Pure Fiction

You know credibility is at stake when the picture on the cover bears faint resemblance to the present day subject of another ghost written excuse to fill the book shelf. Asked why he would want to "write" another book, Lee Kuan Yew, 89 going on 90, said, "To recount what has struck my life before I lose my memory."

The ghost writers, Han Fook Kwang et al says  - unlike the earlier two volumes of memoirs, "Singapore Story" and "From Third World To First" - this 400-page exercise in ego massage focuses more on the future than the past. Lee must be the only person who has "memories" of the future. Artistic licence has just embarked on a new frontier.

As in previous publications, Lee just can't resist insulting other countries, "The iPhone, iPad, Microsoft, the Internet - these were created in America, not elsewhere. The Chinese have many talented individuals compared to the Americans, but why have they not been able to come up with similar inventions?"

Er, Mr Know-It-All, the Chinese invented papermaking, the compass, gunpowder, and printing (both woodblock and movable type). The Chinese also invented the blast furnace, paper money, sternpost rudder, water-powered clockworks, the multiple-tube seed drill and heavy moldboard iron plow. Compared to these technologies involving mechanics, hydraulics, and mathematics applied to metallurgy, agriculture, engineering, craftsmanship, horology, nautics, and warfare, iPhones and iPads are mere toys. Besides, real men prefer Android smartphones and tablets. Try explaining that to a guy who doesn't text because he "can't find the keys" on his mobile phone.

Sorry, America is not on the decline, not because of the power of creativity. The success of America is ensured by its full embrace of democracy. The problems with the Arab Spring is not that democracy has failed, or that Egyptians lack the cultural and sociological reasoning to appreciate equal citizenship.  The problems lie with the damage inflicted by the cabal rule of dictators like Mubarak on a nation, damage which will take years to unwind. The best bit about America is that the presidents are limited to two terms. Somebody else is always given a chance to contribute his best for the nation. One-man rule, or one-cabal rule, is the cancer of civilisation.

Lee once said he will call it a day when his stories can fit into a thumbdrive. Well, the 2 volumes of Hitler's Mein Kampf take up only 1 megabytes (mb), 3 Lord of the Ring books 2 mb, 7 books of the Harry Porter series 6 mb, and the Oxford Complete Works of Shakespeare occupy only 7 mb of disk space. Even "The Untold Story of Mao" by June Chang and Jon Holliday, 1780 pages of text and photographs, require only 6 mb. It is doubtful all of Lee's books can even fill up a 2 GB drive. Han said he thought Hard Truths was the last book, and his subject could not endure interviews longer than 1 hour for this one, so why is he still on the payroll?

Blame Faulty Memories

The porcine politicians in George Orwell's "Animal Farm" started off by forswearing the imbibing of alcoholic beverages. Later they made some tweaks to accommodate the true state of their lily white convictions. One day their subject animals woke up to discover that the commandment reading “No animal shall drink alcohol” actually reads “No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.”  As with previous revisions of the Seven Commandments painted on the barn, the animals blame the apparent change on their faulty memories — they must have forgotten the final two words.

It was not so long ago we were told the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is not regressive. Never mind what the economics books say. Singapore's GST was first introduced on April 1, 1994, at 3%. It was increased to 4% on 1 January 2003, 5% on 1 January 2004, and 7% on 1 July 2007. Then in 2008, Transport Minister Raymond Lim went the extent of making a vile veiled threat of a further 1.5% hike, "You want the GST to go up to 8.5 per cent, to run a completely free bus and MRT system?”

Speaking at a Channel NewsAsia forum in March 2012, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam still maintained that "most of the taxes are paid by those who are better off and the benefits are received by those less well off." The new permanent GST voucher was introduced in that year to supposedly offset the 7 per cent GST that the lower half of retiree households pay on their expenses.

GST plus vouchers is not regressive. All too soon, the electorate will blame the apparent change on their faulty memories — they must have forgotten the two important words.

This year's GST voucher will not help everybody. Retirees staying in, not renting out, homes with annual value exceeding $21,000 will not be receiving the check. Retirees with zero income will still have to pay GST for goods and services purchased, including the water consumption component in the utilities bill, which is already subject to a hefty 30% Water Conservation Tax. Even if they switch off lights, wash at public toilets, and resort to a free smoke by opening windows to the haze from Sumatra, last we heard, the Mandai Columbarium still charges GST.

Truth Be Told

When his Ministry of National Development staff gave him a tearful send off in September 1992, Dhanabalan told reporters he would be spending more time with his church. When he had to make way for Lim Boon Heng as the new Temasek chairman on August 2013, he said same: spending more time with his church, currently Bukit Panjang Gospel Chapel. You gotta take that with a large pinch of salt.

My uncle met him at a Varsity Christian Fellowship (VCF) gathering eons ago, when he first donned the white and white uniform (him, not uncle), and asked him why his political party seemed to be unpopular among some circles. The cocky response was that, with 70+ of the votes, they had to be popular. Period. End of sharing.

When he was in charge of Development Bank of Singapore (DBS), there was a time when the bank paid the lowest salaries on the island. Asked why, he said he prides DBS as the training center for Singapore bankers. The mass migration to the other banks continued unabated. To halt the stampede, he quietly revised the pay scales to match the market rates.

Then he killed the POSB girl. Many, including yours truly, closed all their accounts and moved their money to another bank, any bank. Queried by the press, he boasted that the impact of the POSB takeover was minimal. Insiders reported a different story, and POSB was revived.

When SingaPolitics wrote in the Sunday Times that "a rare breed of leader (was) lost with Dhana's exit", they must have originally intended a piece on fiction.

Yesterday Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen warned of a new threat on the horizon: the distortion or false information, rumours and smears that emanate from the Internet. That's nothing new. We have seen with our own eyes the source of the distortion, rumours and smears, and mostly it is from the 149 ranked mainstream media.

Headline Makers

Two party faithfuls made the news, albeit not for reasons to cheer about.

The former MP of Joo Chiat Constituency was  fined $2,000 and disqualified from driving for 12 months for DUI (drink driving). “It was totally not intended at all, I made a wrong decision of driving there… it was due to my carelessness,” was how he explained maneuvering his vehicle into a police checkpoint and failing the breath analyzer test. Chan Soo Sen has been sore even since he was dropped from the 2011 GE sweepstakes race, and often seen at Hokkien clan gatherings imbibing huge amounts of strong liquor and belting out at the karaoke mike. His drinking buddy was recently hospitalised for suspected alcoholic poisoning.

The other (existing) MP will go down in history as the man who let Mas Selamat Kastari go out through the toilet window. Andrew Kuan - remember that presidential candidate hopeful? - always said Wong is a hard man. Ever popular with his grassroots leaders, he just happened to be at the right place at the right time. He was inducted at the same time as Lee Hsien Loong. And since latter was made minister of state immediately after the elections, someone else had to promoted quickly too. Else the rumour mill will be rife with accusations of cronyism and nepotism. The press statement said Wong will need 2 months to recover from a operation to "remove a small lesion from his liver". The poor guy lives in morbid fear of the "c" word. He lost his mother, and two sisters were visited with the incurable disease.

In the 2013 American romantic drama "Before Midnight", Celine (Julie Delpy) tells her husband Jesse (Ethan Hawke) about a friend who found out he had leukemia, and the first thought that came to his mind was relief. Before the discovery, he always had to worry about money. And he was like, great, now he had more than enough money to live the next 9 months. Never doubt the power of positive thinking.

Disasters At The Mike

Obama's theme of change was invoked by at least two speakers recently. The first was in a sermon that alluded to an apology from a higher authority:
"My son, Kong, thank you, thank you for going through this. I need you to go through this alone, so that you and CHC can be the man and the ministry I called it to be. I'm so sorry, but you need to go through this by yourself, to bring a change to your generation."

We have a guy who also claimed to be able to rise from the dead ("Even from my sick bed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel something is going wrong, I will get up." - 1988 National Day rally), but you'll never hear him utter the "s" word. At best, as when he recanted asking a minority group to be "less strict" with their religion, he would concede a "I stand corrected".

The other speaker who mentioned Obama in passing was this year’s valedictorian of Nanyang Technological University's (NTU's) School of Humanities and Social Science who simply could not resist cocking a snook at the linguistic skills of the Chinese nationals at his campus, “This (something about honouring parents, not peers) is especially so  for the Chinese majors who probably have not gotten what I just said in English.” His speech was vetted by NTU, but he could sneak in the insult because, as he put it, "Guess who's at the mike?" A valedictorian is supposed to be the highest ranking among his or her graduating class, not dog pile.

With these two hard acts to follow, prime minister Lee will need to work doubly hard at his National Day Rally (NDR) 2013 speech scheduled for August 18th. At least we should be spared the hissing delivery style of a Lim Swee Say, punctuated by the sound of air escaping from the gaps of teeth pried apart by tooth picks purloined from elitist eating establishments. There's good reason why dental floss and toothbrushes are recommended means of dental hygiene. Don't expect much too much of a change though, trains will continue to break down, dirty money flow in, prices go up, crowding resume at all manner and mode of infrastructure as usual. The one surprise was the detailed disclosure about BTO flats for singles. Previously, "goodies" were announced at the NDR speech, and followed by "my minister will provide the details."