Technically Flawed

80 youths - some as young as 12 - were arrested by the Singapore Police Force in July 2011 for being on the records of loansharks. Most of the traumatised school kids were just trying to earn extra pocket money by distributing fliers. To the police they were technically "assisting in the operations of illegal moneylenders".

80 men were hauled up for questioning by the authorities sometime last year - including a head of strategic planning at Police Training Command, a Navy officer, a National Environment Agency senior counsel and a school principal - for being listed in the laptop database of an online vice operation. 44 men, including 9 public servants, have been charged in court.

Their crime is having paid sex with a person under 18. Their foolishness is transacting through an alleged pimp who used to be an adviser to the chairman of Shell International Petroleum. Lulled by the confidence of dealing with a professional with impeccable credentials, the last thing they thought of was to ask the lady to swear on the Good Book and promise to tell the truth, the whole and nothing but the truth. About her age, that is.

Apparently the police have also been lulled into believing it's an open-and-shut case. Lawyers have now pointed out that the age of the girl is not included in the court documents. According to the legal eagles, this means the charges are technically flawed - "The charge sheets should set out her date of birth so we know she was below 18 at the time of the offence." Which means some of the 80 interviewed will not be charged if the liaison dangereuse was concluded an hour or a minute after she turned 18. The pertinent factoid here is that prostitution in Singapore is legal. Sure it's a sin in the eyes of the morally upright, but the law makers here appear to be on the side of the female with a service for hire. Hey, at $850 a session, she has to be the poster child of productivity.

Round One

During the Iran-Iraq war, there was a cartoon of two boxers slugging it out in the ring, with no one in the spectator seats watching. The only observer was a cleaning lady, who told the warring adversaries, "Please turn out the lights when you're done."

LTA (represented by Allen & Gledhill) and SMRT (Drew & Napier) brought their expensive lawyers into the Attorney-General's Chambers for the long overdue Committee Of Inquiry (COI) hearing. That Second Solictor-General Lionel Yee had already set the tone by making it clear the inquiry "is not an adversarial proceeding but a fact finding one," did not dissuade the two contestants from coming out slugging. Maybe it had to do with the presence of the CID, and the implication that a criminal element would not be discounted.

When the short lived ex-President of AWARE Josie Lau brought in legal help for the disastrous EOGM of 2009, she blew $99,291.28 (Rajah & Tann have donated $5,000, Deloitte & Touche $3,000) for the whole shebang which did not help her cause by a single iota. Doubtless, the lawyers will in similar vein benefit more from this sham of a COI than the commuters who will be ultimately stuck with the bill.

At the end of the wasted day (day one of a protracted 6-week wayang) COI Chairman Tan just had to direct the warring factions to focus on certain key issues, elementary stuff like:
- whether trains could have gauges to detect missing collector shoes;
- whether a transparent cover could facilitate inspection;
- whether the 45 minute power supply backup was sufficient

To which, we might add: who's gonna be the fall guy for this one?

Who's Monitoring Who?

If there's any doubt that Big Brother is in charge in Singapore, all you need to note is the proliferation of CCTVs installed at every nook and corner of the city state. VP of media for Shaw Theatre said the cameras in its newly renovated multiplexes such Jcube and Lido are meant for anti-piracy purposes. "However, we also realised that they allow us to troubleshoot any disputes involving  cinema operations or customers," he said.

Meanwhile Lui Tuck Yew's LTA has installed CCTVs to nab those parking illegally at private housing estates. LTA issues about 300,000 tickets for parking offences annually. Considering that there are 900,000 registered vehicles out there, there's a tidy revenue stream for the taking. And you thought those summonses were intended for education, a public spirited exercise to inculcate in motorists a healthy respect for the law.

When the lights went out onboard an MRT train on the North-South Line yesterday, the SMRT spokesman said blackouts in its trains are "not uncommon" and are "usually due to human error". He added, "We can rectify the problem quickly as long as it is reported to our staff.  In this case, we did not receive any report." Looks like CCTVs should be installed in the MRT control room, with the cameras focused on the staff, to "trouble shoot any disputes involving train operation or customers". Lui may call the tender for the car park monitoring, it is doubtful he would like to catch SMRT staff sleeping on the job. And they wouldn't dare sneak off to Jcube or Lido, the CCTVs there are actively monitored.

Screen grab from "Enemy Of The State"

A Shocking Response

"My concern is this: Yes, we can give wages a shock but in the process, are we also able to give productivity  an equal shock." The speaker happens to the worst example of the productivity malaise in Singapore.  After relinquishing his short stint as Second Minister of National Development in 2005, Lim Swee Say (林瑞生), he has been minister without portfolio up to today. Meaning, he's good for nothing special. Unless you count dressing up as Zorro and generally making a fool of himself on stage with ditties like "Upturn the downturn".

One of those high income earners losing sleep over Professor Lim Chong Yah's radical proposal of a deep wage freeze, Lim Swee Say conceded that driving wage growth through productivity gains will take time. And that's the way these guys like it: the longer it takes, the bigger his bank account will swell. Hence the hentak kaki pace of bringing to justice the two top uniformed officers caught bedding the same IT vendor. Ditto the Hougang by-election.

"Every month, when I receive my CPF statement, I feel so rich," he once told his captive audience of grassroots supporters. In office since 1999, this guy still hasn't mastered the art of public speaking. Makes you wonder how he survived as Deputy Managing Director of the Economic Development Board when he was based in New York City from 1991 to 1993.

Prof Lim told Today: "If the NTUC secretary-general Mr Lim Swee Say has serious reservations for my ER2 (Economic Restructuring 2) proposal, then the logical sequence is to keep it in deep freeze, instead of temporarily freezing the salaries of the highest income groups as suggested by me." Stay tuned, the spirit of wage reform will remain, to the march of the spirit of GE 2016.

Scary Friday

Scary Wage Freeze

Friday the 13th invokes nightmarish characters like Freddy Krueger, not a mild mannered professorial type like Lim Chong Yah. Yet he has managed to instil fear island wide in a pretty short time with his "shock therapy" - the clarion call of  a 3-year plan for a wage freeze for top earners ($15,00 and above) and a 50 percent or more wage rise for those earning less than $1,500.

What scared Lim was the Gini coefficient creeping from 0.454 in 2001 to 0.473 in 2011, a whisker's hair from the "danger levels" of wage gap disparity. Globally, income inequality is disconcerting because of the threat it poses to social stability. Not that we will ever have winds of change as in Egypt or Syria, more likely the Leopard 2A4 tanks will be rolled out in a reprise of TianAnMen. Still, it could be as messy as a Freddy Krueger production.

What scares Lim's detractors are:
Scary foreign talent loss- people who leave just because they won't be getting 5 percent more automatically each year. For these lot, who have no intention of ever serving in NS anyway, it's good riddance for them.  If they wanted to go, they would have left already.

Scary unemployment - have no fear, if labour intensive sweat shops shut down, workers will move on to higher productivity operations. That's what happened in 1979, low tech textile workers ended up as assembly line operators in outfits like Hewlett Packet manufacturing, wiring components instead of threading buttons - exactly what was intended, breaking out of then low-productivity and low-wage economy.

Scary high inflation - the oil supply shock was the bad guy during the 1970s, not the NWC recommendation fall-out. Since MAS is maintaining its strong SingDollar, lose no sleep over that fact that 80 percent of our goods are imported. What we should worry about are the sources of domestic inflation - electricity tariffs, transport fares, housing COVs, and money making scams like the HSA charges for evaluating medical devices.

Scary implementation issues - 60 percent of the workforce is covered by NWC alone. In 1979, the NWC rammed the major wage reform through, why should they change loyalty now? He may not have Dr Winsemius at his side this time, but Lim's daughter is still married to Number 2 Son.

One suspects the scaredy cats, masquerading as nattering nabobs of negativism, are the guys whose wallets are at knife's edge. Think of the many MPs whose allowances have breached the stratosphere, with no associated productivity gains whatsoever to show of. These are the chaps most likely to say, "If there are no Sunshine bread (with ex-SMRT Saw at the helm), let them eat cake." Let them taste the electric volts of the shock treatment.