Sat, 19 Jul 2008
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Chee Soon Juan and Lee Kuan Yew finally met in court. Lee testified the following in court under oath:
“Your honour, the International Bar Association decided to honour Singapore and hold its annual conference in this city and you [Dr Chee] were given an opportunity to present your case, with your complaint that Singapore lack the rule of law. There were some 3000 lawyers there.
I think they left Singapore with a very different impression from what you have projected because we have a letter from the President of the International Bar Association to the organisers, namely the Law Society of Singapore, how successful the meeting was and how impressed they were by the standards they found to obtain in the judiciary.”
You can find proof of this at SDP’s web site by downloading the MP3 recordings of the court proceedings. Furthermore, IBA confirmed that they never wrote such a letter to Singapore praising our wonderful judiciary. Instead, the IBA came out with a report with 18 recommendations for us to improve our judiary system.
What’s worse, Miss Yeong Yoon Ying, Press Secretary to Minister Mentor, claimed that Chee Soon Juan called the Singapore leaders “murderers, robbers, child molesters” and “rapists.” Totally untrue!
I am glad I do not subscribe to the Straits Times newspaper because I believe it is an absolute waste of my money and paper to read the junk the government prints on it. Reading the Straits Times is an insult to my intelligence because I am supposed to believe the rubbish they write. Without the internet, I would have believed everything Lee Kuan Yew and his press secretary said, just like most Singaporeans.
Tagged As: Chee Soon Juan, Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore, Straits Times
Categories: Singapore News | No Comments »
Wow! After increasing their salaries by up to 60% earlier this year, you would think they would be satisfied. Hell no! According to this news report, they are planning another bonus in 2008! My PM is already getting paid 5 times whatever George Bush is getting, but that means nothing to them because in “unique Singapore”, things are different and our leaders have to be paid lots of money to prevent them from becoming corrupt. Furthermore, if they do not get paid as much as the top professionals in the private sector, they might quit their posts and jeopardize our $210 billion dollar economy.
This logic does not really make sense to me. What I am getting is, if you pay them too little money, they might start thinking of doing corrupt things to make some money on the side. The solution to this problem is to pay them a lot of money. I can’t say it makes no sense, I guess you could say it does make a little sense but that does not mean it is the only way out.
The expected average salary increase for Singaporeans in 2008 is 5%. Sounds really nice. Did you know that Singapore’s inflation in 2008 is estimated at 5%? There goes your 5% pay increase!
Singaporeans have been told to “Get a sense of proportion” by Lee Kuan Yew. Don’t make a big deal about the ministers’ pay increase because it is for the good of the country to pay them loads of money to preserve what we have and improve on it.
Here’s what Lee Kuan Yew has to say about the ministers’ pay increase:
A dumb video on how they calculated their pay increase.
The total cost of ministers’ salaries, of all office holders, the present cost is 0.13 per cent of government expenditure (and 0.022 per cent of GDP).
It amounts to $46 million. We are quarrelling about whether we should pay them $46 million or $36 million, or better still $26 million. So you save $20 million and jeopardise an economy of $210 billion? (This was the size of Singapore’s GDP in 2006.)
What are we talking about?
You know fund managers? I’m chairman of the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) and we put $5 billion, $10 billion with top fund managers, just to benchmark how we are performing against the best in the market.
We have about three or four top US investors and we track what they do and we compare what we are doing.
And you have to pay them not 0.13 per cent. Win or lose, whether the stocks go up or down, they take their cut. You ask GIC employees; I’m the chairman of GIC. I’m being paid as Minister Mentor, the Senior Minister before that, and even as Prime Minister before that, a fraction of what the top managers in GIC earn.
But they are handling over US$100 billion (S$151 billion). They make a mistake, we lose $10, $20, $30 billion overnight when the stock market collapses.
So for the average family earning $1,500, $3,000, we are talking of astronomical figures.
But for people in government like me, having to deal with these sums of money which we have accumulated through the sweat of our brow over the last 40 years, you have to pay the market rate or the man will up stakes and join Morgan Stanley or Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs. And then you’ve got an incompetent man and you’ve lost money, by the billions.
So get a sense of proportion.
More of his wonderful speech on why we need to pay him more money.
According to this interview, Lee Kuan Yew challenged Singaporeans to ask ourselves if we can leave Singapore with a clear conscience.
‘We are now into a globalised world where people who are well-educated, well-trained and especially English-educated have enormous options,’ he said.
But his point to them was this: ‘Can you leave with a clear conscience? I cannot.’
He urged them to think hard about what they owe the country. ‘If we lose our top talent, then we will decline as a nation,’ he said.
The key, he believed, was to inculcate a particular message in the young - especially those doing well in schools, colleges, polytechnics and universities.
‘You are here, you are getting this education, you are getting these opportunities that make you mobile, that make you desirable because this mass of people had discipline, (were) hardworking, provided the stability, the base on which you mounted your career.
‘Can you in good conscience say, ‘Goodbye! Thank you very much’?’
My answer is a big YES. I would like to use his quote “Those are admirable sentiments, but we live in the real world.” in response to this emigration issue. In the real world, there are Chinese people like myself who value their individual freedom. Democracy is not reserved just for Westerners, all Asians and human beings all need and want freedom.
Tagged As: inflation, minister pay increase, singapore emigration
Categories: Singapore News | No Comments »
Ever since I decided to really move out of Singapore, my dominating thoughts have been all about how to get all the migration paperwork done as soon as possible and all the good things I can expect in the near future.
Therefore, I will be blogging a lot about my life in Singapore and the local news that affects my life in general. I predict this will be one of my last long stays in this country and I would like to keep a record on the reasons why I want to emigrate and how I did it so that others may learn from my experience.
I love to read alternative Singapore news from blogs such as:
My blog is primarily about internet marketing and not a Singapore political blog. If it were one, I would have to register my blog with the Singapore government and have my every post used as evidence against me if I wrote anything they deem as slanderous. Gotta get out of this FEAR based country ASAP!
Tagged As: Singapore News
Categories: Blog Updates, Singapore News | No Comments »
I have often been called all sorts of negative names by my peers because I criticize Singapore. Let me clarify that I love my country but I just disagree with the way it is being governed.
I like the green, neat and clean environment even though the weather here is simply too hot and humid. I like the cheap food I can get and the world class public transportation, which is still relatively cheap even after the continuous price hikes. I am ok with the lack of beautiful places to visit in my country because I can make do with the aircon at the nice shopping centres. All in all, Singapore is a fine city.
Beneath all that nice marketing wrapping of Uniquely Singapore, you’ll find a country with a very repressed bunch of people who live in fear of the government. People get whipped on the ass for certain offences, death sentences for drug traffickers, permits are required if you plan to assemble more than 5 people in a public place, compulsory military service for men, men need to get a permit to leave the country for holidays, no chewing gums allowed, no cats in government flats, opposition politicians are made bankrupt etc…. I could go on and on and on.
The good news for Singapore is most people simply suck it up and live with it. As long as you do that, you can live in Singapore even though you might feel very miserable living here. It is your choice. My choice is to leave. I cannot see the situation improving in the next 50 years. I can’t wait for the old man at the top of this police state to die and wait for another generation to try to turn things around. I want freedom now but it is not going to happen because we cannot beat the system via elections and the government don’t give a shit about us any way.
I really admire is Dr Lim Hock Siew, who was jailed for almost 20 years for nothing! He was not found guilty of any crime but yet he was detained under the Internal Security Act without trial. That’s like assuming someone is guilty without giving him a chance to prove his innocence. I have been a regular customer of Dr Lim’s for over 15 years as he has a clinic near my home. I did not know he was a former PAP member who was thrown in jail because someone accused him of being a Communist till I stumbled on this Youtube video.
I also happen to live in a country where the police can block you from walking on the street without giving you an official explanation. This shows how much of a “POLICE STATE” we really are.
Combine all this nonsense with the high cost of living makes this place a rather terrible place to live in if you’re the type of person who values freedom. I admire people like Dr Lim, Dr Chee Soon Juan and JB Jeyaretnam. Hopefully, I will be able to help them in their freedom movement in future when I am no longer a Singapore citizen. Right now, to be completely honest, I don’t have the balls to oppose my government because there is simply too much for me to lose than gain.
Categories: Singapore News | 2 Comments »
