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Ambassador Chan provided a smug defence of Singapore’s brand of illiberal democracy in a speech at Yale law school last month.  (See here.)

This is not quite entirely her fault, however. She is a fine civil servant who has served Singapore for many years, and is constrained by whatever the Singapore government of the day (for a very long time now, the PAP) wants to sell to the world.

Now, it would have been all right if ambassador Chan had just stuck to telling everyone else that we are quite efficiently run (although we are very worried about the alarming slide in standards in our beloved MRT system).

First, let me say that I am no economist. Neither am I an expert on numbers or manpower matters. The debate that has been generated by Professor Lim Chong Yah, the former head of the National Wages Council (NWC), is a much needed one. For the longest time, Singaporeans, particularly those at the bottom rung, have been dismayed (to say the least) at how wages have remained stuck in the rut.

If you do a bit of research, it is quite confusing. On the one hand, we have ministers, including the Finance Minister and the Manpower Minister – who happens to be the same person (who also happens to be the Deputy Prime Minister) – say that wages have indeed increased. In fact, in the midst of the General Election last year, on 4 May, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who now holds all of the abovementioned titles, rebutted claims that wages have not increased.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

National Solidarity Party’s Letter to the Ministry of Transport Regarding Recent Casualties From Public Transport.

Dear Sir,

Safety of Public Transport

The National Solidarity Party (NSP) requests accountability from the Ministry of Transport over the spate of public transport-related casualties in recent months.

The recent spate of events involving fatal casualties as a consequence of bus-related accidents concerns us all. The safety of commuters and passengers has been compromised. This is unacceptable.

Although the public has received a response from both SBS and SMRT following questions about hiring practices and employment quotas, NSP feels that the information that has been made public does not address the root cause of this disturbing trend, nor does it offer solutions that can eliminate it and ensure the safety of commuters. 

“Even as three state counsels were sitting next to me in the Court of Appeal yesterday as I received judgment on behalf of a client facing capital charges,” lawyer M Ravi told the Court on Thursday, “additional state counsels were, without notice to me, prevailing upon the Registrar to convene this emergency Summons to seek an expedited appeal which, for reasons I am about to explain, is entirely misconceived.”

M Ravi was in court on Wednesday to receive judgment on a separate case involving death-row inmate Yong Vui Kong’s appeal.

On Tuesday, Justice Philip Pillai dismissed the Attorney General’s (AG) objection to the application by Ms Vellama Marie Muthu for the Court to order the Prime Minister to hold a by-election in Hougang within three months or any such time as the Court deems fit. He granted leave to Vellama and ordered that her case be heard in open court on 16 April.