The Workers’ Party’s Eastern Area Committee (EAC) conducted our house visits in Bedok South yesterday evening. As always, we had an enriching time chatting with residents and understanding their concerns about life in Singapore. Residents we met expressed appreciation for our visit.

The EAC was formed in 2005 to expand the WP’s operational capabilities into the eastern part of Singapore. The current team, led by Eric Tan Heng Chong, the party treasurer, has been conducting house visits every week since early last year.

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Technorati Tags: Bedok, EAC, house visits, Workers' Party

A reader forwarded me this press release from Contact Singapore, announcing that Economic Development Board and the Ministry of Manpower are hiring 250 China engineers this Saturday in Shanghai. Here’s the catch: If don’t read Chinese, too bad for you–the press release is written only in Chinese with no English translation. It is quite obvious that the ad is targeted only at China engineers, and not at Singaporeans.

My reader wondered why priority was not given to Singaporeans. I think it is a valid question to ask. Can EDB and MOM confirm that no effort was spared in recruiting locally before going to China to recruit?

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Technorati Tags: careers, engineering, jobs

To say that the past week has not been a good one for the PAP government is a gross under statement. First, was the continuation of the saga involving the break-in to the government-owned MRT train depot in Changi. Then the release of the Town Council Management Report (TCMR) provoked a much stronger than expected reaction from opposition MPs which they could not satisfactorily respond to. Finally, the most appalling was the massive flood in Orchard Road and Bukit Timah after just a few hours of rainfall, that caused millions of dollars in damages.

Although the three incidents are not connected, there seems to be a common thread running through all of them. In all of them, Singaporeans neither saw nor heard from the Cabinet ministers in charge for days on end.

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Technorati Tags: accountability, floods, leadership, Orchard Road, responsibility

Singaporeans are quite well-versed at keeping an eye out for the political rituals that the PAP government embarks on in the lead up to elections. This time round, the PAP is hardly even making an attempt to conceal its intentions: Glowing press reports about a Minister returning to work after his MC, positive reports about PAP town councils (especially those helmed by PM, SM and MM), negative reports on the opposition, sharp rebuttals of opposition MPs’ remarks, training of civil servants to be election officials, etc.

But perhaps one of the clearest signs that an election is looming, apart from the release of the Gerrymandering Report Electoral Boundaries Report, are the sudden resignations of senior civil servants. This week, we saw one such resignation. After a game of musical chairs at the Ministry of National Development (MND) and its agencies, URA and HDB, it has emerged that BG Tay Lim Heng, deputy secretary at MND, has “left to pursue other interests”. It was later reported that BG Tay has been appointed deputy CEO of Keppel Integrated Engineering (KIE), a subsidiary of government-linked Keppel Corporation.

Now I’ve never heard of KIE before, perhaps due to my ignorance of the local corporate scene. But it strikes me as rather odd that a guy with a likely CEP (currently estimated potential) of permanent secretary of a Ministry would quit to be a No. 2 guy in a lesser known company.

This pattern played out the same way in the lead up to the 6 May 2006 General Election. On 11 April that year, RAdm Lui Tuck Yew resigned from his post as CEO of HDB after just 10 months on the job. On 2 April 2006, Lee Yi Shyan resigned as CEO of IE Singapore. Both were fielded as PAP candidates and promptly appointed as junior ministers after the GE.

The PAP always accuses the opposition of showing up just before elections, but they overlook the fact that many of their new candidates have barely started climbing down from their ivory towers when they are fielded as candidates under the wings of powerful Cabinet ministers in a GRC (Group Representation Constituency). Although the Singapore Civil Service is supposed to be politically neutral, the PAP unabashedly uses the Civil Service as a harvest field for its political candidates, and doesn’t even bother portraying a semblance of separation of the two. For example, Lee Yi Shyan’s candidate write-up for GE 2006 started with the sentence, “Mr Lee Yi Shyan is currently the Chief Executive Officer of International Enterprise Singapore” (emphasis mine).

So keep a watch out for further movements in the Ministries and statutory boards. They could provide a peek into whom our next millionaire ministers may be.

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It is hard to contain one’s scepticism when reading the news about the Town Council Management Report (TCMR).

The Straits Times reported on Friday:

The two best performers are Ang Mo Kio-Yio Chu Kang led by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, and Tanjong Pagar headed by Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, according to the government’s Town Council Management Report.

The two worst performers are run by the opposition: Hougang, by the Workers’ Party’s Low Thia Khiang, and Potong Pasir by the Singapore People’s Party’s Chiam See Tong.

Isn’t it interesting that the two Town Councils (TCs) that “top” the report are the ones “headed” by the PM Lee and MM Lee, and the two “worst performers” are those headed by opposition MPs? (Technically the two Lees do not head their Town Councils. They have delegated that less glamorous job to their backbencher MPs.)

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Technorati Tags: HDB, public housing, Town Councils