Thank you PM for your unsolicited gift
But we don’t want and don’t need it
Do you realise that your gift will only
Reinforce the negative images of us
And undermine our past progress
What we want, you don’t want to give
Full equality for our males in National Service
And in all sectors of the Armed Forces
Full employment opportunities for all our
Women including the tudung-clad ones
We have waited for 50 years for equal
Treatment and equal opportunities
Do we have to wait for another 50 years?
If there has been no Malay president for
More than four decades, whose fault is it?
Is it the Malays, the People, or the PAP?
If it is so important to you
Why give SR a second term?
Why not a Malay then?
You have assumed that no Malay
Can ever be elected in an open race
But have you tried? Why not?
After winning 70% the last round,
Why the lack of confidence?
Why the haste to admit defeat?
Or maybe the gift to us is nothing more than
Political expediency to avoid a tough opponent
And to thwart the will of the people
On the day a Malay assumes the EP
Through a reserved race will be
A Day of Shame for us and for all the people
It will be a step backward for multiracialism
And meritocracy and democracy
Teen blogger Amos Yee Pang Sang was on Monday (Jul 6) sentenced to four weeks’ jail, backdated to Jun 2.
Yee was found guilty of two charges – one for making offensive or wounding remarks against Christianity and another for circulating obscene imagery. A third charge, for the teen blogger’s statements on the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew in a YouTube video, was withdrawn.
Yee intends to appeal against the conviction, said his lawyer Alfred Dodwell.
“The journey here has been long and arduous, ridden with lots of obstacles and hurdles. We have somehow gotten here,” said Mr Dodwell. “We have confirmed with our client that he wants to appeal against the conviction.”
“Let’s not run away with the idea that just because he’s remorseful and stuff, that is in relation to the social context. Whether this was a crime or not, still remains a question we want to determine in High Court,” Mr Dodwell added.
The 16-year-old has been remanded at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) for the past two weeks to assess his suitability for a mandatory treatment order, after a doctor said that Yee may have autism-spectrum disorder.
Mr Dodwell on Sunday night confirmed reports that the blogger was in hospital. Yee has “not been eating well, perhaps loss of appetite or no appetite, understandably so and hence his blood sugar went down,” he said.
“I’ve not been told of a hunger strike,” added Mr Dodwell, referring to the blogger’s hospitalisation.
I understand #AmosYee is back in IMH after being warded last night. Yee to attend court at 2.30pm for likely sentencing @ChannelNewsAsia
Yee had previously rejected the option of probation and a term in the Reformative Training Centre as a sentence, sticking to his original plea for a jail term
Education Minister Heng Swee Keat has said Singaporeans must continue to build and maintain a harmonious society, regardless of race, language or religion.
As the country turns 50, he urged the public to reflect on how its pioneers helped shape such inclusiveness.
“This harmony did not come by accident,” said Mr Heng. “It is good work, hard work, on the part of everyone and because Singaporeans reject race-based politics, we reject intolerance. And instead we embrace each and every race, and we embrace multi-racialism, and we embrace a multi religious society.”
He was speaking at an event called SG50 Harmony Swing, which was held at the Nanyang Polytechnic Stadium on Saturday afternoon (Jun 20). It was organised by Thye Hua Kwan Moral Society and was a prelude to the society’s annual “Inter Racial Inter Religious Harmony Nite”, which will be held on Jul 12.
The event saw 3,578 people being part of the country’s largest Zumba dance to date. They smashed the previous record in the Singapore Book of Records of 1,162.
3,578 people of all races and religions broke the record of the country’s largest Zumba dance this afternoon. http://bit.ly/1SyxrUH (Video: Nadia Jansen Hassan)
In true Singaporean fashion, participants came from all races and religions. Amilia Amil, one of the participants, joined with her friends despite having started fasting.
“We are here to show that despite fasting, we can do fitness activities, and also to celebrate with the rest of the multi races and cultures here,” she said.
“It’s a wonderful feeling for everybody,” said Chairman of the Thye Hua Kwan Moral Society Lee Kim Siang. “We’re all neighbours, we’re all Singaporeans. We get to see each other, we dance together, we have fun together.”
As scenes of overcrowding outside the Sports Hub yesterday evening for the closing ceremony of the SEA Games went viral, questions need to be asked on whether the Singapore SEA Games Organising Committee (SINGSOC) have done all it could to make it better, or did it instead compound the problem.
Agitated ticket holders queuing to enter the stadium to watch the closing ceremony might not have realised that the problem went beyond missing a show. The capacity crowd could have turned into a disaster if there was a fire or stampede on site.
There were reportedly thousands of such ticket holders who were sweating in the crowded confines. SINGSOC had since issued an apology and clarification, indicating that the crowd was due to an entry issue.
“As a significant proportion of the spectators were at the gates just before the start of the ceremony, there was a need to adjust entry gates and seating arrangements to enable them to be seated as quickly as possible. Consequently, some gates had to be closed for safety reasons.”
However, the problem might be due to there being too many tickets issued compared to the capacity for the Sports Hub, as some disappointed ticket holders have alleged.
TOC understands that SINGSOC was unhappy with the number of no-shows at the opening ceremony, as many seats were clearly visible on national television. In order to avoid a repeat of the incident, SINGSOC supposedly decided to over-sell the tickets for the closing ceremony.
Over-selling tickets is not something alien to event companies. It is a pretty common practice to over-issue tickets by about 5% in the form of complimentary tickets, in order to pack venues.
But the question becomes one of exactly how much SINGSOC over-issued, if it did indeed do so.
From pictures and eyewitness accounts, a conservative estimate of the number of people waiting outside the stadium would hover between 10,000 and 15,000.
Image from an attendee stuck outside the stadium during the SEA Games closing ceremony.
The Sports Hub has a maximum capacity of 55,000, and factoring in seats that need to be allocated for display and participants, it would likely be configured to hold about 40,000 seated ticket holders for the closing ceremony.
In other words, if SINGSOC did indeed over-issue tickets, they did it at 25% to 35% more seats than the stadium can hold in full capacity, a far cry from the 5% standard.
Would the Sports Hub had been able to absorb such excess capacity? As a video by Channel NewsAsiashows, there does not seem to be extra room for the thousands who were stuck outside the gate, but who would technically have an empty seat in the stadium.
Images from various online sources also indicate that there was very little spare capacity inside the stadium to match the crowds waiting outside, although there were a few empty block visible.
Capacity crowd for the SEA Games closing ceremony.
Who has the legit ticket?
The overissuing of tickets were mainly in two forms – complimentary tickets for Sponsors and free entry for SEA Games Volunteers. The former might include entities like GP Battery and NTUC, while that the latter could access the Sports Hub by flashing their accreditation passes (a pass given to all volunteers), TOC was told.
Paying patrons mostly bought their tickets before the start of the SEA Games itself, as the seats were sold out quickly.
The problem arising from yesterday evening also give reason the question how paying patrons are guaranteed their seats. It is understood that those who bought tickets had designated seats by blocks. However, comments online suggests that such designated seats were not reserved fro them as they rightly expected it to be.
Who were occupying the seats of paying fans? Was it complimentary ticket holders from sponsors and partners, volunteers, or was there excess capacity sold?
Disregard for safety, poor decisions on capacity
The crowd waiting outside the stadium was clearly agitated from the humidity and the crowd, from social media postings. There were also accounts of a lot of pushing and shoving going on in the crowd and many like the elderly, the disabled and the young were helplessly caught in the scrum.
It was also reported that those who managed to get in ended up sitting on the stairway to watch the show. In the event of an emergency, a stampede could have led to serious injuries and death, not only within the stadium, but among the crowds stuck outside.
Pertinent questions to ask might include whether SINGSOC has consulted Sports Hub management about the ability of the new stadium to accommodate such an expanded capacity. TOC understands that such consultations did not take place.
An expert in event management TOC spoke to shared that any decision to over-cater for event seats need to take into account the realities of the ground, and an inability to do so reflects lack of competency.
“When managing such long haul multi sports events, it is important to feel the pulse on the ground so that organisers are aware of public sentiment towards the games. This will help in understanding whether the public are interested/or will attend events. SINGSOC should have realized that public participation for the games was high, and hence the likelihood of attendance at the closing ceremony was likely to be high.”
About SINGSOC
SINGSOC is the steering committee for the 28th SEA Games. It’s a team of 20 headed by Minister Lawrence Wong.
In addition to Minister Lawrence Wong, SINGSOC also features 2 other Ministers – Mr Masagos Zulfiki and Mr Teo Ser Luck and 2 Senior Ministers of State – Ms Indranee Rajah and Ms Josephine Teo.
In its post-event statement, SINGSOC offered a full refund but as evident from the comments, many are still unsatisfied. Questions also remain about how SIGSOC would be able to identify legitimate tickets in order to effect such a refund.
There was also no clarity so far about how it was possible for thousands to be stuck outside the stadium, beyond the explanation of a congestion at the gate.
TOC has sent a number of queries to SINGSOC to seek clarifications on whether tickets were over-issued and how the capacity for the closing ceremony was managed. At time of publishing, SINGSOC has not responded.
Data is the new competition arena for telcos, as they strive to find new revenue streams, and consumers shift toward data-intensive applications.
Analysts said one key area will be managing network and infrastructure costs while still providing a good user experience. As data consumption continues to increase, industry watchers said data analytics will be another growth area.
MyRepublic has said it plans to set large data caps of 12 gigabytes or more, should it be awarded the fourth telco licence by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). If MyRepublic does that, some analysts have said this could put pressure on current pricing of tiered data plans, forcing the three major telcos M1, StarHub and Singtel to be more generous.
While this may be good news for consumers, it could impact the margins for telcos and their investment in infrastructure.
“With the potential of another operator coming to the market, the prices will go down and you might one day have unlimited packages,” said Mr Dustin Kehoe, programme director of AP Telecommunications at IDC Asia Pacific. “But you still have to ask the bigger question. If telcos are not making money, then they are not going to be investing in networks. And if they are not investing in any networks over time, the user experience will deteriorate.”
Singtel, StarHub and M1 have spent millions of dollars on data infrastructure and improving mobile connectivity. This includes seeking ways to switch subscribers seamlessly to wireless broadband networks to relieve the load on their mobile network.
Such solutions would improve the quality of the mobile network and potentially keep a rein on costs. The three telcos are already testing out solutions, most notably, in IDA’s heterogeneous network (HetNet) trial in Jurong Lake District.
“The answer to this is offloading this to Wi-Fi – offloading the data to fixed line network,” explained Mr Sachin Mittal, vice president of equity research at DBS. “Mobile has only limited capacity and it causes congestion, unless you offload to the fixed line. You need to put incrementally more and more capex and that is something they won’t do for free. So Singtel came up with this Wi-Fi offloading solution where you get a couple of gigabytes if you use their mobile network and the Wi-Fi.”
At the same time, growing data consumption provides more opportunities to grow revenue. Data analytics will continue to be an area of growth for telcos, especially if they can find creative insights and applications.
“Getting into things like precision advertising. Knowing something about your customers and offer them something relevant, given the context of a situation, maybe passing by a retail store and having something offered to them that is relevant. Another thing, they are doing here in this country in particular, is the analytics of tourists,” said Mr Kehoe.
“This is actually interesting information to pass on to retailers, to local governments for money, and that is another way to take data that you have on your network, anonymise it and monetise it,” he added.
Both Singtel and StarHub have already established analytics teams in a bid to capture growth in the segment.
