Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

Finally, I have time to actually sit down and put my thoughts into writing again. The end of semester hell has passed, at least for now.

The twin stories of the World Bank managing director calling for loosening up of restrictions in Singapore and the seizure of a film during a private screening by the SDP caught my attention.

I’ve always favoured less restrictions, particularly with regards to speech. Sure, giving complete freedom of speech may result in lots of irresponsible talk but well, as the Chinese saying goes, genuine gold does not fear fire. The truth will eventually surface. Those who repeatedly spout nonsense and lies will eventually end up like the boy who cried wolf; people will not take them seriously.

This is why I don’t understand why the MDA has to step in to seize the film that was shown during SDP’s screening at Excelsior Hotel. Sure, the film is probably unkind to our founding prime minister but that’s life. There will be people who love you to bits and there will be people who hate you to the core.

By attempting to prevent people from saying unkind things about you, I think it sends off a signal of insecurity. Despite his flaws, I think Lee Kuan Yew has done alot for Singapore and no one can take that away from him. I really think he should let the nay-sayers do that they want and let people judge for themselves what is the truth. Sure, people might be dissatisfied with Lee Kuan Yew (or the PAP for that matter) in one way or another but that’s normal. You cannot please everyone.

I think Singapore should adopt a light touch approach not only to Internet regulation but to the entire media landscape. I think the PAP will gain alot more respect that way. Clamping down on words that are not music to the ear gives off a whole host of negative signals. I believe that young and educated Singaporeans are leaning towards the left and to court these young voters, there’s a need to loosen up.

I disagree with many of the methods employed the SDP but the acting of seizing a film screened for a small group of people isn’t going to make me like the PAP. The Worker’s Party suddenly seem like a nice in-between.

If Mas Selamat has been following the news (assuming that he is still in Singapore), he must be laughing to death at the level of embarassment and troubles he has caused to the government. I think the problem with the escape of Mas Selamat, at least for now, is not so much of a possible terrorist attack but rather, how far up the hierarchy should blame go?

There are two parallel lines of argument. The first one, favoured by many netizens, is that heads of officials connected to the escape of Mas Selamat should roll, whether they are directly involved or otherwise. Even if you are high up in the hierachy and not directly involved, you still have to go because like it or not, the escape happened under your watch and you are ultimately responsible.

The second argument, favoured by the government, is that only the heads of those who are directly involved should roll. The logic here is that it is unfair to punish someone for something that is not within his or her direct control. DPM Wong did not have direct control over the Gurkha guards. If he did, then of course he has to go. But since he didn’t, we should be fair to him and not blame him at all.

Each argument fundamentally works on a different set of assumptions, so it is difficult to argue one in favour of another. However, as Gerald rightly pointed out, most of the work done by a minister are actually that of the civil servants under him. Favouring the second argument means that any Singaporean minister will have an iron rice bowl (make that a diamond rice bowl: it’s the hardest substance around and it’s damn expensive) because he/she will never be directly responsible for most of the things happening under his watch. As long as a minister does not succumb to corruption or engage in behaviour defined as unacceptable by society or the ruling political party, the job is basically secured for life.

Either way, we have a problem. It’s either we create a culture of aversion to mistakes or we create a modern day nobility. We have to choose between a rock and a hard place. And, the choice has been made for all of us.

The release of results of the inquiry into the Mas Selamat fiasco has resulted in renewed calls for accountability (note: this generally reads as the sacking of DPM Wong Kan Seng) by Singaporean netizens. PM Lee Hsien Loong has come out to defend Wong Kan Seng, saying that Singaporeans should not slip into a “witch-hunting mode”.

I find it interesting that PM Lee chooses to use the term “witch-hunt”. Putting on my critical media scholar hat, I think PM Lee is trying to frame the discussion to his benefit. By choosing to use the term “witch-hunt”, PM Lee is essentially throwing in a smoke grenade to obscure the differences between accountability and witch-hunt, probably hoping to equate the two so that he can turn the spotlight away from the issue of accountability.

Having said that, I do think that PM Lee has a point too. I mean, how far up the chain of command should the blame be laid? Some time back, a soldier escaped from his army camp with a rifle. Should the chief of army, chief of defence force and the minister be sacked for that? Or should the transport minister be sacked for the Nicoll Highway incident? It’s a tough call for PM Lee on whether he should sack a minister who is not directly responsible.

Besides, it would be counter-productive to sack an obviously talented person over a mistake he/she is not directly responsible for. There is more value to the organization in keeping such people. Of course, whether DPM Wong is of such a pedigree is open to debate.

PM Lee also said that we have to be careful of breeding a culture where people are afraid to make mistakes. That point is well-taken. I think we need to leave some allowance for honest mistakes. However, then question would be why are the guards considered to be negligent instead of making an honest mistake? Why are mistakes for some people tolerated, but not others?

I guess there are no straightforward answers. I personally would like to see something more substantial than an apology, although resignation is not necessary. Maybe a big pay cut? Or maybe a demotion to Minister of State?

I just read the online media release of a proposal by a group of 15 bloggers recommending sweeping changes to the way the Internet is regulated. The media release can be found on The Online Citizen.

I’m not part of the group (I am going to dub them G15 from now), although I was aware of the initiative. I commend the G15 for investing their personal time and effort into putting together the document. It looks like it’s going to be a great piece of work, although I don’t think that the recommendations will offer anything groundbreaking but rather, the recommendations are likely to sum up all the key thoughts and arguments in the Singaporean socio-political blogosphere on Internet regulation.

The next step is, of course, so what? Can we truly expect the government to implement most of the proposals? Wearing my pragmatic hat, I would imagine that the government will, at most, acknowledge the paper but say that it is too early to implement these proposals. Of course, this is a vast improvement compared to the past. If this initiative happened 30-40 years ago, the G15 would have to do prison break, Mas Selamat style.

While I don’t think there’s much chance of a major shift in policy as a result of the document, I do think that it would help bolster the G15’s case if the proposal is endorsed by as many netizens as possible. As it stands now, if I were the government, I would contend that the G15 is hardly representative of the online population and then proceed to ignore it. It would be much harder to question the legitimacy of the proposal if there were some 50,000 to 100,000 Singaporean netizens endorsing it.

Of course, it is going to be difficult to even get 1,000 netizens to endorse the proposal, let alone 100,000. I think that majority of the blogs in Singapore fall into the personal journaling category and these folks, having little opportunities to run afoul of any regulations, are unlikely to lend their support to the proposal. However, I think every single endorsement counts. I will read the full proposal when it is released and it is very likely that I will endorse that proposal.

The heartening thing about this proposal is that it is a genuine grassroots initiative and not the result of some committee mandated by the government. Of course, there are going to be some people who are sore at not being “invited” to give their opinions and they will claim that the G15 is an elitist group. In fact, reading the comments thread on the media release on The Online Citizen, it looks like these folks are going to start questioning the legitimacy of the proposal.

To these folks, please, get out of my elite uncaring face. Stop being so damn full of yourselves.

The American and Israeli government are now upset that former US president Jimmy Carter has “embraced” Hamas.

A paragraph from the Associated Press’ report read:

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Carter’s meeting with Hamas “dignified” a group committed to Israel’s destruction. “One cannot but wonder how this attitude is supposed to promote peace and understanding,” he said.

Well, I cannot help but wonder how the attitude of the Washington and Israeli hawks would fare any better. Will isolating a “terrorist” group solve the problem? I think that Jimmy Carter is right in reaching out to Hamas. If there is no talk, people will just construct their own ideas about the “other”, leading to misunderstandings and sustained conflict. It’s far better to get people to thrash things out by talking.

Of course, the issues surrounding Israel and Palestine are complex and I’m don’t have clear solutions to the problem. However, I do think that the Americans and Israelis should reconsider their policy of isolating Hamas. It is more prudent to talk to Hamas and understand them.

If the Americans and Israelis don’t even want to talk to Hamas, they won’t understand why Hamas behaves the way it is behaving now. It is perhaps much more convenient to label Hamas as a terrorist group because the military can then be sent in to “clean up” the problem. The Washington hawks seem to love the idea of a military solution to everything.

However, this will only make Hamas appear even more legitimate in the eyes of Palestinians because Hamas can easily employ the rhetoric of being the real defenders of the Palestinian leaders. By not talking to Hamas, the Americans and Israelis are just weakening the domestic support for the Fatah party, which is obviously not the desired outcome.

I’ve read reports that Hamas actually does alot of humanitarian work in Palestine and they are popular with ordinary Palestinian folks as compared to Fatah, which has been viewed as a corrupt organization. Of course, I am painfully aware of the violence that Hamas perpetuates and I most certainly do not condone that. However, I do think that people (especially the neocons) should try and understand why Hamas is resorting to violence. Are they resorting to violence because they like wanton destruction, or is it because they have no other recourse against groups that are much more powerful?

Seriously, the Americans and Israelis should stop vilifying Hamas. They are no saints themselves.

Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said in a Straits Times report that home ownership helps to hedge against inflation.

“The 95 per cent of Singaporeans who own their homes are not affected by inflation in the rental market, which is especially worrisome if you are a retiree householder.”

On its face, what Tharman said is valid. If indeed so many Singaporeans are owning their own home, the effects of inflation is already mitigated. However, I do wonder, how many people own a fully paid home?

For example, I would fall into the category of Singaporeans who own their homes as I signed the lease agreement with HDB. However, I don’t exactly own my home, at least not until December 2037, because I have a 30 year home loan to pay off.

Only people who have either finished paying their home loan or who bought their homes when the economy is in a slump some years back would have the effects of rental inflation mitigated. If you just bought a piece of property in recent months, technically you own your home and do not suffer rental inflation but, you are still suffering from inflation in property prices.

Add in the loan interest over the next 20 - 30 years and you probably are not any better off than those who rent their homes. The good thing for those who rent is that their rental drops when the economy dips but if you have a home loan, you have to pay the monthly installment regardless of whether the economy dips or not. Of course, I must qualify that you eventually get to own that piece of property but that doesn’t mean that home owners don’t suffer the effects of housing-related inflation.

Considering how hot the property market was in the past year, I’m quite sure there is a fair number of people who are now saddled with huge loans to pay off as a result of a bouyant property market. Certainly, one can make the argument that it’s not the government’s business to tell people whether they should or should not sell their homes and saddle themselves with fresh loans. However, if the government is serious about home ownership as a hedge against inflation, I think there should be policies that encourages people not to sell their homes and land themselves in fresh debt.

One possible way would be to revise the current subsidies system for first time home owners to one that is such that the longer a person owns a flat, the more housing subsidies a person can enjoy, of course, subject to a maximum cap. The subsidies will be paid out yearly, with low subsidies in the initial years and higher subsidies as time passes. This system is flexible and allows home owners who wish to sell their flat within a few years of purchase the option of doing so, which is not possible under the current system.

The problem with this system is that it makes the buyer pay full market price initially and this results in a whole new set of problems for certain groups of people so this idea might not be very feasible after all. However, if we truly desire for home ownership to be a hedge against inflation, we have to create incentives (I favour incentives over disincentives) for people to own a fully paid home and get them to stay in that home. If people are going to keep on selling their homes and taking out fresh loans, it will be difficult to escape the clutches of housing related inflation.

I’ve been following America’s progress towards the presidential elections. In particular, the tight race between Democrat rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has been particularly interesting to watch.

Clinton is generally selling herself on the basis of her experience and has tried, on numerous occasions, to discredit Obama on this count. In response, Obama and his supporters have responded that experience and judgment are not the same.

Indeed, I would agree with Obama that experience and judgment are fundamentally two different things, and if I have to choose, I’ll choose a leader who has better judgment but little experience over one who has more experience but less astute judgment. The reason is simple: the former can make sound decisions in any situation but the latter can only make sound decisions in situations that are similar to what he/she has previously experienced.

That being the case, picking the right candidate is actually quite easy, if not for the fact that it’s almost impossible to know who has good judgment and who doesn’t. And besides, whether a given judgment is good or bad is often situated, be it culturally, socially, economically, politically… (the list goes on and on). Whether someone has good judgment or not probably all boils to a matter of personal belief.

It’s quite obvious that I have sympathies for Barack Obama. I think Clinton should stop harping on the experience issue. At the end of the day, even if the so-called ‘inexperienced’ Obama becomes president, he will not be governing the country alone. He will assemble a team to help him and, in that team, he can get the most ‘experienced’ people in the country. He doesn’t need to be ‘experienced’. All he needs is to be able to assemble ‘experienced’ people to work for him.

And, I think this is Obama’s strongest point. He has proved that he can rally different groups of people around him. Clinton may be more ‘experienced’ but she can’t do everything by herself, no? Besides, by harping on experience being an essential pre-requisite for being a president, Clinton is opening herself to attacks on mistakes that she has made in the past. It’s a double-edged sword.

Applying my argument to local politics, it should be no surprise that I don’t buy the rhetoric that political parties in Singapore other than the PAP are not capable of governance because these parties lack experience. Civil servants can share the experience of governance with an inexperienced politician. What is more important to me is whether I believe that politician I’m voting for is able to make a correct judgment.

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew has acknowledged the alarming problem of Singapore’s brain drain. While I do not profess to be a talent, I profess to be someone who has given very serious thought to leaving Singapore and giving up citizenship.

Singapore is a good place to live in. The food is good, infrastructure sound, safe and it’s a global aviation hub. However, I cringe when I saw Martin See’s video, Speaker’s Cornered. I feel indignant for Francis Seow, and even more so for Chia Tye Poh. I am saddened by the execution of a Nigerian boy for drug trafficking. I am disillusioned by defamation suits by the ruling party against their political opponents. I shake my head in disbelief that there’s more interest in reviewing minister salaries than reviewing public assistance to the poor.

There many other things I can probably add on to the list of reasons why I’ve been contemplating giving up my pink IC. It seems to me that the Singapore story is becoming the story of Animal Farm. And, before I end up like Boxer, I’m going to get out of here.

This entry on academic freedom in teaching by Elia Diodati inspired me to write this entry.

I think that educational institutions in Singapore has traditionally been viewed as manufacturing lines rather than a place for scholarly pursuit. The role of education is to provide the necessary engineers and technicians to fill up the jobs in factories. This is true right up to the tertiary level. Singapore would have been doomed if philosophers were produced by truckloads.

When education becomes a manufacturing line, it is small wonder that the emphasis is on grades. Since everyone is pretty much a carbon copy of each other in terms of knowledge, the only differential is grades. Those with good grades get the good jobs and those without good grades get the leftovers.

However, things have somewhat changed of late but the change isn’t because of a sudden enlightenment on the importance of scholarly pursuits but rather, it’s because education has been identified as another potential industry for further economic growth. This is a very cynical view but I believe that without an economic imperative, nothing advances in Singapore.

Despite my cynical view, I am thankful for the change because my university education is nothing like what I experienced previously. The first 12 years of my formal education were completely undone by 4 years of university education. I remember that in secondary school and junior college days, the buzzwords in education was critical thinking but I realised I never knew what was critical thinking until I reached university. Looking back, I am honestly not sure if there was critical thinking involved (maybe except for GP) in my classes. The standard operating procedure was to do the ten-year-series from front to back and back to front.

I have to thank my professors in university for their efforts in undoing my first 12 years of education. If I have to pick the single most important thing in university that all my professors taught me, that would be that there’s no such thing as a model answer. The answer you get depends on the perspectives and assumptions you think is “true”. I may be over-generalising but I think that the local education system prior to university somewhat follows the positivist tradition rather than the critical school of thought. There could be many reasons for this but I am of the opinion that the positivist tradition is less of a threat to the status quo than the critical approach (and of course, it is easier to grade when you assume there’s a certain “truth”, i.e. model answer).

Ultimately, how insidious education can be as a political tool depends on how far teachers are willing to abet the system. Academics, thankfully, are usually resentful of attempts to turn education into a political tool because they understand the importance of academic freedom in both teaching and research. I think that any rot in our education system stops at junior college and university education (including local university education) will provide the saving grace. Of course, this is assuming that the government continues to adopt a hands-off approach towards the universities.

MM Lee has a very upbeat assessment regarding the foreign talent policy. He feels that even if just 30 percent to 40 percent of foreign talents who come into Singapore eventually stay, Singapore would benefit tremendously.

Well, that is a fair statement to make except that I don’t exactly have the necessary statistics to agree with him. Do we actually have such a high rate of foreign talents who choose to make Singapore their home, or do most of the foreign talents take Singapore as a nice, sheltered parking lot?

Besides, is it easier to convince a foreign talent to make Singapore their home, or is it easier to convince local talents not to make somewhere else their home? The CIA World Factbook stated Singapore’s net migration rate in 2002 to be an estimated 26.11 migrants per 1,000 population. It’s a sobering figure.

Of those, this figure appears to be extraordinarily high and I have no idea how it’s computed but there is no doubt that a good deal of Singaporeans are giving up their pink ICs and red passports. I have to say that I do not know the exact demographics of Singaporeans who migrated but I do think they are probably highly-educated, talented folks who are either attracted to better opportunities elsewhere or are just too sick and tired of life in Singapore. If you are not highly-educated nor talented enough, you are probably too busy with just making ends meet, let alone consider migration.

It’s perhaps much more effective to stem the emigration rate compared to increasing immigration rate and hoping immigrants will stay. Those who choose to emigrate probably lived in Singapore for a large part of their life. They would have made many friends here and they probably have many cherished memories of times in Singapore too. Would it be easier to persuade these people to stay compared to foreigners who are new to Singapore shores? The foreign talents probably feel more of an emotional attachment to their own hometown than to Singapore.

One might argue that Singapore is a state made up of immigrants and that if my logic above holds, there should be no Singapore today. That may be true, but the immigrants of yesteryear are usually poor and less educated than immigrants of today. The modern Singaporean immigrant is highly educated, probably well-to-do and certainly very mobile. It will take much more to convince these people to stay compared to the immigrants of the past.

However, encouraging Singaporeans not to emigrate is not exactly easy either. While emotional ties might be a useful leveraging tool, there’s only so much that can be leveraged without corresponding tangible actions addressing the reasons why these Singaporeans choose to migrate. Sometimes, it might not be in the interest of the government to address these issues. Perhaps the key consideration for the government really isn’t a question of whether it is more effective to attract foreign talent or retain local talent but rather, which option doesn’t disrupt the status quo.