Brompton Case Closed

Something to smile about

It was blatantly obvious that assistant director of the National Parks Board (NParks) Bernard Lim had colluded with his pal BikeHop director Lawrence Lim in the acquisition of $2,200 Brompton foldable bikes for inspecting trees. Investigative efforts by netizens provided the damning proof: timing of bid, duration of bid, specifications written around the desired product. That similarly functional foldable bikes were available at prices as low as $128 imply public funds were misused and abused.

Minister of National Development (MND) Khaw Book Wan initially defended the purchase of the bikes by claiming they were good value for money. Same reasoning he offered for buying Herman Miller chairs when he was at the Health Ministry. Any guy paid more than a million smackeroos a year tends to think like that. When public disgust cascaded, Khaw tasked an audit team from his MND to work with NParks to review the controversial purchase. MND passed the case to the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau CPIB) in July 2012. Then in March 2013, DPM Teo Chee Hean, in response to query by member of parliament Lina Chiam, revealed that CPIB had completed its investigation and the case was with the public prosecutor “for assessment and determination of whether there is any offence disclosed”.

This month in August, CPIB charged Lim with knowingly given false information to a public servant, lying about his personal relationship with Lawrence Lim, for which the NParks director can be jailed up to a year and fined $5,000. No need to wait till 27 September 2013, when the case will be up for mention, the punishment will be another slap on the wrist.

The system cannot be faulted, the minister cannot be embarrassed for his error in judgement. The inquiry into the death of Dinesh Raman Chinnaiah was abbreviated by the sacrificial offering of scape goat Deputy Superintendent Lim Kwo Yin, charged and fined $10,000. The Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC) has rejected the request by family members to re-open an inquest into the circumstances of the loss of life at Changi Prison. The Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) is to move on.

Call A Spade A Spade

Billed as a cabinet reshuffle, it was in actuality a promotion exercise. Speaking to the media in Xinjiang, China, where he is on an official visit cum holiday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that the tasks at hand "have become more complicated and more intense" and that the existing mechanism needs to be "staffed with political leadership . . . who can do the political work, which means going out . . . engaging Singaporeans . . . understanding what people are feeling".

Not everyone was promoted. Tan Chuan-Jin had to step down as Senior Minister of State at Ministry of National Development (MND), but gets to hang on to his post as Acting Minister for Manpower. Political unknown Desmond Lee (who's he?) will be taking over the role of Minister of State at MND, the ministry handling the hot potato issue of affordable housing. Perhaps Lee felt that the Bukit Brown and bus strike brouhaha was not what he had in mind about ". . . engaging Singaporeans . . . understanding what people are feeling."

Perhaps Lee's idea of people ..."who can do the political work, which means going out..." was luring senior citizens with packet meals to boost the pathetic attendance at its election rallies. Or help shovel dirt at a tree planting photo-op when dad didn't have the physical strength to lift the farming implement.

Chan Chun Sing made his cameo appearance at the funeral of the PM's mother, claiming to be in charge of the gun carriage team. When rumors spiralled about his association in the family tree, instead of quashing the misinformation outright, he added fuel to the speculation, "I am related to the Lee family as much as I am related to all Singaporeans..  as fellow Singaporeans". The political mileage in the innuendo is not missed.

Way back in 1988 of the newspaper archives, Chan was more straight forward with the truth: "My mother is a machine-operator. I do not stay with my father became my parents are divorced." While we are still at myth busting, Wong Kan Seng is not related either - it just happens his wife has the same three-letter surname. Then again - how did Chan put it? - "...if one believes in evolution, then we all - regardless of race, language and religion - came from the same ancestor."

No Simple Solution In Sight

According to Occam's razor (also written as Ockham's razor from William of Ockham, and in Latin lex parsimoniae), the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. The principle of parsimony states that one should proceed to simpler theories until simplicity can be traded for greater explanatory power.

Writing to the press, Nick Fellows, managing director of a transport consultancy, suggests a "simple solution" to a problem that had the Land Transport Authority (LTA) polling 3,700 and interviewed another 200 to address the Certificate Of Entitlement (COE) dilemma. Simply stated, there are 535,000 private cars in Singapore. Based on a lifespan of 10 years, and no extension, this equates to 53,500 COEs per year. Release 53,500 COEs a year, he recommended, instead of the current 24,000 limit, which is pushing the price of the piece of paper towards $100,000.

There is another simple way to look at the problem. The COE system was started 23 years ago, when the total population (citizens and permanent residents) was 3.047 million. In 2012, the official statistic is 5.312 million. The number of foreigners in-country have not been included. Unless the kilometers of road have kept pace with the growth of vehicle owners, the nightmare of the grid-lock can only be epic when the population hits 6.9 million.

Havard University's Professor Susan Fainstein was quoted as saying a just city, not just a global city, has three essential attributes: equity, diversity and democracy. Oh, we have diversity, we even have Indians speaking different languages, Tamil and Hindi. On democracy, someone wrote that "it would be a stretch to say that the residents of Singapore feel they have significantly more voice and enjoy more democratic rights today than they did a decade ago." It is equity in private transportation that is even more hurting.

A fixed supply of COEs is only part of the problem, making them available only to those with deep pockets is the other. Pity the karang guni man making the rounds with his beat up Nissan pickup. Soon he will be reduced to pushing a cart, like the sad old women collecting cardboard boxes to stay alive. Meanwhile high worth individuals from around the world are continually encouraged to move into the crowded city. For these guys, what better conspicuous display of wealth than a string of COEs? Everybody else is packed like sardines into the public transportation metallic boxes, straight from their public housing pigeon holes in the sky.

Elephant In The Room

The Our Singapore Conversation (OSC) Survey was conducted over a period of two months, between 1 December 2012 and 31 January 2013, and completed by 4,000 Singaporeans. The strange part is that the OSC was conducted over one whole calendar year, and 47,000 people were involved. Given the importance of the objective, to determine what Singaporeans hope to see in 2030 and what their key priorities are for today, the sample size and sampling period seems anemic. Sample size is an important feature of any empirical study in which the goal is to make inferences about a population, too small a sample size results in wide confidence intervals or risks of errors in statistical studies.

Fortunately, the findings did confirm that Job Security, Healthcare and Housing are top concerns among the electorate. Next in order of decreasing ranking, Caring Government, Safety and Security, Public Transport and Education System kept Singaporeans awake at nights. We have heard the placating platitudes about Healthcare, Housing and Education System, but nothing about the elephant in the room, Job Security.

Globalisation is always fingered as the bad guy, and "competition" is the scape goat when jobs are lost or taken away.

Wu Jiaping (not his real name) is one of 200 PRC imports who will be studying at our local universities. He is spending one year at a preparatory school to brush up his competency in English before starting his 4-year degree course, to be followed by a 6-year bond working in Singapore. Wu will be spending 11 years here, 5 years of which are on a scholarship funded by Singapore taxpayers, which includes a generous stipend of $400 pocket money each month. This is way more generous than the School Pocket Money Fund allowance that selected Singaporean children are given for school-related expenses, such as buying a meal during recess, paying for their bus fares or using it to meet their other schooling needs (Primary school beneficiaries receive $55 a month, secondary school beneficiaries $90, post-secondary institutions like Polytechnics $120). Wu said his batch is studying engineering, which means 200 engineering jobs have been allocated for this "imported competition". There are other batches involving other disciplines of study. How many more jobs are set aside for the foreigners is any body's guess.

The OSC survey report, like the White Paper, is unsigned, so we don't know who to approach to ask why the respondents to the survey felt Job Security is a top worry. Perhaps they are resigned to the fact that competing for jobs on even basis is already an uphill task, and putting faith in meritocracy to ensure their survival. Blissfully unaware of the loaded deck they have been dealt with.

A Widening Gap In Trust

First we heard Lee Kuan Yew say that our declining population woes had nothing to do with his stop-at-two policy. Now we hear Deputy Prime Minister Tharman  Shanmugaratnam declare that the gap between the rich and poor here is not the result of the Government's recent growth strategy. The Gospel accord to S Tharman wants to believe us that "the spike in education levels exacerbated the high inequality". He was speaking at the Academy of Medicine which conferred him a honorary fellowship, not the Academy of Wisdom, or Academy of Blind Faith.

Recall Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's take on how a higher Gini coefficient could be even better for all of us. "Supposing the world's richest man, Carlos Slim, comes to live in Singapore. The Gini coefficient will get worse. But I think Singapore will be better off. Even for the lower-income Singaporeans, it will be better."

That's entirely consistent with his father's line of thought. Dismissing the minimal wage as a method to reduce the growing income gap between the rich and poor, Lee Senior had insisted, “Never mind your Gini coefficient. If you don’t have a job you get zero against those with jobs. So our first priority is jobs for everybody.” Others beg to differ.

At the 18 Jan 2013 press conference in Beijing, China's State Council released for the first time the Gini coefficient for the past decade to demonstrate the government’s resolve to bridge the gap between the rich and poor. Despite year-by-year retreat, the Gini coefficient has stayed at a relatively high level of between 0.47 and 0.49 during the last 10 years. "The statistics highlighted the urgency for our country to speed up the income distribution reforms to narrow the wealth gap," said Ma Jiantang, director of the National Bureau of Statistics.

According to the BBC, "A Gini-coefficient of 0.4 is generally regarded as the international warning level for dangerous levels of inequality." Our own academic Lim Chong Yah confirms, "A Gini coefficient of 0.5 is normally considered a danger to breach." Singapore is already mired in the danger zone.

The mainstream media tried to ameliorate the deplorable state by judicious manipulation of statistics. According to TODAY, “Singapore’s Gini coefficient of 0.478 last year, before accounting for Government transfers and taxes, is on a per-household-member basis.” It goes on to argue that “some countries compute their Gini coefficients based on the “square root scale”, and  Singapore’s Gini coefficient is “0.435 if the (modified OECD) square root scale is used” and would be 0.414 after Government transfers and taxes are factored in. Balderdash. If the income gap is a non-issue, why did DPM Tharman have to defend it, and PM Lee leave it out of the National Day Rally speech?