Did the PAP mischaracterise the WP’s housing proposals?

On February 24th, Leon Perera, a Workers’ Party (WP) member of parliament (MP), stood up in Parliament to make an impassioned plea. “The [ruling] People’s Action Party (PAP) seems to be doubling down on this incorrect assertion, using its tremendous PR and communicative machinery.” The PAP’s claim, repeated relentlessly for weeks, is that Singapore’s housing shortage would be worse if the government had listened to … Continue reading Did the PAP mischaracterise the WP’s housing proposals?

The problems with Teo Chee Hean’s MC on Oxley

Over the past few days, I’ve had to respond to some misrepresentations of my work last Thursday in Parliament. I’ve done so through one statement here on Thursday night, and three posts on Facebook.

I am also grateful to Today and CNA for offering me the chance to respond, and for accurately covering my position. Good to know that mainstream media journalists are also eager to put out unbiased narratives. This will be my final piece on the matter. (Err. I hope.) 

But first, why the fuss now? The battle over Lee Kuan Yew’s last will was published last July. There was no response from the government then; no newspaper critiqued the book, as might have been expected if somebody took issue with it. Instead, last Thursday, Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim, the PAP MP for Chua Chu Kang, who has suddenly developed a keen interest in Oxley Road, asked Teo Chee Hean (TCH), senior minister, a random question out of the blue, offering him a chance to say whatever he wants about me and my work. 

Minister hantaming ordinary citizen in a protected setting—a uniquely Singaporean way of debating. Yes, most likely I’m collateral damage in some bigger fight between the Lees, with the presidential election (due this year), and possibly even to do with the general elections (due by 2025).

“When elephants fight, the grass suffers, but when they make love, the grass suffers also,” LKY apparently used to say, playing on an African proverb. As I said in the book’s conclusion, I hope that Hsien Loong, Hsien Yang, Wei Ling, Ho Ching and Suet Fern eventually kiss and make up—sorry to put that thought in your head—but for now, I’ll assume the elephants are fighting.

And all I, a blade of grass, can do is try to elak, while also nurturing our plot. On that note, it’s great that over this past weekend Jom, the weekly magazine about Singapore that I co-founded last year, has seen a spike in our paid subscriptions. Thanks for the support: we now count well over 700 people of many nationalities as subscribers (I make the point only because some worry that foreigners can’t subscribe. Of course you can. We’re like any other subscription product. Forget Netflix; get Jom.)

Jom is a proud, Singapore-incorporated independent media company. Our only source of revenue is reader funding—we believe this is the best way to guarantee our independence. 

Some readers of my free e-book have asked how they can contribute. The best thing you can do is to get a paid subscription to Jom—there are different price points for people of different means. Every dollar counts. Jom publishes weekly, but we also have three big investigative projects planned for this year: one social, one political, and one corporate investigative, which I believe is the big gap in Singapore.

We’ve got a great team. Read about our values here. We are only a quarter of the way to breaking even. Before you continue reading about TCH’s Ministerial Committee, take a minute to help us get there.


So, why was the formation of the Ministerial Committee on 38 Oxley Road (MC) problematic? Readers will know that this was a tangential topic, which is why I relegated it to the book’s appendix. But since TCH is again so interested in the affair, it’s only fair that we talk about the MC that he led.

First, it’s important to note my book’s statement on this controversial point: did LHL orchestrate the formation of the MC by directing his ministers, as his siblings suggest? I found no evidence of this. The available evidence, in other words, supports Hsien Loong’s perspective on this, not Hsien Yang’s or Wei Ling’s. And the book says so (p. 22-23).

Still, there are three problems I found:

Continue reading “The problems with Teo Chee Hean’s MC on Oxley”

Operation Coldstore: my first ever piece

Image: “Barisan’s Lost Candidates” published in 阵线报, the defunct official Chinese language paper of the Barisan Sosialis. Thursday was the 60th anniversary of Operation Coldstore, in which Lee Kuan Yew’s government arrested and jailed over 120 people in Singapore. Yesterday Fiachra Ross and I co-wrote an essay for Jom. Be The world still lives with the scars of the 20th century’s Communist conflicts. On the … Continue reading Operation Coldstore: my first ever piece

the most stressful week of the year

The reason I haven’t written much here this year is because all my writing is now at Jom, a new magazine about Singapore that a few of us launched in August. (Haven’t heard of it? Hello-oh, where you been, macha?)

My best friend whom I’ve hardly seen of late just told me that we should do a “2022 Jom Year in Review” type thingy that seems to be so fashionable among the new media literati, and I think we should next year, 2023, once we’ve had a full year of operations, Our Books of the Year, Our Home Baker of the Year, Our favourite politician TikToks of the year, look out for that—don’t you hate it when people say ‘look out for that’ for something so far away—but in the meantime I’ll just do a very bloggy post to address everyday questions from my friends in this style that only 0.01% of you appreciate, too bad, just exercising a literary muscle that’s been left to atrophy by my editorial masters at Jom, so you can leave now but then you’ll miss the story of when Anthony Bourdain returned to haunt me through Twitter in late September.

But, first, 

Continue reading “the most stressful week of the year”

National Service: why we need a deeper discussion

Dear friends and readers, I just published my very first article for Jom, the new Singapore magazine that I’ve just co-founded. Memories of National Service always fill me with mixed feelings. I made some of my best friends there, but also saw lots of pain and suffering. Read “National Service: why we need a deeper discussion” on Jom now. And if you’re ready, do subscribe … Continue reading National Service: why we need a deeper discussion

Jom, our new media outfit

Dear friends and readers, Thanks for all your support these past years! As some of you know, I have, along with Charmaine Poh and Tsen-Waye Tay, recently co-founded Jom, a new media outfit. Jom will be a weekly digital magazine covering arts, culture, politics, business, technology and more in Singapore. I am slowly winding down my writing elsewhere, and will soon be writing only for … Continue reading Jom, our new media outfit

Separation

The wildest Covid-19 border story I’ve heard involves a Malaysian speeding in her car towards Singapore, only to find a huge jam at the border crossing. Arriving at six in the evening, this friend of a friend had given herself plenty of time to make the midnight cut-off, after which foreigners would no longer be easily allowed into Singapore and the complications of modern travel would kick in: quarantines, swabs and stay-at-home notices. With her family and job waiting in Singapore, she had to make it back.

To be sure, there is always some traffic on the two bridges that connect the Malay peninsula to the island of Singapore. Memang jam gao gao, surely there will be a heavy jam, a Malaysian might quip, combining three languages in the most delightful creole phrase. Memang is Malay for surely. Gao is Hokkien for thick or heavy. And jam is, well, not the strawberry kind. Memang jam gao gao, but nobody expected it to be like this.

Continue reading “Separation”

Pasir Ris Passion

Every day I see Pulau Ubin.

I don’t mean from within, but from without, two-and-a-half kilometres away, from the public balcony of our condo in Pasir Ris, which offers a grand view of Ubin in all its greeny, islandy, stuck-in-the-nineteen-fifties glory.

Between the Pasir Ris beach on the mainland and Pulau Ubin is a narrow bit of the Johor Strait, which separates Singapore from Malaysia. If I look to the right, eastwards, I can see it opening into the South China Sea. If I look to the left, I see it leading to Pasir Gudang, Johor, an industrialised port and petrochemicals hub, from where palm oil and other biofuels are shipped around the world, and whose containers and cranes and chimneys with nighttime flares offer a stark, Mordor-like contrast to the serenity around.

From the Pasir Ris beach, in other words, with a little turn of the head one is presented with two visions of planet earth. Pulau Ubin is the pre-industrial, bucolic paradise that our hearts pine for; Pasir Gudang the post-industrial ugliness that our lifestyles demand. The world that we miss, and the world that is.

Continue reading “Pasir Ris Passion”

Comrade Gorbachev Marx Homas, son, brother and adventurer, 2010-2020

Gorby_P1040366

Two years ago, when Li Ling, the kids and I moved out of my parents house in Bukit Timah to our own flat in Pasir Ris, it was hardest on Gorby.

Ling and I had the benefit of time, foreknowledge, active hands in the process. Blooby, Gorby’s sister, had by then retreated to a familiar sedentary life of eat, sleep, and the occasional lizard, dragged in leaving a trail of blood, body parts strewn across the terrazzo floor.

But Gorby was still Mr Bukit Timah. We would spot him prancing around the actual Bukit Timah Road, near the Tessarina Apartments and Tan Chong Motors, a full two-hundred metres from our house. Unlike us, Gorby had two channels of entry/exit: regular sidewalk when pesky humans weren’t around, or the wide drain when we were.

Once Gorby went missing for a full eighteen hours. It was his first full night out. We grew anxious. When he returned the next morning, smelling of stale beer and garbage, I saw my younger self in him, remembering my own adolescent nights of too many Graveyards at Zouk, slobbering up the driveway after stumbling out of the cab.

Continue reading “Comrade Gorbachev Marx Homas, son, brother and adventurer, 2010-2020”