Seelan Palay's Blog

Deepest Sympathies & Synonyms (My next exhibition)

2011-10-17T11:42:00.004+08:00

Hi everyone, you're all invited to Deepest Sympathies & Synonyms, the latest exhibition by Seelan Palay & Shikin Ali, opening on 19th Oct.

Deepest Sympathies & Synonyms (Exhibition)
Wednesday, October 19 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm
15 Minutes (The cafe) @ La Salle College of the Arts, 1 McNally Street

In this exhibition, artist-duo Seelan & Shikin apply a newly developed visual ensemble to reflect on the chronic dichotomy of Singapore's social structures.

The exploration into both the artists' approaches to the portrayal of the evolving civic system lent itself to the stylistic application and conceptual framework in the created set of drawings, installations, collages and photographs. The eventual works displayed in the exhibition are the shared products of both artists, intertwined in form and intellection.

By visually translating the relativity between Singapore's public memory, social landscape, critical discourse and modern history, the artists seek to portray the paradox of power and experience in the island state.

There is nothing uniquely Singaporean about inequality

2011-09-15T11:51:00.005+08:00

There is nothing uniquely Singaporean about inequality
By Assoc Professor Aneel Karnani of the University of Michigan
14 September 2011

As of June last year, some 4.2 per cent - or 83,400 - of employed Singaporeans and residents still earned less than $500 a month, the same as they did way back in 1999. And in a nation that prides itself on home ownership, 45,000 households are renting subsidised one and two-room flats now, up from around 40,500 in 2008.

Meanwhile, the number of those who earn $10,000 a month or more has soared fourfold to 121,700 in a decade. And Singapore has the highest proportion of millionaires in the world, with one in six households on that gilded rich list.

Reel off these statistics - gleaned from recent newspaper reports and government data sheets - to Associate Professor Aneel Karnani and he does not seem the least bit surprised.

Income inequality is an inevitable by-product of free market economies, says the Harvard-educated academic, who has spent nearly a decade researching how society can strike the right balance between private profit and public welfare.

"Singapore likes to think it is unique but there is nothing uniquely Singaporean about inequality. That's increasing in practically all affluent countries." Technology and globalisation are two major causes of this "natural phenomenon", says the professof of business strategy at the University of Michigan's Stephen M. Ro Business School.

The 60-year old was in Singapore recently to conduct a series of executive training workshops and speak at universities here. As societies* and economies become more knowledge-driven, there is a greater premium on higher education, which increases knowledge, and technology, which increases productivity. Highly educated and technically skilled people thus tend to earn more and more.

At the same time, globalisation has brought a large pool of unskilled labour into the global market, depressing wages and the bargaining power of lower-skilled people who find their jobs migrating to the lowest bidder, whether within their countries or overseas.

This is to enable "economic efficiency" - where resources are used to maximise the production of goods and services. Thus, Americans these days get shoes or garments from Bangladesh or China because it is cheaper to manufacture them there than in the United States.

"In the old days, you could be a blue-collar worker in the US and make a reasonable living," says Prof Karnani. "But now there are people all over the world who say I can do this cheaper - so it's difficult to be a blue-collar worker in the US or other rich countries, with their jobs migrating elsewhere. So globalisation and technology are increasing inequality."

As someone who has spent three decades, teaching at a business school, the professor stresses that he is in favour of economic efficiency and that private enterprise is a proven "engine of growth". But he says too much of the discussion he hears in Singapore - he has been coming here two or three times a.year for the past 20 years - is from people on the `political right" who are keen to let free markets work unfettered. It increases the economic pie and makes the country rich.

But it is essential to know how to distribute the wealth as well: "The sense I get is that Singapore has focused too much on growing the size of its economic pie and not enough on distributing it." While free markets are good, they also produce more inequality than what most would consider socially desirable. And they lead to the exploitation of the most vulnerable.

The solution, he says, is that `we don't leave the market alone". "Governments should foster free markets but at the same time have another set of policies to temper the resulting inequality, even though it hurts economic efficiency to a certain extent."

There are a myriad ways for a government to do this - and most developed economies already have many such measures in place. The simplest and most direct is through cash handouts or even conditional transfers of payments - where the poor are given cash, as long as they meet certain preset conditions. Singapore's Workfare Income Supplement system is one such way, where low-income workers get their salaries topped up as long as they, are employed.

Progressive taxation is another way forward, where rich individuals and companies are taxed more for a more equitable distribution of wealth.

Third, governments could intervene directly in the markets by setting minimum wage laws or by strengthening unions and enabling workers to collectively bargain for higher wages. Providing public-funded services - such as education or health care - cheap or free to the poor is yet another way forward, he says.

But won't high taxes that must be exacted to fund such handouts kill incentive? And is it wise to advocate more spending on the poor at a time when so many debt-ridden °Western economies are groaning under the weight of burgeoning welfare bills?

"You can take all these equality-inducing mechanisms to a silly, dysfunctional extreme. That, of course, must be avoid- ed. The trouble, is that the debate on, this issue is polarising all too often free markets or communism," says the self-avowed political centrist.

"We can and must find the appropriate middle ground." This can be done through vigorous debate in democratic societies in Parliament, in the media and in other public fora - with each country deciding for itself what is the best course of action.

Currently, similar debates are on in the US, which is deciding how best to deal with record deficits, and in Britain, where the recent London riots were blamed on rising income inequality.

Singapore, too urgently needs more discourse on inequality, says Prof Karnani. Its economy may have grown at a blistering pace of 14.5 percent last year. But at the same time, the gap between its .rich and poor was the second-largest among the world's developed economies, according to a United Nations report.

Its Gini coefficient - among resident employed households - a measure of income inequality between zero and one - has risen from 0.43 in 2000 to 0.452, last year, despite government transfers. This figure could be higher still if wages of Singapore's large pool of blue-collar migrant workers were taken into account, he points out.

The Gini average among members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a consortium of developed economies, by contrast, is 0.3.1.
One issue Singapore can discuss, for instance, is whether its richest can be taxed more to help the poor gain access to better services and opportunities, he says.

After all, the Republic's Gini coefficient has grown steadily even as the highest personal income tax rates were cut from 28 per cent in 2002 to 20 per cent in 2007, one of the lowest in the developed world. Currently, those earning $320,000 per year pay the same tax rate as those earning 10 times more.

"We can have progressive taxation without killing entrepreneurship or incentive. Taxes that can go up to 30-40 per cent. In Western countries, the rich don't say that because taxes are 30 per cent, I will stop working."

In fact, back in his own country, billionaire investor Warren Buffett recently sparked debate by saying that the richest in the US could be taxed even more than the current 35 per cent to help ease deficit woes and avoid cutting 'services for the poor, says the Indian-born American citizen.

"These are interesting'' questions that need to be debated openly. Every society must decide how much ' inequality to have." And no discussion on inequality in Singapore can be complete without considering, the impact, of the large pool of blue-collar immigrants here. Being transient workers, they are not included in Gini coefficient calculations. But they work here - and deserve more protection, he argues.

"Singapore wants cheap labour, but you can't have cheap labour without having inequality. I think we should say that, no, we don't want cheap labour because that's what forms the basis, for an unequal, exploitative society. But of course, that's up to you to decide.”

If immigrants must be let 'in, they must be protected by all the mechanisms of equality that a society has in place, he argues. "I don't know about you, but I want a society that gives protection of`equality, to those who are legally and physically there, irrespective of where they, were born."

Solving the problem of labour shortages by creating an "artificial underclass", like in the Middle East, he believes, is morally problematic. "You can't say you want an egalitarian society only for Singaporeans and not for others. Then don’t let immigrants in."

Why Young People Don't Participate in Politics

2011-08-09T22:23:00.003+08:00

I recently read an article titled "Why Young People Don't Participate in Politics", and I found the latest comment posted to be of interest:

"I think too many of us are ready and willing to blame the political system for youth non-participation. This is a cop out. Of course the political system is frustrating and promotes cynicism--they all do to some degree. But the narrative that suggests it is somehow reasonable that young people turn away from participatory democracy because it is less than savory is ridiculous. And, in any event, I'm not sold by this narrative; it suggests young people attain a degree of understanding of what governance is and how it works only to suddenly turn away from this civic project. I don't believe this happens enough to explain youth non-participation. Laziness and lack of conviction, along with a lack of civic education, are the main contributors." - Benjamin Byron

Updates on my life

2011-07-25T23:58:00.004+08:00

Hi everyone who reads this blog occasionally or have it on your RSS feeds, thank you for all your support so far. I've been really busy since right after the elections with work outside of politics and activism and I haven't updating as regularly on this blog.

I'm thinking of developing a website to feature my artwork and merging this blog within it in the near future. I'll post a link to that when it happens.

Other than that, stay strong, be positive and always hold on to your convictions!

Images from our recent CAPITAL exhibition

2011-06-10T11:18:00.003+08:00

Online gallery of images here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thecapital

HDB: 15 Q & A – Uniquely Singapore?

2011-06-08T14:40:00.001+08:00

theonlinecitizen on June 8, 2011

By Leong Sze Hian

Q. Which is the only country in the world that allows foreigners to buy public housing?

A. Singapore – permanent residents (PRs) can buy resale HDB flats.

Q. Which is the only country in the world that allows not just citizens, but also PRs to own public housing and private property at the same time?

A. Singapore – You can buy private property after the 5-year Minimum Occupation Period (MOP).

Q. Which is the only country in the world that allows whole public flats to be rented entirely to foreigners?

A. Singapore – After the MOP, you can rent out the entire flat to anyone.

Q. Which is the only country in the world which requires a public flat owner to pay a penalty of up to $50,000, when he or she buys another new public flat?

A. Singapore – Resale levy when you buy your second new flat, even if you suffered a loss when you sold your first flat many years ago, or if you were forced to sell your flat or had your flat compulsorily acquired by the HDB because you couldn’t pay your mortgage. Or if the HDB Resale Price Index dropped by about 40 per cent from 1996 to 2003.

Q. Which is the only country in the world that pays your down-payment in full or in part, when you cannot afford to buy a flat?

A. Singapore – CPF Housing Grants. Other countries’ public housing authorities normally keep the prices of public housing low and affordable, so that the lower-income can afford to buy. What is the difference between the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States, which caused the 2008 global financial crisis, by encouraging those who cannot afford to buy homes by lending them housing loans effectively without the need for any down-payment, and the HDB Housing Grants for the lower-income?

Q. Which is the only country in the world that marks up the price of public housing, and then give Housing Grants that never seem to catch up with the price increases, and thumb it as helping people to own homes?

A. Singapore – Flat prices rose 66 per cent or 11.1 per cent per annum over the last five years or so, whereas Housing Grant increases were about a few thousand dollars a year for most eligible buyers. What about buyers who are not eligible for Housing Grants?

Q. Which is the only country in the world that allows public housing prices to increase by about five times more than median wage increase?

A. Singapore – The real median wage only increased by about 1.1 per cent over the last 10 years or so

Q. Which is the only country in the world that acquires public housing flats at only 90 per cent of the valuation as determined by the public housing authority, when owners default on their mortgage?

A. Singapore – The HDB eats up 10 per cent of the valuation from those who are already in dire straits when they cannot pay their mortgage.

Q. Which is the only country in the world that requires you to find another stranger who is 35 years or older to rent a flat together, with a combined monthly income not exceeding $1,500, when you are homeless?

A. Singapore – Joint singles rental scheme.

Q. Which is the only country in the world that increase the rent of the poorest of the poor, after two years of renting a public flat?

A. Singapore – Households earning just over $800 a month have to pay higher rent after two years of tenancy.

Q. Which is the only country in the world that allows public housing to be rented to foreigners for profit?

A. Singapore – E M Services, a joint venture between HDB and a publicly listed company, rents HDB flats to foreigners for profit. How much profits does E M Service make from renting flats to foreigners?

Q. Which is the only country in the world whose public housing supply policy caters almost entirely to first-timer families?

A. Singapore – 95 per cent of Build-to-order (BTO) flats are reserved for first-timers and and an unknown percentage for grassroots volunteers. The forsaken – second- timers, divorcees, single mothers, singles, down-graders due to financial stress, mortgage defaulters, etc.

Q. Which is the only country in the world that requires a public housing flat to be returned to the public housing authority, at a price to be determined by the authority, when couples divorce?

A. Singapore – Divorce within five years, without children.

Q. Which is the only country in the world that requires divorcing couples to cancel their existing public housing loan, and re-finance with a new one?

A. Singapore – Why can’t the existing housing loan be continued? Many divorcing couples have difficulty in re-financing.

Q. Which is the only country in the world that does not disclose public housing statistics like mortgages in arrears, foreclosures, etc?

A. Singapore – Only occasionally, but rarely, when questions are asked in Parliament, but only HDB loan statistics, but not HDB bank loan statistics.

Q. How many of the above HDB policies will be reviewed by the new National Development Minister?

The CAPITAL exhibition is showing till 26 May

2011-05-22T11:59:00.000+08:00

Thank you to everyone who attended the opening reception of the CAPITAL exhibition. It's showing till 26 May 2011 and is open everyday from 5pm onwards.

For details on the venue and directions read: http://seelanpalay.blogspot.com/2011/05/invitation-to-my-next-art-exhibition.html

Invitation to my next art exhibition, CAPITAL

2011-05-17T13:16:00.009+08:00

My art exhibition on the death penalty, CAPITAL has an opening reception at 7pm, 21 May (next Saturday) and I would love it if you all could attend.

Brief info: In this exhibition entitled, 'CAPITAL', Seelan Palay & Shikin Ali apply a new visual ensemble to explore ideas of crime and punishment, social and political constructs, and humanitarian values that hang in the balance.

I would really appreciate if you could help me get the word out about this event and bring along your friends and family.

Here is the Facebook event link: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=171070486284587

Thank you very much everyone,
Seelan Palay

Vote SDP to cool off!

2011-05-05T23:45:00.002+08:00

I'm living in Sembawang GRC and I'm voting for Team SDP!

http://yoursdp.org

Election update

2011-05-03T01:21:00.002+08:00

Hi everyone, I'm really busy at this time with video work for Singapore's General Elections. Please visit http://yoursdp.org daily for updates!

SDP unveils 2 potential candidates, confirms contest in 3 constituencies

2011-04-18T12:26:00.008+08:00

Apr 18, 2011
By Qiuyi Tan, TODAY

SINGAPORE - The Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) unveiled another two potential candidates for the coming General Election during a walkabout yesterday, as it confirmed three of the constituencies it plans to contest.

Introduced to residents at Ghim Moh Market alongside other SDP members yesterday was Ms Teo Soh Lung, 62, who was detained by the Internal Security Department in May and June 1987, on suspicion of being involved in a Marxist conspiracy.

SDP chief Chee Soon Juan also introduced a new face, Ms Michelle Lee, 35, to residents alongside the party's assistant secretary-general John Tan, assistant treasurer Vincent Wijeysingha and former Workers' Party candidate James Gomez.

The party has not officially announced its slate for the GE but Dr Chee confirmed that the party will "definitely" contest Holland-Bukit Timah GRC and the Bukit Panjang and Yuhua SMCs. It is working on a fourth constituency to be revealed at an appropriate time.

Of its candidates, Dr Chee said they are well prepared and "more than capable of taking over from the PAP (People's Action Party) team".

He said: "This election is going to be very different. Our candidates are all going to be very highly-qualified professionals, but I want you to look beyond that.

"Because you look into their hearts, that is where the service comes in. But you won't find them lacking in any shape or form when it comes to their credentials, their competence as compared with the PAP team."

On the National Solidarity Party's decision to not stand in Yuhua in the spirit of Opposition unity, Dr Chee said this was in line with SDP's withdrawal from Whampoa SMC.

The SDP team, numbering more than 30 supporters and members yesterday, also visited Yuhua Village Market and Bukit Timah Food Centre.

Race Issues in Singapore: Is the HDB Ethnic Quota becoming a farce?

2011-04-13T16:01:00.000+08:00

February 17, 2011, The Online Citizen

By Lisa Li

It was a passionate open discussion and debate on race issues that lasted for more than 3 hours, and continued over dinner at a coffee shop nearby.

“David Marshall–a Jew–was our elected Chief Minister in 1955, in the middle of Malay States! How come now Lee Kuan Yew says Singapore is not ready for a non-Chinese as our Prime Minister?” Lawyer M. Ravi asked the roomful of people, rhetorically.

Yes, there were the Maria Hertogh riots in 1950, between Malays and European/ Eurasian communities. Yes, there were riots in the 1960s between Chinese and Malays.

Yet, anecdotally, so many of us remember the 1950s, 60s and 70s as a time when our parents and grandparents lived and mingled with different races, spoke each other’s languages, and celebrated each other’s festivals–all without nudging from government regulations. The question we came back to repeatedly was: What went wrong in the last 20 years?

This is not to paint a completely gloomy picture. A forum participant pointed out that when she was travelling with friends, a foreigner correctly identified them as Singaporeans, because “Indian and Chinese travelling together… must be from Singapore!” This peaceful multicultural life has indeed been the experience for many of us as well, and it should not be taken for granted.

HDB’s Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP)

Source: pbase.com

One issue that many forum participants spoke about was HDB’s Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP) of ethnic quotas for public housing, a policy implemented in 1989 ‘to promote racial integration and harmony‘.

Some, like NSP Secretary-General Goh Meng Seng, felt that the ethnic quotas for public housing should remain. He cited his own experience in a Special Assistance Plan (SAP) school, which tends to be all-Chinese, and pointed out that racial enclaves of any sort could lead to stereotyping and division.

A teacher by the name of Sean also supported the ethnic quotas. He shared that when his students were given a choice to form their own groups, his students tended to gravitate toward their own race. With this parallel, he felt that people would tend to gravitate toward their race in housing. The forming of racial enclaves, in his opinion, would be detrimental to Singapore’s harmony.

Modification of the EIP?

However, Sean also suggested that the categories and quotas be re-examined and modified. The current HDB quota system has three categories: ‘Malay’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘Indian and Others’, so one modification could be to create another category for ‘Others’ instead of subjecting ‘Indian’ and ‘Others’ to the same quota.

It is worth noting that these HDB ethnic quotas were revised on 5 March 2010, yet they do not seem aligned with our current racial mix. The maximum ethnic limit in the neighbourhood for Chinese and Malay residents is approximately 10 percent higher than their actual percentage in Singapore’s resident population (2010), while the maximum ethnic limit for ‘Indians and Others’ is 0.5 percent less than the actual percentage in resident population (2010).

Given that the population of ‘Others’ has increased from 46,400 (1.4 percent) in 2000 to 125,800 people (3.3 percent) in 2010, shouldn’t the HDB’s ethnic quotas and categories kept pace with this trend in Singapore’s racial mix?

Another suggestion by a forum participant was to keep the concept of ethnic quota, but to relax it further. He asked: If we can allow blocks to have 80 percent Chinese and 20 percent Indian occupants (as a loose estimate), why not allow blocks to have 80 percent Indian and 20 percent Chinese occupants? This would loosen the quota to give people more choice of housing, while still preventing the formation of racial enclaves.

Mr Alsagoff, another forum participant, questioned the assumption that the removal of ethnic quotas would result in the formation of racial enclaves.

He explained that in the past, many Malays congregated in Geylang Serai due to their work on Alsagoff plantations. His view was that most people tended to choose their housing location based on economic reasons, that is, the location of their work or housing prices, not necessarily because they wanted to live with people of the same race.

EIP: The creation of differential pricing based on race

For a quick look at the current EIP situation, The Online Citizen spoke to two recent buyers of HDB flats.

A few years ago, Tay Jin En was browsing for flats in a particular district that had reached the Chinese quota. Based on information from her housing agent, she recalls that “Malays [were] selling at valuation price because they could only sell to other Malays” but “Chinese sellers who freed up the Chinese quota could set almost any price they wanted”. As a result, some of these Chinese-owned flats were priced at $80,000 over valuation.

K, an Indian Singaporean, is also a recent flat buyer. The district she preferred had not reached the quota limit for ‘Indian and Others’, so she was able to select from buyers of different races. She felt that the buying market was to her advantage because non-Chinese flats tended to be cheaper. However, she acknowledged that if the Chinese quota limit was reached, she would have to be patient in order to find an Indian buyer for her flat.

The implicit problem here is if buyers do not have the patience for this, for example in cases where flat owners default on mortgage payments. Those caught in such financial difficulties are forced to either quickly sell it on the open market (subject to ethnic quota restrictions) or have their flats seized by HDB at 90 percent of the market valuation price.

Parliamentary Secretary for National Development Mohamad Maliki Osman

When questioned about this in Parliament by Nominated MP Viswa Sadasivan, Parliamentary Secretary for National Development Mohamad Maliki Osman asserted that “sellers who are affected by the EIP limits should have no problem finding buyers from the eligible ethnic groups as long as they are realistic in setting their asking price… There are sellers who are affected by EIP restrictions, who are able to sell at…even $30,000 above market valuation.”(Click here for the Parliamentary exchange)

The PAP government’s unwillingness to admit that EIP can negatively affect public housing prices based on race merely sweeps it under the carpet. At the very least, they need to admit that some Singapore do suffer under these race-based policies in order to genuinely discuss how to minimize these problems.

Moving beyond racial divisions

Another feature of Singapore today would be the increasing number of inter-ethnic marriages. In 2010 (based on records from the Women’s Charter and the Muslim Law Act), there were 4,928 inter-ethnic marriages, that is, 20 percent of the total number of marriages for the year.

Perhaps in response to this trend, it was announced in January 2010 that a child of mixed heritage would be allowed to take on either a double-barrelled race, the father’s race, or the mother’s race. However, in cases where two people with double-barrelled race classifications marry, they will have to choose two of the four races to be declared as their child’s race.

To add on to this over-simplification of race, the current HDB EIP Policy states that “only the first race component of a double-barrelled race will be used. For example, for an individual with double-barrelled race of “Indian-Chinese”, only Indian will be used.”

Does it make sense for a Singaporean child who, having a Malay-Eurasian father and a Dutch-Chinese mother, is officially classified as Malay-Dutch, and therefore is subjected to HDB’s ‘Malay’ quota and all its restrictions in the name of preventing racial enclaves?

As Singapore becomes increasingly racially ambiguous and cosmopolitan, is our classification of race and ethnic quota for housing slowly but surely becoming a farce?

And given Singaporeans’ general mobility in this geographically small island, are we really in danger of forming racial enclaves, lacking in understanding and friendship with other races whom we interact with on a daily basis in school, at work, and everywhere else?

This article is the second part in a two-part article about Race Issues in Singapore. The first part was about the need for great discussion of race, based on reports by Dr James Gomez (presented on 12 February) and UN Rapporteur Mr Githu Muigai.

This article was written after conversation with Mr Alsagoff, Sean, Rakesh, Sha Najak, Nina Chabra and Roderick.

We are here to serve

2011-04-08T14:04:00.003+08:00

06 April 2011
By Dr Vincent Wijeysingha

On Saturday last, I participated in a television forum that enabled some of the opposition parties to showcase our policy programme and to debate the governing party on its record.

That the PAP needed to send a full minister to represent it and another party member is testament to the crisis of confidence it is facing and its deep unease over its own policies.

No doubt including the SDP in that programme was the result of our highlighting from this website the now glaring attempt by the governing party to keep the SDP from engaging with the people of Singapore.

The advent of the Internet means that the old-fashioned policy of censoring its opponents is no longer tenable.

The long decline

Why do I bring this up? Because if we are to understand the challenges facing the PAP, and therefore the real dangers of it continuing unchallenged in Parliament, we should look at some history.

When Mr Lee Kuan Yew entered politics, he gathered around him a group of highly effective men. People like Dr Goh Keng Swee, Mr S Rajaratnam, and Dr Toh Chin Chye.

These men were his equals, and in many ways, his betters because they were able to think through and implement policies that endured while he was their front man, selling their philosophy - and silencing their opponents.

In the mid-eighties, all the old guard started their exit from government leaving him in sole charge of a new group of younger ministers.

That has now left us with a Cabinet that is not even able to take action on mundane matters such as flooding, the rate of inflation, the social effects of the immigration policy, the galloping cost of living, or even to propose alternative solutions and creative approaches to the economic problems of our time.

Why? Because in positing himself as the sole arbiter of policy in the PAP, Mr Lee disabled the capacity of his younger colleagues to think for themselves. Witness Mr Yaacob’s response to the floods last year; Mr Wong Kan Seng blaming everybody else for the escape of Mas Selamat; Mr Tharman’s Budgets of recent years, destitute of anything but to throw money at old problems; Dr Balakrishnan’s failure to spend within the YOG budget (not to mention his arrogant parliamentary statements on raising Public Assistance for the poorest of our poor) and the inability of the Cabinet as a whole to control Mr Lee’s misguided statements about the Malay community.

Sometime last year, Mr Lee lamented the failure of the bilingual education policy. Numerous teachers I have spoken to on the ground have told me that they could have offered that same appraisal 15 years ago. Apparently, in Singapore, no policy is assessed until Mr Lee searches his soul.

The top-down approach he inculcated at all levels of the administration and public life has started the rot. Few in the public sphere has the capacity to face the problems we are now experiencing. No one has the capacity to speak up. The only leader of any substance in the PAP, Mr Lee is now a man literally without peer.

The way forward

Enter the SDP. Over the last 20 years, Dr Chee Soon Juan and his hardworking colleagues, with whom I now have the privilege to serve, have built up a coherent philosophy and policy framework, contained principally in our two key documents, alternative economic programme, It’s About You: Prosperity and Progress for Every Singaporean, and financial policy, Empowering The Nation: Shadow Budget 2011.

Our philosophy is contained in three simple words: Competence, Constructiveness, Compassion.

The CNA forum allowed me to offer the people of Singapore our vision. If I performed at all well, and may I thank those who have kindly complimented me, it is because, to quote Isaac Newton, I have stood on the shoulders of giants.

I have also tried to speak on behalf of the less fortunate, whom the SDP has never ceased to place at the centre of its philosophy. If I was at all coherent, it is because our party is coherent.

I am first and foremost, not a leader. Neither is the SDP. We aspire to serve. The electorate leads. You say where you wish our community to go. You tell us the kind of society you want.

And utilising the expertise that we bring from our professional lives and the research that is a hallmark of the SDP way, we propose and facilitate the resources and structures that will get us there.

In the wake of last Saturday’s forum, I ask you, my fellow Singaporeans, to help the SDP to help you. You can contribute in so many ways: work behind the scenes on logistics, do research and data collection, make available your vehicles for the many errands we have to make.

And you can donate money to fund our posters, leaflets, transport and rally equipment. Chee Siok Chin and I made this video last week. But it bears repeating. Standing for elections costs a lot of money.

In 1994, the British Labour Party lost its respected leader, Mr John Smith, to heart disease. May I quote from Mr Smith, who once said, “The opportunity to serve our country, that is all we ask.”

I ask you to join us for this election campaign. Singapore deserves our service.

It's About You, not PAP

2011-04-06T14:29:00.003+08:00

6 APRIL 2011, Singapore Democrats
By Dr James Gomez

This general elections, It's About You - the Singaporean voters, your families and what we can do to alleviate the economic hardships caused by PAP`s bad policies. Instead, the PAP is making this election all about itself.

For days on end we are hearing that this election is about PAP`s “self-renewal”, “4G leaders”, its new candidates, its line up of candidates in GRCs and its long term survival as the ruling party.

We have heard nothing specific about policies the PAP will introduce to reduce the suffering it has caused to the people of Singapore.

Hardships caused by PAP`s bad policies that have led Singaporeans to suffer rising costs of living, overcrowding by large number of foreigners and depressed wages for Singaporeans.

The only worker`s organization, NTUC, through its partnership with the PAP is no longer an effective organization for workers` interests.

The NTUC has metamorphosed into a political tool of the PAP to recruit, employ and deploy its election candidates.

The PAP is talking itself up, its candidates and its long term survival this elections, but we have heard nothing about the PAP`s election manifesto and its programs to elevate the suffering of Singaporeans.

For too long we have let the PAP make Singapore elections all about itself. And as a result, it has ignored the people and the policies needed to improve their current conditions.

A compliant media that reports the PAP propaganda and does not question this jarring absence of policies for the people only highlights the fact that the elections is all about the PAP.

The SDP's policies, on the other hand, are people policies because Singaporeans are important. That’s why we entitled our economic manifesto It's About You. It's about the people of Singapore and your families.

And we will be speaking up for you.

James Gomez is an academic at an Australian university. He is back in Singapore and will work full-time on the SDP's election campaign.

No real change as Burma swaps military rule for civilian parliament

2011-04-05T16:57:00.002+08:00

31 March 2011, CSW

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) has warned that although Burma’s State Peace and Development Council has been officially disbanded, there is no prospect of true democratic reform for the country.

As part of the changes that followed the sham elections of November 2010, a new civilian parliament was sworn in yesterday, ostensibly completing the transition from a military dictatorship to a civilian administration. In addition, Burma’s dictator Than Shwe has been replaced by General Min Aung Hlaing as head of the armed forces, and former Prime Minister Thein Sein was sworn in as President of Burma.

Despite being touted as the first step on the road to democracy, Burma’s first elections in over 20 years were marred by reports of harassment, intimidation, violence and arrests in several of Burma’s ethnic states, both on polling day and in the days afterwards,. New electoral rules excluded pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from participating, and resulted in her party, the National League for Democracy, being banned. Shortly after polling began, fighting between the Burma Army and a faction of the pro-junta Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) resulted in tens of thousands of refugees fleeing across the border into Thailand.

Political parties affiliated to the military regime won the majority of seats. Under the new constitution, the military is guaranteed 25 per cent of the parliamentary seats and immunity for past, present and future crimes. It also offers no meaningful autonomy for ethnic nationalities and no genuine protection for human rights.

CSW’s East Asia Team Leader Benedict Rogers said, "There is no real change in Burma at all. The process which the regime has completed is a cosmetic change, but the brutal military dictatorship remains in power. A few changes of personnel and clothing, from military uniform to civilian suits, does not represent real reform.

The international community must unite in sending the regime a strong message, that if it wants the legitimacy and credibility it desires, it must make meaningful changes: release all political prisoners, end attacks on ethnic civilians, and enter into dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy movement and the ethnic nationalities. Sanctions must be maintained until there are meaningful signs of genuine progress, and the UN should investigate crimes against humanity and war crimes through a commission of inquiry. Only then can there be true accountability and an end to impunity."

Hard truths on hard culture

2011-03-25T16:00:00.000+08:00

Guest essay by Robox on Yawning Bread

I had been prompted to write this in response to a comment following this Yawning Bread article in which Alex Au reports Peter Lloyd as having observed in his book Inside Story, that three in four prison inmates were Malay or Indian. I would urge readers who have yet to read that article and the comments that followed to do so first in order to be able to follow this better.

Background

The comment in question, by reader Christopher, proffered that in examining the causes of this gap, one would have to investigate it from two angles: circumstances – the “fault” or “shortcomings”, evidently cultural ones according to him, of Malays and Indians themselves – and government policy. Christopher arrived at the conclusion – somewhat pre-emptively without examining, even cursorily, any policy or administrative acts that might have been a contributing factor – that:

In terms of policy, I would hardly think that [there is] any socio-economic disadvantage faced by our minority groups [that] are the direct result of government policy. On the contrary, I believe that Singapore has good and fair policies in place in regard to race that not only do not discriminate, but they also promote multi-racialism, and serve to improve the social mobility of the minority races. In this regard, the government does subtly admit that there is a socio-economic gap that exists between the race majority and minority.

[snip]

Hence we are left with circumstance. Adopting a pragmatic point of view, different races have different cultures and these will inevitably churn out different socio-economic outcomes. Closing the socio-economic gap would require one or more groups of people to adopt a different set of thinking, or adapt their lifestyle accordingly for progress…[Emphasis added]

I take a diametrically opposite position to Christopher’s: There is, to me, sufficient evidence existing in the public domain that point incontrovertibly to government policy being a possibly major cause of the disparity between the Chinese population on the other one hand, and the Malay and Indian ones on the other, in the prison population.

At the same time, I posit that, in the absence of any explicit admission by the PAP government to the existence of such a policy, and exacerbated by the lack of transparency by them even when queried in Parliament, we are left to a more unorthodox method of intellectual inquiry, though one that is in widespread informal use, to make these deductions. We perform intelligent guesswork by matching the following:

1. the public opining of government officials;

2. administrative acts, such as the police work that takes place on the ground; and,

3. anecdotal evidence provided from a variety of sources, only one of which is Peter Lloyd’s book.

The pre-requsite for performing the above though, I might add, is a healthy distrust for the PAP government which I am happily and amply endowed with.

Public Musings

In his paper, Lee Kuan Yew: Race, Culture and Genes that is well known to Singaporeans in cyberspace, Michael D Barr recites a 1967 parable attributed to Lee Kuan Yew in which, out of three women – presumed to be Chinese, Indian and Malay – admitted into hospital in the same condition and needing a blood transfusion, only the Chinese woman survived. As Barr explains:

…”hard” and “soft” countries not only produce “hard” and “soft” cultures, but their people acquire “hard” and “soft” physiological characteristics. This explains why in Lee’s parable of December 1967, the woman from the “hard” East Asian society lived after her operation, while the women from the “soft” South Asian and Southeast Asian societies died.

(see footnote 1)

Neither would it seem that these idiosyncrasies are confined to only one man and would have been abandoned with the passage of time (footnote 2).

Fast forward to the present day, and by sheer coincidence, the same Yawning Bread article on which this one spins off from relates an observation made by Peter Lloyd in his book: “[Lee Wei Ling’s] first contribution of 2009 [to her Sunday Times column] was a startling assertion that Singaporeans are guilty of becoming too soft and comfortable in their affluence”. While Ms Lee did not attribute this softness to any cultural contamination of “hard” culture by the “soft” cultures, her comment does belie her uncritical acceptance of her father’s beliefs. Even more recently – just last week in fact – Goh Chok Tong would praise the “stoicism” that he observed in the Japanese in the face of calamity and personal tragedy, and then make the outrageous leap as to conclude that it was a necessary ingredient in nation building (footnote 3).

Indeed, Barr notes that, “[Lee Kuan Yew’s] speeches also reveal a fear that he and the ethnic Chinese of Singapore will lose the drive which has made them successful, not only because they have left the “hard environment” of their forebears and are now living in the tropics, but because they are also living in a more prosperous, but “softer” and thus inferior culture.”

While it is clear that Lee Kuan Yew is not alone in his fear, it is indeed frightening that what should have been denounced as just more of Lee Kuan Yew’s many idiotisms, instead permeates all strata of state and society, the latter of which was also exemplified in Christopher’s comment.

The Mounting Evidence

What then is to become of Malays and Indians who espouse “soft” cultures, and who are believed by government officials not to have contributed to the nation’s success nor to nation building itself? It stands to reason that the only course of action open to the PAP government, one given to punitive action to accomplish behavioural change, are exactly those reserved for all who betray their nation on any account: punishment and rehabilitation (footnote 4).

Sylvia Lim’s assertion in Parliament in that ‘the Government had been reluctant to publish figures on ethnicity and crimes’ was an expression of the disquiet that already exists on the Indian and Malay grounds. Peter Lloyd’s book offers some of his own observations; Alex Au‘s article itself should be viewed as an expression of that same disquiet. In response I cited my own observations and those of others. Though there was one detractor in the discussion that ensued, another commenter Prison Volunteer wrote that, he could ‘vouch that there is an over-over-over representation of Malays and Indians in prison especially those under 25’. Indeed, the SDP website even published an email more than year ago from a Malay reader making the observation that Malays seem to suffer harsher sentencing in the justice system.

All of these constitute the anecdotal evidence. It would have been quite normal in a more mature society with democratic public institutions to have treated anecdotal evidence as raw material for further empirical investigation. The stumbling block here seems to lie in the not infrequent observation that the government insists on a monopoly in information as well as a monopoly on its flow: the hard evidence could have been made available in Parliament but wasn’t, leading one to suspect that a policy that could cause the government untold embarassment had to remain under wraps at all costs.

The information in this and the previous section leads me conclusively to believe that government policy does in fact play large a role in the disparity between the numbers of Chinese inmates on the one hand, and Indian and Malay ones on the other, in the prison population.

Conclusion

One possible rationale for the government’s evasiveness might be understandable, though only from the perspective of protecting their own backs. It could provoke questioning such as the type that I have already made. It could provoke the emergence of the true stories of police action. And it could result in accusations of government racism. Beyond just the matter of the lack of transparency, the flipside of this evasiveness goes far beyond. It does nothing to quell the disquet that is already on the Malay and Indian grounds, and which is moving beyond the two communities. It also has the potential to perpetuate the culture of rumor mongering so prevalent in all autocratic states

All in all, we have a government that cannot, even in our wildest imaginations, be described as possessing well-honed problem solving instincts. If anything, they are the net cause of more problems.

—

Footnotes

1. It has to be noted that Lee’s beliefs in “hard” and “soft” countries, cultures and the resulting physiological traits are at its most fundamental level sexist ones. Applied to cultures, “hard” or “soft” ones, and with no regard for the heterogeneity within them, it acquires all the connotations of ethnic superiority and inferiority, such as it does in the power disparity between the sexes; Lee’s beliefs are undeniably racist.

2. I have often wondered what Lee Kuan Yew could have meant by “hard” culture. While this is by no means authoritative, it would seem to me that he really refers to an orientation towards militarism, a culture complete with rigid hierarchies with room for exactly one person at its apex, unquestioning attitudes, blind loyalty, and a steely exterior suggesting a determined refusal to factor in feelings and emotions in the course of executing one’s public duties: the ingredients that predispose a people to autocratic rule. The belligerence that often accompanies militaristic attitudes would become immensely useful in fending off the Islamist hordes at our gates.

By sharp contrast, consider a possible reason for Indian cultural rehabilitation in Singapore. In Ethnicity, Gender and Entrepreneurial Tendencies: The Singapore Perspective by Ramin Cooper and Christopher Ziemnowicz, the authors cross reference Hofer (1997): “…Hinduism accepts the validity of many paths leading to the same goal.” This in effect precludes, in the average Hinduism-impacted Indian mind, a singular source as an absolute authority, a pre-requisite in democracy and anathema to Lee’s penchant for totalizing. Though I am not suggesting that this attitude is present uniformly in all Indians, it is also that quintessentially Indian attitude that might have given rise to the common stereotype of Indians as being ‘difficult to control’, providing justification for cultural rehabilitation as well as for being denied employment..

I suspect that a parallel rationale for punitive action against Malays exists as it does with Indians. In the past, it could have been due to some Malays having placed the authority of the Malaysian government in their lives over that of the Singaporean one helmed by Lee Kuan Yew. Lately, it seems to have morphed into an antagonism against Islam as the penultimate authority in the lives of many Malays.

3. One would have thought that good coping skills might have sufficed to cope with disaster, however, I surmise that Goh fancied that the militaristic attitude I wrote about in the preceding note, ‘a determined refusal to factor in feelings and emotions in the course of executing one’s duties to the state’, would not only be politically expedient for his autocratic government, but it presents yet another opportunity to reinforce the notion that Singapore’s success could only come about by the espousal of East Asian cultural attitudes and behaviour.

4. It is in this light that the recent Thaipusam controversy might be viewed, with the event producing a bumper crop of arrests of Indian individuals annually by the Singapore Police Force for “crimes” such as drumming on plastic pails. It’s also a matter of curiosity that in the same Yawning Bread article, Alex Au describes rehabilitation services as such: “The daily routine of prison life was one of obeying orders. Roll calls came several times a day. Inmates had to snap to attention, saying “Yes, sir” this and “Yes, sir” that when spoken to by prison officers.”

All Woks of Life (Exhibition)

2011-03-23T17:05:00.003+08:00

Seelan: I am one of the participating artists in this exhibition.

Time: March 19 at 7:00pm - May 19 at 10:00pm
Location: Your Mother Gallery, 91A Hindoo Road, Singapore

Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=105863369494859

This group exhibition project is inspired by the signboard of Your MOTHER Gallery. The idea of using a wok as a signboard is to remind us about our mother or family using this utensil to make food for us everyday.

The wok is a very special and unique tool that we use everyday and especially in Asia. There's a saying “What we eat is what we are”. And this is part of our Asian culture.

Opening night 7pm on 19 March 2011 with performances by Bani Haykal, Kai Lam and more. Other dates viewing by appointment only HP 97877874 (Jeremy Hiah).

Participating artists:
Kai Lam, Gilles Massot, Chin Chin, Jeremy Hiah, Ezzam Rahman, Seelan Palay, Urich Lau, Jason Lee, Jacklyn Soo, Lina Adam, Angie Seah, Mary Anne, Bani Haykal, Andree W, Justin, Tien Wei.

Supported by NAC, Arts Fund & Your Mother Gallery.

Singapore is not a model for Australia

2011-03-21T13:04:00.000+08:00

By Dr Michael Barr
17 March 2011, The Interpreter

Dr Michael Barr is Senior Lecturer at Flinders University. His most recent book, written with Zlatko Skrbiš, is Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation-Building Project.

Australians looking at Singapore as a model for pulling the poor up by their bootstraps (such as Noel Pearson in The Australian) will be disappointed. Singapore's success is not replicable or desirable.

Singapore had its economic take-off by turning itself into a regional manufacturing and exporting base while China and India were sleeping and the US was booming and buying. If China or India had been competitors in the global market during the 1960s, '70s and '80s, then Singapore would never have followed the path it did and could not have succeeded as it did. Needless to say, China and India are no longer sleeping, and the US is no longer booming or buying.

Furthermore, the manufacture-for-export pattern of development upon which Singapore relied and continues to rely to this day, is already past its prime. The Singaporean Government recognises this, and is desperately trying to find alternative models. To suggest that Australia revert to a model that worked for Singapore in the 1970s and is being systematically abandoned as we speak would be a foolish move indeed.

Pearson argues that Singapore has developed without the creation of an underclass and that the country has 'free(d) itself from poverty'. In fact Singapore has two underclasses. The first consists of poor Singaporeans who live in a high-cost city, but who work without significant political or industrial protections: without a minimum wage, without independent unions, without much by way of welfare or health benefits and without much hope of themselves or their children ever climbing out of the poverty trap.

There are many Singaporeans working 10 and 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for as little as Singapore $3-4 per hour (S$1 is worth about 80c Australian) with few social security benefits. Members of this underclass become very visible late at night in food courts, where aged grandmothers and grandfathers work for a pittance serving food and cleaning tables and toilets.

This Singaporean underclass includes people of most of Singapore's races, but the indigenous Malays are over-represented because they are the victims of systemic racial discrimination by the Chinese-dominated Government. Furthermore, the entire system is sustained politically by a system that tells the 'losers' it is their own fault. The 'self-help' systems that have so impressed Mr Pearson as a substitute for welfare are part of the story of this marginalisation. Because communities are forced to look inwards for assistance, 'self-help' becomes a system of restricting the pathways of public assistance: resources are redistributed within the poorest sections of the community, with minimal contribution from either government or from the better-off segments of society. The middle and upper classes are then free to focus their resources on helping themselves and their own children.

The second underclass is comprised of 'foreign guest workers' who come from other parts of Asia and work for even less than the locals. They make up nearly 40% of the island's population and they have the added vulnerability that they can be repatriated in an economic downturn or if they get sick, pregnant, or make trouble.

Let us take just one of the arguably more positive examples of Singapore innovation: the Central Provident Fund (CPF). The CPF is a national superannuation scheme in which all employees and their employers contribute proportions (at one time 50%) of their salaries to a Government-managed retirement fund. The British saw it as a cheap way of providing a hint of social security, but Lee Kuan Yew's Government used it to fund national infrastructure projects, housing and mortgage schemes, and eventually even 'self-help' health cover. For several decades it was central to funding economic development, and I do not dismiss its contribution to the Singapore success story. Furthermore, I think Singapore's emphasis on systematic personal saving and the deliberate conversion of those savings into a resource for national development is worthy of note by those looking for a development model.

But — and it is a big 'but' — let us not forget that this project operated on the basis that the Government kept most of the profits from personal savings and commanded their investment choices. It has loosened up a bit in the last couple of decades, but in the crucial period in which Singapore's success was built (1960s-late 1980s), the Government was appropriating most of the profits of the retirement investments of millions of Singaporeans, and paying nominal interest rates to the account holders. Is such a proposal politically possible (or necessary) in Australia in the 2010s? I doubt it. In any case, one of the unintended but entirely predictable consequences of the Singapore practice is that it never came close to providing security in retirement.

There are lessons from Singapore's experience on matters such as strategic investment for job creation, the creation of a savings pool for strategic investment, and the advantages of professional management, but we should be cautious about thinking that Singapore's model of success can be transplanted in any significant degree to Australia. Such a model probably does not exist anywhere. It is certainly not found in Singapore.

Photo by Flickr user Amizyo.

Experts Help to Rebrand Burma’s Failed Dictatorship

2011-03-17T13:45:00.003+08:00

With special mention of Singapore's Institute of South East Asian Studies (ISEAS) of course.

Experts Help to Rebrand Burma’s Failed Dictatorship
By Dr Zarni
16 March 2011, Irrawaddy

Every time Burma’s military dictatorship is framed as “new,” it is being rebranded, to use the lingo of corporate advertising. The spoils of the positive public relations are shared as it were between the experts and their organizations that prostitute themselves by spinning for their neo-liberal governmental patrons and corporate “donors” in the West and Burma’s despotic regime, the former’s actual and potential business partner.

Dr Zarni (m.zarni@lse.ac.uk) is research fellow on Burma at the London School of Economics and Political Economics.

“While the underlying power structures have shifted significantly, dramatic change is highly unlikely in the short term. … Change will be gradual, but will accelerate over time,” reads the latest report of the International Crisis Group (ICG), titled “Myanmar: Post-Election Landscape” and released on March 7. The report on the whole reads more like a series of astrological calculations—which are all-too-familiar to the Burmese—than an empirically verifiable, serious work of analysis.

This portrayal of the so-called post-election political landscape in my country as “significant” is an insult to the common sense of the ordinary men and women of Burma, if not to the commercial and political elites who have concluded that they have more to gain by collaborating with the dictatorship than by standing against it. The ICG’s rebranded image of “post-election Burma” stands in sharp contrast to the political and institutional realities lived by the Burmese public, including ethnic nationalities in the country’s cease-fire regions or active war zones and the dominant majority living under direct military rule.

The loose network of local and global actors framing what the Burmese public knows first-hand to be the same old dictatorship in new garb as something genuinely new needs to be subject to empirical scrutiny in terms of these framers’ ideologies, interests, and the substance of their arguments or lack thereof.

From high-level policy lobbies such as ICG and the Burma experts of Chatham House (see “Burma Elections: First Step Out of the Impasse”) and Singapore’s Institute of South East Asian Studies (see “The army's new clothes”) to less articulate elements from within Burma’s local political and commercial elites, those who advocate for the normalization of “aid relations” (and in due course resumed and expanded commercial relations) view the opposition’s flagship organization, the National League for Democracy party (NLD) and its influential leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, as a key obstacle to business engagement, economic development and even incremental reforms. Accordingly, these advocates are bent on chipping away the NLD’s legitimacy as the most representative voice.

One of their discursive strategies is to help reinforce the regime’s propaganda—a dictatorship under a new management evolving slowing in the right pro-democracy direction—while attacking the NLD’s claim as the last democratically elected party with a moral authority to speak for the Burmese public at large.

Two individuals stand out: Burmese writer Thant Myint-U, the grandson of the late UN Secretary General U Thant (and himself a second-generation former UN official), of Singapore’s quasi-autonomous Institute of South East Asia Studies; and Marie Lall, a senior lecturer with the University of London’s Institute of Education and an Associate Fellow of Chatham House.

In a recent New Yorker article by Joshua Hammer (“Letter from Burma: A Free Woman,” Jan. 24, 2011) Myint-U made assertions about Burma’s flagship opposition that are important but manifestly and verifiably false.

Burma elections ‘similar to Singapore’

2011-03-09T14:55:00.003+08:00

Seelan: I sometimes wish to archive certain articles on my blog, the article below was first published in June last year.

Burma elections ‘similar to Singapore’
9 June 2010, DVB

The lengthy and arterial process of registering for elections in Burma this year mirrors that of Singapore, one of Burma’s principal economic backers, a prominent would-be candidate has said.

Political parties in Burma continue to await confirmation from the government-proxy Election Commission as to whether they can participate. The National Democratic Front (NDF), comprised of members of the now-disbanded National League for Democracy (NLD) party, expect to get a response by the end of the week.

But there are several hurdles that parties must conquer before being permitted to run: an application for party registration must be submitted; upon approval, a policy guideline must then be approved before a second phase of party registration takes place. Once this is granted, parties can erect a signboard and set out on the campaign trail.

“We generally understood that the [system] is similar to that of Singapore – to put the political parties under control by the law – which in reality will cause difficulties,” said Thein Nyunt, head of the NDF.

Analysts also claim that Singapore’s election commission is controlled by the prime minister’s office, while parliamentary seats are allocated to cronies prior to balloting: similar accusations have been levelled at the Burmese elections, the country’s first in 20 years.

Several parties have complained that election rules are severely restricting their progress in terms of establishing themselves within the election realm. Ohn Lwin, from the registered National Political Alliances party, said that parties must inform township and division-level authorities of their activities.

“If [the Election Commission] was not satisfied with our conditions and we do not qualify [to be a party] then why not just deny our registration? It’s not right to restrict us after approving the registration,” he said.

“Now different townships…are swarming with [government] intelligence people and locals are scared to attend our meetings or to join the party after seeing them. When we asked [intelligence] why they were there, they said that they were just collecting information assisting in case we needed help from them. But people are afraid of them.”

Thu Wei, head of the Democratic Party, a member of Burma’s ‘third force’, allied to neither opposition nor incumbent, said that the ruling junta had made sure there “wouldn’t be any worries for them” in elections this year.

“So I think they will make the elections free and fair. It doesn’t matter who gets hold of the power…[because] even if some other party has won, they will still transfer [the power].”

Additional reporting by Khin Hnin Htet

Related reading: Burma mentors Singapore in sham elections

Burmese Dictator adopts Singapore President Model

2011-03-07T15:10:00.002+08:00

5 March 2011
By Myin Kyaw Kyaw, Temasek Review

Burma’s most hated dictator, Than Shwe, has adopted the Singapore President Model with regards to budget. He has granted the commander-in-chief of the military—who is currently himself—the absolute authority to use unlimited “Special Funds”. These funds are supposedly to help him in performing his duties of protecting the Constitution and preserving national sovereignty. What is interesting is that this was enacted as a law but it was done secretly.

Just like how the Singapore President has no accountability, the newly passed Burmese law also stipulate that “for the spending of the Special Funding, no person or organization can question, propose and audit.”

Quoting official information distributed to members of the Burmese government, The Associated Press reported Tuesday that 1.8 trillion kyat (US $2 billion), or 23.6 percent of Burma’s budget this year, will go to defense. The health sector, meanwhile, will get 99.5 billion kyat ($110 million), or 1.3 percent.

The funds used by the commander-in-chief under the Special Funds Law will be over and above those allocated to the military in the defense budget.

It is clear how Than Shwe has structured this using the Singapore President model. In fact one can also see parallels between how both governments keep several budgets but when they talk to the public they only talk about one. They chose to keep absolute secrecy about the other budgets and transfer money across budgets arbitrarily.

The late President Ong had a massive fallout with the PAP leadership when he wanted basic level disclosures on the various budgets PAP has been managing. Till today the situation has not changed. While US proudly call Singapore an ally, least do they see that their close ally is also the key inspiration and ally to the biggest dictatorship in the world.

‘Foreign’ doesn’t always mean ‘talent’

2011-03-04T12:11:00.000+08:00

4 March 2011
Letter by James Ang to ST Forum, reposted on Temasek Review

WHILE I agree that Singapore needs foreigners to stay competitive, there are levels of foreign talent (‘Levy hike ‘not a push for locals”; last Thursday).

At a basic level, there is a need for work permit and S Pass holders in the service, construction and manufacturing industries, given the shrinking population and comparative lack of appeal for these sectors among most Singaporeans.

There should be some control to mitigate the negative effects of attracting foreigners at this level, like falling productivity; and this year’s Budget has started to address this issue with the revised levy. However, when it comes to foreign talent on employment passes, are we certain that Singaporeans who graduate from one of the best education systems anywhere are unable to fill such vacancies?

As much as we need multinational companies (MNCs) to invest and create jobs here, there must be a delicate balance to reap the optimum benefits of combining local and foreign talent.

To achieve optimum balance, the Government should have a process of checks to manage the quantity and quality of white-collar foreign talent. I have been working in MNCs for more than 26 years and my experience informs me that it is not always the case that the foreign help is cleverer or more productive than his Singaporean equivalent.

In fact, there are many Singaporeans who are better and cheaper.

In fairness, I have also worked with talented and experienced foreign managers from whom I have learnt much.

However, it is troubling when the term ‘foreign’ becomes synonymous with ‘talent’, though that is not always so.

We need more Chee Soon Juans in Parliament

2011-03-03T13:29:00.003+08:00

3 March 2011
By Chua Chin Leng, My Singapore News

Chiam See Tong may be able to anchor a team to win a GRC. I hope he delivers. But what is badly needed in Parliament is more Chee Soon Juans. Personally I think he is the most wronged person in politics. He has given his all, his career, his family and his life to politics, to serve Singapore. If this is not sacrifice, what else is? It is time that the people appreciate his contribution and give him their votes to bring him into Parliament.

Having one Chee Soon Juan is not the end as a lonely figure in Parliament is not a joking matter. He could be drowned by laughters, and that is all there is to keep him on the defensive. He needs a team of several Chee Soon Juans to stand up to the wolf pack. And a few Chee Soon Juans can only do good for the people of Singapore.

There is a need for an opposition voice, a real opposition voice, in Parliament. And if there is a time for it, this GE is the best opportunity to make it happened. The set back in the Reform Party must be taken in its stride and the best of the opposition must be given a chance to represent and speak for the people.

Without an opposition voice, we can expect more of what we have already knew, and more akan datang. More of everything is affordable. No matter how good a solitary ruling party is, I think by now the people are wiser and know what is for their own good. A bigger and louder opposition voice is begging to be represented and heard in Parliament.

Our first world country with first world political and economic system, with first world citizens, now with more foreign talents becoming citizens, more first world, must surely be able to withstand the presence of a few more opposition members in Parliament. Not the NMP or the NCMP kind. It would not collapse. If it does, like sand castle, then it is not worth keeping. We need a more resilient and durable political system that can last.

Chua Chin Leng

* The writer is an ex-civil servant, and he blogs at My Singapore News

What’s Up With Kishore Mahbubani?

2011-03-01T15:57:00.003+08:00

Comment from a friend:
This Kishore Mahbubani's greatest fault is not that he criticizes the west unfairly. Some of his criticism in fact is spot on. But that guy has a bigger problem. He has the idea that Asian societies are progressively becoming more liberal, and western societies are progresively becoming more oppressive, and his favourite examples are -- you guessed it -- Singapore, and also China, Myanmar(!!), etc.

That guy loves to take superficiality and turn it into a linguistic art form -- looks good on camera no doubt, but does a horrible injustice to the victims of human rights abuses that take place in Malaysia, in Burma, in China. He is the perfect example of taking PAP ideologically and applying it globally.

27 January 2011
By Alastair Su, Harvard Political Review

By many measures, Kishore Mahbubani is one of the leading public figures in Asia. He is currently the Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, a man with an enormous intellect and an illustrious career that few can compare with. From January 2001 to May 2002, he held the position of president of the United Nations Security Council, a considerable feat for anybody who comes from my country.

It puzzles me, therefore, why he wishes of late to become another Amy Chua.

Since his 2008 interview on BBC’s Hardtalk, and the release of his book, The New Asian Hemisphere, Kishore’s arguments have become increasingly polemicized, aggressive and vapid. Here’s an excerpt from his most recent article on the Financial Times, where he writes:

Most crises are known by their origin, from the Mexican peso crisis of 1994/5 to the Asian crisis of 1997/8. Given there is no doubt who caused our world’s latest troubles, it should adopt its logical name: the western financial crisis. This reluctance to call a spade a spade reflects an inability to reckon with changes the US and Europe have to make to avoid a repeat…There is a simple reason why the west has not noticed: Asians are too polite. Sometimes it takes a relatively rude Asian, like me, to express our continent’s true feelings.

Kishore then goes on to make two main criticisms. The first at the West, somehow, is living in a bubble of its own ignorance, unaware of its own relative decline in the changing world order. While I can see where he’s coming from, I’m wondering whether Kishore is the one really being ignorant here. Not all Westerners are parochial; for simple evidence, consider Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday.

The rules have changed. In a single generation, revolutions in technology have transformed the way we live, work and do business… Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They’re investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became the home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer.

So, yes, the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real. But this shouldn’t discourage us. It should challenge us.

Is this evidence of parochialism? I’ll let you be the judge.

The second criticism is that since the financial crisis originated in the West, the West should take full responsibility for it. He writes:

What must be done? Domestically, the US must cut spending and raise taxes, no matter how politically difficult. Europe must resolve its flawed monetary union – with the overhaul of its bailout fund and the rewriting of Germany’s post-Maastricht “grand bargain” with the periphery a necessary start.

By analogy, this is just about as helpful as a person who stands outside a burning house and shouts: “Hey, your house is on fire!” These facts are already painstakingly obvious to policymakers in the West. As always, the devil is always in the details, and details is something his piece is desperately short of.

So, how does one go from a learned diplomat to a not-so-learned polemicist? I propose two theories.

My first theory is that Mahbubani is simply attempting another “Amy Chua.” In a room where everyone is shouting, the only way to get yourself heard is to shout louder. Even if it means sacrificing the quality of your ideas, the most important thing is to be heard. His article was written to generate more heat than light, to provoke rather than to stimulate meaningful discussion.

Given the right context, this approach has its merits – in politics, for example – though given Mahbubani’s stature as a public intellectual, it would be unbecoming of him if it were true. If so, he may as well go on to write the sequel to Amy Chua’s piece, “Why Indian Fathers Are Superior.”

My second theory is that like the uncompromising football coach, perhaps Mahbubani is only outwardly condescending, where he secretly possesses benevolent motives. From his previous books, you get the sense that he commands a healthy respect for the West, so maybe there is a distance between what he writes here and what he really thinks. His real agenda is to provoke the West, so it might wake up to its own woes.

While this is certainly a tried-and-tested method in the sporting world, I’m not quite sure if it works in the realpolitik of nations. As the British will tell you, making an angry Frenchman more angry will – surprise – only make him angrier. While Kishore is right on target when he says that world’s institutions need to be overhauled, this is hardly the way to get there.

Two ex-ISA detainees join SDP

2011-02-21T13:19:00.003+08:00

Feb 20, 2011
Two ex-ISA detainees join SDP
By Tessa Wong, STRAITS TIMES

Former Internal Security Act (ISA) detainees Michael Fernandez and Vincent Cheng have joined the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), and may stand as party candidates in the upcoming general election.

The two new members were introduced at the party's anniversary dinner last night at Fort Canning.

Both men told The Sunday Times they would consider standing for election under the SDP banner if they were asked to by party leaders.

Mr Fernandez, 77, is a retired former unionist whose lawsuit against the Government for alleged torture during his detention from 1964 to 1973 was struck out last Friday.

He has another suit pending against the Government that alleges he was unlawfully detained for part of his detention.

He said he joined the party two months ago because he wanted to 'let more young people know about ex-detainees' experiences'.

He felt that his age and health would not affect his decision to run. 'I am still very healthy. As for age, Lee Kuan Yew is also very old, and he is still in Parliament.'

Mr Cheng, 64, is a former social worker who was detained in the late 1980s for being part of an alleged Marxist conspiracy to overthrow the Government. He joined the SDP shortly after speaking at its rally last November.

Both men are advocates for the abolition of the ISA, which the SDP has also called for. They said this issue would be part of their campaign platforms if they ran.

SDP chief Chee Soon Juan told reporters yesterday that the party is in the process of attracting new members. He declined to give figures on party membership, but he said that since the last election in 2006, the median age of party members has dropped from the mid-50s to the mid-30s.

Among the younger members are academic James Gomez and civil society activist Vincent Wijeysingha, both in their 40s and seen as potential election candidates.

Since joining the SDP last year, Dr Wijeysingha has become more prominent in the party, and is the key figure behind its recent Shadow Budget.

When asked if Dr Wijeysingha could be his successor, Dr Chee, who has been the SDP's secretary-general for 18 years, said: 'That would be a question that our party members would have to answer. He would have to convince party members that he should be in the leadership and would continue to lead this party.'

On leadership renewal, Dr Chee said he found the idea of grooming successors 'off-putting'.

He said he preferred that members with leadership qualities step up instead, and that party members would recognise talent and leadership.

He said the party was non-hierarchical. 'We include young members in our discussions and decision-making processes. So they learn, and when they learn, they build confidence, and they develop as leaders themselves.'

The SDP would field more young candidates in the next election and would unveil them once the electoral boundaries report comes out, he said.

--------------

Further reading:

23 years after Operation Spectrum : Ex-detainees recall mental and physical abuses

More ex-detainees speak out : Political violence and the abuse of the ISA in Singapore

The Scars of Detention by Michael Fernandez

Walking Distance (Poem)

2011-02-18T14:16:00.002+08:00

Walking Distance
A poem by Tania De Rozario

Above: Newly weds who tie their dog up
for hours on end. I can hear it crying
day in and out just above my kitchen
as I do my dishes religiously.
Across : A woman beats her child
to tears because she pulls a face
upon being delivered like a weekly digest
to lessons in piano / ballet / drawing / French / abacus / speech
and drama : Tick where appropriate,
like you do with ethnicity and choice of schools
(all newly-built, well-ranked, value-added
and walking distance from the MRT).

I can hear the man who comes back from work
at 6.33, demanding his tea be hot by the time
he comes out of the shower. I hear the kettle
blow its temper ten minutes later as I fill up surveys
for companies who pay me fifty a piece
because they think I'm creative and articulate.
Across the street : Large vinyl signboards
prostituting brand new condominiums,
all devoid of inhabitants and less importantly,
soul, looking for people who are looking to better
their standards of existing, dying, and procreating
within walking distance of the MRT.

Downstairs: Cats grown crafty from rumours
of culling, patrol corners sneaking glances
at the man who rants to an invisible audience
about the government, the price of housing
and a time when bus-rides were practically free.
Upstairs: A writer grows desperate with rage
pondering the years she's minced her language
into verbs and nouns all mispronounced
and strung into sentences without conjunctions
simply to facilitate the buying of rice
in stores all small and family-owned
all walking distance from the MRT.

Hard Facts on Singapore

2011-02-15T08:49:00.004+08:00

By Dr. Foo Loon Sung, Temasek Review
Feb 15 2011

Hmmm something to ponder on. The only truth about LKY’s system of govt is it leads to us working harder and harder… sometimes for less.

In addition to the truth our wisest leader has uttered, I would like the authors to consider the following UNDISPUTED quantitative truth reported by various studies in the past few years and most of these, Singaporeans know for sure is the truth and nothing but the truth:

1. Singaporeans work the most number of hours per week in the world.

2. Most Singaporeans will never own a car because COEs are limited.

3. The Average home of a Singapore has fallen from 1660 sq feet to about 1000 sq feet in the past decades.

4. Fertility rate in Singapore has fallen to below Japan – among the lowest in the world.

5. Less than half the Singaporeans can meet the minimum sum for CPF retirement accounts. Meaning many will never retire.

6. 17% of Singaporeans do not have medical insurance – the highest in the developed world give and take a few % compared with USA.

7. Singapore has the fastest growing foreigner population per capita in the world. Within a decade, the majority of people in Singapore will be foreign born.

8. Singapore has the highest paid political leaders in the world….

9. Singapore has the highest income gap of all developed countries.

10. More than one person kills himself/herself every day.

11. Singaporeans have the highest savings rate in the world due to CPF but many still can’t retire.

12. The Singapore parliament has the fewest opposition in terms of % of seats in the world among countries that claim to be democratic…of course we are also democratic.

13. Singapore bans chewing gum but legalise casinos. Casinos are legalised in only 2 of the 50 American states.

14. Singapore hangs the most people per capita in the world. Even more than China….do believe this feller called Shadrake.

15. Singapore cars are the most expensive in the world.

16. Singaporeans have the lowest purchasing power among all developed countries according the UBS…even Malaysians in KL have higher purchasing power.

17. Singapore govt has the highest sovereign wealth fund per capita. ..and among the top few in absolute terms.

18. Singapore spends more on defence than Malaysia and Indonesia combined – so I guess we don’t need too much diplomacy and or diplomats, can afford to badmouth them according to wikileaks. Now that they know, we better spend a $100M extra this year on defence.

19. Singapore has the No.1 civil service in the world according to Minister Lim Swee Say. I want to add we also have No.1 civil service in terms of pay for the top echelon. Some can afford French cooking lessons.

20. Singapore has only one news paper company called SPH that produces hoards of quality papers such as Straits Times, Sin Min and other reading delights. We had 5 newspaper companies a few decades ago, I guess this business is in decline even as the population increases.

21. Singaporeans serve NS for 2-2.5 years, this is the longest in the world after Israel. We do it because we can afford the time. Many Singaporean workers will work their whole life without retirement anyway so what is the difference putting aside 2 years.

22. Singapore has the world’s oldest and wisest politician. His name is Lee Kuan Yew. As long as he is around, the good life for Singaporeans will continue. He will make sure of that.

23. Lee Kuan Yew’s son is Lee Hsien Loong who coincidentally became PM due to his own merit. His New Year Message this year asks Singaporeans to be more RESILIENT.

24. Singapore has the most expensive public housing in the world….but according to Minister Mah, it is still affordable.

Dumping the fallacies LKY created

2011-02-09T12:03:00.004+08:00

By Solo Bear, 9 Feb 2011

Firstly, let me qualify that LKY did many good things for Singapore. He led a team of capable leaders to bring where Singapore is today. Any other man would have….well, done the same.

It is just that LKY has taken far, far more credit than he deserves. He is no god, nor deity, but just an ordinary man, who outwitted his adversaries. He was at the right place at the right time, and he capitalised those opportunities with shrewdness like a fox.

In other words, a lesser shrewd man would still have brought Singapore to where we are today, but taken much less credit for it.

Here are some of LKY’s propagated fallacies that need to be ditched.

Fallacy #1 – LKY was charismatic

Ha ha. Those of you who are old enough to remember Lim Chin Siong, will know what I am talking about. I myself was born after his era, but I managed to dig up some enlightening facts about this fiery man.

There was a documentary aired by Discovery Channel, on the history of Singapore. It was a series of documentaries actually, and the feud between Lim Chin Siong and Lee Kuan Yew was discussed.

In the 1950s, it was Lim Chin Siong who commanded the respect of the masses. LKY was well… just a spectator. What Lim could do, Lee could not. When Lim wanted the masses to demonstrate against the Brits, they did just that. With fiery speeches, he moved the masses. LKY was a Nobody, spelled with a capital “N”.

What tilted the favour for LKY was the merger. It was planned that the only way to get rid of Lim was for Singapore to merge with Malaysia, putting pressure on the Tunku to lock Lim up.

Lee played his cards well. Lee pretended to work for Lim’s release (the people’s leader) after the merger. But by then, the position of PM of (autonomous) Singapore, under Malaysia, was already filled – by LKY, of course.

So it is really by wit, using the merger as an alibi rather than charisma, that Lee was made the PM of Singapore.

In another parallel event, we were also told that LKY was made PM of Singapore by a single vote by the Party Chairman, Toh Chin Chye. Of course Lee now tries to deny that event happened – because he wants all the glory to himself (see: Old Man wants all the glory to himself).

It can be seen that it was due to his wit and shrewdness that he became PM. It hardly had anything to do with charisma, where he could move the masses on the ground, as what PAPpy would like us to believe.

Fallacy #2 – LKY led Singapore to prosperity even when we don’t have natural resources

That’s the perfect fairy-tale, isn’t it? It is not a lie that Singapore has no natural resources. It is that it is not the whole truth either.

Singaporeans are bombarded since schools that the great LKY brought Singapore to where it is today, even though we lack all the natural resources.

What we are not told is that all the infrastructure that was needed to run and govern the country, was already in place for LKY when he became PM.

When we broke off from the merger, we already had all the infrastructure. We had well-developed roads, hospitals, fire department service, the police, airport, sea ports, schools, judicial courts, the various statutes and laws, even our own currency, and most important of all, the various ministries and govt agencies needed to govern a country – including parliament itself.

Singapore was already a thriving city (thanks to the Brits) in its own right, and LKY simply took over what was already an established city with trade pacts and commercial deals in place, and all the other necessary systems in good working order.

It is not like he and his team brought Singapore from zero to hero. Yet, LKY, being the narcissist he is, makes it look like he was the Great Man who against all odds, pulled this tiny nation that has no natural resources and means, to where we are today.

Besides being overly narcissistic, he is also insulting all the other parties (including the citizens) who have contributed one way or another, to make Singapore a success.

Fallacy #3 – LKY managed to keep Singaporeans united in spite of race tensions -

This is LKY’s favourite. He likes to play the race card. He did it when Singapore was part of Malaysia, and he continued to do so decades after we broke off from the Federation.

Firstly, there were only two “race riots” where it involved the Chinese and Malays. Secondly, the Chinese were involved in more riots than the Malays. Thirdly, there were more riots in which the govt was the target, than there were riots where particular races were the target (see: History of Riots in Singapore – LKY’s racist version has to be stopped).

So why the emphasis that riots in Singapore has always been about race? Isn’t this just a fallacy perpetuated by LKY, so that you would believe that he was able to handle a highly explosive situation, hence, elevating his status as a “great leader”?

Fallacy #4 – “We were kicked out”

Really? In LKY’s eulogy (when Dr Goh Keng Swee passed away), he unwittingly let the cat out of the bag that it was the Singapore side who planned that we leave Malaysia – hence, putting to rest the lie that we were “kicked out” once and for all (see: Did LKY Lie We Were Kicked Out of Malaysia?).

Besides unwittingly admitting he lied we were kicked out, the above shows that Singapore leaders were well prepared to go alone. So all this talk that we were “left in the lurch suddenly to fend for ourselves” is just humbug.

Fallacy #5 – The Great (Malay) Bogeyman from the North and South is out to get us! -

I leave this to the last because this fallacy is one that has been played the longest. This myth has been played since the 1960s till today. That’s a good long half a century! (Hey, Old Man, move with the times!)

LKY and his PAPpy leaders have always said that our neighbours are out to attack us. They cite the tension during the Confrontation Period. But that issue was one Malay country (Indonesia) against another Malay country (Malaysia).

Indonesia was not too happy that Malaysia merged and assimilated Sabah and Sarawak. They saw it as Malaysia’s expansionist plan, right at the doorstep of Indonesia’s Kalimantan border. Singapore was targeted only because we were also part of Malaysia then.

However, LKY, the racist who always plays the race card, turned that Malay-Malay dispute into “a sea of Malays out to get us” scenario. With a magician’s sleight hand, he deceives Singaporeans into believing that the Bogeyman out there is trying to eat us.

When the Confrontation Period was over, LKY would of course need to whip up more bogeymen. So in came the argument that the North will threaten to cut off their water supply to us.

Hello, old man, who are you trying to fool? Isn’t it easier for Malaysia (and Indonesia) to just control their air and sea space to choke us? Every time a vessel or plane leaves or lands in Singapore, it somehow has to cross Indonesian or Malaysian air/sea space. All they have to do is to put up a high tax, or put up some security checks (in the guise of controlling terror) and all the best sea and air ports we have will be nothing but nice exhibits to look at.

With a high tax, we have to work hard to earn bucks, while their cash registers keep ringing endlessly. With stringent security checks, they not only slow down our operations, but also have an excuse to tax us for what they can say is needed to cover their security checks cost.

Cutting off water is an international crime which Malaysia would never do. But controlling air and sea space is legal. Yet, this Old Man tries to bluff Singaporeans about the water stuff. Hardy har har.

LKY has long known to be a racist. He played the race card in the 1960s and he is still playing it today, 50 years later.

Conclusion -

LKY is a shrewd politician. That, no one disputes. But when you say that he is a charismatic leader, one who could move the masses, that is hardly the truth. I am sure those from the Lim Chin Siong era will remember LKY as a wimp who stood by the sidelines, watching Chin Siong antagonizing the Brit govt with demonstrations after demonstrations, and riot after riot.

As for LKY’s never ending race card play, that’s about the only game he knows. He knows of no other way to play politics.

LKY is trying to deify himself before he dies. The hard truth about his book, The Hard Truth, is that in between the hard truths, there are hard lies embedded within.

Let’s stop believing his lies before he dies.

Identical peas from divergent pods: Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohamed

2011-02-05T12:14:00.008+08:00

By Terence Netto, Malaysiakini
3 February 2011

Strange to tell, there is a curious congruence between the latest outpourings on race and related issues of former Malaysian prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamed and his Singaporean nemesis Lee Kuan Yew.

The two octogenarians, visceral adversaries in their younger days and loathing each other still in their dotage, have had an impact on the histories of their countries that will be debated long after they have passed on.

But before they each “go into that good night”, it appears that they are fated – to borrow from lines made famous by the poet Dylan Thomas –to “rage, rage against the dying” of the political order they have each sought to perpetuate.

Destined adversaries

The other day, the Malaysian controversialist virtually told the Chinese and Indians of the country to accept Malay cultural and political hegemony as a pre-condition of theirs' and the nation's tranquillity.

Barely 30 pages into Lee Kuan Yew's just-released third installment of his memoirs (entitled 'Hard Truths'), you have Singapore's iconic leader telling his interlocutors that though Malaysia's founding premier Tunku Abdul Rahman was “a nice man” with “Chinese friends”, “he (Tunku) and the Malays had to be on top. That's his (Tunku's) vision of social balance.”

Malaysians old enough to remember parliamentary debates of the mid-1960s will recall, from the way the member from Kota Star Selatan and the one from Tanjong Pagar clashed in the Dewan Rakyat when Singapore was briefly part of Malaysia (1963-65), that Mahathir and Lee were destined to be adversaries who would impact their societies, for better or for worse.

azlanIn politics, few things have a higher potency for upheaval than a rivalry that is fed by a conflict of personality and vision.

Examples of this phenomenon are Ferdinand Marcos's rivalry with Benigno Aquino in the Philippines of the late 1970s, Mohamed Ali Jinnah's with Jawaharlal Nehru in pre-independence India; and further afield, Winston Churchill's rivalry with Aneurin Bevan in the Britain of World War Two's immediate aftermath, and Charles de Gaulle's with Francois Mitterrand in the France of the 1960s.

In each case, the antagonists were men of destiny whose political trajectories crossed, with added frisson for the clash of ideology and personality they embodied. Personal antipathy only served to accentuate the one's distaste for the other's methods and philosophy.

Curious convergence

NONEYet, for all their differences, there is a curious convergence in Mahathir's and Lee's lack of belief that economic progress and democratic competition can soften social cleavages stemming from racial differences.

To both, race is primeval, an identity not malleable by the emollient influence of economic prosperity, educational advancement, and democratic choice.

Race is like the Freudian 'id', waiting to break out in lurid ways at the merest dent in the tight fit that, in Mahathir's vision, is forged by minority races' compliance with the dominant one's formula for social amity which prescribes appropriate thought and behaviour for the former.

In Lee's vision, race and its potential for turbulence can only be kept in check by a ruling coterie, constantly refreshed in personnel, whose superior quality of governance and unceasing vigilance would ensure that the demons of communalism do not well up from the deep.

With such illiberal views, it's no surprise that both Mahathir and Lee were leaders of authoritarian bent.

Sure, there is a big difference in their impact on their societies.

NONELee has produced a prosperous, if tightly controlled, country, a cynosure of sorts for plural societies wanting to go up the economic ladder.

By contrast, Mahathir has built up Malaysia in infrastructure and emasculated its institutions.

Vastly different though their impacts have been on their countries, both Lee and Mahathir are similarly busy in life's twilight trying to perpetuate and sustain the polities they created.

Through often admirable applications of will and effort, each in their careers strove to shape societies hungry for advancement, securing for their citizens an environment congenial for the satisfaction of human needs.

However, one thing these two pivotal leaders cannot seem to free their selves from: bondage to constricting racial orthodoxies.

At democracy's dawn, its better exponents the world over sought to inspire their peoples with the prospect of a new order of nobility, one not based on the accident of birth – as was the case in feudal societies or in race-based ones that still persist in our times - but on the cultivated excellence of mind and heart, an aristocracy of the spirit to which all are eligible.

The vistas that prospect opened for individual achievement and fulfilment, by their very nature, suggest that race, like biology, can never be destiny.

Leaders who gainsay this wisdom of democracy are horribly obsolete, their visions certain to be repudiated by posterity.

Sam, the SDP supporter

2011-01-26T15:23:00.000+08:00

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youtube link

Yong, please don't die

2011-01-16T20:55:00.003+08:00

I never knew you. And the closest I've ever been to you was seeing you through a glass barrier in a room where people argued to decide your fate.

I could never concentrate on what they were saying though. All I could think about was what you were thinking about. Oddly enough, the question, "What's on your mind?" is something that I've been using quite often recently.

Outside of the walls that you have to face in relative silence every day pondering about your life, I continue to live mine, surrounded by the people that I love. And sometimes, I'd wish we could switch places, but I know we can't.

I've seen several before you pass. Murdered by a state that never asks for my consent. Despite the hundreds and thousands of leaflets, the days and months and years of trying to get the rest of the people on this island to spare a compassionate thought for those before you, they were all... murdered.

With some others I stood outside the prison walls in all those final hours, half-freezing in the cold of the morning. But nothing could compare to 5:59am, when we all felt a rush of emotion, the knots in our hearts tightening for one last time.

Yong, please don't die. I can't ask anyone else for help anymore because I know they don't care. And even if they did, they couldn't do anything.

All I can do, is ask you. And knowing how hard it is for you to accept my request, is the greatest tragedy of all.

I am from Bangsa Singapura

2011-01-10T15:51:00.001+08:00

07 January 2011
Muhd Shamin, Young Democrats

When I was younger, I used to ask my parents about my grandparents. Who were they? Where did they come from? Why was I darker than most Malay people and yet I spoke the Malay language and not Tamil? Why did some of my extended family members look Chinese and Middle-Eastern?

I remembered my mother explaining to me that my grandfathers came from India, my paternal grandmother was Javanese and that my maternal grandmother was of Malay-Arab mix.

If I were to put it fully on my Identity Card, I am not sure if there would be enough space. If I declared partially, then I would be denying the other parts of me, and that would not be fair. My birth certificate shows that I am an Indian.

During primary school, I was first sent to an Indian language class. I was puzzled. After sometime, I was transferred to a Malay language class. It was a very confusing time for me.

I showed my identity card to some friends during my internship when I was in the European Parliament last year as an intern. They were aghast. “What is this? A Nazi country?” one of them commented. It reminded them of the terrible time that engulfed Europe.

That is how complicated my "racial" identity is. But that is, in a way, a reflection Singapore. It has always been the melting pot of cultures. It is because of that that we get to enjoy various kinds of food. The quaint mixture of Chinese and Malay ingredients gave rise to peranakan cuisine. Then we have dishes like Roti John, a combination of Malay and Indian foods. Even the name is a mixture.

This mish-mash of people is also where we get our Singlish. People of older generations knew more than one language. Indians, Chinese and Malays spoke Singlish and Malay patois.

Later on, I came across people who were like me yet they were declared as “Malay”. They then told me that my grandfather changed his race after independence because if they were Indians they could not get free education and privileges. I didn't know how to respond. Out of hardship and for material gain, people resort to denying a part of them.

Which brings me to the question about race. What relevance does it hold for me? Nothing. The diversity that we have in Singapore is a blessing for us all. It makes us more tolerant of each other's differences. It makes us know more things about the world.

No race is superior. It is just a myth created by those in power to instill intolerance. Aren't there Malay graduates who are just as competent as Chinese and Indian graduates? Aren't there Indian businessmen who are just as rich as a Malay or Chinese businessmen?

In the SDP, we do not focus on race. the colour of our members' skins are not important. Nor is there a need to create a bureau to represent a specific group of people.

Of course, there are still problems that affect specific ethnic groups. These are caused by PAP policies. But when we speak up on these issues, we speak up as a a party, Chinese for Indians, Indians for Malays and Malays for Chinese. We speak as Singaporeans for all Singaporeans. I am confident that it will remain that way.

And through this party, the idea and ideal of Bangsa Singapura - the Singaporean People - will prevail.

Shamin is a member of the Young Democrats.

More ex-detainees speak out : Political violence and the abuse of the ISA in Singapore

2010-12-30T14:55:00.001+08:00

Source: Singapore Rebel, December 29 2010

UPDATE : Ex-ISA detainee plans to sue Malaysian govt too

MHA ignores torture allegations; claims Fernandez was detained by Malaysia
Former ISA detainee Michael Fernandez rebuts MHA
LKY Distorts Singapore History, Academic Gets Fired

DAYS after initiating legal action against the Singapore Government for damages for alleged torture, ex-detainee Michael Fernandez now plans to sue the Malaysian authorities as well.

The writ will be filed with the Malaysian High Court by this week, and will name Malaysia's Attorney-General and the Malaysian government as the defendants, according to Mr Fernandez's lawyer, Mr M. Ravi.

Its claims will be similar to those in a writ filed against Singapore's Attorney-General on Thursday last week, namely that Mr Fernandez, 77, was subjected to 'severe physical and mental torture, humiliation and loss of income' during his detention from 1964 to 1973.

At the time of Mr Fernandez's arrest in September 1964, Singapore was part of Malaysia. Singapore left Malaysia in August 1965.

Mr Ravi said at a press conference yesterday that Malaysian law firm K. Selva Barathy and Associates would be filing the writ with the Malaysian High Court.

Mr Ravi added that complaints would also be lodged with the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia and with the Malaysian representative to the Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, prominent lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah.

As for the Singapore writ, a spokesman for the Attorney-General's Chambers confirmed yesterday that it has been served the writ. It now has eight days to indicate whether it will contest the suit.

Mr Fernandez was a leftist activist in the 1960s.

He was detained under the Internal Security Act on grounds that he was part of the Communist United Front, an appendage of the Communist Party of Malaya.

MHA rebuts claims of ex-ISA detainee

Ex-detainee Michael Fernandez sues Government
Former ISA detainee seeks damages against Singapore government
Michael Fernandez files writ against Government
Breaking news: Former ISA detainee plans to sue Singapore Government
Former ISA detainee wants to sue Govt for damages : Straits Times

There are three things you need to know about Singapore.

1. The only political violence that has happened in the last 45 years in Singapore are the ones inflicted on political prisoners behind the walls of the Internal Security Department.

Links :
Political detention in Singapore : Prisoner case histories
The ISA as a political tool
Life in Singapore's political prisons
Surviving long-term detention without trial
Detention of journalists and lawyers under the ISA
A detainee remembers

2. The Internal Security Act has been abused (to serve political ends) more often than it has been used appropriately (to safeguard national security).

23 years after Operation Spectrum : Ex-detainees recall mental and physical abuses
I'll forgive Lee Kuan Yew if he admits to his error and apologises to me : Lim Hock Siew

3. The people and the institution responsible for the political violence and the abuse of ISA are still in power today. Open discussions on such topics remained sensitive, and even outlawed, in Singapore.

Zahari's 17 Years - rated PG by censors, banned by Minister
Ex-detainee Vincent Cheng barred from speaking in history seminar
Here we go again - Govt bans another Martyn See's film
Operation Spectrum forum cancelled
Police retracts licence request after Minister queried
Zahari's 17 Years remains banned : MICA

Ex-political prisoner speaks out in Singapore (Banned in Singapore) from sotong on Vimeo.

Whither Singapore Artists?

2010-12-27T16:48:00.001+08:00

Missing the High Notes
Singaporeans can make a greater impact on the world music stage if
they are given more moral and monetary support.
by Wang Ya-Hui, December 2010

Today, I look at many young Singaporean musicians, and their parents
who dream of their child’s distinguished musical future. I would hate
to say to them that compared with their Western counterparts, they are
already behind. And when they finally walk the road, they will realise
that they are even further behind. Why do I think that Singaporeans
are disadvantaged in making an impact on the world music stage, and
what can Singapore do about it?

Allow me to tell you about my own experience of music, which has
shaped my views.

Let’s rewind to the ‘70s and ‘80s when I was growing up in Singapore.
Most of us had our music education privately. We learnt from teachers
individually, an hour per week. Music in Asia then was considered for
the rich and (sadly still is) an indulgence. I recall my maternal
grandfather asking my mother why she invested in a piano for her
daughters “to make noise on”. Nevertheless, we went on to take the
ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal School of Music) exams like
everyone else who took formal music lessons.

The ABRSM system was good for those times. It made us practise our
scales and arpeggios (basic technical skills), learn theory and
provide an early training of our aural skills. These were foundations,
vital for a degree in music and a lifetime’s engagement in music.

After I obtained the LTCL (Licentiate of Trinity College of Music), my
piano teacher who had patiently taught me from scratch, advised my
mother that I should look for another teacher. We found Ong Lip Tat, a
young Singaporean pianist who had just returned from Germany and made
his debut with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) at its opening
concert.

What I learnt from him, aside from a great advancement and maturity in
my piano playing, was showmanship, which I still use today. He was
always particular about how one plays every note and how that
should/could be communicated to the audience.

Technique and Training

One of the most important skills in music performance is technique.
Technique is not inborn. Motor skills must be honed at a young age. We
have all watched how the communist countries train their little ones
(some even injure themselves in the process). Attaining excellent
technique is almost impossible when spending a mere one-hour per week
lesson, practising through the cracks of school, homework and play.

I struggled much with this balance when I was young. Fortunately, I
had an understanding mother who preferred me to fail my mathematics
than to miss an hour of piano practice.

People in the Western world grow up as inheritors of Western art.
Their techniques, knowledge, experience, and connections are largely
due to their constant exposure to Western Art. This is far more than
what an aspiring world-class musician here in the East can hope for.
Some “buy” their resumé particulars, such as paying US$100,000 to play
with a Russian Symphony Orchestra on tour, or do a recording with a
major label. But that one-off event will not buy them eternal fame.

As Yo-Yo Ma’s father said in his Chinese biography, it takes three
generations to make it to the very top -- the first generation is the
birth of a naturally talented but raw musician; the second generation
is that of the professional musician; the third generation is the one
that can achieve world-class status. Yo-Yo Ma’s Dad was a cellist and
Mom a singer. Another example is the pianist Lang Lang.

Music and Money

This brings me to the second point: exposure and environment. My
classmates at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia included
students such as Alan Gilbert, now Music Director of the New York
Philharmonic, and Ignat Solzhenitsyn (son of the Russian Literary
giant Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn). They spent their childhood with
houseguests such as the great Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovitch
and New York Philharmonic conductors or musicians.

These young musicians had the opportunity to play chamber music with
professionals, and were immersed in music that permeated every aspect
of their lives.

The Curtis Institute of Music itself is known in the music world as
one of, if not the best, music conservatories in the world, because of
its unique mission to train exceptionally gifted young musicians for
careers as performing artists, and its rare tuition-free policy
established back in 1928. Only four Singaporeans (all violinists
except myself: Siow Lee Chin; Kam Ning and Ike See who is currently
studying there) have ever studied in Curtis since its establishment in
1924.

Keys to the Top

I returned to Singapore in 2006 to be the Music Director/Conductor of
the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music at the National University of
Singapore, Singapore’s first music conservatory. While the music scene
seems to have improved, the form has widened more than deepened. More
people are attending concerts, and there are many more people that I
can have intelligent invigorating musical conversations with. This has
prompted me to found a Richard Wagner Society here in Singapore. But
from my observations of the “emerging talent pool”, aside from
violinist Kam Ning, I am still waiting to hear a young Singaporean who
can make it on the international stage.

In saying this, I do not intend to be too judgmental. To be the next
Yo-Yo Ma, you have to have all of the following (and I’m not being
facetious either): a) good looks b) right height c) enough muscles d)
excellent technique e) great financial backing and personal
connections f) the gift of being musically refreshing and
transcendent.

Being petite and cute can sell, but the Asian physique, generally
smaller than the Caucasian, remains a challenge for top performers.

Groom Them Very Young

The late Dr Goh Keng Swee rightfully believed that this nation should
have its own symphony orchestra, and he started the SSO and initiated
the SSO scholarships. His calculations were simple: government gives
scholarships to Singaporean musicians to study abroad for four years,
they then return to Singapore’s SSO to serve a bond for eight years.

After providing these scholarships for the past eight years,
theoretically we should by now have a full orchestra of Singaporean
musicians. The reality? Some scholarship holders returned to serve in
the SSO, but to this day, there is only a handful in the orchestra.
The rest have moved on, and some have even given up music
professionally.

It is too late to start serious musical training at the age of 18. You
need to start at 10 or earlier. The Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of
Music takes in students at age 17 and above, and not surprisingly, is
made up of largely imported students. SOTA (School of the Arts)
recently created by former Minister of the Arts, Dr Lee Boon Yang,
does better, accepting local students at age 12. Let’s look at some
great musicians of our times: Lorin Maazel (former Music Director of
New York Philharmonic and Pittsburgh Symphony) started conducting
publicly at age 8; pianist/conductor Daniel Barenboim also began
performing at age 7.

In my opinion, Singapore needs to have the will to commit to a
long-term strategy of growing local talents in this nation, instead of
preferring to import foreign talent. As an aside, I do not blame
Singaporeans who raise their concerns about our national table tennis
players.

Commitment From All

In Singapore today, the government invests heavily in infrastructure
hardware, erecting many fine buildings. Yet there is not enough
financial support for the software, the artists. Reports show that
Singapore has among the highest number of millionaires in Asia, but it
is the rare individual who would step out to fund the arts.

Compare this with the Japanese and Korean corporations, who would pay
their own (and other countries’) symphony orchestras to feature their
country’s artists. European embassies fund their artists to perform
in different countries.

I believe it is time for Singapore to redress this imbalance. Our
wonderful champion of the arts, Ambassador-at-large Professor Tommy
Koh, suggests that the Singapore government can do even more to use
culture as an instrument of diplomacy and as a way to project a more
rounded image of Singapore to the world.

Singapore now has an enormous opportunity in Asia. The economic growth
is here, to quote Joseph Horowitz in Classical Music in America - a
History: “According to a 1939 survey, the number of American
orchestras increased from 17 before World War 1, to 270.” Underscoring
this trend, the former Director of the Curtis Institute of Music and a
great pianist of his time, Gary Graffman, once said, “During my time,
people were talking about the end of classical music. Look at it
today, there are more orchestras, more concerts and more classical
musicians! Thus it has not reduced but increased!” Asia is walking the
same steps.

So, let us have more faith, and support the arts. Singaporeans are not
less talented. Success in the arts is highly dependent on the
environment, the financial and emotional support everyone in the
country is willing to give to artists.

Don’t treat the arts as merely a business. Treat it as philanthropy
that will improve the country that we live in and call home.

[Wang Ya-Hui is an internationally renowned conductor and has
conducted symphony orchestras, operas and ballets around the globe.
She is currently based in Singapore as Music Adviser, Centre for the
Arts at the National University of Singapore.]

Arts housing! Arts centre mania?! What about the oldies?!

2010-12-23T15:50:00.001+08:00

23 December 2010
By Mayo Martin

The former LASALLE-then-SOTA campus looks pretty much the same. Except that they’re sprucing it up (naturally).

We called some artists on our, er, speed dial, for their initial impressions on the new arts housing framework.

But unfortunately, Thom Yorke, Frank Black and Jeff Koons did not pick up. So we had to look for alternatives. (Cymbal crash!)

Anyway, some interesting points were brought up by a couple of arts folks, particularly for what’s going to happen in already existing arts spaces, especially since the general consensus about Goodman Arts Centre is two thumbs up. (We think so too).

Here are two important ones worth mulling over based on some initial impressions.

***

TheatreWorks’ Tay Tong, for example, highlighted the Arts Centre Scheme, which of course will directly affect them seeing as right now they’re holding fort at one of the earmarked places, 72-13 Mohd Sultan Road.

Generally speaking, he broaches the question of whether there seems to be an obsession for arts centres – citing “Esplanade, the museums, the Substation, NUS UCC, The Arts House, private galleries, your IRs, SOTA, La Salle, NAFA and others.”

The other point he raised, which I think is also a pertinent point for whatever discussions follow, is that, with the Arts Centre Scheme, are these tenants expected to produce shows (like what SRT and TW do right now in their respective places for example) and programme events like an arts centre does? Or is it going to be either/or?

It’s a rather tricky question because, unlike say, Substation which is an arts centre (and IMHO should really just get their own permanent building because well, isn’t 20 years enough?), some companies who are now residing in these earmarked places are producing companies. They may rent out their space, like SRT does for their theatre, ditto TW for their white space, but these places are still primarily for their own productions.

So does that mean they’ll have to change the way they do things when the time comes for them to reapply? Or get booted out if they insist on being primarily a producing company?

And then, while the arts housing issue is (arguably) not an arts funding issue, in these circumstances, they might be linked, actually.

While the scheme is “interesting and challenging”, TT pointed out, using TW as an example: “The annual grant for TheatreWorks is $310,000, which is a result of a consistent reduction in the last few years, which is about 20 % of what we need. What does it mean if you’re cutting, on one level, the grants and yet asking the same company whose grants are being cut, to increase our job scope by becoming an arts centre aside from being a producing company?”

***

Visual artist and long-time Telok Kurau Studios resident Tang Mun Kit also had some sharp observations.

The new housing approach has commendably and finally addressed the uneven playing field between the younger artists and the established ones in getting space. But, he pointed out, it seems to have overlooked the third category: the really established ones with medallions hanging around their necks.

Heh.

If you look at the schemes again, the Arts Centre Scheme (which looks to deal with the “mature” groups) isn’t really looking at the individuals per se but the space and what it’s used for.

Mulling over TKS, Mun Kit did agree that for it to regain its luster, it might be a good idea to concentrate on developing and mid-career artists and well, let the oldies go. (Because, well, some of them don’t really need it right and are successful enough and earn enough to actually be able to rent their own spaces – which, ahem, some of them actually do right now.)

“If NAC want Telok Kurau Studios to be vibrant and humming, that should be a place to fill it up with young, developing and mid-career artists. I have a sense that the young artists and mid-career artists can mix and be open. But when it comes to the established, even among themselves, they do not really communicate,” he said.

I mean, you hope the oldies would actually mentor or just mingle with younger ones and impart some of their knowledge, but – and this is from what I’ve seen and heard when I did a story on TKS way back – that’s hardly the case.

But before you get all riled up, here’s his groundbreaking suggestion.

Give them permanent space. Not arts housing space, but permanent space.

Leave the arts housing spaces to the young and mid-career ones and give the oldies a different place.

Said Mun Kit: “They make up the backbone of the whole art scene. Why can’t they be given a permanent housing for as long as they exist. Then you can leave the other two groups to even out the fair distribution of housing resources. If you look upon them as “cultural assets” because they have already done their part, if you recognise their contribution, then you reward them with permanent housing, regardless of whether they are financially able.”

In an ideal world, it actually makes sense, don’t you think?

NAC had underscored the idea of housing spaces as simply finite.

One view would be to say that their hands are tied – there’s only so much space and they’re doing the best they can (they have earmarked three completely new buildings).

Another view, perhaps, would be that they should insist on pushing for more land/space as they champion the arts and those who have contributed so much to it.

Again, this new arts housing thing is in its infant stages and Goodman Arts Centre, their test baby before rolling out the changes until 2014, doesn’t even have tenants yet. Let’s hope it’ll work out for the better for everyone involved.

Hey, it’s Christmas in a couple of days.

Thoughts anyone?

How To Change The World Without Really Trying – Reflections On Performance Art Today

2010-12-22T15:18:00.007+08:00

"The artist who sincerely looks at his own personal experiences and transmutes them into art will ultimately make consequences of social and political dimensions."

How To Change The World Without
Really Trying – Reflections On
Performance Art Today

By Lee Wen
December 2010, Asia Art Archive

Lee Wen is an artist and organizer of art events in Singapore. He has been exploring different strategies of time-based and performance art since 1989. A contributing factor in The Artists Village alternative in Singapore and the Black Market international performance art collective, Lee has helped to initiate and organize events such as Future of Imagination and R.I.T.E.S.- Rooted In The Ephemeral Speak, in order to platform, support and develop performance art practices, discourse, infrastructure and audiences in Singapore.


There seems to be an ongoing obsession within contemporary society, to advocate for a vision of the future. When we responded to this excessive concern for the future by calling our performance art event “Future of Imagination” in 2003 [1] we were met with varied responses. Our initial idea was to have a bright-sounding title to overcome the negative image that performance art had acquired in the past decade; however, in hindsight it was too loaded and sounded perhaps like a propaganda catchphrase in concert with the ubiquitous political slogans that often boast of providing a better tomorrow, or perhaps commercial sound bites selling real estate or investment schemes. The hope was to call for a shift of emphasis to the imagination in relation to the concerns for the future, and not to become obsessed with approaching the future with angst, anticipation and anxiety. Recently, we put a temporary stop to the festival and turned it instead into a regular one-day or one-evening programme, so that it could become a consistent feature of the cultural landscape – and not only every year or two. At the same time, we hoped to instigate dialogue and discussion by holding talks and hosting a blog [2]. Without critical discussions and assessments, we felt that the level of appreciation would only remain at the level of the curious, casual onlookers. We need to look back and apply observations of performances, as well as festivals, to help us learn and respond to current trends. I have already discussed the three most immediate concerns of remuneration, resistance and regulations within performance art practice in Singaporean contexts in a previous essay [3]. I would like to further investigate this and emphasize some crucial points for serious reflection and re-assessment of our present state before taking appropriate actions. Performance Art: Shifting Perceptions of Time, Discipline and Authenticity There have been many definitions suggested for performance art; its openness towards hybridization and the blurring of art and life dichotomy derived from a shifting of social values, aesthetic tastes and historical understanding of cultural productions and its appreciation. Ray Langenbach once read a passage to me from Marvin Carlson’s then just-published survey of performance, describing it as an “anti-disciplinary discipline resisting conclusions.”[4] Perhaps it was because it was read to me while I was going through the physical manifestations of my own anxious questioning and musings, that this proposition for an “anti-disciplinary discipline resisting conclusions” has now become my favourite description of performance art. At the time, I was buried up to my waist in the backyard garden of the house I shared with fellow artists Jason Lim and Vincent Leow. This was the second part of Nychthemer 1 and 2; where I first walked in a circle for 24 hours from sunset to sunset on November 8th to 9th, 1996, and the following year was buried up to my waist in the centre of that same field for 24 hours from sunset to sunset on November 8th to 9th, 1997. My question touched on how the universal acceptance of the Greco-Roman calendar, and measuring time as a 24-hour day being one of the first steps towards the globalized situation we are in today, has already sabotaged various cultural authenticities based on other traditional concepts of time and calendars. One principal motivation for me to do this performance was the increased bureaucratic difficulties of organizing art, and especially performance art, in Singapore. I wanted to do something without having to go through all of that. So I distributed photocopies of a hand-drawn pamphlet to friends and did the performance in my backyard. I was not worried about whether I had an audience or not; people came at whatever time suited them. While I was enduring the 24-hour day with steadfast persistence to not fall asleep, it struck me that perceptions of time, discipline and authenticity are inevitably inter-connected with the human activity we called art. What we often generalize as ‘contextual’ can be broken down and analyzed under these three significant phenomena for a clearer, objective understanding and its qualitative appreciation. The changing nature, forms and strategies of art productions from that of tangible objects such as paintings and sculptures to ephemeral performances or conceptual processes have resulted in debates and discussions on whether the new practices can actually qualify as art. The disagreements more often than not involve the various perceptions with regard to the nature (and not just the measure) of our time and the meaning of discipline, in order to achieve authenticity and relevance. An artwork produced is considered historically relevant and worthy, be it performance art or any other forms of art, when it realizes certain measures of interventions, disruptions or manifestations of radical shifts in perceptions of time, discipline and authenticity. Realization of Radicalism At a time when performance art has supposedly gained a level of acceptance in mainstream culture, it is necessary to re-evaluate where it stands and orientate the game at play. In spite of the celebratory mood of some when looking at the growing proliferation of performance art festivals – and the widening international networks of artists initiatives who organize them – I fear the euphoria is premature, elevated by self-deception and conceit, and blinded to the actual crisis in art and cultural production in our deeply-troubled, contemporary society. The questions we discuss in reference to performance art are neither new nor peculiar to those who profess themselves to be ‘performance artists’ or proponents of performance art. Most of the time, our questions concern art in contemporary society and the basic questions recur; as our time is one that is incessantly changing. With rapid developments in technology bringing forth promises of progress, yet endangering our very survival, we arrogantly ignore the climate changes that have already made our planet look doomed for extinction, as we continue, unabated, to enjoy ever-more luxuries to satisfy our complacent, consumer lifestyles. Globalization is advocated as the panacea for economic development while we pay no heed to its side effects of failing, if not worsening, to bridge the north south divide, but also its destroying of indigenous cultures, the extinction of more ecologically-sound lifestyles and the forcing of communities into our sick, consumerist and destructive ways of living. We celebrate with ever-more cultural spectacle as developed economies flex their muscles with global international art exhibitions, expositions and biennales that are in danger of evolving into semblances of trade fairs and market capitalism. Details and dynamics differ in different countries; however our common struggles are that of being artists as cultural workers and producers, who address various current issues in response to the changes tantamount to crisis in our societies, inter-connected as they are by the globalized nature of our present time. Crises abound in our rapidly-changing world in terms of technological, ecological, psychological, spiritual, social and political relationships that all affect the artists’ area of concern: art and culture. With awareness of these various pertinent crises, we should not merely exclusively hold up the flag for ‘performance art’, giving it an unnecessary privilege and relish its outdated notoriety of being radical and cutting-edge in itself. The competitive claims of radicalism between different genres of art production is as reactionary and as superficial – almost detestable – as any propagation of trendy artistic labels, not unlike commercial branding logos and the promotion of fashionable status symbols. Art, which includes ‘performance art’, is a manifestation of human consciousness that must seek to express itself in response to our collective crises of the present day, and which hopefully will find a certain level of clarification and reconcilement of these contradictions, for us to then face the future with hope and dignity. It is necessary that art today aspires to provide us with the artist’s dreams and visions of possible realizations or pathways of healing, if not moving us into real commitments towards peaceful co-existence and a renewal of our common humanity, or pointing towards necessary actions in our communal social structures as means of confronting the on-going crises of human evolution. Only then shall we justify any claims to cutting-edge radicalism by any artistic practice, and not only that of performance art alone. Relevance of Performance Art Festivals The idea of international art symposiums and festivals began after the First and Second World Wars as artists began to believe that exchanges through an international fraternity and network would help to create inter-cultural understanding and communication, that would directly contribute to global peace and harmony. The sculptor Karl Prantl (1923–2010) was said to have organized the first, post-war manifestation of such symposiums, the International Sculpture Symposium (Symposion Europaischer Bildhauer) held in an abandoned stone quarry in Sankt Margarethen in Burgenland, Austria, in 1959. Since then, they have been held in various cities and countries around the world [5]. Having survived a narrow escape during the devastation of Dresden, the traumatic experiences of the Second World War had inspired Prantl not only to initiate such international symposiums, but also to work in abstraction and avoid the human form - creating forms using nature’s own destructive processes in order to create anew. His forms, which were void of any recognizable figurative images, strived towards a language which overcame specific cultures and which must have seemed to him like a universal language of nature [6]. The international performance art festivals of today began with the same motivation of building bridges between different cultures. We should not forget the legacy that we carry. The desire for new experiences by artists in travelling and participating in the growing network of international art events in various countries around the world should not be motivated merely by romantic notions of exploring foreign and exotic places. However, intentions of building bridges may not be as immediate or coherent as anticipated. Contemporary art, not to mention performance art that explores cultural productions in response to the changes of our times as well as an evolved consciousness of the artist, may not necessarily communicate easily to an uninitiated audience. Like any new or evolving language, it takes time for discourse, debate and dissemination. Furthermore, the open-ended stances, conceptual processes or abstract, formalist strategies adopted evoke complexities and layered meanings rather than complimenting the earlier, post-war search and desire for a universal art language through abstraction. International events organized by artists’ initiatives still hold significant relevance as they provide an alternative representation to those organized by the institutions that follow partial agendas and criteria usually submissive to the ideology of the state, if not the manipulative powers of an insular art world or commercial market concerns. However, artists’ initiatives must be careful and consciously take heed to not become equally disposed and guilty of the various corruptions that they set out to resist. Anarchy and Dictatorship in Our Midst As our society grows in complexity, there are gains in individual choice and freedom. This is a major development in our cultural history, whether we like it or not. Authorities enact new regulations of control to keep society in check. New practices of art productions are necessary in augmenting our evolving humanity and yet unfortunately are often mistakenly read as the severance of the traditional, time-tested social fabric that keeps the social group together. The need for self-preservation and conservative desires of maintaining the tyranny of the power structures held by the status quo that intertwined with fears of losing intrinsic unique identities, jeopardises the transition and transformations of our humanity in response to the demands of the confusing rate of changes in our contemporary society. Increasing conflicts, crimes and other disruptions to social order arise out of our different beliefs and loyalty to various possible systems of social sovereignty. For the artist who embraces the ultimate goal of complete individual choice and freedom in the vein of advocating anarchy as the autonomous, pragmatic, peaceful alternative to that of being ruled by elitist privileges of class, power and property, one must become more conscious of individual responsibility and social accountability in one’s actions. Extremes will only lead to the perpetuation of the inherent contradictions of our flawed and restricted social systems, if not self-destruction and extinction. As contemporary art and culture becomes liberated from traditional practices there is always the threat of losing or damaging the time-tested fabric sense of community. By suggesting and presenting radical alternative possibilities of art production, we set out to question the prevailing social systems but at the same time create new possibilities of community. However, these art events, meetings, festivals or even individual public interventions that artists’ initiatives often model their organization structure upon are inevitably based on the prevailing social systems we come from and manifest in. It is inevitable that stronger individuals will take control or be looked up to for leadership in any social group. Artists’ initiatives creating alternatives to the cultural mainstream may succeed in providing platforms and expanding networks, but without a conscious effort to also encourage management, organization structures that reflect their anarchic intentions remain trapped within the subject of its resistance. We should also bear in mind the need to explore and experiment with different possibilities in organizational structures that allow more individual, responsible participation and shared decision making in order for it to be relevant and to grow. If not, the alternative that is being represented only replicates the dictatorial and authoritarian models that exist in our society and hence our radical resistance would be short of its own desire for anarchistic tendencies. The celebrations of committed sustenance and proliferation of various performance art events and festivals are not necessarily evidence of success but instead a perpetuation of our inherent failure and dependence on the flawed imperfections of prevailing society. Artists’ initiatives have to pro-actively attempt to re-model organizational structures to allow the growing and veering towards greater autonomy for individual participation rather than dependence on the “artist dictator or imperialist” in our midst. Individual Visions Versus Social Consequences One commonly-held opinion that favours performance art as the premier art genre that expands authenticity, is due to its being a direct expression that comes from the individual self of the artist: undirected, script-less, unplanned and unrehearsed. Furthermore, it is suggested that performance art is a more universal language since it is usually more visual, than being based on oral language or written texts. It is not to be argued that this is one strategy that may help artists to arrive at a higher degree of authenticity. One classic debate is that of performance art’s claim of authenticity over theatre. Performance art is often claimed as being closer to a real life situation and the independent direction of the artist as opposed to a script-based contrivance in theatrical performances. However, there can be authenticity in a well-produced Shakespearean play even today. Indeed, theatre may also retain its affinity to the radicalism and criticality of performance art if it is done with appropriate sensitivity of the time, discipline and authenticity. Many of the artists who are known for strong political comments and socially critical content admit that their art arose from personal experiences they felt strongly about. In expressing their ‘lived’, personal experiences, the engagement with complex social issues seeps through. Arai Shinichi is well known for his performance titled Happy Japan, where he is seen to be grotesque and cynical when making his comments about his disgust for the manga bestseller Senso-ro (War Theory) (戦争論) [7] where he lambasts its extreme claims of being the aggressor and wrong doer during well-documented atrocities in the past such as the Nanking Massacre and the sex slavery imposed by Japan during World War II. Most people notice the shocking actions of the artist and usually judge him based on their own attachment to traditional decorum, but overlook the fact that these are sincere personal experiences of disgust and wrath that Arai expresses so clearly that it is hard to not respond. In a recent workshop with performance practitioners and students at TUCA in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Arai gave us three basic actions, which were used in slightly different manifestations in his many narrative demonstrations of his personal life. He provided us with options of: putting an egg in our mouth, doing a handstand against a wall, or walking in a straight line while balancing a bucket of water on our head, or a combination of these three actions while at the same time calling out our own name 10 or more times. Our tasks involved focusing on a bodily action and at the same time verbally repeating a phrase. These simple actions in various permutations and variations when juxtaposed with his personal anecdotes provide a tension-filled narrative that at times was humorous and grotesque, forcing a reaction from the audience. Arai had discovered a few, succinct actions, which were also personal and based on his own body’s ability to create tension-filled images, which could deliver his narrative in a manageable, yet uniquely personal and emotionally-charged way. Arai also made it clear that the political content does not make him an activist, but that his anti-disciplinary discipline has invented a personal-yet-universal form of language. The artist who sincerely looks at his own personal experiences and transmutes them into art will ultimately make consequences of social and political dimensions. Many artists in advocating an international and universal art for art’s sake, an objectivity akin to that of scientific research, try to distance themselves from any idealistic utopian motivations or political agendas of social activism. Tehching Hsieh in his presentations often reminds us that he is an artist and does not intend to make any social political statements or “to change the world”. Hsieh’s one-year performances are masterpieces that were conceived by a sensitive individual who plainly expresses the human condition of living in a socially-constructed world, caught within an intrinsic political web of power relations. The strength of his vision and commitment has already made an impact on our perceptions of art and society and has helped to induce changes in our perceptions of the world, art and culture – which he said he did not set out to do. Conclusion Historically, performance art overlaps with conceptual art in their both being radical strategies that attempt to affect social criticism and changes through cultural actions and interventions. After having gained acceptance in the cultural mainstream, has performance art lost its edge for resistance to mainstream culture as it has been incorporated into the status quo? [8] The question is not for performance art alone or any dominating genre of art – but that of art in recalling Adorno’s dilemma of “poetry after Auschwitz” [9]. For what we have seen in the rapid changes that have characterized the half century, post war years may have given us a euphoria of optimistically embracing a hopeful future of progress and improvement of human comforts into luxuries via economic growth and the opening up of maturing societies into providing increasing security and chances for democratic choices. And yet there have been many more unresolved conflicts and symptoms of global climate change, leading to unforeseen natural disasters that threaten our human survival and portend an impending extinction, as well as dictatorships that exist under the guises of democracies. Adorno’s aporia is often misunderstood as an interdiction or call to an end of all art; on the contrary it is acknowledging the many questions we continue to confront with urgency, and a constant vigilance to the ongoing crises of the human condition. The triumph of anti-art, if any, which McEvilly celebrates is only a chapter, which saw a paradigmatic shift in cultural production. However the unfinished project of art is a continuing struggle, a road without an end in temporary states of triumph. Let us not delude ourselves of ever reaching elevated states of nirvana, nor re-occupation of the mythical Garden of Eden, nor entering the heavenly gates when admitted into the holy temples of art museums or prestigious biennales and triennials. Instead, it is the nomadic journeys and endless battles that art revolves towards, a creative way of living with an awareness of our responsibility and a decision to choose freedom instead of the fatalistic acceptance of false security under the domination of selfish masters and domineering dictators. It is not that artists want to change the world, but the world may change us in ways that we are not willing to accept. Therein lies the need for resistance, and the purpose of our work as artists: without really trying, we change the world. Arai Shinichi (far left), performance practitioners and students at TUCA in Sao Paulo, Brazil Arai Shinichi (left) Lee Wen, Nychthemer 1, Performance, November 8-9 1996, 8 Oxford Street, Singapore Lee Wen, Nychthemer 2, Performance, November 8-9 1996, 8 Oxford Street, Singapore Poster of 'R.I.T.E.S.- Rooted In The Ephemeral Speak' in 2009 Poster of 'R.I.T.E.S.- Rooted In The Ephemeral Speak' in 2010 1. Future of Imagination, international performance art event, Singapore, organized by Kai Lam, Jason Lim and Lee Wen on 6 December 2003, The Substation; subsequently: FOI2, 8-12 Dec 2004, Sculpture Square; FOI3, 10-14 April, The Substation & Singapore Art Museum; FOI4, 27-30 September 2007, TheatreWorks, 72-13 & Post-Museum; FOI5, 12-15 November 2008, Sculpture Square; FOI6, 7-11 April, 2010, Sculpture Square & Singapore Art Museum. http://www.foi.sg/ 2. R.I.T.E.S. – Rooted In The Ephemeral Speak, organized by Kai Lam and Lee Wen, The Artists Village to create a regular platform to support the practice, research and development of performance art. http://rootedintheephemeralspeak.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/texts-essays/ 3. Lee Wen, “Performance Art Performing”, Future of Imagination 6, 2010 catalogue pg. 4-8, also will be published in Singapore Shifting Boundaries: Social Change in the early 21st century, edited by Sharon Siddique, William Lim, and Tan Dan Feng (Singapore: Select Publishers, Forthcoming February 2011). http://www.foi.sg/index.php?/downloadpress-releasearchives/ 4. Carlson, Marvin A.: Performance: A Critical Introduction, Routledge; 1999. P. 188-189 5. Andrea Schurian, DerStandard print edition, 09./10.10.2010, Seine Steine schlagen Wurzeln, Der standard at http://derstandard.at/1285200386044/Karl-Prantl-1923-2010-Seine-Steine-schlagen-Wurzeln (Assessed on 4 November 2010) 6. Yehuda E. Safran, The Sculptures of Karl Prantl, http://www.karlprantl.at/ (assessed on 4 November 2010) http://www.artnet.com/artist/13733/karl-prantl.html 7. Arai Shinichi, “Arai’s Zanzibar, Tanzania” http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ee1s-ari/ & http://www.araiart.jp/ (assessed on 1 November 2010) 8. McEvilley, Thomas, The Triumph of Anti-Art: Conceptual and Performance Art in the Formation of Post-Modernism, McPherson & Co., 2005 p.351-352 9. ‘To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today’ (Theodor W. Adorno, Robert Hullot-Kentor (editor), Aesthetic Theory (Theory & History of Literature) 1995: p.33-34).

SDP's Christmas Message 2010: A Just Society

2010-12-22T13:08:00.006+08:00

Singapore Democrats

Mr Vincent Cheng delivers the Singapore Democrats' Christmas message, calling for a just society and a voice for the weak and the poor in Singapore.

Lee Kuan Yew's occidental illusion

2010-12-20T13:13:00.003+08:00

17 December 2010, Malaysiakini
By Josh Hong

While Lee Kuan Yew's stunningly frank, if blunt, remarks about regional leaders and politicians may have ruffled some diplomatic feathers, they provide an immensely interesting glimpse into the mind of the octogenarian autocrat nonetheless.

In his opinion, the Thais are 'corrupt' and Laos is an 'outpost' for China that faithfully feeds Beijing with the content of Asean meetings. Meanwhile, Burma's junta leaders are 'stupid and dense', and Cambodia's political system is too personalised around Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Naturally, the loudest ruckus that these personal views have caused in Malaysia is over Lee's concerns that the country is in a 'confused and dangerous state' thanks to its incompetent leaders, and that Anwar Ibrahim had walked into a trap that rendered him being charged with sodomy.

I agree all the supposedly confidential messages that are now made available by WikiLeaks cannot be taken as gospel truth; neither do they necessarily reflect the official position of a given government.

Still, we are talking about Singapore where everything that Lee (left) says goes. It is because of this widely shared perception that George Yeo, the Foreign Affairs Minister, has issued a statement in an attempt to contain potential damage to the improving bilateral ties.

Being the founding father of the modern republic who continues to serve as Minister Mentor, Lee's words can never be dissociated from those of the Singapore government, a fact that Lee himself readily acknowledges.

Granted, in just one generation, Lee built the resource-starved island into a prosperous nation with a capacious mind, strong character, iron will and absolute prudence, and does deserve credit for it. But his ruthless pragmatism and unquestioned belief in Machiavellianism will forever taint his otherwise remarkable achievements.

Question over squeaky clean reputation

Singapore's records on transparency and efficiency make it the only star pupil in South-East Asia, but it does not mean that the authorities have not in one way or another been involved with the corrupt regimes in the region.

In early 2006, mass demonstrations started to emerge in Bangkok against the then-Thaksin Shinawatra government.

One provocative banner read: Welcome to Thailand - The Second Branch of Singapore, while the local media mercilessly lambasted Prime Minister Thaksin for having turned the country into 'a colony of Singapore' by selling his family-owned Shin Corp to Temasek Holdings for a whopping 73.3 billion Baht without paying any taxes.

Lee described that engagement with the ruling generals in Rangoon was akin to 'talking to dead people'. However, Benedict Rogers writes in the book Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma's Tyrant of intricate economic and financial links between the junta and the PAP government, while Seelan Palay reports on the staggering similarities between the two countries in terms of political modus operandi.

It seems that Lee would not mind some 'joss papers' even though he may secretly detest the not-so-bright generals.

And a personalised political system in Cambodia? That is indisputable for sure, but isn't the same thing can be said of the dynastic politics in Singapore?

Now, let's turn to Malaysia. Lee's dim views of the leadership here are well-known, especially when it comes to the issues of race politics and meritocracy. Unfortunately, I happen to share his observations of our government leaders as being incompetent.

Just look at our substandard tertiary education, the heavily devalued ringgit against the Singapore dollar since the 1980s, the deteriorating public transport system, and the increasingly corrupt - openly corrupt I would say - public service.

Nose in air prophecy gets hit

Then again, Lee has been rather shrewd not to say a word about the independence of the judiciary for obvious reasons.

But the Minister Mentor, having done much over the years to stifle public dissent in the island, is also never known for having high regards for anti-establishment elements in neighbouring countries.

When Mahathir Mohamad sacked Anwar as deputy prime minister that precipitated the biggest street protests ever in Kuala Lumpur, Lee predicted it to die down within weeks.

He was plain wrong here as the reformasi movement persisted right into the new millennium and became a remote cause for the March 2008 political tsunami. A significant segment of Malaysian society - if not all - was awakened to the destructive nature of authoritarian and arbitrary rule in the long run, and decided to do something about it.

Prior to that, President Suharto had been toppled in a violent political upheaval, sending the region into some sort of turmoil. Watching intensive political struggles unfold from across the causeway, Lee was no doubt fearful of a domino effect that could eventually reach Singapore.

Despite the unfettered cronyism, nepotism and corruption bred under Suharto, Lee considered his continued rule a source of stability. When Suharto died in 2008, he lamented that the strongman's contributions to a stable Asean that had made Singapore's prosperity possible remained unacknowledged.

He is too elitist and aloof to have in mind the political prisoners and the poor masses in Indonesia, and conveniently forgot Suharto's conscious effort to stigmatise the Chinese community, which was instrumental in giving rise to the shocking anti-Chinese riots in May 1998.

Finally, Lee got it wrong again when he thought if PAS leaders would ditch their kopiah and traditional Islamic dress and put on a western suit - just like Mahathir and himself - they could easily win over the Chinese.

Little did he realise - until they met last year - that Nik Aziz Nik Mat is popular with the non-Malays not because of any western outlook, but his sense of fairness, humility and equanimity as opposed to profanely corrupt and racist Umno politicians, his Islamic clothing notwithstanding.

I do have profound reservations about the idea of an Islamic state, but Lee's failure to understand the enigmatic politics of Islam exposes his West-anschauung, ie. a west-centric worldview that had thrown him into a fervent pursuit of progress and modernity, looking up to the West as being intrinsically and essentially rational, developed, progressive and civilised. (To be fair, Mahathir suffers from the same Occidentalist illusion too, only to a lesser extent.)

And who did Lee share all the unpalatable comments about his neighbours with? The Americans and Australians of course.

To him, these are his real friends indeed although he may love the money and business opportunities offered by the thugs next door.

JOSH HONG studied politics at London Metropolitan University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. A keen watcher of domestic and international politics, he longs for a day when Malaysians will learn and master the art of self-mockery, and enjoy life to the full in spite of politicians.

Anwar to Lee Kuan Yew: Let's meet in court

2010-12-17T15:35:00.003+08:00

15 November 2010

Related reading: Anwar dares Singapore to substantiate reports

Cut and thrust of arts funding

2010-12-09T12:27:00.003+08:00

Cut and thrust of arts funding
Arts council should not use funding cuts to weed out critical works
By Adeline Chia, Straits Times Arts Correspondent
8 December 2010
http://www.wildrice.com.sg/images/doc/news/2010/20101208ST.pdf

THE chief executive of the National Arts Council (NAC), Mr Benson Puah, recently sent chills down the spines of some artists.

In his first full-length interview since taking over the helm of NAC last year, he addressed the controversial decision earlier this year when the council cut the funding for arts group Wild Rice by $20,000 to $170,000.

When the news broke in May, the council had said it would not fund projects 'which are incompatible with the core values promoted by the Government and society or disparage the Government'.

In the interview two weeks ago, Mr Puah elaborated on the reasons for the funding cut. The issue with Wild Rice, known for putting on cheeky plays dealing with political themes, is 'cumulative', he said.

Funding guidelines have always existed and are spelled out in the grant contracts. This time round, the council decided to be upfront about the reasons for the cut - to send, as he put it, a 'gentle reminder' to arts groups that they have to comply with funding guidelines if they want to accept government money.

While he did not spell it out, his message came through loud and clear: Other arts groups may face funding cuts if they put up performances contrary to guidelines not to 'disparage' the Government.

While Mr Puah should be commended for candour, the impact of his words is another matter. After all, he heads the NAC, a statutory board whose twin missions are to nurture artists and make the arts integral to the lives of Singaporeans.

Mr Puah himself has impeccable credentials as an arts administrator: He has been with The Esplanade since 1998 where he is credited with steering the arts centre to its premier position. He remains its chief executive.

As NAC chief, Mr Puah will have oversight of the council's grant-making decisions. He has said he prefers to support artists and new groups, rather than spend NAC funds on high-prestige events that have little impact.

These are laudable objectives consistent with NAC's first aim of nurturing artists - which should include giving artists the space and resources to express themselves. The Singapore arts scene is made up of a myriad of voices. Some are conservative, others are liberal.

Some are critical of the status quo, others are pro-establishment. Unless they are outright defamatory or explicitly fan racial hatred, they deserve to be heard, because they are artistic expressions of Singaporeans and are the product of Singaporean experiences.

The role of the arts council is to nurture a diverse and healthy arts ecosystem. Funding should not be used to weed out critical or non-conformist views.

You can't hide from democracy

2010-11-30T12:39:00.002+08:00

Hilarious new video featuring Danny The Democracy Bear :)

C.V Devan Nair: Lee’s Betrayal of PAP and Singapore

2010-11-25T17:20:00.003+08:00

Temasek Review, 25 Nov 2010

Security sweep codenamed Operation Spectrum saw the arrests and detention of 22 young professionals in Singapore under the Internal Security Act.

The “Marxist Conspiracy” arrests, as it is commonly known, also involved the detentions of lawyers Francis Seow and Patrick Seong in 1988 as they sought to represent some of the detainees who were re-arrested that year.

Upon release, Seow contested in the 1988 General Elections under the Workers’ Party ticket and lost narrowly to the PAP incumbents. The Government subsequently filed tax evasion charges against Seow, who was overseas at that time and has remained in US until today.

In 1994, he published ‘To Catch A Tartar’, which documented in considerable detail his 72 days’ ordeal under ISA detention in Whitley Detention Centre.

The following is the foreword to the book, written by former President and founding PAP member Devan Nair, who himself lived in self-exile after openly criticising the Government over the ‘Marxist Conspiracy’ detentions. He passed away in Ontario, Canada in 2005.

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

C.V Devan Nair

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 anticolonial 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.

Lee Kuan Yew Toh Chin Chye Goh Keng Swee

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.

A march along St. Andrew's Road outside City Hall, circa 1964

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.

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.

Crowd gathering on South Bridge Road awaiting a press conference by Devan Nair and Lim Chin Siong after their release from detention in 1959.

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.

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.

Lim Chin Siong with Chia Thye Poh

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 (1923 – 2005)

Whither Asian values

2010-11-22T19:02:00.002+08:00

By Muhammad Shamin, 20 November 2010

Recent developments in and about China have been quite unprecedented. First, Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Following ths award, 23 prominent members of the Chinese Communist Party wrote a letter blasting the Chinese government's clampdown on free expression.

According to The Guardian, the signatories to the letter include Li Rui, the former secretary to revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, and other retired high officials in state media and the propaganda apparatus who were once themselves responsible for enforcing strict censorship.
Then in an interview by Fareed Zakaria, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said: “I believe freedom of speech is indispensible for any country, a country in the course of development and a country that has become strong.”

This comment drew criticism from the People’s Daily, the main Chinese Communist Party newspaper saying any changes in China’s political system should not emulate Western democracies, but “consolidate the party’s leadership so that the party commands the overall situation.”

All these developments are certainly observed with great excitement by democrats and free speech proponents all over the world. At a time where there are still those who advocate the idea of Asian values, the developments in China is a reaffirmation of the universality of human rights.

Political freedom is indeed the inalienable rights of human beings anywhere they may be regardless of skin color and religion.

Yet, the PAP continues to propagate the nonsensical argument that Asians don't subscribe to the universal values of human rights as described in the Universal Decalaration of Human Rights by the the United Nations.

Channel News Asia quoted “One, a system that fits societal values; two, one that can deliver an effective and honest government; and three, a system that provides security, jobs and prosperity for the people.

The developments in China is watched closely by people all over the world who yearn for freedom. The PAP's Asian values propaganda is looking more and more obsolete given that the Prime Minister of China himself agrees that freedom of speech is a universal right and not something to be dismissed as a Western idea.

Muhammad Shamin is a member of the Young Democrats. He completed a stint as an intern at the European Parliament earlier this year.

Comments from SDP site:

Sat 20 Nov 2010 11:39 PM | freedomT - Welcome to Wayang Singapore.

And won 82 out of 84 seats without even all voters have the chance to vote due to walkover. The PM keeps on saying he has the mandate to rule Singapore zzzzzz. Wayang here and wayang there. Remember his father cried on TV when his dead wife suffered from a minor stroke. Others have worst problem than him. Some have cancer and at stage 4 but they don't cry on TV seeking others to pity them. Such is Singapore.

Sun 21 Nov 2010 4:29 AM | | Erik Strand - Dictatorships and so called democracies

As a comment to PAP's claims this is a good and relevant. However, there is reason to contemplate the focus on notorious authoritarian states like China and Myanmar (to choose a couple of examples).

There is a detrimental media propaganda portraying these countries as fundamentally differnt from formal democracies like Singapore, US, UK, Norway and Sweden. When it comes to Singapore, an international NGO called Transparency International has named Singapore one of the three least corrupt countries in the world. A really nice piece of propaganda, isn't it?

A website that has got some really interesting articles, is www.globalresearch.ca. They have an article - see http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21922 - which describes the media hypocricy in being concerned about the rule of law in Myanmar and not the US (seen from an American point of view).

For myself, I live in those countries blesses by democracy - at least according to media propaganda - namely Norway (for some background see www.fampo.no/norway.html ). A couple of years ago, I sent a letter to one of the nice NGOs concerned about human rights, referring to documentation of grave corruption and human rights violations in Norway. But Amnesy International did not give that any priority - the have other things to do (an interesting thought here: if Norway was not ruled by a corrupt elite, maybe instead of awarding Obama with the peace price, it could have been shared among some people who have fought for freedom of speech in Singapore).

The examples I chose concern different countries, but they have something in common that oppositionals in Singapore as well as the US and other countries should be aware of - the intent to use well known authoritarian regimes and focus on them to give people the false impression of living in a democratic society.

Mon 22 Nov 2010 5:24 AM | Robox

Re: "At a time where there are still those who advocate the idea of Asian values, the developments in China is a reaffirmation of the universality of human rights."

The Asian Values mantra one that is used with a knife held to the waist of the person being spoken to. Underlying is this message: "We abuse human rights because it is our culture, and if you criticize us, you are culturally insensitive and thus racist."

I am as anti-racist as they get. But I equally deplore false charges of racism such as the one that authoritarian Asian govenments, many are openly racist themselves. This is meant to paralyze mainly Caucasian-dominated western nations by guilting them.

-END-

Art and Politicking (and in defence of art)

2010-11-18T15:44:00.003+08:00

By June Yup for Arteri, 30 June 2009

Seelan Palay as a one-year-old, 1985. Image courtesy of the artist

Singapore again.

Earlier last month, I wrote about the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts’ announcement to convene a Censorship Review Committee to conduct a mid-term review of issues pertaining to the censorship of all forms of media and information that might enter the island’s hallowed land and airspace, and of how some members of the arts community thought it good to revisit the issue having sent in a proposal for the last 2002/3 review.

In a continuing attempt at engagement with art policies, the group that met earlier put together a list of 23 members of the arts community including artists, playwrights, filmmakers, writers and theatre directors, willing to participate in the Censorship Review Committee 2009, in the name of sowing OATs (openness, accountability and transparency – for the acronym-loving state that we are). This list has been submitted to the ministry and we await their response (though strictly they did politely issue a terse reply already saying that they would “take (our) feedback into consideration,” we are after all nothing if not courteous. It is nice to know the graciously smiling orange and upright, elbow-less Singa lions on the grassy knoll next to the Ministry’s building are doing their job).

Issues about the problems of censorship have been raised in the Arteri post on 22.6.2009, and seeing how censorship seems to have become a recurring topic as well in this site, I thought I’d add a bit more to the pile: with some more examples and perspectives on contemporary art. As Sharon Chin has mentioned in her post the purpose of the practice of censorship is one of power, and what is politics if not power? The issue however I would like to argue is perhaps not so much whether one is provoked by the naked behind, but the meanings inscribed on the body and other that are then seen as violated, transgressing and subject to policing. The bogeyman or rationale for censorship routinely marched out for the masses is that without censorship there would be “riots on the streets” with a capital “R”, proving if nothing else how useful it is to terrorise a community with nebulous terrors.

While the terror may be unclear, the policing however is real. During the group’s discussion a video experiencing such policing was mentioned: One Nation Under Lee is a work for which artist and activist Seelan Palay is currently under investigation, the DVD having been seized by censorship officers during a private screening at Excelsior Hotel on May 17, 2008. The act of screening the video is being charged under the Films Act. Section 21 of which states that:

(1) Any person who (a) has in his possession; (b) exhibits or distributes; or (c) reproduces, any film without a valid certificate, approving the exhibition of the film, shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction.

If the Act is strictly upheld, it would also mean that your nephew’s birthday party video needs a license before his grandparents may proudly show off the delightful child he has grown up into to their golfing clique.

With formal police investigations beginning as of last week (22 June 2009), the charge raises the spectre of a witch-hunt, as the Act quite clearly (even if arbitrarily employed) implies that all video and film are suspect until proven otherwise, and by none other than a board of officially approved and predisposed censors. That the video touches on history does not enter into the police investigation, only the act of screening – who brought the film into the room, how many copies were there in the room, who was operating the system when the film was screened? Between history and logistics, logistics would appear more tangible to navigate.

But if this is not about the sheer impertinent audacity of the artist showing unclassified video to people he knows (and as a private event, surely it was but preaching to the converted), what is it of the content that transgresses? Perhaps it challenges a dominant historiography, but would that merit draconian censure? Standing at 45 minutes long, One Nation Under Lee is not for the lax, it is undoubtedly critical, but it does not pretend to be otherwise, and it raises topics of national development and management that one would be hard-pressed to find in mainstream media. The attention however that the attempt at seizing the video has aroused is far greater than the interest the video would have received had the attempt not been made.

Accepting that history is rather more dynamic than dusty tomes read in the half-light of libraries, the concern with such content is less about history’s past as it is about history in the making, and making this history we are all the time. As historians Hong Lysa and Huang Jianli note:

“nations are idealised communities, which ‘recover’ the history they need to bind diverse elements into a single whole, while concealing the inevitable inequalities, exploitations, as well as patterns of domination and exclusion involved.”1

While it is arguable if the work is purely political or tinged with the nuance of artistic expression, that contemporary art might engage with the political is something that needs to be accepted. Art does engage with different aspects of life, and with politics it may prove enlightening – charging it, inflecting it and adding new perspectives to those on hand. As Susan Hiller, an artist with a background in anthropology, describes:

“artists, in the sense I mean, modify their own culture while learning from it. The artist, like everyone else, is an insider. Artists’ work depict biographically-determined social conditioning. Artists’ work do not allow discontinuities between experience and reality, and it eliminates any gap between the investigator and the object or situation investigated … Artists change their culture by emphasising certain aspects of it, aspects perhaps previously ignored. The artist’s version may show hidden or suppressed cultural potentials. Artists may offer ‘paraconceptual’ notions of culture, by revealing the extent to which shared conceptual models are inadequate because they exclude or deny some part of reality. Artists everywhere operate skillfully within the very socio-cultural contexts that formed them. Their work is received and recognised to varying degrees within these contexts. They are experts in their own cultures.”2

The artist as “insider” (as opposed to the role of transgressive “outsider” as demonised by officiousness) informed by his / her conditions be they social, religious, economic, geographic, linguistic and political, creates works that explore the limitations and boundaries of these conditions. The denial of this, the depoliticisation of art, is useful only to maintain a status quo, a political hold, which art then attempts to mediate.

“Mediators are fundamental. Creation’s all about mediators. Without them nothing happens. They can be people – for a philosopher, artists or scientists; for a scientist, philosophers or artists.”3

Arguably then also, it is mediation in Fahmi Reza’s attempt at giving voice to one side of the political landscape appearing in the vein of the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen with his work Najib’s Head Stolen from Billboard that needs defending, if not the controversiality of its content if the 54 comments it evoked is anything to go by. Sure the discussion gets a bit heated and emotions get riled, but do not for a moment mistake the questioning of assumptions for the assumptions themselves.

Cries against politics in art and the pitchfork-waving occurs when it appears that boundaries are crossed, yet little is said about the boundaries that are maintained, shored up and reinforced in all the other moments. That artistic expression might find its way into the political sphere, is not exceptional, but the ways in which it can create new spaces for discussion is. In his examination of his own “research-based” practice which may be viewed in relation to political exegesis in art for its socio-political-cultural mining, artist Sean Snyder has this to say:

“I have often placed myself in precarious situations in order to access information and images for my work. I have been thrown out of places, been arrested, had cameras confiscated, have faked journalist credentials, paid bribes, and so on. A compulsion? A ‘research-based art practice’? Well, more the former, supported by the notion of the latter … What is often forgotten in discussions about ‘research-based’ art practice is that it cannot simply be reduced to research. To do so is to forget what art can do and what research can’t. Art makes the form the site of knowledge. Without rejecting the content. It is art itself that delineates its own borders.”4

That the private viewing of a work might turn into a convicted offence seems extreme, and while it might be taken by the media (and authorities) as a call for a spurious discussion of the line between art as critique and art as sedition, the point is that when art appears to transgress it does so within a context that frames it and which it produces meanings from – it is on the inside, even if they are meanings that some may not agree to. Art does not, and perhaps should not, acquiesce to a dominant ideology or oblige for the sake of; art is not a “product” of “creative industries”, manufactured in factory lines and quality circles, and labelling it activism is the prerogative of the artist, not his / her audience, and certainly not the state.

(JY)

Production, Seelan Palay, 2008. Image courtesy of the artist

1 The Scripting of A National History: Singapore and Its Pasts, Hong Lysa and Huang Jianli, Hong Kong University Press, 2008

2 Art and Anthropology/Anthropology and Art, Susan Hiller, in Thinking about art: Conversations with Susan Hiller, Manchester University Press, 1999

3 Mediators, Gilles Deleuze, in Negotiations 1972-1990, Columbia University Press, 1997

4 Disobedience in Byelorussia: Self-Interrogation on “Research-Based Art”, Sean Snyder, e-flux 2009, http://e-flux.com/journal/view/57

Opposition SDP unveils two new members (And reports on Rally 2)

2010-11-16T14:57:00.008+08:00

Channel News Asia, 14 Nov 2010

SINGAPORE: The opposition Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) unveiled two new ordinary members at a rally at the Speakers' Corner at Hong Lim Park on Saturday.

When asked if they will contest the next General Elections, they said it was still too early to tell.

One of them is 45-year-old Dr James Gomez, who was a Workers' Party candidate in the 2006 General Election.

Dr Gomez, a Deputy Associate Dean at Australia's Monash University, said he officially became a SDP member on Saturday.

The other new member is Dr Vincent Wijeysingha, executive director of non-governmental organisation, Transient Workers Count Too.

The 40-year-old is the son of former Raffles Institution principal Eugene Wijeysingha.

Dr Vincent Wijeysingha joined the SDP in August.

The party also launched its alternative economic programme called "It's About You".

Among others, the initiative supports the introduction of minimum wage for workers.

- CNA/ir

Related articles and more pictures:

SDP unveil economic programme for Singapore (TOC)
The working poor (TOC)
Democrats officially launch alternative economic plan (SDP)
The rally in pictures (SDP)
Sound policies, impressive candidates for GE (SDP)

SDP's Deepavali Message 2010

2010-11-07T21:42:00.008+08:00

04 Nov 2010, Singapore Democrats

The Singapore Democrats wish all our Hindu and Sikh friends a Happy Deepavali. சிங்கப்பூர் ஜனநாயகக் கட்சி இந்துக்களுக்கும் சீக்கியர்களுக்கும் எங்களின் மகிழ்சிகரமான தீபாவளி வாழ்த்துக்களை தெரிவிக்கிறோம். Mr A Jayaraman delivers this year's Deepavali meesage for the SDP, reinforcing our message that workers in Singapore be paid decent wages and that the cost of living be lowered.

Pro-democracy group to hold first human rights film festival in Singapore

2010-11-02T14:38:00.000+08:00

2nd Nov 2010, Singaporeans For Democracy

Pro-democracy group to hold first human rights film festival in Singapore

A film festival dedicated to the promotion of human rights issues will be held for the first time in Singapore on November 14, 2010. Organised by local political association Singaporeans For Democracy (SFD), Freedom Film Fest Singapore will showcase seven human rights documentaries from neighbouring Malaysia.

Details as follows :

Freedom Film Festival Singapore : A Showcase of Human Rights Films from Malaysia.
Date : 14 Nov 2010
Time : 2pm to 6pm
Venue : Guinness Theatre, Substation Arts Centre, 45 Armenian Street
Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=135960353120755
Admission is free, but donations are welcome. Sales of T-shirts and other paraphernalia at the door.

Are there any films from Singapore? Why not?

No, there are no films from Singapore. The Films Act prohibits the production and exhibition of films which display biased references towards any political issue or persons in Singapore. The penalties for such an offence is a conviction to a fine not exceeding $100,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years. In 2005, local filmmaker Martyn See was investigated by the police for such an offence. Two of See's films remained banned in the country. Another filmmaker, Seelan Palay, is currently undergoing criminal investigation for exhibiting a documentary critical of Lee Kuan Yew. The legal restrictions to political film-making, compounded by a culture of fear among filmmakers and artists in Singapore towards any depiction of "sensitive" issues, meant there is currently a dearth of human rights films made by Singaporeans about Singapore.

Why films from Malaysia?

Now into its seventh year, the Freedom Film Fest was initiated by Malaysian NGO Pusat Komas as a means to educate the public on the values of human rights. The festival's circuit in recent years has included Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Johor and East Malaysia. Due to our shared political and cultural history with Malaysia, SFD has decided to host the Singapore leg of the festival this year. As the views raised in these films reflect ground sentiments of the Malaysian public and of its civil society, we feel that Singaporeans would be interested to get a first-hand look at the issues affecting their neighbours. The FFF 2010 in Malaysia is supported by the European Commission. None of the films shown in its seven year history has been censored or banned by the Malaysia Government.

ABOUT THE FILMS

Kopi O Khau (30 min) 2006
Dir : Andrew Sia
Language : English, Bahasa (English subtitles)
Rated M18 (Mature Content)

In 2005, after a leaked video of a naked female suspect performing ear-squats in a police station had sparked public outrage, the Malaysian Royal Police faced a barrage of allegations including physical abuse, corruption and disproportionate allocation of resouces to monitor political activities instead of combating real crime. Kopi O Khau, translated as "thick black coffee", is a colloquial term for "coffee money", or bribes. Over a hip-hop soundtrack, Andrew Sia interviews activists, politicians and a retired police officer in his quest to restore police integrity and service in Malaysia to "truly royal standards."

Sepuluh Tahun Sebelum Merdeka, or 10 Years Before Independence (30 min) 2007
Dir : Fahmi Reza
Language : Bahasa (English subtitles)
Rated PG

October 20th, 1947 marked a historical day in the Malayan people's constitutional struggle for independence from British colonialism.
This documentary chronicles the events that culminated in the Malaya-wide 'Hartal' day of protest against the undemocratic Federation of Malaya Constitutional Proposals devised by the British Colonial Government and UMNO. Breathtaking in its scope of research and enthralling in its use of music and archival material, Fahmi Reza has aguably created the definitive film on the genesis of the democratic movement in pre-independence Malaysia and Singapore.

Pecah Lobang, or Busted (30 min) 2008
Dir : Poh Si Teng
Language : Bahasa (English subtitles)
Rated M18 (Mature Content)

Shot in the red light district in Chow Kit, Kuala Lumpur, the documentary follows the life of Natasha, a Muslim Mak Nyah (transsexual), who refuses to live life as a man. Unable to secure employment because of discrimination, Natasha turns to sex work and lives in constant fear of the police and religious authorities. While interviewing a broad cross-section of society including a religious scholar, a sex-change physician, a sociologist, attorneys and a social worker, Teng Poh Si unflinchingly examines the continuing repression of transsexuals in a Malaysian society caught between rapid modernisation and a new rising tide of religious conservatism.

Kayuh (21 min) 2009
Dir : Soh Sook Hwa
Language : Bahasa, English (English subtitles)
Rated M18 (Mature Content)

This documentary is a first-hand account of the trials and tribulations of a 100-strong contingent of cyclists who had rode into Kuala Lumpur from Kedah in the north and from Johor Baru in the south. Their purpose - to submit a memorandum to the Prime Minister to highlight six major concerns of marginalized groups in Malaysia. With an intention to make stops at villages and towns along the way to raise awareness among the public, the cyclists were repeatedly harassed by authorities from delivering their message. Unrelenting in its pursuit and invigorating in its spirit, Soh Sook Hwa has managed to produce an uplifting work to inspire activists all over the world.

Hak Dinafikan (30 min) 2010
Dir : Abri Yok Chopil & Shafie bin Dris
Language : Bahasa (English subtitles)
Not rated as yet

On March 17, 2010 more than 2,000 Orang Asli marched in a rare protest against a proposed new land policy, believed to be detrimental to their people. This documentary- made by a team of Orang Asli - contains their voices; many who are speaking out for the first time. Hear what they have to say in their own words.

Pilih (30 min) 2010
Dir : Loo Que Lin
Language : Bahasa (English subtitles)
Not rated as yet

Are Malaysian universities empowering future generations to participate in a democratic society, or are they nurturing disempowered and indoctrinated youths? Using a popular talk show format, Pilih explores the issue of campus election and exposes the reality faced by students. It gives us insight as to why Malaysian youths may be apathetic, and a micro-look as to how democracy functions in Malaysia.

Kisah Tauke Mancis Dan Minyak Tumpah (30 min) 2010
Dir : Sheridan Mahavera & Siti Nurbaiyah
Language : Bahasa (English subtitles)
Not rated as yet

This is a story of two communities and the relocation of a temple. This film takes a look behind the sensational headlines of the cow head protest to understand how the dispute came to be. It reminds us how extremism can easily be fueled when we fail to understand the context of the dispute, and manage such situations beyond the emotions.

SM Goh: Why should I be working for people who don’t feel they belong over here?

2010-11-01T14:17:00.001+08:00

1 November 2010, Temasek Review

A final-year aerospace engineering student Lim Zi Rui, 23, stood up during the Nanyang Technological University Ministerial Forum and asked SM Goh Chok Tong if he is aware that many young people no longer felt a sense of ownership in Singapore?

Mr. Lim said that when he was younger, he was very proud of being a Singaporean but “that was about five, 10 years ago. Five years later, with all the changes in policies and the influx of foreign talent, I really don’t know what I’m defending any more.”

He added that he was reflecting a sentiment held by many of his men in the SAF, who had to compete with foreigners for jobs. “I feel that there is a dilution of the Singapore spirit in youth… We don’t really feel comfortable in our country any more.”

Mr. Goh’s reply was one of deep concern. “This is one early sign of danger… If this is happening, it is very serious.”

He asked Mr. Lim why he felt disconnected.

Mr. Lim assured SM Goh that he was still keen to fight for Singapore but he compared his attitude to that of the foreign friends he had. “I tell them, this is my country. I can’t just leave here whenever I want to. You can come and play and work here, but I have to stay here.”

SM Goh responded with a defense of the Government’s open-door policy. “You want to have a home. Who is going to build your HDB flat?”

“My brother got engaged, but lost his engagement because he could not afford a HDB flat” Mr. Lim countered.

“Without foreign workers in Singapore, would your hall of residence be built?” SM Goh asked. “If we totally reject foreigners, we’re going to shrink in size… I don’t think Singaporeans want that. What they want is to moderate the inflow of foreigners.”

He also said Singapore had to find ways to integrate foreigners. “There are many of them who would like to be Singaporeans, and those of them who can be integrated, make them Singaporeans, make them part of us, make them help to defend the country.”

“My question was, how are we going to help the younger generation feel a sense of belonging to Singapore? I don’t think it’s about integrating foreigners.” Mr. Lim stated that his concerns were somewhat different.

“This is your country,” SM Goh replied. “What do you want me to do to make you feel you belong?”

“For my part, don’t worry about me,” Mr Lim said. “I will definitely do something, if I can, for Singapore. But I can tell you honestly that the sentiment on the ground is a bit different.”

“If that is prevalent among young people over here, we’ve got a real problem,” SM Goh noted.

“If the majority feels they don’t belong here, then we have a fundamental problem. Then I would ask myself: What am I doing here? Why should I be working for people who don’t feel they belong over here?’” SM Goh added.

More ex-detainees speak out : Political violence and the abuse of the ISA in Singapore

2010-10-29T12:25:00.001+08:00

29 October 2010, Martyn See

There are three things you need to know about Singapore.

1. The only political violence that has happened in the last 45 years in Singapore are the ones inflicted on political prisoners behind the walls of the Internal Security Department.

Links :
Political detention in Singapore : Prisoner case histories
The ISA as a political tool
Life in Singapore's political prisons
Surviving long-term detention without trial
Detention of journalists and lawyers under the ISA
A detainee remembers

2. The Internal Security Act has been abused (to serve political ends) more often than it has been used appropriately (to safeguard national security).

23 years after Operation Spectrum : Ex-detainees recall mental and physical abuses
I'll forgive Lee Kuan Yew if he admits to his error and apologises to me : Lim Hock Siew

3. The people and the institution responsible for the political violence and the abuse of ISA are still in power today. Open discussions on such topics remained sensitive, and even outlawed, in Singapore.

Zahari's 17 Years - rated PG by censors, banned by Minister
Ex-detainee Vincent Cheng barred from speaking in history seminar
Here we go again - Govt bans another Martyn See's film
Operation Spectrum forum cancelled
Police retracts licence request after Minister queried
Zahari's 17 Years remains banned : MICA

Reports on Alan Shadrake's trial

2010-10-21T15:01:00.002+08:00

All reports by The Online Citizen, 18-20 Oct 2010.

No reason to depart from Inherent Tendency Test – DPP

DPP’s statement “a serious imputation on my character” – M Ravi

“This proceeding itself scandalises the judiciary” – M Ravi

“We shouldn’t be so hypersensitive in reacting” – M Ravi

Shadrake’s book a “blatant, contemptuous attack against the judiciary’ – DPP

Review of Non-Dominant Discourse (Daily Serving)

2010-10-13T12:12:00.006+08:00

Review by June Yap for Daily Serving

Art has been known to speak out of turn. In Singapore, there is a phrase, ‘O.B. marker’, that in local parlance is used to describe topics that are considered officially ‘out of bounds’. The phrase, borrowed from golfing terminology, to designate spaces where play is not allowed, on an island with limited land but a surprisingly large number of golf courses, is seldom used with irony, even if with a knowing nod.

Ezzam Rahman, "SO?", 2010, printed paper, plastic ribbon and chocolate

Humor aside, the presence and ubiquity of the expression ‘O.B. marker’ points to a condition of censorship and self-censorship that is made to seem unremarkable and is officially rationalized as necessary defense against riots on the streets and a descent into gratuitous depravity. Yet the boundaries of the topics that are ‘marked out’ are ambiguous at best and oppressive at worst, and it is generally understood that they include the subjects of race, religion, permissive lifestyles (usually referring to non-heterosexual relations), explicit sexual activity, and critique of the government. Interestingly enough, violence is not one of them, even though it may be said a certain violence is wrought upon the community unable to speak on these proscribed subjects.

Censorship of art dealing with these topics comes in different forms. Between 1994 and 2003, performance art was subjected to a de facto ban by the National Arts Council due to an unfortunate media incident involving art, after which ‘unscripted’ performances were deemed a threat (‘Art’ acts at Parkway Parade vulgar and distasteful: NAC, The Straits Times, 5 January 1994). While arguably less such over-reactions have occurred since in the visual arts, as compared to say film, theatre or the literary arts, censorship still exists even if by other means. Funding conditions, licensing, and venue availability and terms of use, are areas where censorship and self-censorship have become institutionalized.

Rachel Zeng, "Thou Shall Not Hear", 2010, mixed medium on stretched canvas.

On 3rd August, 2010, an arts community position paper on censorship and regulation was submitted to the Censorship Review Committee (2009/10) and the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (that oversees the National Arts Council and the Media Development Authority), calling for an end to censorship, and bearing 1,786 supporting signatories from the community and public. The paper arguably acts as a minority report to the official CRC report that was produced by the Committee and its secretariat, the Media Development Authority. While the exercise of reviewing censorship appears benign enough, it remains an exercise on government terms.

The exhibition Non-Dominant Discourse at Post-Museum featuring the works of Rachel Zeng, Sha Najak, Ezzam Rahman and Seelan Palay is an attempt at opening up ‘space’ for dialogue within the community through art. Quoting Martin Luther King at the opening of the exhibition, “almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world a better place,” Seelan Palay more modestly added, that while the four artists may not be able to improve the conditions of the world, they hope at least to make Singapore a little better, and doing so for them means having room for thought and expression beyond dominant and official terms. Reflecting on the challenging subjects of civil, social, cultural and political concerns, the artworks are notably measured meditations.

Rachel Zeng, (L-R) "Happily", "No High Falutin Ideas Please",
"Thou Shall Not Say", "Blissfully", "Thou Shall Not Hear",
2010, mixed medium on stretched canvas

Rachel Zeng’s series of five mixed-media canvases, approximating propaganda and campaign posters, speaks of the ways in which one is taught to silence one’s views, and to accept official ideas and decrees without question, including how one should be censored or should censor one’s self. She says, “people accept censorship even though it bothers them, but they do so because they fear more than they get annoyed by the State.” While artists may appear to be the ones bearing the brunt of state censorship, the issue of censorship goes further than that. She says that people need to realize that censorship does not simply involve the removal of purported harmful material, supporting censorship legitimates the prevention of access as a principle.

Ezzam Rahman, "SO?", 2010, printed paper, plastic ribbon and chocolate

Ezzam Rahman’s ‘SO?’, an ordered, but non-chronological, display of images of Cultural Medallion winners from between 1979 and 1999 taken from the National Arts Council’s publication Narratives: Notes on a Cultural Journey: Cultural Medallion Recipients 1979 – 2001 (2002) is a lighthearted critique of cultural legitimation by the state who awards these medallions an annual basis, together with a grant of funds. The low-resolution reproduction of the faces of the recipients is less a judgment of their worthiness, as it is a commentary on the state’s hand in ranking artistic practices and the production of ‘national culture’, as evidenced by the chocolate-coin and plastic ribbon medallions that accompany the images. A billboard of seemingly anonymous faces, the artist also makes an attempt at kindling audience’s curiosity as to whom these individuals are, who one might recognize, and what they have achieved. For a relatively young nation, the subject of cultural heritage is closely tied to its nation-building narrative, a process that generally remains unquestioned.

Seelan Palay Accomplished, Staying, Changes, Recession, Deja Vu,
Payday, Dangerous, 2010 Sweet’, Collage on Paper

Seelan Palay presents two series of works, both of collages, utilizing publicly available print material. One series of two works, ‘Belakang Mati (Behind Die)’, of stately-looking uniformed figures with animal heads, and ‘Kasi Siapa (Give Who?)’ of national statues and figures, comments wryly on the notion of patriotism and sacrifice for the nation. The other series of eight individual portraits, ‘Accomplished, Staying, Changes, Recession, Deja Vu, Payday, Dangerous, Sweet’, superimposes captions of these words, taken from the sports section of the local newspaper, Straits Times, upon images of ordinary individuals, that were compiled as an archive of street-fashion by art school students. Variably descriptive or disjunctive, the captions call to question what these headlines might mean for the common citizen, and the consequences of valuing citizens only through the ideals of nationalism, national success and patriotism. With an ethnically diverse population and a complex history of migrant movement, not to mention rapid economic development that has resulted in an increasingly widening income gap, suggestions of a singular national experience and identity would be possibly superficial at best, and not addressing the issues with all its complexities, unwise.

Sha Najak, “I’m still waiting for my passport”, 2010, installation series.

Finally, the work of Sha Najak, ‘I am still waiting for my passport’ (2010), an installation of enlarged photos of a passport and a letter written in Urdu, a side-table with a can of prickly heat powder (a common remedy for unbearable weather for an earlier generation), slippers, and an English translation of the letter, focuses on the relationship between her Muslim grandmother and Hindu grandfather, who due to disapproval of their inter-religious relationship, had to leave the family behind. The history of Singapore is complicated by both the earlier history of the region — its Malayan past, as well as the history of its migrant population, where both are essentialized to the island’s separation from Malaysia and its economic success, when in fact both these histories have contributed considerably to its present condition. The letter from her grandfather after he returned to India, is filled with the most mundane of questions asking for news of the family, if all are well and why the lack of replies — expressing a desire for intimacy that is being denied by religious intolerance. The reductive simplicity of racial categorization continues to be an obstacle for the artist herself, trapped in a category of ‘Indian Muslim’, a combination of religious and racial classification where while born a Muslim, the racial category of ‘Indian’ results in her often being mistaken as Tamil. The deficiencies of these categories fail to capture the cultural and ethnic richness of the artist’s heritage, and in its failure, then becomes a site of trauma and loss for her and her family.

Sha Najak, “I’m still waiting for my passport”, 2010, installation series

As a group exhibition, the subjects of the works appear quite disparate, from freedom of expression, race, state culture, nationalism and patriotism, seeming as if private grievances. However, arguably, it would have to be the case that these non-dominant discourses at first appear fragmentary, as the ruling ideology is constructed with the conscious exclusion of these other articulations. But as audiences, it is not hard to find meaning within the works, to relate to their broader concerns, and realize how putting them on the table could in fact result in a change for the better.

Yet, even in art, it is often the case that such dialogue is not possible within its own native environment. With the same reductiveness that renders these subjects tricky in its own home, they are seen as characteristics of the land and its people from a distance; and as much as they need to be discussed, it is within its own community where this needs to happen. Exhibitions that present purportedly sensitive artworks, those that cross the ‘O.B. markers’, are more likely than not, set within non-institutional spaces, if they should even succeed in being presented. As a rough guide of how far ‘out-of-bounds’ the various topics are considered, one could hazard a guess. In order of increasing proscription, it might read: explicit sexual activity, race, permissive lifestyles, religion, and then critique of the government. Here, the subject of politics within art expression is delivered the most dire of consequences, even if the other topics are not entirely devoid of politics as well. Given that these are of non-dominant discourses, it is unlikely they will succeed in becoming central concerns through direct means, and precisely for this reason, the chance of them being heard is through the art that makes it a point to give them expression.

My 2 part interview with The Online Citizen

2010-10-07T18:23:00.007+08:00

For the purposes of my blog I will feature both parts in one post, but feel free to read Part 1 and Part 2 off The Online Citizen too.

Face To Face with Seelan Palay (Part One)

Posted by theonlinecitizen on October 6, 2010

The first in a series of intimate interviews with people who have made an impact in Singapore’s socio-political scene, The Online Citizen meets up with Seelan Palay to talk about his time in jail, his family and Dr Chee Soon Juan.

by Joshua Chiang

You went to jail recently because of your participation in the Tak Boleh Tahan demonstration outside Parliament House. Can you tell us more about the events leading up to the imprisonment?

It (the demonstration) was about the rising cost of living, high salaries of the ministers, income inequality. I was arrested that day, and the trial went on for close to one-and-a-half years. On the day it ended, I had an option to go to prison or pay a fine. I didn’t want to pay the fine – it was around $1800 – and so I decided to go to prison for 12 days.

It’s my first time going to prison; although I’ve been arrested and put in lock up sometimes on the day itself, they released me. I’ve not been in prison before.

Tell us more about your imprisonment.

On the first day, what I have to do is to go surrender myself at the court and say that I want to serve the sentence. So the judge asked me if I was going to appeal at the higher court. I said, “I’m not going to. It’s no use. I already know the result.” Before that he was smiling, and after I said that he was kind of frowning.

After that I was handcuffed and taken to the basement of the subordinate courts where there’re a lot of holding cells. Then I was brought in a van to the prison. After I was brought there (to Changi Prison), they made me strip; they did a strip search. And after they did the searching they gave me this blue shorts and white t-shirt; I went for some ID marking and everything, then they brought me to my cell.

What’s the cell like?

It was quiet bare. They give you this straw mat, you know the kind that you bring to the beach, but it’s pretty worn out, so you might as well sleep on a piece of paper. I’d imagine that it would be pretty bad for your back, especially if you’re going to be in there long-term. They also give you two blankets and you can choose to roll up one into a pillow and use the other to cover yourself. That’s what I did.

The cell is basically like a very long rectangle. There’s a big blue door, you can open a latch and look in. There are no bars. The cell can fit three people. And at the back of the cell there’s a short wall, and there’s a latrine; a toilet on the floor. And right in front of the toilet there’s a shower. So if you want to shower, you’ve got to spread your legs in front of the latrine and press a button for the shower. The water from the shower basically goes into the latrine. And that’s also where you brush your teeth, so you’d better not drop your toothpaste or your soap into the toilet bowl because you are expected to dig it out and re-use it.

So you shared the cell with two other people?

Yes, one was a Singaporean. The other one was a Nepali.

The case of the Nepali was really sad to hear, because he’s 30-something years old, he’s never been out of Nepal his whole life, and this is the first time he came out. He worked for this boss who’s also a PR (Permanent Resident) in Singapore, and he worked in a restaurant. According to him, the boss gave him a place to stay but didn’t pay him for five months, and he kept asking for his pay but the boss didn’t give him any. Finally he got angry; he pushed the boss, the boss pushed back and they started fighting. After that the case went to court. This guy, I believe he was sentenced to six or eight months in prison.

I asked him, “What are you going to do after your release?” He said, ”I’m just going to go back to Nepal, I don’t want to travel again.” And I asked him what happened to the boss? Did he get charged? He said that he doesn’t think so. So did he have a lawyer? He said, “No.”

Do you get to leave your cell?

There’s supposed to be yard time, when you go out for a while to this big basketball court. But when I’m brought to the yard, there seems to be no one there. Maybe they bring me to the yard after everybody had left.

Sounds like you’ve been given special status.

(laughs) I don’t know. That’s what happened.

How did you pass your time during those 12 days?

I think the first three days I kept asking for my books. Because previously some friends of mine went in for one-week sentences, and for the whole week, they didn’t get the books, so I feared that (the same thing would happen to me.) I really love reading you see. I really didn’t have any appetite when I didn’t have my books with me, I didn’t eat well.

After three days they handed me my books. I bought in three books – ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’, another book called ‘The Mute’s Soliloquy’ by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, an Indonesian writer, and I also brought in Alan Shadrake’s ‘Once a Jolly Hangman’. They didn’t give me ‘Once a Jolly Hangman’. And I asked them – why? The warden smiled and said something like, “Questionable content.” That was pretty funny.

Did you get it back after you were released?

Yes, I got it back upon my release. The sad thing is, I read very fast. I needed three books. But I read too fast so I finished the two books I had quite quickly.

Were you allowed pen and paper?

I was allowed pen and paper because I had a trial in the following week. So for some of the days I would come out for trial. That was quite testing because they put you in these orange overalls and they handcuff you at the back, they cuff your ankles, and then they had a chain connecting your handcuffs and your ankle cuffs, so you had to bend like this (stoops with hands behind him).

The first time they did that to me, I looked at the guards and said, “What is this the slave trade or what?” And I looked at the other prisoners around me and said, “You don’t have to treat people like this, even if they’ve committed crimes.” The first day I was brought (to court), and so many people were struggling to walk – an old man too was very obviously walking in great pain…

Apparently it’s a security concern because some of the prisoners had escaped when they arrived at the subordinate courts, but there’s surely better ways to do this. And it’s excruciatingly painful. I told the judge about it too. Because the metal cuffs scratch and ‘clang’ against your ankles so it hurts with every single step you take.

Did the 12 days feel long?

Some days. Especially when I didn’t have my books. I don’t regret going into prison. I did what I did, and the Government wanted to react in this manner. If they want to be unreasonable that’s for people to judge right? But what I did miss was sunshine. I like the feeling of sunshine on the skin. In my cell, there’s a window. But the window is so high up, you can see the sunlight coming in at the ceiling, but it doesn’t come down into the cell.

It’s not like in those movies…

Yah. Quite funny right? But it’s true.

One time I had nothing to, I actually went to the toilet area – the window is above the toilet area – and I tried to climb up the ledge and jump up so I could catch the sunshine but I couldn’t reach it. So those days when they bring me to court, there’s one moment at the loading bay where the sun would shine in, and when they bring me in (from the van) I would always turn (and face the sun) as I walked in. So for seven seconds I would just absorb the sunshine and then I would go back in to the blasting air-con.

How did you get in touch with your families and loved ones?

I couldn’t. They were supposed to visit, but on the day it happened, I had to get to court. So I didn’t get to see them until I was released.

My sister did come to court, on one of the days. She saw me, but we couldn’t speak. So at first when she saw me in the orange overalls and shackles, she was kind of shocked and kind of smiling, like amused. But once the break time came, and they to had to drag me and I was walking like that, dragging the chains. I turned around and she was totally… her face totally changed. It was all red and she was crying. And then everybody was comforting her, and she was like , “Why did they treat him like that? He’s not a murderer.” Chee Siok Chin (sister of SDP leader Dr Chee Soon Juan) was there and she tried to console her.

What are your parents’ views on your involvement in activism?

I think the first time I got into trouble was during the 2006 IMF World Bank summit in Singapore. I was planning to distribute some fact-sheets about the impact of IMF policies on Third World countries. And when I wanted to do that, the police intercepted me as I was traveling to work on some artwork; they escorted me into a police car and drove me to my block. They went into my room, searched my room and took my computer. My mother was there but she wasn’t allowed to speak to me so she just stood there crying. And so after that I was brought to the station, my mother was still crying, but my father sort of told her, “Well he knows the consequences, and he goes into it, so it’s ok, we shouldn’t worry. He’s not scared. If he’s scared then I’ll start worrying.”

And from that day, slowly as time went on, my mom got more composed. So nowadays sometimes if there’s a demonstration, I just tell her, “You know there’s going to be a demonstration, I might get arrested and come back tomorrow.” And she’d say, “Okay, take care.”

But these 12 days in jail was the longest time you were away. What did they feel about it?

My mother says the house feels a bit empty ‘cos she can’t hear my voice. And, my dad is ok. I think my dad is confident of me… so he kind of supports what I do. And he thinks that, “Well, you are not committing a crime. You are only speaking up for people, speaking up for human rights, and justice. What’s wrong with that?”

Do you have a lot of such (political) discussions with your family?

Well my mum doesn’t have so many views on politics, but she does know about how families struggle to survive in Singapore. My father… he was initially quite surprised when I first got involved. Two years ago, when he met Dr Chee (Soon Juan), he told Dr Chee, “I’m so surprised my son got involved. Because my whole life I’ve been voting opposition and I never tell him. And I never talk to him about politics and suddenly he got into it by himself.” So my father thinks it’s kind of fated or something.

The anti-death penalty campaign was your virgin campaign?

Yes, But before that I did a little bit of campaigning with ACRES, a local animal rights group, and also the Vegetarian Society of Singapore. But those were kind of like, giving out flyers at roadshows and other indoor events…

Permissible activities.

Ya, you can say ‘permissible’ by their (the Government’s) standard.

At anytime during your campaignings, do you actually feel afraid?

In the beginning, in 2006 when I first got arrested, of course I was afraid. I thought they were going to throw me into ISA detention or something, because I really didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t have anybody to turn to. I have a friend, Rizal, an activist. He was calling a lot of people in Singapore from different fields, NGOs, activists, artists… none of them knew what to do. The only people who came down to speak up for me were Chee Siok Chin and some other people from SDP. She actually came down to Cantonment and she wanted to know if I was arrested, and they (the police) said, “No he’s not officially under arrest, he’s under investigation.” And she said, “If that’s the case we want to see him and we ask that you release him now.” And soon after that the questions to me changed. They asked, “Do you know Chee Siok Chin, do you know Dr Chee Soon Juan?” And I said, “They’re my friends.” And then they said, “Ok ok, you can go first.” Then suddenly I was out of there. Ms Chee drove me back home, and she (Chee) spoke to my mum for a while to console her…

At that time I was afraid to be put away for a very long time. Not because of my personal freedom being taken away but more because I still have to take of my parents. That’s the main reason. But by this time, knowing Dr Chee and other people in SDP who have gone to prison – and I’ve gone to see them go in, and see them come out, and they’re still sturdy. And it helps me stay confident as well.

You still have outstanding charges?

I have outstanding investigations. I think I still have ten open investigations. And I can be charged in court for any one of them at any time.

So you’re hanging on to your blue shorts and white shirt for the time being.

(laughs) Well it depends on what the Government wants. I don’t know why they haven’t acted on some of the things, like the two-man protest I did for the Burmese outside MOM (Ministry of Manpower building at Havelock Road). They arrested us for criminal trespass, and they put us in lock up, and then they released us and nothing happened after that. So I don’t know. It’s very weird. The only cases I’ve ever went on trial for were two Tak Boleh Tahan events.

Face To Face with Seelan Palay (Part 2)

Posted by theonlinecitizen on October 7, 2010

In Part 2 of an hour-long interview with Seelan Palay, TOC asks about his relationship with the SDP, and what he thinks of public perception of his activism. You can read Part 1 here.

Seelan next to his art pieces at the recently-concluded Non-Dominant Discourse exhibition at Post Museum

People often associate you with the Singapore Democratic Party. Are you a full-fledged member of the SDP?

No I never was. Various political parties have asked me to join them, but I didn’t all these years simply because I don’t feel a need to yet, I think it’s great that other people join political parties, but I think where I am, I’m in the arts community and the activist community and I’m just doing my work there, and I try to help out people, I don’t feel a need to enter politics in that manner.

But there’s the sense that you identify more with them than other parties.

Of course I do. Because I found out about local politics through the Internet back then, when I was 18. I went to meet JB Jeyaretnam; I got his book and I asked him to sign it. I stood there and I asked him how I could help him. He kind of thought I was too young maybe. And it’s okay that he thinks that way.

After that, I went to meet SDP, and Dr Chee, and I read his books and everything. I like the ideas expressed in them. That’s why I identify more with them as compared to other political parties. Also because beyond politics they are also now my friends, and also my family friends.

You have heard of Dr Chee before you read his books. At that time there were already a lot of bad publicity about him. So what got you interested to check out his books?

I always believed in a free market of ideas. It’s the main thing that I advocate. The time I got to know about Dr Chee, I already knew that there’s not much of a free market of ideas in Singapore. It’s mostly government controlled or largely government induced/influenced. I kind of viewed Dr Chee and JBJ in the same light. I didn’t let any of the bad press affect my judgment of him. I told myself, if I’m going to judge him, I’m going to have to meet him and talk to him myself. I’m going to read his books first. I’m not going to read the Straits Times’ version of Dr Chee or the Newpaper’s version of Dr Chee.

So when you read his books, did it change any of your perspective?

It’s not about changing perspective. I was never influenced by the mainstream media’s impression of him. It was more like, when I read his books, I know the substance behind the man. And the kind of socio-political, and also economic ideas that he has. I find my own views to be very in line with his. And so I think his books were the things that made me understand him more.

They (the mainstream media) like to promote the idea that he’s just doing demonstrations, like to cause trouble. The thing is, from a young age, I didn’t find anything wrong with demonstrations. They’re fine. So when the media try to tell me that Dr Chee is bad because he does demonstrations, I didn’t see the connection. ‘Cos I would do that if it were me.

What do you think is the public perception of activists like you and Dr Chee?

Sometimes I ask long time friends of mine from school. They know what I do, and almost all of them support what I do. And I think that’s cause they know me as a person. They saw me growing up, they know my values from the start. So none of these mainstream media influenced their perception of me. And after that, as I got more into it, I asked them what their friends and families think of what I do. They all give me different kinds of answers.

There’s actually one quite racialist answer. I have an equal number of Chinese, Malay and Indian friends. But some of these Indian friends I have – the older uncles and some of these friends of my friends. They ask ‘why Seelan wants to get involved in all this? Dr Chee is a Chinese. Lee Kuan Yew is a Chinese. Let them whack each other and die lah. This fella, he’s an Indian , he’s a minority. Just ask him to cover his own backside, make his living and just get on with life.” This may seem quite controversial but this the hard truth. This is what some people say within the Indian community.

Some of the feedback I’ve received… the perception is that you guys are standing up for a cause. It’s a good thing. However at the same time, it puts them off somewhat – what they perceive as this negativity, this anger…

When my Burmese activists friends, all they do is speak up for Aung San Suu Kyi, against the brutal regime in Burma and they are kicked out of the country (Singapore) and they are thrown into countries like Cambodia because they can’t go back to Burma. And they’re left with zero, nothing in their lives. What do you want me to do? Not get angry? If everybody is going to keep quiet and not get angry or upset about these kinds of things… I did that demonstration outside MOM because I was totally disgusted with the way the Singapore Government is doing this to people that I know.

And there are also many people I’ve spoken to who said that they support the idea of demonstrations and they would participate in the ones we’ve organized if they didn’t fear or have to face so much persecution.

One trivial question. Malcolm X or Gandhi.

Gandhi. But I generally don’t look up to figures in that manner, in the sense that I just like reading what they write. There are so many other inspirational figures. So many in South East Asia that are even more inspirational than Gandhi in a sense ‘cos they’re so close to our history. And I feel that we should also look that these people.

But wasn’t Gandhi’s methods less confrontational, more ‘gentle’?

I think we have had gentle protests as well. I don’t know what degree of gentle is. Gandhi during his time was considered a radical as well. They thought his ideas were mad, that he was an angry man with nothing else to do but complain about everything. That’s what his contemporaries thought.

I just don’t look at Gandhi. I look at protests happening around the region. I’ve participated in protests around the region, and I don’t find anything wrong in holding a placard and saying “someone is really not respecting human rights.” I see an event, and I feel, as a human being, I’m going to make a placard, I will write what I want on it. Of course I’m not going to make it defamatory or racially or religiously insensitive. I’m just going to hold it, and I’m going to show that person. They can do whatever they want. They can arrest me they can ignore me. It’s okay. But to me as a human being I’m just expressing myself in that manner. And these people who don’t like it, disagree or feel uncomfortable, there’s nothing I can do. I’m not at your house showing it to you. You’re not the person I’m addressing. So if you don’t like it, that’s fine, but I’m still going to do it.

And at the same time I also organize forums, exhibitions, film screenings. I post articles on my Facebook, I write articles for TOC (The Online Citizen), for my blog, I also write articles for socio-political publications, and all of these are the other activities that make up what I do. How many demonstrations have I done compared to the advocacy work that I do everyday? Compared to the video editing I do everyday. Compared to the art process I do… I took three years to do this piece of artwork (a piece of collage work that was recently exhibited at Post Museum). People don’t see this side of me and I don’t blame them for not seeing that. They only see the demonstrations because those are the things that get the media attention. And it’s just what happened with Dr Chee Soon Juan. Like people don’t see how he interacts with his family. People don’t see what he has to do everyday. And they only know him based on what the media has showed them.

Do you think it’s the media’s influence, or it’s human nature to fear and reject what they do not understand?

I think both. You can’t say it’s only the media. It’s also because it doesn’t happen enough often so it’s this fear of the unknown, so they don’t know what to expect.

After doing activist work for eight years, are there any encouraging signs? What do you see happening right now.

I think the Internet has provided the kind of space to express themselves or let off steam. That’s the most positive thing. Many years ago, you might guess that there are so many people reading the forum, but thanks to Facebook you can sort of gauge how many people there actually are. The numbers of blogs have increased. The number of online activities that translate into offline action has also increased. Like for example the campaigns that TOC has taken up. The campaigns that other organizations have taken up. So it’s very dynamic… ever-growing. There are positive things that have happened. All is not lost.

So what about the people sitting behind their desks and typing, do you think this is the first step towards something, or is it more like – this is it?

I can’t say if this is it, but that depends on people’s conscience, the socio-political climate, Lee Kuan Yew’s existence. (laughs) I mean it’s a very real concern people have. And I would think that it’s more… It’s just positive. It’s good that people are writing online whether it’s anonymous or not, it’s good. I’d rather have that than eight years ago, I Google-searched for Singapore human rights, all I get is the Think Centre, now I’ve got so much other stuff to read. So many people’s opinions. It’s good, you know.

What about the quality of the content? On one hand you have your intellectual posts and on the other hand, ranting.

I appreciate both. The former, it makes you think. The second, makes you laugh. I just like it that people express themselves, because I always feel that a lot of times… when I go other countries, even amongst Asians, I always feel that Singaporeans express themselves less. It’s partly due to the climate and social conditioning. And I feel that if more people express themselves, then we have a free market of ideas, and more people stand up for what they believe in. That can only be good in my view. Especially if you are going into a knowledge-based economy, and that’s where we want to go, then having such an environment would be good.

But on top of the fear of repercussions, there’s also this aversion to messiness, which many feel may threaten the stability.

I hear that from some people. But I’m not the government, I’m not going to decide on how much freedom of speech you’re going to have. If you want freedom of speech in Singapore, you gonna have to decide how much you want and take it for yourself. And you’ve got to know the consequences when you go about it.

As for how the system will change… by the time you get a democratic society where we have freedom of expression, the entire economic system in Singapore might collapse, because of the CPF (Central Provident Fund) bubble exposing itself to be a sham, and everybody loses their CPF money, and HDB devalues, and the whole system might implode with the PAP in power and without freedom of expression. To me that’s even worse. That’ll be like back when Suharto (President of Indonesia) was in power. But if we have a free market of ideas and open debate, when there are real problems like that there can be different voices heard and proposals considered, and there can be a solution found, together, rather than dictated by one person who might be wrong all over again. What he calls himself… the ‘Forecaster’.

With regards to activism, what is the achievement you’re most proud of?

Seelan outside MOM building in Jan 2009 protesting against the expulsion of Burmese workers who took part in the 2007 protest

Personally I would think, the demonstration that me and my friend Kai Xiong did for the Burmese who were expelled, mainly because after that demonstration, it seemed that none of our other Burmese friends were expelled. I feel like that might be my greatest achievement because through that act of civil disobedience it seemed we could really stop such injustice.l

This was after the Burmese demonstration at Orchard Road in 2007. (more about the demonstration here)

Yes. But you can’t say it was inspired by them. Cause their demonstration was completely different it was for democracy, asking ASEAN to stand up for Burma. Which was another thing, because they investigated a lot of them, they started expelling them, which is why we got so… we felt this great sense of injustice being committed. C’mon so many Burmese all over the world are speaking up for their country, and these people are stuck here – what do you want them to do? Sit down at home and just watch Channel Newsasia?

So your demonstration was in response to how they were unjustly treated.

And the high-handed manner which it was carried out.

'Changes' by Seelan Palay

Last question – What about your future?

My future. Of course, as an artist, what I consider to be my profession first and foremost – I just had another exhibition; I’ll do more. That’s really what I see in my life. I really want to develop my art process more, develop my output, and have more exhibitions. That’s what I really want to do. Other than that there’s freelance video-editing to help pay some bills… a lot of people they think that activism is the main thing is m

y life. But Art is the main thing in my life. Ever since I was ten years old I already knew I was an artist. I told my mother when I was ten years old, I said one day I was going to grow up to be an artist. Up till now I still believe that. And so on my blog I always put ‘artist’ then ‘activist’. Art is still the most important thing in my life.

Why not just stick to being an artist?

When sometimes at a demonstration, anywhere in the world, there might be a taxi driver who participates… you could also ask him why not just stick to (being a) taxi driver. For me I would answer the same way. I’m an artist, I’ve a conscience, I feel some kind of social responsibility. If I feel something is wrong, I’ll speak up. That’s it.

Source: Part 1 and Part 2 at The Online Citizen.

SFD Election Consultation (2 Oct 2010)

2010-09-29T12:23:00.002+08:00

Singaporeans For Democracy

Do you want to see improvements to Singapore’s electoral system so that its free and fair and the results better reflects your vote? If you do, join this public consultation organised by Singaporeans For Democracy (SFD) and share your views.

Presently, the United Nations is accepting reports from civil society groups to assist it in assessing the Singapore government’s human rights record. This assessment is done through the United Nations mechanism the Universal Periodic Review. Singapore’s human rights record will come under the United Nation’s review in 2011.

SFD will be submitting a special report on Singapore’s electoral system towards this process. All those who want improvements to Singapore’ electoral system should attend this public consultation. SFD will listen to your inputs during this consultation and summarise them into a report that will be submitted to the United Nation’s Universal Periodic Review process (http://sfd.sg/content/sfd-submit-report-singapores-electoral-system-un).

Join us at this special event and invite your friends along if you want a better electoral system for Singapore and have your voices heard at the United Nations.

Date: 2 October 2010
Time: 3-6pm
Venue: Post Museum,107+109 Rowell Road S209033 (directions)

Please RSVP at our Facebook invitation page so we can manage the necessary meeting room space.

Moderator

Mr Martyn See, Executive Secretary, Singaporeans for Democracy (confirmed)

Speakers

Mr. Goh Meng Seng, Secretary-General, National Solidarity Party (confirmed)
Mr. Chia Ti Lik, Secretary-General, Socialist Front (invited)
Dr. James Gomez, Executive Director, Singaporeans For Democracy (confirmed)

Speeches at the SDP pre-election rally

2010-09-28T12:46:00.000+08:00

Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Singapore Democrats

Watch highlights of the speeches at SDP's Pre-Election Rally at Hong Lim Park on 25 September 2010. The speakers focused on the cost of living and the influx of foreigners into Singapore.

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youtube link

My next art exhibition and SDP's pre-election rally!

2010-09-24T02:15:00.002+08:00

Dear readers, hope to see you at the opening of the next exhibition I'm part of, Non-Dominant Discourse on Friday, 24 September 2010.

Also come down to the SDP's pre-election rally on Saturday, 25 September 2010.

Have a good weekend!

CSJ refutes LKY on race, politics and immigration policy

2010-09-16T12:08:00.003+08:00

This video message comes on Lee Kuan Yew's birthday ;)

16 September 2010, Singapore Democrats

Dr Chee Soon Juan rebuts Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew who said that open political contest in Singapore would lead to raced-based politics and "our society will be ripped apart."

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youtube link

Non-Dominant Discourse (My art exhibition this month)

2010-09-13T23:32:00.004+08:00

Non-Dominant Discourse
Featuring Rachel Zeng, Sha Najak, Ezzam Rahman & Seelan Palay

This exhibition by 4 Singaporean artists offers an attempt to unravel discourse in our society through visual presentations of our consciousness, personal backgrounds and creative inquiries. We welcome you to join us in our reflective analysis and journey into the non-dominant discourses that we feel are missing in contemporary Singapore.

Exhibition opens 7pm, 24 September
24 September - 1 October 2010
Opening house: 6-10pm (Tue-Fri), 2-10pm (Sat+Sun)

At Post-Museum
107+109 Rowell Road
http://post-museum.org

SDP's Hari Raya video message 2010

2010-09-09T16:00:00.004+08:00

Singapore Democrats, 09 September 2010

Ms Suraya delivers the SDP's Hari Raya message for 2010. She talks about the PAP disrupting Singapore's racial mix with its policy to flood Singapore with foreigners.

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youtube link

A wish in September 2010

2010-09-08T14:11:00.003+08:00

I wish I could make a blog post everyday. It doesn't even have to be an article in reflection or analysis, it just could be a nice painting or photograph I stumbled upon that day.

Should I try doing that or just confine smaller postings to my Facebook account?

Chee Soon Juan responds to Lee Hsien Loong's ND speech

2010-09-06T13:33:00.001+08:00

Singapore Democrats
01 September 2010

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong delivered his National day rally speech on 29 Aug 10. This is SDP Secretary-General Chee Soon Juan's respsonse. Dr Chee notes that Mr Lee ignored the problems caused by the flooding of foreigners in Singapore and how this is causing grave social and infrastructural problems for the country.

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youtube link

MDA questions Seelan over Francis Seow video

2010-09-01T15:36:00.003+08:00

Singapore Democrats, 1 September 2010

Filmmaker and human rights campaigner Mr Seelan Palay has submitted a video to the Media Development Authority (MDA) for rating as required under the law. The video is an interview of Singapore's former solicitor-general (SG) Mr Francis Seow.

Mr Seelan had submitted the film last year. The agency now wants to know the purpose of Mr Seelan producing the film and whether the video is accurate. Mr Seelan's replies are reproduced below.

Mr Seow was also the president of the Law Society of Singapore (LSS) in the mid-1980s. As president, Mr Seow indicated that the Society would play a greater role in keeping watch on the laws the PAP passed.

Of particular concern was the amendment of the Newspaper Printing and Presses Act which allowed the Government even greater control of the media in Singapore.

This enraged Mr Lee Kuan Yew who was then prime minister.

Mr Seow was subsequently arrested and detained under the Internal Security Act in 1987 together with those accused of being part of a Marxist conspiracy to overthrow the Government. He was removed as the LSS's president.

After his release from detention and after standing as a candidate in the 1988 general elections, Mr Seow left for the US. This video interview was recorded in the US where he now lives.

In the interview the former SG spoke on a wide range of issues including the inner workings of the PAP Government and Madam Kwa Geok Choo's (Mrs Lee Kuan Yew) role.

Below are Mr Seelan's responses to the MDA's queries:

Seelan Palay
What is your purpose in producing the Film?

Why is the MDA asking me this question? I am required to submit this video for rating which is exactly what I am doing. My purpose of producing this film has nothing to do with the rating process. But if you must know, I would like Singaporeans to hear what Mr Francis Seow has to say about our national affairs.

You have stated in your submission that the Film is a "documentary...and composed wholly of an accurate account depicting actual events, persons ... or situations..." What are your reasons and premises for indicating that the Film is such a documentary? Could you explain how the Film is "an accurate account"?

Can you explain which part of the film is not an accurate account and how it is not accurate? I will respond accordingly.

Your submission also states that the Film is for "Private film screening". Please elaborate on what you mean and intend by "Private film screening", and who the intended target audience is.

Private film screening is where I invite my friends to come to my place and watch the film.

Your submission further states the Film will be for "distribution". Please elaborate on the medium and platform for such distribution.

I would like to make copies of the film and pass it to my friends for their own viewing.

Have you informed the interviewee of your intention to have the Film privately screened and distributed in Singapore?

What has my communication with Mr Seow anything to do the rating of the film?

In step with a Producer's responsibility, have you exercised editorial oversight in parts of the interview which, on the face of it, can be regarded as defamatory?

You are the MDA, not the Supreme Court. Your job is to give me a rating, not decide on whether the content is defamatory or not.

In step with a Producer's responsibility, have you exercised editorial oversight and ascertained accuracy with regard to what was said by the interviewee about being driven out of the country?

If there is any inaccuracy, I am sure the relevant authorities will clarify it. You are not the proper authority to determine the accuracy or inaccuracy of Mr Francis Seow's claims because you do not know the facts. You do not have to be the gatekeeper of what the public watches or hears. Let Singaporeans watch and hear both sides of the story.

The film ends with the Producer's statement that, "Francis T. Seow currently lives in exile in the United States ...". Have you ascertained if this is factually correct?

I am amenable to removing this sentence.

Overall, have you exercised editorial oversight to enable viewers to develop an informed understanding?

The answer is yes. Perhaps you should more appropriately pose this question to Channel News Asia, the Straits Times, The New Paper, and all other local mainstream media outlets.

I will start my 1st prison term on Aug 11

2010-08-10T16:03:00.005+08:00

Aug 10 2010

Dear friends, fellow artists and activists from Singapore and the world over, I will be in prison for 2 weeks starting from tomorrow, August 11.

I've been arrested and put in lock-up for single days a few times, but this will be my first actual prison term. Here is a BBC article which mentions my views on it near the end, but with incorrect dates: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10849942

We will resume correspondence upon my release. Take care and keep the faith.

Seelan Palay

SDP's National Day Message 2010 - The Young Ones

2010-08-05T16:35:00.001+08:00

05 August 2010, Singapore Democrats

What kind of a society are we building for our young ones? What are their aspirations? Are they going to live in a country that is different from ours, one which is free and democratic? We hear from them in this year's National Day Message from the SDP.

Singapore "hates Anwar Ibrahim", vows to back Najib in Malaysia

2010-08-04T21:02:00.002+08:00

By FMT Staff, 4 August 2010

KUALA LUMPUR: Prominent blogger Tulang Besi has claimed that a well-connected friend from Singapore revealed that the island state has a new policy, which is to ensure that Anwar Ibrahim does not come into power.

According to the pro-PAS blogger, who operates the popular Malaysia Waves blog, Singapore's PAP government would throw its weight behind Barisan Nasional and Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak.

The policy stated that Singapore would do its best to ensure that Najib remains in office following the next general election and the neighbouring state had devised certain measures for this.

Tulang Besi said this was because Singapore "hated" Anwar as the opposition leader was considered an "Islamist" who would strengthen Islam here and in Southeast Asia.

"A clear example of Anwar's Islamic leanings is his strong support for (the Palestinian liberation outfit) Hamas, while the Singapore government openly backed the killings in Gaza," he added.

The blogger also noted that Anwar's revelation on the link between Najib's administration and public relations firm Apco Worldwide had angered the Americans and Jews.

"When the Americans and Jews get angry, Singapore also gets angry," he said.

The Apco Worldwide issue made international news when Anwar accused Najib of having copied the firm's One Israel concept for his 1Malaysia concept.

His scathing attacks had led certain quarters, including Jewish organisations, to label Anwar as anti-Semitic, which the latter denied.

Singapore's ties with Malaysia had taken a positive turn after former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad stepped down in 2003.

Under the reins of Mahathir's successor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, bilateral relationship flourished, with a vexed Mahathir accusing the new administration of pandering to its neighbour's whims and fancies.

Khairy an agent?

Meanwhile, Tulang Besi also recalled how the Singapore intelligence had predicted the fall of the PAS government in Terengganu during the 2004 general election.

Local analysts, however, had believed that the east coast state would remain in the Islamic party's stable.

The blogger said he was informed then that the Singapore intelligence was certain that BN would reclaim Terrenganu and had purportedly submitted the report to Abdullah soon after he took office.

"I am surprised how Singapore could obtain such accurate and classified information. So it is no surprise that Mahathir had accused Abdullah's government of being controlled by Singapore.

"PAS' defeat is important to Singapore because it means the defeat of Islam. Singapore prefers Umno because Umno can be relied on to stop the spread of Islam...." he said.

Tulang Besi claimed that Singapore's new policy also explained why Abdullah's son-in-law and Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin had launched a series of vitriolic salvos on Anwar.

"Many in Umno have accused Khairy of being a Singapore agent. I don't know if there is any truth to this, but Khairy's actions are in line with Singapore's new policy," he said.

On the same note, Tulang Besi said he could not verify the information obtained from his friend but noted that ties between Malaysia and Singapore had grown closer and Najib appeared to share a strong rapport with his Singapore counterpart Lee Hsien Loong.

No one cares about the Youth Olympic Games except the Government

2010-08-01T12:06:00.004+08:00

1 August 2010

Really? The residents are celebrating it? I haven't heard a single friend or family member mention it even once.

An interesting piece on the YOG by Alex Au: Alienation scores gold at Youth Olympic Games

As I type this, an official is going around my block hanging Singapore flags outside of peoples' flats because no one bothered to do it themselves. Pride has to be instilled (or installed) you see.

Human Rights Watch: Legal charges threat to freedom of expression

2010-07-29T17:53:00.003+08:00

29 July 2010, Human Rights Watch.

British author’s critique of death penalty leads to arrest

(New York, July 28, 2010) – Singapore officials should cease using criminal defamation and contempt laws to silence government critics, Human Rights Watch said today. The arrest of Alan Shadrake, the 75-year-old British author of Once A Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock, a critical review of Singapore’s death penalty law and its administration, further narrows the space for reporting and analysis of issues the government prefers to keep under tight control, Human Rights Watch said.

On July 16, 2010, the day before the book launch, the Media Development Authority, responsible for regulation of Singapore’s media and publishing industry, filed a police complaint against Shadrake for criminal defamation and contempt of court. The defamation charge is still under investigation. On the same day, Singapore’s attorney general submitted an affidavit saying that Shadrake should be “committed to prison or receive such other punishment … for his contempt of court … for bringing into existence, publication and distribution of the Book which contains passages that scandalize the Singapore Judiciary.” Supporting documents add that passages “undermine the authority of the Singapore courts and public confidence in the administration of justice…” If convicted, Shadrake faces a potential two-year sentence and fines.

“Free speech is an endangered species in Singapore,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s sadly predictable that the government did not hesitate to threaten prosecution, fines, and imprisonment against an author whose views run contrary to its own.”

Authorities arrested Shadrake, a death penalty opponent, on July 18, seized his passport, and released him on bail the following day. The court hearing on the contempt charge is set for July 30, but in the interim the 75-year-old author has been subjected to several days of police interrogation without benefit of counsel. Shadrake stated that the lengthy interrogation sessions left him exhausted, and his lawyer reported that he had been placed on a heart monitor.

Once a Jolly Hangman is based on interviews with a longtime executioner at Changi Prison who has now retired and with dozens of lawyers and death penalty opponents. Shadrake also reviewed years of court case files. He is outspoken in his suggestion that Singapore death penalty sentencing decisions are not always made through impartial and independent examination of the alleged crimes.

Human Rights Watch considers criminal penalties for defamation to be disproportionate and unduly harmful to freedom of expression. Many states have abandoned such laws, recognizing that civil defamation is generally adequate to protect the reputation of others.

Scandalizing the court, the contempt charge applied in Shadrake’s case, is a relic of British colonial law no longer in use in the UK or in other commonwealth countries such as Brunei, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Canada, but retained in Singapore. And although Singapore’s constitution protects free expression, it also specifically protects against contempt of court.

Another well known case was that of the academic Christopher Lingle and the International Herald Tribune, who were fined for contempt when Singapore’s High Court deemed that a reference in an October 7, 1994 op-ed article to “intolerant regimes” and a “compliant judiciary” could only refer to Singapore. In the 2009 case of Attorney-General v. Hertzberg, the High Court rejected the proposition that contempt had to pose a “real risk” to the administration of justice and affirmed that conviction could be based merely on the “inherent tendency” of words to suggest bias, impropriety, or other judicial wrongdoing.

“All the government’s action will do is jail yet another author, while ensuring that Shadrake’s book will be a best seller outside Singapore, most likely in Southeast Asia’s airport bookstores” Robertson said.

Although media reports state the book is not banned in Singapore, it is apparently hard to purchase because the government has advised bookstores not to stock it.

The death penalty is a touchy issue for Singapore officials, who rigorously defend the state’s mandatory death penalty for murder, treason, and some 20 drug-related offenses. The latest high-profile case on Singapore’s death row involves a Malaysian, Yong Vui Kong, due to be executed in August for a drug-related offense committed when he was 19. Singapore refuses to make public statistics on executions in the city-state, but is believed to have one of the highest per capita execution rates in the world. Human Rights Watch opposes capital punishment in all circumstances because of its cruel, inhumane, and irreversible nature.

Singapore’s drug law, which carries a mandatory death penalty for some offenses, also fails to meet international human rights standards, Human Rights Watch said. The mandatory nature of this penalty effectively obstructs judges from considering the circumstances of a case or handing down lighter sentences. The United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions has stated that the death penalty should under no circumstances be mandatory by law, regardless of the charges involved.

“If the government is truly concerned with protecting its reputation, it could do better than to jail authors and execute drug offenders,” Robertson said. “Abandoning criminal punishment for defamation and prosecutions for criticizing the judiciary would be a good start.”

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Singapore, please visit:
http://www.hrw.org/en/asia/singapore

Let Me Decide: Video of Singaporeans on censorship

2010-07-27T12:38:00.003+08:00

27 July 2010

A society's "competitive edge" is marked by its ability to think for itself, not by a censor's arbitrary scissors.

From the Let Me Decide website: I am responsible for my morals and values, not the censor.

If I'm not the best judge of what is "appropriate" for me, what makes the censors think they are better?

And why do they claim they are "protecting" us, when they are harming Singapore's development into a global city - and assaulting my right to judge for myself?

It's time to say thanks but no thanks to censorship. It's time to LET ME DECIDE.

Make yourself heard by 'like'-ing this on Facebook here:
http://let-me-decide.tumblr.com/

Seelan Palay's Blog

Deepest Sympathies & Synonyms (My next exhibition)

There is nothing uniquely Singaporean about inequality

Why Young People Don't Participate in Politics

Updates on my life

Images from our recent CAPITAL exhibition

HDB: 15 Q & A – Uniquely Singapore?

The CAPITAL exhibition is showing till 26 May

Invitation to my next art exhibition, CAPITAL

Vote SDP to cool off!

Election update

SDP unveils 2 potential candidates, confirms contest in 3 constituencies

Race Issues in Singapore: Is the HDB Ethnic Quota becoming a farce?

We are here to serve

It's About You, not PAP

No real change as Burma swaps military rule for civilian parliament

Hard truths on hard culture

All Woks of Life (Exhibition)

Singapore is not a model for Australia

Experts Help to Rebrand Burma’s Failed Dictatorship

Burma elections ‘similar to Singapore’

Burmese Dictator adopts Singapore President Model

‘Foreign’ doesn’t always mean ‘talent’

We need more Chee Soon Juans in Parliament

What’s Up With Kishore Mahbubani?

Two ex-ISA detainees join SDP

Walking Distance (Poem)

Hard Facts on Singapore

Dumping the fallacies LKY created

Identical peas from divergent pods: Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohamed

Sam, the SDP supporter

Yong, please don't die

I am from Bangsa Singapura

More ex-detainees speak out : Political violence and the abuse of the ISA in Singapore

Whither Singapore Artists?

Arts housing! Arts centre mania?! What about the oldies?!

How To Change The World Without Really Trying – Reflections On Performance Art Today

SDP's Christmas Message 2010: A Just Society

Lee Kuan Yew's occidental illusion

Anwar to Lee Kuan Yew: Let's meet in court

Cut and thrust of arts funding

You can't hide from democracy

C.V Devan Nair: Lee’s Betrayal of PAP and Singapore

Whither Asian values

Art and Politicking (and in defence of art)

Opposition SDP unveils two new members (And reports on Rally 2)

SDP's Deepavali Message 2010

Pro-democracy group to hold first human rights film festival in Singapore

SM Goh: Why should I be working for people who don’t feel they belong over here?

More ex-detainees speak out : Political violence and the abuse of the ISA in Singapore

Reports on Alan Shadrake's trial

Review of Non-Dominant Discourse (Daily Serving)

My 2 part interview with The Online Citizen

For the purposes of my blog I will feature both parts in one post, but feel free to read Part 1 and Part 2 off The Online Citizen too.Face To Face with Seelan Palay (Part One)

Face To Face with Seelan Palay (Part 2)

SFD Election Consultation (2 Oct 2010)

Speeches at the SDP pre-election rally

My next art exhibition and SDP's pre-election rally!

CSJ refutes LKY on race, politics and immigration policy

Non-Dominant Discourse (My art exhibition this month)

SDP's Hari Raya video message 2010

A wish in September 2010

Chee Soon Juan responds to Lee Hsien Loong's ND speech

MDA questions Seelan over Francis Seow video

I will start my 1st prison term on Aug 11

SDP's National Day Message 2010 - The Young Ones

Singapore "hates Anwar Ibrahim", vows to back Najib in Malaysia

No one cares about the Youth Olympic Games except the Government

Human Rights Watch: Legal charges threat to freedom of expression

Let Me Decide: Video of Singaporeans on censorship

For the purposes of my blog I will feature both parts in one post, but feel free to read Part 1 and Part 2 off The Online Citizen too.

Face To Face with Seelan Palay (Part One)