Tag: nation

Reserved Presidential Elections: The Challenges And The Opportunities..

Mdm Halimah is now the President of Singapore. Elected on a technicality for the only one candidate meeting the set requirements for this year’s RPE. The Government has urged the people to move on and acknowledged the bitterness over elements leading up to the RPE. There are still lingering sentiments of unhappiness from the people. But overtime all this will die down as the reality of life in our sunny Island catches up.

Below are a summary of issues for our reflections in moving forward.

1. Race

– Race was upfront and personal in this RPE. It was ugly at times but overall it was a good exercise for everyone to see the raw issues in public space. It is not as bad as we pictured.

– Singapore has indeed grown up somewhat and from the spectrum of views and commentaries from all segments of society, we can see that it gave a fair variety, capturing feelings and thoughts representatives of quite a good number of us, Singaporeans.

– The letting off steam period will soon pass and we will pick up the pieces so to speak and honestly we came off not as bad as we might have. A testimony of our collective growth and vigour. We differ strongly on views and adamantly stood our grounds but at the end of the day we all have to move on. The bruises are part and parcel of growing up as a nation.

– Much can therefore be picked up and learned to continue the engagement from where this RPE have left us to reach the needed rapprochement across the stereotypes and divide. We should all see this as a welcome process of our maturing society.

– I may be against the RPE but I do see the benefits that this truly unexpected move the Government took for reasons that is best left for now, as all sentiments have been expressed.

– The Government has a vital role to address the soreness of the RPE but it has the vantage view of where we are truly at by taking a pretty back seat so far to its credit. But the next move it makes will be the game-changer. It can choose to ignore or capture the moment to offer us a fresh new deal which Singaporean clearly are keen to learn about.

2. Politics

– Putting aside the unfortunate vitriols of all kinds, there has been many more reasoned and intellectually worthy discourses from netizens. Several online forums platform do provide critical and constructive analysis offering good sound bases for further political explorations.

– Citizen’s has shown genuine concerns on processes and changes to our constitution. The Government should consider the people’s desire for engagement in politics and have their questions answered, instead of sticking to rigid clinical executions ignoring the people.

– This RPE stood right in the middle of the 5-year term of parliament and should have an impact in the next election. Depending on which way the Government again choose to lead, the opportunity for widening the political space is there for the taking.

– Singapore politics clearly has so much room for improvement and the Government should cease the day and begin the process of political reform.

3. Democracy

– This word has too often been taken for granted and it is high time that society and citizens learn more about what democracy is about. The Government for reasons it chooses to keep to itself adopts a very measured and slow progress in teaching democracy to us. Now is the right time for the Government to embrace the spirit of strengthening our democracy.

– For this, the Government can begin to reduce its excessive control on the media and public spaces for political discourse. It should not be overly sensitive and show more confidence which it actually has, as not all political discourse including opposition’s views are automatically detrimental to the Government.

– In fact, it will benefit the Government by allowing more diverse ideas and plurality of political viewpoints. It has enough buffer to take a robust political engagement than it realises. However, it has to restrain its army of online supporters which often time discredit the Government more than any short term good it does. The online troops adopts a shallow approach in engaging netizens that contributes little in content and substance but focuses on sarcasm, emotions and fears. It is hampering our citizen’s political growth and education.

4. Singaporean Identity

– The Government has thrown race into the political machine that it has carefully avoided in the past. It has open up a can of worms but on the flip-side it actually forced a nationwide wakeup. It now has the golden chance to reconfigure the race discourse as it chooses to. It should do so together with the people.

– The stakes are high but it is worth taking as the benefits truly outweighs its downside. This is about the Singaporean identity project that now requires a deeper soul searching exploration.

– There has been many opinions about race but most are stale uninspiring tales of the political past. However there has been thought provoking but reasoned views calling for a relook at our ethnic divide.

– Race realities are more fluid and the struggles over the definition of race for the RPE should suffice to tell us reform is a must, as indeed society has moved on and policies on race may be past its dues.

– We are more united and race blind in form than we view from the emotional lenses of ourselves. It is an exciting window to be opened by the Government to offer us a review of what our multi-racialism today is truly all about.

Finally, we can see the less savoury, somewhat polarised race divide that this RPE has caused. The Government by its decision for the RPE has calculated and has said clearly that it is prepared to take the risk. It must now listen to the voices of the people expressed in frustration not out of any hate, but an emotional pouring of love for this nation that we truly care about. The Government is truly poised to take the higher road and address this divide with the grace of leadership foresight or chooses to do otherwise. The nation awaits to see what it does.

Source: Damanhuri Bin Abas

September 21, 2017
Damanhuri Abas: Reserved PE Is A PAP’s Ploy, Sadly A Compliant Malay Community Will Only Served Their Plan To The Tee

Today we are sadly living in times when values are mere rhetorical slogans thrown around with no sense of truth that it becomes meaningless.

Few years ago they said to attract good leaders in government, peg ministers pay to top private salary bracket. The assumption is that this would bring the so-called talent from private to the public sector. What it failed to explain is the logic of correlating two different positions and roles with two different objectives and responsibilities. Yet we seemed to swallow it. A dismal flow of ‘quality’ people from private to public since they up the salary is a damning exposé on its illogical logic.

Actually all this strange logic is only possible because the whole process only went to a parliamentary route which is already a biased one as the overwhelming power of one party would simply allow them to use it to push through their preferred decisions. The fair route would have been to allow thorough public debate which would have prevented this and other changes from seeing the light of day but alas we killed that possibility by allowing such a lopsided parliament to exist in the first place.

And the rest is history.

This PE being reserved is but another similar episode of the PAP simply using their power to get away with what they want. The full machinery of control is then used to validate a clearly unjustified ruling. A compliant Malay community do not help as they simply served the PAP plan to the tee.

This will not end and more crazy changes will take place so long as we the people continue to allow them to do so by our own failure to act according to our conscience.

Today the PAP has set the ground rules to ensure that the chance or possibility of a political breakthrough for the opposition to be minuscule if not impossible. With the GRC and the gerrymandering, they effectively already won even before election is called. If we factor in the exclusive access to public broadcast where they no longer even bother to hide their utter blatantness in utilizing the public media to propagandized and even bring disrepute to oppositions, the outlook and prospect gets only worst for the opposition.

This is the state of the nation today.

The fundamental role of check and balance, fairness and justice no longer exist in so far as political space and reality are in Singapore. We collectively are responsible for this situation. History has shown how this is unsustainable and will lead to abuse and suppression or even oppression on any segment of society that dare to challenge their dominance.

We had a window of hope in 2011 but 2015 showed how we chose to follow our emotions rather than our rational mind and logic. By the way things are, and the slew of changes to strengthen their almost absolute control, 2020 may be worst.

Without unhindered political space, unlike most other regional nations, we remained sadly behind the political maturity curve. This stagnation or even regression is taking place amidst a changing economic reality that are driven primarily by freedom and space accorded for dynamic social growth in which political freedom is key.

Therefore it do not augur well for our future that today we remained stuck in this clearly debilitating discourse over the highest office in the land not over the critical role and function that it meant but the secondary or even minor issue of racial equality totally misplaced and clouded with so much questions, half-truths to even strange redefinitions. It is really painful to see the acting by all parties to this national charade.

To think that with all the intelligent minds that we have produced as a nation and to see such outright dumbing down of the people for vested political interest of the PAP is a damning indictment on our ownself. No one else is to blame really.

Source: Damanhuri Bin Abas

September 4, 2017
Celebration Of 50 Years Of National Service Forgets Past Discrimination Against Malays

Despite all our gripes and grouches about National Service (and its yearly reservist call-ups) it’s widely regarded as A Good Thing for a variety of reasons: Singapore has too small a population to rely on citizens volunteering for the military, it forces people from different backgrounds to assimilate, etc. etc.

It’s been 50 years since mandatory conscription came into effect, and it’s become a cultural phenomenon unique enough to inspire films and literature revolving around national service. Criticisms abound, of course, but nobody can deny that Singapore stands ready when disaster (or God forbid, war) goes down.

NS50, the year-long commemoration of National Service’s 50th anniversary, however does not bring back warm nostalgic memories for all Singaporean men. We’re not even talking about recalling the time you messed something up and caused everyone else to be punished, nor the time you wore the same dirty underwear for a week straight in the field — we’re talking about structural discrimination that disadvantaged people based on their race.

Suspiciously missing from all the NS50 bluster and forced pride is the fact that Malay youths were virtually (not officially, mind you) excluded from conscription from 1967 till 1977.

Even when they were eventually let in, they were mainly positioned to serve in the police force or the fire brigade. The small minority of Malays who manage to be called up into the military were given menial jobs, and are (almost always) excluded from key defense roles such as intelligence, the air force, commandos, artillery units and more — a practice that arguably continues to this day.

The Ministry of Defence keeps insisting that the selection of personnel in various military vocations is not based on race. “The ethnic composition of commanders is similar to that in the general population,” Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen said in a 2014 response to a Parliamentary query about the racial breakdown across National Service vocations.

The unofficial, widely understood reason is this: There is uncertainty as to where the loyalties of the Malay community lie should Singapore engage in war with neighboring Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia.

Alon Peled, an associate professor and political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, noted in his paper (A Question of Loyalty: Ethnic Minorities, Military Service and Resistance) that discrimination against Malays in the military didn’t need to be spoken out loud to be felt.

“By the second half of the 1970s, Malay exasperation with military recruitment and discrimination polices reached an all-time high. Even without official data, Malay parents knew that their children alone were not called upon to serve. Malay officers and (non-commissioned officers) who had been transferred from field command positions to the logistics corps were also frustrated. Nearly every officer knew that military units had informal quotas on Malays.”

Though pleas were made to Malay leaders to change things, the figures of the day didn’t help ease the malaise. They stated that Malay youth lacked education and couldn’t speak English well (even though drafted Chinese Hokkien youth were the same). They argued that the government didn’t have enough facilities to train Malay soldiers (even though race should make no difference to when it comes to military training).

1969 image from National Archives of Singapore

It may not be much of an issue today, but the impact of Singapore’s blatant exclusion of Malays in the service back then was severe. Tania Li argues in her book Malays in Singapore: Culture, Economy, and Ideology that it left the Malay community behind in socio-economic standing.

“There was an unfortunate side effect to the non-recruitment of Malays into National Service. Employers in Singapore are generally unwilling to recruit or train young male workers who have not completed National Service or obtained exemption papers as these youths can be called up at any time. Since Malays were not officially exempted from National Service, Malay youths were unable to obtain apprenticeships or regular jobs, and many were forced into an extended limbo period of about 10 years from ages 14 to 24 … (this) was in part responsible for the high percentage of Malay youths who became involved in heroin abuse during the late 1970s”.

Peled repeats similar sentiments.

“Malay servicemen were pushed out of the military, and young Malays found that the military doors, once their prime avenue for social mobility and a promising career, were firmly closed. Years of exclusion resulted in social bitterness, frustration and a major collision between the state and its principal ethnic minority group”.

The silent ostracizing did not last, fortunately. Policies were eventually eased as the Malaysian invasion threat diminished, and Malay citizens were slowly integrated into the military. By the 1980s, more Malays were being posted in sensitive positions, including the Commando Battalion, while more began graduating as officers.

The memories of the past however are hard to erase, and for former Straits Times’ senior political correspondent Ismail Kassim, the ongoing NS50 campaign did nothing but revive painful memories. Nonetheless, he asserts that it’s a good time for the government to make amends for the past wrongdoings.

“Surely it is not beyond the ability of the present star-studded scholar-leaders to think of some way to assuage the hurt of the past.”

Source: https://coconuts.co

July 8, 2017
Filipina Scolds Woman Who Questioned Her For Having ‘Singapore’ Emblazoned In Shorts

A reader sent us a video of a commotion in a hawker centre. According to the reader the woman, a Singaporean, questioned the Filipina about why she had ‘Singapore’ emblazoned in the back of her shorts. The Filipina who got upset with the woman’s question went ballistic with her attracting many onlookers.

According to the reader, the woman is a maid who had engaged in a game of weekend netball before the incident.

Do you think the word ‘Singapore’ should be better respected?

Source: www.theindependent.sg

February 28, 2017
Goh Meng Seng: Supporters Of Israeli Nationhood Must Not Blindly Support Its Oppressive Anti-Palestine, Apartheid Policy

I had sent my response to TRE with regards to an article written by Philip Ong but they actually didn’t publish it! Well, cannot expect anything else when the mind is bias.

People who “support Israel” really has an emotionally charged mind fill with religious rhetoric . No wonder Karl Marx said “Religion is the Opium of people”! It numbs the minds of people, giving them fantasies and weird logic. They can justify anything under the Sun, regardless whether it is logical to the human mind, just or unjust or otherwise.

It just electrifies them when something just touches on Israel, never mind what you say, you don’t support Israel, you are my enemy!

All sound and logical reasoning just fallen on deaf ears. Even when we are just asking for a reasonable stance from Israel, stop the atrocities in Palestine, stop the illegal settlements, establish the Two-States structure… not even wanting Israel to be wiped off or destroyed!

I am personally considered a “religious man” in any sense but never will I subject myself to totally illogical religious fanaticism. Anything I believe, must make HUMAN logical sense, though it is about Buddha, Gods and Goddess, it must still make HUMAN sense to me. And it must be just, fair and peaceful to all.

In all honesty, I feel strange for anyone to support a group of people who basically rob land and declare nationhood. Yes, they bought the land initially, but no, buying the land is not equal to buying sovereignty. Else, Singapore will be in great trouble because lots of foreigners on our land bought land and properties! Will we agree to them declaring Nationhood just because they paid for the land?

Israel, to me, is built upon less than honorable and legitimate way. But that could be excused because I empathize with their plight from WWII Holocaust and they will need a permanent land and country of their own. In all pragmatic terms, the situation is set. Israel is set to be here on Earth.

But instead of being grateful and empathetic to the Palestinians’ emotional backlash, they became aggressive, greedy and inhumane. As the Chinese saying goes, giving them an inch, they want the whole foot. That’s the Zionist style. It is totally unacceptable and immoral to me.

The emotional backlash by the Palestinians may or may not be invoked by religious differences because any human being, would be disgusted and felt repulsive if foreign migrants just came in and declare the land belongs to them and they will become the ruler of the land! That’s totally human nature and you do not need any religious spikes to ignite that knee jerk reactions.

The sad part is, many religiously zealous people, failed to see the human side of things but overly engrossed in their religious belief.

I guess most residents of this World, just want peace and sick of all silly atrocities and politics of hatred. There are 140 countries which supported the Two-States resolution and UN has passed the resolution in condemning Israel’s continual oppression and land grab in Palestine. This is not some “fake news” or anything, but pure facts of the day. Wake up, my friends. Wake up. Supporting Israel’s Nationhood should not be translated into the support of its continual oppression of the Palestinians, apartheid rule and illegal land grab!

Source: Goh Meng Seng

February 22, 2017