David Lam/
- Bedok Stadium rally/ credit: Wallace Woon
30 Apr 2011, Saturday, 7pm. I was at the Workers’ Party Election Rally at Bedok Stadium. It was quite a sight. Never before have I seen so many people packed into a stadium. Not in the last election as far as I can recall. There must have been easily 15,000 people there, dwarfing the attendance at S-league football matches.
As my girlfriend and I listened attentively to the speakers making their speeches, I can’t help but notice my surroundings – there was friendly banter amongst uncles who are seasoned supporters, peppering the occasion with light-hearted comments in tandem with the pertinent issues raised which drew laughter and even applause from the crowd. I saw an old man in his seventies who arrived late and had to stand as there was no space to sit. Almost without hesitation, this teenager beside him (who came with his parents and was probably too young to vote), gave up his “seat” on the ground to the elderly man.
When the minority candidate for East Coast GRC spoke in Malay, which the majority Chinese crowd perhaps could not understand, everyone waited patiently and observed silence respectfully, so that those who could understand would not miss out on important messages from the speaker. When Mr Low Thia Khiang made his final speech of the night, even those seated stood up to show their appreciation for what he has done for the party. That was when I realised I had been standing for almost 3 hours, when the doctor had advised me against standing even more than half an hour as it could injure my back due to my medical condition.
The rally ended at 10pm. By then, my girlfriend was almost reduced to tears, touched by the issues close to our hearts which the speakers had passionately spoke about. Almost immediately after the rally ended, it started to rain. Perhaps the heavens were watching the rally. As we filtered out of the stadium, the poor policewoman tried to use her loudhailer to direct human traffic to other exits, but could not be heard as it ran out of battery and her voice was easily drowned out by chants of “Workers’ Party”. One uncle even sarcastically suggested that the policewoman buy a new and better loud-hailer since the government was so rich, again drawing loud applause. I pity the policewoman who was put in such a difficult position and could only smile wryly in response.
I came away from the rally feeling massively enriched. Seldom have I witnessed such graciousness and consideration amongst fellow Singaporeans. The camaraderie all round, which I’ve not seen since the Malaysia Cup days, was especially heart-warming. People always say that Singaporeans are apathetic towards politics and their country, but what I witnessed tonight was a resounding rebuttal to these claims. It was at the rally when I felt passionate about Singapore again. I can’t help but wonder where my passion had dissipated to these past few years and why it happened. In any case, I really hope that such passion amongst Singaporeans will be here to stay, and not come only once every 5 years.
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May 4, 2011 at 9:59 pm
First order of business is to get the Ministerial salaries scaled down several orders of magnitude to levels like any other country..Otherwise we would have to account to future generations of Singaporeans as to how we have been fooled so badly: to believe that the Singapore Cabinet is so special that they have to be paid several fold more than their counterparts in other countries.Because they wont be offered lucrative speaking appointments or book royalties, said the PM. Should we compensate them for their mediocrity on the World stage? The other oft repeated argument by the Ruling Party’s spokesperson for paying them over the moon is that it would prevent them from corruption. I think this must be the real reason, an innate greedy predisposition. .
May 5, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Once a Minister takes a salary that is so large that it looks like a heist in comparison with similar jobs in government across the Globe, he breaks the compact with the citizenry. His job becomes a commercial contract and should be gauged in a strictly commercial manner. There are standard methodologies for valuing jobs and the job of being Ministers is no exception. I suggest that if a substantial opposition gets elected in Parliament, it moves the motion to revalue the jobs done by the various Ministers. The parameters involved in such a valuation exercise includes estimating that portion of the GNP attributable to the Minister whose job is under appraisal. It also includes estimating a discount rate which consists of a risk free rate and a risk premium. Intuitively without doing the calculations now, you can see that the portion of attributable GNP is very different from the GNP itself. It has been touted by the PAP that they created the whole GNP, which is not correct because patently commercial, industrial and financial enterprises are the engines which brought the process of creating the GNP to completion. For instance the ministers do not operate, the finance houses, factories and every enterprise in the country. The share of the GNP created by each Minister is a sliver of the country’s GNP.
This sliver of GNP is then operated on by the discount rate to arrive at a figure of value of the job of each Minister..The risk premium ( which as mentioned above is a component of the discount rate) would be entirely absent in Ministerial jobs so that what remains is the risk free rate which name itself reveals the nature of Ministerial jobs- essentially risk free! You should find that the resulting figure of value of the job should bear comparison with figures of actual remunerations of the Parliamentarians in the first world countries, as Singapore prides itself to be first world. You will then see the utter absurdity of claiming that a Ministerial salary in Singapore is to be 6 to 10 times more than its comparable in the first world governments. Thus the present salaries of our Ministers would be found to be grossly wrong in fact. Whether they are also wrong in Law has to be investigated, given the fact that these Ministers in this one party Government of Singapore in effect drew up their own salaries scales and paid themselves from that self- serving blueprint..They are judges in their own cause. Moreover they went to war with the oppositions for 50 years using the legal apparatus of the State, destroying them and in the process remain the Ruling Party for all of 50 years and eradicating the concepts of Human Rights by unprincipled use of defamation Laws, ISD arrests etc.The next question is whether they should be asked to return the excess payment to the State, as many bankers and CEOs were asked to do so when it was found that they did not deserve such remunerations or such remunerations were extracted by false representations..
As citizens we should break up the nonsense of Million dollar salaries to Ministers on spurious claims of uniqueness.Singapore is on the same planet as New York, London, Beijing, Tokyo, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Amman. None of the office holders in these countries demand such grotesque salaries. Not only do we support a big heist but we also engender a colossal greed in these supposedly exceptionally noble people. One of the most ludicrous deeds instigated by such salaries is the pump priming of the economy by overwhelming the country with foreign labour. We will be sitting ducks for the next get rich quick scheme.
May 5, 2011 at 1:32 pm
My dear fellow citizens,
If you want to cast a vote for President, then you have to vote opposition on Sat, May07.
If not, the coming election for President will be walk over again or assigned by the OMO. (one man operation)
So tell me do you or I got a say then. Just think for the last president election, what had happened ? Can you recall ?
May 5, 2011 at 3:01 pm
Notice that the PM is saying sorry for not doing the infrastructural works to prepare for the huge deluge of foreign workers when it came like a five year long Tsunami. He is not saying sorry for opening the flood gates to let them in. What is the root cause of our problem is the flood of foreigners, not the lack of preparation for them.
The PM still does not want to give up his plan to transform and replace the people of this island with those who are more capable of work to increase the GNP and who in gratitude will vote for the party for another 50 years.
Dismiss his apology for what it is worth, another black screen to make big money for the PAP( through unmerited high salaries).
May 5, 2011 at 9:40 pm
Singapore under PAP has failed in national education and also badly in nation building as well.
The most important task if sufficient opposition candidates become MPs after 7 May is to table a motion to reverse the Constitution to its original and strengthen it by referendum like the Swiss. This will abolish GRC, NMP, NCMP, and any other ill amendments in the past to the advantage of ruling party. This will prevent future abuse of constitutional amendment by any ruling party to ensure a multi-party non-elite political system that truely represents the people. Needless to say, the ridiculous millions dollars ministers’ salary will be reviewed since it is the product indirectly from the ill constitutional amendment. CPIB and all other civil services should answer directly to the parliament and not the PM or ruling party.
Singapore should know you need more than 1/3 opposition seats in parliament to be effective in check and balance to ensure accountability and transparency.
May 6, 2011 at 10:18 pm
We should ask the ministers to give back their over-paid salary and donate the money back to charity.