The Crack In The System

The proverb, "A new broom sweeps clean", was intended to suggest that someone who is new in a particular job will do a very good job at first, to prove how competent he or she is. Too bad it doesn't seem to apply to the new army chief paid millions to run the train system. For starters, he didn't even bother to abbreviate his holiday plans when the rail system fell short again during his honeymoon period.

Neither, it seems, does it bother his buddy officers from the armed forces who signed on with the gravy train. The metallurgical crack in the rail was detected as early as 7.30 pm, but 4 hours later, the SMRT spokesman (probably one of those army guys) would only say, "We are still trying to find out more about what happened." Worse, the lame SMRT twit who tweeted at 8.30 pm, "unfortunately sometimes there are machine faults that we do not expect," failed to comprehend that a static steel rail lying on the ground is definitely not a moving machine component. Seng Han Tong, who drew lots of flak for criticising the English spoken by Malay and Indian SMRT staff, had apologised by saying that bad English should not prevent people from trying to communicate, especially in times of emergency. But that's no excuse for one of Lieutenant General Demond Kuek's expensive hires.

A cracked rail can throw a train, as in the Leeds to London derailment of October 2000 that killed 4 and injured 30. An expert at the Committee of Inquiry commissioned by the Government had actually warned that a faulty track could cause trains to derail. That real-world rail operators paid more attention to flaws on the tracks than power supply systems.

Flaws like the falling e-clips which were first reported at Commonwealth Avenue West, near the junction of Clementi Avenue 3, in February 2012. An LTA spokesman said at that time: "We have met with the engineers and maintenance staff from SMRT to discuss the measures to be implemented following these incidents. SMRT will be putting up temporary safety nets at the two stretches of the viaduct between Dover and Jurong East with immediate effect." Those disembarking at the Clementi Station will be able to verify that the "temporary safety nets" are still very much in place.

The humble e-clips are responsible for fastening the rail to the base plate so the rail cannot move vertically or horizontally. If the rail is permitted to slide through the plates then compressive or tensile forces build up to either cause a pull-apart (rail break) or a track buckle, which causes derailments. That's when the proverbial shit hits the fan.

Dialogue — The Speech of Fiction

We have had enough of bad dialogue. Enough of those politically correct utterances from staged puppets, spouting verbiage that no one is allowed to challenge without the consequence of a lawyer's letter of demand in the mail. Come on, who in real life lets another person spout off without interruption, especially when debating points he or she doesn’t agree with? It's only natural there’s a response if the parties agree and an even stronger response when the parties are in opposition. Anything else, it's plain wayang.

The task of dialogue does have responsibilities. Dialogue is supposed to:

Advance the plot
Dialogue can and should both direct and change the course of a storyline. A simple revelation, like how much does it really cost to build a HDB flat, will soothe the skeptics about the affordability of public housing. To suggest that the housing authority actually incurs financial losses, like the fairy tale of the $8 open heart surgery, merely stresses the plot and prolongs the agony of the spin.

Reveal character
Dialogue cannot be bland. Characters in play should not speak in dour, colourless monotone, unless you plan a career in announcing electoral results with a robotic voice. The absence of emotional engagement when addressing the concerns of a worried generation says a lot about the sincerity of the speaker. Just avoid rabble rousing theatrics like prompting the audience to assent with a "keechiu!"

Create or increase conflict
Dialogue should shake up the status quo, not prolong the perpetuity of the ongoing injustices. The misunderstanding of multifarious parties in contention — either by accident or deliberate ploy - is only evil when by promoted by participants with separate agendas, pursuing those agendas at the expense of others. Even the authorities have issued a statement declaring that if insensitive comments are made in the heat of the moment, or by relatively immature persons who did not know better, after the investigations uncover, “a more nuanced response may follow” by the police in handling the matter.

Break up passages of action or inaction
Like fiction in a novel, too much of any element is simply too much. The audience need a break from the drone of the official spiel; repetition ad nauseam - "we are on your side" - can only put one to sleep; exposition without pause is merely regurgitation of propaganda; and constant dialogue, as would constant conversation in real life, annoys people to no end and drives them to alternative platforms like the May Day gathering.

One of the answers to the Shell Thought Leadership Question "How can a meaningful dialogue between the Government and the people be sustained" suggest that dialogue sessions should not be restricted to just "politically correct" opinions and views, and the people should be given the right to challenge the Government (Student, Tampines JC, 430 Votes). The student may wish to add a disclaimer about personal views and partisan parlance, even though that declaration may afford scant protection from whispering ministers.

The King Is Not Amused

The concept of Lèse-majesté (French, from the Latin laesa maiestas, "injured majesty") as a criminal offence goes all the way back to ancient Rome and was zealously guarded by absolute monarchs in medieval Europe. Various real crimes were also classified as lese-majesty even though they were not intentionally directed against the crown, such as counterfeiting (because coins bear the monarch's effigy and/or coat of arms). By analogy, as modern times saw banana (or mango, depending on your preference of fruit) republics emerging as first world countries, a similar crime may be constituted, though not under this name, by any offence against the highest representatives of any state. In particular, similar acts against heads of today's totalitarian dictatorships are very likely to result in prosecution.

Current instances of lese-majeste application crop up periodically in Europe, Middle East, Asia and Thailand. In the Indian Ocean state of the Maldives, 3 journalists were sentenced to life in 2002 for "insulting the president" and setting up a newsletter critical of the government. In October 2006, a Polish man was arrested in Warsaw after expressing his dissatisfaction with the leadership of Lech and Jarosław Kaczyński by passing gas loudly. An Egyptian court sentenced blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman in February 2007 to 4 years in prison for insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak. Swiss national Oliver Jufer, who admitted to spray-painting several portraits of the Thai king during a drunken spree in Chiang Mai, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in March 2007. He received a royal pardon subsequently and was promptly deported.

Prof Ronald Hutton of Bristol University opined on the travesty: "It was the idea that being rude about a government was a very bad idea - it hurt the government but was technically not treason because no act of rebellion was committed." But it was King Henry VIII (1491-1547) who first took personal injury one step further by passing an act which made speaking against the king treason in itself so "lese-majeste" became redundant.

Interestingly, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Thailand’s longest-reigning monarch, may be growing tiresome of strict applications of the law. "Actually, I must also be criticized," he said in 2005. "If someone offers criticisms suggesting that the King is wrong, then I would like to be informed of their opinion. If I am not, that could be problematic... If we hold that the King cannot be criticised or violated, then the King ends up in a difficult situation." Someone else (not of blue blood) said as much decades ago, "I don't think I worry too much about what people think... In fact, criticism or general debunking even stimulates me because I think it is foolish not to have your people read you being made fun of. And we have got books circulating in Singapore written specially for this purpose by foreigners." (LKY to New Zealand academics and journalists in Christchurch on April 15, 1975)

Guided Democracy In Play

Contemporary conceptualizations of the public sphere are based on the ideas expressed in Jürgen Habermas' book "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere". Broadly speaking, the public sphere encompasses the processes involved in political communication and the sites where the processes take place (the media, civil organisations, etc). According to democracy theorist Robert Dahl, there is an expectation that the political preferences expressed in a democratic sphere are "freely formed". That is, if we subscribe to the definition of democracy as a political system that allows political talk to take place in a relatively untrammeled way, where civil liberties provide people with the ability to express views that run contrary to the current flavour of the incumbent government.

Yaacob Ibrahim gave a clue why Nizam Ismail had to go when he said money given to Malay Muslim organisations must be used to help the community, not "creating a platform for people to be involved in partisan politics." The Minister obviously does not subscribe to the belief that listening to diverse views, even critical and dissenting ones, is one of the processes of helping the community, one of the vaunted objectives of the ongoing National Conversation.

The chairman of the Association of Muslim Professionals (AMP), Azmoon Ahmad, had advised Nizam to part ways after separate phone calls from two Ministers (guess who?) took issue with some online comments, speaking at the Hong Lim Park, and participation in a public forum. Azmoon had to act, "Otherwise, the Government will withdraw all funding from AMP." Money may not buy happiness, but it sure does ensure compliance.

Nizam was aghast that activities in his private personal capacity was commingled with community services in his public capacity as an AMP/RIMA director. Community services which stand to benefit thousands – be they low-income families, youths at risk, students. Nizam is also leaving Suara Musyawarah, a feedback panel for the Malay-Muslim community. You would too, if feedback is commingled with kickbacks.

The other news worthy item in the public sphere is the arrest of a cartoonist for sedition, the offending copy being “Malay population… Deliberately suppressed by a racist government.”

Unpleasant Reminders

The counter for the mobile phone repair center was manned by Burmese, all of them. It was a golden opportunity to ask why the locals we came across in a recent trip to Rangoon were decorated with a yellow paste, like the red dot our own Indians adorn for ceremonial purposes. But the ladies didn't care to explain, and we didn't want to be insensitive about cultural practices.

Google provided some clues, but the enlightenment came from Zoyan Phan, author of "Undaunted".The tha na kah is a traditional face cream made from the bark of the tha maw glay, the tamarind tree. Her mother  would rub a length of the bark over a smooth stone, adding water simultaneously to dissolve the bark into a yellow paste. Besides acting as a natural sunblock, tha na kah is also applied to cheeks, arms and legs to keep cool in the hot season.

Zoya's book isn't just about beauty treatments. Her story is about the Karen tribe displaced by "the most brutal dictatorship in the world". She spent her childhood dodging live bullets and bombs, and managed to escape the hovel of the refugee camps in Thailand to earn an MA at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. Her father was assassinated in 2008 by agents of the Burmese regime, and Zoya was also on the hit list. After the world recoiled in the horror of the 2007 "Saffron Revolution", she actually spoke with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, asking him to introduce targeted economic sanctions that would stop money  from going to the generals. Money that was helping to pay for the bullets used against the monks on the streets of Rangoon. And the first class treatment of generals coming here as medical tourists to perpetuate the longevity of their dictatorship.

We don't know about the personal stories of the Burmese nationals fleeced by the "freelance recruiters", except that the first four months of their salaries are deducted for "recruitment fees", essentially making them slaves for the first period of their stay in Singapore. The practice is not unique to Burmese of course; Sri Lankans, Indonesians and Filipinos have also been exploited. It is easy to be inured to the unpleasantness of humanitarian rights abuses - until the day "our women will become maids in other people's countries, foreign workers". That's the outcome Lee Kuan Yew predicted for "a really a good dose of incompetent government." (LKY justifying million-dollar pay hike for Singapore ministers, Straits Times, 5 April 2007)