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By Andrew Loh

“The guidelines clearly state that we will not fund projects which are incompatible with the core values promoted by the Government and society or disparage the Government,” said the director of arts development, National Arts Council (NAC), Ms Elaine Ng. She was referring to the NAC’s funding cut for theatre group, Wild Rice, in May 2010. [See here.]

Shortly after, some 23 members of the “Singapore Theatre Community” criticised the reasons given by Ms Ng.

In a statement to the media then, the group said that the “sole criterion” for the allocation of funds should be “works of high artistic merit.”

“We urge the NAC to revise and update its funding guidelines to better serve the expectations and aspirations of Singaporeans. NAC’s priority should be directed towards developing Singapore’s potential as a world-class city for the arts, and not towards developing the potential of a statutory board—entrusted with public money—as an organ of social control.” – Arts group, May 2010.

Two years since that episode, the Government seems not to have moved from its position.

By Andrew Loh

Two days after the two Chinese workers – dubbed the “crane protesters” by the media – were sentenced to jail, the Ministry of Manpower said the men had made “false claims”. One of the reasons why the men staged the protest was because of poor living conditions.

The Straits Times reported the ministry’s position thus:

“A spokesman said MOM inspectors visited the men's last place of residence - a container at Fishery Port Road in Jurong - on Dec 12 and found it complied with ‘approved housing requirements and were assessed to be satisfactory’.”

By Andrew Loh

“In January this year, following the horrific accident in Tampines that claimed the lives of the two young brothers, photographs showing the mangled state of their bodies were circulated rapidly on the Internet.

“The photographs made a spectacle out of a tragedy and robbed their family of the privacy and dignity that they deserved. This is only one incident.

“The recent sex-corruption cases have seen photographs of innocent women circulated on the Internet speculating whether they were involved.”

The above quote is taken from Member of Parliament Hri Kumar’s speech in Parliament. Kumar cited the two incidents to support his call for the government to “act against hateful conduct online.” In my view, Kumar's citation of the 2 incidents are rather one-sided and incomplete.

Kumar has apparently ignored certain facts about the two incidents, namely:

1. In the Tampines accident, as noted by researcher Carol Soon of the Institute of Policy Studies: "Soon after the photographs were posted, prominent bloggers and forum participants questioned the motives and the need for sharing such pictures. They called on the online community to show greater respect to the family of the boys who died."

2. In the second case Kumar cited, “photographs of innocent women” being circulated online is not peculiar to the Internet. In fact, the mainstream media had camped out and harassed the innocent women friends and colleagues of former Workers’ Party MP Yaw Shin Leong in 2012 – and had splashed their photos in their newspapers which reached millions of readers.

By Andrew Loh

People’s Action Party (PAP) Member of Parliament, Mr Inderjit Singh, made an impassioned speech in Parliament against the population White Paper on 5 February 2013. [See here.]

It was, and quite characteristic of the Ang Mo Kio GRC MP, a strongly-worded speech. “Our past decade of rapid population growth has already created too many problems which need to be solved first before we can take the next step,” he told the House. He used words and phrases such as “too steep” to describe Singapore’s population increase the last decade. He lambasted the government for having “failed to achieve the goal” of a promised Swiss standard of living for Singaporeans. Mr Singh said he has “a big issue with the number of PRs and new citizens” in our midst currently, that “it is just too much”, and how “things [had] started to fall apart” from this influx. Adding more people to the island “will be disastrous”, the MP warned. “We missed the mark in the last 10 years, and we are already paying a heavy price for that mistake… We already have too many of them,” Mr Singh said, referring to the number of permanent residents (PRs) here. Children of PRs who do not do National Service (NS) should be punished, he implored. “Send them to jail if we can.”

He called on the government to take a breather on population growth and to address existing problems first. “[We] cannot afford to make Singaporeans’ lives more difficult as a result,” he said. “I rather err on the side of caution when it comes to growing our population. We cannot keep paying a high price for any planning misjudgements in this area.”

Strong words expressing strong sentiments indeed.