The Year In Pictures

January.
She came, she saw, she collected millions, and zoomed off into the sunset in her Ferrari California. Budget for train maintenance, whazzat? Engineering is so unsexy. The new guy seems to think so too.

February.
His sacking triggered a by-election. In retrospect, it was a godsend; the relentless witch hunters will have the tables turned on themselves before the year was over.

March.
Even the dead have to give way for the development plans to feed the real estate bubble. What they fail to tell you about asset enhancement is the cash impoverishment side of the story.

April.
What killed the wage shock therapy was not the call to raise the income of the poor, but the audacity to suggest a wage freeze for the filthy rich. "Never mind your Gini coefficient", was the old man's dismissal.

May.
What Susan Boyle did for "I Dreamed a Dream", Hougang contributed as much to popularise another Les Miz favourite. Don't be shy, join in the chorus,

"Do you hear the people sing?

Say, do you hear the distant drums?

It is the future that they bring

When tomorrow comes..."

June.
Botox is great for masking blemishes. But who would have thought speeding tickets could be papered over by waffling about appropriate traffic laws that were in force in 2006?

July.
Kudos to the keyboard warriors who shattered the imprimatur of the minister who initially endorsed the profligate spending exercise. Just because minister says okay doesn't always means okay, okay?

August.
The Chinese proverb says: When you drink water remember the source (饮水思源). Does not apply when your heart tells you different in a moment of celebratory euphoria.

September.
The national con got off to a good start.  Until eagle eyed netizens spotted the card carrying party loyalists and aspiring sycophants embedded in the discussion group.

October.
Xenophobia had a good run, kicked off by the "more dogs than men" quotable. The unpardonable was this foreign talent's explicit blog of ugly bedroom gymnastics. If the 51 guys had come across his gross pictorials earlier, they would be so turned off by female anatomical parts that the under-aged online hooker's bookings would be less prolific.

November.
Thanks to the pioneering contribution of this lot of bus drivers, our official lexicon now recognises the proper word for industrial action. It may take 26 years to call a spade a spade, but such is the new timeline for progress in our nation.

December.
The English translation may lack the panache, but Confucius once made this cynical observation:, "For I have never encountered anyone who puts principles before licentiousness."

微臣從沒見過

如斯好德如好色的人

A Real Tear Jerker

Can you think of someone who can afford to retire at the age of 31? Li Jia Wei can, thanks to the $1.27 million bonanza from the Multi-Million Award Programme provided by her host country.

The official reason given is that a knee injury is ending her sports career that require the use of healthy hands. "I will always be a Singapore player and I want to ...  repay the country for the support I've received," she sobbed convincingly while announcing plans to pack her bags and return to China with her 3-year old son. It sounds more like "quitting" than "retiring". Throughout her 18 years spent here, she didn't even bother to pick up Singlish. And she's probably not planning to see her son killed/injured/mangled in a national service training exercise either.

Another foreign talent who downed her ping pong paddles is Sun Bei Bei, 28, who decided to step down to raise kids. Contribute to advancing the nation's pathetic Total Fertility Rate. "Whether as a coach or as a player, I will not leave Singapore. I want my child to live here and be educated here." That sounds more palatable. Sun is assigned the role of youth coach to the School Within A School programme at the Singapore Sports School. At least she plans to earn her keep.

It beggars the imagination why Lee Bee Wah will want to "arrange for her (Jia Wei) to do something for Singapore" when she is clearly uprooting herself and family to settle in Beijing. Which part of goodbye does she not understand? Something must have been lost in translation.

Surely Singapore money should be spent on Singaporeans.

The headlines scream "Higher cash payout for elderly households," but the "bonus" money is a mere $5,000 (which used to be a CPF top-up). All part and parcel of a Lease Buyback Scheme incentive to sell a $470,000 4-room flat and trade down to a $100,000 studio apartment. Which means the silver haired will bequeath a substantially reduced asset to their kids when the time comes to quit this life on earth. If they could afford to have kids in the first place. Nobody really arranged to do something for the old folks who are trapped in the asset-rich-cash-poor dilemma.

A Lackluster Performance

Anne Hathaway made a better Catwoman than a Fantine tugging at your heart strings with "I Dreamed a Dream", reputedly a performance aimed at an Oscar. Sorry, Russel Crowe's vocals made a splash only after his suicide soliloquy. Save Eddie Redmayne as Marius Pontmercy, the real singing came from those with stage experience, like Samantha Barks as Éponine and Daniel Huttlestone as Gavroche. Colm Wilkinson only makes a cameo appearance as the Bishop of Digne.  What a waste of talent.

One reviewer said Tom Hooper's film of the musical Les Miserables is an exceptional movie of a mediocre musical. Judging from last night's screening at Lido, more likely, it is the other way round. Just like the present cabinet is a mediocre version of the exceptional first generation of political leaders.

Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee, Toh Chin Chye and other Old Guard ministers may have been renowned for their domineering and authoritarian style, but they contributed much with their robust debate of policy and administrative issues. Not for them the group-think that Lim Boon Heng shared crocodile tears over when he was asked to step down before GE 2011. Even Lee Kuan Yew noted that the sameness of political and public sector executives is in itself a problem; they do not challenge one another and are guilty of "intellectual in-breeding" (ST 12 Nov 1994). One consequence is the inability of the middle class to achieve genuine political participation except through PAP co-option (Garry Rodan, "Singapore Changes Guard: Social, Political and Economic Directions in the 1990s", Longman Chesire, 1993). And we are told, even those invited to tea decided not to sign up.

All we see on stage is a string of strutting generals, lacking in vitality, force, or conviction; uninspired actors with no commanding performance. Witness ex-Rear Admiral Teo Chee Hean's version of a town hall meeting, fending off every earnest question with a infuriating "What do you think?" The ex-Air Force Chief George "FM" Yeo had plenty pretty speeches to make, but when he had to man the barricades at Aljunied, he turned tail and blamed everybody else except himself for the "resentment against the government". The man who promised "I am not going anywhere. I am staying in Aljunied GRC." shifted loyalties to a Hong Kong employer instead of staying on for the fight.

One memorable scene in the Les Miz movie has Inspector Javert walking through pools of blood shed by the fallen. It brings to mind the words of Ong Pang Boon who bitterly objected to the creation of the elected presidency:
"In a parliamentary democracy, peaceful transfer of power, whether intra-party or inter-party,  is fundamental to the system, and must be seen to be so. Once this possibility appears to be closed, then violent revolutionary means would loom large.  I do not know if this is what we want." (Cited in "Singapore: The Ultimate Island", T.S Selvan, Freeway Books, 1991)

Insights From The Past

It was an unusual find at the Christmas tree, a hardcover book published in 2003. The book provides a great deal of detailed information and analysis about the peculiarities of the elitist and highly controlled system of governance in Singapore. It also has the only documented narration of how Richard Hu, S Dhanabalan and Tony Tan threatened to resign en masse over an act of violence in a cabinet meeting (click on cover for the relevant page content). No wonder the country is in such a mess today.

There are loads of priceless insights from the book. Nearly a decade ago, Ross Worthington already expressed doubt that economic performance is an adequate substitute for trust. The lack of accountability, complicated by the high levels of remuneration and those aspects of their public duties hidden within the GLC and statutory boards, is starting to bear rotten fruit. Ergo, the work of the government owned National Computer Services (NCS) sold to a political party owned Action Information Management Pte Ltd (AIM) for $140,000 and leased back to the public through the Town Councils (TC). With such shadowy money making schemes in play, no wonder the Service and Conservancy Charges keep increasing year after year.

Worthing quotes this on page 232:

"Intellectuals and professionals sense an atmosphere of corruption - not corruption of money, for there is nothing in Singapore corresponding to the activities of families of Presidents of some of the ASEAN countries, but corruption in the disbursement of power and influence."
(John Goldring, "The legal profession and government in Singapore and Malaysia", Australian Quarterly, 60, 4, 1988)

Earlier, in 1973, T J S George ("Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore", Eastern Universities Press, 1984 p.213) noted:

"Even Singapore's famous graftlessness has an unseen face.  Petty bribery is, of course, unknown and no minister of government official grows fat on illegal takings - a unique virtue in Southeast Asia. But this does not preclude the existance of a form of political corruption. Falling in with the government's line of thinking is recognized as a way of getting official favours such as the allotment of choice apartments; a proportion of housing estates' accommodation is set apart as a reward for political support. Government pressure through red tape is brought to bear on industrialists and traders... If, however, the businessmen concerned  are personally close to the top political hierarchy, they are spared the pressures."

Frankly, Dr Teo Ho Pin, Coordinating Chairman of 14 PAP TCs, did no favour for Chandra Das by coming to his defence of the latest variant of BromptonGate. This businessman is so close to the top political hierarchy, no pressure will ever be brought to bear on him. Ever.

Will Santa Oblige?

All we want for Christmas is a ......    by-election.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had to be in India to start "considering seriously if a by-election should be held for the Punggol East SMC, and if so, when to hold one." Lee reiterated that the Constitution does not require him to call a by-election within any fixed timeframe, based on his father's interpretation in 1965: "Since we are no longer a part of the Federal whole, for reasons which we find valid and valuable as a result of our own experience of elections and of government in Singapore, we have decided that this limitation should no longer apply".

Singapore's constitution draws upon the English Constitution tradition and the Malaysian Constitution (which drew heavily on the Indian Constitution), but has been sufficiently adapted to demonstrate some Westminster traits, while exhibiting many non-Westminster components. The general PAP view of institutional arrangements was summarised by then Minister of State for Law Ho Peng Kee:

"I look at democracy as a basket of rights and a list of freedoms, at the top of which you put the freedom to express your choice of the group of people you want to put into power, who will, after that, have the authority and the power to circumscribe the other freedoms that you have."
("Democracy East or West?" ST 25 May 1995)

This interpretation of a Westminster style constitution has been rejected by the Privy Council in one of its first cases involving Singapore constitutional law. (Anthony Lester QC, "Note on Constitutional Law", Singapore Association of Women Lawyers, 1989). In that case, the council found that an act of the Singapore parliament cannot override a citizen's fundamental human rights.

The Singapore constitution is essentially an instrument of "rule by law" rather "rule of law", which when combined with the complete dominance of the legislature by one party has produced a "rule of State law" regime. (Robert D. Cooter, "The Rule of State Law and the Rule-of-Law State", Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1996).

Walter Woon said this in 1991 ("Stand up and be quoted", ST 6 July):
"We effectively don't have a Constitution.  We have a law that can be easily changed by parliament, and by the party in power, because the party is the parliament.. it is unsettling how flexible the Constitution is..."

Thanks a lot, Michael Palmer, for sobering up our Christmas this year.