Alternative proposals for a better Singapore
I am glad to see that the Public Transport Council and train operators have decided to change the seat signs on trains to read “Reserved Seating” instead of the less assertive “Priority Seating”.
This was a suggestion I made back in February 2008 in my paper titled Improving Singapore’s Public Transport System – A Commuter’s Perspective:
Barack Obama was invited to speak at the graduation ceremony of the University of Notre Dame, where he touched on the contentious issue of abortion.
Notre Dame, apart from being known for its football team, is one of the nation’s premier Catholic universities. It was thus very controversial for Obama, a strong advocate of abortion rights, to be invited. The Catholic Church strongly opposes abortion. Some students had attended their commencement but stated their stand by wearing anti-abortion symbols on their mortar boards.
Photo: New York Times
Message from Maruah (Singapore Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism), which is organising a peace vigil for Aung San Suu Kyi at 5.30pm on May 31 at Speakers’ Corner.
This is a peaceful rally to ask as many people in Singapore to give two hours of their time to show support to a courageous women – Daw Aung Sung Suu Kyi – who has been placed under house arrest for almost two decades and now is held in a formidable prison.
Continue reading “Peace vigil for Aung San Suu Kyi @ Speakers’ Corner”
This is an excellently argued letter by Mr Michael Wee from today’s Straits Times, which deserves to be repeated here.
Political changes must win over younger citizens
Straits Times forum, 21 May 2009
TUESDAY’S report, ‘New strategies for a new world order’, on the President’s speech to Parliament hinted at what might be, to some, political liberalisation.
Given past precedents, any change made to Singapore’s political system will certainly be implemented with caution.
Such changes must be sufficient to overturn the cynicism of younger voters who want greater involvement and participation in the political process.
Where parliamentary politics are concerned, the best litmus test for any reform to the current group representation constituency system is its ability to elect a Parliament whose composition more closely reflects political parties’ percentage of votes.
Based on the last general election, the Workers’ Party garnered 16.34 per cent of the votes, but it holds only one of 84 seats in Parliament.
In Britain, which also uses a similar first-past-the-post system, the opposition Conservative Party holds roughly 31 per cent of parliamentary seats, which reflects the 32.3 per cent of the popular vote the party obtained.
Ambiguous or seemingly half-hearted attempts at reform will only further increase scepticism.
The People’s Action Party (PAP) should accept the possibility of greater opposition party involvement and acknowledge that other parties can also bring in a fresh generation of political leaders in their own right.
If the PAP can still be elected with the same resounding confidence even after meaningful reforms to the political system, it will certainly win over more fully the younger generation of voters.
Michael Wee
I am glad to learn from the President’s speech in Parliament on Monday that Singapore is opening up a new government-subsidised tertiary institute designed for more polytechnic graduates to be able to obtain their university degrees locally.
I think this is long overdue. I know of so many poly graduates who, because they were not in the top 10% of their class, did not qualify for local universities. Their parents had to fork out thousands for them to study overseas, usually in Australia. Apart from the drain on finances for individual families, on a national level this money could have been spent locally, contributing to the Singapore economy, instead of the Australian economy. And for the many families who couldn’t afford an Australian education, it is unfortunate that their sons and daughters were denied a quality university education because of financial constraints, and had to join the ranks of middle rung workers working for imported foreign talent.
Passion for activism extinguished…but not for long
This article is the first part of a week-long focus on The Online Citizen of the 22nd anniversary of the 21 May 1987 government clampdown on a group of so-called “communists” and “marxists”, who were detained under the ISA – and never charged or brought to trial.
On 21st May 1987, 22 social activists in Singapore were detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) for allegedly plotting a so called “Marxist conspiracy” to overthrow the Singapore government. Although they were never tried in an open court, the full weight of the government’s machinery, including the state-controlled media, was used to make the government’s case against these activists.
The detainees’ side of the story has seldom been heard by the general public. In the 20 years after the detentions, the mainstream media has shied away from telling the ex-detainees’ stories.
Mr Tan Tee Seng was 28 years old when he was detained, along with 21 others. In an exclusive two-and-a-half hour interview with The Online Citizen, Mr Tan speaks about his background and activities in the 1970s and 80s, his arrest in 1987, his experience under interrogation and detention, and his life after his release.
Sometimes I wonder why Parliamentarians and political commentators even bother to debate government expenditure. To paraphrase a senior statesman, perhaps we all have “no sense of proportion”.
Temasek’s realised loss after selling its Bank of America (BoA) stake could be as high as S$6.8 billion, according to figures published by the pro-government Straits Times. That’s more than the Singapore government’s 2009 budget for healthcare, community development, social services, and manpower development combined!
And the secretive Temasek thought it could keep it hush hush when it sold its stake before the end of March. It was only discovered when a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that Temasek no longer held BoA or Merrill Lynch shares.
I oppose the Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) scheme.
It’s name — Nominated MP — already condemns it as undemocratic in nature. An MP is supposed to be a representative of his or her constituency — the candidate who has been given the most votes by his constituents.
Myanmar’s opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been charged with breaching the terms of her house arrest after an apparently uninvited visit by an American man.
This is clearly a flimsy excuse to extend her detention, which expires at the end of this month. These latest charges carry a penalty of 5 years imprisonment, which would stretch her detention beyond even the 2010 elections, effectively disqualifying her from contesting it.
She has been under house arrest under the country’s military regime for 11 of the past 19 years in since her party, the National League for Democracy, was elected to power in the last democratic elections in the former Burma.
Continue reading “Singapore, ASEAN must strongly condemn Myanmar”
I am very concerned about reports that a police officer interrogating a murder suspect suggested scenarios to the accused about how he allegedly murdered his wife.
When the accused lawyer asked him why he was then able to provide details of the alleged murder in his police statements, the accused said the investigating officer had asked him “would it have happened this way or would it have happened that way?” when he could not answer her questions.
“I told her between the two, this looks okay, you can take this, and I wanted to be out of the place as soon as possible because of the coldness,” said the accused.