It was obvious the televised interview was unrehearsed. When a reporter asked Desmond Choo why he contradicted PM Lee who had suggested the Yaw saga was far from closed, it was not bravado but sheer political naïveté that made him declare on national tv, "Well, obviously our opinions differ and you can see that I am my own man." Someone please buy him a ticket for The Avengers:
Captain America: What's the matter? Afraid of a little bit of lightning?
Loki: No, but I'm not a huge fan of what follows.
Tharman jumped in to rescue him (who, Lee or Choo, it's hard to tell) by declaring that the Yaw affair was a national issue from the PM's perspective, not a local issue in respect of the current by-election. Choo had better grasp what he's getting into. Just learn from WP's Low Thia Khiang, "I believe it can never be so clear-cut whether it's local or national. While we've noted (Tharman's) comments on what the PAP wants to do, we have to see what comes out before we respond." Tharman may claim to be the underdog in this rumble, but Low has seen what "hulk, smash" can do.
“I’m still a rookie politician,” Choo admitted. At 34, be may not be as green as the Marine Parade gal lofted into parliament. But then, although married, he still has yet to complete his national service obligation to improve the total fertility rate. Maybe he, too, can't tell the difference between G-12 and G-spot. Compared to his opponent, it's easy to tell who has "eaten more salt than he has tasted rice."
Choo's just another of those sheltered scholar types - his day job is an appointment at NTUC, for pete's sake - who's so insulated from the ground that he thinks he can save Hougang single handedly. He claims he has refused help from party big wigs, while sitting flanked by the Finance Minister and the Minister of Education. For his sake, Tharman and Heng Swee Keat won't take offence at the insult. Maybe he meant to say big wigs like Emeritus Senior Minister Goh, who specialises on kicking in own goals, and provide the entertainment value at every election.
Heavy on the give-aways (porridge, hearing aids), Choo announced the launch of a monthly free legal clinic starting on May 15 that will be helmed by Subhas Anandan and a team of lawyers. Et tu, Anandan? This slug fest is so full of surprises.
Friday, May 11, 2012
The Yaw Factor
These things do happen in dysfunctional families. One member thinks lowly of Indian ethnic groups, another has a low esteem of our women folk.
Here's how it was written up on Sunday Times, 25th Sept 2011:
For his extremist perspective, Desmond Choo was nominated for the sexism Alamak Award by the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware). It was not the kind of landslide victory he was looking forward to.
Yaw had a different problem, he liked women too much. The Workers' Party (WP) wasn't interested in the lurid rumour mongering, they didn't want to go there. The man didn't show up for the disciplinary meeting, he was booted out. Unlike U.S. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr who didn't know when to quit when he went after Bill Clinton, he had to tell the whole wide world what the president did with a cigar.
PM Lee thinks different, he wants WP to give a "full and proper account" of Yaw's personal indiscretions. Probably will provide more distraction from the embarrassing revelations at the COI hearings. But the kind of folk addicted to such tabloid sleaze will probably start asking why Lee Kuan Yew married in secret while studying at Cambridge. His wife even put the ring on a chain, instead of on the fourth finger of her left hand.
Nah, this by-election is not about one guy's marriage. As a matter of fact, husband and wife are reported to be travelling in Vietnam. For all we know, they are on their second honeymoon. This Hougang event may well turn out to be a referendum, a report card on how the citizens feel about the transport meltdown, housing affordability, foreigner divide, and income gap. One year has come and gone, millions in bonuses have been paid out to the ministers, and yet "much work remains ahead to translate good policies and programmes into actions on the ground, and to deliver the results that we all look forward to" (PM's own words).
Here's how it was written up on Sunday Times, 25th Sept 2011:
"Mr Choo, 33, who was the People’s Action Party’s candidate in Hougang in the May General Election, was criticised for being sexist when he made his maiden rally speech. During that speech, he recounted a meeting with an elderly Hougang resident who told him that choosing an MP is like choosing a wife.
‘If your wife is unable to cook, there’s no point. You must choose a wife who is able to look after you and do things for you,’ Mr Choo had said in recounting what the elderly man told him."
For his extremist perspective, Desmond Choo was nominated for the sexism Alamak Award by the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware). It was not the kind of landslide victory he was looking forward to.
Yaw had a different problem, he liked women too much. The Workers' Party (WP) wasn't interested in the lurid rumour mongering, they didn't want to go there. The man didn't show up for the disciplinary meeting, he was booted out. Unlike U.S. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr who didn't know when to quit when he went after Bill Clinton, he had to tell the whole wide world what the president did with a cigar.
PM Lee thinks different, he wants WP to give a "full and proper account" of Yaw's personal indiscretions. Probably will provide more distraction from the embarrassing revelations at the COI hearings. But the kind of folk addicted to such tabloid sleaze will probably start asking why Lee Kuan Yew married in secret while studying at Cambridge. His wife even put the ring on a chain, instead of on the fourth finger of her left hand.
Nah, this by-election is not about one guy's marriage. As a matter of fact, husband and wife are reported to be travelling in Vietnam. For all we know, they are on their second honeymoon. This Hougang event may well turn out to be a referendum, a report card on how the citizens feel about the transport meltdown, housing affordability, foreigner divide, and income gap. One year has come and gone, millions in bonuses have been paid out to the ministers, and yet "much work remains ahead to translate good policies and programmes into actions on the ground, and to deliver the results that we all look forward to" (PM's own words).
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Haste Makes Waste
Shortly after returning from his leave of May 1 to 6, the Prime Minister instructed President Tony Tan to issue the writ of election on 9 May for nomination day to be 16 May, to be followed promptly by actual polling day on 26 May. After all the delay tactics, court room drama and all, the obscene haste to rush the by-election through with minimal time for the electorate to vet the potential candidates merely confirms the incumbents have not changed their form or style of politics. Either that, or they are assuming the promises of GE 2011 to "do a better job" have already been forgotten.
Curiously, the Returning Officer for the Hougang by-election Yam Ah Mee has approved the use of 9 symbols by candidates: scroll, bicycle, ship, tree, flower, horse, hen, rhinoceros and bird. Are they attempting to detract from the highly anticipated clash of symbols between the lightning bolt and the hammer? If so, they might as well add the following symbols already deployed for the pork barrel politics - bowl of porridge, hearing aid, wet market.
They are also probably counting on the short term memory of the average Singaporean voter. Especially folks who have forgotten about the racist humour of one PAP Member of Parliament Choo Wee Khiang:
Two years earlier, the same Choo was fiddling with the books. The law caught up with him only on June 7, 1999, when he pleaded guilty to a charge of abetting his brother-in-law to cheat a finance company by issuing false invoices worth $1,000,000 in 1990. In a statement on his stepping down prior to sentencing, then Acting Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said he was saddened by Choo's resignation and that Choo "has done the right thing." Note the regret was about his resignation, not the transgression of law.
That kind of history didn't bother the guys who made him President of the Singapore Table Tennis Association (STTA), a tenure which he abused by incurring three counts of corruption and one of criminal breach of trust. From 2005 to 2007, Choo was alleged to have charged his personal airfares, expenses, phone bills to the Singapore Table Tennis Association (STTA) and received gifts of S$1,500 and US$600 from Chinese coaches and players.
For the sake of the people of Hougang, this Choo better not take on the guise of a scroll, bicycle, ship, tree, flower, horse, hen, rhinoceros or bird. Given the short times allocated for the by-election, it's easy to make a mistake.
Curiously, the Returning Officer for the Hougang by-election Yam Ah Mee has approved the use of 9 symbols by candidates: scroll, bicycle, ship, tree, flower, horse, hen, rhinoceros and bird. Are they attempting to detract from the highly anticipated clash of symbols between the lightning bolt and the hammer? If so, they might as well add the following symbols already deployed for the pork barrel politics - bowl of porridge, hearing aid, wet market.
They are also probably counting on the short term memory of the average Singaporean voter. Especially folks who have forgotten about the racist humour of one PAP Member of Parliament Choo Wee Khiang:
"One evening, I drove to Little India and it was pitch dark but not because there was no light, but because there were too many Indians around."That quip was made during a 1992 session of parliament.
Two years earlier, the same Choo was fiddling with the books. The law caught up with him only on June 7, 1999, when he pleaded guilty to a charge of abetting his brother-in-law to cheat a finance company by issuing false invoices worth $1,000,000 in 1990. In a statement on his stepping down prior to sentencing, then Acting Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said he was saddened by Choo's resignation and that Choo "has done the right thing." Note the regret was about his resignation, not the transgression of law.
That kind of history didn't bother the guys who made him President of the Singapore Table Tennis Association (STTA), a tenure which he abused by incurring three counts of corruption and one of criminal breach of trust. From 2005 to 2007, Choo was alleged to have charged his personal airfares, expenses, phone bills to the Singapore Table Tennis Association (STTA) and received gifts of S$1,500 and US$600 from Chinese coaches and players.
For the sake of the people of Hougang, this Choo better not take on the guise of a scroll, bicycle, ship, tree, flower, horse, hen, rhinoceros or bird. Given the short times allocated for the by-election, it's easy to make a mistake.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Learning From Hainan
The Singapore Government spends undisclosed sums to host bureaucrats from China, teach them about governance and stuff, all on the premise they have lots to learn from us.
As Reuter describes it, Hainan has poured money into prime seafront property, five-star hotels, golf courses and marinas for private yachts. Just like the Singapore model. And along familiar lines, the economic growth has resulted in inflation and a yawning income disparity. The poor family farms, that once generated 20,000 yuan (about S$4,000) a year, are sold off to build luxury homes that fetch as much as 150,000 yuan per sq m. What we would call land acquisition to feed the land bank for property developers.
"It is more like a hometown of rich outlanders, instead of ours, though we were born here and lived on htis land for generations," lamented the 26-year old Zhang, whose parents used to grow mangoes on farmland which has been cleared for construction of another new tourist resort. It is enough turn anyone into a xenophobe. But the similarity dies here.
Fortunately the Hainan goverment does not turn a deaf ear to its citizens' plight. Last year, it gave urban residents 42 yuan a month to subsidise food consumption. Across the board, not selectively in predetermined electoral wards.
The central government also pledged to raise the annual average minimum wages by at least 13 percent in the five years to 2015. Maybe not as drastic as Prof Lim Chong Yah's recommendations, but at least they are headed in the right direction, they do have officially sanctioned minimum wage levels. And oh, the local authorities have to set the lowest wages at least 40 percent of average local wages. You see, these guys take the income gap seriously.
Maybe the Singapore lecturers should learn from their PRC students.
As Reuter describes it, Hainan has poured money into prime seafront property, five-star hotels, golf courses and marinas for private yachts. Just like the Singapore model. And along familiar lines, the economic growth has resulted in inflation and a yawning income disparity. The poor family farms, that once generated 20,000 yuan (about S$4,000) a year, are sold off to build luxury homes that fetch as much as 150,000 yuan per sq m. What we would call land acquisition to feed the land bank for property developers.
"It is more like a hometown of rich outlanders, instead of ours, though we were born here and lived on htis land for generations," lamented the 26-year old Zhang, whose parents used to grow mangoes on farmland which has been cleared for construction of another new tourist resort. It is enough turn anyone into a xenophobe. But the similarity dies here.
Fortunately the Hainan goverment does not turn a deaf ear to its citizens' plight. Last year, it gave urban residents 42 yuan a month to subsidise food consumption. Across the board, not selectively in predetermined electoral wards.
The central government also pledged to raise the annual average minimum wages by at least 13 percent in the five years to 2015. Maybe not as drastic as Prof Lim Chong Yah's recommendations, but at least they are headed in the right direction, they do have officially sanctioned minimum wage levels. And oh, the local authorities have to set the lowest wages at least 40 percent of average local wages. You see, these guys take the income gap seriously.
Maybe the Singapore lecturers should learn from their PRC students.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Air Force Envy
The Ministry of Defence initiated LALEE (Low Altitude Long Enduring Endurance) research in 1998 to replace the E-2C Hawkeye early warning aircraft, among other purposes (presumably military ones).
"We will have to look at replacing the E-2C, which has been with us for 14 years. I think the time has come," said Maj Gen Lim in 2004. One option was a system like the LALEE, studied for 3 years by a team under a Prof Lui. The unmanned air vehicle (UAV) was described by Lui as "an integrated airborne surveillance and communications system to provide continuous temporal and very large spatial coverage". The good news to taxpayers was that it would "provide a task group operating in the littorals (coastal region) with continuous surveillance from the air at a cost considerably cheaper than operating current-generation surveillance and communications platforms". During the 21 April 2004 presentation to the Unmanned Vehicles Asia Pacific conference in Sydney, Maj Alfred Fox, then director of Mindef's newly established future systems directorate, displayed images of a single fuselage air vehicle with a large, underslung phased-array radar (Flight International, May 2004).
According to Associate Professor Tan of International Studies, University of New South Wales, Australia, Singapore already operates a comparatively large UAV fleet, consisting of about forty Hermes 450 and Searcher UAVs. On top of this, it also acquired four advanced surveillance platforms comprising Gulfstream 550 jets equipped with the Elta conformal EW system which went into service in Israel in 2008 ("East Asia's Military Transformation: The Revolution in Military Affairs and its Problems", Security Challenges, Vol.7, No.3, Spring 2011).
When the four Northrop Grumman E-2C Hawkeye aircraft were first delivered from 1985-6, our neigbours were not too happy with the intrusive spy in the sky. Goh Chok Tong made more people unhappy when he said the cost of each plane was "only" equivalent to a plate of char kway teow for every man, woman and child in Singapore. This had to be a precursor of the "$600,000 is peanuts" remark made by Mrs Goh during the NKF saga. The Aviation Research Group says the price for one Gulfstream G550 starts at US$59.9 million.
Singapore's defence ministry confirmed the purchase of the four Gulfstream luxury business jets in 2007. DPM Teo Chee Hean, the big spender, proudly announced their operational status in April 2012. The G550 can fly faster, higher, longer and see farther than the E-2C Hawkeye which it replaces. A quick look at the Gulfstream brochure also shows that the configuration can be easily tweaked to rival the accouterments onboard America's Air Force One. Poor Obama, and he thought he had one up over the highest paid political leader in the world.
"We will have to look at replacing the E-2C, which has been with us for 14 years. I think the time has come," said Maj Gen Lim in 2004. One option was a system like the LALEE, studied for 3 years by a team under a Prof Lui. The unmanned air vehicle (UAV) was described by Lui as "an integrated airborne surveillance and communications system to provide continuous temporal and very large spatial coverage". The good news to taxpayers was that it would "provide a task group operating in the littorals (coastal region) with continuous surveillance from the air at a cost considerably cheaper than operating current-generation surveillance and communications platforms". During the 21 April 2004 presentation to the Unmanned Vehicles Asia Pacific conference in Sydney, Maj Alfred Fox, then director of Mindef's newly established future systems directorate, displayed images of a single fuselage air vehicle with a large, underslung phased-array radar (Flight International, May 2004).
According to Associate Professor Tan of International Studies, University of New South Wales, Australia, Singapore already operates a comparatively large UAV fleet, consisting of about forty Hermes 450 and Searcher UAVs. On top of this, it also acquired four advanced surveillance platforms comprising Gulfstream 550 jets equipped with the Elta conformal EW system which went into service in Israel in 2008 ("East Asia's Military Transformation: The Revolution in Military Affairs and its Problems", Security Challenges, Vol.7, No.3, Spring 2011).
When the four Northrop Grumman E-2C Hawkeye aircraft were first delivered from 1985-6, our neigbours were not too happy with the intrusive spy in the sky. Goh Chok Tong made more people unhappy when he said the cost of each plane was "only" equivalent to a plate of char kway teow for every man, woman and child in Singapore. This had to be a precursor of the "$600,000 is peanuts" remark made by Mrs Goh during the NKF saga. The Aviation Research Group says the price for one Gulfstream G550 starts at US$59.9 million.
Singapore's defence ministry confirmed the purchase of the four Gulfstream luxury business jets in 2007. DPM Teo Chee Hean, the big spender, proudly announced their operational status in April 2012. The G550 can fly faster, higher, longer and see farther than the E-2C Hawkeye which it replaces. A quick look at the Gulfstream brochure also shows that the configuration can be easily tweaked to rival the accouterments onboard America's Air Force One. Poor Obama, and he thought he had one up over the highest paid political leader in the world.
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