minister of State (Education) Lui Tuck Yew and Hong Kah GRC MP Zaqu Mohamad, strategises the campaign. The other is led by Tanjong Pagar GRC MP Baey Yam Keng and Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC MP Josephine Teo. Called the "new media capabilities group", it executes the campaign.

Both were set up after last year's General Election. Aside from politicians, some 20 IT-savvy party activists are also involved

Insurgents

We're flabbergasted. Surely they don't mean to say that all bloggers are insurgents?

Insurgent, according to the Webster
1. Person who rebels against civil authority or established government
2. One who acts contrary to policies and decisions of their own political party.

Onelook has it even better:
3. a member of an irregular armed force that fights a stronger force by sabotage and harassment

But there's only one meaning of insurgent that is implied when you use "counter-insurgent", really. The member of an irregular armed force one... And how one takes action against insurgents (i.e. guerillas) is simple: you dispense with all rules of war and adopt a black ops manual. Adopting unconventional warfare is a must. Against the Vietcong, napalm their forests. Execute them. Against local bloggers, take on anonymous identities and destroy the blogosphere through disinformation and ghostwritten propaganda.

Black Ops

There is thus no less suitable phrase to describe the PAP counter-insurgency campaign. Party operatives posting anonymously in forums to advance the views of their party is every bit as covert and ethically questionable as a black op.

Elsewhere in the world, the revelation of party operatives infiltrating forums and blogs would be cause for the expulsion of several party leaders. One remembers the fury that was barely averted when Atrios disclosed his connection to the Democratic Party's campaign in 2005. One remembers the furore that resulted in the expulsion of one Jeff Gannon from the White House press room when it was revealed the journalist was hired by Republican Party operatives to ask easy questions for the administration. Closer to home, one remembers that a certain NKF trial alleges a whole slew of major ethical problems at the charity - including the practice of getting NKF staff to rebut anti-NKF views through ghostwritten letters in newspaper forum pages.

We wonder if Ng Eng Hen is so unaware of world affairs and the biggest trial to occur in Singapore that he happily authorises a campaign that essentially has PAP's party operatives masquerade as the ordinary blogging public, in order to propagate their party's views. Of course, that IS the intent of the counter-insurgency campaign, no?

One activist who is involved said that when posting comments on online forums and the feedback boxes of blogs, he does not identify himself as a PAP member.

We call upon Ng Eng Hen to come clean with this dishonest campaign; to identify all MPs, Ministers, and PAP party operatives involved. We want to know if they were paid by the State to masquerade as ordinary people to post anonymous comments on blogs during working hours. For their role in this fraudulent campaign, impeach Ng Eng Hen, Lui Tuck Yew, Zaqy Mohamad, Baey Yam Keng, and Josephine Teo! Impeach them now!

Flash Mob for Mr Brown

Excerpts from the AFP:

Supporters of a Singaporean blogger have gathered at a busy subway station for a silent protest at the suspension of his weekly newspaper column after the government criticised his latest satirical piece about high living costs.

At least 30 supporters turned up at City Hall station at 2:00 pm dressed in brown attire in support of the blogger, who goes by the moniker Mr Brown.

Unfortunately for the news wire agency, the real news wasn't that 30 people in Singapore bothered to take part in a flash mob for a proscribed blogger-columnist. I could think of several more newsworthy stories on the top of my head, such as:

How did a secret SMS-only invite leak out to the press, which turned up in battle positions and recording equipment shoved up the noses of participants, even before the flash mob was scheduled to begin?

Or how's this for a more newsworthy story:
Plainclothes police accost flash mob participants at end of event

At least 2 participants were approached Citylink mall by 4 plainclothes police operatives after the flash mob event concluded. The operatives presented themselves to the duo, requesting a "short and private discussion at a more private place".

The operatives, marshalled in a line formation, herded the two to a remote corner of the underground mall, where they proceeded to ask the following questions:
Who organised this protest?
How did you know about this protest?
What are the names of the people who informed you of this protest? What are the names of the people you informed, in turn?

And the winner: Look, we know all about this protest. You better cooperate with us and tell us the truth.

Thankfully one of the cornered persons did read up on his rights, as well as the extent of cooperation citizens are bound to give to plainclothes operatives presenting themselves without a warrant or charges, and gave them his name, his lawyer's contacts, and told them to fuck off.

Several, even more newsworthy issues present themselves in the aftermath:
1. Flash mob sparks police actions by government
2. Seeing the flash mob as a bona fide protest, Wong Kan Seng, the Minister for Home Affairs, does not send in the riot police.
3. Instead, the clown show is mobilised.

Apparently there is no formal investigation, no indication that said flash mob is an illegal and destablising event, so what the MHA and Wong can do is send in the clown squad and hope that the idea of plainclothes operatives asking questions and claiming to know everything about the event... will actually scare off the participants, make them piss in their pants, and scar them for life. Remember, kids: for real protests and destabilising events, the riot police is used. When the authorities want to stage a political comedy, they send in plainclothes operatives!

But really, this flash mob was rather lame. People showed up and stood around. No silly waving, cheers, synchronised actions or what have you. No immediate and sudden dispersal. And the best part? People who didn't get the message won't get the message at all. So much for a flash mob for Mr Brown.

Don't get me started on the organiser's horrendously unironic satorical decision wear brown shirts to support a columnist who was unfairly axed. This is what you get when Singapore's artistes pose as political activists.

Ladies and gentlemen, the continuing clown show from Wong Kan Seng. As if the dropping of the police investigation against Char isn't embarrassing enough, they send in a clown show against a not-very-successful or well-planned and conceptualised flash mob.

Goh Chok Tong speech decoded

3 May 2006 - Washington, speech to reporters

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

--- Peanut Goh

Get your decoding rings ready!

1. "I do not have the calibre to function in a true democracy."
2. "In Singapore, the PAP decides how many opposition MPs Singaporeans are allowed."

Peanut Goh should grow up and accept the challenge of governing in a democratic country, where the voters decide how much of an opposition they want in Parliament. If he's unable to deal with the decision of the voters, he should either step down or work for peanuts.

My question to Peanut Goh: Let's cut to the chase and forget about elections, in this case. How many opposition MPs do you allow us to have, at maximum? Please, I want some more.

3. "We will do what we can to prevent Singaporeans from voting in more opposition MPs."

Peanut Goh admits he wants to control how Singaporeans vote! We need a clarification on what legal or extra-legal means he is contemplating. Does this include fixing opposition candidates? Or finding more ways to buy his supporters votes?

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

But Peanut Goh, you have no right to make this kind of statement. It is not your place to dictate to voters who they can and cannot vote for; how many seats the opposition is allowed and not allowed to win. It is not your place to tell voters they can vote in opposition politicians, but not too many.

Need I say that this is scandalous? Peanut Goh should withdraw from Marine Parade GRC for the insult to Singaporean voters he has made. The PAP should take clear, unambiguous steps to do the right thing, to sack Peanut Goh from the party before he damages their credibility any further.

"We can't fight the next battle using today's strategies," says Peanut Goh. But it is clear that the objectives of the Whiteshirt battle still remains the same as yesterday's battle. It is clear that the Whiteshirts still view voters as frightened children who must be told who they can vote for, and how many sweets they're allowed. It is clear that the Whiteshirts continue to be wildly out of touch with reality.

Singapore Urban Legends Part Deux

Cherian George opines: Opposition coverage has been greater and fairer than at any point in the past 30 years at least.

Get your debunking tools ready!

In the previous post, I went to the National Archives with fellow SBPer Pleinelune to search for the Holy Grail of Singapore politics: undeniable proof that Papalee threatened to find out who exactly voted in Jeyaratnam and Chiam in 1984, and why.

We didn't find any such account in the Straits Times.

What we did find:
A much more sympathetic report of the opposition in its stories (although numerically, articles covering the Whiteshirts still dominated).
More critical reporting of the Whiteshirt campaign and election issues, compared to the 2006 election.
The combination of sympathetic and critical reporting led Papalee to accuse the press of being biased against his party, a claim he continued to make as late as 2006, in a televised dialogue session with ST journalists.

What does Cherian George say about this editorial from the Straits Times, in 1984?

"Let's take it in our stride"
What is disturbing is talk of the need to re-examine the one-man, one-vote system in light of what happened. Equally disturbing is the prospect that residents of Anson and Potong Pasir are in for a lesson, for voting in opposition candidates.

Can Cherian George honestly say that today's Straits Times is capable of printing such editorials? That it is more fair towards the opposition?

We also paid attention to photographs of the politicians. All were of low quality and in black and white. Papalee had one of the worst photos (him in side profile, clenching a fist at the microphone), while other PAP and opposition MPs and candidates had full-face passport photo style mugs, regardless of position and post.

There was also a half page interview with Chiam, where he outlined what he'll do in Parliament. A quarter page interview with an outgoing opposition party leader, his analysis of how his Malay party managed to garner suprise Chinese votes in 1984. ST also published full articles from foreign newspapers (the Bangkok Post, the New Straits Times, the Wapo). These were articles chastising Papalee for being a sore loser, pondering over his rejection of one-man one-vote democracy, and suggesting that voters, in their 12% national swing towards the opposition, were rejecting the increasingly hectoring style and torrent of Papalee's national campaigns.

Which is the Pro-PAP ST?

A. ST in 1984: Quoting Whiteshirts word for word, no matter what they say. Headlines are direct quotes from their speeches, and come with quote marks.

B. ST in 2006: Spinning Whiteshirt speeches, dressing up headlines to mislead readers, editing out unfortunate phrases like "fix them and buy my supporters votes".

Cherian George, I'd like to see a retraction of the statement in your blog, really. And it took just 2 people 1 hour at the National Archives to do what you thought would take 2 years by NUS/NTU honours thesis candidates. Gah.

Bonus Section

Just to see how the Whiteshirts have commited the mistakes it accused opposition parties of making in 1984, and how little things have changed, here are the headlines of the post-election coverage from 24 and 26 December 1984:

PM replies to voters' signal (papalee promises a more open and less austere government)
Genuine distress or blackmail, asks Raja (Raja vows to show voters they cannot blackmail the government into compromising policies and principles. This man does not understand the meaning of democracy)
Senior ministers' pay to go up (he did promise a less austere government. and is leading by example)
PAP has support of most younger voters (claim by Goh Chok Tong, then a new MP)
26,000 voters cast spoilt or rejectd votes
Snake pit politics will scare off credible candidates (now we know why the Whiteshirts find it so hard to recruit)
Brigadier-General Lee makes early "thank you" call
We will settle accounts (Papalee refuses to congratulate Chiam and JBJ, vows not to put election clashes behind)
PAP must make greater effort (to bond with voters. GCT)
Not so much a vote for opposition: Mah (it's a plebiscite)
Chua to step down from Cabinet
By-elections may be needed (to allow Mah Bow Tan to get back into parliament after defeat by Chiam)
Let's take it in our stride (critical editorial by ST chief. Soon replaced by a more pliant and cooperative candidate)

26 December

Voting is not like making a film (excerpt from Papalee election victory speech)
Voting not based on racial lines, says Yatiman (denies Malays ever vote as a bloc)
Opposition denies playing gutter politics

Singapore Urban Legends

"Some elections back when the 'Mentor' was PM, he threatened the electorate by saying he would find out why those who voted against the PAP did so. That was in a speech after an election when the public was beginning to be brave enough to rub the dictatorship up the right way. I still remember the sinister and menacing tone when Harry Lee made his open threat."

From A.K. Tan, in comment to Voting must be kept secret

Pleinelune and I went down to the National Archives during the weekend to verify this claim. A.K. Tan has to be referring to the 1984 General Elections, notable for the loss of 2 seats to the opposition JB Jeyaratnam (WP-Anson) and Chiam See Tong (SDP-Potong Pasir). As the election was on 23 December, we checked the Straits Times from 24-27 December.

Results:
There was no account of Papalee issuing threats to find out who voted for whom. The Straits Times in the 1980s had to print every single word of Papalee's speeches; we waded through 5 pages of his election victory speech, printed over 2 days, and found nothing similar to AK Tan's anecdote.

That's not to say there weren't any harsh lectures from the then-PM.

On the morning of 24 December 1984, Papalee made several interesting remarks:

Because they had begun losing seats to the opposition: "at this rate, the one-man, one-vote system could lead to decline and disintegration"

He accused the opposition of "gutter politics": "Every election campaign starts off on a reasonable note, then in order to get the crowds excited, they make more and more brazen, scurrilous, wild accusations." (Like for example, accusing their opponents of planting bombs with their election manifestos?)

Papalee sternly warned the electorate in Potong Pasir and Anson that they would have to live with their choices; "the party would withdraw services to the two opposition-held seats of Anson and Potong Pasir"

Of course, there were the usual admonitions about Singapore descending into riots, that the people must realise this is not a game, you cannot change governments, etc.

However, the best lines came from the recently deceased S Rajaratnam, then Second Deputy Prime Minister in Papalee's cabinet. Said the man who wrote the national pledge: "If this is an attempt by voters to blackmail the government, to compromise on important issues or principles, then we must show them we cannot be blackmailed. No government should succumb to blackmail." That was the most chilling quote from the 1984 election, and it didn't come from Papalee.

It was Rajaratnam who made the threat AK Tan remembers. In "Genuine distress or blackmail, asks Raja", the then-2DPM wanted to find out whether the vote swing to the opposition was a genuine distress signal or an attempt by voters to blackmail the Whiteshirts. He then followed up by saying "we must show them that we cannot be blackmailed". Perhaps due to the passage of time, we now have the impression that it was Papalee who threatened "he would find out why those who voted against the PAP did so"?

Now, on that night, with Papalee raising a clenched fist at the microphone during the election victory speech and interview, with Rajaratnam, Mah Bow Tan, Richard Hu taking turns to reiterate their leader's disappointments, one threat would've seemed indistinguishable from the next.

So please, everyone. Let that urban legend rest. Papalee did not threaten to undermine the secrecy of the vote.

Tired Election Strategies

A party desperately clutching at straws.
An election gimmick that didn't quite work the first time round.
The same election gimmick used yet again this year.

Gentle readers, I refer not to the "by-election" strategy in this post, but the Whiteshirt "lifting of the whip" strategy.

This year, Mr Peanut Goh has promised to allow Messrs Eric Low and Seetoh Yih Pin, the challengers in the opposition-held Hougang and Potong Pasir ridings, freedom from the party whip in the next Parliament if voters deliver these two long-time oppo wards to the Whiteshirts.

Never mind that some political experts in the Channelnewsasia article see Peanut Goh's move as inconsistent, unprincipled, and damaging Whiteshirt credibility and party discipline - we've been here before. Cue to the previous general election, where Mr Peanut Goh promised to select new MPs to form a Shadow Cabinet to keep policymakers on their toes.

When criticised during the recent General Elections of a lack of checks and balances on the Government, PM Goh Chok Tong had this response - the People's Action Forum. The group, described by the PM as a Shadow Cabinet, is to ensure more debate in parliament. However, unlike other countries where the Shadow Cabinet is formed by the Opposition, Singapore's Shadow Cabinet will be drawn from the ruling party, with 20 PAP MPs and Ministers serving a 2-year run. The Party whip will be lifted so they don't have to toe the party line and can even vote against party decisions.

Whither Peanut Goh's Shadow Cabinet today?

The Smoking Gun

And a BG is Born!

Minilee's son recently passed out from basic military training at Tekong with a marksmanship medal. Chibilee's achievement? Getting 42 out of a possible 36 points at the rifle range. This kid is going places. Today, marksman... Tomorrow, BG? (And 20 years later, the THIRD member of the Lee emperors?)

No Links Between Grassroots and PAP

Branch and local chairmen of assorted grassroots committees and the Citizens Consultative Committee (CCC) have been writing furious letters to the ST forums this week, after the paper reported allegations/complaints at a NUS politics forum on the links between grassroots organisations and the Whiteshirts.

Their denials are pretty fun to read. It's almost as though no one remembers a certain article, published in page 26 of the 5 June 2005 edition of the Straits Times, on the retirement of one Mr S Phyaindran, top grassroots activist from the CCC.

The caption of the photo says: Mr S Phyaindran (left), describing a time drug addicts loitered in Marine Parade void decks. If you look at the photo, you'll realise that Mr S Phyaindran is supposedly posing outside the entrance of the Marine Parade CCC. Its signboard displays the PAP lightning bolt in circle logo and slogans in 4 languages. The chinese one is clearly visible, and reads: 全民一心

So will the grassroots leaders and members of the CCC still be able to say honestly that their organisations are not linked to the Whiteshirts?

Lessons on Constructive Criticism

Singapore's leaders are a bunch of creative people who repackage every possible concept in Democracy 101 into Orwell 1984.

Civil society is now civic society.
Bourdieu's cultural capital is now a show-me-your-money concept, thanks to Khaw Boon Wan's very short stint at the Ministry of Culture.
Welfare is now workfare (despite the fact that our workfare has nothing in common with how the rest of the world understands it).
In order to deny that 4 straight years of economic doldrums could create a Generation X, then-PM Goh popularised the term Generation M in his speeches.

And now constructive criticism is rebranded as "constructive suggestions", according to the Feedback Unit's "Feedback Pursuit" online game to teach Singaporeans how to engage with the System. This, of course, is another move to defang the increasingly bold mentality that's sprung up lately in the populace since the NKF debacle broke.

Agagooga has stronger nerves of steel than me, which explains why he's visited the site already. Great findings from him on the hidden messages of the Feedback Pursuit game:

...instead of using Critical Thinking skills so important to the New Economy in writing their Op-Eds, Catherine Lim and Cherian George should have gone to more tea sessions and participated in more feedback dialogues and written more letters to the Straits Times Forum with suggestions to the relevant authorities.

Given that the Feedback Unit is part of the Civil Service, it is exceedingly odd for the people to engage with it, rather than with the political process proper by voicing their opinions to their elected representatives; the Civil Service deals with implementation of policies, while the political process formulates them - thus, working through the civil service would presumably only tweak the implementation of said policies, rather than resulting in substantive change.

Our leaders prefer that there is no politics in Singapore; hence their happy subjects are only allowed administrative participation and not political participation, tweaking policies rather than questioning policies.

Well-meaning persons will do well to understand this next time they insist that critics of the Whiteshirts should take bigger part in the feedback process. There is no substitute for political participation, no substitute for open and free questioning of policies, no substitute for accountability of politicians to their electorates. The feedback process provides none of that.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Ng Eng Hen's Ministry of Manpower clearly knows the difference between lies, damn lies, and statistics. Consider the recent release of Q4 figures by his ministry: the unemployment rate fell to a 5-year low of 2.5%!

Let's hold back the picture of Ng in a coverall on a factory floor, with a giant banner proclaiming MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, okay?

A look at Channelnewsasia's and ST's versions of the story will reveal the standard message: Record employment in 2005 (2.3 million serfs), 32,800 jobs created in December (No metion if they're just holiday-specific jobs), and expectations by unnamed economic experts of moderate wage increases (tell me if any economic recovery since 2001 has been accompanied by wage or even job increases?).

Then take a look at the Financial Times coverage of the same story (archived on SBP).

Singapore said on Wednesday its unemployment rate last year fell to a provisional 3.2 per cent, the lowest since 2001, although the figure was flattered by a recent change in how the data was measured. The government decided last year to revise the measurement of unemployment to include foreign workers who have temporary work permits, including construction workers living on site and those who commute to Singapore from Malaysia.

"The revision has the effect of reducing the overall unemployment rate as...(the) total labour force is now larger, taking into account full coverage of the foreign workforce," said the ministry of manpower, which compiles the statistics. Unemployment rates for foreign workers are lower since they normally lose their work permits and can no longer stay in Singapore if they become jobless.

Such an important point got conveniently left out of ST and CNA's press reports. Why are our national press run by these fools?

This is blatant statistical massaging that puts several question marks on all the figures quoted in the reports.

How much of the 32,800 jobs created last December, for example, went to Singaporeans and not temporary foreign workers? How much of Singapore's record-high of 2.3 million workers were Singaporean workers? How much is the SINGAPOREAN rate of unemployment?

Okay. Apparently Financial Times does have the figure, which it got from the Min. of Manpower: 3.3% in Q4. Is this a reason to pop out the champagne? The 2005 Q1 unemployment rate was 3.5% (2005 figures, of course, did not include foreign workers), so we have 3.3% unemployment in Q4 2005 vs 3.5% in Q1 2005. This, contrary to what FT's reporter says, is not a cause for celebration, nor a worthy achievement, nor a harbinger of more good things to come.

Why this insistence on the Singaporean rate of unemployment? Well, apparently during the Budget debate in 2005, Minister Ng Eng Hen vowed to "re-take jobs for Singaporeans".
1. Has he?
2. Why does his ministry now deprive us of even finding that out, with the "new and improved" method of calculating unemployment?