NKF, HDB, and an Open Letter

Date: 24 February 2006

To: Editor, Singapore Review

From: Mr See Leong Kit

Subject: Be Open on HDB Flat Pricing --- Open Letter to PM Lee

Note for fellow S'poreans:

> Please circulate freely to all interested parties (esp HDB flat buyers/owners comprising some 90% of our population).

> As HDB flats are supposed to be low-cost public housing, S'poreans have every right to know whether they are priced with a "true cash subsidy" or a "cleverly-disguised profit".

The HDB Flat Pricing Issue is all about TRANSPARENCY (i.e. as in the NKF Shameful Scandal).

> If someone makes wild accusations, the PAP Govt will quickly issue a "robust reply" to rebut same.

Read on carefully and judge for yourself why PM Lee did not bother to render HIS response (i.e. choosing to maintain a DEAD SILENCE) despite my following reminder:

" In the absence of your response, our citizen-voters (already fed-up with Minister Mah's constant dodgy replies) will naturally wonder why Singapore's Prime Minister do not seem to have any comment/opinion on an issue that affects some 90% of the population."

Original full text of my Open Letter emailed to PM Lee (which he did not bother to respond):

Date: 21 February 2006

To: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong

cc: MND/HDB Minister-IN-CHARGE Mah Bow Tan

MoS/MND Heng Chee How

MND Parl Sec Maliki bin Osman

MND Perm Sec Tan Tee How

DPM Wong Kan Seng

PMO Minister Lim Swee Say

Head of Civil Service & PS/MFA Peter Ho

Ex-Head of Civil Service & PS/MOF Lim Siong Guan

PS/PSD Lim Soo Hoon

HDB Board Members:

Chairman Aline Wong

Dy Chairman Koh Cher Siang

Member David Wong Cheong Fook

Member Edmund Koh Kian Chew

Member Quek Bin Hwee

Member Ravi Menon

Member Halimah Yacob

Member Tan Boon Huat

Member BG Tay Lim Heng

Member/HDB CEO RADM (NS) Lui Tuck Yew

HDB Dy CEO Tan Poh Hong

HDB Dy CEO John Keung

Members of Parliament:

MP Dr Amy Khor (GPC Chairman,Environment/Nat'l Devt)

MP Dr Lily Neo

MP Chiam See Tong

MP Low Thia Khiang

NCMP Steve Chia

From: Mr See Leong Kit [ 58-year old educated/thinking citizen-voter and

whistle-blower (one who MUST speak up,when things are NOT RIGHT) ]

BE OPEN ON HDB FLAT PRICING --- OPEN LETTER TO PM LEE

1 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

1.1 During my idealistic youth, I was a staunch PAP supporter (just like my illiterate parents) through my unquestioning support and blind loyalty --- being systematically "brain-washed" by the endless flow of "feel-good" propaganda dished out by the PAP-controlled Press/TV Media.

My Greatest Regret --- it has taken me so long (at around age 40) to "see through" the many convoluted/unprofessional political ploys played by the PAP to entrench itself and to "ride roughshod" over the people (in not according rightful respect for their concerns/feedback).

But My Greatest Consolation --- more younger/better-educated/Internet-savvy Singaporeans are able to do so at an early age (in their 20s and 30s).

Over the Internet, their message goes like this:

"We, Singaporeans, Not Stupid! We do not like to be treated like 3-year old kids. Nor have our intelligence insulted by spurious arguments from public officials. We can THINK, READ between the lines and ADD one and one to make five!"

[ Other Internet postings:

> Politicans may fool MOST people MOST of the time.

But they can never fool ALL the people ALL the time.

> TALK IS CHEAP. Politicians must WALK THE TALK

in order to "earn" the respect/trust/credibility of the people.]

[ ST 7 Jan 06 headline: "Coming polls: Voters want leaders to EARN their TRUST."]

[ "People don't vote for a politician for what good things he has done IN THE PAST. People will support the man for what he can do for them GOING FORWARD." --- PAP MP Ong Kian Min (ST 20 May 05) ]

1.2 Is Singapore's PAP Government Really Open?

[ "We are OPEN AND TRANSPARENT...WE CANNOT HIDE what goes on in Singapore" --- MHA Minister Wong Kan Seng (ST 18 May 03) ]

[ "DPM Lee promises a more open Singapore"; "I don't make promises I can't keep: DPM Lee" (ST 7 Jan 04) ]

(a) What Singaporeans Say:

[ TODAY 13 Aug 04 headline: "The PM for all Singaporeans. Newly-sworn-in PM Lee pledges an 'open and inclusive' Singapore".]

[ TODAY 25 Aug 04 headline: "An Open Society? We'll See. Young Singaporeans sceptical about promised changes."]

[ From Internet posting:

Singapore is a supposedly First-World country, with a supposedly Open Government run by supposedly World-Class million-dollar ministers and supposedly First-Class half-a-million dollar senior bureaucrats.]

(b) What Foreigners Say:

[ "I hope my Singaporean friends can drop their ARROGANCE and the Chinese can let go of their pride"

--- Former Chinese Ambassador to Singapore Chen Baoliu (ST 20 Nov 03).]

[ "Singapore has flourished over the past 40 years, but is a 20th century model adequate for the 21st century?

Remaking its economy is, in a sense, the easy decision. Shaping a political system to reflect the needs and aspirations of its citizens is more difficult and more sensitive.

What are the bounds of expression? What say should citizens have in their government? In this era of Weblogs and Webcams, how much sense does it make to limit political expression?

As part of Singapore's success is its strong international links, it is surprising to find constraints on discussions here.

In my view, governments will pay an increasing price for not allowing full participation of their citizens."

--- Former U.S. Ambassador to Singapore Frank Lavin (ST 17 Oct 05) ]

[ "The use of libel and financial penalties can be a tremendous hindrance to freedom of expression.

When people who express critical views are sued, and sued out of existence by imposing financial penalties, they are prevented from participating in political life.

Obviously, Singapore does NOT qualify as an open society.

Prosperity and an open society have a symbiotic relationship. When a serious problem develops, a society without freedom of expression can't cope.

Singapore is a prosperous society....So I HOPE Singapore will become an open society."

--- U.S. billionaire financier/philanthropist George Soros (11 Jan 06) ]

1.3 What Singaporeans have learned from the NKF Disgraceful Debacle-cum-Shameful Scandal:

(a) From the Internet: "What the NKF saga has proved is that people who win defamation lawsuits may not be innocent and those who lose may not be guilty."

(b) Most quoteworthy Internet posting by a young/educated Singaporean:

"People with INTEGRITY counter accusations with the TRUTH, not lawsuits!"

(c) What Singaporeans at large think about defamation legal threats:

--- a most unbecoming/unprofessional as well as distasteful/disgraceful habit (especially coming from Public Officials).

--- a cunningly-clever way to strike fear and prevent charity-donors [or taxpayer-citizens] from asking rightful questions and seeking rightful answers on how their donated monies [or public funds] are being spent.

(d) [ "Obviously the checks and balances didn't work." --- PM Lee's first comments on the NKF Scandal (CNA 15 Jul 05) ]

Immediate Postings on the Internet:

Wearing his hat as Finance Minister, PM Lee had constantly preached on the importance of Good CORPORATE Governance and the need for "checks and balances"; "transparency and accountability"; "level playing field" (under Competition Act) and encouraging "whistle-blowers" (to expose corporate fraud/wrong-doing).

BUT wearing his hat as PRIME MINISTER, WHEN is PM Lee going to DO SOMETHING about the long-overdue/much-needed similar "checks and balances", etc,etc, to promote Good POLITICAL Governance ???

WHY the double standards between Corporate and Political Governance?

[ ".....we can always do BETTER if we try HARDER. We ALWAYS MUST try HARDER. Don't just do NATO (No Action,Talk Only)....."

--- PM Lee Hsien Loong (5 May 05 CNA "Up Close" programme) ]

(e) Excerpts from ST 6 Jan 06 INSIGHT article on MCYS Minister Vivian Balakrishnan:

......In 1997, he slammed the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) for its election practice of linking votes to upgrading of HDB estates.

"Voters are supposed to vote without fear and favour, and now we have a situation where both elements are in", he said sharply in an interview with Insight then.

In January 2001, Dr Balakrishnan found himself at lunch in the Istana with then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, who asked him to join the PAP.

Muses Dr Balakrishnan: "I've never forgotten what he told me, that 'if you join us, don't compromise and lose your values because if you do, you lose your value to us'."

He meets head-on the accusations that in the last four years, he has capitulated too quickly, too much --- and had essentially become a PAP yes-man.

So what alternative views has he expressed to the Government? He declines to go into it, saying "it's wrong for me to now publicly criticise".

ST reporter Li Xueying: "Some people have drawn parallels between the NKF and the Government, namely the use and justification of high salaries to draw talents, the use of libel suits to silence critics and the political patronage."

Dr Balakrishnan: "Those are opposition politicians trying to grasp at straws, but let me take it on.

Do I believe in paying people what they're worth? That's a principle which we still are for. Who decides how much you earn? In the case of Government, it's TRANSPARENT. We're not secretly being paid or collecting things. It's the INTEGRITY of the system. THAT'S INTACT.

TRANSPARENCY --- is there any fact being suppressed simply because we're embarrassed about it or because it cannot withstand public scrutiny? NO.

In even the so-called things which people are concerned about --- Temasek or the GIC --- there are good national financial reasons for certain amount of discretion in what is put out in the public domain. After all, this is to protect our own reserves and our own fiscal situation."

2 PRICING OF HDB FLATS --- AN ISSUE OF TRANSPARENCY

2.1 Many of Singapore's national/social problems (eg insufficient job creation; rich-poor income gap; rising divorce rates; procreation problem; younger/educated/disillusioned S'poreans emigrating; etc) can be traced back to these two fundamental causes:

(i) For COMPANIES/BUSINESSES (creating jobs for the people), the HIGH COST of doing business here

(ii) For our PEOPLE, the HIGH COST of living

WHO SAYS S'poreans must "pay through their noses" for good Government, a roof over their heads, a decent education for their children and a decent quality of life?

And WHO SAYS S'poreans must tolerate (ie suffer in silence) our high cost of living in order to enjoy a high standard of living?

[ Australia has a high standard of living, but its cost of living is nowhere as ridiculous as Singapore's! ]

2.2 The various/numerous taxes and dues S'poreans have to "Pay And Pay" include:

income tax; property tax; ad-valorem stamp duty on property purchases;

GST, COE, ERP, maid levy;

transport fares and varsity fees going up and up; etc, etc.

[ From the Internet --- With apologies to Sir Winston Churchill, never in the history of Mankind has so Many Singaporeans been Milked for so much Monies over so Many years by the PAP Government! ]

Million-Dollar Question --- To run a tiny red dot island, WHY do the PAP Government have "to milk so much monies from the people" ???

Final Correct Answer:

(i) to pay for the humongous remunerations/perks of our Ceremonial Presidency, Bloated Cabinet and Bulging Bloated Bureaucracy.

(ii) to provide an abundant/cheap source of funds for GIC, Temasek and other Government-linked business entities.

(iii) to pay for GIANT ELECTION CARROTS to seduce the people for their votes --- as in "pork-barrel politics" (using taxpayer's monies for political advantage) and "election gerrymandering" (fiddling with electoral boundaries for political advantage).

2.3 Irrefutable Facts on HDB Home Ownership In Singapore:

FACT 1:

Singapore's private home prices are "obscenely-high" while HDB flat prices are "sky-high".

For most S'poreans, a home is the most expensive purchase they will make in their lifetimes.

Some 90% of our population live in HDB flats --- representing the less-well-off who cannot afford private property.

FACT 2:

Despite our high home prices, few buyers "feel the pinch" immediately because up to 90% of the cost can be financed by long-term debt (over 20 -30 years).

Thus, many do not give a second thought to the fact if they borrow, say, $100,000 under a 20-year home loan, they could ultimately cough up some $200,000 in total capital and interest repayments.

FACT 3:

If prices of cars reach intolerable levels [at one time, COE nearly hit $100,000!], we can at least forego owning a car and fall back on public transport.

However, to encourage young S'poreans not to delay marriage and have more children [solution to our Procreation Problem!], they need a roof over their heads! IT IS AS SIMPLE AS THAT !!!

FACT 4:

BUT if a young couple in Singapore have to "sink so much monies" into their "brick and cement" HDB flat, how much monies will there be left to raise a family and sent the children to school/university (not to mention providing for their own healthcare/retirement needs in their golden years) ???

2.4 Timeline on the HDB Flat Pricing Issue:

(a) 23 Jan 2002 ST Forum letter "Govt should be open about true costs" by Wendy Lee Wan Fern, on the building costs and pricing of new HDB flats.

(b) 27 Aug 2003 TODAY letter "So, what's the true cost of an HDB flat?" by See Leong Kit:

" The impending CPF cuts raise two issues of concern for Singaporeans who use their CPF savings to finance their home purchases.

First, the affordability of public housing should be examined. National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan "promised" in Parliament that HDB flats will be kept "affordable" but did not elaborate.

What is the true cost of --- and what is the Government subsidy for --- an HDB flat? Singaporeans have the right to know how the flats are priced.

I urge Mr Mah to follow the example of Acting Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan in his move to publicise healthcare costs to help patients make informed choices. "

(c) 12 Jul 2004 ST Forum letter "How does HDB price its flats?" by Douglas Chow Tuck Kheong.

27 Jul 2004 ST Forum letter "Subsidy should be based on flat's building cost" by Mohamed Rafiq Hamjah.

11 Aug 2004 ST Forum letter "Flat buyers pay more than cost unless resale prices take a sharp dip" by Ee Teck Siew.

Mr Douglas Chow had "discovered" from ST reports that Chip Eng Seng Contractors had in 2000 built 824 flats in Bukit Batok for the tendered sum of $39.78 million, and would be completing in 2004 another 456 flats for $23 million.

That works out at around $50,000 construction cost per flat (in both cases). He then rightly asked why these new 4/5 room HDB flats are priced upwards of $200,000?

[ Following the above letters, there were considerable angry reactions on various Internet websites over the PAP Government's recalcitrant "lack of transparency" on the HDB Flat Pricing issue.]

(d) 1 Dec 2005 TODAY letter "Transparency begins at home. How does HDB derive flat prices? What are the costs?" by See Leong Kit.

2 Dec 2005 TODAY letter "How does HDB manage its finances?" by Gary Lee.

Note:

> For (b) above, although specifically asked to, Minister Mah Bow Tan did not bother to furnish a public reply i.e. he chose to maintain an arrogant/disrespectful DEAD SILENCE to an issue affecting some 90% of our population.

> For (a),(c),(d), the HDB had dodged the issue ALL THESE YEARS with its standard exasperating "wishy-washy/mumbo-jumbo/fuzzy-wuzzy" reply that a "market subsidy" is provided for new HDB flats to make it "affordable".

The same reply was regurgitated by Minister Mah in Parliament as follows:

[ Reproduced from Singapore Parliament website ]

Parliament No: 10 Session No: 1 Sitting Date: 2004-09-01

Title: Affordability-Based Scheme for HDB Flats

Mr Steve Chia Kiah Hong asked the Minister for National Development:

--- what is the basis and rationale for the Government to choose an affordability-based pricing scheme for HDB flats instead of a cost-based pricing system

--- whether this affordability-based scheme is taking more money than necessary from the people's savings than for other needs like children's education, medical care and retirement

--- whether this affordability-based scheme is turning previously well-affordable HDB flats into a backbreaking financial burden for those hard hit by the economic restructuring and who cannot find jobs with the matching pay.

Mr Mah Bow Tan:

The Government has committed that the majority of Singaporeans would be able to afford a basic HDB flat. Affordability is therefore the key consideration in pricing HDB flats. All HDB flats come with a market subsidy, i.e. they are priced below their equivalent market value.

Last year, 3- and 4-room HDB flat buyers used, on average, less than 20% of their monthly income to service their monthly loans. It is well within the 40% guideline used by financial institutions in credit assessment. It is also lower than international benchmarks of household expenditure on housing, which is typically around 25% or 30% of household income. This clearly shows that HDB flats remain affordable to Singaporeans.

We have consistently adopted an affordability-based pricing system. This has enabled more than 80% of Singaporeans to own their HDB flat.

Compelling Rebuttals to Minister Mah's statements:

(i) Previously, HDB flats were said to be "heavily subsidized".

In recent years, Minister Mah had cleverly switched to "market subsidy" --- perhaps realising that younger/educated/not-so-gullible S'poreans are "smelling a rat" in the pricing of HDB flats?

(ii) "Affordability" is often a relative/subjective thing.

Example: A Mercedes car priced at $250,000 is certainly "affordable" to Million-Dollar Minister Mah but definitely "not affordable" to the 400,000 S'poreans earning less than $1,500 per month!

As Minister Mah himself admitted, the 40% is just a "guideline" (general yardstick) used by banks to assess home loan instalment repayments.

Does he not know the "primary security" for the lending banks lie in the "legal mortgage" on the property???

(iii) See how Minister Mah (and other PAP politicians) like to constantly boast that "80% of Singaporeans own their HDB flat".

BUT notice how they cleverly avoid mentioning how many of the HDB flats still have outstanding mortgage loans, the amount outstanding and the remaining duration of the loans ???

2.5 Comparison between the "cost-based" and HDB "market subsidy" flat pricing approach :

(a) First, the logical "cost-based" approach used by Private Developers to price their condo flats:

Selling Price = Construction Cost + Land Cost + Other Related Costs + Profit Margin.

The profit margin is for the Private Developer assuming business risks, and generally range from a few per cent to say 20% (depending on market conditions and competition).

[ Note: HDB should be adopting such a "cost-based" approach but without the profit element --- since HDB is supposed to be a "not-for-profit" Developer of low-cost mass public housing.

(So that, through its large-scale developments, it can reap the "economies of scale" and pass on the "substantial cost savings" to HDB flatbuyers!) ]

>> Consider the example of a 5-room HDB NEW flat,

with a tendered construction cost of $50,000 [as verified in 2.4(c)]

but selling price set by the HDB at $200,000

[ Note: It is a GRAVE INSULT to the intelligence of S'poreans for the HDB to argue that the hugh balance of $150,000 is accounted for by Land Cost & Other Related Costs (eg piling works; consultancy/project management fees; financing/marketing/legal/misc costs).

Nowadays, HDB flats are built HIGHER and CLOSER TOGETHER i.e. with MANY flats cramped into a SMALL PLOT of land --- so the PER UNIT share of Land Cost & Other Related Costs cannot be so high at $150,000.

Let's estimate it at, say, around $70,000.]

>> So, Total Break-even Cost of the 5-rm new flat

= $50,000 (Construction Cost) plus $70,000 (Land Cost & Other Related Costs)

= $120,000 (which the HDB should set as the Selling Price --- if it genuinely want to help S'poreans in home ownership)

(i) If the Total Break-even Cost of a new flat is $120,000 and the HDB sells it for $100,000, then it is granting a "true cash subsidy" of $20,000 to the buyer.

(ii) Alternatively, if the HDB sells it for $120,000 (Total Break-even Cost), there is no such subsidy to the buyer ( but he will AT LEAST benefit from buying the flat at the LOWEST POSSIBLE COST! )

(b) Coming to the HDB's "market subsidy" flat pricing approach:

Minister Mah is trying to tell a young Singapore couple planning to have 3 children and wanting to buy a 5-rm HDB flat as follows:

Hey fellas, you have only the following two choices (so take it or leave it):

--- Apply for a NEW 5-rm flat, but be prepared to wait a few years (at one time, as long as 7 years! )

--- If you cannot wait, then go and buy a RESALE 5-rm flat at the (higher) prevailing market price.

We, the PAP Govt, like to proudly proclaim that buyers of new HDB flats get a "market subsidy" --- which is provided "by pricing NEW flats below the market price of comparable RESALE flats."

So, the HDB will look at the prevailing market price (say, $260,000) of a RESALE 5-rm flat --- and then "pluck from the air" the lower figure of, say, $200,000 as the selling price of a NEW 5-rm flat (NEVER MIND if its actual Total Break-even Cost is only $120,000 !!! ).

You, Singaporeans are "so damn lucky" and should not "moan and groan" --- the PAP Govt is giving you a "market subsidy" of $60,000, right???

And that's why you must vote for the PAP for another 40 years of MORE GOOD YEARS !!!

IMPORTANT CONCLUSIONS FOR ALL HDB FLAT BUYERS:

(i) The HDB "market subsidy" is thus really a "fake non-cash subsidy" --- as compared to a "true cash subsidy" [ mentioned in 2.5(a)(i) ]

By selling a new 5-rm flat (with Total Break-even Cost at $120,000)

for $200,000, there is actually NO "true cash subsidy" at all

AND the HDB is actually raking in a WHOPPING PROFIT of $80,000 PER FLAT SOLD !!!

[ Is this yet another ingenious way to milk more monies out of the people? ]

(ii) The HDB "market subsidy" flat pricing approach had actually resulted in both NEW FLAT prices and RESALE FLAT prices "chasing each other in an upward spiral" --- that is painfully disadvantageous to buyers of both new and resale flats !!!

2.6 HDB Flat Pricing --- Show Us The Numbers:

See how, recently in Parliament on 13 Feb 06, Minister Mah (ONLY WHEN IT SUITS HIM) was able to provide detailed facts/figures pertaining to the HDB Racial Quota Policy?

And amazingly, from the following two quotations, see how Minister Mah had also proudly preached about being "open and transparent" in tackling Bird Flu (but NOT in HDB Flat Pricing ???)

and being "professional" in football (but NOT so in furnishing to the people the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth behind HDB Flat Pricing ???).

[ "....It is better to be a bit kiasu and over-react rather than under-react, because you never know what surprises await you --- a lesson learnt from the SARS outbreak.

The other lesson is that it is better to be OPEN AND TRANSPARENT, and TELL PEOPLE WHAT'S GOING ON , whether good or bad, so that they will be BETTER PREPARED...." --- MND Minister Mah Bow Tan (ST 2 Feb 04) ]

[ "I urge all of you involved in football in Singapore to remember that it is in your own interest to make sure that players behave PROFESSIONALLY at all times and do not do anything to bring the game into disrepute." --- Former FAS President Mah Bow Tan (ST 19 Feb 02) ]

3 CONCLUDING REMARKS

3.1 Difference between a Truly Competent/Caring Government and a Dud Government:

(a) A Truly Competent/Caring Government is one that will do its utmost to SERVE THE PEOPLE through keeping the COST OF LIVING at sensible levels by providing basic social services --- such as housing, education, transport, healthcare, security --- at lowest-possible and cost-efficient prices/charges.

(b) A Dud Government (which will do Singapore in) is one that will think of many ingenious ways to "milk as much of the people's hard-earned monies as possible"

--- such as "do HDB flatbuyers in" through pricing supposedly low-cost public housing at a cleverly-disguised profit using the clever semantics of "market subsidy".

[Origin of the PAP-coined phrase "a Dud Government that will do Singapore in":

At every Singapore General Election, there will be scare-mongering politicians warning voters ( with silly/childish threats like "time bombs" which grossly insult the people's intelligence) that if they vote for the Opposition, they will be voting in "a Dud Government that will do Singapore in". ]

3.2 [ "And we must invest in our young, who are the hope for our future. This will strengthen our bonds, and assure every Singaporean of a brighter future, as we create OUR BEST HOME IN SINGAPORE."

--- PM Lee Hsien Loong 2006 Budget Speech 17 Feb 06 ]

PM Lee, the whole world knows about the notorious/overly--kiasu insistence by PAP politicians on their "right of reply".

I will thus be fair and professional in according you such right of reply to this Open Letter.

Please do so within our PS21 Civil Service 3-working day Response Directive i.e. by 5 pm Thursday 23 Feb 06.

More specifically, Singaporean voters will be most interested in your replies to the following rightful questions:

(i) WHY is the PAP Government not genuinely helping HDB flat-buyers by passing on to them the cost-savings from economies of scale in massive HDB developments through pricing the flats on a cost-recovery "break-even" basis?

(ii) Are HDB new flats priced with a "true cash subsidy"?

If the answer is NO, say so directly and openly.

If the answer is YES, convince the people with detailed facts/figures and indicate the amount of the "true cash subsidy".

[ ST 8 Dec 05 front-page headline: "Allegations of Rampant Maid Abuse. Govt counters rights group's claims with figures."

STForum 21 Dec 05 reply: "Govt had to set record straight on maid abuse" by Jean Tan, Press Secretary to Minister for Manpower. ]

3.3 Thereafter, (in keeping with your promise of an "open and inclusive" Singapore), I will proceed to download over the Internet this Open Letter and Your Reply so as to "openly include" the 90% of our population who are directly affected by this important HDB Flat Pricing Issue.

PM Lee, this is indeed a golden opportunity (ahead of the coming General Elections) for you to live up to what you preach/promise and demonstrate the requisite political leadership needed to "earn" the votes of the people.

In the absence of your response, our citizen-voters (already fed-up with Minister Mah's constant dodgy replies) will naturally wonder why Singapore's Prime Minister do not seem to have any comment/opinion on an issue that affects some 90% of the population.

Other Irrefutable Statements:

(a) Citizen-voters have EVERY RIGHT to ask QUESTIONS of Politicians (as Public SERVANTS). And it is a Politician's BOUNDEN DUTY to provide truthful/proper ANSWERS.

(b) HDB flats are developed using public funds --- so Singaporeans have EVERY RIGHT to know exactly how HDB flats are actually priced.

(c) ANY Public SERVANT (i.e. politician or bureaucrat) who choose to maintain a DEAD SILENCE to questions/issues raised by the people is guilty of a brazen act of arrogant disrespect towards the very same people who are actually paying various taxes/dues towards his public-funded remuneration.

Most Quoteworthy Statement on Unresponsive PUBLIC SERVANTS:

"The Four Monkeys of Unresponsiveness --- SEE Nothing, HEAR Nothing, SAY Nothing, DO Nothing"

--- title of 2002 "pep-talk" speech by Permanent Secretary Lim Siong Guan

( who, as Head of Civil Service, did precious little to curb our Bulging Bloated Bureaucracy. He had also allowed civil servants [ including himself !!! ] in dealing with public feedback to get away with either maintaining Dead Silence or issuing exasperating "half-answer or non-answer" public replies that insult the intelligence of educated/thinking Singaporeans.)

ADDENDUM

Other Notable HDB Fiascos (Under Minister-IN-CHARGE Mah Bow Tan)

(1) 2002 HDB Hub Overboard Extravagance Fiasco:

> In June 2002, HDB moved to its spanking-new $380 million HDB Hub from its still-new Bukit Merah premises.

1st Screw-Up --- WHY was the HDB Hub's "very prime site" (directly above Toa Payoh MRT Station) allocated to a Government building and not tendered out to Private Sector Developers(with deep pockets) to reap handsome revenue for the State coffers ???

2nd Screw-Up --- Most Shocking Revelation: Apparently NOBODY in MND/HDB had given a thought on WHAT TO DO with the vacated Bukit Merah premises !!!

[ As a result, the Bukit Merah premises were left vacant for some 18 months, incurring an opportunity cost in lost rental estimated at $1 million per month!

And what about the wasteful expenses incurred in first moving some 8,000 HDB staff from Bukit Merah to HDB Hub, and subsequently "moving back" some 2,000 (as HDB Corp staff) to Bukit Merah? ]

3rd Screw-Up --- What "posh extravagance" [like a 5-star hotel lobby] for the HDB Sales Office at HDB Hub:

Plush fabric sofas instead of durable moulded plastic chairs.

Polished granite floors (slippery) instead of heavy-duty ceramic tiles.

Large expensive Plasma TV screens instead of cheaper alternatives.

> Pertinent Questions:

WHO pays for such SINFUL EXTRAVAGANCE and WASTEFUL SPENDING of public funds but OUR PEOPLE (already burdened with our high cost of living and paying numerous taxes and dues)?

A Business Times reader also rightly asked: "Have these well-paid and pampered bureaucrats no sense of shame?"

MOST IMPORTANTLY --- Instead of "throwing public monies to the wind", why not lower prices of HDB flats TO DIRECTLY BENEFIT OUR PEOPLE ???

(2) 2003 HDB Overly-Generous $220 million Retrenchment Payout Fiasco:

> Under Minister-IN-CHARGE Mah Bow Tan, the HDB had grew unchecked into a 8,000 staff organisation with a $500 million annual wage bill (or $55,000 per person --- pointing to many over-paid "fat cats" !!! )

In July 2003, it then went overboard with its stupidly and overly-generous $220 million retrenchment payout to let go 2,630 staff (or $84,000 per person !!! ) --- pointing to an inexperienced/panicky/botched-up handling of its first major retrenchment exercise.

Human Resource practitioners in the private sector were rightly shocked at the humongous payout !!!

Again, WHO pays for all these MINDBOGGLING SUMS OF MONEY but OUR PEOPLE ???

> Of the 2,630 staff, about one-third (some 900) were really "leaving" the HDB, with the remaining two-thirds actually "transferred" to HDB Corp (a new subsidiary of HDB).

WHY were the latter HDB staff ( who should be very thankful they still have a job at HDB Corp! ) also given retenchment payouts? [ Giving such benefits to "transferred staff" is unheard of in the private sector !!! ]

And WHY was there no 25-year cap on the retrenchment payouts (as is the standard practice in the private sector)?

Most ironically, there was a 25-year cap applied to the earlier (Feb 2003) PSA Retrenchment Exercise! (A clear-cut case of left hand not knowing what right hand was doing !!!)

Without the 25-year cap, some HDB staff apparently received nearly half a million dollars in retrenchment benefits --- thus "laughing all the way" to the bank and "profusely thanking" Minister Mah Bow Tan!

[ Why Worry? After all, it's just the People's Money, lah!

And $500,000 must be really "peanuts" compared to our world-infamous and handsomely-humongous million-dollar ministerial salaries! ]

For sure, retrenchment benefits are meant as compensation for being laid off, and certainly NOT A TOTO-LIKE WINDFALL !!!

WHY such "special" treatment for civil servants (at taxpayers' expense) ???

[ Do not forget the 26,000 retrenched S'poreans in 2001 (and 19,000 in 2002) were all private sector employees! ]

(3) 2003 Marine Terrace Upgrading Delay Fiasco:

> Not one but three contractors in succession abandon work (pointing to sloppy monitoring/supervision of the project by HDB staff).

> From ST Forum 10 Jun 03 write-up "Marine Terrace: A Brush-Off":

" The offhand way with which National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan dismissed the plight of the Marine Terrace residents left stranded by the delayed upgrading work is a big disappointment, write three Forum readers.

After putting up with filth, debris, diversions, noise, stench, crippled lifts, mosquitoes and rats, they expect some sympathy. But it seems that topmost on the Minister's mind was the issue of compensation --- not how quickly the works can be rectified."

[ Adding insult to injury, Minister Mah had even accused the residents of telling "half-truths" !!! ]

> Then HDB CEO Ngiam Chiang Meng also did not dare show his handsome/moustached face to apologise to the residents until the very last minute.

( How "Uniquely Singapore" --- after screwing up at HDB, this obviously "mollycoddled" bureaucrat was subsequently "promoted" to MCYS Permanent Secretary [ to screw up further at MCYS, which deals with pressing social issues??? ]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Sg_Review/message/2242

PAPaya dog spotted!!!

Election must be round the corner. The 147th ranked Shit Times has been churning out articles after articles of sycophantic pro-PAP shit. Sycophantic bootlicking PAPaya scums must have been instructed by their masters too to do their part in the papers' forum. If not, meaning they are writing in on their own accord, they are truly beyond hope sillyzens shit the country can do without with. The latest in these eunuchs and toadies (the other two mentioned in this blog are Ephraim Loy and Tang Li) is no stranger... Thanks to google and the brudders at sammyboy, today we have a face to the name hahahaha!

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Ace Kindred Cheong! (WTF kind of chee bye name is that anyway?! -_-")
http://www.julieroberts.com.sg/images/ace.jpg

And here is little more about Ace... http://aceimagesmedia.com/profile.shtml
Steady lah! Apparently lumpar-face there is a photographer wannabe! Wah lan eh, just take a look at his portfolio and i wonder did he pay his models to pose for him? I mean with a face even his own mother would hate no wonder he is such an ACE.. ugly fucker really aced it in the looks department! HAhahaha!!! And i bet he is probably a brainwashed xtian too, giving himself such a shameless chee bye name... sibei jialat leh. I mean would anyone give work to a complete waste of time like him? No wonder he has to learn to suck cock and be an ass-crack licker, busy tripod-ing the PAP! *Gasp* Lumpar face has a hidden agenda there! Going by his super retared looks, he has better chance working as extras appearing in those TV charity shows posing as some down syndrome spastics or brain cancer victims, sure can get record number of people to call in one!

Sometimes i really think there is a God. He is fair lor... useless people sure got one kind of useless hum kar chan face one, and being fucking ugly is a given. I think this is god's way to help normal people to be able to one look distinguish them from the rest. Just look at Ace, Ephraim and Tang Li (and of coz Hairdo Lim and miniLee)! Hahahaha!!

S'pore judiciary eat shit!!!

Media release: Judiciary steps into politics with decision on protests
11 Dec 05

The ruling by Mr V K Rajah mocks the Constitution and the principles of democracy. The decision removes all doubt, if there was any to begin with, that Singaporeans effectively live under a dictatorship.

By making this decision, the courts have signaled its refusal to protect the rights of Singaporean citizens to assemble peacefully to protest against the Government and its policies. This is in spite of the fact that there were only four protesters and the Constitution guarantees that only five or more people constituted an illegal assembly.

It is utter nonsense for the judge to equate public protest to public nuisance or “something even more serious.” This is an insult to decent and right-minded Singaporeans who want to express their unhappiness with the Government through public protests – a freedom enjoyed by civilized and open communities all over the world.

This tired argument has been used by the PAP through the years whenever calls for freedom of speech are made. It is also the kind of antiquated thinking that retards Singapore’s development as a modern nation able to run with democracies of the world.

Mr Rajah’s reference to the words “CPF, NKF, HDB, GIC: Be transparent now!” painted on the protesters T-shirts as “incendiary” truly boggles the mind. If calling for transparency and accountability is “incendiary” (and thus prohibited) what can the Singaporeans call for? Even the Government admits that for (specious) commercial reasons, the GIC cannot be transparent.

The judiciary is effectively saying that it will act as the police and decide what messages are permissible and what are not in a public protest, assuming that protests are allowed. By doing this, are the courts not dragging themselves into the political arena, something that all judiciaries in established democracies assiduously avoid?

What about the National Trades Union Congress protesting against the US Government in 1988 for “interfering” in Singapore’s politics? What if it was the opposition who had tried to conduct that protest? Would the protest then be considered “incendiary”? Which authorities will decide what messages are proper and what are not? Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that a protest of four or less persons shall be allowed only if the message is deemed proper.

And since when was it the courts’ duty to protect the integrity and reputation of public institutions? Already the Government has an iron-grip on the media to ensure that the public gets to watch, read and hear nothing but good news about the Government. The voice of the Government shrieks loud and deafening. What is needed is protection of the citizens’ voice. The one-way traffic of political debate in Singapore is painfully clear to all who are willing to see.

Saying that Singaporeans do not have the right to “picket public institutions” because to do so would be to “question the [institutions’] integrity and cast a slur on their reputation” is tragic beyond words.

The judge has unwisely stepped on a political mine that will explode with serious consequences in the future.

The courts have spoken and they have made clear their stand. There is no recourse left available for citizens to express their dissent in a Constitutional manner.

It is confirmation, if any more is needed, that civil disobedience is the only route open to Singaporeans who wish to see our country embark on the path towards democracy and openness, and to remain faithful to our national pledge “to build a democratic society, based on justice and equality…”

CHEE SOON JUAN
Secretary-General
Singapore Democratic Party


Also see Yawning Bread's damn steady article.

Devan Nair say... (Final)

(From Foreword, To Catch A Tartar, Francis T. Seow)

What an unconsciously long time some people take to learn that power really does corrupt, especially its exercise when placed outside the purview of an impartial third party - like an independent judiciary. No statesman was ever more resoundingly correct than Thomas Jefferson when he warned:

In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.

Alas, because he was not stopped in time, Lee Kuan Yew has proceeded to alter the laws to bind down the judiciary and the media instead.

The crucial question is this. What internal or external dangers threaten Singapore so gravely today to justify the need of a law like the Internal Security Act. allowing, as it does, indefinite detention without trial? None that anyone acquainted with the current political and economic situation in Southeast Asia can think of. None at all that cannot be more effectively dealt with by sensible democratic political process, under the ordinary laws of the land.

There is no longer a communist insurrectionary movement in Malaysia committed to the violent overthrow of lawfully constituted governments in Singapore and Malaysia. There is no communist united front movement left in Singapore. By all accounts, communist potential in the area has been decisively scotched by economic, political, and geographical developments. the Communist Party of Malaysia, a sad and bedraggled relic of a once truly formidable movement, which it took all the military and political skills of the British and subsequent Malaysian governments to defeat, finally laid down their arms on December 2, 1989, after signing peace agreements with the Malaysian and Thai governments, and thus brought to a formal close 41 years of armed conflict.

When this was announced, the first Prime Minister of Malaysia, the late Tungku Abdul Rahman, promptly and publicly recalled the pledge he had given in the free Malaysian parliament to the effect that the internal security laws providing for the arrest and detention without trial of suspected subversives were directed solely at the communist insurrectionary movement, and would be repealed once the insurrection was overcome. He therefore called for the outright abolition of the Internal Security Act since the communist threat to constitutional government had ceased to exist. Not so Lee Kuan Yew whom the London Sunday Telegraph reported as saying: "I don't see myself repealing it." Do Confucian conformity and stability require powers of detention without trial?

In Singapore, by the early seventies, we had decisively debunked and defused a once powerful communist united front movement, which is no longer in evidence. I should know, because I was right out in the front line of that battle, among the foot soldiers, in constant danger of life and limb, leading the free trade unions - now, under Lee's surrogates, no longer free. The economic, social, and administrative successes we registered clearly do not provide fertile soil for violent insurgency of any kind. With the notable exception of Singapore, everywhere else economic success, even of much less magnitude than we can boast of, has invariably been accompanied by
more relaxed political climates and styles. Not so under Lee.

Success has been followed by an even further tightening of the screws. Indeed, even the insurrectionary communists of the fifties and sixties, with their unconstitutional resort to armed violence, civil riots, and strikes, were dealt with under laws and custodial treatment more benign and civilised than were constitutional law-abiding dissenters like Seow, and other social workers and professionals arrested and detained in Singapore in recent times. Neither were they obliged to produce abject statutory declarations "confessing" their numerous "misdeeds." Much can be said of the defects and shortcomings of previous British colonial regimes in Singapore. But these did not include the systematic and ruthless crushing of the human spirit at which Lee's Internal Security boys excel. One can appreciate now why he proudly refers to them as "professionals."

Only recently, yet another striking departure from decent civilized practice occurred. Detention without trial is no longer subject to judicial review in Singapore. The government on January 25, 1989, amended the Internal Security Act to place its powers of detention without trial beyond challenge in the courts, with retrospective effect into the bargain. And nobody will ever know what takes place behind the walls in the soundproof, freezing rooms of the Whitley Detention Centre, from which issue "statutory declarations" by political prisoners abjectly admitting to a variety of anti-government offences.

Thus, by means the venerable Confucious would never have condoned, Lee hopes to enforce in his ideal city state the Confucian conformity and respect for authority he so much admires. In these circumstances, it will be a rash Singaporean who, knowing the grave risks he is likely to incur, will dare even to murmur dissent. But alarm bells are already ringing in the night. As already observed, internationally mobile Singaporeans are leaving "the Singapore Miracle" in disturbing numbers to seek their fortunes in more congenial pastures, where they can breathe more freely.

+++

The road to perdition gets rougher and spikier as one goes down it. Relentlessly downhill has forged the predatory road with a vengeance, especially in the last few years. Consider the spate of repressive legislation enacted in a brief three to four years.

Parliament is converted into "a political mine-field," as a pained and shocked Dr Toh Chin Chye, the founder chairman of the People's Action Party, observed in 1987. A mine-field which blew opposition leader J.B. Jeyeratnam out of the legislative chamber and made certain that he would have not be able to contest another election for at least five years. An even worse fate has befallen Francis Seow.

Parliamentary select committees, by hallowed Westminster convention serious and sedate forums to consider public or professional reservations about government bills tabled in Parliament, are transformed into criminal courtrooms where a fiercely prosecuting, browbeating prime minister puts startled witnesses in the witness box for gruelling cross-examination. This was what happened to Francis Seow, the then president of the Law Society, and to members of the Society's governing council. Subsequent legislation ensured that Seow no longer remained president, and that the Law Society would never again be able to comment publicly on bills before the legislature, on the ground that they were beyond the limited professional competence of the Society. The curious theory was trotted out that politics is only for politicians, not for professional bodies, even though their members are citizens with legitimate concerns about matters of public interest.

Draconian laws were passed to bring to heel foreign journals and newspapers which were critical of what they considered bizarre going-ons in the republic. The Asian Wall Street Journal and the Far East Economic Review were accused of "meddling in domestic politics," and their free circulation was drastically curtailed. They were told that they were not reporting Singapore to Singaporeans "fairly," as if that were the role of the free international media.

Lee forgets that in the colonial past, his British predecessors were not knocked off by free reporting on Singapore by the foreign media, even though they had to deal with an obstreperous population and its equally restive politicians who included, for instance, rambunctious types like Lee Kuan Yew and Devan Nair. In particular, he forgets that his own international reputation as a staunch anticolonial freedom fighter owed a great deal to the free and open manner in which the foreign media covered him and his party's activities.

One could go on ad infinitum about the road Lee Kuan Yew has chosen to travel. My immediate purpose, however, is to as paint vividly as possible, with a few basic strokes, the political context in which Francis Seow's book should be read. I hope I have managed to do this with at least a minimum of adequacy. For there have been other detainees in Singapore whose predicament was, if anything, worse than Seow's was.

There is, for example, Chia Thye Poh. First arrested on October 29, 1966 under the ISA, Chia was banished on May 16, 1989 to the off-shore pleasure island of Sentosa. One cannot improve on what Christopher Lockwood of the London Sunday Telegraph noted:

Exile on Sentosa is a diabolically-crafted alternative. Who can take a prisoner of conscience seriously on a holiday island? With Chia out of jail, he (Chia) fears, world disapproval of his detention will simply evaporate.

But Nelson Mandela was unconditionally freed by President F.W. de Klerk of South Africa - free to begin shaking the evil apartheid system down to its foundations. Chia Thye Poh is incapable of shaking anything. So why this extraordinary vindictiveness?

I recalled Lee Kuan Yew once quoting, in euphoric mood, Churchill's resonant words: "In war, resolution. In defeat, defiance. In victory, magnanimity."

Lee and his comrades-in-arms were resolute in all the political battles we fought in the early years against the colonialists, and the crooks. But Lee has never yet known defeat. So far he has met only victories, in all of which he has shown himself incredibly vicious. Unlike Churchill, who, incidentally, could not boast anything comparable to Lee's two firsts and a star for distinction in Cambridge, Lee misses human greatness by several million light years.

As was inevitable for one who, in arrogant contempt for soulcraft as a vital ingredient of successful statecraft, recklessly opted for an errant orbit, traced in benighted times past by the trajectory of Moloch.

Lee's major justification for his policies is the example of Singapore's remarkable economic success. But what will haunt generations to come in Singapore and the Southeast Asian region generally are his even more monumental failures. Well did the Bard observe:

The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interr'd with their bones.

Ultimately, his most unpardonable failure is the crass betrayal of the ideal which launched the People's Action Party into political orbit - that of an equal, multiracial, democratic society which would banish from its midst, for ever and a day, invidious notions of ethnic or religious majorities or minorities. In Singapore there would be no majorities and minorities. There would only be Singaporeans. This was the flaming aspiration on which Lee rode to power on the crest of revolutionary fervour. Today he has defiled the social atmosphere of Singapore with the sordid evil of ethno-centrism, which he had vowed to eradicate, in my company and in that of countless other comrades in the common struggle against colonialism, communalism, and communism. But this is not the place to expatiate on this particular piece of treachery. I will deal with it in my own book.

Lee is gifted with a brilliant brain and an eloquent tongue. But the capricious gods omitted to equip him with the saving grace of that essential wisdom which makes for true greatness. And Singapore thereby missed the infinitely more potent miracle of the political and spiritual success it might so easily have provided, as a practical, living demonstration to the other unhappy, struggling, heterogenous nations in Southeast Asia, not merely of singular economic achievement, but also of the eminent viability of a free, open, sane, and equal multiracial democracy, worthy at once of economic, political, and moral emulation.

As things are, one can only wonder how much longer successful economic performance and a loutish political style can sleep together in the same bed. While one dreams of electronic paradises to come, the other enacts, in political nightmares, vengeful vendettas against foes real or imaginary, mostly the latter. Alas, both must perished in fatal embrace, on the same bed.

- C.V. Devan Nair, 1994

Devan Nair... (Part 3)

(Foreword to To Catch A Tartar, Francis T. Seow)


Lest it be considered that I have revised my views about the conditions of my own detention, after having parted company with Lee Kuan Yew, I will quote here from the statement I made on behalf of the People's Action Party of Singapore at the meeting of the Bureau of the Socialist International held in London on 28-29 May 1976, with the approval of Prime Minister Lee. I said:

In 1950 I joined the Anti-British League, an underground auxiliary of the Malayan Communist Party. I spent, in two separate spells, a total of five years in British prisons. I am not in the least bitter. Indeed, I look back back nostalgically to my years of incarceration, for they were years of intensive reading and self-education. On the whole, my fellow detainees and I were well-treated. One of the few complaints we had was that the British allowed us radio sets which were doctored to receive only Radio Singapore. We wanted to listen in to Peking and Moscow as well.

We were in touch, through easily bribable camp warders, with the communist underground in Singapore. We were instructed to go on a hunger strike and to protest against against "ill-treatment and torture." When some of us pointed out that there was no ill-treatment and torture, our chief fellow detainee told us that "it was a revolutionary duty to expose the imperialists, through whatever means were available." Our anticolonial zeal being greater than our commitment to truth, we swallowed whatever qualms we had and embarked on a six-day hunger strike. It had the required effect, not upon the British - who were quite unmoved - but as far underground communist propaganda in Singapore was concerned, for our hunger strike was extolled as an example of our heroism and of the vileness of the imperialists...

I was reminded of the episode when I read the Dutch Labour party paper about the torture of detainees...

I also happen to know a good deal about both prisons and detention camps in Singapore. For, soon after Lee Kuan Yew formed the first PAP Government in May 1959, I persuaded him to set up a Prisons Inquiry Commission, for I had not liked what I had seen of the demeaning conditions of imprisonment imposed by the British authorities: not on political detainees, but on convicted prisoners. For example, on the approach of a British prison officer, every convict had to kneel down on the floor, with his head down. That aroused my ire, and it still does, when I think of it.

I was appointed Chairman of the Prisons Inquiry Commission, which included two British academics from the University of Malaya in Singapore - the late Dr Jean Robertson and Professor T.H. Elliott. The recommendations my commission made, to humanise prison conditions, still form the nominal basis for the administration of prisoners and detention centres in Singapore. The International Red Cross has had access to our prisoners, detainees, and places of detention. You will appreciate that the Red Cross is not allowed in several other countries, and I can confidently challenge any country in the world to boast a more efficient prison system than the one we have in Singapore.

This explains why I read with wry amusement the absurd allegations of ill-treatment, torture, and inhuman conditions in our prisons and detention centres, made by the communist united front group in Singapore, and faithfully repeated in the Dutch Labour Party paper.

Today I am obliged to eat a good number of the words I uttered in London in 1976. A humbling obligation, and therefore good for the soul. I have no difficulty, of course, reaffirming that my fellow detainees and I were well treated in British colonial centres of detention. That was a fact of direct personal experience. Not so, apparently, the conditions political detainees were subjected to in the seventies. I had then accepted, all too gullibly, that these were humane and civilised purely on the word of the powers-that-be. I was not the only credulous Singaporean to do so.

There is no better teacher than painful personal experience. I know today that in this matter, as in several others, my trust and confidence were grievously misplaced. I am certain now that if any of these detainees had brought themselves to write of their experience as Seow has done, their accounts would not have been greatly dissimilar. If anything, going by what Seow learned from other detainees whom he had represented as legal counsel, some of them went through much worse ordeals. I can also appreciate today that detainees do not speak up during guided tours of detention centres for Red Cross representatives.

Seow's account of the horrendous process of interrogation he underwent, the freezing coldness of the soundproof interrogation room, an air-conditioner blower duct on the ceiling which directed a continuous and powerful cascade of cold air down at the spot where, barefooted, he was made to stand, the sudden paroxysms blasts of cold air sent him into, the total darkness save for the powerful spotlights trained on him, the obscenities, shouts, and threats he had to endure, all left me stupefied.

Sleep deprivation, for instance, is a fiendishly effective means employed by Singapore interrogators to thoroughly disorient the detainee, so that he may be suitably readied for abject "confessions" which would later be copiously presented by the government-controlled media as a "statutory declaration." One cannot think of any other country in the civilized world where "statutory declarations" exacted under duress from political prisoners are published and unabashedly palmed off on the public as gospel truths.

I found acutely disturbing the following paragraphs in the book at page 121 et seq. :

As I walked through the doors of the interrogation room, a freezing coldness immediately wrapped itself around me...

I had lost all sense of time. I had been standing there under the pitiless glare of the spotlights. I felt the urge to go to the toilet. I told them. Two Gurkha guards appeared and escorted me to the toilet. Having stood motionless at one spot for so long I had great difficulty walking. I found myself rooted to the ground - a term more descriptive of the reality of the situation than a mere figure of speech. My limbs were stiff all over. I was unsteady. The two Gurkha guards on either side of me supported me under my arms. I staggered out of the interrogation room, half carried by them, along the dark corridors up two flights of stairs to the ground level of Block C, along a corridor, to a toilet located in an empty cell in Block D. I blinked at the unexpected harsh light of day. I was quite shocked. The urge to go the toilet forgotten for a moment. I asked one of the two Gurkhas for the time of day, ...I was astounded. It was 11.30 in the morning. I then realized that I had been standing in the interrogation room for about sixteen hours warding off questions thrown unremittingly at me. It seem incredible to me that I could have stood at one spot, almost motionless, for that length of time. I recalled with shame that, when my detainee-clients had previously complained to me that they had been deprived of sleep and forced to stand for as long as 72 hours at a stretch, without sleep, I had great difficulty in believing them. I thought they were exaggerating; but now I was, incredibly, undergoing a somewhat similar experience!...

I noticed, too, dried sunburnt blisters peeling from the skin of both arms. I could not at first comprehend how I could have acquired them until I realized that I had been burnt by the powerful rays of those spotlights, which had also dried up the moisture in my eyes. Cold rashes had broken out all over my atrophied limbs under my clothes. Unlike many people who are sensitive to sunburn, I am susceptible to cold rashes. It was always troublesome for me whenever I had perforce to travel abroad during winter. In this instant case, as if signaled by a faithful built-in thermometer, the rashes broke out in chilling confirmation of the coldness of the room. My interrogators had swaddled themselves up in warm winter clothes and left it, time and again, whenever they could no longer withstand the wintry cold.

As a prisoner of the British, my fellow detainees and I had simply refused to be interrogated. We told our captors that we would only speak as free men. We were left alone after that. We experienced no soundproof room, no brutal interrogation and sleep deprivation for hours on end, no air-conditioner blower duct directing a powerful and continuous cascade of cold air at the spot where the barefoot detainee stood on "a floor like a slab of ice," no spotlights, no threats and obscenities shouted in our ears, no absolutely solitary confinement throughout the period of detention, indeed none of the things which Mr Seow had to undergo at the hands of the rulers of free, independent, and professedly civilized Singapore.

After the statutory period of 21 days' solitary confinement, my fellow detainees and I were allowed to live together in camp conditions, whether in Changi or, even better, on salubrious St. John's Island. Our lawyer, Lee Kuan Yew, was freely allowed to visit and talk to us, without Special Branch supervision, and to plan with us the downfall of the British colonial power. So free were we as political detainees to pursue our own interests and studies that we light-heartedly referred to our places of detention as "St. John's" University and "Changi" University.

Mr Lee knows all this. It surely cannot be termed progress in freedom and humanity to arrest and treat his own political prisoners so brutally, and with far less reason than the British had to detain me and my revolutionary comrades. After all, we had made no secret of the fact that we were committed to the violent overthrow of the British colonial power. But Seow and others like him certainly did not aim to overthrow the elected government of Singapore by unconstitutional means. Even if they did, Lee and his government would still stand convicted of the kind of inhumanity of which "the perfidious British colonialists" (as we referred to them in those days) were not guilty.

The government's assertion that it does not ill-treat detainees strains credulity. Seow's readers will find extraordinary (to put it mildly) Brigadier General Lee's (Lee Kuan Yew's son and Singapore Deputy Prime Minister) statement in an interview with the BBC World Service:

The Government does not ill-treat detainees. It does however apply psychological pressure to detainees to get to the truth of the matter ... the truth would not be known unless psychological pressure was used during interrogation.

Systematic sleep deprivation, continuous interrogation over sixteen hours by strident, foul-mouthed intelligence officers, while standing barefoot in flimsy clothing on a cold cement floor in a freezing room under the skin-blistering and eye de-moisturing glare of spotlights, unlimited solitary confinement, are at once physical and psychological ordeals.

Mr Seow quotes to potent effect a comment by Jerome A. Cohen, a prominent legal representative of Asia Watch, while on a visit to Singapore at the time. Mr Cohen ... found deeply disturbing both the use of psychological torture and what he called a pervasive Singaporean, if not Asian view that "if you haven't hit somebody, it isn't torture." Psychological disorientation is evil whether it happens in South Africa, the Soviet Union, China, Singapore or the United States. Yet here they seem almost proud of their psychological tactics - breaking down the defenses of people in captivity. They need to be more sensitive to the definition of what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

One can understand why the Singapore government hurriedly withdrew its initial offer (made inadvertently by junior ministers when Big Brother happened to be out of town) to appoint a judicial Commission of Inquiry to examine public allegations of ill-treatment by nine ex-detainees in April 1988. They were rearrested instead, and it came as no surprise that some of them duly signed, while in renewed custody, "statutory declarations" withdrawing their earlier allegations, and asserting that they had not been ill-treated. Much more convenient, certainly, for Lee and his government, than a judicial Commission of Inquiry, which would publicly examine and pronounce on charges made from the witness stand by free men and women, subject to no constraints but those of conscience and of cross-examination by defence and prosecution alike.

The circumstances of Seow's arrest and the subsequent ordeal of interrogation and detention provide occasion not only for grave disquiet over the brutal mistreatment of detainees. (they certainly put paid to any continued pretense of Lee Kuan Yew's part that he walks in the company of civilised statesman.) It raises another question - perhaps the most crucial one - in my own mind. I may explain, even if the effort proves, as it certainly will, an unflattering commentary on some of my own past judgments of persons and events.

I had once publicly supported the need for the Internal Security Act when the democratically elected PAP Government was engaged in the life and death struggle against a murderous communist united front movement, committed to the violent overthrow of constitutional government. In subsequent years, I had continued to believe that the Act was justified given the volatile geopolitical milieu in which Singapore had to survive. Never had it occurred to me that the PAP government was capable of the gross abuse of the draconian powers conferred by the Act. And never was I more wholly wrong, and my conscience so grievously misplaced.



... Final part coming liao..

Devan Nair... (Part 2)

(Foreword to To Catch A Tartar, Francis T. Seow)


What we launched as the independent republic of Singapore succeeded, as the world knows, all too well, only to discover that in the eyes of Lee Kuan Yew, means had become ends in themselves. First principles were stood on their heads. Economic growth and social progress did not serve human beings. On the contrary, the primary function of citizens was to fuel economic growth - a weird reversal of values. The reign of Moloch had begun. Not an unfamiliar phenomenon to those who browse in the pages of history. My old-guard colleagues and I might have been wiser men and women if we had read our history with greater comprehension than we do now. Alas, one cannot alter the past.

The inevitable drift to totalitarianism begins with the typically symptomatic thesis of the progenitors: "Society as No. 1, and the individual, as part of society, as No. 2." The words are Lee Kuan Yew's, speaking to journalists in Canberra, ACT, on November 16, 1988. He was dutifully echoed by Goh Chok Tong, the First Deputy Prime Minister, (now Prime Minister), when he announced this as one of the pillars of the government's new goal of "a national ideology" for Singapore. Portentous words, given the current morbidities of the republic, which include the account given by Francis Seow in the following pages of his seventy-two days of detention and interrogation by the guardians of "national security," the Internal Security Department. Seow learned at first hand what happens to the individual as No. 2, when subjected to society as No. 1 in the shape of his jailers and interrogators in the Whitley Detention Centre.

"The individual, as part of society," is a marginal improvement on Mr Lee's egregious penchant for referring to fellow-citizens as "digits" of the development process. You are either a productive "digit" or an inefficient one. And "digits", like robots, if they are to be functionally useful, have to be programmed. So one need not be surprised that Singapore's political programmers should now be working on a "national ideology," in addition to the social and genetic engineering already in the works. Shades of Huxley's Brave New World!

History bears irrefutable witness to the self-evident truth that no harmony is possible between the individual and society where either seeks aggrandisement at the expense of the other. The mutual need for each other, for mutual completion and fulfilment, is frustrated if one seeks to devour the other. Invariably, the end result is material and spiritual impoverishment, stagnation and death, for both individual and society. The equation is infallible, whether the nation concerned is eastern or western, although Lee Kuan Yew pretends that Confucious would have sanctioned the outrages he has perpetrated in Singapore. Which, as those who decline to traduce history for political ends will appreciate, would be an unwarranted insult to the memory of the venerable figure, whose proverbial wisdom laid primary emphasis on character-building enhancement of the human spirit and of social mores - not their mutilation.

The tree is known by its fruits. The supremacy of the state over the individual which those inclined to totalitarianism always propound has invariably meant, in practice, the immolation of the individual at the altar of an impersonal, faceless, and conscienceless deity, sanctified by the grandiose term: "the organized community." But the voices which issue from the iron throat are recognisably those of the political elite in power. They spell out the implacable social "imperatives" which override the rights of the individual. And in the name of these imperious mandates, the social juggernaut driven by political roughnecks grinds the hapless individual under its wheels. Francis Seow was one such victim. Another was Chia Thye Poh, whose lengthy incarceration has been compared to the experience of Nelson Mandela. It would be invidious to mention others by name, for either their spirits have been broken, or they remain subject to tongue-tying restrictions.

Seow survived the ordeal. Because he is a free man outside Singapore, he becomes the first ex-detainee to place on record the ordeal of arrest and detention without trial in Singapore. In doing so, he has rendered a signal service to all Singaporeans, as indeed to all sane and humane men and women everywhere. But they must know that he will have to pay a heavy price for his pains in the shape of repeated or fresh calumnies and of rearrest should he choose to return to Singapore. Indeed, this will be in addition to the price he has already paid for raising his voice against Moloch. It is a rare kind of courage which would take on so perverse and formidable an
adversary.

I am personally able to confirm the brutal fact that exile, for whatever reason, uprooted from one's entire milieu of life, culture, and career, from friends and relatives, is, to put it bluntly - unremitting spiritual agony. Nonetheless, an ordeal certainly preferable to the individual as No. 2 suffering systematic asphyxiation by society as No. 1. And writing this foreword, I am cruelly aware that I am, in effect, finally and irretrievably burning my boats with my country and a people whom I love and served over the greater part of a lifetime. But what would you? Exile, pensionless to boot, at least ensures the survival of the integrity of the person.

The story, as Francis Seow tells, is a grisly symptom of a high-seated (rather than deep-seated) political malaise afflicting Singapore. History will indict Singapore's eminence grise, now Senior Minister and Secretary-General of the ruling party, Lee Kuan Yew, as the source and bearer of what, despite transient and misleading appearances to the contrary must, without radical political surgery, turn out to be a terminal condition.

I may be wrong in believing that the point of no return has already been passed, for currently it does appear that a population rendered politically comatose over the years will be unable to bestir itself sufficiently - apart from surreptitiously immobilizing subway trains by stuffing well-chewed chewing gum into their doors - to cancel the blank cheque it has given to the Singapore government.

However, I am also aware that we live in times when reality keeps exploding in the faces of experts. It has more than once exploded in mine, not to speak of Francis Seow's. There is no guarantee that one day it will not explode in Lee's own face, or in the face of those who will inherit his creed and style of power. Gorbachev, Ceausescu, and Honecker are only the more visible among the many who, undercurrents which suddenly surfaced, ensuing in utterly unforseen, convulsive change in the sprawling Soviet empire and eastern Europe, leaving all the world's normally voluble geopolitical pundits and pontiffs flummoxed.

Some believe that the necessary inspiration for surgical intervention to rescue Singapore from terminal risk might arise from within the republic's own undoubtedly intelligent establishment. A good number of professionals and civil servants do know, and will private acknowledge - looking over the shoulder, of course - what has gone grievously wrong with the once promising Singapore experiment. In the strictest privacy, they readily admit that, if there is any country in Southeast Asia which, by virtue of economic success and probably the best educated population in Asia after Japan, can afford a more relaxed style of government, tolerant of free expression and dissent - that country is Singapore. They appreciate that the people of Singapore are certainly intelligent enough to discern where their best interest lie, and run the risk of falling prey to rabble-rousing politicians with easy panaceas and quick fixes.

Indeed, they vividly recall that an earlier, less educated generation of Singaporeans had, after listening to open public arguments and debates, repeatedly rebuffed at the polls slogan-shouting demagogues who clearly did not know the social and economic priorities of a small, island nation with absolutely no natural resources to boast of, dependent on neighbouring Malaysia even for its water, and entirely dependent on the stability of export markets for comfortable living. Finally, they know that the source of the overweening authoritarianism - so entirely contra - indicated by one of the most vibrant and successful economies of Asia - issues from the increasingly obsessive fixations and bizarre values of one man - Lee Kuan Yew.

But it remains to be seen whether knowledge goes with moral courage and the will to action. I confess that, with every passing year, I have come to fear that the point of no return has already reached and passed. For Singapore's grey eminence lords it over the republic from the top of a tower of undeniable previous achievement. He had been the superb captain of a superb team which had led a highly responsive and intelligent population out of a savage and sterile political wilderness into outstanding success and internationally recognized nationhood.

Today every member of that superb team has been eased out of power and influence in the name of political self-renewal, while Lee himself has ensured that he presides, as Secretary General of the ruling party, not as he once did, over equals who had elected him, but over a government cabinet and a judiciary made up entirely of his appointees or nominees. In relation to old guard leaders, Lee had been no more than primus inter pares. He had perforce to deal with equals, and they were fully capable of speaking their minds. Once, in the early days of the PAP, in sheer exasperation, I myself had responded to him with a four-letter word and thought no more about it.

Today, Lee no longer deals with his equals, but with his chosen appointees, who did not earn power the hard way, but had it conferred on them. They are highly qualified men, no doubt, but nobody expects them to possess the gumption to talk back to the increasingly self-righteous know-it-all that Lee has become. Further, the bread of those who conform is handsomely buttered. Keep your head down and you could enjoy one of the highest living standards in Asia. Raise it and you could lose a job, a home, and be harassed by the Internal Security Department, or by both, as happened to Francis Seow.

Nonetheless, one must hope, even against hope, that the daunting challenge is not evaded by intellectually honest and spiritually courageous members of the Singapore establishment. The inevitable alternative is clearly the abortion of what began as the Singapore miracle. An abortion and a treachery. For not many societies return whole from the graveyard of elementary human rights and decencies.

Admittedly, Lee is right in talking of the remarkable economic transformation we wrought in Singapore, an achievement at once collective and individual. The people of Singapore well deserve the material success for which they worked so hard. But, all the same, they have reaped a baleful harvest. Lee bakes a bitter bread. The relish of greater material well-being gives way to the acrid taste of ill-being along other equally vital, if less tangible dimensions, beyond the gauge of GNP, the only measuring rod Lee knows. As his career progressed, he revealed, in increasing measure, enormous blind spots.

"Transformation" is quite the wrong word word for qualitative aberrations which have occurred in the noneconomic areas of life in Singapore. On reading Seow's manuscript, the word which leaps to mind is "transmogrification" or the grotesque metamorphosis that has overtaken the perception and treatment of the individual in the republic.

My thoughts go back to my own arrest by the British colonial authorities in Singapore in the fifties. I have already indicated that my experience as a political prisoner under a British colonial administration had nothing in common with what Seow went through. I can come to only one conclusion. The colonial Special Branch were saints compared to Lee Kuan Yew's Internal Security outfit. The end result of our struggle for political freedom and independence turns out to be not a progression in terms of respect for human dignity, but a surreptitious regression into barbarity.

Few can appreciate how painful a contemplation from the sidelines Seow's account is for those like me who had spent a good part of our active lives helping to launch modern Singapore. Contrary to Lee's pretensions, Singapore is not only his baby. It's our baby as well. But under Lee's exclusive charge, the miracle child suffocates today beneath a pile of heavy swaddling. Small wonder therefore that a disturbing number of Singaporeans have chosen to emigrate from Lee's utopia to less strait-jacketed places like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, According to government figures, the exodus reached 4,000 families in 1989, around 16,000 people. The London Economist observed:

His (Lee's) statistically-inclined government may well reflect that, proportionally, the exodus from Singapore, which faces no threat from China, was not far below the flight from Hong Kong last year.

Lee himself appears to be the only person who does not seem to have got the message. In his National Day Rally speech in 1989, he affected incredulity - even turning lachrymose - that so many Singaporeans should opt out of his paradise. Nobody present could summon the gumption to tell him that to discover the reason why, all that he need do was look into the mirror.

For Lee's entire approach to government pointedly ignores some crucial ingredients of nation-building. Full employment, well-fed digestive tracks, clean streets, and decent homes are not the be-all and end-all of good government. They are only a necessary beginning - an essential foundation from which to aspire to greater human ends. Like people elsewhere, Singaporeans also have keen nonmaterial appetites, the satisfaction of which will not brook permanent denial. For these are fundamental urges which return after every banishment.

A new and better educated generation, increasingly open to the great winds of change blowing all over the world, is bound to intensify the search for an invigorating image of desire and hope, a liberating political formula, a more satisfying life scheme and scene than are available under the present pervasive system of coercion and control. Also, in this day and age, ideas and hopes increasingly scorn border check-points and censorship laws.

A society burdened by a multitude of prohibitions must come to suffer that stifling of innovation and creativity which comes of excessive regulation. Singaporeans today have to memorise an exhaustive list of prohibitions. But they are without a comparable list of what they are free to do.

Certainly citizens of a civilized community need to cultivate that sense of order and discipline which has served Singapore's economic success so admirably thus far. But where a sense of social responsibility goes unnourished by an equally vivid sense of individual rights, and of participation and involvement in the entire political and legislative process, there the human spirit is bound to shrivel under the deadening touch of authoritarianism. Indeed, what has become increasingly evident to Singaporeans is Big Brother's total lack of trust and confidence in the good sense and judgment of his citizens. Hence the hectoring speeches by ministers, and worse, the ubiquitous voice of the oracle telling everybody else, including government ministers who perform under his watchful eyes, what is good for them.

The obvious danger is that if ever Singapore is faced with a serious economic downturn, as is entirely possible given the republic's overwhelming dependence on increasingly volatile export markets, the current disturbing brain drain may be expected to gush into massive exodus. And that would be a sad end for what began as the most promising experiment in socioeconomic growth in Southeast Asia.


... Part 3 coming soon, hehee.

Devan Nair say hor... (Part 1)

C.V Devan Nair
Foreword to To Catch A Tartar, Francis T. Seow
Published in 1994

Before reading Francis Seow's manuscript, I had decided that I would decline his request for a foreword. My political days are definitely over - and more reasons than either friends or foes imagine. Apart from a series of reflective essays (in preparation) on the making of an ideal (in which I too had been privileged to share), on its unmaking (which I watched in helpless pain from the sidelines), and on the dubious - to say the least - political and social aftermath of phenomenal economic success, I had, and still have, no intention of becoming involved in promoting the political views or program of any individual or group, whether within or without Singapore.

After reading through the manuscript, however, I realized that I would never again be able to look at my face in the mirror without flinching, if I said no to Francis, at least in regard to this particular piece of writing by him. For this was no political harangue by one of Singapore's leading opposition figures, excoriating the political or economic program of the powers-that-be, and pleading the virtues of his own political cause. On the contrary, central to this book is a grim account of how a citizen of Singapore was treated while under detention without trial under the republic's internal security laws.

As an ex-detainee myself, who had undergone in two separate spells a total of five years of political imprisonment in the fifties under the British colonial regime as an anticolonial freedom fighter, I recalled that I was never treated in the shockingly dehumanizing manner in which Francis was by the professedly democratic government of independent Singapore. Indeed, my fellow detainees and I had as legal counsel a brilliant lawyer and vocal freedom-fighter by the name of Lee Kuan Yew, who has publicly borne witness to the comfortable circumstances in which we lived under detention, and how he was able to visit us, without supervision, to discuss, among other things, strategies for bringing the colonial rule of our jailers to an end.

Francis's account of his seventy-two days of detention by Prime Minister Lee's government confronted me yet once again with acutely poignant questions: What has the nation come to? And what malefic hidden persona has emerged in Lee Kuan Yew of today? Surely, this cannot be the same man, whom I and several other starry-eyed anti-colonial revolutionaries in the fifties and sixties had jubilantly accepted as our captain in the grim, heroic struggles of those early days to create what we expected would be a new Jerusalem? Alas, it took us thirty years to realize that we had been treading on air.

Mr. Seow's book is an eye-opener; that is, for those whose eyes still required to be opened. Mine too, for that matter. Nobody is blinder than the captain's inveterate hero-worshipper. And none probably as wilfuly, self-righteously closed to unfolding reality as I was. Indeed, until fairly recently, I had believed that the People's Action Party (PAP) government, by which I had once sworn, had all along been tolerably civilized and humane in its treatment of political prisoners. Yet another scale had to fall from my eyes, the latest in a series of scales which had already fallen earlier, and which I will deal with in my own book.

The economic transformation wrought by the PAP government is there for all the world to see. The towering skyline of the island city state, the great vistas of new high-rise apartments which had replaced the sordid sprawling slums and malarial swamps of only three decades ago, the magnificent international airport at Changi about which all visitors rave, the world latest and, perhaps, the best mass rapid transit system, the clean and green garden city - all and more - quite rightly evoke the envy and admiration of foreign visitors, especially those from developing countries with much less to boast of by way of efficient development-orientated governments.

I would be the last person to denigrate the material achievements of Singapore, for the good reason that I was also a member of the ruling team responsible for them. Like other members of the PAP old guard, I saw the creation of a solid socioeconomic base as a vitally necessary springboard for the realisation of human ends and values. At least for me, and for the others in the anticolonial movement like me, the human agenda was primary. In short, the urgent, organized, disciplined drive for economic growth and technological progress was powered by noneconomic aspirations and ideals.

We looked at the sad fate of other multiracial and multireligious developing countries and recognized that life's highest rewards and fulfilments were beyond the reach of societies riven by sterile, senseless class and ethnic strife, and cursed by a corrupt polity, inefficient production, material poverty, and hungry bellies. Modern technology and management systems would be necessary means to advance the human agenda. Alas, we failed to forsee that human ends would come to be subverted for the greater glory of the material means, and our new Jerusalem would come to harbour a metallic soul with clanking heartbeats, behind a glittering technological facade.

History bears abundant witness that idealists generally come to grief. They awaken high human aspirations and hopes and ignite the liberating fires of revolution. The pains and humiliations of foreign subjection and exploitation are scorched, and, for a brief, blazing period, men transcend themselves in the inspiring vision of a great common future. The revolution triumphs - but idealists become expendable thereafter. One by one, sooner or later, they are eased out. And the revolution is inherited by cold, calculating power brokers at the head of a phalanx of philistines.

Lee Kuan Yew's earlier speeches echo the great themes of freedom fighters everywhere. As the several irrefragable quotes Seow offers in his book testify, Lee too had once waxed eloquent about liberty, freedom, harmony, justice, and the dignity of man. But reading Lee Kuan Yew today, or listening to him, one realizes how brazenly he has abandoned the positions which had so convincingly persuaded an earlier, revolutionary generation of Singaporeans, both old-guard colleagues and the population at large, to confirm him in the captainship of party and nation. We had taken him at his powerfully eloquent word. If Lee had then given the mildest hint of the apostate he was to become, he would have received short shrift from the revolutionary following who had put their trust in him.

Those who order, systematise, and govern in the aftermath of revolutions often become votaries at covert and pernicious altars. Ineluctably, the Olympian gods are displaced and a Titan holds sway, with lamentable results. The march of the human spirit is first arrested, then retarded.



Part 2 coming tomolo... -_-"

PAP distortion of Privy Council Judgment

Statement from JBJ! Hooray!!

PAP distortion of Privy Council Judgment

I see that the PAP government is resorting to chicanery to hide the truth from Singaporeans about the Privy Council's verdict on the "convictions" I suffered at the hands of the Singapore courts (ST Friday Dec 9). It is not the first time. It is completely dishonest in the way it is presented.

Jayakumar, the Minister for Law, or Chan Sek Keong, the Attorney-General, should have pointed out any "inaccuracy" in interpreting the judgment of then Singapore's highest court of appeal. Instead, they hide behind the skirt of a civil servant. The PAP forces civil servants to make political capital for them. It is thoroughly unworthy of a government that claims to be creditable.

To put the record straight and to nail the lie once and for all that the Privy Council did not condemn the judgments of the Singapore courts, will Jayakumar or the Attorney-General honestly and truthfully, as though on oath, answer the following questions:-

1. It is true or not true that in 1987 the Singapore court of three judges ordered that I be struck off the Roll of Advocates and Solicitors on the ground that I had been correctly convicted on four criminal charges, a ground specified in the Legal Profession Act for striking out an Advocate and Solicitor;

2. Is it true or not true that in my appeal to the Privy Council I had challenged the validity or correctness of the criminal convictions against me;

3. Is it true or not true that the Privy Council in October 1988 overturned the Order of the Singapore court holding that I was not guilty of any of the offences, the convictions were all wrong and that "by a series of misjudgment' in the Singapore courts I had suffered a "grievous injustice". (See Judgment of the Privy Council
(1989) A C 1);

4. Is it true or not true that I was restored to the Roll of Advocates sad Solicitors following the decision by the Privy Council to overturn the Singapore high Court decision to strike me off the Rolls;

5. Is it true or not true that I was thwarted by the Singapore courts in three attempts I made to make it possible for me to appeal to the. Privy Council and which the Privy Council noted in their Judgment and regretted the actions of the Singapore courts.

It is completely dishonest to say that "Mr Jeyaretnam did not appeal to the Privy Council against his convictions" deliberately hiding the fact that the then Singapore laws gave no automatic right of appeal to the Privy council from any convictions in the Singapore courts.

It is again completely dishonest for the PAP government to say, through Its civil servant that the validity of my criminal convictions were not before the Privy Council. How dishonest can this government get. I do not want a civil servant to answer the questions. They must be answered by the government's highest legal officers.

If either Jayakumar or the Attorney-General do not answer these questions, Singaporeans will be entitled to assume that the government's protest about the programme is totally unfounded and only worthy of a government that distorts the truth.

JB Jeyaretnam

Funny letter by a bitch!

This morning i saw this letter appear in the 148th forum page...

Nov 21, 2005
NSmen make a mockery of chivalry

ON NOV 11 at about 11.15am, a mother with three young boys in tow boarded the train at Clementi MRT station heading towards the city.

It was crowded and they were standing next to me while holding the vertical railing. Seated in front of us were five physically fit national servicemen in Singapore Civil Defence Force uniform.

After passing two stations, the youngest boy, aged about seven, began to squat and I could see he was tired and unwell. I asked the nearest NSman to offer his seat. Instead, he turned to his friend on his right, asked why he should give up his seat and offered his lap instead. His amused friend also offered his lap.

Then came the final straw when they started patting their laps, not so much to emphasise their point as to mock us.

It was pathetic to see the NSmen seated while the boy remained squatting throughout the journey. Finally, the family got a few empty seats at Outram MRT station.

Failing to assist is bad enough but making a mockery of the situation is worse as it is a provocation in itself.

Ting Lan Inn

Knn this Ting Lan Inn must be a female Sinkie. Fuck you understand! KNNBCCB!!!
Cheebye woman you were there sitting down right? Why you never give up your seat ah?! You feel so fucking indignant issit?! Then you fucking practice wat you preach before you open you cunt mouth and tell others wat to do understand?!!!

Orrr i know lah, you woman mah... Hey fuck you cunt bitch!! You fucking go and serve your cheebye NS first before your cunt mouth. Do you know what it is like to serve NS? Fucking chow cheebye! I bet you are an overweight fat lump of lard ass that's why you can't move that fat ass of yours right?!! You deserved to be mocked you piece of shit! Notice the two NSmen don't even bother reply to you, that is how worthless you are! Get it?! I am sure you must be a dumb fuck PAP supporter also, kena brainwashed by all the shit about gender equality and woman's charter bullshit.

Now you so farking free to write letter to complain? You are asking to be flamed and this is my reply to you!



If i was there i would tell you to mind your fucking business you cunt!! I hope you get breast cancer just like the 148th female repoter call Chua cheebye or something!
As for the two NSmen... steady lah brudders! I salute you!! Hahahaha!!!

Let's fine uncivil shoppers...

A freelance writer call Tang Li contributed this article to Today. This guy i see his name already a few times in the paper liao, quite regular one i think.

Okay lah so i read read a bit, and today he talk about service culture in S'pore... poor service lah, blame S'poreans as horrible customers lah, basically repeating what the cheebye gahmen have brought up not so long ago. So he talk and talk and talk, i a bit sian already, nothing new leh, KNN just repeat what people already know. Lidat i also can write and be a freelance writer sia!

And then he reach one point he asked "So what can be done?" Aha! I thought finally he is going to offer his important input... and he wrote "For a start, more competition is needed within industries. This should bring the products on par with each other. Once this happens, service will become a defining factor."
Chey, nothing new also leh, even I also know, but cheebye this is S'pore leh where got real competition one. KNN i every month see my handphone and internet bills also toolan. Watch tv and cable also pissed off, like nothing to watch lidat.

Nevermind I read on first... and wah lao eh, ho seh liao! Tang Li mentioned two company that has improved according to him. Yellow Pages and this Goldbell Engineering. Wat the fuck??!! Is he trying to carry balls or wat?? Yellow Pages is out of sight out of mind, and worse is this Goldball is like knn also dunno wat the fuck they do one! Talk about giving free advertisement and publicity, trying to angkat sia! Hahahaha!!

But not say i want to say lah, this Tang Li is really hor kao kan type. After wasting so much time talking cock, his last two paragraphs really make him the cheebye champion.

"Perhaps, it is also time for the Government to look into the cost of being ungracious and pass it on to the ungracious. Just as the Government has looked into the cost of social ills such as smoking and littering and passed on the costs to consumers by way of higher taxes and fines, perhaps the same could be done for ungracious behaviour. Since courtesy campaigns have obviously not been as effective as we would like, perhaps we should contemplate fines and taxes to make people more polite and pleasant to each other."

This kind of things he say confirm plus chop make him one stupid KNNBCCB motherfucker. Want to fine people again?? Use money to scare people?? Then if still don't work then jail them issit?? Knn this type of thing people read liao also dunno whether to laught or cry! Fucking gahmen already make S'pore machiam like a police state, add another lan cheow law will solve the problem meh?? Fucking Today even print this article, KNN editors also must be the same cheebye stupid fucks!!

Anyway this what the fucker Tang Li looks like... Wahahaha!! What a fucking ugly loser! Agree anot? One look you know confirm is the brainless spineless type. Almost wan to pity him, Hahahaha!!!

Derek MIA

Very long never hear from Derek liao, dunno whether the fucker is still alive or not? Maybe kenna the cheebye reservist again, hahahaha!!

PAP got no fucking chee!!!

I saw this tok kong article from a website...

Govt runs away from legal action by protesters
14 Oct 05

For all its bravado, the PAP Government never ceases to run away from a fight it knows it cannot come away looking good. The latest example is the Attorney-General (AG) asking the courts to have the legal action taken by Ms Chee Siok Chin, Ms Monica Kumar, and Mr Yap Keng Ho against the Government dismissed.

What's more the AG is applying for the dismissal to be heard in chambers where the public cannot attend.

Ms Chee, Ms Kumar, and Mr Yap had filed an Originating Motion in September 2005 and named Minister for Home Affairs Wong Kan Seng and Commissioner of Police Khoo Boon Hui as respondents.

The three activists had asked the courts to declare that the police had acted unlawfully and unconstitutionally when it ordered the four protesters (including Charles Tan who is away presently) to disperse during a silent protest outside the CPF Building on 11 August 2005. Under the Constitution, only five or more people gathered in a public area is deemed an unlawful assembly.

In its application, the AG has said that the Originating Motion should be “struck out or dismissed” because it is “irregular, scandalous, frivolous or vexatious and/or that it is an abuse of the process of the Court.”

In addition, the AG wants the costs of its application be paid by the protesters.

The hearing for the protesters' Originating Motion is set for 21 October at 10 am. The AG's application is set for 19 October 2005, two days earlier, at 2:30 pm.

Question: Why can't the AG make his argument that the Originating Motion is irregular, scandalous, frivolous or vexatious at the hearing itself on 21 October and ask the judge to dismiss it? Why go through the trouble of asking the courts to do this at another session in chambers?

Answer: Because the Government doesn't want the matter to be debated in an open court where the public has access.

There you have it, Singaporeans. The PAP says that citizens have no right to protest. If the courts go along and dismiss the protesters' Originating Motion, it would be further confirmation that we effectively live in a one-party dictatorship.

The Attorney-General's application

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE

Originating Motion ) In the Matter of section 5 (i) of the Miscellaneous Offences
(Public Order and nuisance) Act (Cap. 184)
No. 39 of 2005/A ) Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance)
(Assemblies and Processions) Rules

And

In the matter of Article 14 (1) (b) of the Constitutionof the Republic of Singapore

Between

1. CHEE SIOK CHIN (NRIC NO.)

2. N GOGELAVANY (NRIC NO.)

3. YAP KENG HO (NRIC NO.)

…Applicants

And

1. MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS

2. COMMISSIONER OF POLICE

… Respondents

SUMMONS-IN-CHAMBERS

Let ALL PARTIES concerned attend before the Judge in Chambers on the 19 day of Oct 2005 at 2.30 pm on the hearing of an application by the Attorney-General on behalf of the 1st and 2nd Respondents for this action to be struck out or dismissed and costs of and incidental to this application be paid by the Applicants to the Respondents.

The grounds of this application are that the Originating Motion is irregular, scandalous, frivolous or vexatious and/or that it is an abuse of the process of the Court.

Dated this 7th day of October 2005.

Entered No. 5162 of 2005

Clerk santhi

This summons is taken out by the Attorney-General whose address for service is The Attorney-General’s Chambers, 1 Coleman Street #10-00, Singapore 179803.

for ATTORNEY-GENERAL