Alternative proposals for a better Singapore
Red shirted protestors loyal to deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra stormed the hotel where ASEAN leaders, including PM Lee, FM George Yeo and Trade Minister Lim Hng Kiang, were holding the annual ASEAN summit, prompting the Summit to be postponed indefinitely. The Thai government has declared a state of emergency.
View BBC clip
I am very concerned over what seems to be a lack of efficient procedures in place to avert mass public health tragedies like the recent Geylang Serai rojak stall food poisoning incident.
Three lives have been lost (including one unborn baby), and 146 people have been affected by the food contamination, 48 of whom were hospitalised.
CNA reported that stall patrons started to fall sick between April 2nd (Thu) and 4th (Sat) with food poisoning symptoms such as severe abdominal cramps, vomiting, and diarrhoea. However it was only at 8am on Sat April 4th that officials from the National Environment Agency (NEA) arrived to shut down the stall.
Continue reading “Authorities took 2 days to shut down killer rojak stall?”
The Straits Times did an Insight piece on how difficult it is to get corporate exec types to enter politics. I think they did it from a rather biased angle, assuming that execs will only join the PAP if ever they consider entering politics. But in any case, I think the mindsets expressed pose a challenge for both the ruling party and the opposition in recruiting good men and women to lead the country.
Some of the interviewees said they would be willing to step forward “if one day the Government fails, it is corrupt and there are policy failures”. This is heartening to hear, but is still the wrong thinking. Once the rot is apparent, it may be a bit too late to set things right. Singapore is a small country and cannot afford a “transition period” where things are in a mess. People who have the interest and ability, and genuinely care for their fellow citizens are needed in both the ruling party and the opposition. They should step forward and not wait to be asked, as if it is some badge of honour to be “headhunted”.
Read also: Having a capable alternative party is in the national interest
This is a press release from MFA today:
02/04/2009
His Excellency Gregory Hunt, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water of the Commonwealth of Australia, will visit Singapore as the 29th Lee Kuan Yew Exchange Fellow from 3 to 11 April 2009. During his stay, Mr Hunt will call on Minister for Foreign Affairs George Yeo and Senior Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment and Water Resources Dr Amy Khor. Senior Minister of State for National Development Grace Fu will also host him to an official meal.
Mr Hunt will participate in a roundtable at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies. He is also scheduled to attend a PAP Meet-the-People Session.
Other elements of Mr Hunt’s programme in Singapore include meetings with senior officials at the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of National Development and Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources. He will also visit the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Urban Redevelopment Authority’s Singapore City Gallery, the NEWater Plant, the Marina Barrage, the Changi Chapel Museum and the Night Safari.
Now I’ve never heard of Gregory Hunt, but from the red carpet treatment he is receiving from the Singapore authorities, one would assume he is some really big, influential chap in the Australian government. Well, yes and no. Technically he is not a member of the Australian Government, because he is an MP from the opposition Liberal Party. However, as a Shadow Minister he is accorded a protocol level equivalent to a minister in the government, or close to it, hence the “His Excellency” honorific.
What is interesting to note is the honour the Singapore government accords to opposition MPs of other governments. From a realpolitik standpoint, it makes sense: These leaders could, in the next election, become government ministers if their party wins the majority vote. So it is important to cultivate them.
But it is in stark contrast to the disdain demonstrate towards our own opposition politicians. Perhaps it’s because our opposition leaders have yet to reach the stature of their counterparts in other developed countries. Nevertheless it still makes political sense for the PAP to treat opposition members as persona non grata so as not to give them any credibility with the electorate.
C’est la vie…
I did not participate in Earth Hour. Well I couldn’t because I was still on the way home at 8.30pm tonight. But I did see quite a few buildings like SMU switching off their lights at 8.30 sharp.
Even if I was at home, I would not have turned off my lights. To all the treehuggers out there, I’m sorry but I think this Earth Hour is quite a load of rubbish. The amount of time, resources and energy it took to come out with all the marketing material would surely exceed any savings from the few people turning off their lights for that one hour. It’s ironic that the bus stop ads for Earth Hour remained lighted up throughout those magical 60 minutes.
Its symbolic, yes everyone agrees on that. But beyond the symbolism, I feel that it makes participants feel they are doing something great for the environment for just that one hour, before returning to their normal, wasteful ways.
I have a few practical and achievable suggestions for people who really want to save the Earth:
1. Sell your car, or don’t get one. Take public transport.
2. Only very occasionally sleep with aircon. Train your kids to sleep without aircon.
3. Limit your TV time to max 1 hr a day.
4. Change all the lightbulbs in your home to energy saving ones.
5. Seldom print anything, and if you do, print double-sided, two pages per side or use recycled paper.
How many Earth Hour participants do all of the above? I do. I’d like to challenge all Earth Hour participants to do the same. I’m sure there are many more ways that we can reduce consumption without too much inconvenience to ourselves.
In fact, one particularly wasteful and environmentally unfriendly policy of the Government which flies in the face of Earth Hour is the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s (URA) Lighting Masterplan. Introduced in 2006, the Lighting Masterplan asks building owners to turn on the lights in their buildings at night to beautify the city, as well as design lighting on their roofs to make their buildings more attractive. Choong Yong has written more about this and I shall not repeat what he said. Needless to say I agree with his points. Personally I would find a darkened city that allows me to see the natural lights of the stars much more beautiful.
The United Nations Human Rights Commission recently released a report on Israel’s war in Gaza. The report severely criticizes Israel for documented and verified reports of violations “too numerous to list.”
According to CNN, the report gave an account of how in a town southwest of Gaza City, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers ordered an 11-year-old boy to open Palestinians’ packages, presumably so that the soldiers would not be hurt if they turned out to contain explosives.
They then forced the boy to walk in front of them in the town, it said. When the soldiers came under fire, “the boy remained in front of the group”.
The report cited two alleged incidents from January 3. In one, it said, after a tank round struck near a house, a father and his two sons — both younger than 11 — emerged to look at the damage.
“As they exited their home, IDF soldiers shot and killed them (at the entrance to their house), with the daughter witnessing,” the report said.
In the second, it said, “Israeli soldiers entered a family house in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. Standing at the doorstep, they asked the male head of the household to come out and shot him dead, without warning, while he was holding his ID, hands raised up in the air, and then started to fire indiscriminately and without warning into the room where the rest of the family was huddled together.
“The eldest son was shouting in vain the word ‘Children’ in Hebrew to warn the soldiers. The shooting did not stop until everyone was lying on the floor. The mother and four of the brothers, aged 2-12 years, had been wounded, one of them, aged 4, fatally.”
In a separate report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, a group of Israeli soldiers said that Palestinian civilians were killed and Palestinian property intentionally destroyed during Israel’s recent 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip.
In one account, a squad leader from a brigade serving in Gaza described an incident in which he said an elderly Palestinian woman was shot and killed at the orders of a company commander:
“One of our officers, a company commander, saw someone coming on some road — a woman, an old woman. She was walking along pretty far away, but close enough so you could take out someone you saw there. If she were suspicious, not suspicious — I don’t know. In the end, he sent people up to the roof, to take her out with their weapons. From the description of this story, I simply felt it was murder in cold blood.”
According to the Haaretz transcript, the squad leader protested the rules of engagement, which he said allowed soldiers to fire on Palestinian homes without giving residents a warning. After the rules were changed, his soldiers complained that “we should kill everyone there [in the center of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist.”
According to Haaretz, the squad leader went on to say that, “You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won’t say anything. To write ‘death to the Arabs’ on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It’s what I’ll remember the most.”
All these war crimes remind me of the evils perpetrated by another occupying force – the Japanese Imperial Army during World War Two, and what they did to the Chinese and other Asians in China, Korea and Southeast Asia.
I’ve followed the Straits Times’ last two Saturday Insight articles — last week’s was about the Opposition’s plans for the coming election; this week’s was a report card on the 24 PAP MPs who were brought in for the 2006 election.
Overall I feel that both articles were relatively balanced. In a rare departure from the ST’s usual reporting style, the two articles extensively quoted sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Given the political climate in Singapore, where fear of retribution runs high, I am not surprised that these anonymous sources provided some of the more juicy tidbits about political players on both sides.
Of the interviewees who were willing have their names quoted, I think SMU law lecturer Eugene Tan appears to have the best grasp of the issues:
On the P65 MPs:
They and others urge the younger MPs to go beyond ‘the mere stylistics and cosmetic branding’, as law academic Eugene Tan puts it.
‘They need to connect at the cognitive and personal level and I don’t think we have seen enough of that – well, not yet,’ he says. For instance, politically, the younger MPs have imbibed the party attitudes such that they are almost indistinguishable from the pre-65 MPs.
‘In Parliament, they have not distinguished themselves at articulating the younger generation’s perspectives, concerns and thoughts on national matters.’
On the WP:
Like it or not, the hammer is the most recognisable symbol after the lightning. How well they do will depend on whether they are able to bring new candidates and raise the calibre of candidates.
For readers who surf on the move, I’m pleased to announce that my blog is now accessible from your mobile devices. Just go to https://geraldgiam.sg and you’ll be presented with a mobile-friendly page.
Credits to WordPress PDA & iPhone for creating this handy WordPress plugin. Any feedback on this is most welcome, particularly if you’re using an iPhone or Blackberry (since I’ve only tried it using my old Nokia phone and PDA).
It’s not often that you see such a strongly worded letter coming from the US government (or a State government). I think this letter from the New York Attorney General to the AIG Chairman takes the cake.
An article appeared on Saturday (March 7) in Malaysian newspaper The Star titled “Engaging the young and restless on their virtual turf”. The writer, veteran Singapore journalist Seah Chiang Nee, mentioned me briefly:
Prominent blogger Gerald Giam believes that until now the PAP did not see a need to use the Internet because it had firm control of newspapers and television.
He probably paraphrased it from a blogpost I wrote:
…back then, I think the PAP did not plan to use new media in a big way to win over the electorate. It didn’t see a need to since it had effective control over the mainstream media (it still does) and few Singaporeans were getting their news from the Internet (that number has grown, and it includes not just young people, but retirees as well).
Mr Seah also wrote that:
In his interview, PM Lee apparently realised it. Moving forward, he said, what is needed are young MPs who are comfortable with the new media landscape.
I’m interested to know who these young, potential MPs are — and if they even exist. Scanning local blogosphere for the past two years, I don’t know of many fellow bloggers who are pro-establishment and have made a name for themselves (i.e., Netizens know about them, for better or worse). Only a few come to mind: Ephraim Loy, Nicholas Lazarus, Kway Teow Man.
The fact that more than two years after PAP MP Denise Phua said the Internet is “85% against the government”, our blogosphere is still as anti-establishment as before indicates that there really aren’t many prominent bloggers in the PAP ranks to balance the anti-PAP rhetoric.
Added to the stringent qualifications for being a PAP candidate (scholar, CEO or can speak Chinese/Malay very well), this means that the party probably has to settle for candidates who are IT savvy, but are not necessarily bloggers.
This does not spell well for their e-engagement strategy. Being IT savvy doesn’t mean that one knows how to engage Netizens. Those are two completely different skillsets. It’s like asking a programmer geek to be a public relations professional.