The last month has brought all these questions into sharp focus, and the answers are proving difficult to come by. If you asked Singaporeans if there exists a Singaporean identity, most Singaporeans would answer in the affirmative. You might get hit with answers like the language, or perhaps the food. If probed further about what exactly makes us uniquely Singaporean, you might be hard pressed for an answer. You might hear vagueries like kiasu-ness or kiasi-ness, but you won’t come close to getting a definitive answer on identity like the French or Japanese.

But even as we struggle to define it, the Singaporean identity remains profoundly important to the Singaporean experience. The recent language debacle surrounding the release of the film Dear You is not just about Singaporeans wanting to see a film in its original language, its the yearning of a people who are desperate to connect to their roots and their culture. Culture is not everything for a country’s identity, but it is certainly a necessary component. There is a common perception that Singapore’s cultural scene is lacking, that perhaps in our fevour to industrialise and push into the First World we had neglected the development of our soul. When even our then acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth David Neo jokes about not having time to consume culture, something one might presume to be under his purview, you know how little this matters to the ones in charge.

But why does all this matter? It matters because if you want Singapore to flourish, if you want to pass on your heritage and your way of life to your children and beyond, then you have to protect our identity. So again, what is our identity? Maybe we can’t describe it, and we may struggle to define it, but in the immortal words of Justice Potter Stewart, “I know it when I see it”.

Problems on the horizon

A strong Singaporean identity is key to preserving Singapore as a whole. Already, cracks are appearing across society. Even as Prime Minister Lawrence Wong continues to push his “renewed social compact”, new problems are creeping over the horizon. Earlier last month, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) ordered social media platforms to block access to posts which were deemed to be targeting the Indian community in Singapore. Once again, the Singaporean mind was deemed to fragile and feeble to resist the allures of such malicious messaging, and our betters from the People’s Action Party (PAP) had to swoop in to shield us lest we devolve into vile racists.

Two things can be true at the same time. Are there foreign actors who seek to influence Singaporeans for their own nefarious purposes? Most definitely. But where there is smoke there is fire, and these videos are not stirring resentment out of thin air. There is a growing sentiment amongst Singaporeans that having imported foreigners into our society with little care for how these foreigners might integrate or assimilate, our society is now becoming more fragmented and at risk of being overrun by people who neither share our values nor our culture, and in that we risk losing the very thing that makes us Singaporean - our identity. These fears are no doubt exacerbated by the perception (whether true or false) that the PAP has shown little care about these concerns. While it is true that there are some who hide behind the guise of criticizing the Singapore-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), feigning concern about jobs and immigration to spew the most vile racist hate, it does not take away from the fact that there are valid concerns. Further, this clearly is not a race issue, there is just as much concern that foreigners from China (or PRCs as colloquially known by Singaporeans) are not integrating, or even bothering to integrate, into Singapore society. The Singaporean people have made leaps and bounds since the race riots of the 1960s, but still the PAP government will have you believe that race relations are just as fragile as they were when we were a fledging nation. Singapore does not have a racism problem, we have an integration problem.

The PAP already know there is an integration problem. They have repeatedly acknowledged the existence of the problem, but have yet to actually do anything about it. In a speech in February, Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong announced improved measures to help new citizens and Permanent Residents (PRs) through the Singapore Citizenship Journey and the newly introduced PR Journey. The cart has been put so far in front of the horse, it might as well not be hitched to the horse. Shouldn’t these immigrants have integrated, or at least show a penchant for integration, before being granted Singapore citizenship or permanent residency? The PAP will continue to insist that the problem is under control, while Singaporeans’ lived experiences will continue to inform them that the situation is getting worse. Who hasn’t encountered PRCs who either refuse or are unable to interact in English? Or encountered behaviour which would be incompatible with Singaporean culture? As the number of foreigners increase in Singapore, it becomes increasingly easy for them to avoid any integration by forming enclaves within our society. As always with PAP, the problem isn’t that there is a lack of integration, it is that there are people noticing that there is a lack of integration.

It is not racist to insist that immigrants have to conform and integrate into our society. It is true that Singapore is a multi-racial and multi-ethnic country, and the freedom to practice our cultures is what makes this country vibrant, but any and all cultures practiced must be second to and informed by our Singaporean identity. We must be Singaporean first and foremost before anything else if we are to succeed together, or our differences may very well tear us apart. Never let anyone use your own values against you. The PAP have already played the race card before, and to great success. In 1988, the PAP introduced the Group Representative Constituency (GRC) system, under the assertion that Singaporeans would be too racist to practice non-ethnic voting, the PAP sought to ensure that there would be forced minority representation in Parliament. And again in 2016, the PAP introduced the Reserved Elections, asserting that Singaporeans would not vote for a minority candidate, or that somehow certain races would always lose if pitted against other races (which itself is incredibly racist), the PAP introduced elections reserved specifically a race group if that race had not been represented in the presidency for a certain amount of time.

It is far easier to label opponents to GRCs and the Reserved Elections racists than it is to engage them on substantive points. Singaporeans might harbour suspicions that maybe the stated purpose of GRCs is not all that important given that the PAP do not seem too concerned1 about replacing the minority representative. In 2017, when Halimah Yacob vacated her seat to run for President, and again in 2023, when Tharman Shanmugaratnam vacated his seat to run for President, and again in 2026, when Faishal Ibrahim vacated his seat over some text messages. Or maybe Singaporeans might have the perception that the 2017 Reserved Elections were put in place specifically to prevent Dr Tan Cheng Bock from running given that he almost won in 2011. All this is to say that never let anyone use your own values against you. Singaporeans are rightly concerned about fostering a tolerant and diverse society where members of all races can thrive and succeed, but never let this be used as the reason for having to accept and tolerate values of others which are incongruous to the Singaporean identity.

Integration

Given the struggle to even define what the Singaporean identity is, it is perhaps difficult to figure out how best to integrate immigrants into our society. So much so that one might feel inclined to cut the PAP some slack, if they were not the same people who is also importing these foreigners with such reckless abandon. It becomes even harder to sympathise with the PAP when they refuse to even implement the simplest of integration measures. In 2023 then Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong shot down a proposal by the Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh to mandate an English test when assessing a person’s application for citizenship or permanent residency.

Singapore is a multi-racial country, and the business language of Singapore English. While not all Singaporeans can speak English, if you were to pick a language you would guess most Singaporeans could speak, it would be English. English has become our de-facto shared language. As more and more spaces in Singapore eschews the English language from their businesses, be it restaurant menus that are entirely in Mandarin or staff that will not communicate in English, Singapore becomes an ever more hostile place for our minorities. An English language test, and perhaps to go even further, mandating that businesses in Singapore have to at least have their customer facing staff and customer facing interfaces have an English option would actually be the bare minimum in trying to integrate foreigners into our society.

Minister Tong’s objections2 come across as disingenuous. He evokes his 96 year old grandmother who would not be able to pass an English test as a reason why such a test would be unfeasible, neglecting the fact that Singapore has changed so much so it would be unrecognisable to that same grandmother when she had first come to Singapore. This is not only to say times change, and we should also update our perimeters based on how society is today and not whether it would have made Ah Ma very sad 70 years ago, but also that Singaporeans who came a long time ago and those who are born here are different from those who wish to come here today, and should be treated differently.

The common rebuttal to all this is that “Singapore is a nation of immigrants”. This line is often said with a pompous finality, as if the debate has been settled. The implication is of course that because our ancestors were immigrants, we have no moral standing to deny foreigners who wish to immigrate to Singapore today. This rebuttal is only used by the most obtuse of people, those who are incapable of understanding nuance and context. When our ancestors emigrated from their home countries, Singapore was still in her infancy. While our ancestors might have escaped an even more dire situation back home, there was no promise of HDB ownership, or low income taxes and no capital gains taxes, or low crime, or a stable business environment. Our ancestors built these things. The immigrants today may also be fleeing destitute conditions, but they arrive in a Singapore which already has all these comforts. Citizenship is a balance of rights and obligations, whatever rights the state confers upon you has to be earned through your obligations to the state. Singaporeans born here today not only inherit these rights from their ancestors who have fulfilled their obligation by building this country, but also male Singaporeans today are still fulfilling their obligations through their service to this nation. So yes, there is a huge difference between immigrants of the past and immigrants of today.

The flood

With the growing consternation from Singaporeans over integration issues, and the PAP themselves admitting that there is an integration problem, why doesn’t the PAP simply slow down the rate of immigration to either allow for better integration, or until they actually figure out a way to integrate immigrants into the Singapore identity? The problem is that they can’t.

One might speculate over any number of reasons why the PAP insists on not just maintaining, but in many ways stepping up, their immigration policy. The first reason is obvious, and confirmed by the PAP many times, is the falling Total Fertility Rate (TFR). Singapore now boasts one of the lowest TFRs in the world, and immigration is seen as the quick fix. The second (perhaps more speculative) reason is that the PAP needs to continue to prop up the housing market, particularly the resale market for public housing, up.

In a dialogue with the Singapore Press Club last month, PM Wong spoke about the challenges that Singapore was facing with respect to TFR. Finally, after so many years, PM Wong acknowledged that just throwing money at the issue was a failing endeavour, something that was highlighted by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as far back as 2019. The new direction which the PAP is purportedly taking is actually encouraging - PM Wong indicated that they were exploring ways to make Singapore a place where families can flourish. The irony is that the aggressive immigration policies of the Singapore government is the exact kind of policy which discourages families from procreating. There is an increasing feeling amongst Singaporeans that you are being crowded out of your own country as basic necessities like housing become ever more expensive, and that the competition for jobs is becoming ever tougher. It is a vicious cycle - the more the TFR drops, the more foreigners the government feels inclined to import, and the more foreigners are imported, the more the TFR drops.

As our TFR drops, the government faces yet another problem. The Goh Chok Tong era policy of treating public housing as an asset instead of a home is now coming home to roost. Since the PAP made sweeping changes to the resale market in 1989 (including removing the income cap for resale-buyers, allowing PRs to buy resale flats, and allowing HDB owners to buy private property), the price of HDB flats on the resale market have been on a constant upward trajectory. This is by design. Since Goh Chok Tong in the 1990s until now, the PAP has been selling the idea that HDB flats are not only your home, but also your “nest egg” in retirement, an policy recently reiterated by PM Wong. Since most Singaporeans buy housing using money from their Central Providend Fund (CPF) accounts, what would ordinarily be a retirement fund is now “invested” in their homes, and their houses have quite literally become their retirement fund. With a declining TFR, it would be impossible to prop up the resale market indefinitely, and eventually as the supply of old flats outstrips the demand, the prices would inevitably come crashing down. While it would take a lot to topple the PAP dynasty, a housing market crash is presumably one of the ways this could happen. The rush to increase the amount of PRs in Singapore is therefore no surprise. The market needs new buyers, and PRs can only buy from the resale market.

To be clear, nobody is actually asking for a complete halt of immigration, there will always be gaps in our economy that need to be filled. But there is such a thing as too much, and this is merely a call to slow down before we lose something that we may never recover.

The next 50 years

In his 2015 National Day Rally speech, then Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong reads a letter which recounted a conversation involving his late father Lee Kuan Yew. In response to the question, “Will there be a Singapore 50 years from now?” the usually reticent Mr Lee replied with a confident, “Of course there will be… even better!”

Perhaps there will be a Singapore 50 years from now, but would it be one that any of us here now will recognise? Will the demographics of this Singapore in 50 years even be the same as the one today, or will we just be overrun by a different culture from a different country? The fledging Singaporean identity is so young, and so fragile, that it would not take much to overwhelm. Like the Ship of Theseus, with its parts slowly stripped off and replaced, Singapore might still be there, but will it still exist?

There is only one way to stop the rapid import of foreigners into this country, and that is at the ballot box. Can Singaporeans even stomach stopping the rapid influx of foreigners, given that it comes with the cost of their housing values? Housing reform is of course possible, but the web of problems facing Singapore is not so easily untangled. Ironically, whichever party that actually fulfills the promise of housing reform and slowing our immigration numbers will undoubtedly lose the following election if Singaporeans even get a whiff of falling housing prices.

As we head into the future, the current leadership slate of the PAP does little to inspire confidence. The jokes write themselves: we have a Minister for Culture who has no time to partake in culture; a head of the fertility task force who does not have any children; our labour union chief has never held a job outside the government; and who knows when was the last time our Minister for Transport sat in a bus.3

Ultimately Singaporeans have to decide for themselves what kind of country we want to live in. Or we can stand idly by as our culture and identity is slowly eroded, and our chicken rice stores are replaced by mala tang outlets, and our heartlands are overrun by massage parlours. If there is a happy ending to be found, Singaporeans will have to look for it themselves.

Coming home to roost

The first of these is finalising the details of the Voluntary Early Redevelopment Scheme (VERS). First announced in August 2018, VERS was introduced as a “long-term plan” to redevelop ageing HDB flats. Depending on how you looked at it, the scheme was either an evolution or a replacement of the more generous Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme (SERS) scheme, which has been phased out by the government. If you were a more cynical person, you might think that VERS was quickly announced to appease Singaporeans after the news that their HDB flats would be returned to the government after the 99 year leases expired, effectively rendering them worthless at the 99 year mark. After years of selling HDBs as an ever increasing asset, there would be no escaping the fact that eventually a 99 year lease would expire, and thus VERS was born.

After 7 years of kicking the can down the road, and 7 years without revealing any details of VERS despite frequent questions about it during question time in Parliament, the government will finally have to announce the details by this term, as the first HDB flats are slowly approaching 70 years old, the age which VERS would be applicable. Perhaps it is only fitting that PM Wong would be the one to end up revealing the details of VERS, after all he was the Minister of National Development in 2018 when it was announced, and it would be his ministry that began work on the scheme, and now we have come a full circle.

The scheme would be a nightmarish tightrope to navigate. Offer too much for the buy back and it would risk overheating an already heated property market. Offer too little and it could result in an overnight crash of the housing market. And even if the PAP somehow got the amount exactly right, it still would not resolve the underlying contradiction that public housing is simultaneously supposed to be an ever appreciating asset and that at the end of its 99 year lifespan it has to be returned to the government for no compensation.

All this makes for an incredibly unsatisfying situation: the PAP’s big-brained solution that has been cooking for 7 years is merely a small band-aid over a problem which is likely to rip open at the seams in the future. But perhaps that is the hope, that every small patch is just enough to maintain the status quo and tide it over to the next government. It is a dangerous game of pass the hot potato, and Lawrence Wong has better hope it does not end up with him.

The Singaporean identity

The second problem this government will have to solve is even greater than what could be the complete collapse of our public housing system, and pose even more dire consequences for Singapore. It concerns the fate and the future of a nation. It is the identity of the people.

The struggle to find and define the Singaporean identity is not a new one. If you ask 4 Singaporeans what it means to be Singaporean you might get 6 answers back. Nobody quite knows what it means to be Singaporean, and yet we do feel it quite keenly that there is something that differentiates us from the rest of the world. In a recent dialogue at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong tackled the issue of identity. You can tell that SM Lee is a seasoned politician because he has mastered the art of speaking a lot and saying very little. To be fair to him, the Singaporean national identity is a difficult one to pin down.

Of the more controversial things that SM Lee said in the dialogue was that the Singaporean identity was not the most important part of many Singaporeans’ identities:

I think if we are honest about it, we would say the national identity as a Singaporean − it is important. But it is not the only one we have. And for many Singaporeans, it is not the most important part of his identity. If you poll them, you will find that for many Singaporeans, religion is a very important part of their identity − particularly for Muslims, particularly for Christians, and amongst the Christians, particularly amongst the non-Catholics. And there are other elements as well. Race is very important. Language is important, especially for the older generations.

- Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, 2025 Kent Ridge dialogue

And on the surface it would appear he is right. The Singaporean people have been conditioned (and in no small part helped along by the policies of the PAP) to view themselves by race. It is all pervasive, from the moment you are born you have to be assigned a race, when you enter school you must pick a mother tongue, and when you apply for public housing your race determines where you can stay. Race plays a huge factor in what traditions one might uphold and practice. But if you dig a little deeper, it becomes clear that these identities are not layered on and separate from the Singaporean identity, it is informed by it. These identities exist in service to the Singaporean identity, and are not separate from the Singaporean experience, but are an integral and part of it. The Chinese or Indian or Malay in Singapore do not exist independent of their Singaporean identity, they are Chinese Singaporeans, Indian Singaporeans, or Malay Singaporeans. The Chinese Singaporean has more in common with their Malay or Indian neighbour than they do with a Chinese person from China.

Why else is there so much friction with the growing number of Chinese and Indians from China and India and the local populace? If our identities as Singaporean are so malleable and secondary to our greater identities as Chinese or Indians these newcomers should fit right in. It is not racist or xenophobic to demand that these foreigners assimilate to our culture and our identity. The Singaporean people may not be a monolith, but there is something that sets us apart from the rest of the world. Afterall, if you believe there is value to being Singaporean, and value to having Singapore, wouldn’t you want to preserve it?

Which is why it frustrates so many Singaporeans when the PAP brushes away these concerns. The PAP has spent more effort in the continuing integration of the races in Singapore by continuing their racial policies than they have in integrating foreigners in Singapore. So much so that the PAP would refuse to even consider something as simple as an English test as part of the requirement for Permanent Resident or citizenship. English is the business language in Singapore, and more importantly it is the lingua franca here, and that we might speak many other languages in Singapore is only important insofar as it adds to the rich patois of our common invention Singlish. It is essential to maintaining a multiracial and multicultural society. The weak reasoning eschewed by Minister Edwin Tong in evoking his non-English speaking grandmother failing a hypothetical English test is him being obtuse on purpose. Of course he understands that times have changed and Singaporean society has evolved with it, but he cannot help but invoke his grandmother in an attempt to garner sympathy for his position by reminding Singaporeans that some of our closest friends or relatives may not speak English. One has to wonder why the PAP maintains such stubborn opposition to such a popular idea, and a cynical person might speculate that introducing such a policy would curtail the PAP’s efforts to buoy the economy with immigration at any cost.

How can we preserve our identities as Singaporeans? How can we continue this country? The answer according to SM Lee, you have to contribute to feel like you belong:

There are any number of volunteering opportunities and service opportunities including participating in all kinds of campus activities. Basically roll up your sleeves and do something. Giving feedback is useful. Sharing views and discussions is good. Attending dialogues I’m very happy you came. But I hope that beyond listening and tracking what is happening, you will decide there are some things you want to do, some ways you want to make Singapore better. Let’s get together with your friends and do something about it. It can be cleaning the beach. It can be greening the environment. It can be doing social work, taking care of down and outs. It can be promoting entrepreneurism, entrepreneurialism, any number of issues. But be committed, do something, make Singapore better. In doing it, you will find that you will feel yourself belonging to this place. Otherwise, if you just sit there, you’ll be asking yourself, why do I feel I belong to this place? I could be sitting anywhere. But if I’m doing something here, that’s where home is… So how to feel belonging? I think own this place and make a difference to it.

- Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, 2025 Kent Ridge dialogue

In and of itself this is a great answer. SM Lee is right, the grass isn’t greener on the other side, it is greener where you water it. This answer would also have been better if the PAP had not politicised every aspect of community in Singapore. From the Resident Committees to the People’s Association (PA), the PAP has preempted any ground up community initiative and replaced it with a structured top down body. Whether rightly or wrongly, most Singaporeans perceive the PA and their Grassroots Organisations to be political. If the PAP were truly sincere about building community, these institutions should be free from even the perception of politicisation.

There is also a chicken and egg problem to this: most people will only contribute if they feel a sense of community, but to foster this sense of community they’re encouraged to contribute to it. All Singaporean men face this when called to serve. Part of our social compact that PM Wong loves to drone on about in his promotion of Forward SG is that as citizens we have rights and obligations. In serving our obligation to the state, there is an increasing feeling that the reciprocal rights are not as forthcoming. There is a growing disillusionment amongst Singaporean men about their service to this nation; after all, when almost half the people on this island are non-Singaporean, it begs the question what are you actually defending?

Ultimately the people have to be responsible for fostering their own national identity and community, but the government should at least do everything in its power not to undermine and damage it.

There is perhaps no other time which national identity is more important than now. Why does it matter so much? Because it concerns the fate of the nation. The Total Fertility Rate is at an all time low. Cost of living (of which the public housing crisis mentioned above plays a huge role) is only one part of the equation of why Singaporeans are not having children. National identity rests on the other end of that equation. People need to feel that there is a culture worth preserving, that their children are inheriting a country worth fighting for. That we are all merely links in a long chain of people to serve this nation, and that we are mere custodians of this little red dot we call home. That Singapore’s worth is not what we feel entitled to receive, but what we can provide for future generations of Singaporeans to come. All this comes from the recognition that our nation, and our identity, is worth preserving, and worth passing on.

We could in theory continue importing more foreigners to replace the lack of Singaporeans. Like the Ship of Theseus, we could replace this country bit by bit, until nothing remains of the original ship, or of the original country. But would this be a country that we would want to live in? The tragedy is that in trying to keep the ship together by replacing the parts, the quicker the ship deteriorates, and the more of the ship requires replacing.

The next 5 years could very well determine the future of this nation.

On the next issue of The Week we discuss the first sitting of Parliament and the various speeches.

Perhaps it would be better to start on the agreements before figuring out how to parse the disagreements. The COE is a quota on the amount of vehicles in Singapore, a representation of a scarce resource, in this case, road space. Both Associate Professor Lim and SM Lee both agree that a form of quota is necessary, this was never in contention. The irony of car ownership in Singapore is that if everyone owned a car it would make driving in Singapore so undesirable that most people would rather not have a car. The disagreement then is over how to distribute the COEs.

What sort of system should Singapore have?

The current COE system is a monthly tender where the COEs are auctioned out, and whoever wins the tender pays the lowest qualifying bid for their COE rather than the amount they had actually bid. The COEs are distributed by the market, and whoever can afford the COEs will get them, which skews car ownership disproportionately towards the wealthy in society. The main contention that Associate Professor Lim had was that the market has no means or mechanism to account for needs, and some people who need it more but would be unable to afford the COE would have to do without a car.

Any argument that appeals to human empathy is likely to be an enticing one, and after all the free market for all its prowess is a machine without a conscience, and it is often blind to societal needs. This is what most people think the government is for: to plug the gaps that the free market cannot account for. But it is also easy to sympathise with SM Lee and the government - designing a system which accounts for every human need is impossible, because the needs of humans are not only endless, but near impossible to quantify.

It is easy to see perhaps that a family with young children - children which need to be sent to school, or the doctor’s, or to any number of activities and appointments a child may have - would require a car more than an unmarried individual who may only use a car for the daily commute or for leisure on the weekends. It is also easy to see how a person who has to care for an elderly parent, particularly if that parent is ill and requires weekly trips hospital, may need a car more than the unmarried individual. However it is more difficult to ascertain if the family or the caregiver requires the car more. And therein lies the problem: how can you design a system which accounts for needs if it is so difficult to quantify these needs?

Imagine a more equitable system

Is it possible to imagine a more equitable system? Not for SM Lee, who believes that such a system would fail from its own complexity. It is also worth noting that neither Associate Professor Lim and Ravi Philemon (who chimed in to join the conversation) had proposed any concrete solutions to the system, and while Associate Professor Lim merely wished to adjust the current system to include a more targeted system to achieve social objectives, Mr Philemon is more intent on tearing down the system and building a new one.

The issue Singaporeans have with the current system is two-fold: first that the price of the COE is now so high that everyday Singaporeans might soon struggle to afford one; and second COEs are not distributed by need. On the surface these are one and the same issue, or perhaps two sides of the same coin, for if the COE prices were lower those who need them could afford them. However with an ever increasing population and a scarce resource which does not, COE prices can only go up. SM Lee is right in his estimation that the only way prices come down is an increase to the supply in COEs. To that end the Peoples’ Action Party’s (PAP’s) solution to this problem is highly unsatisfactory: the cut and fill strategy of borrowing from future COEs to fill in current demand to smooth out the prices of COEs is merely a stopgap measure, it does not address the long term increase in COE prices, and worse yet it is borrowing from the future to pay for our present, appeasing current voters at the expense of future ones.

If we accept that prices of the COE cannot come down because we are unwilling to increase the quota of vehicles, then the only other way is to see if it can be distributed without an auction. SM Lee alluded to this during the dialogue, where he says that there are cities and countries that distribute the COEs using a raffle. While he did reject the concept, he did not elaborate on why it wasn’t suitable for Singapore. It would be the most equitable way of distribution, but it is not without problems. A person might win the raffle and own a car and under-utilise it. It is also a completely random system that does not account for the needs of people.

One could imagine a system that could account for needs. At the risk of oversimplifying the problem, and to make it easier to parse, let us for this hypothetical system only consider families as parties who might have a greater need for a car, rather than considering the whole slew of people with various disabilities or caretaking responsibilities or needs. A possible solution could look like this:

1. There can be a separate category of COEs available for families which are either free or priced with a nominal fee. These COEs are not subject to the tender process, but rather distributed via a raffle.

2. Families can combine as a unit to increase their chances in winning this raffle. For example, each family member living in the same household can ballot together to win the raffle, so if you have a family of 5 you would have a greater chance of winning the raffle than if you were a family of 3 (i.e. if you were a family of 5 you would have 5 individual chances of winning rather than 3 chances).

3. One family unit can only own one car, and would not be able to win another COE until the current one is expired. Should the family decide to forfeit the COE, it would go back to the government rather than sold to another individual.

4. This does not replace the COE tender system, but it would drain the current number of COEs available for tenders.

Of course, the can of worms that SM Lee did not want to open is now on full display. Should the raffle be limited to families who earn below a certain threshold, or should all families be able to apply, regardless of income level? Does it discriminate by type of housing? Or housing location? A family which lives away from an MRT station would certainly “need” a car more than one who lives right next to one. And all this is before accounting for other needs (like disabilities and caretakers), and only accounting for families. But it is possible, in theory, to craft a more equitable system. Whether that system will fail under its own weight might be a different question, and perhaps one for someone more learned to consider. The harsh truth might be that perhaps it is too difficult to design for a system of empathy.

And even if such a system were to be implemented, there would still be plenty of unhappiness surrounding the system depending on what needs are prioritised over others.

The public transport solution

Perhaps the true solution to the COE problem has always been this: the public transport system. Part of the problem is that Singapore has been designed for cars. It is just that much more convenient to own a car than not. The entire infrastructure is built around these roads.

If we have a public transport system which is as efficient or more so than travelling by car, there would be less of a need to own a car. Credit where credit is due, the government is working at creating such a system, and perhaps the true test to this will be in 2040 when all the lines are open. Perhaps a truly comprehensive public transport system, one which will do away with the need for a car will only be possible if the cost of public transport is higher. It remains to be seen if Singaporeans will be willing to pay more for such a system, given how much Singaporeans complain every time there is a fee increase.

One could possibly imagine a Singapore better designed for walking and public transport, rather than a Singapore designed for cars. Where cycling paths are integrated into our infrastructure, rather than added as an afterthought. Until then, the COE prices will continue to feature as part of our cost of living debates.

The failure of the Opposition

With the conclusion of the election, there now exists three tiers of Opposition parties. At the very top, the Workers’ Party (WP) now sits alone on the throne, unchallenged by any of the other parties, breaking head and shoulders away from its closest competitors in 2020, the Progress Singapore Party (PSP) and the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP). The PSP and SDP occupy the middle tier, despite having lost significant margins since 2020 they’ve still managed to garner about 30 to 40 percent of the vote, which places them above the bottom pack of everybody else.

The title of this section may be a bit of a misnomer for WP, because by all accounts they’ve had a very successful election. Not only have the WP retained all their previously held seats, across all the constituencies that they contested they have managed to accrue a 50.5 percent vote share. It would remain to be seen if the WP would enjoy such success if they were to contest more seats to the point of challenging the PAP’s parliamentary majority, after all, the WP’s successes in recent years have all been on the back of a “checks and balances” campaign, where the entire strategy is based on reassuring Singaporeans that even if they win all their contested seats, they would not have enough seats to form the government. This election also sees WP make a clean break from the rest of the Opposition, electing to leave the Marine Parade–Braddell Heights Group Representation Constituency (GRC) empty as opposed to coordinating with other Opposition parties. There is of course no obligation for any political party to cede territory or coordinate with other parties - the Opposition is not a monolith despite the tendency for the Singaporean public to view them as such. While the WP have previously as early as 2019 already made allusions to breaking from this concept of “Opposition unity”, it is nice to see the WP take a clear position on this. Perhaps this will finally pave the way for the Opposition in Singapore to shed this expectation of unity and forge their own independent identities.1

For the PSP, one cannot help but feel that this might have been their last chance in a long time to get a team into Parliament. This will be the last election for the face of the party, Dr Tan Cheng Bock, who will be stepping down due to old age. The rest of the slate is not faring any better. There is some truth to the perception that the PSP is the party of old men. The biggest blow to the party is losing their Non-constituency Member of the Parliament (NCMP) seat, which was their biggest boon (or perhaps in the hands of Leong Mun Wai , their biggest curse) in the last Parliamentary cycle. Maintaining relevance is a struggle for Opposition parties outside of Parliament, where outside of the incredibly short election campaigning period every five years, public displays of politics is largely frowned upon. The next 5 years will be crucial for the party, and it will either culminate in a successful rebuild around Mr Leong and Ms Hazel Poa, or the slow decline into irrelevance.

The SDP suffers a similar fate, losing vote share from 2020 to 2025. Once again, Dr Chee Soon Juan has come within a hair’s width of getting elected, and one has to wonder how many more years he has before he too has to retire from politics. There are serious questions after coming so close so many times whether Dr Chee’s past fiery temperament and original sin in his part of Mr Chiam See Tong’s departure from SDP is an insurmountable challenge to his political aspirations. There is also the concern that like Dr Tan, Dr Chee’s personal popularity does not translate across to his party, with only Dr Chee’s constituency breeching 40 percent of the votes. It yet may well be the case that Dr Chee will eventually grace Parliament, though like his mentor Mr Chiam before him, it remains to be seen if he can bring along his party and any real change along with him.

Opposition wipeout

The warnings of “Opposition wipeout” is starting to ring hollow, especially when it is coming from Pritam Singh, and especially when he gave this warning not just in 2025 but also in 2020, and especially when the WP is commanding a greater vote share than ever.

The same cannot be said for the bottom tier of Opposition parties. These parties are now on the cusp of complete wipeout, their political efforts thoroughly rejected at the voting booth and their very existence reviled by the Singaporean populace. In what is now increasingly common in Singaporean parlance, some of these parties are referred to as “clowns”, and there will no no tears shed should they cease to exist.

If any of these parties are to survive, they will need to escape this perception that is slowly cementing in the Singaporean psyche. The era of “Opposition unity” is over, and parties will either need to distinguish themselves from the Goh Meng Sengs and Lim Teans of the Opposition to rise alone, or risk sinking together as a whole. The fear for the newer parties is that they will not be given the time or the chance to do so, and that the ship is already sailing towards a 2 or 3 party ecosystem in which they will have no part of.

The unfortunate thing about failure is that the stench is incredibly difficult to wash off. People like winners, and there exists some people who like to vote for who they think will win rather than who they think should win. The failures of this election cycle may well very be the start of a self-fulfilling spiral, where some smaller parties are deemed unfit and unserious because of their poor election results, leading to poor election results in the future. Singaporeans will do well to remember that even the WP took over 50 years to finally become what it is today, and to write off the newer parties today may yet prove premature. That said, nobody is owed a vote, and parties will quickly need to distinguish themselves to earn a place in the political landscape.

The government we deserve

“Singaporeans get the government they deserve” - Kenneth Jeyaretnam

For better or for worse, the Singapore people have made it clear that they want a PAP government. And why not? It is the perception of the Singaporean people that every Opposition party is basically offering the same policies as the PAP, albeit with slight tweaks or changes. If Singaporeans are not convinced that the Opposition has no vision for Singapore, why would they vote for a watered down version of the PAP’s vision? You might say that the existence of the WP proves that Singaporeans do want an Opposition, it’s just that they want credible Opposition. But one could argue that the fact that the WP is the most successful Opposition party in Singapore is not evidence against the proposition that Singaporeans want a PAP government, on the contrary it is evidence for that proposition.

The WP have often been accused of being PAP lite, and they’re not doing a good job of shaking those allegations. The WP’s entire platform is based on “checks and balances”, which suggests that they believe that the course the PAP has charted for Singapore is fundamentally right, that WP’s role is to prevent the PAP from exercising their worst excesses. Their entire election strategy is predicated on not being able to form government, making it safe to elect them. It is highly likely that the WP would never have achieved that 50.5 percent vote share across their constituencies should they contest more constituencies. For the Singaporean who wishes for a PAP government and PAP policies, but yet have to voice their discontent and distaste for the PAP, the WP might be the perfect vehicle. Perhaps this is the furthest from the PAP the Singaporean electorate is able to stomach.

There is some encouraging data from the election: the two independent candidates2 that ran managed to accrue a significant vote share in the constituencies that they contested. Perhaps it would be foolish to extrapolate these two isolated races to a larger Singapore, but this seems to suggest that Singaporeans are looking for a change, just that none of the Opposition are able to summon a platform which can resonate with the Singaporean people. This also seems very much in line with the 2001 IPS survey, in which 69.8 percent of participants answered that “Singapore would benefit from having more political parties in Parliament”.

What would it take to see change in Singapore? There are Singaporeans who yearn for this change, should there be a party to grab it. The PAP does not have all the answers: there is something lacking in the way the country is run, and the people can feel it. The TFR is at a historic low, and looks to be trending further down - the Singaporean people are dying out, and there seems to be no solution in sight. Housing prices is at an all time high. Singapore is consistently ranked as one of the most stressful countries in the world.

The first party in Singapore to present an alternate vision for Singapore which addresses these problems will be the first party to finally galvanise the Singapore people to vote for change. It will have to be platform about hope: it needs to lay out a direction and plan for a successful Singaporean society. It cannot merely point out the problems of the PAP government, because the Singaporean people are acutely aware of these problems, they just do not see a way out of them. This platform will need to revitalise what it means to be Singaporean, and if Singapore and Singaporeans are to survive for the next 60 years, it will need to be focused around strengthening the concept of citizenship, and the rights and responsibilities that come with it.

The time for pencil pushers and bureaucrats is over. It will take a true visionary to get us there, whether it is Lawrence Wong at the helm of the PAP or an Opposition party that has finally found the way. Singaporeans will have to find the courage to demand the change we wish to see, or live content with the path we have chosen.

Nobody likes a hypocrite

If you want to know what the PAP is guilty of, you need only see what they are accusing others of. Of all the sins, hypocrisy is perhaps the worst. Nothing is worse than being preached to about wrongs by someone who has done the same thing.

Ong Ye Kung accuses Dr Chee Soon Juan of abandoning Bukit Batok

In his rally speech on the 24th, Ong Ye Kung accuses Dr Chee of abandoning the residents of Bukit Batok. Putting aside what it actually means to abandon residents for which you were never elected their representative, or the fact that Bukit Batok SMC no longer actually exists after the redrawing of the electoral boundaries, following his logic every PAP candidate that has ever switched constituencies must explain to voters why they did so. As expected, the rebuttal by the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) was swift and brutal, exposing the hypocrisy of the 11th hour candidate swaps of Dr Tan See Leng and Gan Kim Yong.

Perhaps what made it even worse was that Ong Ye Kung himself was also guilty of swapping constituencies. After his failed electoral attempt in 2011 in Aljunied GRC, he was elected into Parliament in 2015 as part of Sembawang GRC. This kind of rake-stepping behaviour is usually a hallmark of the Opposition, though perhaps now that the PAP members find themselves outside the safety of Parliament, and without the benefit of media cover, they cannot help but engage in these same self defeating behaviours.

Tan See Leng to his credit tried to explain why his switching constituencies did not amount to abandonment:

“It was a walkover. It was a walkover. It was a walkover. I’ve said it three times. There’s no abandonment here.” - Tan See Leng

Either Tan See Leng thinks he’s summoning Beetlejuice, or he thinks that like reciting Hail Mary 3 times he has absolved himself of any sin. The logic here does not follow: how does a walkover make it any less of an abandonment? Walkover or not, he is still not representing the constituents of Marine Parade-Bradell Heights GRC.

The PAP urges all parties to reject foreign interference and reject identity politics

On the 26th, PM Lawrence Wong called on all parties to reject identity politics. This came after several foreigners made posts asking Singaporeans to vote along racial and religious lines. This has now become a PAP talking point, featuring in both SM Lee’s speech at the Jalan Kayu rally and PM Wong’s speech at the Choa Chu Kang rally.

Is there a party in Singapore that practices identity politics more than the PAP? This is the party which introduced the Reserved Elections, which might have been the single most damaging policy to racial equality in Singapore. This was the insinuation that somehow Singaporeans were too racist to vote in a minority President without government intervention, despite the fact that Tharman Shanmugaratnam was elected in a non-reserved election in the election right after the Reserved Election. The Reserved Elections raised the biggest middle finger to racial equality: the idea that for a minority to reach the highest office in the land they needed a leg up in their very own special elections. Perhaps not so surprising from the party that believed that Singapore was not ready for a minority Prime Minister.

This is also the same party who introduced the Group Representative Constituency system, solely built on the supposed belief that Singaporeans would not vote in minority candidates. This is also the party that is so obsessed with race, that from the moment you are born, you have to be registered by your race, that your public housing eligibility is dependent on race. All these policies are PAP policies.

Perhaps the most ridiculous thing to come of this was this portion of SM Lee’s speech:

“This has been going on for some time, but now after the PAP government stood up and put its position out clearly and acted to block the foreign sites, all the other parties straight away within days say, ‘I also agree, I also agree, I also agree.’ You didn’t notice? You didn’t know? Or buat bodoh?” - SM Lee Hsien Loong

This is a classic PAP move. PM Wong first makes a statement challenging the Opposition to “make their positions clear” on foreign interference along racial and religious lines, then after the Opposition parties agree that foreign interference is bad, claim that without the PAP nobody else would have condemned this. These are supposed to be our thought leaders? It’s akin to asking all Opposition parties to make clear their position on murder, and once everyone has denounced it claim that the PAP was the first to denounce murder. Understandably, politicians have to politic, but this is politicking on the most performative level.

Also, speaking of foreign interference, isn’t this your wife?

Nobody likes insincerity

It would appear that part of the PAP strategy this election is the tried and true call for a “strong government”. In the first political party broadcasts on the 25th, PM Wong had this to say:

“After the dust from the campaign settles, the contest will not be the PAP versus the Opposition, it will be Singapore versus the world. A turbulent world with a multitude of external challenges and threats. The outcome of the election will determine how effective your government will be in serving you.” - PM Lawrence Wong

The insinuation of course is that the more PAP members you vote into Parliament, the stronger the government will be. This was echoed throughout various rally speeches by the PAP.

How sincere is the PAP at creating the strongest government possible? Or the strongest Parliament to represent the country? One of the most repeated warnings by the PAP is that by voting in more Opposition members, you might inadvertently vote out essential ministers, the most obvious example being George Yeo when he was voted out in 2011. The irony of this is that the PAP has the tools to fix this very problem: they could abolish the GRC system. It would be extremely unlikely that key Ministers lose seats.

This also begs the question: how shallow is the PAP’s bench that they would have a weak government should they lose some seats to the Opposition? In the worst1 hypothetical scenario, the PAP loses almost half the seats in Parliament to scrape by with a 50 seat majority. Is the PAP saying they’re unable to field a competent government from their 50 members?

If the Prime Minister were truly committed to forming the strongest government and the strongest Parliament, he would remove any and all obstacles that have been put in place to create the most even playing field for the elections. This would allow for the people to choose the best candidates for the country, instead of letting backbenchers ride the coattails of Ministers into Parliament.

So when PM Wong calls for Singaporean unity against the world, one cannot help but feel that he isn’t being very sincere at all.

Nobody likes a biased media

If you did not watch The Roundtable on CNA, you should be grateful that you did not waste your time. This was a poorly disguised PAP rally speech masquerading as an attempt at helping voters choose which party they should vote for. Perhaps this was always going to be a weakness for traditional media: with the need for a short show and to fit in advertisements, CNA offered up one of the worst formats - a question and answer show where candidates (with the exception of the PAP) were given a paltry one minute to answer complex questions, and were not given any opportunity to interact with one another’s answers.

The short time to answer led to some of the most superficial answers. Candidates could not expound on their points, and if you wanted nuance from their answers you could forget about it. It was basically the scene from Miss Congeniality, where candidates tried to get in as many sound bites as they could. How was this supposed to help voters decide? What would help voters would be to see the candidates debate and discuss the issues.

Perhaps the highlight of the roundtable was when the host decided to “fact check” Ravi Philemon on his statement:

“Why do foreign wives of Singapore citizens only get LTVP and not PR or citizenship?” - Ravi Philemon

by saying, “Earlier, Mr Philemon said, ‘Foreign wives of Singapore citizens only get LTVP and not PR or citizenship.’ Well actually LTVP is not a prerequisite for PR or citizenship.” If you’re confused, it is because Mr Philemon never said LTVP was a prerequisite for PR or citizenship. This one incident best summed up the entire show: Who asked for this?

Nobody likes the state of our politics

Many issues from the previous term are now coming home to roost. Cost of living is featured front and center of this election. The ghost of the Income-Allianz deal is now coming back to haunt the PAP. Despite all these issues going against the PAP, come election day it is overwhelmingly likely that they will be returned to power.

The truth is that the PAP is right on some things. They are right that the Opposition is far from ready to form government, a fact that the Workers’ Party (WP) also acknowledges. But this is a situation of the PAP’s creation: like Frankenstein beholding his creation, if the PAP is revulsed at the state of our politics, they have only themselves to blame. Singapore’s political landscape is a unique one - we have effectively a one party system with various smaller parties that may on occasion express dissent but not effect any real change within our legislative system. Even if Singaporeans are unhappy with the direction the country is headed, there is no real alternative to a PAP government. The alternative would be voting in so many Opposition that either a PAP coalition will form government, or an Opposition coalition would have to take the helm. Either way could be a disaster for Singapore.

How many more election cycles would it take for either the WP or the Progress Singapore Party (PSP) to field enough candidates to form government? There is a perverse incentive to maintain the by-election strategy: it is a winning strategy. Singaporeans simply do not seem to have the stomach for a non-PAP government. The irony of this is that the PAP has the solution to every problem they have pointed out: from what SM Lee calls the “free-rider” problem, to having a “weaker government” if PAP ministers are voted out.

Will a declining vote share prompt the PAP towards electoral reform? Or will the PAP double down on legislation like POFMA or the Reserved Elections in a bid to preserve its power? Singaporeans in this election have to make clear what future they want for themselves, before it is too late.

Battles over these issues have been fought in Parliament, and last month the budget was debated and passed. You would be forgiven for not watching any of it: the budget debate was largely a masturbatory display, and there is only so many times you can listen to a People’s Action Party (PAP) back bencher wax lyrical about the wonders of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and government.1 But it is still important to go through the debate, because ideas are important and it is the sincere hope that it will be on the strength of these ideas that Singaporeans will be swayed at the voting booth - one way or the other. By far the most interesting and important part of the debate came at the end of the budget debate after Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s round up speech, and the subsequent clarifications that ensued. That speech and the answers that followed highlights the core philosophy of the PAP today, and betrays the lack of vision the PAP leaders have for the country.

We talking about surpluses?

“Sir, I would disagree with Mr Leong's characterisation of the PAP Government's policy as refraining or denying Singaporeans from funds, or keeping the funds and not leaving it in the pockets of Singaporeans, as he put it.” - Prime Minister Lawrence Wong

This was the crux of the debate between the PAP and the Opposition: are the Singaporean people better served if the money is with the government and spent on the behalf of the people, or are they better served if the money is in their own pockets and they can spend it however best they see fit?

The Opposition has done a terrible job in Parliament defending their position of excess surpluses. Part of the reason is this obsession with “non-adversarial” politics, the roots of which could probably be traced back to the Worker’s Party’s (WP) ascent to power, where as part of their strategy to garner votes the WP has advocated for a more constructive style of politics. And who could blame them? This was a winning tactic, and has only won them more seats in Parliament. Singaporeans, having witnessed the fistfights in the Taiwanese legislature and a turbulent Trump term, prided ourselves on our “boring” brand of politics, the less adversarial the better. Now, every Opposition party is emulating this approach in hopes of gaining traction in their own campaigns.2

Far be it for this writer to be seen as being overly critical of our Opposition, but precisely because the job is so difficult and the odds so stacked against them that it is imperative that they perform. This is not a call for oppositional or adversarial politics, where opposing parties oppose for the sake of opposing. But it is possible to disagree with the policies even if you agree with the policy objectives, and it is possible that the PAP’s ideas are not always what is best for the country. Sometimes, a line needs to be drawn in the sand, and a stronger push for ideas and policies in Parliament does not mean the Opposition is being adversarial.

The PAP on the other hand is not bound by such constraints. There is of course no incentive for the PAP to come to any compromise with the Opposition given their overwhelming super-majority. But even beyond that, there is a proclivity for the PAP to treat Opposition policy positions and arguments with a certain disdain: arguments are rarely treated with charity (in many cases outright strawmanned),3 and in the most egregious cases members can be outright mocked. This has allowed the PAP to frame the conversation in their favour.

“I find it strange that we have spent all this time trying to defend a surplus, while most developed economies in the world are begging for a surplus. [Applause.]” - Mr Neil Parekh, Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP)

All this culminates in NMP Neil Parekh dropping the line above, a line which has since been repeated throughout the Committee of Supply debates by various ministers, including PM Wong and Minister Vivian Balakrishnan. It is of course easier to pretend that the Opposition is concerned about having a surplus than to debate the Opposition about whether the people, rather than the government, are better placed to decide how best to spend their money.

Whose money is it anyway

And this is the whole point in asking if the government has over-burdened Singaporeans in creating a surplus for the budget: while surpluses are a good thing for a country, there is a cost to them - the money has to come from somewhere. This is the core PAP philosophy: that the government should collect and spend on behalf of the people, because it knows what is best for the people. It is a philosophy that started with Lee Kuan Yew and persists to today: “We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.”

While that might have been the best course forward in a country strapped for resources and a fledging government struggling to survive against the odds, today the situation could not be more different. Singapore today is one of the wealthiest countries per capita in the world. The people are one of the most educated. The government has also changed: we no longer have visionaries like Lee Kuan Yew leading us. What is so wrong with letting the people decide what is best for themselves?

It is disingenuous that PM Wong pretends that Mr Leong is concerned that the government is hoarding the funds and not spending it. Everyone understands that the purpose of government is the collection and spending of tax revenue on behalf of a country, the issue is what the spending is on. Nobody is complaining about new trains, or new hospitals, or paying our soldiers. But to pretend that every Singaporean agrees with and appreciates spending on the Community Development Council (CDC) mayors, or that Singaporeans are enthusiastic about NS Square or Founders’ Memorial, or the S$900 million spent on SPH Media Trust, just to name a few.4 The objection is not to government spending, it is to government spending Singaporeans don’t want.

The needs of every Singaporean is different, and each person is best suited to decide for themselves how best to spend their money. Afterall, what good are SkillsFuture credits when you’re trying to pay for your child’s tuition fees or trying to keep an ailing business afloat? The government cannot and should not be a panacea for every problem. But the systemic push to make it so by introducing government to every facet of life, and by making the poorest among us increasingly dependent on government handouts creates a vicious cycle of dependency.

This then is the argument against the surplus: there can and should be a different vision for Singapore, one where Singaporeans have more money in their pockets to spend on themselves, instead of the government spending on their behalf. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the housing crisis we face today.

Our housing crisis

Strictly speaking, Singapore is not in a housing crisis at the moment. The prices are high, but by the design of the PAP they are still affordable. But like an albatross around the neck, the specter of housing will continue to haunt Singaporeans so long as the fundamental contradiction of our public housing system exists: the government wants housing to be both an asset and store of value for Singaporeans in old age, while simultaneously being affordable to younger generations of Singaporeans. It cannot realistically be both: for it to remain a store of value it has to indefinitely appreciate, and for it to remain affordable to younger generations it cannot indefinitely appreciate. Something has eventually got to give.

Cost of living will be the key issue in this year’s election, and at the center of that will be the cost of housing. For many people housing will be the single most expensive purchase of their lives, and the single most expensive thing they will own in their lifetimes. Reducing the cost of this one purchase can single handedly free up capital for the pursuit of other more important endeavours: the extra cash flow can encourage many more Singaporeans to try their hand at business and innovation, or it can be used as the seed funding for their children’s future. The money can be invested in an actually productive industry rather than used to fuel the speculation of land prices, and it could be just the thing that is needed to jumpstart our ailing stock exchange. In a land scarce country like Singapore land should never be a commodity for speculation. This will also remove the incentive to continuously participate in property leapfrogging to maximise the value of your property, another huge benefit as only the truly sick and perverse enjoy moving houses.

The PAP is content keeping the status quo insofar as it extracts as much as the Singaporean population can bear, this is the PAP’s definition of affordable housing: the most Singaporeans can pay without the entire system failing. Nothing betrays the lack of vision this new generation of leadership has than maintaining the fundamental contradiction: out of one corner of their mouths the PAP will preach to the homeowners that their store of value in their assets is secure, but out of the other corner they will whisper to aspiring homeowners that housing is affordable. The introduction of Plus and Prime flats combined with ever increasing amounts of subsidies serve to kick the proverbial can down the road, but there is only so many times you can kick the can before it completely breaks down. Just over the horizon looms the inevitable expiration of HDB leaseholds, a ticking time bomb just waiting to destroy the bedrock of Singaporean society. There is no vision, no solution for the housing crisis - Voluntary Early Redevelopment Scheme (VERS) was announced two years ago and we have yet to hear any details.

There are solutions to public housing, but it would require political will and a stomach for short term pain. It will require a government that does not change their minds at the slightest hint of displeasure from the electorate,5 simply put it would take a government that is willing to do what is right and not what is simply convenient. It is of course doubtful that Singaporeans have the stomach for such pain, and perhaps PM Wong and the PAP are right in their estimations to continue with the status quo. But we are fast approaching the need for housing reform:

1. Remove land costs from housing prices. This is a popular Opposition suggestion - both PSP and SDP have suggested some variation of this in their manifestos. Removing the land cost and only charging the cost of construction would lower the cost of housing. The difference between buying a S$200,000 or cheaper house versus a S$400,000 or more house cannot be understated: it’s not just the cost of the house, one has to remember that often times amount paid for a loan after all the interest is extracted comes up to near double the loan quantum itself.

2. Increase the size of HDBs to sizes comparable to HDBs built in the 1970s and 1980s. This will remove the need for couples who wish to have families to upgrade their houses when they want to expand their families, and will also encourage more Singaporeans to have families in the first place.

3. Return public housing to its initial purpose of home ownership and as a place for Singaporeans to stay. This means removing the ability to rent out all or part of a HDB flat and the ability to own a private property while still owning a HDB flat. This also means reinstating a cap on the amount you can sell the HDB for, removing the free market system for resale flats.

4. Make all current HDB flats private property, while still providing estate maintenance from the government at the rates of the current conservancy charges. This will remove all restrictions on current HDB flats, allowing owners to sell freely on the open market, and to deal with their property as they would a private property, opening up opportunities for en bloc sales. This will retain the value of previous HDB flats.

By far the most common argument against all of this is that removing the land costs will essentially be robbing the reserves, to which there are several rebuttals:

1. HDB currently operates at a deficit. The current method of pricing HDB flats is to first have HDB buy the lands from the reserves at market value, then have the government subsidise the total cost (including construction) to arrive at the Build to Order (BTO) cost. As a matter of good accounting hygiene, it makes sense to pay in the land costs into the reserves first. But as a practical matter, when you consider that the government is subsidising HDB and allowing it to run at a deficit by using money from the operating revenue, money which could have gone into the reserves should there be a surplus, the argument of robbing the reserves loses some of its luster.

2. While Singapore has yet to reach this point, consider this: once every parcel of land allotted for purpose has been sold to HDB and developed once for public housing, upon expiry of that parcel of land when the reserves once again sells this parcel of land to HDB, the reserves has essentially double dipped on that piece of leasehold land. This was a point of contention in the 7th February sitting of Parliament in 2024, and the reader is best positioned to decide who made the more convincing argument.6

3. While details of VERS have yet to be released, if indeed this is how it works, it completely undermines the concept of robbing the reserves. While the PAP has made it clear that VERS would not be for every expiring 99 year lease, the mere fact that the government would be paying out some leases and essentially buying back the expiring leases, which should have expended most of its value over its lifetime, is essentially returning the cost of the land back to the owners of the leasehold.

4. The safeguarding of the reserves are for future generations of Singaporeans. However with the current housing policy our TFR has fallen so low that there may not be much of a Singapore in the future, at least not one which our current generation would recognise or uphold. Further, to maintain the value of public housing such that it stays an asset that does not depreciate relies on borrowing from the future generations to pay off this current generation. Our generation and our descendants will not experience the same windfall increase in housing prices that our forebears experienced. Essentially the government is borrowing from Jayden Tan to pay off Tan Ah Kow. If the reserves are for the future, then fixing this housing crisis is more important than hoarding some rainy day fund most Singaporeans will never enjoy.

In the land of the blind

When the Opposition asks for lower Goods and Services Taxes (GST), or when there is a call for housing to be cheaper, this becomes the cue for the naysayers to crawl out of the woodworks with their cries of populism. The irony is that for all the accusations of a populist Opposition, the PAP have fully embraced the populist ideology. The yearly handouts which had modest beginnings in 2020 are now front and center of the PAP’s agenda, embraced by the new leadership with renewed vigour. Then there are the U-turns,7 where the PAP bent to the public outcries, betraying that either they did not have the right idea in the first place, or that they lacked the political will to push forward with what they thought was right. Any of this would be enough to have Lee Kuan Yew turning in (or rising from) his grave, the very man who made populism such a taboo word in this country.

The elections are upon us, and Singapore finds itself at a crossroads. It’s about the philosophy of government, and the vision for the future. The wait and see approach of this new generation of PAP leaders interested in prolonging the status quo so long as it means the continued rule of a PAP government, Singaporeans are now very familiar with the now common PAP catch phrase: “monitoring the situation”.

Singaporeans are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We are faced with a choice between an Opposition that may not be ready yet to take the helm of government, and a group of paper pushing bureaucrats. The PAP leadership knows that discontent is brewing. Already, they are pivoting to the tried and true: never let a good crisis go to waste. They have found a new bogeyman in the US tariffs, and are hoping to ride the wave of fear into their next political term.8

Lawrence Wong may yet be king, but for all his talk about Forward Singapore he lacks a comprehensive vision for our future. Now, more than ever, Singapore needs a leader who can chart a new course forward through uncertain times. Majulah Singapura.

Problems in the opposition

The Opposition does not appear to be faring any better. Most parties have yet to release a slate of candidates, in part because surprising the PAP can be an effective weapon (though perhaps the PAP would likely think twice about shifting candidates at the last minute), but perhaps the greater reason for this would be that the electoral boundaries have yet to be announced.

The Opposition is also dwindling in number, in no small part because of the many unforced errors and constant rake stepping behaviour. Reform Party’s (RP) Kenneth Jeyaretnam is not only suffering from an undefined illness, he’s also inundated with multiple POFMA notices and possible contempt of court charges. Not only that, since the last election RP has hemorrhaged members, and a faction of the party has since splintered off into an even smaller party (yes, somehow this was possible) the Singapore United Party. Peoples Voice’s (PV) Lim Tean faces multiple criminal charges, and it is unclear if he would be contesting in the next election. As with RP, PV has also been bleeding members to other Opposition parties, though PV as a party has always been about Lim Tean. Most Singaporeans would perhaps (understandably) shed no tears over the loss of these two parties and people, but they are a still fixture of the Singaporean Opposition that might possibly be lost this cycle.

Of the more reputable parties, it remains to be seen if the Progress Singapore Party (PSP) will stand to gain or lose from Leong Mun Wai’s performance in Parliament. While Secretary General Hazel Poa has yet to announce where PSP will be contesting or their candidates, word on the street is that PSP will not be contesting as many constituencies as 2020, perhaps emulating the Workers’ Party (WP) fewer but more focused strategy. One cannot help but feel that for the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) the next election would be the last chance for either Dr Chee or Dr Tambyah to make it into Parliament, having come so close the last time. It remains to be seen whether the 2 SMCs the doctors contested in the 2020 election would remain intact or be redrawn given how close they came to winning. Of the Opposition parties, perhaps the WP are best positioned heading into the election, but even they are not without their struggles. The loss of both Raeesah Khan and Leon Perera to scandal since the last election remains fresh on the electorate’s minds, and while their leader Pritam Singh is at no risk of losing his ability to contest in the upcoming election, it remains to be seen what impact his recent legal entanglements will have for the party.

PM Wong was of course quick to remind Singaporeans that there was “no chance” of an “Opposition wipe-out” at the PAP party conference. He is right, but in the most disingenuous manner - with the NCMP scheme, Singapore Parliament is guaranteed at least 12 Opposition Members of Parliament. In the same speech, PM Wong rehashed the tried and true tactics of the PAP playbook by dropping a healthy dose of fearmongering by warning Singaporeans that voting more Opposition members of Parliament would only serve to weaken the government. You might think: since the PAP has been in power for the last 65 years, why don’t they just campaign on their track record and good policies instead of warning Singaporeans about an incompetent Opposition?

Problems in the incumbent

The answer is there just isn’t much to run on this election cycle. The past 5 years might just be the worst election cycle the PAP has ever had. They can’t talk about the economy, because no matter how many pieces the Singapore media has run about the economy improving, it largely contradicts the lived experiences of Singaporeans who have seen some of the largest layoffs in recent history.

They can’t talk about the cost of living, because despite the media endlessly assuring Singaporeans inflation is falling, it doesn’t change the damage inflation has already caused. The media apparatus is already in full swing at the behest of the PAP, with headlines like “Govt doing its best to help with cost of living, while opposition tries to exploit issue: PM Wong”. It’s a desperate game of pin the tail - the PAP has to land it on anywhere but themselves. This is the narcissist’s prayer: there isn’t any inflation; and if there is, there are worldwide factors absolutely out of the government’s control; and if there aren’t, then it’s the Opposition’s fault for shedding light on this issue. Never mind that the PAP has chosen to increase the Goods and Services Tax (GST) during the throes of the worst inflationary period in decades. Never mind that they chose to split the increase into 2 separate increases, despite it being known to the government that some businesses take advantage of tax increases to also increase prices for their goods and services. The gaslighting is in full effect here: the PAP will accuse the Opposition of lacking “good solutions”, while the genius solution the incumbent has devised is to load up the money guns to spray the populace in the hopes it will distract from the GST increases and inflation.

They can’t talk about the Singaporean dream because they’re not even sure what it is. The old dream of the 5Cs is gone, dragged out back into the alley and shot in the head by the PAP’s policies. The environment that the PAP has fostered is particularly good at attracting the extremely wealthy, and the amount of billionaires has just about tripled in the last decade alone. This coupled with the changes in public housing policies which allowed the prices of resale flats to be subject to free market forces has now seen almost 1,000 HDB flats being sold at over a million dollars. Where the Singapore dream once promised upward mobility for Singaporeans to aspire to, we are now relegated to settling for the bare minimum. Perhaps the most apt case in point for this is Minister for Law K Shanmugam, who bought his Good Class Bungalow for slightly over S$8m in 1998 and has since sold it in 2023 for S$88m. Where it was once possible for lawyers like Minister Shanmugam to aspire to owning an S$8m property, a little over 20 years later it would be inconceivable for any lawyer to afford that same property now valued at S$88m. There will be no cars, no condominiums, and no country clubs for the vast majority of Singaporeans. Maybe this is why PM Wong cannot shut up about the “refreshed Singapore dream” or “refreshed Singapore compact”, laden with buzzwords and vagaries of inclusivity and purpose. If Singaporeans are no longer able to strive for upward mobility, then the Singaporean dream built on the bedrock of meritocratic ideals no longer exists, and with it the 6th C - children. As the TFR falls below 1 to new historic lows Singaporeans question why they would want to bring a child into a country where their future is not necessarily better than their forebears.

So of course the only talking point the PAP has is of an incompetent Opposition, what else can they talk about?

Problems in the elections

On paper it might seem like a slam dunk election for the Opposition. Sure, the Opposition had been hit by a couple of scandals of their own, but the PAP has bore the brunt of it this cycle. From multiple corruption scandals (Keppel and Minister Iswaran), to affairs of their own (Speaker Tan Chuan Jin), to multiple MRT breakdowns (with the added slap to the face of increasing the fare prices), to the U-turn on SimplyGo (but not without first gaslighting the public and letting Singaporeans know we actually cost ourselves an extra S$40m), to the U-turn on the Income-Allianz deal, to the U-turn on the NRIC policy, and a massive data breach (though the mystery of who asked Minister Josephine Teo to apologize remains).

If the list seems long, it is because it is. Any one of these scandals coupled with any of the substantive cost of living issues should be enough to see a noticeable swing in the electorate in almost any other democracy. Taken together it would almost certainly mean voting out the incumbent with a change of government in any other country or, if Khaw Boon Wan would have it, a more permanent solution.

Around the world, 2024 has been the year of incumbent losses, from the Tories in the UK to the Democrats in the US. Yet despite this trend or perhaps because of it, Singaporeans may find themselves inclined to vote once again for the PAP. In an increasingly uncertain world, there is an instinct for the Singaporean electorate to display a flight to safety. This was observed in the crassest terms by Minister Chan Chun Sing, who noted that Singaporeans tended to vote PAP in times of crisis - from 9/11 to Lee Kuan Yew’s death, Singaporeans have always exhibited a flight to safety in uncertain times. There will be no doubt the PAP will be milking the multiple wars around the world and what many perceive to be an unpredictable Trump presidency (though having already seen one Trump term before one could argue it would be fairly predictable), while evoking the ghost of Lee Kuan Yew on his 10th death anniversary to stoke the flames - after all, if nothing else the PAP has always abided by this political maxim: never let a good crisis go to waste. So while the stars appear aligned for a shift to the Opposition, it could be just as easily be a PAP blowout.

Problems in our democracy

Perhaps the biggest disservice the PAP has done to Singapore is not any one issue listed above, but rather the systemic erosion of facets of our democracy. This isn’t to say that Singapore isn’t a democracy - every Singaporean has a vote and is able to vote for their representative in Parliament. However, to assert that Singapore’s elections are free and fair, which Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong did in his May Day speech this year, seems to be disingenuous at best. It depends what you mean when you say Singapore’s elections are free and fair. If you mean that every Singaporean is able to vote and that there is no election fraud, that the ballot boxes and voter slips are not tampered with, then yes, Singapore has fair elections. But if you mean that the electoral boundaries are constantly shifting, or that the local media provides ceaseless cover for the PAP, or that there is an almost invisible line between the PAP and the People’s Association (which is supposed to be a non-partisan statutory board), or that the PAP has a history of detaining and taking legal action against their political opponents which has contributed to an incredibly infantile Opposition and a chilled atmosphere for political discourse in Singapore, then you might argue that the elections are not so fair after all.

Think of a democracy as the immune system against bad governance. In the marketplace of free ideas, a democratic system will vote up the best ideas and get rid of the worst. If the party in power is doing badly, it should be voted out. The assertion that the PAP has eroded the facets of our democracy does not mean that the PAP is not currently the best government for Singapore, or that the Opposition will do a better job than the PAP at governing Singapore. It means that the PAP has eroded the means by which we determine if they are still the best government for Singapore, and because of that it becomes increasingly difficult to tell if Singapore is better off with or without a PAP government.

The strangest part of this is that it seems to be a common sentiment that Singaporeans want more Opposition members in Singapore. According to an Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) survey in 2021, 69.8% of Singaporeans believe that “Singapore would benefit from having more political parties in Parliament”. That is overwhelming support for a proposition that in reality translates to very few Parliamentary seats for the Opposition. What do Singaporeans mean when they say they want more political parties in Parliament? It seems highly doubtful Singaporeans mean they want more Opposition members making speeches in Parliament given that an overwhelming majority of Singaporeans don’t follow what happens in Parliament. Logically then it can only mean that Singaporeans want the Opposition to be able to affect the laws and policies passed in Parliament. Given that Singapore follows the Westminster Parliamentary system, the only way the Opposition can affect what laws are passed is by either having a majority in Parliament, or by having enough members in Parliament that they’re threatening a majority. Merely having a token representation of “Opposition voices” does not do anything for Singaporeans. The case in point being the successes of the WP. Since 2001 WP has made the greatest strides of any Opposition party since independence, and has held the most amount of seats for any Opposition party since the Barisan Socialis in the 1963 elections. And yet it was during this time that some of the most egregious and controversial laws and constitutional changes have passed, including POFMA, FICA, and implementing Reserved Elections to name a few. In each case, the dissent of the Opposition had been duly noted, and the laws and amendments pass, with nary a bang, with nary a whimper.

The voter paradox

And therein lies the Singaporean voter paradox: Singaporean voters seemingly want more Opposition, but at the same time refuse to vote them in. Perhaps it is understandable, Singaporeans are infamously risk averse, and many vote with the adage “better the Devil you know” in mind when going to the ballot box. Many view the Opposition as inexperienced and untested, and therefore cannot be trusted to form the government. Of course following this train of thought to its logical conclusion also means that the Opposition can never form the government.

Part of this is the Opposition’s doing. After all these years, many people still remember the original sin of the Barisan Socialis, whose members walked out of Parliament in protest and abandoned their constituents. This rake-stepping behaviour persists till today, and many Opposition members cannot seem to get out of their own way, presenting unforced errors for the PAP and their supporters to latch onto. It also does not help that there have been a bevy of what the public perceives to be unserious candidates from the Opposition. Perhaps this is one of the most unfortunate consequences of the Group Representative Constituency (GRC) system, where members of the PAP are able to slip into Parliament under cover of a more popular minister. Members who would normally fold under scrutiny now get to cruise by as backbenchers, rubber stamping any PAP motion that comes before them, some of them never speaking more than a couple of minutes in Parliament over their entire political careers.

The GRCs, combined with largescale detention of Opposition members in the 1970s and 1980s, and the use of defamation suits and POFMA notices have led to a chilled and apathetic political climate in Singapore. Even the most ardent supporters of the PAP would have to admit that the playing field is not exactly the fairest. Of course, none of this is to suggest that it is the duty of the PAP (or any political party for that matter) to ensure that members of the Opposition get elected, after all, a political party is a vehicle to secure political victories. It is however the duty of the government to ensure that the democratic system remain as free and fair as possible to allow for the best possible political party to win elections. The PAP in assuming government should have ensured that a country can not only survive succession, but that the institutions are robust enough to endure bad governance. Instead, the narrative painted by the PAP is that the country would not survive a non-PAP government. In engineering an uneven playing field as possible, the PAP have done Singapore the greatest disservice - the country is now losing its immune response to bad governance.

Ironically, the PAP have the solutions to the very things they constantly fear-monger about. The WP are winning on a “checks and balances” platform, winning seats on the promise that they will hold the government accountable. This is clearly a key concern of many Singaporeans. It is in the PAP’s power to give the people exactly that: by being more transparent, and taking more responsibility for what people perceive as failures. Instead, we get Minister Chan “What is the point behind the question?” Chun Sing, refusing to answer questions in Parliament, and Minister Josephine “no apology” Teo, who refused take any accountability for the foreign worker debacle during the pandemic. Of course, the PAP would never voluntarily become more transparent, that would undermine the information asymmetry that the PAP currently enjoys.

Next is the warning that by voting in more Opposition members, we might inadvertently vote out essential ministers, case in point being George Yeo when the PAP lost Aljunied GRC in 2011. It is of course a time honoured PAP trick to blame the electorate when something does not go their way. After the failure of SimplyGo, Minister Chee Hong Tat wasted no time telling Singaporeans that it was their fault they now had to spend S$40m to maintain the older ticketing systems, all to be funded by the government (read: you, the taxpayer). Now, PM Wong warns Singaporeans that each GRC the PAP loses will result in a loss of another minister. This is of course entirely because of the PAP strategy of fielding a minister in every GRC to string along a team of backbenchers. The PAP has the solution to this: they could abolish the GRC system. Without the GRC system, it would be incredibly likely for most ministers to retain their seats, and there would be little risk of losing ministers. However there would be a greater risk of losing seats of the many unknown backbenchers. Once again, the PAP has the solution to their scaremongering but will never implement the solution.

But by far the favourite scaremonger trick is to warn Singaporeans that it doesn’t take a large vote swing before the Opposition becomes the government. Both PM Wong in his PAP party conference speech and SM Lee in his exit interview earlier this year warn of an incompetent Opposition coming to power as the government and bringing Singapore to ruin. There is a solution for this: they could form a Shadow Cabinet, which would allow members of the Opposition to better scrutinise the government, while allowing them to learn the inner workings of government should they ever become the government. Instead, the PAP in their infinite wisdom have elected to appoint Pritam Singh to their newly created position the “Leader of the Opposition”. As far as anyone can tell, there doesn’t seem to be any added responsibilities, and the position seems to be about as useful as the 5 mayors we have, though perhaps at the fraction of the cost to the taxpayer.

A stronger government

In 2023, a survey held by the Pew Research Center found that Singaporeans were split on whether they preferred a leader with a strong hand or a democratic form of government to solve their country’s problems. Perhaps Singaporeans remember all too fondly the days of Lee Kuan Yew, whose promise of economic prosperity more than made up for his brand of strong man leadership. For all his faults, Lee Kuan Yew was a visionary.

Today, the story could not be more different. We no longer have visionaries as leaders, but rather bureaucrat scholars that have outlasted their competition in political maneuvering. The problem with strong men and authoritarianism is that you’re more likely to get a Stalin or Pol Pot than you are to get a Lee Kuan Yew, history has at least shown us that much. The only solution to this is to build a system robust enough that the democratic functions of society correctly sieves through the bad governance in favour of the good.

Singapore is reaching a cross roads at the next election, and only time will tell which direction is the right one.

The Singapore government having blocked the deal would no doubt be happy to bury it in their backyard, never to be seen from or heard again, given how unpopular it was with Singaporeans. Perhaps they would prefer if Singaporeans diverted their attention to the ongoing trial of Pritam Singh, the US elections, and after the new year, the 10 year death anniversary of Lee Kuan Yew. The news cycle is relentless, and modern attention spans are woefully short.

The Allianz-Income transaction has raised so many unanswered questions, and after the Parliamentary sitting meant to clarify the deal and the reasons for blocking the deal, we’re left with even more questions than we had begun with.

The deal of the parties

Let’s start by discussing the deal between Income and Allianz. It would be good to establish a timeline lest the facts become buried beneath the rubble of sensationalism. In August when the deal first emerged in the public consciousness, the PAP scrambled to answer questions fielded by Members in Parliament. The explanation was that Income was failing as a company, and in order to raise sufficient capital, it had to be sold off. Whether to foreign or local entities, Income needed to raise more capital. Specifically the “capital buffers” were “under pressure”, and even after the corporatisation exercise in 2022, Income could no longer exist without additional capital injections.

The main objection to the sale surrounded the “social mission” of Income, and whether this social mission would continue under new leadership. As Ministers Alvin Tan and Chee Hong Tat were quick to point out, for many policies, Income no longer offered the cheapest options on the market. In fact, as Minister Alvin Tan points out, the government has cannibalised a significant portion of the market which would have been part of Income’s “social mission”, both medical and retirement annuity scheme. Given that this social mission is an exercise of covering market failures, it could be argued that the government is better positioned to provide the coverage on these areas, and it begs the question if there even needs to exist an insurance company with such a social mission, or if the government should be the ones providing such coverage, but that is a whole other discussion perhaps best suited for another time. Suffice to say, it was the PAP’s position that Income was not doing well, and it was sorely in need of a capital injection.

The main contention, and what ultimately sunk the deal, was not that Income was being sold off to a foreign entity, in fact the narrative pushed by both Ministers Alvin Tan and Chee Hong Tat was that there was an assurance by Allianz that it would continue with the social mission even after becoming the majority shareholder of Income. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the fact that Allianz was planning for a capital reduction after acquiring Income.

The S$2 billion dollar question

Capital reductions are not inherently bad in and of themselves, and according to Minister Edwin Tong it is also not an uncommon practice. The issue the government had was that during the corporatisation of Income in 2022, the government had granted an exemption from s88 of the Co-operative Societies Act, which had effectively allowed Income to carry over S$2 billion in capital which it otherwise would have had to surrender to the Co-operative Societies Liquidation Account (CSLA). Where had this S$2 billion come from? Presumably it came from NTUC Enterprise buying the shares at below par at S$10 each1. This is where the questions start to pile up.

Was there ever a need for a capital injection?

Given that Income would be subject to a capital reduction immediately after acquisition by Allianz, was there ever pressing need for a capital injection as presented by the PAP during the August 6th Parliamentary sitting? The reason given for even needing the sale was that Income needed more capital. If Allianz had found a way to reduce capital post sale, was there ever a need for a capital injection, or had Income just been so badly managed that it has found its capital buffers repeatedly under attack under the management of NTUC Enterprises? Is this just another Neptune Orient Lines that would see Income suffer under local management but flourish under foreign ownership? Remember, the capital reduction was not caught by s26 or s27 of the Insurance Act (otherwise the PAP would not need to amend the Insurance Act to block the deal), meaning that MAS had no reason to block the deal on grounds of financial prudence. Income would have continued to operate with reduced capital under Allianz, contrary to the PAP’s claims that a capital injection was sorely needed. None of these questions were answered in Parliament.

What was the real objection to the capital reduction?

As said above, capital reductions are not bad in and of themselves. Not all capital reductions are automatically an “asset-stripping exercise”, as Mr Leong Mun Wai asserted in Parliament. It would be hard to believe that Allianz would pay 40 percent over asset value for the shares if all it wanted was to strip Income of its assets. If the S$1.85 billion capital reduction plan had gone through, it is true that as the 51 percent majority owner of Income Allianz would see a hefty discount of more than S$900 million from their S$2.2 billion dollar purchase of Income.

The other S$900m would be returned to either NTUC Enterprises (should they retain the full 49 percent ownership) or to the other shareholders, most of which are Co-operatives. The S$2.2 billion dollars used to purchase the 51 percent stake would also go to NTUC Enterprises and to the other Co-operative shareholders, which would mean more than S$3 billion would be returned to the Co-operatives, even if it were not returned directly to the CSLA. Practically speaking, the Co-operatives would not be losing out on the S$2 billion from the s88 exemption.

Further, even if you don’t buy that argument, the question remains: was there any legally binding purpose for which the S$2 billion was retained by Income? The government in giving the s88 exemption had not extracted any legally binding promise from Income regarding what they would do with the S$2 billion dollars, nor had they ring fenced the money for any kind of “social mission” or “public interest”, otherwise there would be no need for this new bill to block the deal. After the corporatisation in 2022, Income was not legally bound to spend that money in a manner that would please the Singapore government.

In fact, by Minister Edwin Tong’s own admission, the reason Income was corporatised in the first place was so remove the limitations on the extent dividends could be declared so as to make it more attractive to prospective investors. Even if the S$2 billion dollars were somehow ring-fenced for specific “social mission” purposes, given the fungible nature of money, any dividends or capital reduction declared by Income could feasibly be seen to violate this. So would Income just never declare dividends?2 That would run counter to Minister Tong’s explanation for the corporatisation. And so the PAP find themselves webbed in contradictions having backed themselves into a corner of unpopular decisions.

And even if you think that foreign entities should not be able to buy local companies like Income (given its supposed “social mission”), the question remains: Should the government be able to interfere in the dealings of a company governed by the Companies Act?

The party of principles

That is political opportunism – and I state this as a matter of principle, not as a matter of politics. I put principle first, before politics, Mr Pritam Singh. - Mr Christopher de Souza, PAP Member of Parliament

The PAP has long positioned itself as the party of principles, that to act contrary to that would be most hypocritical. In a previous piece, a case was made that governments, especially the Singapore government, has no place interfering with the workings of private companies. At the risk of belabouring the point, there are some elaborations to be made.

Governments which aim to choose winners and losers among companies curtailing the invisible hand run the risk of choosing and backing the wrong companies. Because the money that the government risks is never their own, the taxpayer bears the risk of any failed government action. The free market works because capital has skin in the game, when capital is divorced from consequences the free market ceases to function. Such is the issue with corporatism. One need only look to the failing Government Linked Companies in Singapore, the SPHs and the NOLs, to see the result of excessive government meddling. If you’re not convinced by the examples in Singapore, then take heed the cautionary tale of Argentina, who are now struggling to climb out of the endless pit of Peronism.

Blocking the deal between Allianz and Income sets a bad precedent, and is an overreach of government power. The argument by the PAP that this will not be a problem is threefold: first, the matter was handled openly and transparently in Parliament, that the reasons for blocking the deal were public and clearly explained; second, the amendment to the Bill3 was sufficiently narrow that it would not impact other companies; and third, the Bill is not retroactively applied.

To the first point, it is still unclear what the “public interest” component of the Bill would entail. While the question was asked by members, this was not clarified in Parliament. Not knowing what “public interest” means creates uncertainty moving forward and could affect business confidence in Singapore, especially considering that one of Singapore’s biggest strengths is the adherence to the rule of law and consistent legal principles. More worryingly, it sets the precedent where the government can introduce incredibly narrow and specific legislation to block private deals they deem not in the “public interest”.

Further, that the Bill was not retroactively applied is a matter of semantics and technicality. It is technically true that the deal had not yet gone through, so the blocking of the deal would be prospective. But to draft a Bill specifically aimed at stopping one deal in particular, especially after knowing the deal was live and but for the passing of the Bill the deal would have gone through is practically the same thing. What is to stop the Singapore government from passing specific Bills to stop future transactions just because the government deems it not in the “public interest”? Perhaps in a country where the ruling party does not have an overwhelming majority in Parliament there would be an effective check on this, but unfortunately in Singapore this is not the case.

While Singaporeans by and large believe that the right outcome had been reached, namely that the deal between Income and Allianz had been halted, as a matter of principle allowing government to grossly broaden its powers in the attempt to stop deals between private entities should never have happened. The point of principles is that they should be adhered to, even if it leads to outcomes which you might disagree with. The time to safeguard the “social mission” of Income is not now that it was being sold to Allianz, but back in 2022 when it was being corporatised.

The party of U-turns

Fucking populist. - Mr Tan Chuan Jin, former PAP Speaker of the House

This is not the only U-turn the government has taken in recent memory. Already, there are attempts to gaslight Singaporeans into believing that the government never wanted this deal to go through. In a 6 November article on CNA titled “'Misperception' that government 'blessed' Income-Allianz deal before reversing decision: Shanmugam”, Minister Shanmugam attempts to make the case that there was no reversal in the government decision for the deal between Income and Allianz, given that regulatory approval had never been given by the government before the amendment to the Bill blocked the deal from happening. Minister Shanmugam is technically correct of course.

But Singaporeans will not forget that both Ministers Alvin Tan and Chee Hong Tat were openly advocating for the sale of Income in Parliament. In fact, it is still the government’s position that Income has to attain more capital, either through a sale or further capital injections. The speeches made in Parliament in August were certainly in favour of the sale of Income to Allianz. The media apparatus was also in full swing in support of the government, who can forget the constant refrain of “you have to do well to do good” in support of the sale on the newspapers and radio stations? To say that there was no reversal of the government’s position seems at the very least disingenuous.

There is of course no shame in the U-turn. Singaporeans by and large seem to welcome this decision, and the more generous of us would say they would rather a government which is able to recognise when it is wrong and correct itself accordingly, than one which stubbornly sticks with their positions. The more cynical take would be that the Singapore government just folds to the will of the majority rather than having any kind of principled approach.

Just in January this year the government shelved plans to replace all public transport payment cards with SimplyGo, folding under public pressure to continue the use of EZ-link cards (not before passive-aggressively telling Singaporeans that we had wasted S$40 million to keep this system going). The elections are coming, and perhaps the government fears that it does not have the mandate it once had to push through unpopular policies. Contrast this with the start of the term, where the U-turn was for forcing policies Singaporeans did not want - where Minister Balakrishnan reneged on a promise that TraceTogether data would only be used for contact tracing purposes.

But maybe the PAP is right in their estimation that Singaporeans will accept the continued extension of government power and overreach, from the introduction of POFMA and FICA which gives outsized powers to the executive, to the retroactive amendment of the constitution to allow the President to hold external appointments. After all, we've been taking it for almost 60 years now.

His message for the Women’s Wing event was one of opportunity and representation: the PAP recognised the importance of women’s political participation to champion women’s and Singapore’s development, and pledged to push for more women representation in Parliament. His message for the recruits was guised in opportunity: that the Singaporean man’s training in the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) would give them strong foundations to put them in a good position to overcome future challenges.

The public discourse surrounding National Service (NS) is never an honest conversation. While the government and Lawrence Wong would only ever use the language of privilege to describe NS, the truth of the matter is NS is not a privilege, but rather a sacrifice. The Singaporean male today does not feel privileged to be serving his nation, and has not for a long time. When NS started in the 1970s, Singapore citizens made up more than 90 percent of the country. Today, that number is closer to 60 percent. It begs the question who is the Singaporean male sacrificing for? And therein lies the fundamental problem with any talk of gender equality in Singapore - it will necessarily run into the original sin of National Service.

So when PM Wong refers to the training a man receives in the army as an opportunity, but in the same week talks about actually furthering opportunities of women in Singapore, it comes across as incredibly unfair.

The problem with gender equality

Singapore has come a long way in bridging the gap between the genders. Are there still problems to solve? Probably. But outside of Scandinavia Singapore has come as far as any country in solving this problem.

If we are to solve the problem of gender equality it would be to provide equality of opportunity rather than the equality of outcome. The two are often conflated and it makes any conversation about gender equality that much more difficult. The former ensures that everyone, regardless of gender, has a fair and equal chance of succeeding in any field that they choose, but not that every field would end up having an equal amount of gender representation. For example, as reported in the Straits Times, although the number of male pre-school teachers has doubled in the last 5 years, male pre-school teachers still account for less than 1 percent of all pre-school teachers. Does that mean that there is some systemic discrimination against male pre-school teachers? Maybe, but more likely than not it is the case that fewer men want to be pre-school teachers than women. Equality of outcome would dictate that there should be an equal amount of men and women pre-school teachers, but not every difference in outcome is evidence to some kind of systemic discrimination or inequality. It is therefore important that we strive for equality of opportunity over equality of outcome.

The problem is that so much of politics is performative today, that PM Wong feels the need to advertise that the PAP will be fielding more women candidates for the upcoming election. It is lazy policy to force an equality of outcome then point to that as evidence that there is equality of opportunity. But such is the hallmark of PAP policy making, the case in point being the Reserved Elections, where the PAP decided the people of Singapore were too racist to elect a minority president, never mind that in the very next non-reserved Presidential elections Singaporeans overwhelmingly voted for the minority candidate. Should Halimah Yacob been unable to win the presidency, the evidence of the outcome would have been proof of the need to protect minority rights, not that Halimah Yacob was a bad candidate.

In this vein the narrative that the PAP are pushing for women’s rights because they are fielding more women candidates is proof to the fact that gender equality is happening - the equality of outcome has become more important than the equality of opportunity. The assumption is of course that having more women candidates is good in and of itself, but what is stopping there from being more women candidates in the first place? If there is some kind of systemic or unfair discrimination in play, let’s find it and get rid of it. The mere fact there are less women in politics is not proof that such discrimination exists. What is a more beneficial policy would be policy like the 10 extra weeks of shared parental leave announced at the National Day rally speech. Such policies tackle the root causes of inequalities rather than trying to game the outcomes.

But if Singaporean men are feeling like they are increasingly left behind in today’s world, then PM Wong tells them they are wrong to feel this way:

If they feel their concerns are not adequately addressed, men and young boys then out of a sense of insecurity, some may see the movement for equality for women as a movement against men.

You see, if men feel like their problems are increasingly overlooked in society, then it is because they are insecure.

The problem with leaving men behind

In many areas of society, women have already caught up to men. This is a good thing, and it shows how far society has come to combating gender inequality. Education is the great equaliser, and it is a good way to measure who have been given opportunities in society. Today, men and women attend and graduate from university in equal amounts, a far cry from the 1960s where the men outnumbered the women 5 to 1. In many countries, women far outpace the number of men graduating from university.

The gender pay gap is at the lowest it has ever been. The current unadjusted pay gap stands at 14.3 percent. That sounds bad, but adjusted for age, education, occupation, industry and hours worked the number drops to 6 percent. According to a paper by the National University of Singapore and the Ministry of Manpower, this 6 percent could be attributed to any number of unmeasurable factors, and there is no evidence either way that any of it is attributable to discrimination. Where there is evidence of systemic or even individual discrimination, of course it should be rooted out and destroyed.

But so much of our discourse and language today is centered around empowering and enabling women that it is inevitable that men feel left behind. Anyone who has worked for a Multi-National Company (MNC) can testify to this phenomenon: it is not uncommon to find diversity, equity and inclusion quotas for women, or some kind of internal program aimed at furthering the progression of women. Where are the same programs aimed at furthering or helping men? The Singaporean man born today will be facing a society in which he had played no part in the historic oppression of women, but yet is constantly made to feel like he has to atone for that sin. So is it any wonder that the younger men today feel like they are being left behind? Throw in a compulsory 2 year service which his female peers do not have to suffer and you might begin to understand the increasing disillusionment men in Singapore feel toward further efforts for gender equality.

Already Singapore ranks 8th in the world for gender equality. Women have come a long way to get here, and the historic discrimination and systemic challenges they had to overcome was by no means trivial. Today there is no longer any institutionalised discrimination, and the opposite is true instead - many of the anti-discrimination protections are enshrined into law. This is not to say that sexism and discrimination on the individual level does not exist, we live in an imperfect world and evil is a function of that, and where we face it we must surely confront it. The feminists of the past had dragons to slay - these were monumental challenges that were overcome by the strongest wills. But when you run out of dragons to slay, one has to wonder if you're beginning to tilt at windmills.

Have we moved past the point to overcorrection? It is difficult to have a serious conversation about this because our society is so focused on the outcomes that as long as the pay is not exactly equal, or as long as female representation is not exactly 50 percent then any insinuation that there may be an overcorrection is met with accusations of sexism or misogyny. But as stated above that the outcome is not equal is not proof that the system is unequal or discriminatory, the focus should be on the equality of opportunity. Which is why when the SGX talks about increasing women's representation in board rooms to 30 percent in 2030, or when companies like Proctor & Gamble or Pfizer talk about having a gender goal it reeks awfully of a quota.

Quotas are incredibly damaging, both for the people they are trying to help and the people they discriminate against. Quotas undermine meritocracy, a key foundational principle in Singapore. They foster the impression that the people get in through a quota are not qualified for the role, because why else would you need a quota? If the SGX or any of those companies had naturally reached gender parity without having a stated goal, then nobody would question the quality of the people chosen. It alienates half the population, making them feel like there are additional obstacles to success that come from their immutable characteristics. Instead of fixing for the outcomes (looking at the absolute amount of each gender in any given field), the focus should be on the opportunities (whether both genders have equal opportunities to succeed in a given field). Where there is a disparity in outcome despite having equal opportunity to succeed, it could well be a whole host of other factors which produces this disparity, including lesser interest by one gender in that field.

Take chess as an example. Women form an overwhelming minority of titled players in chess, and an even smaller minority (less than 1 percent) of the highest title available - grandmaster. Are women just that much worse at chess? Probably not. More likely it is a question of participation rates, and men might just be more interested in chess than women. But, you might say, aren't men more interested in chess because there is a culture which discourages women to play chess, or is actively hostile to women? Yes, and the solution to that is not to set quotas on the number of women who should be inducted as grandmasters every year or a quota of women who should play in the top tournaments like the Candidates, but rather it should be changing the culture around chess to make it more welcoming for women and eliminating any systemic obstacles for women to participate. Creating a quota for women to be grandmasters is certainly easier, once the number of grandmasters reaches gender parity you could declare sexism and discrimination in chess solved. In doing so you would have destroyed any faith in the system, and you would have alienated the entire male player base.

The analogy is not a perfect one, after all, that is all it is - an analogy. But it does illustrate a problem when quotas (whether these are actually quotas or perceived to be so) are put into action. Men today have many legitimate concerns about how so much of the language and programs today are about empowering women, and yet when these concerns are raised men are often met with callous dismissals, telling them not to be so “insecure”, or worse yet, with accusations of sexism or misogyny. We need a more honest discussion about the state of gender equality in Singapore today, before our men feel that they have been left behind.

The problem with National Service

Ironically, the only remaining form of institutionalised gender discrimination today comes in the form of National Service. It is almost impossible to have a discussion about gender equality in Singapore without someone popping out of the woodwork to chime in with “but NS”. This is the Godwin's law of gender discussion in Singapore. The surest way to shut up the “but NS” crowd is to fix NS, but being politically radioactive neither the PAP nor the opposition will risk touching it.

The blatant lie told by the PAP is that National Service cannot be measured in dollars and cents, but the truth is that it can and should be measured. Why shouldn't men be fairly compensated for 2 years of their prime? To that end, this is a modest proposal to end the NS debate once and for all, so we can have an actual conversation about gender equality in Singapore:

1. Impose an additional progressive income tax of 2 to 5 percent on any citizen or permanent resident who has not served National Service;

2. This tax can be avoided by either volunteering to serve 2 years of National Service, or by giving birth to your second child. The tax will stop the following year after your second child is born. Raising the fertility rate of Singapore is a service to nation, and the 18 months of pregnancy could be seen as analogous to the 2 years of service;

3. Women who volunteer for National Service but who do not necessarily want to be in a combat role can be given the option to serve in either administrative capacities or be trained as nurses or as part of the Home Team as necessity dictates. Outside of choosing if they want to be in a combat role, they would have no choice in vocation similar to our men;

4. The money collected for this could be ring fenced and either be paid out as a dividend to those who have served National Service, or be paid out to the current batch of active full-time National Service men and women;

5. This tax will not be retroactive.

It may well be there is no political will needed to ever pass such a tax. The PAP could very well be right in their estimation that it would be political suicide to touch NS. So we may continue down the path of never having an honest conversation about NS, or never having an honest conversation about gender equality in Singapore. But that is the problem with National Service.

When news broke of Income’s sale to Allianz, it started a rumbling of discontent online. The rumblings rose to a crescendo, with the voices of ex-CEOs of NTUC Enterprise Tan Suee Chieh and NTUC Income Tan Kin Lian joining in, and it was clear the PAP could no longer ignore these voices. So in the most predictable fashion, these questions were brought to Parliament where they were laid to rest, buried and hopefully forgotten.

The news cycle is a force of nature and the ebb and flow of daily news never stops, first the Olympics, then National Day, then the National Day rally, and what was once a roar now barely a whimper. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow has arrived; all the sound and fury now signify nothing.

The questions asked in Parliament were important ones, no doubt, but they were hardly the right one. The members were focused on whether Income could maintain its social mission, and whether the workers of NTUC Income could retain their jobs. Important questions, but not the right one. The time to cry about NTUC Income’s social mission is not now in 2024 that it is being sold away to Allianz, it was back in 2022 when it was corporatised from a co-operative to a company governed by the Companies Act. How could anyone ensure that a private company be beholden to any social mission, let alone a mission which could conceivably be unprofitable, when a company’s first duty is to its shareholders? Should the government be able to compel private companies to fulfil various social missions, especially when said social missions are not mandated by law? That boat has long sailed.

Enough has been said about the social mission that it seems pointless to continue flaying that dead horse: ultimately it comes down to a non-binding promise from a private company. In fact, as Minister Chee Hong Tat said in Parliament: in many cases, Income is no longer the most affordable insurance on the market. So it is questionable that the social mission was even being fulfilled.

The real question is how did NTUC Income end up in such a sorry state that the only solution was to sell it off to the highest bidder? The declining state of NTUC Income is not a new story. As the ex-CEO Tan Kin Lian lamented in a Facebook post: when he stepped down in 2007 Income had a market share in life insurance policies of over 20 percent in Singapore, today that number is under 10 percent. After several capital injections from NTUC Enterprise and the corporatisation of Income, NTUC Enterprise has thrown in the towel with the sale to Allianz.

The plight of the GLCs

How did it come to this? Income, while not exactly a Government Linked Company (GLC), could be said to be very much government adjacent. NTUC was recently designated as politically significant under the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act. The board of directors for NTUC enterprises reads like a who’s who of the PAP and friends, and even included the speaker of the house Seah Kian Peng as the CEO at one point. All this is to say if the ruling party PAP is largely synonymous with the government of Singapore, NTUC Enterprises and by extension Income is at least government adjacent.

GLCs are companies which were partially or wholly owned by the government, but operated like a private company, motivated by profit rather than any kind of political aim. The Singapore government was adamant these companies would compete on the private market without preferential treatment from the state; without additional funding or political favour, these companies would compete on the open market, and through baptism of fire delivered by the invisible hand these companies would thrive or fail on their merits. The intangibles of being connected to government, an inside route to tenders and contracts, whether these factored into the success of the GLCs over the rest of the market, that is for you to decide. These companies enjoy a kind of incestuous relationship with government, where the management is a revolving door of ex-civil service and future politicians. At their conception, the GLCs could be argued to be necessary to a fledging country with no natural resources. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

How could Goh Keng Swee and his team have foreseen what the GLCs would become? These were supposed to be led by our elite class to create a foundation for Singapore’s new economy, providing services and products that no one else would invest in. We had to invest in our own country with our best and brightest. And by the 1990s the results were in - the GLCs were a massive success. On average, GLCs were trading at a premium of about 20 percent over other private companies. Whether by dint of their superior government connections (which were fervently denied to be untrue) or just because the stamp of approval from Singapore Inc. just made them so much more attractive to investors, GLCs had proven their worth to the country.

Today the story could not be more different. Singaporean exceptionalism, built on the back of a supposedly brutally meritocratic system which would promote the best elites to lead not just government but also industry through the GLCs, has often been touted by the PAP as the justification of Singapore’s success. Singaporean exceptionalism is dead, and it died with Lee Kuan Yew. Our GLCs no longer trade at a premium on the market, many of them are trading as penny stocks or have been re-privatised by the government. Some of these companies are tainted by corruption charges, and whatever justice we sought back home have ended with a slap on the wrist.

The elites of today are people plucked from civil service who have never seen a day in industry before being put at the heads of these GLCs. The embodiment of this phenomenon is Ng Yat Chung, a man who spent almost half his life in the military, and oversaw the ruin of not one, but two separate GLCs. SPH Media Trust (SMT), despite having a near monopoly on the local media landscape, reported its first ever loss under Ng, and in 2022 the government set aside S$900m in funding for SMT, breaking the promise of the Lee Kuan Yew era government that GLCs would not receive special funding from the government. Neptune Orient Lines (NOL), a homegrown successful shipping company saw losses under Ng, but in less than a year after NOL’s sale to a French company it would once again post profits. DBS Bank, which was incorporated by the Singapore government to fund many of our GLCs is today run not by a Singaporean born and raised in Singapore, but by a naturalised Indian national. Do not begrudge Piyush Gupta his successes in DBS Bank and in Singapore, but rather applaud him for saving one of our institutions, which is better than what can be said for many of our other GLCs.

Today, it looks like NTUC Income is about to suffer the same fate. A flailing government adjacent company that can no longer thrive under the model of “Singaporean exceptionalism” that has to be sold off to a foreign entity. The excuses are strikingly similar to the lines uttered by Ng Yat Chung during the sale of NOL, that the market had become increasingly competitive, and the companies could no longer keep up. There is no acknowledgement of any failure on the part of leadership, or any accountability for why these home grown companies built on the backs of Singaporeans cannot stand up to an increasingly globalised market. Perhaps they should be grateful that these are no longer the good old days, or that Khaw Boon Wan is no longer a Minister.

Trust in GLCs to perform are at an all time low, squandered time and again by the government. First it was the backing of Creative, which today trades at a fraction of its share price. Then there was the miracle of Hyflux and the Midas touch of Olivia Lum, who could turn shit into water. Many Singaporeans bought into the company on the confidence of the Singapore government and Singapore Inc, only to end up the bag holders while Temasek escaped unscathed, having divested its stake in Hyflux before the company collapsed. It is no wonder our stock market is in shambles, and that the Singaporean public has no confidence in investing in Singapore Inc.

If Singaporeans feel bitter about this experience, if Singaporeans feel that by buying NTUC Income shares at under market value of S$10 each and then selling those same shares (despite having promised not to do so) at almost a 40 percent premium at S$40.58 each there are some people in Singapore unfairly profiting off Singapore and Singaporeans, then we are told by the government we are wrong to feel this way. If only you worked harder, then you too would be in those positions to profit off the sale. As the philosopher once said: don’t hate the player, hate the game.

But when the only game in town is the government, when the biggest contracts offered in Singapore are government contracts, or when industry has been strangled by the existence of GLCs, where can the Singaporean turn?

It’s all connected

You might say: I don’t care about any of this. Why should I care about the failing local stock market? After all, I, the enlightened investor, invests not in the SGX, but in the the Vanguards and BlackRocks of the world, in the S&P500 and the FTSE. Why should I care about any of this?

You should care if you care about the future of Singapore. If you think there is something about being Singaporean worth preserving, that the culture and way of life is a place you would like your children to know and enjoy, if you think that your heritage as a Singaporean is worth passing down, and if you want to always have this little red dot to call home, then you should care. And most importantly, it’s all connected.

A failing stock market is not just vital to the health and economy of a country, but to the people. There will be no innovation, no enterprise, and no next chapter of the Singapore story if even Singaporeans do not want to invest into Singapore. It affects the prices of housing. If the surest way to get rich in Singapore is not through investment into the industry of this country but by playing the BTO lottery and laddering up the property chain, then that is where people will put their money. Already the prices of property are at record high levels, and do not seem to have an end in sight. There is too much money chasing an incredibly scarce resource, and the decision by the Goh Chok Tong government to turn housing into an asset is now reaping its natural conclusion. Is it really any wonder that the stock market is ailing? In a country where there is a perverse incentive to chase land as an asset, there will be no incentive to innovate in industry. To chase land in and of itself for its value will lead to a country where nobody will care to create services or products because owning land is simply easier.

If the only way for the government to continue growing the economy is by importing migrant workers and foreign talent, and the speed at which the government does this is without care whether these immigrants or foreigners can integrate with the greater Singaporean population, and without care if these immigrants see Singapore as a home or if they see Singapore as a stepping stone onto their next destination, then it is no wonder that some Singaporeans already begin to feel like strangers in their own country. It is not xenophobic or racist to point out that you wish to live in a Singaporean society, and that foreigners have to conform and integrate if they wish to be here. Otherwise what is the point of this being Singapore? But that is the hypocrisy of the PAP, such that our current Prime Minister can in the same breath acknowledge that there are integration issues while condemning others who dare question this as racist or xenophobic, all the while never admitting to the gaslighting that is on open display.

The combination of rising home prices and costs of living, coupled with a country in which Singaporeans increasingly can barely recognise, has led to historic lows in total fertility rates (TFR). Ironically this in turn leads the government to continue down this path of importing more and more foreign talent to make up the short fall of Singaporeans. This rapid replacement of the Singapore populace with people who have no wish to integrate into Singapore society and the rapidly falling fertility rates will eventually result in the end of Singapore as we know it.

Too little, too late?

The PAP are not blind to this reality. Already, as mentioned above, after gaslighting Singaporeans who saw the rapid increase in foreigners in Singapore as a threat to the social fabric, the Prime Minister has for the first time acknowledged the government knows there are integration issues. With the passing of the baton from Lee Hsien Loong to the 4th generation of PAP leaders, there is a noticeable pivot in the tone. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong cannot shut up about “refreshing” the “social compact” of Singapore, and with it follows the vagaries of it being about the journey and not the end, that we can find fulfilment in more diverse ways of living, and now more than ever we need to strengthen the trust among Singaporeans. It is a softer approach from the Lee dynasty, and it is a more consultative approach. Already steps are taken to right the ship and correct the course we are on.

In his first National Day rally speech, PM Wong addressed some of these concerns. Because the threat of an ever decreasing TFR is an existential threat to a country, especially one as young and small as Singapore without a large enough population or a strong enough culture to tide us over, every policy prescription has to be viewed in that lens - that to make Singaporeans want to have children here, to make any immigrant want to build their lives here and buy into the Singaporean way of life, it necessarily has to work towards making Singapore livable again. Simply put: stop running Singapore like a company and start running it like a country.

To that end, all the policies mentioned at the National Day rally were too timid to effect this change. The only one which even came close was the increase in parental leave, which was a small step in the right direction. As for the housing policy, it was disappointing to see that once again the PAP had opted to kick the can down the road to solve at a later date. Increasing the grants for HDB flats is merely a stopgap solution for this round of buyers to be able to better afford their houses. As the market adjusts, the grants that the government gives out will be baked into the price and the price will adjust upwards. Giving people more money to buy property just increases the prices of the properties. The proverbial can can only be kicked so many times down the road before it breaks down completely.

If the era of Lee “We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think” Kuan Yew would be defined by making unpopular but correct decisions, then the Lee “monitor the situation” Hsien Loong era would be defined by waiting at the sidelines till absolutely certain that their decisions would have no political consequences. It is still too early to tell where PM Wong would land, but between the overly timid housing policy, and the incredibly populist scrapping of the Gifted Education Program, things are not off to a good start.

It is of course unclear if Singaporeans have the stomach for the change needed to fix the housing system, or the change needed to reinvigorate the stock market. But the PAP has long sold itself as the party of doing the right thing, regardless of how popular it is, that to shy away from doing what is necessary now feels almost like cowardice. There is something to be said about how incredibly high salaries in the government could incentivise the maintenance of the status quo to retain those salaries for as long as possible, but that is a discussion for another day.

Some of these ideas are not new, and have been put forward before by either think tanks or Opposition, but as part of “refreshing” the “social compact”, these are some possible solutions:

1. A full reset on public housing - make all existing public housing sold by a certain date private housing and reintroduce new public housing with hard caps on the prices which properties can be bought and sold. These would fulfil the true intention of public housing instead of being assets to be speculated on.

2. A more controlled immigration plan which ensures that new Singaporeans are committed to integrating into the social fabric of Singapore, instead of treating Singapore as a stepping stone in their journey somewhere else.

3. Reduce the amount of GLCs and the size of government, and scale back on the reliance on MNCs, allowing Singaporeans to have space to create and fill the gaps in Singapore.

Just making these changes will be extremely painful for Singaporeans, and perhaps Singaporeans cannot stomach this pain. It is a dream of a different vision for Singapore, a more livable one, with better employee protections, and a government which gives people more freedom to live their lives. Perhaps the PAP are right in their estimation that it would be political suicide to attempt any change on such a scale. But the worry then is that the change is coming at too glacial a pace that by the time any change is put in effect, this country as we know it would have already ceased to exist, and that would truly be the end of Singapore.

In one of the dumbest stories this year, the URA and MOH were considering the removal of the mural after feedback from the public (read: one person) saying the mural was “offensive” and “disrespectful”, and that the woman “looked more like a prostitute than a hardworking samsui woman”. On the part of the URA and MOH, the problem they had with the mural was that “the depiction of smoking on the unauthorised mural is not aligned with Singapore’s anti-smoking policy”.

In their view, the Singaporean’s mind is so feeble that any depiction of vice is enough to send us down the dark and decrepit road of addiction and personal ruin. Only our political betters are able to shield us from such things. Soon the only murals we will be allowed to choose from are the warning images on the cigarette packets: do you want the dead baby or the lung cancer on the side of your building?

Never mind that as usual the policy has no semblance of even-handed application. Will the Government censor any and all depiction of smoking and other vice on television and streaming services? Will crime and drug use be banned from being screened? Will MOH and URA ban all overweight people from appearing on any kind of public media or television and movies because that would presumably in their eyes an advertisement that being overweight is acceptable in society? After all, diabetes and other weight related illnesses are on the rise in Singapore. Presumably the MOH and URA are against these vices as well, not just smoking. Or do they not do it because the public backlash against such a policy would be too great?

It seems to be the case in this instance: the MOH and URA basically buckled under public pressure, after taking into consideration “diverse views from many members of the public”. This prompted them to finally come to the conclusion that, “Most members of the public do not see this as an advertisement for cigarettes”. Really? They couldn’t come to that conclusion by themselves? They needed the Singaporean public to tell them that? These are the vaunted elites that supposedly know what is best for you. These are the technocrats and bureaucrats that your tax dollars are paying to come up with inane policies like these, some of whom will one day become Ministers who will continue to make these inane policies.

I thought the whole point of the Faustian bargain we made with the PAP was that these people had some kind of superior cognitive function that allowed them to come up with policies which benefited the Singaporean people. After all as Lee Kuan Yew said, “We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.” Today not only do the ministries buckle under public pressure, the initial policies are so wrongheaded that it begs the question how they came up with them in the first place.

It’s always up to the individual

Somehow it’s always up to the individual to deal with climate change. There is a concerted effort by main stream media in Singapore to push individuals to bear the brunt of climate action. In a Channel News Asia (CNA) report titled “Even as plastic bag use at supermarkets declines, Singapore is in early phase of sustainability transition: Experts”, the article chastised Singaporeans for not doing more to protect the environment.

It’s your fault, you see, that you want plastic bags to dispose of your waste. Never mind that over 80 percent of Singaporeans live in HDBs and the primary way of disposing trash down the chutes actively encourages using said bags. If only the Singaporean citizen would stop polluting, we can finally end climate change and pollution once and for all.1

When I say this is a concerted push by the main stream media, what I mean is this: over the past few years there is an increased amount of commentary pieces which are aimed at encouraging the Singaporean public to “do their part”:

1. “How to beat the heat in Singapore, without air-conditioning” - CNA, 13 July 2024

2. “Commentary: Turning on the air-con shouldn’t be our only way of coping with hot weather” - CNA, 1 June 2024

3. “No air-con, please: How to stay cool with eco-friendly ways” - The Straits Times, 8 May 2024

4. “The Big Read: Reducing single-use plastics and disposables - are we there yet? Or are companies just greenwashing?” - CNA, 29 April 2024

5. “Commentary: Singaporeans’ reliance on air-cons will only lead to more discomfort” - CNA, 5 April 2024

6. “Commentary: Singapore has seen less plastic bag usage. Why not the same for food containers?” - CNA, 4 April 2024

7. “How to make homes cooler without cranking up the air-conditioning” - The Straits Times, 25 July 2023

8. “A billion new air-conditioners will save lives but cook the planet” - The Straits Times, 17 may 2023

9. “Commentary: Air-conditioning – the unspoken energy guzzler in Singapore” - CNA, 7 September 2020

The premise is always the same: what can the individual do to help the environment? It’s always about changing the mindset of the consumer, always about how the individual can impact the environment. Just to be clear: I’m not saying that changing your habits will have no impact on the environment. What I am saying is that the government and corporations should take more responsibility for the environment. Let’s put things into perspective:

First, the population of Singapore is so small that even though we do pollute higher on a per capita basis, even if we completely remove Singapore from the global pollution statistics we would constitute nothing more than a rounding error, and global warming will continue as scheduled. Singapore produces slightly less than 1 million tonnes of plastic waste a year, out of the 400 million tonnes of plastic waste produced globally. That’s less than a quarter of a percent of the total plastic waste.

Second, even if we disregard the insignificance we have on a global scale, and focus instead on just improving ourselves, introducing policies targeted at individuals instead of the government and corporations does not move the needle on pollution or climate change in any significant way. Of the 1 million tonnes of plastic waste, only about 200,000 tonnes of that was from domestic single use plastics (carrier bags, food and beverage containers as well as tableware and utensils). The often trumpeted statistic about the plastic bag policy is that it has reduced plastic bag usage at supermarkets by 50 to 80 percent. Let’s be generous and call it 80 percent. 80 percent of 200,000 tonnes is 160,000 tonnes, which comes to about 16 percent of the 1 million tonnes of total plastic waste. That doesn’t sound so bad, until you realise that the 200,000 tonnes of single use plastics are not just plastic carriers that come from supermarkets, it includes plastic carriers from all sources and single use food and beverage containers. This also doesn’t account for the demand of plastic bags going up in other sectors, increasing by as much as 10 to 15 percent. Even if we were generous and assumed that of the 200,000 tonnes half of it were supermarket plastic carriers (which I doubt), that would mean that the reduction of plastic waste comes out to about 8 percent. I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual number were much lower than that.

I’ve already spoken about air-conditioners and the inane push by the media to get us to stop using them, so I won’t repeat myself here. I will however speak about the the Land Transport Authority’s (LTA) Singapore Green Plan which from 2030 aims to transition Singapore’s vehicle population to become completely electric by 2040. According to Transport Minister Chee Hong Tat, carbon emissions by our “land transport system”2 accounts for about 15 percent of our total carbon emissions. Switching from a internal combustion engine to an electric vehicle (EV) reduces the amount of carbon emissions by 50 percent. So that only comes out to a 7.5 percent reduction in carbon emissions,3 and all at the cost of the private citizen. This 7.5 percent does not even account for any additional emissions or environmental damage done when producing an electric vehicle compared to a gasoline powered car. It takes between 28,069 miles and 68,160 miles before there are any benefits. The average Singaporean car is driven 17,500km annually, or about 10,937.5 miles. Even with the charity of assuming that all households keep the car for the full duration of the COE of 10 years, EVs will need to be owned for anywhere between 3 to 7 years before they present a net reduction in carbon emissions compared to gasoline cars. But because of the COE system Singaporeans are incentivised to change their cars every 10 years, which further diminishes the effects of this initiative. This would mean that the reduction in carbon emissions would likely be lower than 7.5 percent, at which point it begs the question why even have such a policy at all?

I am not against individual action when it comes to climate change, by all means please continue to reduce, reuse and recycle. What I am against is the Government mandating climate action on the individual. All of these policies make Singaporean’s lives worse in the here and now for an uncertain and undiscernible effect on the future which we will never get to see. After already being hit by record inflation levels, an increase to the GST, do we also need to pass the responsibility of climate change on to the individual? Never mind that these policies do not actually result in any noticeable reduction in overall carbon emissions or plastic pollution on the global scale, it is more important that the PAP be seen to be doing something. It is the very definition of performative.

The solution, according to the experts, is to educate the people more. Said Associate Professor Hannah Chang: awareness is important as “many times, people may not be fully aware or cognisant of the type of negative impact the single-use plastic bag has on our environment”. Of course everyone knows plastic is bad for the environment, if there are still holdouts over whether a non-biodegradable toxic-if-burned aquatic-animal-choking-hazard material that will last a million years if buried in the ground is bad for the environment, I think you would find that they are in the minority. But 80 percent of Singaporeans live in HDBs. The waste disposal chutes are designed for trash to be bagged before being thrown down the chutes. Or does the Government expect people to carry trash out piece by piece to be thrown down the common chutes? Either the Government has to redesign how our waste disposal works for the 80 percent of HDB dwellers or they have to accept that the people need the single use bags to dispose their trash.

How can the individual be any more effective than the Government or corporations at taking action against climate change? In both the examples above, the individual accounts for the minority of both carbon emissions and plastic waste. The Government on their part could accelerate the switch to nuclear power, which would eliminate as much as 40 percent of our carbon emissions. I would even settle for the Government deciding if they even want nuclear power, but make a decision so they can focus on other forms of clean energy if they so decide that it would be geopolitically unfeasible to have nuclear power. The Government could also impose plastic taxes and levies like the ones in the European Union if they were so inclined to deal with single use plastics. There are more solutions than passing the buck to the Singaporean citizen, it takes political will and creative policy making, not just looking for solutions that sound good and are easy to implement just so the Government can say they are doing something.

Singaporeans deserve a government who has a proper vision of how to tackle climate change; a government who is willing to come up with solutions, not just pass the costs down to the citizen. We have a new Prime Minister, but do we also have a new vision with creative policies and the political will to implement it? For the sake of this country, I hope we do.

If we go by what we publicly knew of Lee Kuan Yew’s final wishes, there seems to be no doubt that he would not have wanted to be commemorated in a monument. This was acknowledged by his son then Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in Parliament after his passing in 2015:

“Mr Lee made it very clear throughout his life that he did not need and did not want any monument.”

And yet somehow after much deliberation, the Government had arrived at the perfect way to honour Lee Kuan Yew and his fellow founders: they were going to build a monument for them. You could see barely a month after his death the PAP were already pushing out the message that Mr Lee actually wanted this memorial, as seen in this Facebook post by Minister Ng Eng Hen,1 where he writes: “[Lee Kuan Yew] supported the idea of a memorial for our founding fathers that could teach future generations about the values and beliefs that built up a successful Singapore”. Of course, I did not know Mr Lee personally, so it could very well be the case that Mr Lee wanted a memorial like this all this time. But why then did SM Lee Hsien Loong say this in his groundbreaking ceremony speech: “I first suggested the idea of a Founders’ Memorial in 2015, a few weeks after Mr Lee Kuan Yew had passed away”? Was the idea of the memorial already known to and supported by Mr Lee Kuan Yew before his death, or was Minister Ng just making this up to legitimize the building of Founders’ Memorial? The whole thing just reminds me of Communist China, the USSR or the DPRK, where power hungry opportunists would claim to speak on behalf of the dead Mao, Lenin or Kim Jong Il to garner support for their own ideas.

As SM Lee explains in his speech: “Therefore, instead of honouring Mr Lee alone, I proposed that we consider a memorial dedicated to the team of people – our founding leaders – who fought together with him and brought us here, and to the ideals, values, hopes, and aspirations that they held dear.” It’s a loophole you see: as long as it is not a monument but a memorial and as long as it does not only commemorate Lee Kuan Yew but all the founders, then it’s all kosher (or, since we’re in Singapore, halal). I would rather they just built a giant statue of LKY like Christ the Redeemer towering over the city, or carved his face into the side of Mt Faber - the first face of our very own Mt Rushmore, or taxidermized his body so the public can visit and mourn him like Vladimir Lenin. That at least would have been less insulting to the intelligence of the Singaporean people. Maybe I’m a cynic, but this memorial feels like yet another attempt by the PAP to constantly remind the people of LKY (and friends), that always and forever must we be grateful to him (and by extension the PAP). Or maybe it’s just a really nice way of commemorating our founding fathers.

According to SM Lee, Founders’ Memorial will “tell the story of how they overcame the odds to build a strong, united, and independent Singapore; how they led the people of Singapore through successive battles first against colonialism, then communism, and finally communalism”. That sounds great, and I agree that we should have something that informs younger Singaporeans of their shared history. If only we had something like that. The exhibit in the National Museum of Singapore already does a good job of telling Singapore’s history and the contributions of the founders. It might be a little old and outdated, but that could be fixed by just updating the exhibition. Do we really need a memorial just for this?

The Memorial and NS Square (which I’ve written about here) will cost Singaporean tax payers about S$800m. One has to wonder if the PAP Government did not spend so much money on vanity projects like these, Terminal 5, or the National Stadium, would they have to raise the Goods and Services Tax (GST)? After all it was then PM Lee Hsien Loong who said in a rally in 2015:

“What will make you need to raise GST? Profligate spending and irresponsible, unsustainable plans. That is what will hurt and require you to raise taxes and GST.”

Like I said before, I think there is room for a political party in Singapore who would campaigns on cutting wasteful spending and keeping taxes lower. If they must build these vanity projects, I would rather the Government tendered these out to private developers who would have to construct and operate these venues for profit ensuring the tax payer does not have to pay for these. You might say, didn’t they sort of try that with the Sports Hub and didn’t that end in complete failure? Yes, which might point to the fact that we didn’t need the Sports Hub, or that the Sports Hub was way too extravagant of a project for a country of our size. Are the facilities actually properly utilized? Probably not. I would rather the Government stuck to public infrastructure spending without any of these vanity projects. After all, a monument by any other name costs just as much.

Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) held a public consultation for the proposed Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill, seeking feedback from Singaporeans. I’m glad the Government is taking into consideration the views of Singaporeans on this issue, though the extent to which I do not know. I have already made my views on race clear here, essentially I’m of the opinion we should reduce the laws regarding race not increase them.

The Bill contains some of what you might expect: it will port over race related offences from the Penal Code. It is noted by the MHA that “the element of threat to public peace or public order” is not necessary for the offences to be made out, so under s298 using a racial slur and hurting someone’s feelings (this document uses the term “racial feelings” though I have no idea what that might be. Do people of different races have different feelings? Or is there some special category of feelings relating to race I’m just unaware about?) is enough to trigger a prison term of up to 3 years. All words have power of course, but I’m not sure that merely hurting someone’s feelings (or “racial feelings”) should be a crime. As also noted by the MHA, incitement of violence is already a crime, but I could see there being merit to enhancing penalties for race based crimes.

Now the slightly more dubious part of this is the introduction of reparative measures to mend community ties. I’m not sure what the Government has in mind for “reparative measures”, but if the act is going to be performative like issuing an apology to the community or some kind of racial and religious sensitivity training I’m not sure it would help at all. I’m not sure it’s possible to compel racists to actually change their mind short of a full re-education ala American History X where you force them to actually physically integrate with other racial communities (though without the threat of sexual violence). It’s an interesting idea, though depending on the details of the Bill I’m not sure it’s actually practicable, though maybe Parliament can come up with an interesting solution (that’s what they’re paid for, after all).

And now the most dubious part: the introduction of Restraining Orders against content prejudicial to racial harmony. Under this new proposal, the Minister for Home Affairs can issue restraining orders against the “production or distribution of content that prejudices the maintenance of racial harmony in Singapore”. This includes the communication or production of the material; addressing an audience on the subject; printing, editing, or contributing to a publication; or holding office in the editorial board of a publication. It is worth noting that there already exists a similar provision in the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act (MRHA), but the new Bill seeks to expand it to include racial matters as well.

Once again, the PAP seeks to expand the powers of the executive, giving ministers more power to decide what content is savoury and desirable for the Singaporean public to peruse. This comes as the latest in a long line of legislation including MRHA, POFMA, FICA, and even the latest new rules from the Elections Department on election advertising. The “safeguard” (if you can call it that) is a Presidential Council which consists of individuals who have distinguished themselves through public or community service (which makes them experts on racial matters? I’m not quite following this line of logic), which together with the cabinet would make representations on why or why not there should be a restraining order to the President, who then would have the final say. The President would also have the discretion to veto appointment of Council members. As an upside (if giving outsized powers to the executive was not enough for you), we also get to once again amend the Constitution to grant the President these extra powers, a document which according to current PM Wong should be sparingly amended.

Using the President once again as the “second key” as a check against executive power could be a nice idea if the unique circumstance of Singapore’s political landscape did not always result in the President being an ex-member of the ruling party. Maybe in the future when Singapore’s political landscape becomes more diversified it would be an easier pill to swallow, but for now I’m not sure the average Singaporean believes it offers any kind of effective check against executive power at all. There is also the question of why can’t any kind of restraining order go through the court system? Is Minister Shanmugam going to play the same card he did for POFMA where he said the courts would be too slow and by the time a POFMA order could be issued by the courts the disinformation would be everywhere (never mind that the same logic could be applied to a wrongfully issued POFMA order, by the time a correction to the POFMA order is issued by the courts the news cycle would have moved on and the source of information thoroughly discredited. Of course to the PAP it would be inconceivable that a Minister could ever be wrong)? Is there some pressing need for a restraining order to be applied? Would everyone be racist by the time the courts manage to issue the restraining order? If there were any pressing need on threat of violence, there already are other provisions which can handle it, namely incitement of violence under the Penal Code and s74 which covers incitement specific to race related offences. Is there a need for issuing incredibly urgent restraining orders? I’m not sure there is, and if there is I would hope PAP would make a convincing case for it in Parliament. I think any expansion of executive powers need to be checked by the legislature and the judiciary - already as it is the executive have an outsized influence in the Singapore political system.

And so continues the ongoing infantilization of the Singapore public. We the hoi polloi cannot decide for ourselves what is racially offensive, and our fragile minds and eyes need to be shielded from such horrors, lest we succumb to them and become infected with that vicious racism. The Singapore public cannot be entrusted with any kind of material: not disinformation or fake news, we need POFMA for that; not election advertising, the ELD has made new rules for that; and certainly not racist materials, if anyone were to see those they too would become racist. It is for our betters the Ministers and the PAP to protect us against the evils and ills of that ilk, for only their minds are so fortified that they can risk weeding through the filth, while leaving the Singaporean discourse pristine and clean. This all reminds me of Cut, a short film by Royston Tan which remains sadly relevant today.

The students protest against the… Bill?

A group of students from various institutions have marched to the MHA offices seemingly in protest of the Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill. In a press release, the students set out their specific objections to the Bill, many of which I have covered above. But then the release takes a strange turn, and it turns out that the entire reason they were opposing the Bill was so they could continue protesting about the Israel-Palestine conflict? Two things can be true at once:

1. I support the right to protest, and I think Singaporeans should have more rights to peaceful protests and demonstrations. This would largely include the review and abolition of the Public Order Act;

2. I think the cause these students are protesting for is stupid.

I have already made my position on the Israel-Palestine conflict clear, but let me reiterate a few things:

1. All war is bad. Any loss of innocent civilian life is a tragedy;

2. Sometimes war is necessary. I won’t belabour the points I’ve made in my previous post but I think there is a clear moral difference between Israel and Hamas, and while the Palestinian people are paying the ultimate price in this conflict, and they have my deepest sympathies, Hamas needs to be eradicated not just for Israel’s sake but for the Palestinian people as well.

What is it about this conflict for some people that every single issue somehow goes back to this one? The protestors are almost always disproportionately young and college educated, and I think our institutions are somewhat to blame for this. I’ve talked about before how the youth of today are indoctrinated in our institutions by Marxist ideology. It’s what leads to this pseudo-intellectual moral relativist stance I find commonplace in society today, where people unable to take a moral stand: people are always keen to draw moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel, that both sides are equally bad. One is a democracy which defends rights and freedoms enjoyed in the developed world, the other is a terrorist group who would rather use the lives and suffering of their people as a platform to promote their ideology. These are not the same thing. But I suppose this fence-sitting behaviour is only par for the course when our own Government routinely exhibits similar behaviour.

The protestors go on to post this critique of this article by The Straits Times. You know it is bad when I’m defending The Straits Times, so let me go through some of the more egregious comments. Some of the comments are so banal I’m not sure it’s worth going through. Already in the first image there is the accusation that The Straits Times submitted the article late. The article was published one day after the protest happened. I don’t think this news was particularly important or urgent that it needed to be published on the day of it happening, and waiting for statements from the people involved is considered responsible journalism. There’s both lack of an understanding of what constitutes proper journalism (this is a recurring theme amongst the protest movement in Singapore, I think checking sources and verifying the truth should be a celebrated standard), and an inflated sense of self-importance. This was hardly the breaking news that the commenter seemed to think it is, publishing it the next day is honestly completely fine.

On the fifth image it becomes absolutely clear that this group is unable to view this issue in an objective way. The suggested correction of the term “Israel-Hamas war” in the article to “Israeli-perpetrated genocide in Gaza” is insane. And on the ninth image the comments2 completely loses any grasp on reality. I’m not quite sure where to begin with this one. What do you want the police to do? They have no jurisdiction in Israel. Do you want them to start rounding up Jewish people in Singapore? I’m not sure what outcome these protestors will be happy with any more, and the stated goals of the protest are not very clear. The Singapore Government has already voted for a ceasefire in the United Nations, and have coordinated and delivered aid to the Palestinians. Minister Vivian Balakrishnan even flew down personally to Israel to berate their Prime Minister. What more do you want the Government to do? I’m not even sure that majority of Singaporeans are against Israel at this point, despite the post being so confident that it is the “will of the people”.

What is it about this one issue that makes the Singaporean youth so fired up? There are so many other issues in the world, but somehow this one issue which has more moral clarity than most of the other issues ends up being the one they can’t let go of. Where are the protestors against Saudi money in our institutions and Government? The Saudis have been involved in a civil war in Sudan for longer than the invasion of Gaza, and have killed just as many innocent civilians. Will the protestors take up this issue with the Singapore Government? Or do they not care when it is Muslim on Muslim violence? Similarly will they denounce China and Chinese money in Singapore for the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang? Or is Chinese on Muslim violence not worthy of their ire? Will they stop using their smart phones (on which they no doubt took and posted pictures of their protests and crafted their messages) which are made from metals which are mined from modern slavery? Why is it that this one issue is taking up so much of their bandwidth? Is it just the case that it is easier to pressure a democratic ally of Singapore into some kind of compliance? That this is nothing more than signaling that you are doing the “right” thing?

I think there needs to be an examination in Singapore and Singapore’s institutions of educations why the youth of today are so laser focused on this one issue and this one issue only. Part of it is that it is the trendy cause of the day, but I think it goes deeper than that. But if you want a racially harmonious society, examining this issue is more important than pushing through any amount of bills.

1. all election advertisements will have to display the full names of all who have played an active role in publishing or publicly displaying the information;

2. this includes the person who authorised the publication or display; the person directed the advertisement to be published or displayed; the person approved the content; whoever paid for the advertisement; and even the name of the printer;

3. the exception to the above are Singapore citizens who are not candidates or election agents who publish online advertisements in their personal capacity are exempt from the rules; and

4. for online advertisements as well, and amplification of existing online advertisements (defined as boosting, reposting, sharing or re-sharing) will be subject to the same requirements as posting new online advertisements.

All this adds to a chilling effect that already pervades Singaporean politics. Already the Opposition find it difficult to find people who are willing to work with them, it is an open secret that the average Singaporean shies away from being associated in any way with the Opposition. They may vote Opposition, but Singaporeans do not want to belong to the Opposition. There is a perception amongst Singaporeans, whether true or not, that any association with the Opposition will dampen their job and business prospects. By making Singaporeans display their names on the advertisements this will inadvertently discourage them further from participating in politics, even behind the scenes.

Adding to this chilling effect is how unclear the new rule is with regard to online advertisements. Point 4 above (which was clause 7 in the ELD press release) says that any amplification of online advertisements (which includes reposting, sharing and re-sharing) would have the same effect as publishing fresh content, but notably point 3 above (which was clause 4 in the press release) states that Singaporean citizens who are not candidates or election agents will be exempt from the rules. Does this mean that clause 7 is caught by clause 4 as well, and any amplification of the online advertisements by Singaporeans who are not candidates or election agents will also be exempt from the rules? This isn’t very clear, and the report from CNA does little to clarify this. In all likelihood Singaporeans who are notoriously cautious will err on the side of caution and will be less likely to share anything political come the GE. Whether this is by design on the part of the ELD1, or whether just a side effect of their ever vigilant policing of “fake news” and “disinformation”, this will undoubtedly have a further chilling effect on our political landscape and discourse. If the goal is to forever keep the politics in Singapore in a state of undeveloped infancy, then I can think of no better policies to enact.

All this comes after, barely a month ago, then Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in his May Day speech: “Therefore, at each election, 15 times in a row, the PAP has won a renewed mandate, fair and square, and continued to deliver results for Singaporeans.” I guess it depends what you mean by “fair and square”, but the fact that you need to actually say that the elections are fair really begs the question. If you mean that every Singaporean is able to vote and that there is no election fraud, that the ballot boxes and voter slips are not tampered with, then yes, Singapore has fair elections. But if you mean that the electoral boundaries are constantly shifting, or that the local media provides ceaseless cover for the PAP, or that there is an almost invisible line between the PAP and the People’s Association (which is supposed to be a non-partisan statutory board), or that the PAP has a history of detaining and taking legal action against their political opponents which has contributed to an incredibly infantile Opposition and a chilled atmosphere for political discourse in Singapore, then you might argue that the elections are not so fair after all. These changes from the ELD are just the latest in a long line of trying to create an asymmetrical playing field.

The appeal of Lawrence Wong

In less than a month after taking office, one of Lawrence Wong’s first acts as Prime Minister will be to write an appeal letter for migrant worker Sharif Uddin. Who is Sharif Uddin? Sharif is a migrant worker who was working as a construction safety supervisor, and was also an activist for migrant worker rights in Singapore. In March of this year, Sharif’s employer had received threats and notes from loan sharks (which till today have not been caught) at their residential address, prompting them to terminate Sharif’s employment after consulting the Singapore Police Force (SPF) and the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). In a statement from the MOM, the MOM and SPF refute allegations that they had advised the employer to terminate Sharif’s employment and work pass, but if you read the statement in question: first, the Police had advised that “harassment would usually stop after the work pass of a foreign worker being harassed had been cancelled”; and second, while MOM had not advised the employer to terminate Sharif, they did go through the steps required for said termination. Now whether or not this could be seen by the employer as encouragement to go through with the termination, I’ll leave for you to decide.

In any case, Sharif was terminated on the 9th of March and despite the fact that the Police have not found any evidence that Sharif had borrowed any money from unlicensed money lenders (which meant that Sharif himself was a victim of harassment), Sharif’s employment had not been reinstated and after several appeals, including a last minute appeal from PM Lawrence Wong on the 29th of May Sharif’s special pass expired on the 31st of May forcing him to leave the country. It certainly feels unfair, and I sympathise with Sharif. Much has already been said on this matter, so I will not delve to deeply, but I will make several points:

1. in a joint statement, the Immigration & Checkpoint Authority (ICA) and MOM made it clear that Sharif had turned down at least 2 jobs since the 11th of April this year, and without a job his pass expired on 31st of May. I pity Sharif’s circumstances, but if he truly wished to stay in Singapore he did have recourse available to him. This is not victim blaming (as people like Kirsten Han might say), it’s merely a sad reality of our employment and immigration laws.

2. if you wish to improve the employment rights of migrant workers, you should first look to improve the rights of our own citizens. This might be an unpopular take, but the Singapore Government exists first and foremost to better the lives of its citizens, otherwise what is the point of the sovereign state? Sure, it is a travesty that Sharif would first have to endure harassment and then lose his job as a result of this harassment through no fault of his own, but Singapore is a no fault termination country. Employers do not need to give reasons for termination, they can simply give notice. I have already said much about employment rights and will not expound on them today.

3. there is a conspiracy going on that Sharif’s termination was a concerted effort to remove him from Singapore because of his activism on migrant worker rights. I have seen no evidence to this point, and putting on the “just asking questions” routine doesn’t help.

What I do want to focus on is PM Wong’s appeal. If you’re cynical you might say that PM Wong is merely writing this appeal to show how empathetic he is. Whether the appeal was successful or not, I think politically PM Wong comes out on top of this.

As an aside, I don’t think that appeals from your MP or even the PM should hold any additional weight to decisions made by statutory boards. An appeal from your MP should be treated exactly the same as an appeal from yourself. The outcome of a decision should not change based on who is writing the appeal, and it only serves to entrench and reinforce the idea that your MP is of outsized importance to your life. It cannot be the case that the decision of a statutory board hinges on who makes the appeal, then it would be deciding cases not on their merit but on who you know.

The appeal might be a signal from the PM that in this new era Singapore is more compassionate, that we are willing to extend a hand to help our migrant workers (as long as it’s just letter writing), to refresh the oft mentioned but never defined Singapore compact. He’s not a Lee, and that means he can afford to try something new. And maybe that will be the appeal of Lawrence Wong.

But regardless of how one thinks about Lee Hsien Loong’s legacy, we should still be thankful for his service. He has sacrificed much to serve this country, and for that I am grateful. Having been groomed by his father his entire life for succession - first in the military as the youngest general in Singapore history, and then pushed into politics and the cabinet, he had impossibly large shoes to fill. In another life he could have had a career as an exceptional mathematician, but alas in this life he was born Lee Kuan Yew’s son.

Lee Hsien Loong caps off his two decades as Prime Minister with an exit interview: as much a retrospective as his prospective on the way forward, the interview captured his thoughts on the past and future of Singapore. As I listened to the interview, I often find myself agreeing with what he said, the principles he espoused and the philosophy which guided his leadership, which makes it all the more frustrating when I think back on his term, because I don’t think his actions match his words. What I mean is this:

On foreign policy

Let me run through some of the key points of his interview. Singapore’s foreign policy has been consistent throughout the years: be bamboo - bend but not break. As a small nation there is not a lot of wiggle room for foreign policy, you have to bend with the winds of change as bigger countries vie for their own national interests while ensuring that your own interests do not get crushed beneath the weight of their ambitions. In this Singapore has been pretty successful at playing friend to everyone - anyone from the United States to China and even North Korea feel welcome here. At the same time there is a need for Singapore to stand her ground against blatant attacks on her sovereign rights, case in point going to the International Court against Malaysia over ownership of Pedro Blanca. I think the Singapore Government by and large has done a very good job1 of positioning Singapore on the global stage, if anything most of my disagreements with the PAP Government concern local rather than international issues.2

On the youth and their future

And so we run into one such local issue. At this point of the interview, it becomes somewhat clear that the media aren’t just throwing softballs at SM Lee, in many instances they’re actively batting on his team. This is a continuing theme I’ve talked about before, where the local media provide constant cover for the PAP and their policies effectively acting as a Government mouthpiece rather than the objective fourth estate. Melissa Manuel from Seithi (the Tamil arm of Mediacorp) asks “how can [the youngsters] actually build confidence that they are actually doing better than the previous generations”. Already built into the question is the assumption that the youth today is doing better than previous generations, rather than asking the question are the youth today doing better. And she of course avoids asking the most important question: are the youth of today better off at the end of SM Lee’s term than at the start of his term 20 years ago.

SM Lee of course affirms that the youth today had it better than his generation did. I should hope so, he was born in pre-independence Singapore in 1952. If we’re doing worse today than a teen in 1960s I should hope that the PAP would have been voted out long ago. Of course life is better today, and I doubt the PAP can claim credit for everything though they will most certainly try. In my lifetime I have seen the evolution of the personal computer and internet to the point where everyone now has a computer that far surpasses the one NASA used to put a man on the moon in their pockets, a point SM Lee acknowledges when he says “you grow up learning to swipe the iPad before you learn to speak”. People who have experienced the comforts that technology has afforded us today will not want to go back to the past. The end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st century saw the fastest decline in world poverty in world history ever. These technological and economical advances are felt the world over, and is not exclusive to Singapore.

So it is disingenuous when SM Lee tries to brush off the question with university graduate statistics of his generation, of which only 3-4% went to university to the 50% of today, never mind that when he took office 20 years ago in 2004 the numbers were already at 50%. Or when he talks about making a living as a competitive gamer (or e-sports trainer as he called it) or as a social media influencer, jobs which he says our generation is lucky to have as he never had them, never mind that those jobs did exist and were just as rare - the equivalent job in his time would be a professional soccer or NBA player or an actor or celebrity. Those jobs have always existed and they are just as difficult to get and coveted as they were in his time. What I’m interested in and the question he does not have to answer because the media refuses to ask is whether the average youth today (one who is not a professional gamer or social media influencer) feels better off than they would have been 20 years ago at the beginning of his term, and not for things which he cannot claim credit for, like having an iPad or an iPhone, but for things which his Government can control: have wages kept up with the increase in housing prices? Have wages kept up with inflation? Can you afford to raise a family on a single income if one spouse wishes to stay home to raise the children?

I’m not sure that by any of those metrics the youth of today are doing better than the youth of 20 years ago. When you realise that as a young person entering the housing market today you are essentially paying for the capital gains of previous generations, can you say that you are doing better today than the previous generations? But if the youth of today are feeling that way, then it is for the Government and the media to tell us we are wrong for feeling that way. Cue the clip of Principal Skinner: it’s the children who are wrong. That’s how we get Melissa from Seithi essentially asking “how can the youth of today be confident that they are doing better today than previous generations” and Tham Yuen-C of The Straits Times asking how the Government can convince young people not to look at financial gains of previous generations.

On welfare

One of the more confusing things about the Singapore Government is that although it is very much socially conservative, they have many policies which are generally associated with what we would call the liberal left in countries like the USA or UK. We used to have the best public housing policy in the world, before the Goh Chok Tong Government decided to open it up to free market forces, and we also have routine hand outs by the Government in the form of GST rebates or CDC vouchers.

In the interview, SM Lee claims that Singaporeans have no stomach for a political party which wants to cut both taxes and welfare. Maybe that is true. But I think there is room for a party which advocates for small government, a party which wants to cut government spending to make up for the shortfall of revenue without touching welfare expenditure. Some of the ways of distributing welfare is notoriously inefficient and inconsistent in its application. Many welfare programs like GST vouchers only go to those who live in HDB flats, despite the fact that there can be incredibly wealthy people living in HDB flats and retirees who might need a little extra living in private property. CDC vouchers on the other hand go to every Singaporean household, and a family of 5 who needs more money would receive the same amount as a single person household. There is no consistency in philosophy in the distribution of welfare, and there is huge waste in the distribution. Not only is the Government developing parallel ways of distributing funds to Singaporeans ala LifeSG for NS vouchers and a separate website for CDC vouchers, they have also hired personnel in the CDC who distribute physical CDC vouchers to Singaporeans who are not as technologically savvy.

All this is to say there is tremendous waste and inefficiencies in the system (something which anyone who has ever served National Service can attest to). Why is there no party campaigning on cutting this waste out? I’d like to see a party which campaigns on dismantling the CDC and removing the S$660,000 mayors3, advocating for a full audit on Government waste, some kind of welfare reform where the many welfare programs gets condensed into one with a more efficient distribution of cash directly into people’s accounts (the technology is there, we have had assurance packages paid directly into our bank accounts if it is linked to our NRIC). I’m not sure if Singaporeans have the stomach for a party advocating for smaller government, which takes less from the people and gives them more control over their lives. Maybe Singaporeans prefer that the Government makes decisions for them rather than being captains of their own lives.

On the separation of powers

SM Lee makes the case that the Government has to forever be involved in legislating social change, especially when it comes to sensitive issues like wearing the tudung for nurses or striking s377A from the books. According to him, “if the Government does not make it, it is not going to happen or it is going to happen in a very chaotic and very contentious way”. He’s right in the most pedantic fashion - the tudung was previously banned under the uniform policy of the Ministry of Health, and s377A was in the penal code of Singapore, so logically only the Government could undo policies and laws they had inflicted. What he’s wrong about is that the changes in both instances weren’t initiated by the Government - there had been plenty of agitation on the ground before the Government even considered changing the laws.

What is more interesting is SM Lee’s elaboration on his point. He draws on the example of Roe v. Wade in America, where the courts in an act of judicial activism had gone over and beyond their powers and taken it upon themselves decide on abortion rights in the United States. As SM Lee rightfully points out, this was a matter for the legislature (Congress) rather than the judiciary (Supreme Court) to decide, as it concerned one of the fundamental principles that both Singapore’s and the USA’s democracies are built on: the separation of powers. The idea that each body of government (the judiciary, the executive and the legislature) had their own sphere of competence where they each reigned supreme and could therefore act as a check on any other body of government to ensure that no body of government would accrue and abuse power is paramount to our systems of democracy. So I was in full agreement when SM Lee acknowledged the separation of powers and the importance allowing the right government body perform its function. Now what is disappointing is that during his tenure SM Lee had very little respect for the separation of powers. The 2 major incidents that come to mind would be the s377A issue and the fight over 38 Oxley Road.

The s377A issue was a largely confused affair. For those unfamiliar with this controversial law, s377A is a colonial holdover which in simple terms criminalized gay sex. This archaic law was kept on the books until 2023 when it would be finally repealed, long after our former colonisers made gay sex legal in 1967, and losing out to even India (where we inherited s377A from) which repealed it in 2018.4 I will not argue to the morality of such a law, but from a legal perspective the laws could have stayed on the books (having survived multiple constitutional challenges in which our courts found the law to be constitutional) without breaching any principles of the rule of law or separation of powers had the Government not in 2018 decided to announce (in what I can only assume as a way to test the waters) that s377A would not be proactively enforced. Of course this caused a plethora of other issues.

If you’re confused about what it means for s377A not to be proactively enforced, don’t worry, you’re in good company: former attorney-generals Walter Woon and VK Rajah weren’t sure either. Both of them were of the opinion that the executive would breach the separation of powers as the power to prosecute lies in the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) under s35(8) of the constitution. The AGC immediately pounced on this and released this statement: the AGC as Public Prosecutor retained full prosecutorial discretion under s35(8) with regard to s377A, and as an addendum how dare Walter Woon suggest any kind of impropriety on the part of the Government. You see, it was the Police which the executive had directed not to proactively enforce s377A, not the AGC which still retained prosecutorial discretion, and while the AGC will not prosecute s377A for consenting adults of legal age, s377A would still be enforced by the AGC to catch the occasional pedo (never mind that s376A-s376EE would be better suited for this purpose, and also now that s377A has been repealed are all these pedos now finally free from the law?). If only mental gymnastics were an Olympic sport; Singapore would have more than one gold medal by now.

To me the problem is far more fundamental than whether the executive had directed the AGC or the Police not to proactively enforce s377A, the mere fact that the executive had decided which laws were enforceable strikes me as a breach of the separation of powers. Where there is a law on the books and it is not deemed unconstitutional by the courts (as s377A had been), then it is the will of Parliament and by extension the people that the law is enforced. The only way to get rid of that law is to repeal it in Parliament, as SM Lee had noted above it is not for an activist judiciary or executive to subvert the will of the legislature, and if that is true in the USA then what is good for the goose must be good for the gander, and the same should be true in Singapore as well.5 And this is what I mean when I say that SM Lee espouses principles which I agree with but then acts in a completely different way.

The Oxley Road incident is by far the more egregious example of this behaviour. The crux of the issue was essentially a dispute over the will of Lee Kuan Yew by the Lee siblings: then Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, his brother Lee Hsien Yang, and his sister Lee Wei Ling. The point of dispute was that the will clearly stated that their family home Oxley road was to be demolished, but SM Lee later decided he was against the demolition, citing: 1) he doubted the veracity of the will and whether Lee Kuan Yew had in fact signed the will; 2) the house should be gazetted as a national monument. In response his siblings disparaged his character and intentions on social media, accusations which had they been made by anyone other than his siblings would surely have landed the accuser in court.

I’ve made this point before, and it is relevant here as well: there is an old legal maxim “Justice must not only be done, but must also be seen to be done”. What is essentially a private dispute over a private will should be resolved privately in court. Instead, SM Lee decides to convene a ministerial committee chaired by Minister Teo Chee Hean, and comprising Ministers Grace Fu, K Shanmugam and Lawrence Wong. This all culminates in a Parliamentary session in which SM Lee lifted the whip and encouraged all members of the house to clarify the issue in some kind of free for all Netflix special The Roast of Lee Hsien Loong. After which, Lee Hsien Loong then decides he is somehow exonerated of all wrongs.

Do you notice what’s missing? That’s right, his accusers Lee Hsien Yang and Lee Wei Ling are not present in any part of the process to give their side of the story, not only that what should have been a matter for the judiciary to decide is now being aired out in the legislative chamber and decided by the executive. This is a pure overreach of Government powers, if you were a private citizen would you want a precedent set where the Government could interfere with private affairs? If this had happened in any other country, where an outcome of a private legal dispute had been decided without one of the parties even present or involved in the process we would have shaken our heads at their “third world” justice system. Once again, the separation of powers were not adhered to.

So when SM Lee talks about understanding the differences between political and judicial issues and using the right branch of Government for the right purpose, I just don’t believe he actually means what he says. There is a word for people who say a thing but act another way.

On race issues

Singapore is a unique country in that, on the surface, we have a racially harmonious population. When I say on the surface, I don’t mean to say that everyone is secretly racist on the inside, what I mean is that this racial harmony is brought about by incredibly strict laws, such that I’m unsure if the harmony we see is only superficial, and people in Singapore are just racially tolerant instead of racially harmonious. Case in point would be an incident where a man had confronted a biracial couple telling them to date their “own race”.

Racial policy in Singapore is incredibly strict and pervasive, it permeates every facet of life, starting from when you are born when you need to register your race on your birth certificate, to when you wish to apply for a HDB flat and find out some flats are reserved for minorities only. SM Lee acknowledges this in the interview, he goes as far as to call these policies a form of “indoctrination”. And yet when pressed about racism in Singapore, he says there is a need for some moderation in handling incidents of racism, and he disparages what he calls a “movement called Wokeness” in the West. In this we are in agreement, that while “woke” was originally a slang term originating from African-American Vernacular English to mean an awareness to racial prejudice and discrimination, it has now been co-opted to be awareness of any kind of injustice, so much so that any inequality between different groups in society is immediately seen as evidence of a systemic injustice. In this SM Lee is right, we cannot allow that kind of identity politics to enter Singapore.

But once again despite espousing such beliefs, SM Lee and his Government does not act accordingly. One of the offshoots of “woke” politics is the tendency to view the world through the lens of race, and every problem racial groups face is then a problem tied to their race. In Singapore the problem is amplified when people are sorted by race the moment they are born. It is evident in the interview when just a couple of questions before SM Lee’s anti-woke statement the interviewers saw it fit to ask about how the Malay-Muslim and Indian communities are doing (notice no one thinks to ask about the Chinese community given that they are the majority).

It is my view that the racial policies in Singapore are good at preserving a racially tolerant society, but to be a truly racially harmonious society we have to do away with any race based policies, including registration of race at birth, to public housing eligibility based on race, and having a guaranteed minority candidate in Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) (and while we’re at that abolish GRCs altogether). In order to have a racially harmonious society we should move towards a colour blind society. The term colour blind is often ridiculed as ignoring the realities of race and the struggles that different races face, but I think it is just the opposite. There is an interview that Coleman Hughes does on The View that explains this philosophy: colour blindness is not about not seeing race (and the bias and discrimination that might come with that), it is about trying our best not to see race in our personal lives and public policy. If you think that the Malay-Muslim community is disproportionately doing worse economically than their other counterparts in Singapore, then a policy that helps the poor in Singapore would disproportionately benefit the Malay-Muslim community. Are there no poor Chinese in Singapore? Of course there are. What good is telling a Chinese person living in a HDB rental flat struggling to hold a job to make ends meet that they have some sort of “Chinese privilege”? They certainly don’t feel privileged, and this inadvertently worsens race relations in Singapore when they are told again and again that they are. The only way to make Singaporeans truly colour blind to race is to adopt colour blind policies.

So despite SM Lee’s rejection of “Wokeness”, his administration has done little in the way to remove these targeted racial policies, instead he has added new ones. The introduction of the Reserved Elections was a sore point amongst Singaporeans, and might have been the single most damaging policy he and his Government had put up. That Tharman Shanmugaratnam was elected in a non-reserved election right after Halimah Yacob’s term was proof that such a policy was not about ensuring that minorities would be represented in Singapore, the insinuation that the Singapore people were somehow so racist that they would never elect a minority without the Government to tell them to do so was clearly a false narrative perpetuated by the Government. Instead of slowly breaking down the racial policies to foster a more racially harmonious society, SM Lee had in the form of the Reserved Elections raised the biggest middle finger to racial equality: the idea that for a minority to reach the highest office in the land they needed a leg up in their very own special elections. And again SM Lee fails to practice what he preached.

On free riders

SM Lee once again reiterated his stance on the “free rider” problem, but this time he was careful not to use the term. The term was used by SM Lee to describe Singaporeans who wanted the PAP to form the Government, but voted for the Opposition because they wished to see more alternative voices in Parliament. The term was largely unpopular with Singaporeans, so it was wise of SM Lee not to bring it up again. Calling about 40% of your citizens “free riders” was insulting and would once again show how out of touch SM Lee and the PAP was with the electorate.

I don’t agree with the “free rider” moniker that SM Lee chose (he should really fire whoever came up with it), but I understand and agree with the underlying idea. I too like SM Lee think that people should vote for the Government they want, not just use their vote as a protest. This is not to say that people cannot vote however they want, you can vote for any reason, you could vote for someone because you prefer how they look or how they speak, far be it for me to stop you from exercising your right to vote. But don’t claim to be some kind of “enlightened voter” when you vote for the Opposition just because you want to give the PAP some kind of “check and balance”. I think either you draw the line in the sand and say you’re prepared to vote out the PAP in order to try a different party’s vision for Singapore, or you accept that the PAP vision of Singapore is actually how you want Singapore to be, that maybe you’re unhappy with some of the policies that are enacted but by and large you like how things are and you want it to continue.

But I don’t blame the people for this. The irony is that this is a creation of the PAP, so SM Lee only has himself to blame for this problem. The constant quashing of the Opposition in Singapore by the PAP has led to an incredibly infantile Opposition, one that is still struggling to find its feet. The by-election strategy by Mr Chiam See Tong (described here by SM Lee) is now the blueprint for the Workers’ Party’s “check and balance” strategy. As SM Lee himself had said, “you must win the politics, otherwise the policies cannot run”. And so the PAP has created a perverse incentive for the people to vote for the Opposition. I suspect that the people have no actual stomach for a non PAP Government, and why would they? The people of Singapore have been for decades through our education system and environment trained to become extremely risk adverse. The prevailing logic is given that the Opposition is as yet untested as Government, we cannot trust that they will do a good job as Government. Of course by this logic it also means that the Opposition can never be trusted to form Government.

The PAP could put an end to their “free rider” problem altogether. What the people want to see is more accountability on the part of the PAP. All they need to do is to become more transparent and release more figures and let the people see more of what is inside the black box to alleviate the people’s concerns. Of course, the PAP will never do that, any attempt at transparency necessarily gives the Opposition more information to work with, and the information asymmetry is one of the biggest advantages the PAP has.

SM Lee could also easily avoid the problem he describes, where an incompetent Opposition wins too many votes and ousts the PAP out of Government. All he needs to do is allow for a smoother transition of power should the PAP ever lose an election by creating a shadow cabinet. A shadow cabinet would allow members of the Opposition to understand and scrutinize decisions made by the Government, and give them a better understanding of how Singapore’s Government functions. This would allay the people’s fears that should the Opposition ever win an election they would not be incompetent at forming Government. But of course the PAP would never do, despite the fact that it is in the country’s best interest. The best they can do is create the “Leader of the Opposition”, which as far as I’m aware has changed nothing except cost the Singaporean tax payer more money.

On the Opposition

The end of the interview was certainly the most illuminating part, it reveals the mindset that SM Lee and by extension the PAP have towards the Opposition and the electorate. One of the biggest problems with the PAP is that they believe that they and they alone have the answers to the problems that Singapore face. This is despite the fact that they know they make mistakes, SM Lee having apologised before on behalf of the Government for mistakes they had made in 2011. It is impossible for anyone to be right all the time, no matter how competent you are, which is why diversity in viewpoints is important. There is a condescension that betrays SM Lee’s feelings about the opposition, for example when he says:

“And the Opposition will chip in ideas and sometimes if you close your ears, close your eyes it sounds it could have been made by somebody wearing white and white.”

To him, the PAP has a monopoly on good ideas. It becomes even more apparent when he later says:

“You have to deal with them, you have to rebut it. But I think if we spend more and more time thinking up clever arguments and rebutting clever arguments, we will have less and less time thinking up good ideas and implementing good ideas.”

Any and all ideas the Opposition puts out are merely “clever arguments” to be dismissed, they are, by virtue of coming from the Opposition, necessarily bad. Only the PAP can ever think up of good ideas and implement good ideas, and the Opposition is in the way of that. SM Lee and the PAP begin every debate with the Opposition with the conclusion in mind so much so that no matter how convincing the arguments are, it always ends the same way: Opposition bad.

To SM Lee it is inconceivable the Opposition might be better than the PAP. According to him, if the Opposition were to win, maybe the PAP have failed and the Opposition are now the better option. Or maybe, just maybe, the “political system has malfunctioned”, because the Singapore people in their unfathomable folly have voted in so many Opposition members that “the Government was less able to govern well and therefore lost the support and there is nobody else there who is going to be able to do better”. And this is the mindset: that the Singapore people don’t know any better, that if we vote in Opposition it will only ever weaken the Government. Is the PAP so weak? Will they fold to the slightest questioning by the Opposition? Does SM Lee have so little faith in his policies (which according to him are right by virtue of being PAP policies)?

Maybe when you get so used to always having your way, to having the media cover for you, that the slightest whisper of an objection is enough to blow down the house of cards. The solution to the Singapore people voting in the Opposition is not doubling down and stubbornly insisting you’re always right, it is coming up with better policies so people will continue to vote you in. This goes back to a speech made by SM Lee in 2006, where he actually says the quiet part out loud:

“Then instead of spending my time thinking of what is the right policy for Singapore, I'm going to spend all my time, I have to spend all my time thinking what is the right way to fix them, what is the right way to buy my own supporters over.”

Today almost 20 years later SM Lee is more polished, and he no longer says the quiet part out loud. But he is still the same person as he was then, and PAP is still the same party.

On Lawrence Wong

An end of an era. As Lawrence Wong takes on the helm as Singapore’s Prime Minister, I wish him the best, for his sake and ours. If Singapore is to prosper for the next 50 years, his leadership would play no small part in that. If my criticisms above seem harsh, know that I want PM Wong, and by extension Singapore, to succeed as much as any Singaporean. I say all that I do out of love, not hate, after all, “Every criticism, judgment, diagnosis, and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need.”

1. Location: allowing employees to work a location different from the usual office location;

2. Time: allowing employees to work at different timings without changing their total workload or compensation; or

3. Work load: allowing employees to assume different workloads with commensurate pay.1

Once an employee submits a request, the employer needs to communicate the decision within 2 months. If the employer wishes to reject a claim, it will need to be on what TAFEP calls “reasonable business grounds”, examples of which include but are not limited to cost, feasibility or practicality, or the work arrangement being detrimental to productivity or output. Examples of “unreasonable” reasons include management not believing in FWAs, supervisors preferring to have direct sight of employees, and traditions of not having FWAs in their organization.

How effective are these guidelines in protecting the Singaporean worker? Even if you’re highly optimistic about these guidelines, I think you would have to admit the most you could say is that it is nothing more than a step in the right direction. If you’re less charitable, you might say that the introduction of these guidelines are largely performative, that the PAP government once again want to seen to be doing something, rather than actually doing something to make lives better for the Singaporean worker.

What I mean is this: the guidelines are toothless, there is no bite to them. The guidelines merely impose an administrative burden on employers, all employers need to do is show that they have put in place a system which can process FWA requests from their employees, and upon receiving these requests, ensure they do not give any “unreasonable” reasons when rejecting the requests. Given Singapore’s reputation for strict laws, surely a failure to do that results in a massive fine and or at least a warning which could escalate to a fine? Wrong. You see, these are merely guidelines, and in the spirit of greater government-industry cooperation, TAFEP will opt to instead educate these errant employers. This isn’t even a slap on the wrist so much as a stern talking to. But most importantly, nothing in these guidelines actually increase the employee’s likelihood of having flexible work arrangements. All that an employer needs to do to be compliant is to have systems in place, there is nothing that provides for actually improving the working conditions of employees, and in fact might make some human resource manager’s conditions worse by increasing their workload. In all likelihood employees who already enjoy FWAs will continue enjoying them and employees who do not enjoy FWAs will continue going without.

Who are these guidelines supposed to help? In a report cited by The Straits Times, 83 per cent of Singapore employers already support flexible arrangements.2 Are the guidelines meant to cudgel the remaining 17 per cent into compliance? Are these employers who have not already been offering FWAs now suddenly keen to do so now that there are guidelines in place? That seems very unlikely to me. These guidelines also do nothing to help Singaporeans for whom FWAs do not apply, anyone working in retail or a job which requires them to physically be there (most commonly in hospitality or service industries) will not benefit from these guidelines. I’m not saying every policy has to benefit all Singaporeans, that would be impossible, but I do think these guidelines in particular don’t seem to benefit anyone.

Already most multi-national corporations (MNCs) offer at least some version of FWAs. The employers who struggle the most to offer FWAs will be local small-medium enterprises (SMEs). In fact the predictable outcome of this is SMEs will have the additional administrative burden of implementing these guidelines, but still reject any application for FWAs (given how ridiculously easy it is to give “reasonable business grounds”). And I don’t blame them for it. Smaller SMEs do not benefit from the same economies of scale as MNCs, they may not have the same infrastructure or resources as an MNC. Not every SME will be able to afford a laptop for everyone, or have their documents on the cloud or servers accessible to employees at home. Sure, there are government grants, but most of these require some level of copayment from the SME, some of which just do not have the spare capital.

Among developed countries Singapore has some of the worst labour protections: one of the lowest annual leave entitlement starting at 7 days to a maximum of 14 days in law and we work some of the longest hours per week at over 43 hours (by contrast the average for OECD countries is about 37). Instead of introducing these guidelines, will the government be willing to enshrine more employee protections into law? Let me address some of the common objections to this, and also elaborate on why any change to worker protections must necessarily come from the government.

The MNCs are going to leave

This is the common refrain whenever it is suggested that Singapore should have better worker protections. It has been largely the Singapore strategy from way back in the 1960s first implemented by Lee Kuan Yew that Singapore would rely on MNCs to be the main driver of employment and investment in Singapore.3 The accepted wisdom in Singapore is that we have an overwhelming reliance on these MNCs, and should they leave everyone in Singapore would suffer.

To that end Singapore has one of the most pro-company regimes in the world. We have one of the lowest corporate tax rates at 17 per cent and some of the most lax financial regulations around the world4 (something which all us ex-British island colonies seem to have in common). We also have a low tolerance for corruption, and a reputation for public safety. In other words, it is very conducive for companies to set up businesses here, even if there is a premium to be paid on rentals and work force.

Are we to believe that the second the Singapore government increases mandatory annual leave or cuts the weekly working hours or implements a right to disconnect these MNCs will start running? Is the educated Singapore work force and human capital worth so little? If indeed these companies flee at the first sight of pro-worker policies, then the PAP strategy has indeed been an abject failure - there has been no skills transfer between the MNCs and the Singapore population, we don’t have the elite human capital that the PAP has often taken credit for creating, and the only reason these MNCs even put up with us is because we are the cheapest and most exploitable people they can find. This cannot be the reason we don’t implement more pro-worker laws in Singapore, it is fearmongering to suggest it is.

But it won’t stop people from saying things like:

Why don’t I just hire remote workers

These guidelines, as toothless as I’ve shown them to be above, are still generating some pushback. In a CNA article titled “'Singaporeans need to level up': Companies say flexi-work could push them to hire overseas”, some employers expressed that they would start looking overseas for remote workers instead of hiring locally if they had to adopt FWAs for their employees. First off, they could already do that, there’s nothing stopping them from hiring remote workers if they truly believe that it is better for them. Second, of course the employers are going to say that, they will push back against anything that is against their interest.

The subject of hiring foreigners, or “foreign talent” as coined by the Singaporean government all the way back in 1988 is a touchy one. Singapore like any other developed nation struggles with balancing the needs of the locals with the needs of the country’s labour needs. The debate is still ongoing today, and as recent as 2021 this topic is still heatedly debated in Parliament. Singapore seemingly needs an endless supply of “foreign talent” to supplement the workforce, and the supposed skill transfers that should have taken place over the course of the last 20 years since the term first entered the national lexicon is nowhere to be found. Part of the problem is the government is always trying to bandwagon onto the latest economic fad instead of trying to cultivate a comparative advantage in specific fields which would be hard to disrupt. An example would be how Taiwan manufactures more than 90 per cent of the world’s supply of microchips. This cannot be easily replaced or offshored, and creates a stable job market for the country. In contrast, the Singapore government is always chasing the next big fad. First it was trying to establish Singapore as a financial center, then it was creating a biomedical manufacturing hub, and most recently was the push for Singapore to become a leader in artificial intelligence (AI). These are not bad things in and of itself, it is good that Singapore becomes a leader in AI, it is good that Singapore is a biomedical hub. What is not good is that the government in trying to create these industries where Singaporeans have no expertise in are now “forced” by necessity to bring in “foreign talents”.5

Why do I bring up “foreign talents”? Because the threat of hiring remote workers or offshoring parts of a business is very similar to that. After years of the promise of skills transfer to the local population are we no better off now then we were back then? Is the Singaporean workforce that replaceable that the mere threat of increased employee protections is enough to scare employers away from Singapore to forage our neighbours for cheaper labour?

A government which is openly on the worker’s side

Where does this leave us? I hate to say this, but I think the only way we will ever get better employee protections and more pro-worker rights is through the government. Singaporeans are often accused of overreliance on the government, but on this matter I think there is simply no other way.

In the 1950s, Lee Kuan Yew rode the unions to power. Then in the 1960s, he crippled them. He had good reason to do so, in his memoirs he recounts how the British unions had ruined the British economy, and determined not to let Singapore suffer the same fate he rid the unions of communist influence through Operation Cold Store and in 1968 he imposed strict restrictions on industrial action through the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Bill. Today the unions are but a shadow of their former selves, and it is an open secret that there is a revolving door between the government and the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), and the secretary general of the NTUC has been either a member of the PAP or a PAP Minister for the last 40 years.

So the Singaporean worker can only rely on the government to advance their rights. In a speech given on Singapore’s inaugural May Day public holiday in 1960, Lee Kuan Yew said the following:

“For this is the first time that May Day is celebrated in Singapore when there is a government which is openly on the worker's side. The P.A.P. said clearly before and during the elections that a P.A.P. Government is a Government on the side of the workers.”

Will the PAP once again fulfil this promise to the workers of Singapore and introduce pro worker legislation instead of merely pushing ineffectual guidelines under the guise of helping the Singaporean worker? If the aim of FWAs is to make life easier for Singaporeans with dependents, then passing the following legislation would have the same if not even greater effect:

1. Lower the working hours for Singaporeans, instead of a 44 hour work week working from 9am to 6pm, instead allow for Singaporeans to have an actual 9am to 5pm job. This would allow parents to spend more time with their children, actually have time to pick their children from after school activities, and maybe even prepare dinner. Improving working conditions and allowing for more family time is a way of making Singapore livable again, and I believe would be a step in the right direction for increasing our TFR;

2. Enshrine the right to disconnect into law. As above, this would allow workers to enjoy their time outside of work, and would have a greater effect on improving the mental health of Singaporeans. Already we are ranked one of the most overworked and fatigued countries;

3. Make it illegal to ask for the last drawn salary. This is a simple way to protect workers’ interests. There is actually no reason an employer ever needs to know the last drawn salary of their employee. Employers should be offering what the job is worth to them, and knowing the last drawn salary does nothing to help them arrive at the figure. This is an incredibly simple way to protect workers’ rights without prejudicing the employer.

Actual legislation rather than loose guidelines from TAFEP should be the way to improve the lives of our workers. As May Day approaches, we will take our well deserved rest to celebrate the workers who have built Singapore into the country it is today, and it is an excellent time to reflect on the reform that we wish to see for our country and our workers. “For the State must protect your rice bowl, your friend's rice bowl and also that of your children.”

By far the most disgusting of this behaviour comes from Minister Edwin Tong. In his Facebook post on the 2nd of April after Schooling’s announcement, Minister starts by saying “I think we all remember where we were that day, stopping everything to watch the race.” Ok relax Minister, this isn’t 9/11, you can drop the hyperbole. He goes on to speak about “Jo”, and his journey through the 2016 Olympics. Who? Now, I am not privy to the relationship between Edwin Tong and Joseph Schooling. I don’t know if they’re bosom buddies, or if they had only ever spoken five sentences to one another. It reminded me of a meme where people refer to professional esport players by their actual name instead of their in game names as a joke to imply they’re close friends. Regardless, using it in the post like that just reeks of wanting to appear closer to Schooling, and maybe through osmosis Minister Tong can cement himself as having done something as Minister for Culture, Community and Youth. Or maybe they’re best friends and “Jo” regularly hangs out with “Ed”, given their great number of common interests and hobbies (he might have to if he wants to become a politician).

Minister Tong goes on to write: “we remember him not for his medals, but for the belief he has given us”. The irony is of course that the medals mattered more than anything else to Singapore. After failing to qualify to the finals in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Schooling was to enlist for National Service (NS) in 2022. To be clear, I don’t know if the lack of medals had stopped Schooling from receiving another deferment, but what I am saying is this country did not afford Schooling the leeway to at least see his swimming career through before prematurely ending it. To Schooling’s credit, he has said that “NS didn’t end [his] career”, but let’s be real, the demands of NS don’t gel well with the aspirations of an Olympian.

Singaporeans are quick to get behind a champion but are even quicker to pounce when their champions fall. There is no short supply of Singaporeans with crab mentality, waiting for the first opportunity to pull a fellow Singaporean down. The endless comments about Schooling’s weight, article after article about Schooling’s use of cannabis overseas, the criticism of Schooling when he failed to qualify for the 2020 finals.

And so we come to the end of Minister Tong’s post, where he thanks “Jo” for “showing us that it is possible to come from Singapore and still be a champion”. In this Minister Tong is finally right: Joseph Schooling is a champion not because he came from Singapore but despite of it.

We come now to the weekly segment on Israel. For some reason local media and Singaporeans just can’t let this issue go, and this week it comes in the form of Parliamentary Questions from MPs Hazel Poa and Leong Mun Wai, in essence asking 1) if the Ministry of Education (MOE) can make public the content and materials on the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Character and Citizenship Education (CCE); and 2) what content is taught to students of different levels.

Minister Chan Chun Sing refers them both to a speech he had given on the 4th of March, smugly asking the speech to be distributed for Parliament to read as if it answered all the questions. I have read and listened to the speech in question. It has answered nothing. Short of releasing the actual lesson plans and materials, Singaporeans will not know what was actually taught in the classrooms. Broad conjecture stating how younger students are taught the “plight of the innocent victims, how they can express sympathy for and empathise with others” while older students are taught “more recent events, and help them better understand Singapore's national interest” does nothing to tell you what was actually said in those lessons. What are Singapore’s national interests according to the MOE? What was actually said about Israel’s and Hamas’ part in the conflict?

Once again the veil of information asymmetry descends down on Singapore politics. Minister Chan refuses to release any of the materials, citing that materials taken out of context could damage the MOE. Don’t we have a mechanism for dealing with that? He insists that parents could ask the schools if they wished to know more about the curriculum, where the teachers could adequately explain the material to them. Do our MPs not have the right to ask what is being taught in the classroom? Do they not have parents as constituents?1

As an aside, I don’t think that the Israel-Hamas conflict should be taught in the classroom short of it being just an objective history lesson of the Middle East and the conflicts that happened with all the facts and timeline properly considered as a full course. I don’t think the schools should draw conclusions for students but rather allow them to draw their own conclusions after presenting as fully factual a picture as they can. In fact, I don’t think we should have CCE at all. By all means have a social studies class which teaches students about Singapore, but let it be a purely factual exercise - Singapore’s history, the political system, our relationships with our neighbours and wider global community and various conflicts we might have. We have outsourced so much of what parents should be doing for their children to the schools - teaching children what is right and wrong and imparting values. CCE according to Minister Chan is a defence against “global and social media, news and fake news, compet[ing] every moment to pull our people in different directions, challenging our efforts to maintain national cohesion and harmony”. The solution to that isn’t some state curated narrative taught via CCE lessons, the solution to that is to actually foster our student’s ability to think critically and discern what is right and wrong for themselves.

After several exchanges the discussion culminates in what would be the headline the media decides to put out “'Please do not twist our words': Chan Chun Sing tells Leong Mun Wai in debate over making Israel-Hamas lesson materials public”. In a continuation of the rake-stepping theme from the previous weeks, Mr Leong makes another unforced error in purporting that Minister Chan had “accused [Mr Leong and Ms Poa] of being divisive”. This allows Minister Chan to respond with an easy soundbite telling Mr Leong “not to twist our words”. In truth, Minister Chan had not said anything about the opposition being divisive, so I’m not sure where that came from.2 Mr Leong is prone to being too much of a loose cannon. Whether this will come back to bite the PSP in the next election remains to be seen.

But this was far from the worst thing that was brought up in the exchange, though of course Mr Leong who does not benefit from any cover from the media will bear the brunt of the headlines while Minister Chan who enjoys cover from the media will escape yet again having said some truly insane things:

In response to Ms Poa’s question on how many schools have organised dialogue sessions with parents on their request to know what materials are being taught to their children, Minister Chan gave this non-answer “some schools have received such requests most of them have not”. He had not answered the question at all. The answer to the question how many is that some have and most haven’t? I’m not sure this answer would even be accepted in the schools Minister Chan oversees.

Minister Chan also expounded on the purpose of CCE:

“to help our people understands (sic) their emotions, the diversity of perspectives within our society, help our students to learn to verify the information that they come across that is widely available on social media, help them to understand our nationals (sic) priorities and positions and interest, and most importantly help them to take constructive and positive actions for the sake of our cohesion and harmony.”

For him and the PAP, the people of Singapore cannot be trusted to navigate the world of social media, or even emotions, on their own. By his own admission the schools need to be teaching critical thinking skills to students. The curriculum and education environment does not foster that. In a leaked memo on Singapore on Wikileaks, there is a less than flattering image of Singapore on Singapore’s attempt to steer our economy to a knowledge based one. In it, the memo identifies our education system as one which “stifles independent thinking”. Anyone who has been through the Singapore education system can attest to this. I think programs like the CCE actively foster this. It is a joke that Minister Chan attempts to twist CCE into a program that fosters critical thinking in any capacity.

But perhaps the most ridiculous part of this was when Minister Chan decided to recount an anecdote from a session where he was presumably instructing principals and teachers how to use these CCE materials:

“One of my senior educators rose and spoke and reflected on this after we had an hour more (sic) of sharing. She asked, ‘Minister, why is it that whenever something like that happens, you have to come and tell us and share with us? How long will it take us to develop those instincts to react together as one united Singapore? That we will not be pulled apart by different forces from different directions?’

It was a poignant moment. I assured her that I did not expect and I do not expect all my educators to be experts in foreign policies, and it would take us time and perhaps generations for us to reach this stage whereby we can respond as one united Singapore.”

Minister Chan no doubt thought this was an inspiring and amazing way to cap off his speech. He had just recounted a story in which a senior educator had basically told him (no doubt with tears in her eyes in awe of him) that only with his sharing of his infinite wisdom could we make sense of what was happening whenever a crisis happened. Like Moses coming down the mountain with the stone tablets, Chan Chun Sing is here to tell us what to do. If a disaster were to happen tomorrow, would she be saying “where is Chan Chun Sing? I need him to make sense of this for me! Where is Minister Chan right now?” First, I think this story highlights what Minister Chan thinks of the Singaporean people, that we cannot be trusted to form our own thoughts and conclusions about the world around us; and second, if this is the quality of our senior educators I am truly worried for our children today.

Will the media report on any of the other things which occurred during the exchange or will they only report on the stupid things that the Opposition say? Of course Minister Chan can get away with saying these things, he has the media providing cover for him. There are valid points being raised by Mr Leong, the lack of transparency of the government in educational policies or teaching material and curriculum, that as a member of Parliament he should be able to review and access these materials, that Parliament should be able to debate what is appropriate or inappropriate for our children. But we have to settle for any headline which shines a bad light on our Opposition.

In a commentary piece on 5th April, Dr Ziwen Liu, Dr Guang Yu Jin and Mr XiangJian Zhang want you to stop using your air-conditioners. Titled “Commentary: Singaporeans’ reliance on air-cons will only lead to more discomfort”, the piece on CNA argues that we should switch away from air-conditioners to other cooling methods.

Let me first say this: that I believe in climate change. I believe that global warming is happening, and that humans have definitely played a part in the warming of the planet (though it is debatable how much), and that if we as a species reduce our carbon and greenhouse gas outputs we can definitely cool the planet. What I disagree with is pinning the responsibility on the individual. Individuals do not account for the vast majority of emissions. Less so the population of Singapore, which accounts for less than 0.001% of the world’s population. Which is why policies like passing the burden of plastic bag use to the consumer, and requiring Singaporeans to switch to electric vehicles by 2040 are policies which reduce emissions by a drop in an ocean, and are implemented so the government can be seen to be doing something rather than actually doing something.

So the moment that the piece encouraged Singaporeans to monitor our “personal carbon footprint” by “tracking time spent in air-conditioned spaces”, I knew these people aren’t serious about actually tackling global warming. For starters, the term personal carbon footprint was coined by BP in an advertising campaign aimed at redirecting the focus of global warming away from industry towards the individual. Could we reduce carbon emissions if we turned off our air-conditioners? Sure, probably. Would that reduction be meaningful in any way that could actually save the planet? Probably not. Air-conditioning isn’t even close to the most polluting thing when it comes energy usage in our homes.

There is scant evidence in the article that air-conditioning is exceptionally bad for the environment, or that turning it off will make a noticeable difference. The one piece of evidence that is used is a study from a global sustainable development consultancy Arup (you can download the study here), in which the “‘hot spots’ in the Singapore Central Business District are up to 6 degrees Celsius hotter than their rural surroundings”. This is misleading. I have read the study. Nothing in the study suggests that the 6 degrees is due to the use of air-conditioning, the study only says that “[t]o a large extent, we have designed our cities to be hotter. We’ve pushed out nature, concreted our streets and built high in steel and glass. That makes the built environment a huge contributor to the build-up of heat in cities, compared to their rural surroundings.” Further, the two areas compared are the Central Business District and the incredibly habitable and populous Upper Peirce Reservoir. Do the writers of this piece expect Singaporeans to live in conditions similar to those found in Upper Peirce Reservoir? Perhaps we should forgo our houses and move back into the jungle. No doubt Singapore was a much cooler place in the 1800s, but I doubt many people today would want to live there as it used to be.

What is the point of this article? Realistically none of the solutions suggested can be implemented by the individual. Should we all attempt to rebuild our homes to use other cooling measures? Or is it more realistic that we utilize new technologies like this cooling paint that reduces ambient temperatures by up to 2 degrees? Human beings are incredibly bad at reacting to slow moving changes, meaning that where the temperature is slowly creeping up due to global warming, we lack the political will to change our consumption habits. But what we are really good at is innovating and coming up with new solutions to our problems. The air-conditioner was an excellent invention that Lee Kuan Yew credited as the secret to Singapore’s success. The air-conditioner will continue to play a huge role as Singapore gets increasingly hotter. What can be changed are the invention and implementation of cleaner energy sources, better technologies to reduce heat in urban centers, and even innovating the technologies used for air-conditioning will be more effective than telling people not to use it. Air-conditioning used to use CFCs as a refrigerant, which had incredibly damaging effects on the ozone layer. Upon discovering the huge impact CFCs had on the ozone the refrigerant was switched to HFCs, and today the ozone is on its way to a full recovery. Human innovation has been and will be the way to solve this climate crisis.

The solution to the climate crisis cannot be pinned on the individual, and it certainly won’t be solved by finger wagging at Singaporeans telling them that they have to endure 35 degree days without touching their air-conditioning remotes. Stop passing the burden of this crisis to the individual when any action, even collective action, the population of a country takes will pale in comparison to any action that will be taken by industry or government.

Mr Singh has nothing to worry about being disqualified from being a Member of Parliament (something he was concerned about back in February 2022) as the prosecution is asking merely for a fine, and the courts generally do not mete out sentences higher than what is asked. The fine for his offence carries a maximum quantum of S$7,000, which does not cross the threshold for disqualification at S$10,000. The disqualification amount was adjusted upwards from S$2,000 in May 2022, the timing of which is very convenient for Mr Singh, though Minister Chan Chun Sing insisted that the adjustment was already in the works before Mr Singh was ever in danger of being disqualified, and through lucky happenstance Mr Singh can now rest easy. All this is good optics for the People’s Action Party (PAP), who despite having a good case during the CoP against the Worker’s Party (WP) had overplayed their hand in their relentless application of political blunt force. Now the PAP has the chance to damage the WP without disqualifying Mr Singh.

I spoke last week about rake stepping behaviour by members of the Opposition, and this is merely the latest in a long line of unforced errors. From Kenneth Jeyaretnam’s almost magnetic propensity to get POFMA orders, to Lim Tean’s endless legal troubles, to the Progress Singapore Party (PSP) being unable to hold onto a Secretary General longer than 5 minutes, to affairs and lies in the WP, the Opposition has been quickly losing members in this election cycle. I chalk this up to the inexperience and immaturity of the Opposition scene. Should people who choose to stand as Opposition in Singapore be more aware? Sure, after all they chose this path after knowing the risks. But do not forget that the Opposition in Singapore had been kept down for so long that it has a long way to go and grow. Less than 20 years ago more than half of Singapore did not even have to vote in elections, it was only in 2011 that most constituencies were finally contested, and today every member of the electorate finally have a choice. This did not come easy, and it would be very easy for it to return to a time where majority of constituencies are won by walkovers. Those who are born in the summer take the ability to vote for granted, and those who have only ever known elections where the entire Singapore has had to vote should cherish their vote, lest they lose it.

This week also sees the groundbreaking ceremony of NS Square. NS Square is to be the permanent replacement for the floating platform, and can be found at the intersection of who-asked-for-this street and what-is-it-for avenue. NS Square is set to be the permanent venue for National Day, after the National Stadium turned out to be a gigantic disappointment.1

When Singaporeans ask for more recognition for National Service, I sincerely doubt they were referring to another museum. We already have separate museums for the army, navy and air force, all of which could have been combined into one location that might actually have enough content to be worthy of being called a museum, instead of each individual branch wasting taxpayers’ money on building their individual installments. But how else can Singaporeans be compensated for their time? How much is two years of your prime worth? The cost is incalculable, and there is some truth when Minister Josephine Teo said that service to the country cannot be measured in dollars and cents. While monetary compensation is welcome for our service, the honest answer is that no amount of money will ever be enough, people will always ask for more.

And they should. There is a big cost to serving National Service. Giving a couple hundred dollars every few years doesn’t feel like you have been compensated. It certainly does not feel like the country cares for the sacrifice you have made. The fact remains that when National Service first started in the 1970s Singapore citizens made up close to 90% of the population, today it forms barely 60%. It begs the question who are you defending? Know that the Singaporean men have served so you don’t have to, and many of the things you enjoy in Singapore is only possible because of this service.

Do any Singaporeans who have served actually want NS Square? I’d like to see a poll on this because I’m fairly certain almost nobody wants this. The Singaporean male who has served National Service feels cheated when he gets out because he was promised the world but now struggles to find his place in it. The truth is that no amount of compensation can solve this, the only thing that can help is to make Singapore a place that Singaporeans want to defend. Lee Kuan Yew was right in his assessment that letting people own their homes in the form of HDB flats would encourage them to defend their homeland, but the HDB flats of today have been turned into economic units and assets by the Goh Chok Tong government and no longer represent a piece of Singapore which Singaporeans own and defend but rather just a transactional property to profit from. If you want Singaporeans to have a stake in this country there has to be something in this country worth fighting for.

National Service is unfortunately the third rail of Singaporean politics. Neither the PAP nor the Opposition would ever dream of changing it - either by abolishing it for the males or making it compulsory for the women. It is a political minefield, best left unexplored, so they skirt around the edges throwing in handouts like NS life and increasing the NSF pay, or decreasing the amount of time served. There needs to be a real conversation to be had about why we still need to maintain such a large traditional ground force, especially given the huge technological advances that have happened between the 1970s when NS was first implemented and today.

On the part of the PAP, keeping the Singaporean populace under a constant siege mentality is always to their advantage. Minister Chan Chun Sing understood this of course: the PAP wins votes when the people feel under attack, so the people must always feel under attack. The constant reminder that the McDonald House was bombed during the Konfrontasi, that back in 1991 Malaysia and Indonesia did a military exercise on Singapore’s birthday (can you believe the nerve?) and that the exercise was called *gasp* Pukul Habis (did you know that means TOTAL WIPEOUT?)? The constant reminders in school and in the army that we could be under attack at any moment, and that since 1997 every household in Singapore needs to be equipped with a bomb shelter, are all testament to furthering this siege mentality.

Let me be clear, I’m not saying the world is not a dangerous place, it is. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the fact that China is conducting the fastest military expansion since WWII is cause for concern. Singaporeans like the idea of having a standing military, and National Service is still very popular by most opinion polls. It certainly does not seem like a winning issue for the Opposition to campaign on. Because of this there is no room in Singapore for an honest conversation about National Service and its place in Singapore’s future. There will be no talk about whether we still need a large conventional ground force (despite the fact that we keep saying we harbour no desire to capture land, something a large ground force is good for), there will be no talk about actual benefits for Singaporeans who have served the country, and forever will the specter of the original sin of National Service hang over any discussion about gender equality in Singapore. There will be no change until either a political party in Singapore can summon the political will to start a discussion, or the Singaporean populace finally decides that they want change.

Until then, I guess all we have is NS Sqaure.

This week, Minister Vivian Balakrishnan leads a delegation of Singaporean MPs to the Middle East. I have already said my piece on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and will refrain from going into more detail. Suffice to say, I find it curious that Minister Balakrishnan finds it his place to tell Israel that they have “gone too far”. This is despite the fact that Minister Balakrishnan agrees that there is a right to self-defense, that should Singapore undergo an attack similar to that of October 7th we would also strike back. Will Minister Balakrishnan also go to Myanmar and tell the Junta that they have gone too far? Will Minister Balakrishnan go to Russia and tell Putin that he has gone too far? Or is Israel the only country we will personally visit to tell off?

The question I have for anyone who thinks that Israel has “gone too far” is what do you think they should do? Israel is not in possession of magical terrorist killing lasers that discriminates between terrorists and civilians. I find it puzzling that people who have no military experience suddenly find themselves armchair generals who can navigate the incredibly complex war against a non-conventional army in one of the most notoriously complicated areas to wage a war in. I note that Minister Balakrishnan wished for a ceasefire and for the hostages to be returned in his interview with the press. Why is he putting pressure on Israel on this front? If the hostages were returned and Hamas unconditionally surrenders today there would be a ceasefire tomorrow.

But it seems so much of politics is performative nowadays. It is easier to talk to a democratic ally of Singapore and engage in finger wagging, telling them they have gone too far than to tell a terrorist group that you wish they would return hostages and surrender so their people can finally know the peace of a ceasefire.2 Elections are coming up, and I know there are no small number of Singaporeans who sympathise with the Palestinian plight. And so the performance must continue.

House Leader Indranee Rajah addressed the issue in the 28th February sitting of Parliament. She cites a variety of reasons for the low TFR, including 1) marriage plans interrupted by COVID-19; 2) financial costs of raising a child; 3) pressures to be an excellent parent; and 4) changing individual priorities and societal norms that reflect a global phenomenon. Of course the PAP is never at fault for any of them, so much so to deflect Leader Indranee circulates an annex of articles in Parliament just to highlight that falling birth rates are a global phenomenon, not just something that Singapore is dealing with. Never mind the policies of the PAP that have contributed to this low TFR: the stop at two policy, the shift to the Build to Order (BTO) system in 1997 instead of building HDBs ahead of demand, the ever shrinking flat sizes, an extremely pro employer legal regime that has led to the most fatigued and overworked people in the world.

I will concede that falling TFR is a problem the world over in developed countries. There is a shift in priorities from the traditional to the individual: increasingly people value fulfilling personal goals and aims instead of viewing themselves as a cog in the bigger machine of humankind. This is not a moral judgment on people’s priorities, merely an observation. I’m not here to decide what is better or worse for the individual, but it is clear that it has an impact on the TFR. People are getting married later, and women are postponing childbearing to further their careers and education. Leader Indranee is right on this count of course, that the focus on self-fulfillment and personal freedom is leading to an increasingly lower TFR. There is a strong correlation in the adherence to the traditional and a higher TFR, in fact the only country among the developed nations which is firmly above replacement is Israel, with a TFR of 2.9, with their highly religious society and large focus on traditional values. In Singapore this is also true, of the 3 major races, Malays have the highest TFR (Chinese 0.87, Malays 1.83, Indians 1.01 in 2022). Most Malays in Singapore are practicing Muslims and are the most religiously conservative group in Singapore.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that Singaporeans should become more religious, nor am I pushing institutionalized religion onto Singaporeans. This is not a debate about whether religion is good or bad. The point is that the single greatest predictor if someone will have children is whether they are religious or not. But what can be done about it? There needs to be a replacement of religious values and a replacement of the communal bonds which undergirds a religious community. I’m not sure that the government can stand in as a replacement for religious institutions, in fact I’d rather they didn’t.1 I’m not a fan of big government, and I’d rather not they entrench themselves in a way that the people can no longer live without the help or handouts of the government.

But I’m not even sure that the shift values are as applicable in Singapore: in a recent Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) survey almost 70% of Singaporeans polled wanted to get married and wanted to have children. If those numbers are true, then the shift in mindset in Singapore might have been overexaggerated. Of course, if most of them only want to have one child, the dropping TFR would still be a concern. But instead of focusing on stopping the shift in values, or trying to create some kind of social zeitgeist which would make childbearing desirable, the government should focus on changing the things they can.

So what is the PAP proposing to improve our TFR? Do they have any novel or impressive new solutions to a problem that has plagued Singapore since the 1980s? Not so. The usual slew of solutions were trotted out: an increase to the baby bonus scheme; a long overdue move to increase paternity care2; increased funding for preschool and education for children. Will any of these solutions work? I’m firmly convinced that throwing money at the problem will not solve it. The baby bonus scheme has been in place since 2001, and there has not been an increase in TFR, rather a steady decrease in our TFR. As an aside, I welcome any financial aid the government can provide in raising a child. After all, it is incredibly expensive to have one. But if the policy objective is to increase the TFR, then it has already been shown that increasing the baby bonus would not do it. In fact, a 2019 study by the United Nations has suggested that financial incentives do not encourage people to have more children. But the PAP is creatively bankrupt. They do not know how to raise the TFR, nor are they willing to try any new and novel policies to raise the TFR.

Leader Indranee asks for more time for the policies to take effect. How much longer must or can Singaporeans wait? The PAP has been working on the issue since 1987, and still our TFR is declining. In fact, if it were such an existential issue, why is the TFR not one of the criteria for the national bonus? If the TFR were so important, shouldn’t it be one of the ways we judge a successful government? Of course it is not one of the criteria because the PAP knows that they would never get that portion of the bonus should it become part of the criterion. They have no idea how to raise the TFR but will not admit it. They are not serious about raising the TFR, as long as they can pay lip service to it instead of having to put their money where their mouth is they would happily continue ignoring the issue. How well a country is doing is in part a function of who actually wants to live in it, have children in it, and raise a family in it. The failure of the PAP to raise the TFR is testament to the failure of their government policies.3

I think that the solution to this is to make Singapore a place where people want to live in. There are policies which the government can enact which will help with this:

1. Increase the size of HDBs while decreasing the costs.45 The HDB has decreased in size since the 1980s, and there seems to be no desire on the part of the government to reverse that. The common refrain from the government is that given that families are smaller today and therefore the size of the HDB has shrunk as well. But the inverse is true as well, if the house sizes are smaller, people are dis-incentivized from having larger families. Having larger HDBs will at least allow Singaporeans the option of having more children should they wish. Further, decreasing the cost of housing allays some of the financial burden and cost of living concerns young parents will have. It will also allow more Singaporeans to start in a bigger house, providing them with the ease of mind to plan for a larger family from the beginning without having to worry about moving to a bigger house to accommodate more children. Moving houses is a pain, and most people would avoid it if they could.

2. Further to this, switch back to building ahead of demand instead of continuing with the BTO system. This would cut down the waiting time for couples significantly, and allow couples to start on family planning right away. A wait time of 3 to as long as 7 years puts severe impediments on couples who want to start families, and contradicts the PAP’s rhetoric that they want Singaporeans to start families earlier instead of waiting. Building ahead of demand of course runs into the same issue that the old Registration for Flats system ran into: that there may be excess supply and the public may perceive this as a waste of resources. HDB can rent out the existing flats to singles under 35 who are not yet eligible to purchase their own flats. These singles can either form groups of friends to rent out a single flat, or apply as a single and be randomly allocated house mates. This allows young Singaporeans to foster independence away from home, and give singles a chance to mix with other singles which would allow for more dating opportunities which could lead to more marriages.

3. Build more communal spaces to allow for more social interaction to build a stronger social fabric. This would in the long run hopefully drive a sense of community and contribute to this “social compact” that Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong keeps alluding to. As religion plays a smaller and smaller role in secular Singapore, this would allow a fostering of communal bonds and hopefully make Singapore a place where people actually want to live in.

These are just a few examples off the top of my head which can help make Singapore a place people would want to live in, there are plenty of other policies and initiatives which can help: a shift in labour policy to make it more employee friendly instead of employer friendly; a more controlled immigration policy; a real effort to actually bring down cost of living and real wages up instead of increasing taxes and then using the revenue to fund programs to ease people’s cost of living ala GST and CDC vouchers; and the list goes on. But the PAP in their infinite wisdom will continue upping the baby bonus year after year, because that worked so well the year before, and the one before that, and the one before that, all the way back to 2001.

In one of the weirder call outs in Parliament, DPM Wong in his budget round up speech issued a challenge to the Opposition calling on them to “take up the challenge the Prime Minister issued in this House a few weeks ago: Make drawing more from the reserves an election issue. Go to the people, ask them for a mandate to change the Constitution, compel the President to let you spend 60%, 75% or even 100% of the NIR. The PAP will join issue with you – we will present our case to Singaporeans, and ultimately Singaporeans can decide what is the best fiscal approach to take Singapore forward.” This was him echoing PM Lee’s speech which I’ve written about before: I called out the PM and the PAP for being disingenuous.

Of course DPM Wong chooses to use the budget speech to grandstand and issue political challenges to the opposition instead of just laying out the aims of the budget. This is the man whose own party member Christopher de Souza attempted to call out Associate Professor Jamus Lim for supposedly making a political point, and in the same debate decides to make his own political point. He’s back at it again in the budget speech - Political Grandstanding 2, This Time It’s Personal. If the irony is lost on the PAP, no doubt because having gone through the Singapore education system they might have missed a literature lesson or two, it is certainly not lost on me.

The challenge is of course a pointless one. With a perfectly asymmetric access to information, the Opposition can never hope to win a debate about the reserves. How can you argue about something which you have no knowledge of? It seems to me that the members of the Opposition cannot help themselves but continue to step on rakes. Stop talking about spending from the reserves, or increasing spending from the NIR. According to an IPS survey, the public already has a low opinion of the Opposition when it comes to who they trust with the reserves. Out of 9 possible options, the Opposition comes in at 7th on the list, hardly a sterling endorsement by the public. In a continuation of rake stepping behaviour, it was the Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh who brought up the survey, to what political gain I do not know. It is political malpractice to continue bringing up the reserves, or to be perceived to want to spend more of the reserves. Singaporeans really dislike the idea of spending the reserves.6

The only option for Opposition, and this is my position as well, is to outflank the PAP on fiscal conservatism. Instead of talking about drawing or spending from the reserves or NIR, the focus should be on spending less money in government, and cutting waste. The ideal position would be to fight back against any kind of GST tax increase while finding ways to save money in the budget (an easy place to start would be the CDC and the various endowment and trust funds).

Elections are coming, and if the Opposition want to be serious contenders they need to get out of their own way, and shift the spotlight to the PAP and make it a referendum on their policies and mistakes.

The biggest criticism one can level against these amendments is that there doesn’t seem to be any evidence for the need nor any pressing public wish to make these amendments at this point. When pressed for statistics of any kind in support of these amendments the ministers had come up empty. In fact, the two year recidivism rate has fallen from 2016 to 2020. It was hilarious (or incredibly sad, depending on your point of view) watching every PAP member begin their speech with how safe Singapore is, but yet still have this pressing need to pass these amendments to make us even safer. In fact listening to the speeches, it is hard to discern what the reasons for the amendments, particularly the introduction of the Sentence for Enhanced Public Protection (SEPP), really were. Minister Shanmugam by his own admission stated that there has been no increase in serious violent or sexual crimes. In fact, he gives no reason for having SEPP apart from having studied the laws of other countries, they had “decided that it made sense to have something similar”. Of course, this is a reason that many Singaporeans are familiar with: the amendments were born out of a feeling of kiasuism. Finally a sentiment all Singaporeans can get behind. Besides regaling truly heartbreaking cases of serious violent and sexual crimes, the PAP raised no other reasons for the amendments. The appeal to emotion is a powerful one, but is a fallacy nonetheless. The PAP provided nothing in the sorts of meaningful statistics despite repeated requests from the MPs through the sitting, and made no case as to why there was a need for the amendments.

Having said that, I do think that there is merit to some of these amendments, and even the amendments which I don’t care for I don’t think changes the status quo that much that it’s worth kicking a fuss over. If you’ve read any of my other articles you would know that I’m no PAP shill, but having read the bill and listened to the Parliamentary debate (so you don’t have to), I have come to the conclusion that there really isn’t much to be worked up about.

Codifying the Prosecutions Duty of Disclosure

The prosecution’s duty of disclosure in Singapore is currently a common law invention, meaning it has no basis in statutes passed in Parliament. There are pros and cons for maintaining certain legal principals in the common law, but when it comes to criminal procedure it is almost certainly mostly pros to codifying the law into statute. The codification of the duty of disclosure allows for more certainty, and clarifies areas which have previously not been brought before the court.

Searches Without Warrants

Now we venture into slightly more controversial ground. At present, the police already has powers to search without warrants in certain circumstances under s34 of the CPC. Where the officer has reason to believe that the suspect will not produce the document or thing requested under s20(1) the officer can perform a search without a warrant. In my view the amendment does not make the current law any more onerous than it already is, but it helps to clarify some of the present issues:

1. it is difficult for anyone to know if the suspect will comply with a search order, or if the suspect will destroy or remove the evidence. Allowing the police to search where they have reason to believe a suspect has evidence in their possession would remove the uncertainty on the ground;

2. there are still safeguards in place: the police still only has powers to search without a warrant if the person is reasonably suspected of committing an arrestable offence, which allows for a check on their powers to search without a warrant. Notably, this is not search and frisk as is practiced in New York City, the police cannot just stop anyone on the street and search them, there must be reasonable grounds for suspicion before they can conduct searches1;

3. the amendment also places a limitation on where the police can search, limiting it to “where he or she has reason to believe the document or thing is located”.

I think that any expansion of police powers need to be considered in relation to our rights as private citizens, but given that this isn’t so much of an expansion as a clarification I don’t think that it is particularly worrying. One can make the argument that the police should never have the power to search without a warrant, but I think that might limit the powers of the police by too much.

Forensic Medical Examinations

The amendments introduce the power for police to use reasonable force to carry out FMEs under s40I. Note that consent is still needed from the victim before the police can conduct any FMEs on them, and s40I is only for accused persons. Again, the lack of need of consent for an FME to be conducted can be construed as a further erosion of our civil liberties. But in order for the police and the justice system to be effective, some civil liberties must be relinquished. The surrender of all force by the citizen to the state under our social contract is perhaps one of the greatest advancements in civilization our species has ever made. Allowing the state, and only the state, to mete out punishments and maintain order ensures that private citizens need not fear undeserved violence from their neighbour. When confronted by the police, the best course of action is to cooperate and seek remedies later. I don’t prescribe to the “if you’ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide” mantra which so many Singaporeans recite in response to the erosion of any civil liberties, but still a balance must be struck to allow for our police to do their duties.

Nominated MP Usha Chandradas asks how a person’s gender identity will be accounted for under s40G, where the FME will be conducted by a man if the victim or accused is a man, or by a woman where the victim or the accused is a woman. I have written before about gender dysphoria and the trouble society and the law has regarding the administration of people suffering from gender dysphoria, and I have every sympathy for people who suffer from gender dysphoria. But as I have written before, since 1973 it has been possible to change your legal gender on identity cards, and I have said before that self identification is not sufficient as a standard, especially not when it comes to the criminal justice system.2 I’m glad that self-identification has not yet come to Singapore, and hopefully never will.

Sentence for Enhanced Public Protection

The name for the new sentencing regime could have come straight out of any dystopian sci fi novel or show. I had several initial concerns about this sentencing regime:

1. would it be subject to abuse, due to the fact that the length of the sentence is indefinite?

2. is the executive once again taking powers from the judiciary (as they did recently in the Significant Investments Review Bill passed in January, where they limited the powers of judicial review under s46) by having the Minister of Home Affairs decide when the prisoner is ready for release?

3. given that the SEPP is meant to be for criminals who are likely to reoffend, how is that determined given that the SEPP can be handed out to criminals who are on their first offence, as opposed to the previous regime of Preventative Detention (PD) which while similarly tasked with dealing with reoffenders can only be applied to actual reoffenders who have been convicted of the same crime at least 3 times?

The SEPP have controls which should prevent it from being abused. Under the seventh schedule, the SEPP can only be applied to certain crimes: culpable homicide, attempted murder, rape, sexual penetration of minors and causing death or grievous hurt. Whether to apply SEPP is also a question for the court, which in theory should maintain some level of the separation of powers. Under our current parole system, prisoners with life sentences are also subjected to receiving a Conditional Remission Order from the Minister of Home Affairs before they can be released, so having the Minister of Home Affairs decide on the release of prisoners under the SEPP regime does not seem all that different.

Having thought about the new sentencing regime I think it comes down to a matter of perspective. This is basically a life sentence by a backdoor. Put aside if you find life sentences palatable (personally I think they are worse than the death penalty, especially if there is no chance of parole), life sentences were already applicable for most of the crimes which SEPP can be applied to, sans the sexual crimes. If you view the SEPP like a life sentence with a minimum sentence of 5-20 years before parole, then the only question left is should a life sentence be imposed for the crimes listed in the seventh schedule?3 Of course that is more of a philosophical question, though it would be helpful to see statistical evidence that longer sentences prevented reoffending.

The main issue then is the criteria with which the court decides if the convicted person will reoffend, especially if it is their first conviction. According to Minister Shanmugam, the court will employ a variety of criteria including assessments from a panel of experts, but is this essentially declaring that they are likely to be reoffenders even before they had reoffended? Under the previous PD regime they had to be convicted at least 3 times before the increased sentence applied, whereas the SEPP can be applied on the first offence. That’s the plot of Minority Report where our judges now have powers to protect the public from crimes which have not yet occurred. The question is why not call a spade a spade and call it a life sentence with more flexibility?

After all a life sentence by any other name would suck the same.

The real drama this week of course comes from PM Lee calling on members of the opposition to take their fight about the reserves and bring it to the ballot box. This was the culmination of the motion pushed by PSP MPs Leong Mun Wai and Hazel Poa: “That this House calls on the Government to review its current budget and reserve accumulation policies in order to help present-day Singaporeans reduce their financial burdens and improve their quality of life, while continuing to save for future generations of Singaporeans.”

The main thrust of the arguments and proposals from PSP were:

1. for the Government to reveal how much money is in the reserves to all Singaporeans, given that Singaporeans are the collective owners of the reserves;

2. in the alternative, if the Government does not want to disclose the amount to Singaporeans at least disclose the amount to MPs;

3. to combine the different endowment and trust funds into one giant Budget Surplus fund, and this fund will be used to fund all future long term expenditure;

4. to waive the land cost of public housing under the Affordable Homes Scheme, reducing the burden on HDB and freeing up more money for current spending.

In essence, the PSP wanted to free up more money from parts of the budget to increase current spending.

It seems to me that any debate the opposition has with the PAP on the reserves will always necessarily be a losing one, simply by virtue of the asymmetry of information. Further, I would wager that any calls to spend money from the reserves is going to be unpopular among Singaporeans. I myself dislike the idea of spending money from the reserves to fund current spending.

I do think however that the people of Singapore should know how much money is in the reserves. The common refrain from the PAP is that this poses a national security risk, and naturally every PAP MP needed to get up to tell everyone they remembered the 1997 Asian financial crisis where the Thai baht and the Indonesia rupiah fell prey to speculators which saw both currencies massively devalued and both countries economies in shambles. The counterpoints to this is: first, the defence against speculators should be in foreign reserves maintained by the MAS which is publicly available information anyway; and second, savvy speculators are likely able to guess the size of the reserves anyway.

Even if it were a matter of national security that the reserves not be made public, at the very least, MPs should know how much money is in the reserves, given that to even use money from the reserves Parliament needs to approve the spending. How can the MPs approve a bill to use the reserves if they do not know how much money is in the reserves? But in any case matters of the reserves have been debated to death in Parliament, and only with a non-administration (read: PAP) approved President or a non-PAP Parliamentary majority will anyone outside of the PAP leadership finally know how much is in our reserves. I see no point in belabouring and rehashing the same arguments.

The PAP attempted to be deliberately obtuse when faced with questions about the reserves, like when the Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh asked multiple times that if the sale of a single piece of leasehold land can be sold repeatedly how can it be that it represents merely a conversion of assets (i.e. exchanging the land in the reserves for money to be put into the reserves), but instead subsequent sales would not merely represent a conversion of assets, but rather an accumulation of assets past the first sale. Of course the Leader of the House Indranee Rajah had no good answer for this so she merely repeats the points about conversion of assets while pretending not to understand Mr Singh, but the real insane answer comes from Prime Minister Lee: the sum of the money gotten from the repeated sale of leasehold land should in theory add up to the sum of money gotten from the sale of a plot of freehold land. Of course this is blatantly untrue, given that the same plot of leasehold land can be sold infinitely the price of freehold land would be infinite. Of course that is an absurd notion on its face, but since the Singapore Government does not sell freehold land we would never know the true value of freehold land. Current values of freehold land go for only at about a 10 to 15 percent mark up of a similarly sized plot of leasehold land in a comparable location. So what is the Prime Minister talking about? The truth is that there is an accumulation of wealth from the repeated sales of leasehold land, but the PAP can never come out and admit the point. And so they must pretend to be either obtuse or deliberately misunderstand the point.

And so the PM grandstands and blusters about irresponsible spending of the opposition, and accuses the opposition of wanting to abolish the second key. Of course the PAP would love to keep the second key around, for as long as the criteria for Presidency is made ever more stringent, the administration approved candidate will always be in power. So instead of talking about the reserves, which I think is a always a losing point for the opposition, perhaps they should figure out how to cut Government spending so they can spend on programs they like instead.4

Minister Chee starts his answer to the Parliamentary Questions by justifying the zero growth strategy, presenting the 2 main arguments: first, to ensure that the roads are not over congested; second, to reduce carbon emissions in Singapore.1 The thing is, nobody is arguing otherwise: we all understand the need for the zero growth of COEs, in fact, I believe that the amount of cars on the road should be even fewer. The problem is what will take the place of cars? The obvious answer is public transport, a solution Minister Chee was eager to push in his speech. If you truly want to make public transport the premier means of transport in Singapore, then it has to be the most attractive option. The government to their credit espouses the same rhetoric.2

In a country where land is scarce, I agree that there needs to be limits to the amount of cars on the road. The COE is a way to allocate the limited amount of cars on the road. The question then becomes how best to allocate these cars? Is there a truly fair way to allocate these resources? A balloting system may be the most fair or equitable way to distribute the COEs, but do not forget that the COE mechanism is also a means for the Singapore government to generate revenue. Subject to the caveat that the Singapore public transport system continues improving to the point where it eventually becomes more convenient to take the train than to own a car (like in some areas of some major cities where taking public transport is faster than taking a car), I think that it is perfectly fine for cars to be considered luxury goods in Singapore, and therefore an auction system to allocate the COEs is justifiable and in this case the most equitable way of distribution. With an ever increasing population but a limited amount of COEs, basic economics of course dictates that the price will forever keep increasing.

What I don’t agree with are these stop gap measures that the PAP government enjoys deploying. Instead of addressing the issues they opt instead to perpetually kick the can down the road. Minister Iswaran was right: the prices will continue to go up. The PAP on their part refuse to rework or even tweak any of the factors that affect the COE prices, and all we get is more monitoring of the situation. One way I think which would allow the COE allocation to become more fair is a true blind auction system. These will be the following changes I propose:

1. A true blind bid - instead of revealing the current winning bid all bids will be blind and the lowest winning bid will be revealed after the auction closes. This will prevent car hire companies from sniping the bids by perpetually increasing bids to ensure they win;

2. There can be no revision of bids - since the bids are blind, there will be no need to allow for revisions;

3. Winning bidders have to pay whatever they bid, not the lowest winning bid amount - this will ensure that bidders will only bid an amount they are willing to pay;

4. A token administrative fee for losing bidders - this will ensure that all bids made are serious bids.

This system removes any kind of speculative bidding, and will ensure that private hire companies cannot snipe the bids. This system also allows the market and bidders to arrive at a price that they are willing and able to pay, while ensuring that the government does not lose out on any revenue from COE auctions.

The biggest problem for PAP’s cut and fill strategy is not only that in the short term there will be more cars on the road thus contradicting the zero growth policy, but by borrowing from peak years (meaning years where there are the most expiring COEs) to fill current demand, come the peak years themselves will there not be a shortage of COEs given that there will be more COEs expiring but not as many returning to the pool, since those were already used to fill previous demand? How can this be a working model for stabilizing prices in any way? But this is the hallmark of PAP policy making in the 21st century: it isn’t just borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, this is borrowing from Jayden Tan to pay Tan Ah Kow. The PAP is borrowing from the future to pay for the present, and we see this not only in this cut and fill strategy but in their public housing strategy as well.3

Of course there’s good reason for introducing these short term cooling measures that serve no real purpose in the long run: an election must be called no later than 23 November 2025, and could be called as soon as this year. A short term lull in COE prices could just be the good news the PAP needs to tide it over to the next election. And what do we call a policy which serves to appease the populace? That’s right.

In other news, Singapore has joined 13 other countries including the US to condemn the attacks by Houthi militants on commercial ships in the Red Sea. I spoke last time about the battle for good and evil, and this is no different to that. The Houthi militants are connected to the axis of evil in the same way Hamas is: they are both terror proxies funded by Iran.

I’m glad to see Singapore actually taking action and fighting back, though this comes at no surprise to me. The Red Sea is crucial to Singapore’s economy, after all as a port city any disruption to shipping logistics negatively impacts our economy. As typical of the Singapore government, they have chosen to vote for the ceasefire in Gaza, but now that Singapore’s bottom line is threatened and we might face some economic impact we have chosen to take a stand against terror in the Red Sea and the region. As expected, where money is concerned the government is finally motivated to make the right call.