In the 90s, the economy soared, and it was all about the 5Cs – cash, credit card, car, condo and country club membership. 20 years on, Mr Goh said this dream is within the reach of young Singaporeans, so long as they work hard for it. But the question is, should Singaporeans still be chasing this same dream today? Mr Goh said: “My own dream now is not about my own future. It is about the future of Singapore. If I have to reinvent the 5Cs, my dream is to help create the conditions for a generation of Singaporeans to have a good Career, live in Comfort, surrounded by Children, and be Considerate and Charitable.”

Source: CNA

Why have it as a dream?  The PAP should make it part of their manifesto and work towards attaining these 5 Cs.  Certainly we want good careers for ourselves (yep, it’s not only foreigners who want good jobs), comfort (no flood water in our homes please), children (how to if cost of living is high?), be considerate (the government included – be emphathetic to the businesses that lose money during ego events like YOG) and be charitable (don’t ill-treat the YOG volunteers please).

Downloadable here (in English and Mandarin).  Contributed by a reader.

In brief, the author argues that the notion of productivity to the government  is to maximise profits at the expense of the citizens.

I don’t remenber when it started.  Hell, let’s just start with Mas Selamat’s amazing escape that got the Ministy of Home Affairs all in a bind.  Then it was the minibond debacle and the MAS’ sudden paralysis and reluctance to help investors.  After that, I think it was the rojak affair, where the National Env Agency was caught sleeping and some lives were lost.  Then came the massive flooding in Bukit Timah that left the Environment Minister blaming the ‘freak weather’ instead of his own incompetence.  Of late, we had the intrusion of foreign talents (not terrorists) into a train depot and plenty more intrusions by ST reporters at bus depots.  I must also add PUB’s sheer incompetence to the list, for clearing critical drains once every 3 – 6 months.

Hmmm, should I also mention that infamous Tan Yong Soon who left his ENV officers to take care of matters whilst he learnt cooking in France?  Thank heavens he is back, else there could have been more floodings and poisonings.  What about the multitude of deaths in the SAF (2 were even shot by Thai civilians)? 

So who’s next?  Civil servants must be praying to their gods, fearing the worst for they know they will likely have to face the public when things go wrong (some ministers prefer to AWOL).   Perhaps these are signs that we really need a change in government, new blood to shake things up and people out of their incompetence and complacency.

From one of our readers

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THE Elections Department on Thursday announced that changes have been made to polling districts, a day after it released news of the electoral registers being updated.

On Thursday, a 113-page notification in the electronic version of the Government Gazette gave the details of what the polling district changes are.

Under the Parliamentary Elections Act, the Registration Officer may alter boundaries of polling districts within electoral divisions.

When changes are made, these must be announced in the Gazette.

Polling district changes were last announced exactly a year ago.

Changes to polling districts usually precede the preparation of voters’ registers.

 

Dear Cassandra Chew,

 

Do you know what Singaporeans want?

Singaporeans want an end to a political system where one man, that is Lee Kuan Yew, appoints the Prime Minister for the country. What a stupid Westminister system we inherited from the British colonial master!

What we want is to elect our own Prime Minister. Since we are already electing our President, we want the elected President to take over the full power of the Prime Minister to form the Cabinet, and subsequently run the country. Of if you still like the top post as the Prime Minister, change our Presidential election to that of a Prime Minister election. We certainly do not want one man to elect our head of state. Certainly, we do not want a single party, such as the PAP to elect the Prime Minister.

We the citizens of Singapore shall elect our President (or Prime Minister) who assumes the full power to form the Cabinet. Not just LKY. He had been a tyrant for 50 years and yet, we still want to give him the power behind the disguise of the winning political party to appoint the next PM or President one more time.

 

 

Changes to polling districts

Contributed by one of our readers.   Download the mandarin version here.

The third party Integrated Facilities Management (IFM) service market in Singapore is poised for growth. With outsourcing and privatization trends gaining momentum among establishments and the rising awareness of the need for environment-friendly practices, the market is set to benefit significantly. IFM services market in Singapore earned revenues of US$472.1 million in 2006 and is estimated to reach US$1,011.6 million in 2013

Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Terrance Duncan said, “The Singapore Government has played its part by taking the leading role in boosting such service within the country.”  Clearly, government transparency is boosting the demands for third party IFM services.

The government and other private establishments prefer to outsource non-core activities that involved janitorial, landscaping and certain engineering services. Resistance from in-house management is also expected to fade away as businesses start to pay more attention to only core activities within the organization. This should provide a boost to the third party IFM services market.

Duncan added, “Realizing the full potential of opting for third party IFM services will benefit the entire organization in the long run. Moreover, finding the right partner and carefully negotiating FM contracts will benefit a company’s bottom line.”

Major market segments have joined the bandwagon of adopting IFM services. However, third party service providers will need to aggressively market their products and ensure that all benefits are understood in a competitive market such as Singapore.

Please make a guess what are these so-called ”benefits”. 

The non-core activities which engaged IFM services mainly involved almost all workers from janitorial, landscaping and certain engineering services. These workers who have been working in these government sectors have, overnight, become the third party private establishments who contract their former jobs. However, in the process of this change in organizations, they are no longer the staff of the government.

Consequently, they have forfeited their remunerations such as employers’ central provident funds (CPF), medical insurance, annual leaves, annual bonus and the starting pay. I can understand the benefit of these restructuring if Singapore Government has an annual budget deficit. But, is it necessary to rob the insignificant wages from these lowest level workers when Singapore Government pocketed the remaining amount of S$2 billion from the annual budget?

In the coming election, are you going to cast your sacred vote to Lee Kuan Yew and his son again? If so, it is not them who are uncompassionate and merciless, but you are.

The MOH blog casts the spotlight on the Government’s cyberspace journey and what may lie ahead. While new media has been used previously, for purposes such as party recruitment or personal sharing with the electorate, this latest new media push has centred on healthcare issues and policies.  But despite the positive experience – and the 1,530 MOH Facebook users so far – it looks like Mr Khaw and MOH could remain the lone ministry voices in the blogosphere in the near future.

Source: TODAY

No one really takes the local press seriously.  When it states that the public views something positively, it is very likely that that is how the government thinks it should be viewed by the public.  Hence, MOH’s “positive experience” could be a self-alluded one.

Anyway, a MediaCorp check with six Government ministries found the majority have little intention to follow in MOH’s footsteps just yet.  The Education Ministry, for example, “has no plans to start a corporate blog”. The National Development Ministry, which is “reviewing” its online outreach and engagement efforts, also does “not have plans to blog currently”. 

A certain academic posits that new media may not work well for every Minister or Ministry. “This practice (blogging) may not be suitable for all the Ministers, perhaps because of the sensitive or strategic nature of their portfolio, their personal image and style, or other factors,” he added.

Personal image and style?  Hmmm.  Let’s not forget that ministers are politicians who need to reach out to the constituents, to listen, to emphathise and to help.  The web, in effect, is an extension of that outreach.  If a minister really cannot connect with the ground because of image issues or stylistics, he shouldn’t be a politician in the first place.

JOHOR BARU – The 23-year-old Singaporean woman detained last Thursday after passing through a state checkpoint without having her passport stamped cannot go home, although her husband is willing to pay a fine. Her Malaysian husband is willing to pay the RM500 (S$204) fine but freedom seems a distant dream because he claims the authorities (Immigration) told him they were still undecided about his wife’s situation. Indra was on her way to Singapore with husband S. Evaraj when the incident happened. She was sent to the Pekan Nenas detention centre on Dec 10. Meanwhile, Singapore’s consul in Johor Baru Tham Borg Tsien said the authorities had explained that they were still contemplating charging Indra in court. “We are still waiting for a decision and have yet to meet Indra,” he said.

Source: The Star

It’s been 6 days and our consul hasn’t seen the poor woman.   Elsewhere in the web, some Singaporeans have been speculating that the Malaysian authorities are just waiting for higher offers of ‘fines’.  I guess this is no longer ‘feasible’ given that the case is now reported in the press. 

Inefficiency and bureaucracy on the part of the Malaysians are not good reasons to deny her right to see the consul.  Our Foreign Affairs Ministry officials should start doing what we have been paying them to do post-haste.  Indra’s husband visited her for 10 minutes on Sunday where, he said, she cried and begged him to find a way to get her home.  Maybe if MFA officers had gotten their bonusses this year things might have been different for Indra.

The opposition has not dismissed the idea of using the internet to reach out to the voters on the “cooling-off” day which will be introduced in the next general election. Under the new law, the minimum campaign period will be extended from nine to ten days. All forms of mass rallies, home visits and public display of party symbols will be banned on the eve of polling day to enable voters to reflect “calmly” on their choice.

Source: The Temasek Review

Though PM Lee acknowledged that it would be difficult to enforce the law in cyberspace, he hoped the spirit and principle of the “cooling-off” period would be upheld by Internet users without elaborating on the topics they should refrain from writing or discussing.

“I can’t control several million videos on YouTube. But your website, what you are putting out in your own name, I think that should end on the day before cooling-off day,” PM Lee added.

Well, I can almost be certain that bloggers will continue to write about the campaigning and the controversies that arose in the past days.  Should the PAP refrain from using the Internet then, it will be a gross miscalculation on their part as net chatter could determine the decisions of the fence-sitters.

The web is too huge to be policed and the political costs are too huge for the PAP.  I think this ‘cooling-off day’ will benefit Singapore alright, but not as how Lee Hsien Loong intended.  It allows Singaporeans a day to consume free and adulterated information via political bloggers so that they can make the right choice in the polling booth.

We help ourselves. Don’t expect others to help

Tom Wright painted a bleak picture of Singapore’s property sector going forward at The Wall Street Journal. His article ended with the following:
“I’m yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel [for Singapore],” says Mr. Tan, the high-end broker.
We would expect people to continue to dig the dirt and tell it to [...]



Our skin isn’t as thick as it should be

The Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) organised a seminar on March 4 to discuss Singapore’s political blogosphere.  Tan Tarn How, Senior Research Fellow and Research Assistant Tan Simin presented their paper on trends observed in the blogosphere.  As reported in the TOC, the researchers identified the following limitations:

The online-offline firewall, while somewhat alleviated by offline [...]



Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew – The answer to the African problem?

Recently, I followed a thread “Democracy and Economic Growth” which started in PoliticsForum.org.   Apparently, members there often question the role of democracy in a developing nation. “During the wave of democratization in Africa during the 90s, many people had renewed hope for the continent, immediately equating newly established democracies to economic growth. Are these democracies [...]



Tell Singapore government: Ask them a question or give a suggestion

We informed people about the “Tell Singapore Government” subsite and have received some interesting reaction at some forums.
See: 3in1 Kopitiam, Sam’s Alfresco Coffee, Singapore Kopitiam, SgForums
Our responses to some of the comments are listed below. If we are not answering some other specific questions, that is because we do not know how.
 

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Our Singapore

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