A short note on Paul Tambyah, Mariam Jaafar, Ivan Lim, Lee Hsien Yang, The Workers’ Party overcoming perceptions of racism and xenophobia, and Tan Jee Say.
1. Paul Tambyah.
Tharman and his should be the first two names on our parliamentary team-sheet. Continue reading “GE2020SG: Why I’m glad to see Paul Tambyah and Tan Jee Say. And other thoughts from the past week.”
“Elections lai liao,” the elections are coming, buzzed Singapore’s chat groups last week, hours before Lee Hsien Loong, prime minister and leader of the ruling People’s Action Party, announced the July 10 polling date. At first glance, the PAP, which has won every election since independence in 1965, the last in 2015 with a thumping 70% vote share, looks like a shoo-in. Singaporean voters are … Continue reading Coronavirus and inequality threaten to unsettle Singapore election
Last year Heng Swee Keat’s office got in touch because it objected to a published line of mine: “With Singapore’s prime-minister-in-waiting eager to again double the city’s population to ten million…”
I had based this comment off a Straits Times article that reported:
“Singapore’s population density is not excessive, he [HSK] said, noting that other cities are a lot more crowded in terms of liveable space. He cited former chief planner Liu Thai Ker, who said in 2014 that Singapore should plan for 10 million people for it to remain sustainable in the long term.”
This was my thinking. If you ask somebody a question, and they cite somebody else as an answer, a reasonable person would conclude that HSK concurs with Liu.
It’s like if you ask me what my favourite TV series this year is and instead of giving you a direct answer, I say: “Well critics consider Crash Landing on You to be the best.” Continue reading “What immigration rate is Heng Swee Keat targeting for Singapore? Voters deserve to know.”
CORRECTION: In the video I say that K Shanmugam was in parliament in 1987. This is wrong. He entered parliament in 1988. So Shanmugam was only part of parliamentary proceedings related to the alleged “Marxist conspiracy” in those subsequent two years. The last prisoner was released in mid 1990. Apologies.
Additional reading and video notes
At a high level, I want to note that there are many critiques of POFMA out there. Some critics have always believed that no new law is needed, since Singapore’s government already has a panoply of instruments to control speech, like libel and sedition laws, and licensing laws for media outlets and online sites.
While I sympathise with their views, my sense has always been that some new law may be needed to tame a new beast. For sure, as a writer, I consider the proliferation of falsehoods online to be one of the biggest threats to my profession, to democracy, and to our common humanity.
This is why I began the video with The Financial Times and Sarah Palin. Online falsehoods are everywhere. Read critically. There is no better answer to our crisis than those two words.
Continue reading “Truth or Dare: A video about online falsehoods and Singapore’s POFMA law”
Recent support by K Shanmugam, law minister, for a commentary by Tan Wu Meng, a fellow politician with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), begs the question of whether Singapore’s leaders possess the requisite broad-mindedness and maturity to moderate racial harmony in today’s prickly, post-George Floyd, “Black Lives Matter” world. Tan, an ethnic Chinese, used the party’s online platform to attack Pritam Singh, the ethnic … Continue reading Are Singapore’s politicians moderating or inflaming ethnic tensions?
For fans of the English Premier League. From the perspective of a Singaporean. Before I begin work on a series of socio-political videos, I wanted to make one video at home by myself, from camera and lighting to editing. Partly so I know what’s involved, and also partly so I’m self-sufficient with video if need be. I know all this comes easily to many … Continue reading Dear football fans: a video
In mid 2012, when the late SR Nathan, Singapore’s former president (1999-2011), agreed to be the guest of honour at the launch of my first book, “Floating on a Malayan Breeze: Travels in Malaysia and Singapore“, I was delighted.
Mr President! Presiden! 总统 ! ஜனாதிபதி !
Actually, I hate honorifics. Continue reading “President Nathan and polarisation in Singapore”
In response to a recent NYT piece, “A Sudden Coronavirus Surge Brought Out Singapore’s Dark Side”. I am glad to see others taking the time to write about us, there is always something to learn. Nevertheless, if you allow me to put on my editor’s hat for a moment, I have two thematic critiques of the piece: A) Feeding the impression that Singapore is an … Continue reading Response to NYT piece on Singapore
PAP politicians Sun Xueling and Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim handing out reusable masks to the homeless in Potong Pasir on April 29th 2020, during Singapore’s circuit breaker (effective lockdown) and more than two weeks after the party officially stopped all ground activities. Dear friends in Singapore, below is the last piece I intend to write on pandemic politicking. It is an open letter that I have … Continue reading Pandemic politicking: an open letter to a minister
Dear friends in Singapore, I am writing because there appears to be an uptick in anti-South Asian prejudice recently, and I hope the moderate and sane among you can do what you can to extinguish little fires if and when you see them. Seemingly harmless statements like “Eh, why Indians again ah?”, if left unchecked, can lead to resentment, if even in the smallest, most … Continue reading Rising anti-Indian sentiment in Singapore
