李总理记者会 庞大政府部门 可能需超过一名部长

一些庞大的政府部门，今后可能需要超过一名全职部长来管理。

　　李显龙总理昨天在总统府会见媒体，谈论内阁最新一轮改组时表示，随着经济体变大，人口增加，国民要求提高，加上制度变得复杂，不管是国家发展部，国防部，教育部或贸工部，部长的职责都比过去繁重。

　　他可以确定的说，像贸工部，外交部，教育部和国防部，肯定需要多名政务部长或政务次长来协助部长的工作。“我得说当中几个较庞大的部门，其实需要超过一名全职部长。不过那是我们今后必须考虑的问题。”

　　总理也指出，尽管政府的工作比过去庞大和沉重，但政府部门照旧维持在15个，包括总理公署 (Prime Minister’s Office)在内。经过这轮改组，部长包括代部长的人数是21人，总人数也没有改变。

　　他不认为15个政府部门和21位部长和代部长人数过多，因为政府的工作实际上已变得更繁重。

　　总理说，目前21位部长中，当中有10人也就是一半，是在过去三届大选即1997年、2001年和2006年的大选中选出来的。这些年轻部长以活力和新想法，主导政府决策。年龄较大资深部长，则凭着丰富经验和阅历，在国家面临危机时提出各种忠告。

　　他表示，政府部门究竟应该有多少项任命，又或者总理公署应该有多少位部长，其实没有定数。他把一些部长安排在总理公署，只是一种技术上的安排，他们的职责不一定在总理公署，但每个人都会有各自的职责。

　　身为总理，他的职责是组织一批全面、能有效运作的领导团队，确保每位部长、政务部长、政务次长都有一定分量，都能有所贡献，虽然大家未必做同样的事。他说，不是每一个人都在草拟政策，也不是每一个人都在搞基层，又或者以咨询者的角色自居，但每个人都有特定责任和分量。

　　在解释政府的工作为何比过去繁重时，总理以贸工部为例说，贸工部内部其实有个小外交部，它需要和中国、印度、亚细安、亚太地区、本区域，甚至整个世界建立外交和经济关系，一方面培养友好关系，另一方面维护我们的利益，推展我们的观点。

　　总理说，这样的工作比20年前、甚至10年前密集和繁重很多倍。我们虽是个小国，但要求还是一样，担子只有比过去沉重，可是我们还是维持同一数量的部门。

当问及政府最近物色新人是否更困难时，李总理稍面有难色说，他不愿说这个过程更艰难，因为政府过去确实引进不少优秀的人选。不过在上届大选中确实有些人选因为自觉还没准备好，所以没参选。“我想私人企业现在有更多机会，人才也更分散，所以要召集和说服他们会更困难。例如一名出色的科学家或研究员，我必须推断他是否适合从实验室的工作转到亲吻婴儿和打理一个部门，这是很大的转变也有风险……人们现在会觉得点头答应是更困难的事。”

政府没有“资政制”

　　李显龙总理要求贾古玛在卸下副总理的职务后继续留在内阁担任国务资政，是要借重他多年的宝贵经验，认为他能继续作出贡献，这并不意味每一位卸任的副总理都会转任国务资政，并长期留守在内阁中。

　　李总理也指出，副总理出任国务资政的作法其实早有先例，已故建国元勋拉惹勒南最早在1984年卸下第二副总理职务后，便担任总理公署高级部长（英文职衔同为Senior Minister）。不过，前副总理陈庆炎退休后便回返私人界，没有出任国务资政。

　　“这都得视情况而定，只要他们能继续为内阁团队和新加坡作出贡献，我认为是值得把他们留下的。”

　　政府内阁将有三位资政，分别是内阁资政李光耀、国务资政吴作栋及即将转任国务资政的贾古玛。李光耀是在1990年卸下总理职务后出任内阁资政；吴作栋则是在2004年将总理棒子交给李显龙后出任国务资政。

　　贾古玛从政前曾是新加坡大学的法律系院长，在1980年大选中当选后，隔年获擢升出任律政部和内政部政务部长，1984年正式升任为劳工部长、内政部及律政部第二部长，至今已有近30年的从政经验。

　　总理说，贾古玛拥有的经验深具价值，而他也很重视贾古玛提供的意见，所以才会要求他继续留在内阁。

　　“就拿去年的白礁案件来说，很少有人（像他那样）对一个延续长达30年的问题了如指掌，并一开始便着手处理这个问题、直到它解决为止。贾古玛研究白礁争端的起源并亲自在国际法院聆听法官所做的裁决。”

　　未来，贾古玛除了留任国家安全统筹部长外，也将继续负责气候变化及外交政策上涉及法律事务如边界谈判课题。“我们解决了白礁主权的争端，但还有其他尚未解决的课题，不时会有一些新问题出现，我想贾古玛能在这方面作出贡献。”

总理消瘦是在减重

　　如果你觉得李总理最近看起来有些消瘦，那是因为他听从医生指示减重，而不是健康出了毛病。

　　李总理昨天回答记者有关他的健康状况问题时说，他的健康情况良好，如果有人觉得他看似瘦了，那是因为他的身体质量指数（BMI）超过理想水平，所以医生嘱咐他要减重。

　　“我昨天看报道，许文远（卫生部长）说人要保持身材苗条些比较好，所以我现在的压力更大了。”

　　总理说，他每年定期做健康检查，医生会仔细检查，目前为止他的身体无恙。“现在我的健康没问题，不过人生无常，你能做的也只有好好照顾身体，其他的顺其自然。但在这同时，我也要确保整个团队的实力是雄厚的，就是说整个领导团队不是只靠一个人运作。”

　　现年57岁的李总理在1984年踏入政坛，他在1992年11月曾被检验患上中期淋巴癌，在接受化疗后康复，多年来没有复发。

Source: Zaobao.com

Improve the remuneration for local doctors instead of turning to foreign doctors

EDITORS’ NOTE:  The writer is currently a General Practitioner in private practice. He wishes to remain anonymous.

I refer to the report on 30 March 2009 – “1,000 foreign-trained docs still not enough” (read article here). Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan revealed that the public healthcare sector needs to recruit a thousand more foreign doctors to filled the gaps and a third medical school may be needed in the future.

I beg to differ with Mr Khaw’s observation that there are insufficient doctors in Singapore. There are 250 graduates from NUS medical school every year. Less than half the number of doctors retire or close down their practices in the same period of time.

The shortage of doctors lies in the public sector especially in primary healthcare and less popular specialties like Geriatrics, Internal Medicine and Palliative Care.

Over half of our polyclinics are now staffed by foreign doctors who have communication problems with elderly patients. Very few local doctors wish to further their careers in the polyclinics and left for the private sector upon the completion of their bonds. Why is this so?

The monthly salary of a final year medical officer at a polyclinic is only S$5,000 plus compared to S$8,000 to S$9,000 in the private sector with less than half the workload. Even a part-time locum working only three days a week can chalk up the same amount.

An internal medicine trainee needs to spend a few years toiling in the public hospitals, but end up with a salary less than fellow GP colleagues outside. The attrition rate for internal medicine is probably one of the highest amongst all specialities. Many of my friends who were internal medicine trainees give up halfway due to work-related or family reasons and some already passed their MRCP examinations.

Though medicine is a holistic profession and financial renumeration should not be an overriding factor in determining the career paths of doctors, more can be done to ensure that local doctors are adequately rewarded for their contributions to public healthcare.

MOH has always argued against that an increase in salaries of healthcare workers will lead to higher healthcare costs for Singaporeans. We spent only 4% of our GDP on healthcare which is far less than most developed countries.

The government can well afford to spend more of our GDP on healthcare to improve working conditions of local doctors and nurses so as to keep more of them in the workforce. Why do we have so few local nurses in public hospitals? The starting pay for a staff nurse is only S$1,500 compared to about A$4,000 in Australia.

Though it is cheaper to employ foreign doctors, they are merely stop-gap measures which do not address the root cause of the problem.

With an aging population, we need more family physicians, geriatricians and palliative care specialists in the healthcare system to add more years of healthy life to Singaporeans.

Beware of impersonators of wayangparty posting in internet forums and blogs to discredit us

Dear readers,

It has come to our attention that a troll(s)  has been impersonating us with the monikers ‘wayangparty’, ‘wayangparty admin’, ‘wayangparty club’, ‘wayang club’ etc on posts in various internet forums and blogs

They follow the same modus operandi: somebody will pretend to ‘complain’ about wayangparty and then the trolls will respond immediately to appear to ‘defend’ us but is in reality out to smear our name by protraying us in a negative manner.

We have associates in every internet forum in Singapore and none of them uses the above monikers.

At the same time, we have also been receiving false ‘tip-offs’ from anonymous sources leading to a waste of time for our freelance reporters.

We believe this is the work of the same team of trolls who is out to discredit wayangparty to prevent its continued growth and expansion.

We urge wayangparty readers to help us expose these impersonators as and when they arise. We will also be sending out a list of IP addresses to some blogs and forum moderators as well as all our associates to take note of.

To these trolls out there, we have been monitoring you and we already have an idea of where you are from. If you want to continue playing this game with us, then be prepared for the consequences when your identities are leaked out.

 

THE EDITORIAL TEAM

Repeated comments from internet trolls under the guise of different nicknames will now be censored

Dear readers,

It has come to our attention that an internet troll has been monitoring our site and spamming it with repeated comments every one minute:

In the span of 20 minutes, he or she posted 22 comments using different nicks from the same IP address.

We welcome genuine criticisms from our readers, but we will not tolerate nonsense from troublemakers who have nothing better to do in their lives.

We understand you are paid to do a job and we will not make life difficult for you. You are allowed to post only three comments per article. Summarize all the invectives you want to hurl at us and we will publish it, but spamming to slow down the site will not be allowed.

 

THE EDITORIAL TEAM

George Yeo, the man who respects us all enough, not to hurt our brain.

Why can’t every minister talk like Gen George Yeo – if they did, they wouldn’t cause us all pain all the time. please take a good 20 min to understand what I mean – Darkness 2009

The Great Repricing 

Madam Pro-Vice Chancellor, Kate Pretty, my old tutor, Professor Navaratnam, dear friends, ladies and gentlemen, it may seem inauspicious that Cambridge should be celebrating its 800th Anniversary at a time when the world is heading into a deep recession the likes of which have not been seen for a long time. From the perspective of Cambridge’s long history, however, this sharp economic downturn is but another discontinuity in the affairs of man of which the University has seen many and participated in not a few. Whether this crisis marks a major break in world history we don’t know yet. Turning points are only seen for what they are in hindsight.

What is becoming clearer is the severity of the crisis. No one is sure where the bottom is or how long this crisis will last. In the meantime, tens of thousands of companies will go bankrupt and tens of millions of people will lose their jobs ─ at least. What started as a financial crisis has become a full-blown economic crisis. For many countries, worsening economic conditions will lead to political crisis. In some, governments acting hastily in response to short-term political pressure will do further harm to the economy.

In an editorial last December, the Financial Times commented that the US Federal Reserve was flying blind. But, in fact, all governments are flying with poor vision. Markets are volatile precisely because no one knows for sure which policy responses will work.

I remember an old family doctor once explaining how every disease must run its course. In treating an illness, he said, one works with its progression. Attempting to short-cut the process may worsen the underlying condition. While emergency action may be needed and symptoms can be ameliorated, the body must be healed from within after which its immunological status changes.

The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter understood the importance of creative destruction. The end of an economic cycle does not return the economy to where it was at the beginning. During the downturn, firms go bankrupt, people lose jobs, institutions are revamped, governments may be changed. And in the process, resources are reallocated and the old gives way to the new.

Charles Darwin, whose 200th birth anniversary we mark this year, understood all that. Life is a struggle with old forms giving way to new forms. And human society is part of this struggle.

The question we ask ourselves is, what is the new reality that is struggling to emerge from the old? History is not pre-determined. There is, at any point in time, a number of possible futures, each, as it were, a state of partial equilibrium. And every crisis is a discontinuity from one partial equilibrium state to another within what scenario analysts call a cone of possibilities.

Well, whatever trajectory history takes within that cone of possibilities in the coming years, there will be a great repricing of assets, of factors of production, of countries, of ideas.

Economic Repricing

Let me first talk about economic repricing. Many bubbles have burst in the current crisis starting with sub-prime properties in the US. All over the world, asset prices are plummeting. In the last one year, tens of trillions of dollars have been wiped out. How much further this painful process will continue, no one can be sure. Many months ago, Alan Greenspan, in his usual measured way, peering into the hole said he saw a bottom forming in the fall of asset prices; it turned out to be the darkness of an abyss very few knew existed. That bottom is only reached when assets are sufficiently repriced downwards. Public policies can help or hinder this process. Unfortunately, many stimulus packages being proposed will make the adjustment more difficult. For example, bailing out inefficient automobile companies may end up prolonging the pain of restructuring at tremendous public expense.

The repricing of human beings will be even more traumatic. With globalisation, we have in effect one marketplace for human labour in the world. Directly or indirectly, the wages and salaries of Americans, Europeans and Japanese are being held down by billions of Asians and Africans prepared to work for much less. China and India alone are graduating more scientists and engineers every year than all the developed countries combined. Now, while it is true that trade is a positive sum game, the benefits of trade are never equally distributed. We can therefore expect protectionist pressures to grow in many countries.

Governments will try to protect jobs often at long-term cost to their economies. It is wrong to think that we can force our way out of a recession. Beyond a point, the stress will be taken on exchange rates. If governments try to prevent the repricing of assets and human beings, international markets will force the adjustment on us. A country that is over-leveraged living beyond its means will itself be repriced through its currency. Its currency will be devalued, forcing lower living standards on all its citizens.

The world is in profound imbalance today. All the G7 countries are in recession. The West is consuming too much and saving too little while the East is saving too much and consuming too little. China, India and others need to consume much more of what they produce but they are unable to take up the present slack in global demand because their GDPs are still too small. In 10-20 years, they may be able to but certainly not in the next few years. In the meantime, the global economy may suffer a prolonged recession, a global Keynesian paradox of thrift.

 

Political Repricing

When this crisis is finally over, which may take some years, out of it will emerge a multi-polar world with clearer contours. Although the US will remain the pre-eminent pole for a long time to come, it will no longer be the hyperpower and power will have to be shared. The Western-dominated developed world will have to share significant power with China, India, Russia, Brazil and other countries. Thus, accompanying the economic repricing will be political repricing.

Following the spectacular opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, Tony Blair wrote in the Wall Street Journal of August 26 last year: “This is a historic moment of change. Fast forward 10 years and everyone will know it. For centuries, the power has resided in the West, with various European powers including the British Empire and then, in the 20th century, the US. Now we will have to come to terms with a world in which the power is shared with the Far East. I wonder if we quite understand what that means, we whose culture (not just our politics and economies) has dominated for so long. It will be a rather strange, possibly unnerving experience.”

Those words were said by Tony Blair in August last year before the financial meltdown. How much more they ring true today. Sharing power is however easier said than done. But without a major restructuring of international institutions, including the Bretton Woods institutions, many problems in global governance cannot be properly managed. The meeting of G20 leaders started by President George Bush in November last year is a necessary new beginning. But it is a process. Prime Minister Gordon Brown is hoping that the next meeting on 2 April in London will sketch out the main elements of a global bargain. To be sure, the reform of global institutions is a process that will take years to achieve. During the transition, many things can go wrong. In his analysis of the Great Depression in the last century, the economic historian Charles Kindleberger identified a major cause in the absence of global leadership during a critical period when power was shifting across the Atlantic. Great Britain could not exercise leadership while the US would not. In between, the global economy fell.

In the coming decades, the key relationship in the world will be that between the US and China. Putting it starkly, the US is China’s most important export market while China is the most important buyer of US Treasuries. The core challenge is the peaceful incorporation of China into the global system of governance, which in turn will change the global system itself. This was probably what led Secretary Hillary Clinton to make her first overseas visit to East Asia.

Three Points About China

The transformation of China is the most important development in the world today. Much has been written about it, the re-emergence of China. But I would like to touch on three points.

China’s Sense of Itself.

The first point is China’s sense of itself which was written about by Joseph Needham many years ago. Over the centuries, it has been the historical duty of every Chinese dynasty to write the history of the previous one. Twenty-four have been written, the first a hundred years before Christ by Sima Qian in the famous book, Shi Ji. And since then the later Han wrote about the Han and then the Xin, the Three Kingdoms and so on. So twenty-four in all. The last dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, lasted from 1644 to the Republican revolution of 1911. Its official history is only now being written after almost a century.

When I visited the Catholic Society of Foreign Missions of Paris in January this year, I was told by a Mandarin-speaking French priest who served many years in China and in Singapore that out of the 90 volumes envisaged for the official history of the Qing Dynasty, 5 volumes would be on the Christian missions in China. When I was there at the Society, I met a Chinese scholar researching into the history of missionary activities in Sichuan province. No other country or civilisation has this sense of its own continuity. For the official history of the People’s Republic, I suppose we would have to wait a couple of hundred years. It was Needham’s profound insight into China’s sense of itself that led to his remarkable study of Science and Civilization in China. Ironically, China’s sense of itself was mostly about its social and moral achievements within the classical realm. It was Needham who informed the Chinese of their own amazing scientific and technological contributions to the world.

However, China’s sense of itself is both a strength and a weakness. It is a strength because it gives Chinese civilization its self-confidence and its tenacity. Chinese leaders often say that while China should learn from the rest of the world, China would have to find its own way to the future. But it is also a conceit, and this conceit makes it difficult for Chinese ideas and institutions to become global in a diverse world. To be sure, the Chinese have no wish to convert non-Chinese into Chinese-ness. In contrast, the US as a young country, believing its own conception to be novel and exceptional, wants everyone to be American. The software of globalisation today including standards and pop culture is basically American. And therein lies a profound difference between China and the US.

The software of globalisation today, including standards and pop culture, is basically American. If you look at cultures as human operating systems, it is US culture which has hyper-linked all these different cultures together, in a kind of higher HTML or XML language. And even though that software needs some fixing today, it will remain essentially American. And I doubt that the Chinese software will ever be able to unify the world the way it has been because it (Chinese software) has a very different characteristic all of its own. Even when China becomes the biggest economy in the world as it almost certainly will within a few decades.

Cities of the 21st Century

The second point I wish to highlight today about China is the astonishing urban experimentation taking place today. China is urbanising at a speed and on a scale never seen before in human history. Chinese planners know that they do not have the land to build sprawling suburbia like America’s. China has less arable land than India. Although China already has a greater length of highways than the whole of the US, the Chinese are keenly aware that if they were to drive cars on a per capita basis like Americans, the whole world would boil.

Recognising the need to conserve land and energy, the Chinese are now embarked on a stupendous effort to build mega-cities, each accommodating tens of millions of people, each the population size of a major country. And these will not be urban conurbations like Mexico City or Lagos growing higgledy-piggledy, but cities designed to accommodate such enormous populations. This means planned urban infrastructure with high-speed intra-city and inter-city rail, huge airports like Beijing’s, forests of skyscrapers, and high tech parks containing universities, research institutes, start-ups and ancillary facilities.

In March last year, McKinsey Global Institute recommended 15 ’super cities’ with average populations of 25 million or 11 ‘city-clusters’ each with combined populations of more than 60 million. Unlike most countries, China is able to mount massive redevelopment projects because of the Communist re-concentration of land in the hands of the state. If you think about it, the great Chinese revolution was fundamentally about the ownership of land. This is the biggest difference between China and India. In India and most other parts of the world, land acquisition for large-scale projects is a very difficult and laborious process.

As we looked to the US for new patterns of urban development in the 20th century with its very rational grid patterns, we will have to look to China for the cities of the 21st century. Urbanisation on such a colossal scale is reshaping Chinese culture, politics and institutions. The Chinese Communist Party which had its origins in Mao’s countryside faces a huge challenge in the management of urban politics. From an urban population of 20% in Mao’s days, China is 40% urban today and, like all developed countries, will become 80-90% urban in a few decades’ time. Already, China has more mobile phones than anybody else and more internet users than the US.

China’s Political Culture

My third point is about China’s political culture. Over the centuries, China has evolved a political culture that enables a continental-size nation to be governed through a bureaucratic elite. In the People’s Republic, the bureaucratic elite is the Communist Party. When working properly, the mandarinate is meritocratic and imbued with a deep sense of responsibility for the whole country.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there was a rule that no high official could serve within 400 miles of his birthplace so that he did not come under pressure to favour local interests. This would mean that for a place like Singapore, it would never be governed by Singaporeans.

A few years ago, that rule was re-introduced to the People’s Republic, and indeed, in almost all cases, the leader of a Chinese province is not from that province. Neither the Party Secretary nor the Governor, unless it is an autonomous region, in which case the number two job goes to a local, but never the number one job. It is as if on a routine basis, the British PM cannot be British, the French President cannot be French and the German Chancellor cannot be German.

Although politics in China will change radically as the country urbanises in the coming decades, the core principle of a bureaucratic elite holding the entire country together is not likely to change. Too many state functions affecting the well-being of the country as a whole require central coordination. In its historical memory, a China divided always meant chaos, and chaos could last a long time.

To be sure, China is experimenting with democracy at the lower levels of government because it acts as a useful check against abuse of power. However, at the level of cities and provinces, leaders are chosen from above after carefully canvassing the views of peers and subordinates. As with socialism, China will evolve a form of ‘democracy with Chinese characteristics’ quite different from Western liberal democracy. The current world crisis will convince the Chinese even more that they are right not to give up state control of the commanding heights of the economy.

With the world in turmoil, many developing countries are studying the Chinese system wondering whether it might not offer them lessons on good governance. For the first time in a long time, the Western model has a serious competitor.

I make these three points about China to illustrate how complex the process of incorporating China into a new multi-polar global system will be. The challenge is not only economic, it is also political and cultural. Yet, it must be met and the result will be a world quite different from what we are used to. Developing countries will no longer look only to the West for inspiration; they will also turn to China and, maybe, to India as well.

The Nalanda Revival

The simultaneous re-emergence of India and China, together making up 40% of the world’s population, is endlessly fascinating. Two countries cannot be more different. One is Confucianist and strait-laced, the other is democratic and rambunctious. Or to use Amartya Sen’s words, “The Indian is argumentative”. Yet, in both countries, we can feel an organic vitality changing the lives of huge numbers of people.

The re-encounter of these two ancient civilizations is itself another drama. Separated by high mountains and vast deserts, their historical contact over the centuries was sporadic and largely peaceful. In recent years, trade between them has grown hugely, making China India’s biggest trading partner today. But of course, we must remember that during the Raj, China was also British India’s biggest trading partner. But they are suspicious of each other. India remains scarred by its defeat by China in 1962 during the border war, a point which Chinese leaders seem not to understand fully.

We in Southeast Asia have a strong vested interest in these two great nations who are our immediate neighbours having peaceful, cooperative relations. Let me talk briefly about a project which may help bring South, Southeast and East Asia together again. This is the revival of the old Nalanda University in the Indian state of Bihar.

Through Chinese historical records, the world is aware of the existence of an ancient Buddhist university in India which for centuries drew students from all over Asia. At its peak, Nalanda accommodated ten thousand students, mostly monks. It had a magnificent campus with a nine-storey library and towers reaching into the clouds, according to the extravagant but remarkably accurate account of the 7th century Tang Dynasty Buddhist monk Xuan Zang. Xuan Zang’s journey to India to bring back Buddhist sutras was such an odyssey, it has long been mythologized in Chinese folklore – the Journey to the West. He spent a number of years in Nalanda. Unfortunately, Nalanda was destroyed by Afghan invaders at about the time Oxford and Cambridge were established 800 years ago and again initially, mostly for monks.

The Indian Government has recently decided to revive this ancient university as a secular university, offering it for international collaboration. A 500-acre site not far from the ruins of the old has already been acquired. Like the old, it will be multi-disciplinary, drawing on the Buddhist philosophy of man living in harmony with man, man living in harmony with nature, and man living as part of nature. A mentors group chaired by Amartya Sen has been appointed by the Indian Government to conceptualise its establishment, of which I am privileged to be a member. I hope the new Nalanda University will help usher in a new era of peace and understanding in Asia. I also hope it will have strong links to Cambridge.

Cultural Repricing

A multi-polar world is a messy world. It means that no particular value system will hold complete sway over others. The current crisis has already caused many people to question the nature of capitalism, socialism and democracy. Chemically-pure capitalism, to use a phrase coined by former French Premier Lionel Jospin, has become a dirty word. In contrast, John Maynard Keynes seems to have been repriced upwards again and all of us have been dusting the old copies of The General Theory that we have on our shelves. A recent Newsweek cover proclaimed that “we are all socialists now”. Even Karl Marx is being re-read. Ideas, cultural norms are all being repriced as countries search for ways out of the crisis. If high unemployment persists for many more years, dangerous ideas and ideologies may reappear as they did in the 30’s.

Without American leadership, multi-polarity can easily lead to global instability. And there is much expectation of what a new Obama Administration, sensitive to cultural nuances, can do to restore order and growth in the world. Unfortunately, there are no quick or easy solutions. We should expect instead a fairly long period of untidiness and confusion. Most importantly, we should be sceptical of absolute or ultimate solutions for these are often the most dangerous.

The Inspiration of Darwin and Needham

In responding to the current crisis, let us be inspired by two Cambridge men, Darwin and Needham. Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species 150 years ago represented one of the greatest intellectual leaps by mankind. At the British Museum of Natural History, they call it “The Big Idea”. It was a very big idea. Natural selection has an obvious analogue in man’s intellectual and social development. Like biological species, human ideas and systems are also subject to selection through wars, revolutions, elections, economic crises, academic debates and market competition. Those which survive and flourish should, we hope, raise civilization to a higher level.

Needham understood China like few other men did. As Simon Winchester wrote in his recent book on Needham, The Man Who Loved China, Needham might not be surprised to see the huge transformation of China today.

Both Darwin and Needham were drawn from our university tradition of being sceptical without losing our moral sense. Only by being sceptical can we be objective, can we see ourselves critically and learn from others. Only with a moral sense will we be motivated to work for a larger social good. It was China’s corruption and inability to learn from others in an earlier period that led to its long decline. The Qian Long Emperor told George III during Lord McCartney’s mission in 1793 that China had nothing to learn from the West. That marked the beginning of China’s long decline.

Human civilisations learn from one another more than they realise, more than we realise. In a collection of essays published by Needham on the historic dialogue of East and West in 1969, he chose for his title Within the Four Seas. That title was from the Analects of Confucius, who said, “Within the Four Seas, all men are brothers”. In the heyday of Third World solidarity in the 50’s, the Indians had a saying ─ “Hindi-Chini, bhai bhai” ─ Indians and Chinese are brothers. In these confused times, we need to learn from one another on the basis of a deep respect for each other as human beings.

 

Gen George Yeo.

 

A formidable father-and-son act

As an outspoken human rights lawyer and ferocious opposition politician, Karpal Singh, 68, constantly courts danger, controversies and has been arrested frequently in a career spanning nearly four decades.

His exploits have earned him the nickname “Lion of Jelutong”, after the northern constituency that first elected him to Parliament in 1974.

But now he has been joined on the national political stage by one of his sons, Gobind Singh Deo, 38.

Gobind practised as a lawyer at his father’s law firm after graduating from Lincoln’s Inn in 1996 and entered Parliament last year at his first attempt. And in a relatively short time he has already risen to national prominence as a fiery opposition lawmaker.

Like the father, Gobind courts controversies, fights all comers in the courts, in Parliament and outside it, and has quickly earned the nickname “Little Lion of Puchong”, after the constituency near the capital that sent him to Parliament in March last year.

Both father and son are Sikhs and members of the Chinese-majority DAP. While the father is the party chairman, the son is a member of the its decision-making central executive committee.

“Speaking up against injustice and defending democracy and human rights is an everyday job for me,” Karpal said. “I have been doing it for 30 years and I am still going at it.”

Gobind may have a hard act to follow.

“My father is virtually an institution, I am just starting out,” Gobind said. “I have learned a lot watching him deal with the complex legal, political and human rights issues that cross his desk.

“I am still under his shadow,” Gobind said. “I have a long way to go.”

But by some counts Gobind has already arrived in a country dominated by majority Malay Muslims where fiery, macho style-politics is accepted as “right and proper” by aggrieved minority Chinese and Indian voters.

This week both father and son made national headlines, sparking an outpouring of sympathy after they were punished — the son for crossing Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and the father for offending Sultan Azlan Shah of Perak.

Gobind was suspended for a year from Parliament on Monday after he called Najib a murderer during a raucous debate on unrelated matters the previous Thursday. The opposition has tried to link Najib to the 2006 murder of Mongolian woman Altantuya Shaariibuu, but Najib has sworn on the Quran that he did not know her.

Although Gobind is protected by parliamentary immunity, his use of the word “murderer” incensed Najib’s supporters who quickly moved a motion to suspend him and carry it through with their parliamentary majority.

On Tuesday, Karpal was himself charged with sedition, a serious offence punishable by two years’ jail, for disparaging the Sultan by questioning his authority at a press conference on Feb 16. The Sultan had sparked a public outcry after he dismissed the opposition Pakatan Rakyat state government and installed a fresh Umno-led Barisan Nasional administration on Feb 5.

Last month Karpal received threatening letters, two live bullets in the mail, and Umno members lodged more than 100 police reports against him for “insulting” the Sultan.

Such controversies are bread and butter stuff for Karpal, who first made a name abroad while defending Australian drug trafficker Kevin Barlow, who was executed in Malaysia in 1986. In 1989, Amnesty International declared Karpal a prisoner of conscience after he was detained without trial under security laws.

A plaque in Karpal’s law office summarises his outlook on life. It reads in part, “I will never cower before any Earthly master.” Karpal’s zeal is all the more astounding because a 2005 car accident left him wheelchair bound.

His many political opponents wrote him off but after two years recuperation, Karpal bounced back by returning to Parliament last year after winning the Bukit Gelugor constituency in Penang.

Another of Karpal’s sons, Jagdeep Singh, 39, is a lawmaker in Penang and manages Karpal’s law office there but unlike Karpal or Gobind, he rarely courts controversies that make the headlines.

Another son Ram, 36, and a daughter Sangeet, 29, are both lawyers and have not yet shown any political ambitions and the youngest Mankarpal, 21, is studying law.

But the glue that holds the family together is Karpal’s devoted wife, Gurmit Kaur, 58. They were childhood friends before marrying in 1970 — the same year Karpal started his law practice after graduating from the University of Singapore a year earlier.

He also joined the DAP the same year and stood for election and lost, but four years later in 1974 he succeeded as lawmaker, starting a fiery career that has made him a household name.

“Despite the accident, he is the same determined and committed Karpal that I have always known,” Gurmit said. Her fervent hope is to see him walk one day. Unlike before, when Karpal hogged the limelight, now he has Gobind to share the political stage.

“[Karpal] is as fiery as ever if not more,” opposition lawmaker M. Kulasegaran said. “Together with the son they make a formidable team both in and outside Parliament.”

Source: The Malaysian Insider

EDITORS’ NOTE: Ever since the demise of JBJ, there are no fiery opposition figures in Singapore in the mould of Karpal Singh. Dr Chee Soon Juan does come close, but he is not in Parliament. In spite of the “repressiveness” of the Malaysian government, Karpal should count himself lucky he is still financially sound. Had he tried his antics in Singapore, he would long been bankrupted a long time ago.

Mourning 25 years of the demise of a free and independent press

By Eugene Yeo

It is an occasion of double joy for SPH today. A new corporate logo was unveiled in conjunction with its 25th anniversary celebrations.

I can’t help wondering how much the re-design of the same name cost the shareholders which brought up to mind the $400,000 of taxpayers’ monies spent by Mah Bow Tan to rename ‘Marina Bay’ back to its original moniker in 2005 (read news report here)

The event was hosted by ex-DPM Tony Tan in presence of the President S R Nathan and PAP ministers Dr Lee Boon Yang and Mr Lui Tuck Yew.

A beaming S R Nathan recalled his experience  during his stint with SPH:

‘When I accepted the job of heading Straits Times Press,…… the then Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, told me: ‘Nathan, I’m giving you The Straits Times. It has something like 150 years of history. It is like a bowl of china. You break it, I can piece it together again, but it will never be the same. Try not to. I am proud to say that the bowl that was handed to me and passed on to successor leaders of SPH remains unbroken - in fact it has achieved a better glow with successive years. ‘ (read full article here)

Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels would be proud of Lee Kuan Yew if he is alive. Nazi propaganda lasted no more than a decade. The PAP myth is going into its 50th anniversary and still going strong.

How can the ‘bowl’ of SPH be broken when it enjoys a 100% monopoly and is owned 100% by the government? Other than North Korea, China and Myanmar, I cannot think of any other country where its print media is completely under the thumb of the government.

SPH was formed on Aug 4, 1984 through a merger of three organisations – the Straits Times Press group, the Singapore News and Publications Limited and Times Publishing Berhad which was later de-merged from SPH in 1988. The merger brought together the English, Malay and Chinese newspapers under one roof. SPH later also bought Tamil Murasu Pte Ltd. (read article here)

1984 marked the official demise of a free and independent press in Singapore though the nail was hit into its coffin way back in 1975 with the introduction of the Newspaper and Printing Act to control the ownership of news printing firms.

SPH has indeed served its master well by churning out daily doses of state propaganda to justify the PAP’s many flawed policies and repressive measures to stifle civil society and the opposition.

Unfortunately, its “success” has become a tragedy for many Singaporeans who were brought up believing every single word published by the print media to hold it as the gospel truth while it is nothing more than just plain propaganda to serve the narrow partisan interests of the PAP.

25 years of state-sanctioned indoctrination has created an unthinking, subservient and apathetic citizenry who is contented to leave the running of the country entirely to the government without asking questions.

Few people from my generation actually bother to read up on current affairs, let alone spot the glaring inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the media reports and to challenge the nonsense spewed out from the mouths of our highly paid self acclaimed “talented” PAP leaders.

This is what 25 years of relentless PAP propaganda dispensed through its propaganda mouthpiece has done to our minds. And that is why the PAP is unable to recruit first rate talents into the government and has to content itself with paying obscence salaries to keep second rate talents within its ranks.

In a country where the boundaries between the state and the party are blurred, what works for the party often has disastrous consequences for the state.

To the PAP, having the media under its absolute control is a necessity for them to ride roughshod over a politically naive electorate so as to force unpalatable policies down our throat again, again and again.

Over the years, our basic human rights have been raped repeatedly without any protests. Foreigners are allowed to stampede all over the locals to steal their rice bowls with impunity; GST was raised to 3, 5 and then 7% to “help the poor”. New HDB flats are pegged to the value of resale flats when it is supposedly to be a low cost affordable public housing. CPF withdrawal limits are raised from 55 to 62 and in time to come, perhaps 85. PAP ministers lavished themselves with exorbitant salaries when our income gap between the poor and the rich is one of the highest amongst first world economies. A significant chunk of our reserves accumulated over the years were lost in less than a year and still nobody is held accountable. These are just a few of the many instances where the PAP has taken us for granted without having to pay any political price.

In other developed Asian countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, their media will rise up in arms to serve as the voice of the people to protest against the government. Here in Singapore, the mainstream media is an accomplice to the PAP to preserve its political hegemony.

David Marshall is indeed spot on in calling the Straits Times journalists “poor prostitutes and running dogs of the PAP”. Not all the SPH journalists are to blame. Some genuinely have a conscience and committment to their professional ethics, but they have little room to manoeuvre when the senior editors are all henchmen of the PAP. Not surprisingly, a few SPH editors were “promoted” to PAP MPs after years of “dedicated service” to the party, Seng Han Thong and Irene Ng being cases in point.

Without a free and independent press to act as an 4th pillar of the state, Singapore’s future is very grim. We have little choice but to swim or sink with the PAP. If they sink, we will go down together with them because there is nobody else outside the system who can replace them.

SPH is the biggest stumbling block to the emergence of a credible alternative party in Singapore to check on the PAP. In almost every general elections, the SPH spin doctors were called upon to demolish the opposition when they should be focusing on critical issues of national importance.

In 2006, we saw how the media conducted a 7 day smear campaign against Workers’ Party candidate James Gomez for a trivial mistake. In 2001, it was Dr Chee Soon Juan. In 1997, it was Tang Liang Hong who was demonized as a Chinese chauvinist and in 1991, Jufrie Mahmood was attacked unfairly as a Malay chauvinist.

SPH’s timely interference had made that extra difference in saving the skin of the the PAP in closely contested constituencies. Jufrie Mahmood won 49.1% of the valid votes in Eunos GRC while JBJ and Tang won 45.3% in Cheng San GRC.

What if Singaporeans have voted 5 opposition MPs into Parliament in 1997? Will we continue to be subjugated by the PAP in our very own land of birth? Can we not find out the answers to the amount of reserves we have now? That is why the PAP doesn’t want to have “real” opposition in Parliament to make them accountable to the people and this is why SPH needs to be chaired by an ex-PAP minister to this very day.

While SPH and the PAP celebrates 25 years of overwhelming success in state-sponsored thought control, let us, as one of the few who have managed to escape relatively unscathed from its omnipresent influence, mourn the demise of a free and independent press.

VIDEO: Khaw Boon Wan denied asking Singaporean elderly to retire in JB, claimed his words were “twisted”

Prologue:

During his ministerial community visit to the Paya Lebar Division of the Aljunied GRC, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan revealed that MOH is further relaxing the use of Medisave, this time to allow Singaporeans to cover non-urgent hospitalisation in approved hospitals overseas.

Singapore` Shame (Chapter 1 – Political Culture)‏

By Dr James Gomez, Author, Self-Censorship: Singapore’s Shame

EDITORS’ NOTE:

(Self-Censorship: Singapore`s Shame written by Dr. James Gomez ten years ago  focuses on the political behavior of citizens and foreigners living and working in Singapore. He is currently revising his book to consider the impact of the post-internet environment. Dr. Gomez invites readers and bloggers to post their reactions, suggestions and comments to his draft chapters which will be serialized here each week.You are invited to join his
Facebook Author’s Support Group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=59118927883  and check out his blog at http://www.jamesgomeznews.com/blog). His posting last week “Introduction” can be found here.)

In political science, the term “political culture” has largely been understood as involving the norms, beliefs, values, sentiments and understandings that support a people’s perception of modalities of power and authority within a particular political system.

It is seen as setting theunrecorded ground rules as to how the political process will be played out (Pye, 1995). A particular political culture is assumed to arise as a result of historical development, contributing to the reproduction of the system or the processes that support such a culture.

There is an elite culture that operates among the leadership and its allies of a polity while a mass culture, which is less sophisticated but not very different from the top,operates among the people. Often the operation of political culture has been considered within the confines of the nation-state.

In contemporary times with the advent of the internet, globalization and the movement of labourand capital across continents, the production and maintenance of political culture also includes those who are accepted and expelled from theparameters of the nation-state as part of migration and immigration process.

“Political culture” shapes “political behaviour”, that is, patterns of political participation. It dictates and determines the political preferences of individuals in a system. In Singapore, it explains why people (both local and foreign) are willing to conform and engage only in politically sanctioned behaviour.

This holds true of not only Singapore citizens but also foreigners who take up citizenship and work rights opportunities in Singapore. Political culture and behaviour also seeks to explain individual or collective participation as well as non-participation in the political process. For instance, it can explain why in the Republic, with its limited political participation, there is little that falls outside of “approved” channels.

At the same time to also shed light on the reasons many Singapore citizens migrate and some why foreigners resident eventually move out or not continue their employment in the city-state. The net result is that the constraints on political participation have led to the rise of a dominant apathy in Singapore. But I do concede that in the last ten years there has been some movement towards political participation via online expressions with some of it spilling over into the offline world. However, the number of actors initiating such activities remains small but it contributes to the growing tensions with the dominant political culture.

Intertwined with political culture is “political attitude,” which marks the persistent psychological orientations and belief that underpin political opinions and voting patterns of the citizenry. It explains why citizens and foreigners alike residing in Singapore do not generally condone alternative political expression, why the ruling PAP is viewed as the only legitimate or “safe” choice, or why there is a general lack of ability to imagine a non-PAP government.

It accounts for the climate of fear surrounding opposition politics, political oriented civil society groups and individuals as well as acts of civil disobedience. Collectively, political “behaviour”and “attitudes” are part a complex interactive system that contribute to the production, re-production and operation of a political culture in a given society.

In the Singapore this is largely a politically self-censorial one. Although the whole notion of political culture (Almond Powell 1966; Almond and Verba 1988; Pye l995) has been made problematic with the post-modernist deconstruction of essentialisms, the debate within cultural studies is an ongoing one.

In this respect, political culture, behaviour and attitudes can be debated and meaningfully used to explain the phenomenon of politicalculture in Singapore. They are all aspects of the same thing. Still, the scientific recording of political culture is often raised as an issue, complicated by philosophical questions concern over what is scientific as well as the subjective nature of the topic.

Culture, which is marked by the uncertainties of human behaviour, is a difficult phenomenon to record through quantitative methods such as surveys and other quasi-quantitative procedures. Interpretative analysis by those knowledgeable of certain countries, the people and the system has beenrecognized as a helpful way to bridge this impasse.

Given the difficulties in methodology, in my first discussion of self-censorship ten years ago I modestly build on the limited works that have attempted to describe and record this phenomenon without actually employing a formal quantitative social science means.

Instead, I collaboratively employed secondary sources, participant-observation and interpretative analysis to unpack this political feature. Ten years on as a Singapore watcher and participant, I reflect further on the initial analysis and bring into the discussion the post-internet environment and how it has come to bear on the political culture of self-censorship.

In this exercise to understand the dominant political culture in Singapore,one needs to distinguish censorship by the state from acts of individual self-censorship, and actions taken by individuals to censor others and plot the relationship between them.

The two are separate and different mechanisms. Thus, they require dissimilar tools of argumentation, even though the former may lead to the latter. In between the two are the normal and frequently agreed agents of socialisation that determine censorship bythe people. These are the family, school, the various para-political institutions, national service, the work place, the local mainstream media and sub-structures in society at large.

These institutions contribute to the formation of attitudes but, in a centralised state as Singapore, these are principally influenced by the political. Therefore, the fostering and operation of such attitudes must be understood as being derived, to some extent, from the political system. For instance, the state’s censorship of information through the decades has contributed to an inability of the people to formulate a sustained political critique or opinion, even if they want to.

The internet to some extent has mitigated this situation but the mainstream media still dominates the information landscape. The self-censorship that emerges as a result can be attributed to a lack of confidence or a perceived incompetence in political matters because of a critical lack of information.

Even more importantly, it can be argued that phenomenon of self-censorship is one of the tools the PAP indirectly uses to maintain its political hold over the republic and itspeople. This is what I demarcate, describe and evaluate when I scrutinise the issue of political culture in Singapore: it is the in-built political self-checking system among the citizenry and foreigners that helps the ruling party less visibly maintain its grip on power.

Is Mr Khaw Boon Wan really misunderstood?

During the Parliamentary sittings on 9 and 10 February 2009, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan caused a storm when he allegedly said that Singaporeans should consider sending their elderly parents to retire in JB nursing homes if they cannot afford Singapore’s nursing homes.

Following the negative response from the ground, Mr Khaw Boon Wan changed tack and claimed that his words were “twisted”.

Did the media misrepresent Mr Khaw or did we misunderstood his intention?

Let us revisit the Parliamentary records of his speech in the two days and the Straits report report a later. We leave you to judge for yourselves:

Mr Khaw Boon Wan, 9 February 2009:

“We discussed earlier about lower cost possibilities in the neighbouring region, especially Johor Bahru.  Let me talk about my day trip during the Chinese New Year to Johor Bahru.  I visited one site where a Singaporean investor is going to put up 200-bed nursing home.  I asked him, “How much would you be spending on your capex (capital expenditure)?”  It is mind-boggling, the construction cost and land cost are so low, that my cost of just putting up a polyclinic is probably more than his cost of putting up a 200-bed nursing home.  So the cost of keeping a resident in a private nursing home in Singapore can easily pay 2.5 months of nursing home care in JB.  If the connection is easy and if there is any urgent problem, you can always ambulance in the elderly to Singapore.  The family members can get to visit the elderly on weekends.  As this nursing home’s CEO told me, even in Singapore, when they put the elderly in the nursing home, they also only visit them once a week over the weekends. Of course, many visit daily but quite a significant percentage just visit on the weekends. So, what is the difference with putting them in JB? 

Source: Hansard

Mr Khaw Boon Wan in response to Ms Sylvia Lim, 10 February 2009 :

On the nursing home in Johor, I mentioned it in passing because I made a trip there.  Actually my main purpose was to look at the hospital because Members have asked me to consider the possibility of Medisave to be used for hospitals there.  I used the opportunity to look at the Iskandar Malaysia region; I have not been to that part of Johor for many years and wanted to see how the development is shaping up there.  It was a very pleasant trip.  I went by the Tuas Second Link, then from west to east to Pasir Gudang, ended up with a nice seafood and cheap lunch near Pasir Gudang and came back through the new CIQ Checkpoint to our Causeway.  At the Iskandar Malaysia region, I also took a look at the site where I heard they have investment from a medical school from England which is coming to set up.  I also went to take a look at the Legoland theme park where the land is being prepared.  Sorry, for digressing.

But many Singaporeans, including many residents in my constituency, go to Johor very regularly, top up their car, which many do, and also to have a nice seafood meal at much cheaper prices.  I think these are natural activities, and that is part and parcel of globalisation.  In fact, this is not even globalisation; this is regionalisation, and there is nothing wrong with that.  Consumers are free to choose.  I know many go over to the pharmacy there to get cheaper drugs.  It is not our fault.  The pharmaceutical companies have a way of setting prices: Third World, they set lower prices; First World, like Singapore, they set higher prices.  By allowing the flexibility of consumers walking over the Causeway, they benefit.  I do not think we should constrain them from doing so.  Our cost will always be higher because our wages are different.  Nurses are paid very differently here compared to Johor and ditto for doctors; likewise construction cost.

I just want to point out to Singaporeans that there are options like these.  In fact, it is already happening.  This free flow of patients across borders, so much so that there is a term called “medical tourism”.  Singaporeans go to Bangkok, I know, for lasik, and vice versa.  Americans come here.  Russians come here.  Singaporeans go to Penang and Malacca.  I think we should allow that.  In any case, how can we prevent it?  We cannot prevent it.  But in fact, by keeping the borders “open”, it puts some competitive pressure on our local providers which eventually will be good for our own consumers.  Because if they price themselves too high, the patients will start going across the Causeway and they lose customers.

Source: Hansard

Mr Khaw Boon Wan in response to Mr Low Thia Kiang, 10 February 2009 :

So no, I am not saying that if you are poor, I will put you in an ambulance, send you across the Causeway to Johor nursing home.  That is not what I said and please do not twist my words.  But what I am saying is for those in the middle-income group, you have choices, you are paying out of your own pocket, you decide.  Do you want to have a seafood meal in Singapore or you want to have a family reunion in JB, it is up to you, this is your own choice.  Do you want to fill your car tank in Singapore or you want to drive across and have a haircut, that is up to you.  You are spending your own money.  And I am just sharing with Singaporeans that there are alternatives of that kind.  But for low-income Singaporeans, we look after and heavily subsidise them.  There is no need for them to walk across, because they enjoy a heavy subsidy here.  They have to pay unsubsidised rate in JB.  It will be more expensive than what they can receive in Singapore.  So that is the way we do our systems and I hope to get the Member’s support for it as well.

Straits Times report, 11 February 2009:

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