Alternative media critical to Malaysian election

Source: ZapBoom Consulting

According to USINFO, a publication of the Department of State, alternative media played a key role in the March 8 parliamentary elections in Malaysia. The ruling Barisan National (BN) party received a surprising blow when it lost 58 seats in the 222-seat Dewan Rakyat. Although the BN still holds 63% of seats, it lost its commanding two-thirds majority. The BN has ruled Malaysia for 50 years.

At a forum on April 1, at the University Malaya, columnist Datuk Johan Jaffar noted that alternative media had a crucial effect on the election outcome. In Malaysia, people trust the Internet more than official sources, the [opposition] election campaign was conducted unconventionally and quietly, and added that he hopes the recent campaign and election results will be a wake up call for the government.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, a member of the BN, acknowledged on March 25 that his coalition certainly lost the Internet war, and added that it was a serious misjudgment for his party to rely solely on government-controlled newspapers and television in its efforts to attract voters.

The influence of alternative media on the election was partly due to the mainstream media’s lack of credibility. In a post from March 19, blogger Kalinga Seneviratne of Malaysiakini.com noted that Malaysias mainstream media (newspapers, radio, and television) are predominantly owned by business people with close connections with the countrys ruling coalition. This creates demand for less biased sources of information (or at least different perspectives). Unlike the mainstream media, blogs discuss issues such as government corruption and cases of judicial impartiality.

In addition to its value as a source of alternative information, the Internet was also used for campaigning and getting out the vote. According to Raja Petra Kamaruddin, who owns malaysia-today.net, the Internets biggest contribution to the election was motivating Malaysias middle class to turn out at the polling places on March 8. “Alternative media cured the apathy the middle class has. They were no longer saying: Let’s not bother. Suddenly, it was let’s go and give the opposition a chance,” Kamaruddin said.

Opposition candidates’ effective use of the Internet to turn out the vote is no surprise given that five of Malaysia?s
newly elected parliamentarians are bloggers. (Malaysia has approximately 500,000 active blogger total). By contrast, the online presence of the establishment Barisan National (BN), was extremely limited. According to the article, the BN and its allies had only two Web sites and one blog in 2004. (The article does not give more current figures.)

The article also gives interesting information about how CDs and cell phones were used for campaigning in rural areas where there is lower Internet access than in urban areas:

The widespread distribution of cellular phones in rural areas enabled the effective use of SMS (short messaging system) text messages, and campaign activists copied Internet-streamed television programs onto video CDs (VCDs) and circulated them in the countryside where VCD players are popular.

It is also worth noting that University Malaya media professor Abu Hassan Hasbullah announced on April 1 that he had conducted research which indicated that 70% of the election results were influenced by information in the blogs. This is a very impressive statistic, though the article did not give any information about the nature of Prof. Hasbullah?s research methods or sample, so it is impossible to evaluate the reliability of this dramatic figure. Regardless of the credibility of that particular statistic, alternative media clearly played a dramatic role in the elections.

Singapore party member extradited to US: report

Agence-France Presse, 25 December 2009

A Singapore opposition party member has been extradited to the United States where he stands accused of trying to supply arms to Sri Lanka’s defeated Tamil Tiger rebels, according to a report Friday.

Balldev Naidu, 47, a businessman and co-founder of the Reform Party, was extradited on December 18, the Straits Times newspaper said quoting the Ministry of Home Affairs.

He is wanted on charges of acting as a broker between firearms manufacturers and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) between February and September 2006, as well as seeking to export the arms illegally from the United States to Sri Lanka.

His alleged accomplice, Singaporean Haniffa Osman, 57, had pleaded guilty to the charges in 2008 and was sentenced to 37 months’ jail by a Baltimore court.

Naidu had been detained in Singapore prior to the extradition following his arrest by local authorities in September.

He is a founding member of Singapore’s tiny opposition Reform Party.

The party’s secretary-general Kenneth Jeyaretnam said last month that the US charges involved activities alleged to have occurred before the party was set up in 2008.

Jeyaretnam had described Naidu as “a gentle family man and someone who would never intentionally become involved with terrorists or arms dealers”.

Singapore has been home to a close-knit Tamil minority since British colonial days and hosts thousands of workers from Sri Lanka and southern India. Tamil is one of Singapore’s official languages.

Sri Lankan troops destroyed the Tamil Tigers’ leadership in May, ending one of Asia’s longest-running insurgencies.

The Tamil Tigers had been campaigning since 1972 for a separate homeland for the island’s Tamil minority and drew support from members of the overseas Tamil community. – AFP

Body of Vietnamese student found in hostel cupboard

By Mavis Toh from Straits Times

THE decomposed body of a Vietnamese student was found sitting upright in the cupboard of her hostel room yesterday morning.

Friends of Ms Nguyen Cao Minh Ngoc, 24, alerted the management of the Queensway Student Hostel after they were unable to contact her for a few days.

A relationship officer opened the door to Ms Ngoc’s second-floor room, only to see her foot sticking out of the cupboard door.

Ms Ngoc, who was fully clothed, is believed to have been dead for at least two days. There were no visible injuries on her body.

Fellow hostel residents said she had been in Singapore for less than six months and was studying English at the Management Development Institute of Singapore (MDIS).

Ms Nguyen Tsan Thanh Chau, 23, a student, told The Straits Times that Ms Ngoc shared a two-bed air-conditioned unit at the Queensway hostel with another Vietnamese student who went back to Vietnam on Saturday.

Ms Ngoc, who was from northern Vietnam, was short and slim with dyed hair, Ms Chau said.

‘My friend actually went to the room and saw her body after the hostel officer alerted some Vietnamese students,’ she said. ‘He was shocked.’

Indonesian student Viola Pranata, 19, who lives in the unit beside Ms Ngoc’s, said that she heard two boys screaming at about 10am yesterday.

The police arrived shortly after.

She added that she had been in Indonesia over the weekend and did not hear any sounds from her neighbour’s room when she came back on Monday.

Other students interviewed said that Ms Ngoc kept to herself most of the time and had few friends. Her roommate was more sociable and friendly.

The Straits Times understands that most of the students at the hostel are foreigners studying at the MDIS. There are about 50 Vietnamese students in the two-storey housing block. A two-bed room costs about $820 for three months.

Police are investigating the case as an unnatural death. – Straits Times

 

The borrowed success of Singapore

By Chen Jiaqi from Sin Chew Daily

Dangers in jailing Malaysia’s Anwar

By Anil Netto, Asia Times Online

The more things change, the more they remain the same in Malaysian politics. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has failed to get a court to strike out a sodomy charge against him, which means the controversial trial that threatens to bump him from politics and land him in prison is set to begin on January 25.

It will represent the second time Anwar faces charges of sodomy, which is considered a criminal act in Malaysia’s Muslim majority society. This time, he faces charges of sodomizing his 24-year-old former personal aide at a condominium in Kuala Lumpur in mid-2008.

For many Malaysians, there is a sense of deja vu with the 1999 trial that involved his wife’s chauffeur. But the Malaysian political landscape has evolved considerably over the “reformasi” years that followed Anwar’s ouster as finance minister from former premier Mahathir Mohamad’s government in September 1998, coinciding with the height of the Asian financial crisis.

For starters, Anwar’s mentor-turned-nemesis, who ruled the country from 1981 to 2003, is no longer in power. He has since emerged as a vocal critic of his self-appointed and later elected successor, Abdullah Badawi, as well as newly appointed Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Since Anwar’s release from prison in 2004, six years after his ouster from government, Anwar has played an instrumental role in bringing together the opposition parties. His efforts helped produce a shock result in last year’s general election: the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition lost its coveted two-thirds parliamentary majority in parliament and five out of 13 states in the federation fell to opposition party rule.

Opposition parties now control only four state governments after the BN wrested back Perak state earlier this year under controversial legal circumstances. But despite such strong-arm tactics, Malaysian politics have become more fluid, with issues of race, religion and corruption intensely debated online and in political talks. No longer is the BN the overwhelming political force it was previously, though it still controls the main levers of administrative power.

The BN parties representing ethnic minorities, such as the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), still reeling after the electoral drubbing they suffered last year, have proven unable to reform or renew themselves. Instead, the MCA is deeply divided by factionalism while the MIC is staring at irrelevance.

Anwar, who re-entered parliament after winning a by-election last August, was instrumental in stabilizing and bringing under one umbrella the opposition parties after their unexpected gains in the 2008 general election. He helped establish a leadership council among the three main parties – his People’s Justice Party, the Islamic Party and the Democratic Action Party – under the banner of the Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance).

Meanwhile, Anwar’s unrelenting push for more democracy has captured international attention. An e-mail flier released this week by his office announced that the US-based Foreign Policy magazine listed Anwar among the world’s top 100 global thinkers due to “his persistent challenge to the Muslim world to embrace democracy”. The flier also noted that this year the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Jordan listed him among the world’s 500 most influential Muslims for “dramatically changing the political landscape of Malaysia”.

Those political breakthroughs have paved the way for a two-coalition system that has provided an unprecedented political check and balance on the BN. Zaid Ibrahim, a cabinet minister who quit last year in protest at the government’s arbitrary use of the feared Internal Security Act to silence dissent, is now leading the process of formalizing the People’s Alliance into an electoral entity, similar to the ruling BN coalition.

But the similarities between the two coalitions end there: The BN and the Pakatan have sharply contrasting political approaches. Whereas UMNO is the dominant force in the BN (although decision-making is said to be by consensus), the Pakatan offers a collective approach to policy-making.

Even though repressive federal laws are still in place, there has been a democratic opening, felt especially in the four Pakatan-led state governments. Government-owned buildings are now available for use by non-BN political parties and critical civil society groups, which had previously found it difficult to secure such venues for their events. Rarely do riot police mobilize, as they did before, each time Pakatan politicians hold political talks or rallies.

Diminished fear factor

That growing democratic space has reduced the public fear factor, where previously many found it more prudent to keep their political opinions to themselves. For instance, tens of thousands marched calling for an abolition of the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA) in the streets of Kuala Lumpur in August – prompting the government to announce in its aftermath that it would review and amend the law. Pakatan-led state governments also joined in calling for the ISA’s repeal.

Constrained by a squeeze on federal funding, Pakatan-led state governments have claimed to plug leakages on state and local council expenditure, reduce corruption and implement an open tender system for government contracts, winning plaudits from a public weary of years of BN-led graft and abuse. Pakatan politicians are already looking ahead to build on their gains in the next general election, which some analysts believe could be held as early as 2011.

The BN-led federal government has also lost its long-time monopoly on news and information flows. Increased Internet penetration means that Malaysians are much more aware of issues involving alleged corruption, wastage of state funds and official abuse of power. Some analysts now believe that the “alternative” Internet-based news media, which have sidestepped government controls on the print and electronic media, could now be considered the “mainstream” media based on their large readerships.

The government-owned or controlled media, once regarded as the “mainstream”, continue to haemorrhage readers, especially among the younger, tech-savvy generation. News portals such as the well-established Malaysiakini.com, Malaysia Today and Malaysian Insider, and new entrants such as the Malaysian Mirror and Free Malaysia Today, are filling the news gap left by government influenced newspapers.

Having lost its monopoly over the print media (television and radio are still tightly state controlled and have extensive reach), the BN government must for the first time compete in the marketplace of ideas and competing arguments, a role that does not come naturally to its traditional patronage politicians.

Many BN federal ministers and elected representatives, including Najib, now make use of blogs to communicate with their constituents. Najib also turned last month to social networking site Facebook and is now a regular on Twitter. His latest tweet: “Now back in Malaysia after overseas visits to US and CHOGM [Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting], Trinidad and Tobago. Much work to do!”

It will thus be difficult for the BN to put the genie of democracy back in the bottle. Unlike Anwar’s first trial, it is not only the judges, prosecutors and lawyers who will be scrutinizing the evidence in the new sodomy charge brought against him. Rather it will come under intense and unprecedented public scrutiny through new media outlets.

Much has changed in terms of democracy and accountability between Anwar’s sodomy trial I and sodomy trial II, and the public uproar in reaction to any perceived injustice in the proceedings could make the previous reformasi protest movement Anwar sparked over a decade ago look tame in comparison. – Asia Times Online

Republished from Asia Times Online on 3 December 2009

Tee Keat’s tricky stomach problems

By Tay Tian Yan from Sin Chew Daily

Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat indeed had some tough stomach problems.

Everyone cares about Ong, and it is therefore natural that everyone should also care about his stomach.

According to witnesses, Ong’s stomach was still offering its dutiful services to the master in the afternoon, without the slightest hint of an imminent protest or revolt.

Only a lapse of several hours, it was said that Ong suffered some stomach upset and had to be admitted into a hospital!

That was when the real headache came.

The three factions of MCA had fixed the time to meet the deputy prime minister to talk about fresh polls for the party, with the entire nation waiting nervously for the outcome.

Ong’s stomach problems crushed the whole plan.

The original plan of striking an accord within one week, latest by Dec 1, was put on hold, and the meeting did not come out with any substantial conclusion.

Gastrointestinal problems are no novelty, but the incident couldn’t have possibly come at a worse time than such a crucial moment.

Perhaps Ong should make a bet on a lottery ticket!

Of course, no one can accurately point out when a gastric episode will take place, and it does not need to give a reason for selecting such a bad timing.

As such, no one should point the finger at Ong’s stomach and haggle over it.

The weird thing is: the gastric problem warranted admission into a hospital!

This mustn’t be any ordinary gastric distension, which could have been dispelled with a little bottle of medicated ointment, and he could have sat past the entire meeting.

Even if he were to let out some gas half way through the meeting, he wouldn’t be excessively embarrassed so long as the DPM’s residence was adequately ventilated.

Since it wasn’t just gastric distension, it could have been something much more serious, such as GIT infection or GIT depression, which has a direct correlation to the patient’s psychological health.

People would generally feel that Ong had worked so hard leading the national delegation to Britain while those in his party did not seem to understand him that well, resulting in his depressed moods. This, coupled with the intake of inflight meals, has brought about the gastric upset.

Since Ong has often suffered stomach problems because of the country and the party, by right the public should show some sympathy for him.

Unfortunately, when the public learned of his latest gastric attack, they put on some bizarre smiles on their faces.

More weirdly, when the MCA-owned The Star carried the news that Ong was admitted into a hospital, he was said to have possibly down with some “stomach problems.”

Note should be taken that the English daily had put a pair of open and close inverted commas around the words “stomach problems” in its news report!

The use of inverted commas often denotes “something else” such as: Khoo Kay Kim has made “excellent contributions” towards Chinese education in this country, which should not be seen as a compliment.

But, are you trying to tell me that even MCA’s mouthpiece was as suspicious of Ong’s stomach problems as anyone else?

When asked about what had happened to Ong, his comrade Ng Yen Yen told the reporters: You should know better than I.

While Ng believed that Ong could be discharged very soon, not many are patient enough to wait for him.

The prime minister has said he would announce the new MCA solution the moment his touches down on the Malaysian soil again.

No one knows whether Ong’s stomach can take it then. – mysinchew.com

Republished from Sin Chew Daily on 2 December 2009

Singapore men put love on hold on financial worry

By Koh Gui Qing from Reuters

“No money no honey” seems to be ringing true for Singapore’s bridal agencies, which are seeing slowing business as the financial crisis and a looming recession hit love in the country.

Matchmaking agencies in the Southeast Asian country said the financial meltdown has forced some men to think twice about spending thousands of dollars to get a wife.

“About 10 percent of my customers say ‘The economy is slowing down, I have no money,’” said Mark Lin, who runs the Vietnam Brides International Matchmaker in Singapore.

“In the past, girls used to get married in one to two weeks. Now it takes one to two months,” he said, in a tiny office along Singapore’s main shopping belt where five Vietnamese women chatted under walls covered with pictures of smiling newly weds.

Three to four customers pull out of their marriages each month now, forfeiting deposits paid to agencies, up from one to two clients before, Lin said.

The crisis, which sparked banking turmoil from the United States to Iceland, has traversed beyond financial markets into the real economy as falling home prices and fears of losing jobs force consumers to tighten their belts.

“Business has been very badly hit by the crisis. In the past, I would get around 20 calls a day. Now there are hardly any calls,” said Hannah, who works at Truelove International Matchmaker in Singapore. She declined to give her last name.

“Some say the financial pressures from a marriage are just too great,” she said, in a country that was booming last year but is expected to see a recession in the third quarter.

Couples in Singapore typically spend thousands of dollars when they tie the knot as newly weds host family and friends at a lavish dinner to mark the occasion.

Matchmaking is not uncommon in the country, which has a population of 4.8 million and a low birth rate, as older men turn to professionals to find a wife.

Some agencies help link up singles, while others — like Lin’s — help customers find a prospective wife from abroad.

For S$8,000 ($5,450), a man can pick a wife from among the women in Lin’s shop, send her to the doctor, and get his marriage registered — all in 12 hours, but only if the woman fancies him too.

If he does not fancy the women in the shop, he can pay another S$2,000 to fly to Ho Chi Minh City and meet 50-100 women in a hotel, but Lin warns customers this is illegal.

“My customers are usually over 35. That is when they get disappointed with Singapore women, whom they say have too high expectations,” he said.

The women can stay in Singapore for only two months on visitor’s passes if they are not married to a local, Lin said.

But as business slows to a crawl amid a sagging economy, some women have to go home without a husband.

“I hope to get married,” said 19-year-old Nguyen Thi Hue, who returns to Vietnam on Thursday after two months in Singapore. “I want a husband who can dote on me and love me.” – Reuters

Republished from Reuters on 29 November 2009

Income up by just 0.5 per cent last year

By Cassandra Chew from The Straits Times

THE income of Singapore workers has hardly moved, climbing a paltry $10 in one year to $2,600 this June. This rise in the median monthly income of full-time workers works out to a mere 0.5 per cent.

In contrast, their income last year soared by 11 per cent and in 2007, by 7.7 per cent.

Latest official figures also showed that part-timers did not fare much better.

Their increase was 3.33 per cent, from $600 last June to $620, said a Manpower Ministry survey released yesterday.

Despite the increases, the overall median income of resident workers, including permanent residents, went down.

The reason is the bigger pool of part-timers in the workforce, caused partly by a change in definition by the ministry, which conducts the survey annually in June.

Now, those who work fewer than 35 hours a week are classified as part-timers. Previously, it was below 30 hours.

As a result, the median income for all employed residents declined by 1.2 per cent to $2,420 a month compared to $2,450 a year ago.

The drop can also be traced to companies battling the recession with such cost-cutting measures as freezing salaries and reducing pay, said the president of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr Teo Siong Seng.

But Nanyang Technological University economist Randolph Tan argued that the very fact that income for full-timers rose reflects Singapore’s relatively robust labour market compared with the United States and Europe.

However, the number of full-time, low-wage workers continues to decline for the third year in a row. This year, these workers who earn a maximum of $1,200 a month, totalled 275,000 and form 16.5 per cent of the total workforce.

Last June, the corresponding figures were 292,800 or 17.4 per cent.

Dr Tan believes skills training played a key role in elevating these workers, into a higher income bracket. – ST

Republished from The Straits Times on 1 December 2009

Ejected from Singapore

By Ben Bland from The Guardian

Unfriendly reporters are jailed, assaulted or assassinated by the governments of Burma, Iran and Sri Lanka. Singapore, with pretensions to being a global “media hub”, prefers tools of repression that are more subtle, yet have the same chilling effect on free speech. After a year as an accredited correspondent in the southeast Asian city-state, I was unexpectedly told last month that my employment visa would not be renewed.

The government refused to disclose its reasons despite repeated requests and an appeal from the British High Commission. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based press freedom group, condemned the decision, saying that it “shows the Singapore government’s intolerance of independent and critical reporting”. CPJ added that I was merely “the latest on a long list of foreign journalists who have been targeted by the government for their news coverage”.

Although I reported on some sensitive issues such as rising crime, the ageing population and business links with Burma, I did not break any of the taboos that normally lead to a government reprisal – namely criticising Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding father, or his son, the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong. International publications that dare to hold Singapore’s ruling caste to account tend to find themselves on the wrong side of a costly libel suit. In recent years, the Economist, the International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal and, most recently, the soon-to-close Far Eastern Economic Review have all been forced to pay out hundreds of thousands of pounds in damages to the Lee family.

While the international press is silenced through the courts, Singaporean journalists are cowed by the government’s ownership of key stakes in all the country’s daily newspapers and news broadcasters. The insidious practice of self-censorship is all-pervasive. One senior editor at a major international newspaper in Asia admitted that he line-edits every single story about Singapore for fear of upsetting the powers-that-be.

A veteran foreign correspondent in Singapore insisted that it was possible to criticise the government “if one takes a subtle rather than confrontational approach and focuses on policy issues rather than personalities”. But, fearful of jeopardising his employment visa, he was not prepared to speak on the record. – The Guardian

Republished from The Guardian on 30 November 2009

Property consultants say Sentosa IR is scouting for rental flats for some of its foreign staff

Business Times, 28 November 2009

VISITORS to the Universal Studios theme park in Resorts World at Sentosa (RWS) will soon be able to live out adventures seen in various movies. There will be zones based on films such as Madagascar, Shrek and Jurassic Park, to bring thrill-seekers to a make-believe world far away from home.

For some employees at RWS, being away from home will also be a new adventure. The integrated resort will be hiring a considerable number of foreigners, and it is said to be searching for hundreds of HDB flats to help them settle in. C&H Realty managing director Albert Lu said that RWS is looking for HDB flats to rent, and approached his firm a few months ago to find out about the rental market. RWS did not share many details then, but the number of flats is ‘in the hundreds’, he told BT.

Another property market insider who declined to be named also said that RWS has been ‘aggressively looking for flats to rent’, and is probably in need of ‘a few hundred’ units.

So far, there is no official statement on the number of foreigners that RWS could hire. Overall, it will employ about 10,000 people when it opens next year. RWS spokesman Robin Goh told BT that it remains committed in recruiting Singaporeans and Singapore permanent residents.

A media report in June noted that RWS had hired 600 workers, of whom 80 per cent are locals. Assuming that the local-foreign ratio stays constant, its headcount from abroad could reach 2,000.

Going by HDB rules, one- or two-room flats can each be rented out to at most four people; three-room flats to at most six people; and four-roomers or bigger flats to at most nine people. Assuming that RWS hires 2,000 foreigners and all of them rent four-room flats, it would need to find at least about 220 units.

Mr Goh said that RWS started looking for ’suitable accommodation’ for foreign staff early this year, with help from a ‘reputable service provider’. He did not specify the types and number of housing involved.

‘To help reduce their stress and anxiety of relocating overseas, we assist our foreign team members in addressing one of their basic needs – accommodation,’ he said. ‘We make sure that they settle down comfortably as well as enjoy working and living in Singapore.’ And it is important for RWS to keep its employees happy because that could enhance their work performance and in turn, visitors’ experience at the integrated resort, he said.

Mr Goh added that RWS considered several factors in choosing accommodation, including the place’s accessibility and proximity to amenities such as convenience stores. ‘The locations we have chosen facilitate good interaction between the local community and foreign talent,’ he added. BT understands that units at Tiong Bahru and Toa Payoh have been found.

C&H Realty’s Mr Lu said that he believes that RWS would want flats in areas near Sentosa, such as Telok Blangah. But he pointed out that the supply of rental flats in such central locations is tight, and RWS might have to broaden its search to estates near MRT stations.

Rents of HDB flats in the central region rose between the second and third quarter of the year. For instance, the median sub-letting rent for a four-room flat in the area increased from about $2,000 to $2,200.

HDB’s website shows that up to the third quarter of this year, the agency has granted 11,235 sub-letting approvals. The bulk of these – 3,978 or 35 per cent – were for three-room flats. Another 3,593 approvals were for four-room flats.

Also, looking across all towns and flat types, median sub-letting rents have remained relatively steady from the first to third quarter.

Dennis Wee Group director Chris Koh observed that the HDB rental market is ‘more stabilised’ compared with the period when collective sales were rife and many displaced residents were looking for lodging. His firm has seen more rental enquiries direct from foreigners working with RWS.

Marina Bay Sands, the other integrated resort due to open next year, has not engaged property agents to look for accommodation for its foreign staff. ‘Housing arrangements will take into account the needs of the prospective foreign employees,’ said a spokeswoman. ‘At this time, Marina Bay Sands is giving priority to attracting and selecting Singaporeans and permanent residents for our job opportunities.’ – Business Times

Republished from Business Times on 28 November 2009