The Art Of Throwing Smoke

He was silent when the freedom of the internet was threatened by the likes of Yaacob Ibrahim.  He was just as quiet when the number of dengue cases crept past the 10,000 mark. He did not chime in when Vivian Balakrishnan waded into the hawker center scaffolding dissertation. So what keeps our prime minister awake at nights? Nobody would have guessed it was the beautiful view of the skyline from the Istana's manicured lawn, a sight none of us will ever get to see at the crack of dawn. Lee posted a Facebook photo of the haze taken at the Istana, commenting: "The city in the distance is barely visible. We are all affected by the haze."

At stake, of course, are the tourist arrivals, who had not planned to travel all the way to see the Merlion engulfed in smoke. Said national icon is permitted to spit 24/7 to its heart's content, but smoking is strictly prohibited. Some laws are simply not allowed to be applied with a light touch. Too bad the peasants have to put up with watery eyes, and coughing fits.

Instead of dialling up President of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono direct - and remind him how little he is paid for running a country of 247,496,843 people - Lee deputised Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan and Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam to call their Indonesian counterparts to register Singapore's "serious concerns" about the situation and to offer help to fight the fires there. Someone expressed hope that the experts can get together soon to compare notes on "what's happening and where, and what's being done." Every schoolboy in Singapore knows what's happening (farmers burning crops), where (Sumatra and akan datang, Kalimantan) and what's being done (zilch).

Balakrishnan, fresh from calling the Aljunied town council to name cleaning contractors, said in his own Facebook account that he asked Indonesian Minister Balthasar Kambuaya to name the companies responsible for the fires there causing the haze. For a guy who flopped at floods, danced around with dengue, the only thing he knows about clearing the haze is, as expected, pointing fingers at someone else.

The Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution was signed in 2002, but Indonesia has yet to ratify it. Also not ratified is the extradition treaty with Indonesia, signed in 2007, because their House of Representatives refused to approve both the treaty and the defense agreement as a package. Indonesia's House Speaker Marzuki Alie had complained loudly about Singapore's request to be allowed to conduct military training within Indonesian territory in exchange for the extradition treaty. While the politicians quibble, the fires of Sumatra rage on.

Innocence Lost

The film maker's home was raided, her computers seized and her person dragged into a police station like a common criminal. But now the Attorney General's Chambers (AGC) have, after a long review at great expense to the taxpayers, determined that her perceived transgression does not merit a court prosecution. Instead, the public prosecutors has decided that a letter of warning "would suffice in her case".

Her case was a matter of producing documentary videos highlighting the allegations of police brutality aired by two Chinese national bus drivers involved in Singapore's first industrial strike in 26 years. The 28 January blog post title featuring the charges, "I Have Ways To Make You Confess", may be a tad provocative, but truth is always an attention getter when it cuts through the fog of official agenda. The AGC was not acting out of admission of judicial overkill, but hinted darkly at vindictive convictions. Among the factors considered in their deliberations, said the AGC, was the guilty plea of the bus drivers. In other words, if the strikers had refused to bow down to the system, the film maker might not have been let off "so easily". Shylock would demanded have his pound of flesh.

So did the Chinese nationals plead guilty so that an innocent party need not be keel hauled for being sympathetic to their cause?

"Killing the Chickens, to Scare the Monkeys" is a 2011 short film directed by Jens Assur. Set in the People's Republic of China, it consists of nine scenes where national politics and strategy unleashed unforeseen consequences on a young teacher. And there's the Chinese proverb that holds that it’s smarter to punish or do away with a lesser animal (a chicken) as a lesson to a higher or more important one (a monkey) that you can’t afford to get rid of. Hopefully, the monkey will take the hint and fall into line.

The law makers are using the episode to warn the public, "In appropriate instances, AGC will not hesitate to take firm  action... to protect the integrity of the judiciary's role in determining the facts". Expanding, the AGC spokesman added that the public can criticise judicial decisions "only after these have been given." Talk about locking the barn doors after the horse has bolted. That may work for those who subscribe to the wayang of the ongoing charade, but others are mindful of the quote attributed to Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.”

Credibility At Stake

Blackbox Research is one of many online survey companies out there, except that this one has decided to set up shop in Singapore, doing work for outfits like NTUC Income and Mendaki. Top management identified on their website are from Australia, Shanghai, Philippines (2), and two token Singaporeans. Recently it was quoted by the mainstream media to present the challenge why the public should trust bloggers.

Blackbox Research was selected to conduct the "Punggol East: What Factors Influenced Voters?" post-election survey and highlighted the cost of living was the top reason that determined the people's choice. They reported that the second most important reason for the vote swing was attributed to “the government not listening to ordinary Singaporeans”. That survey also measured the impact of the by-election’s catalyst as a vote changer, with results that showed Michael Palmer’s sex-for-mangoes transaction accounted for only 1 per cent of the vote swing.

Workers’ Party candidate Lee Li Lian had won the by-election by a landslide 54.5 per cent of the vote, beating the "son of Punggol" colorectal surgeon Koh Poh Koon from the ruling People’s Action Party by a convincing 10.8 per cent margin.

While on the subject of surveys, Singapore has been ranked the 16 most peaceful place ("Republic moves up 7 places as the rest of the world grows more violent" ST 14 June 2013) ). Same place where a female polytechnic student was slashed repeatedly for refusing to be robbed of her handphone (Thurs June 13). Same place where a 20 year old full-time national serviceman was set upon with knives in the heart of Orchard Road, and left bleeding from a head wound outside a popular shopping mall (Sat June 15).

We are all free to believe what we read, with no need to be licensed for our personal choice. Right now, the besieged Julian Assange and Edward Snowden's credibility still ranks pretty high.

Money For Cars

With scant information about the Changi Motorsports Hub project, we'll never know why the $36 million successful bid by a Japanese-led consortium was finally scrapped by the Singapore Sports Council. Project delays and financial difficulties are typical of construction undertakings, but allegations of corruption were never really sufficiently aired.

As a commercial concept, similar plans for a motorsport facility championed by Singaporean billionaire investor Peter Lim at Iskandar in Johore should prove it must have had merits of viability. The strange bit is when proposals were solicited to salvage the doomed racetrack cum retail complex, all seven interested parties asked for government subsidies. Why would tycoons with expensive hobbies like Lamborghinis or Ferraris have need of a help out from taxpayers, some of whom are evicted from their simple abodes because they can't make the mortgage for their HDB flats?

Maybe those fast car aficionados had in mind the F1 Night Race, roaring round the corner again, in September. That particular extravaganza is heavily subsidised, to the tune of 60% of the total bill, or $90 million based on the estimate of $150 million for each mega event. 5 years after the first race was flagged off in 2007, not a single year's report card on the actual finances has been made available to the public. The true cost of the government subsidy is yet to be disclosed.

One of the chief complains about the Certificate of Entitlement (COE) system is that the deep pocketed is unfairly favoured. The argument is that the present bidding system allows the rich to marginalise the not-so-rich by bidding a high price to ensure success, comfortable in the assurance that only the lowest successful bidding price would have to be paid. It's only a simple tweak to implement a pay as you bid system to address this ongoing nod to those with fat bank accounts.

One suspects the relevant minister responsible for the Sports Council, F1 Night Race and land transportation, each has his own perception of inequity. Perhaps the Changi Motorsports Hub would have a different fate if a more spendthrift cabinet minister was in charge. Asked if he had any regret about splurging $387 million dollars of taxpayers’ monies to host the most expensive “sports day” for children in the world, Vivian Balakrishnan made dubious claims about YOG “laying a strong foundation for Singapore’s sporting culture, especially in spectatorship, community involvement and volunteer engagement.” Racing fans holding multiple COEs for their private fleet would love that line about "Singapore’s sporting culture, especially in spectatorship, community involvement and volunteer engagement.” Just imagine, $387 million could pay for ten Motorsports Hubs, fully subsidised.

Across the causeway, Malaysia boleh

Politicians Exposed

Edward Snowden is proving to be one of America's consequential whistle blowers, after Daniel Ellsberg, the man who gave us the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam war. The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak about the United States National Security Agency's super secret surveillance programmes said, "I'm not here (in Hong Kong) to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality." What Snowden saw at work in Geneva disillusioned him about how his government functions and what its impact is in the world, "I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good." Naturally the first to bray for his blood are politicians, calling him a lone wolf terrorist who is bigger danger to society than Big Brother.

John F Kennedy was a serial womaniser - alleged to have had a threesome on his inauguration evening while his wife was dancing downstairs - and a highly amphetamine dependent drug addict to ward off the pain from an old football injury. And he never wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning biography, "Profiles in Courage", ghost writer Ted Sorensen did. Richard M Nixon took mind-altering drugs that caused his advisers so much concern that they instructed military chiefs not to take orders from him without seeking confirmation from the Defense Secretary or the Secretary of State. Lyndon B Johnson was a crude man, a congressman described him as "damn crude - always scratching his crotch and picking his nose in mixed company." Mao Tse-tung operated on the Taoist belief that sexual activity prolonged life, and was fixated with pornography and sexual excess. Mahatma Gandhi "allowed" teenage girls to sleep naked with him as a form of "testing" his vow of chastity. Winston Churchill, who called Gandhi a "half -naked fakir", was observed by a wartime close friend  Robert Boothby, "Winston was a shit, but we needed a shit to defeat Hitler."

All that, and more, were compiled before the advent of WikiLeaks, by Phil Mason in his book "What Needled Cleopatra... and other little secrets airbrushed from history." If the foibles of Churchill the war-time genius and Gandhi the poor ascetic can be airbrushed, imagine what Photoshop can achieve today.

Ellsberg, in defence of Snowden, said that contrary to claims that NSA's monitoring programs are only collecting meta data -- such as the time and duration of phone calls and the subjects and IP addresses of emails -- he was confident the NSA is saving far information more than it lets on. "We're not a police state yet, but the foundation has been set," he said. "It could happen overnight." That's the slippery slope the licensing of news websites is leading us right to.