KEE CHIU FUCKs AH JUAN!!!

Chan Chun Sing rebuts Huffington Post for articles by Chee Soon Juan

The minister said the opposition politician "claims he is forced to publish in foreign media because he has been silenced in Singapore media", but this is "false" as local press and socio-political websites have carried several of Dr Chee's letters and articles.

SINGAPORE: Social and Family Development Minister Chan Chun Sing has issued a response to the Huffington Post for its publication of the articles “Without Freedom There is No Free Trade” and “Free the Singapore Media and Let the People Go”, by opposition politician Dr Chee Soon Juan late last year.

His response is reproduced below:

Your website has given Dr Chee Soon Juan considerable but undeserved attention and space. You perhaps believe that he is a weighty political figure in Singapore. He is nothing of the kind.

Dr Chee has stood for elections thrice – and lost badly all three times, once receiving just 20 per cent of the vote.

The party he now leads, the Singapore Democratic Party, was once the leading opposition party in the country. But that was when it was led by Mr Chiam See Tong, a man everyone in Singapore, political friend and foe alike, regards as an honourable man.

Indeed, it was Mr Chiam who brought Dr Chee into the SDP in 1992. He mentored the younger man and promoted him. Dr Chee then proceeded to betray Mr Chiam, isolate him and force him out of the SDP, a party that he had founded in 1980 and had nurtured over 14 years. Since then the SDP hasn’t won a single seat in Parliament, though Mr Chiam himself went on to win elections repeatedly.

In 1993, Dr Chee was dismissed from the National University of Singapore for misappropriating research funds and for other serious misconduct, including surreptitiously recording conversations with university staff.

He has been sued for defamation not only by ruling party politicians, a fact that he likes to trumpet in the foreign media, but also by the doyen of the opposition in Singapore, Mr Chiam, a fact that he doesn’t mention because it is embarrassing.

And in 1996, Dr Chee and three of his associates were convicted of perjury by Parliament tor submitting false statements to a Special Parliamentary Committee. This is the equivalent of Congress convicting someone of perjury, a most serious offence.

It is because of these and other failings that Dr Chee is a political failure - not because he was persecuted, as he likes to pretend. His party is now one of the weakest political parties in Singapore principally because voters do not regard its leader as an honourable man.

Dr Chee was disqualified from contesting the last two General Elections because he was declared a bankrupt in 2006 for failing to pay damages for libel to former Prime Ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong. He was discharged from bankruptcy in 2012 after the former Prime Ministers agreed to accept a reduced sum in damages. Since then Dr Chee has been campaigning to redeem himself in the public eye in preparation for the next General Election.

As he has done in the past, he has looked to the foreign media for redemption, chiefly because foreign journalists don’t know him as well as Singaporeans and he believes he can beguile them into believing he is the Aung San Suu Kyi of Singapore politics. Dr Chee, however, claims he is forced to publish in the foreign media because he has been silenced in the Singapore media.

But this is false. There are several socio-political websites in Singapore, some with as wide a reach among Singaporeans as the Huffington Post has among Americans. They have run several articles by Dr Chee. The local press also has carried several of Dr Chee’s letters.

Dr Chee’s problem is not that he has not been heard by Singaporeans. His problem is that they have.

Sincerely,
Chan Chun Sing
Minister for Social and Family Development, Singapore

Without Freedom There Is No Free Trade

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chee-soon-juan/without-freedom-there-is-_b_6149966.html

Posted: 11/13/2014 5:04 pm EST Updated: 01/13/2015 5:59 am EST

SINGAPORE

Trade agreements are often promoted as a means to keep prices down and employment up. The matter, as one might expect, is not so straightforward especially when political freedom is not part of the equation.

The Singapore experience with free trade agreements is, perhaps, instructive. For years, human rights in the city-state have been dirty words, it was taboo to speak of them.

This has not, however, stopped Western leaders, both in the economic and political spheres, from continuing to disregard the lack of democracy and the abuse of human rights in Singapore in favor of trade and commerce.

In 2003, Singapore signed a trade pact with the US. At that time, the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (USSFTA) was touted as a job creator and that the world needed more, not less, free trade. The US Ambassador to Singapore at that time said that as many as 50,000 jobs would be created in Singapore by the trade pact.

I wasn't so sanguine. Without clauses to guarantee human rights and rights of Singapore's workers, the agreement would just help the business elite in the US and Singapore to exploit cheap labour. And I said so when I visited the US then. Of course, given the might of the corporate interests, I couldn't get in a word edgewise.

That was in 2003. Ten years have since passed and the results are in:
•According to the International Labor Organization, Singaporean workers have worked more hours than in most countries, and, perhaps unsurprisingly it has resulted in the workforce being the unhappiest in the world.

•Income inequality in Singapore is higher than that in the US. While the city-state has the highest proportion of millionaires in the world, nearly 5 percent of its workforce have an annual income of less than US$5,000.

•Despite the Economist Intelligence Unit ranking Singapore as the most expensive city in the world, there is no minimum wage law in the country.

•It's not just the lower-income workers who are getting pounded. A recent study showed that almost 50 percent of Singaporeans subsist from paycheck to paycheck.

•We have a pension savings system that is broken. An entire generation of workers is in danger of not having sufficient income to retire on.

•As for the younger generation, there is significant underemployment and limited opportunities for graduates.

•The rich in Singapore, in contrast, have never had it so good. The island, out of 23 economies, ranks 5th on the Crony-Capitalism Index compiled by The Economist.

It is clear that the benefits of the USSFTA have not accrued equitably. One reason for such a skewed outcome, at least for Singaporeans, is, as I've mentioned at the outset, the lack of democratic rights of the people.

The labour movement is under firm state guidance (the umbrella National Trade Unions Congress is headed by a cabinet minister), the print and broadcast media are owned by the government (Singapore ranks 150th out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom index -- even Myanmar is higher at 145th), the ranks of the political opposition and civil society have been decimated through decades of state harassment, and fundamental freedoms of speech, assembly and association are severely proscribed.

More free trade in the pipeline

The European Union (EU) is about to sign its own FTA with Singapore. The proposed agreement makes extensive provisions for the protection of the rights of businesses, but almost nothing in it speaks of the protection of the rights of workers.

The US has also embarked on the expansive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which seeks to, among other things, "support the creation and retention of jobs."

I understand the importance of trade. Without it, modern world comes to a standstill. I also understand that in an imperfect world, no one expects perfect equality.

However, extremes in income inequality does not conduce to society's well-being. Without freedom there can be no free trade; without democracy there can be no workers rights' and without workers' rights, FTAs are only tools for exploitation.

If we are going to ensure that trade remains sustainable, then we must strive to make trade pacts beneficial for all -- from the lowliest worker to the mightiest CEO. For this to happen, free trade agreements cannot continue to ignore human rights.

Follow CHEE Soon Juan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CheeSoonJuan

Free the Singapore Media and Let the People Go


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chee-soon-juan/free-the-singapore-media-_b_6306736.html

Posted: 12/11/2014 4:55 pm EST Updated: 12/11/2014 4:59 pm EST

My op-ed in the Wall Street Journal "A New Vision for Singapore," or rather what happened following its publication, is an example of what has to change in Singapore.

I had first offered the piece to the main daily newspaper, the Straits Times. It was not accepted for publication. This is not surprising as in the nearly a quarter-of-a-century of my involvement in opposition politics in Singapore, I have not had any opinion piece published in the Singapore press even though I have contributed articles in many international newspapers in the past.

My piece in the Wall Street Journal elicited a predictably heavy-handed response from the government. The Straits Times and other pro-government news sites ran identical reports titled Singapore responds to 'dishonest' commentary by Chee Soon Juan in WSJ. My piece was nowhere in sight.

The 'dishonest' label is one assiduously cultivated by the riling People's Action Party (PAP); it is the favored tactic of the ruling party to character assassinate its opponents.

In this instance, the charge is already an improvement compared to earlier criticisms. In a courtroom hearing in 2008, Mr Lee Kuan Yew testified -- after consulting his doctors -- that I was a "near-psychopath." A Straits Times columnist even penned an editorial confirming the diagnosis after looking up a medical website. Mr. Lee's successor, Mr. Goh Chok Tong, declared that my integrity was suspect, vowing that the government "would try and annihilate" me. The third and current prime minister, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, said in 2006 that I was a liar and added for good measure that "he's a cheat, he's deceitful, he's confrontational, it's a destructive form of politics."

The condemnations were not just in word. I was sued for defamation by the three prime ministers and made bankrupt (for which I recently managed to annul after paying off a reduced amount of the damages), imprisoned and fined on more than a dozen occasions, and banned from running for office for nearly 15 years.

I am not the only one so targeted by the government. Many before me have suffered greater abject fate, some imprisoned without trial for decades, all branded societal menace by the state media.

If all this sounds archaic, that's because it is. PAP is clinging to a past that has long since finished.

When the party came to power in 1959, it, with considerable help from the country's British overlords, locked up its political opponents, including journalists whom it deemed unhelpful to its agenda.

Through the decades, the party's grip on the media tightened, resulting in the present situation where every Singaporean TV channel, every radio station and every newspaper is owned and run by the state. The World Press Freedom Index 2014 ranks Singapore 150th out of 180 countries. Even Myanmar does better at 145th.

The control of the media and the heavily financed propaganda has held Singaporeans in utter thrall, enabling the PAP to rule uninterrupted for more than half-a-century. Even today, albeit with less of a swagger due to push-back from the online community, the party continues to dictate to Singaporeans what they should read, watch and hear.

The state-controlled media shield the ruling class from being responsive to the needs and aspirations of the common people. They have put reason and intellectualism to sleep and, as a result, stymied development.

Such kind of politics cannot continue, not if Singapore is going to graduate into the next phase of development. The ruling party must stop attempting to conquer people and, instead, move to contest policies. It must end the political solipsism from which the PAP arrogates unto itself sole ideological legitimacy and turn to a contemporary pluralism where differences in opinion are debated, indeed celebrated.

If the country is going to survive the next phase of technological advancement in an increasingly competitive global environment, politics in Singapore must evolve in tandem. Starting with the media.

Singaporeans have a lot to offer to the world. We built this island-nation to what it is today and we can build an even better country for tomorrow. The only thing that is holding us back is the anachronistic political system and the received opinion among the public that democracy threatens progress.

To this end, Singapore must free the media. The government must let the people go.

Chee Soon Juan is Secretary-General of the Singapore Democratic Party

Follow CHEE Soon Juan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CheeSoonJuan

Ah Juan better not get into a debate with Kee Chiu the same way he argued with Mathias Yao many years ago. It would be funny to see Ah Juan faint at the sight of losing the elections by a large margin yet again.

Ah Juan has a PhD, so he must be right. Kee Chiu got fought in any erection before or not?

Who gives a shit?

This guy write until so xialan,the problem is not he hasnt been heard by sinkies the problem is he has.so scary.what a low class beng.seriously the whole article smacks of defamation and attack of character.if he truly been sued so many times and fired from university and missapporpriated funds and spying why is he still allowed to run in SG politics?we have seen pap politicians go for far less than that.at the end of the day these are mere claims and PAP can't back their shit up that's why hes still here.

ILovePAP said:

If Kee Chiu & Ah Juan have a Open Televised Debate, Will Win?



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Kee Chiu will end up raising both his hands and surrender. Dr Chee is the BEST! I m sure many now has regretted calling him a "Ah Siao".

Not that I want to criticize CSJ but I think by agreeing to let CSJ discharge from bankruptcy, PAP had in actual fact release a time bomb in the opposition camp. . . Suppose PAP brings this issue up during election or CSJ did something silly again and PAP wants WP to make a stance on the matter, either they agree with CSJ behavior or condemn him, it will put WP in a fix. Agreeing with CSJ means letting CSJ drag WP down and piss off middleground. Condemn CSJ will cause some lost votes in the opposition base voters.

I think it better for CSJ to stay away from election. His presence isn't helpful to oppositions.

3_M said:

Not that I want to criticize CSJ but I think by agreeing to let CSJ discharge from bankruptcy, PAP had in actual fact release a time bomb in the opposition camp. . . Suppose PAP brings this issue up during election or CSJ did something silly again and PAP wants WP to make a stance on the matter, either they agree with CSJ behavior or condemn him, it will put WP in a fix. Agreeing with CSJ means letting CSJ drag WP down and piss off middleground. Condemn CSJ will cause some lost votes in the opposition base voters.

I think it better for CSJ to stay away from election. His presence isn't helpful to oppositions.

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I don't agree. Sinkies are now ready for Dr Chee. He has been warning them about the PAPpies in the past but none of them listened to him.

frenchbriefs said:

This guy write until so xialan,the problem is not he hasnt been heard by sinkies the problem is he has.so scary.what a low class beng.seriously the whole article smacks of defamation and attack of character.if he truly been sued so many times and fired from university and missapporpriated funds and spying why is he still allowed to run in SG politics?we have seen pap politicians go for far less than that.at the end of the day these are mere claims and PAP can't back their shit up that's why hes still here.

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he is telling the editor how to do his job?
in teh greater schem of things, who teh FOOk does he think he is? big fish in a very mall FOOking pond

3_M said:

Not that I want to criticize CSJ but I think by agreeing to let CSJ discharge from bankruptcy, PAP had in actual fact release a time bomb in the opposition camp. . . Suppose PAP brings this issue up during election or CSJ did something silly again and PAP wants WP to make a stance on the matter, either they agree with CSJ behavior or condemn him, it will put WP in a fix. Agreeing with CSJ means letting CSJ drag WP down and piss off middleground. Condemn CSJ will cause some lost votes in the opposition base voters.

I think it better for CSJ to stay away from election. His presence isn't helpful to oppositions.

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You're an idiot. Sud totally ban you from participating in this forum. You making ZERO sense at all. Have you went to check your brains recently? You sud, for it may have shrunk to the size of a walnut.

3_M said:

Not that I want to criticize CSJ but I think by agreeing to let CSJ discharge from bankruptcy, PAP had in actual fact release a time bomb in the opposition camp. . . Suppose PAP brings this issue up during election or CSJ did something silly again and PAP wants WP to make a stance on the matter, either they agree with CSJ behavior or condemn him, it will put WP in a fix. Agreeing with CSJ means letting CSJ drag WP down and piss off middleground. Condemn CSJ will cause some lost votes in the opposition base voters.

I think it better for CSJ to stay away from election. His presence isn't helpful to oppositions.

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Exactly why PAP wants him to stand for elections. CSJ already blundered in the Punggol-East GE, when he initially wanted to take part in the by-election. That dude is so desperate for SDP to win a seat that he would do something stupid to achieve his aim. Luckily I think John Tan cockslapped him and he managed to wake up his idea early enough.

As Kee Chiu said, Cheebye here stood for erections three times, and all three times failed to erect firmly. He even ended up with a limp cock once. 20% votes niah!

CSJ should engage erection2011 to be his election agent, maybe get the hope to be erected in 2016.

Dr Chee has stood for elections thrice – and lost badly all three times, once receiving just 20 per cent of the vote.

=> Kee Chiu is that SGs voted for it! Which cannot be further from the truth. So to the 60%, continue being daft if you will!

Who does CCS think he is that he can decide who deserves to be reported and who doesn't?

And who said anything about being a "weighty political figure". Huffington is known for giving underdogs a voice. PAP thinks only certain elite people deserve a channel.

But kee chiu is worse he got zero vote.
Hahahaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I believe Kee Chiu will gain a lot of credibility if he were to challenge CSJ to a live debate.

bakkuttay said:

But kee chiu is worse he got zero vote.
Hahahaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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The thing I find most contradicting about this episode was ccs wrote to huffington post suggesting that they shouldn't give csj too much 'undeserved attention'. But without pap blowing up the matter, I can reasonably sure that 99.99% of sinkie wouldn't know what csj did. The one who gave csj the most attention was none other than PAP.

In the grand scheme of things, what csj wrote becomes secondary. Pap wants Public attention to focus on how is csj used foreign media to 'smear the country' and csj gave PAP the chance to smear him.