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Serious Great analysis of the Lee saga.

Devil Within

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
20170706【ENG】Tears of Lee Hsien Loong and the Ministerial Statement【Big Beacon】
[video=youtube;myJd9FFkrk8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myJd9FFkrk8#t=22.352969[/video]
 

Devil Within

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
20170707 【ENG】Lee Hsien Yang's 7 page reply reveals the biggest mystery of them all【Big Beacon】
[video=youtube;YArK8uHpE98]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YArK8uHpE98[/video]
 

virus

Alfrescian
Loyal
[video=youtube;tZuUOodQT9k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZuUOodQT9k[/video]
 

Wunderfool

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
Agreed with him that the Parliamentary debate on the Oxley 38 had raised more questions than answers. The recourse for this can only be two.

One; to set up an independent committee or a Committee of Inquiry to look into the allegations made by LHY and LWL on the abuse of powers by LHL to further his personal agenda on this Oxley saga.

Or two; to have the matter resolved privately among the three siblings.

It is clear to everyone except perhaps for the lesser minds which one LHL will choose.
 

scroobal

Alfrescian
Loyal
Any reasonably minded person would know such serious allegations requires independent investigation and an inquiry from the word go. An innocent person facing such allegation would want to clear his or her name.

Look at the various headlines from the local press after the parliament sessions.

The PM and members of the secret committee failed to sue to clear their names using the sibling excuse. Evasive?

Nothing has changed. LTK's comment about the pants though comedic was profound and seriously damaging. And note there was no comeback even by his minders in the press.

On a less important note, citing LTK 6 times and then Png hoping for some sort of endorsement turned out to be poor strategy and it backfired spectacularly. I suppose they were hoping a repeat of the Mas Selamat / WKS gaffe by LTK.

The only thing this incident highlighted was the number of blind and blinkered sycophants that we have.

Agreed with him that the Parliamentary debate on the Oxley 38 had raised more questions than answers. The recourse for this can only be two.

One; to set up an independent committee or a Committee of Inquiry to look into the allegations made by LHY and LWL on the abuse of powers by LHL to further his personal agenda on this Oxley saga.

Or two; to have the matter resolved privately among the three siblings.

It is clear to everyone except perhaps for the lesser minds which one LHL will choose.
 

tanwahtiu

Alfrescian
Loyal
This ugly face is marked entry to Singapore.

Disrespect ah tau in sinkieland is trailed.

If he with 5 or more than 5 people gather together he can be arrested.


20170706【ENG】Tears of Lee Hsien Loong and the Ministerial Statement【Big Beacon】
[video=youtube;myJd9FFkrk8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myJd9FFkrk8#t=22.352969[/video]
 

virus

Alfrescian
Loyal
father of PM cannot trust him to be executor of his own estate, how to trust him with ur CPF?

.
 

Bonut

Alfrescian
Loyal
father of PM cannot trust him to be executor of his own estate, how to trust him with ur CPF?

.

KKN, this line should have been picked up by LTK during the Parliamentary session :

"Even your father - and I emphasize, is your father, as my colleague has clarified, not our father - cannot trust you with his estate, can Singaporeans trust you with their CPF money ?"
 

gatehousethetinkertailor

Alfrescian
Loyal
Any reasonably minded person would know such serious allegations requires independent investigation and an inquiry from the word go. An innocent person facing such allegation would want to clear his or her name.

Look at the various headlines from the local press after the parliament sessions.

The PM and members of the secret committee failed to sue to clear their names using the sibling excuse. Evasive?

Nothing has changed. LTK's comment about the pants though comedic was profound and seriously damaging. And note there was no comeback even by his minders in the press.

On a less important note, citing LTK 6 times and then Png hoping for some sort of endorsement turned out to be poor strategy and it backfired spectacularly. I suppose they were hoping a repeat of the Mas Selamat / WKS gaffe by LTK.

The only thing this incident highlighted was the number of blind and blinkered sycophants that we have.

Who would you propose to be part of an independent committee? Who can you rely on to meet the lofty standards of impartiality can be relied upon acceptable to both sides? I would really like to know because given what happened post-Little India riots and how the scathing inquisition became somewhat meek drivel by some of the sharpest and respected minds locally the whole concept itself would be ultimately a lamentable exercise.

The ongoing frustration with the EP is another case. One would think that it is genuinely shocking that we are part of a country that has no shame in scrubbing historical facts* in front of our eyes to suit themselves. But you hear instead a citizenry saying that we have a wonderful corruption free system (look our roads so clean) and that people champion grumblers (foreigners appreciate what we have more than we do). This is a government that has no sense of hesitancy to do whatever it takes to suit their agenda at any given point in time - and the general citizenry accept it unquestioningly whatsoever.

We are truly the laughing stock of the democratic world.

https://publichouse.sg/tan-cheng-bock-challenge-fails-govts-edit-spores-history-affirmed/


Tan Cheng Bock challenge fails, Govt’s edit of S’pore’s history affirmed


The High Court on Friday affirmed the Government’s position that the first Elected President of Singapore is indeed Wee Kim Wee, and not Ong Teng Cheong.

The decision by Justice Quentin Loh effectively means that the Government’s edit of Singapore’s political history is now law.

President Ong, who was head of state from 1993 to 1999, was widely recognised as the nation’s first Elected President following the introduction of the scheme in 1991.

He had contested in the first such elections in 1993, winning with a majority vote of 58.69 per cent.

President Ong succeeded President Wee Kim Wee who was a ceremonial president for two 4-year terms from 1985 to 1993.

He had exercised the powers of the Elected President after the scheme came into effect in 1991.

Prior to the introduction of the Elected President scheme, presidents in Singapore were nominated by the Prime Minister and elected by Parliament which, in a one-party legislature, was mostly just a formal endorsement.

Friday’s decision by Justice Loh followed the constitutional challenge by ex-PAP MP, Dr Tan Cheng Bock, a presidential candidate in the 2011 elections.

Parliament had approved changes to the Elected President scheme earlier this year, to allow for a Reserved Election. Such an election will be held if there has not been a president from the minority races for 5 terms, or 30 years.

The Government had decided that the count of 5 terms would start from Singapore’s first Elected President which it deemed to be President Wee.

Dr Tan filed his case with the courts to contest this, arguing that the count should be from President Ong instead, since he was the first president to have gone through an actual open election and endorsed by the people of Singapore.

Dr Tan’s argument was dismissed by the judge.

Justice Loh agreed with the argument by Deputy Attorney General Hri Kumar who, incidentally, is also an ex-PAP MP.

“The recent constitutional amendments reflect a re-emphasis on the president’s unifying role and the conviction that, in order for the president to fulfil that role, that office must reflect the multiracial character of our country,” Justice Loh said.

He added, “From the perspective of ensuring multi-racial representation in the presidency…it makes no difference whether the president was elected by the electorate or by Parliament.”

He said that ultimately it was Parliament that had decided on the reserved elections with the knowledge that it allows Mr Wee’s term to be counted. And Parliament had the authority to do so.

While one is inclined to allow and defer to experts to debate the legal merits of Justice Loh’s decision, what perhaps would interest Singaporeans more is the recognition in the last 17 years since President Ong’s passing, that he is Singapore’s first Elected President.

While the letters of the law matters, so too does the spirit of things.

And in this case, it is self-evident, and patently so, that virtually all Singaporeans had recognised President Ong as the nation’s first Elected President.

As many have pointed out online, including this writer, the Government itself, and former Prime Minister Goh Goh Tong, the government’s own ministers and publications, news reports, history annals, and ordinary citizens have all accepted and recognised President Ong’s status.

What is regrettable, for example, is how former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, in his letter of condolence to President Ong’s eldest son, had described President Ong as “Singapore’s first Elected President”, but now the Government has made a u-turn on this.

PM Goh’s letter was sent from the Istana and in his official capacity as the leader of the nation. As such, PM Goh was expressing the views of the Government of the day, on behalf of all Singaporeans.

Now, 17 years later, the same Government, where PM Goh is now Emeritus Senior Minister, is arguing in the courts that in fact President Ong is not our first Elected President.

One wonders what Mr Goh would say to President Ong’s family now.


The records of things like this are important, for they tell of the spirit of things – in this case, that President Ong was honoured with that distinguished title after having paved the way by offering himself in service of his country and took part in the first Elected President elections.

Despite the court’s decision on Friday, one suspects that in the hearts of many Singaporeans – whatever their race or cultural background – President Ong was always and will always remain our nation’s first Elected President.

It is indeed a sad day for all of us that the Government has chosen to edit this part of our political history. And sadder still that the courts have endorsed such a mistake.
 
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gatehousethetinkertailor

Alfrescian
Loyal
M. ravi

Kenneth Jeyaratnam

Nicole Seah

Michael Barr

Must be acceptable to all three parties. None of these can be deemed to be impartial/objective.

The current state of despair with the kind of parliament we have was arguably already long foreseen as an inevitable trainwreck:


“The Emerging Elite” (20 March 1973)

by Devan Nair (Speech to the Kiwanis Club, Singapore)

A rapidly industrialising society throws up an elite. And in modern Singapore the elite are the professionals of various types, the technocrats, the engineers and the business executives.

This is necessary and inevitable, for without this professional, technocratic and executive elite, and the managerial, professional and technological expertise they possess, the modernisation process would not have been possible. The not-so-elite majority of working Singaporeans have therefore put up with the higher remuneration and the extra perks and privileges enjoyed by this elite group.

But the shortcomings, weaknesses and foibles of the elite have their reactions on the ground. It is good for Singapore, and in the larger interests of the elite themselves, that there should be periodic and public assessments of ground level reactions to them.

I have the privilege of being one of the leaders of organised labour in Singapore, and may claim, without being immodest, an ability to assess, at least as well as anybody else in Singapore, the present reactions, and the likely future reactions of our working population, to the manner in which our elite conduct and comport themselves.

What distresses me is the feeling that, at ground level, the new elite in Singapore appear to be generally regarded, not as the inspiring social leaders they ought to be, but as somewhat odious but necessary evils.

There is a very vital reason why our new elite should take a hard look at themselves, the image they project to the ground, and their social values, or more correctly, what strikes the ground as their lack of social values. For, in the very nature of things, the future political leadership of Singapore is more than likely to come from this group. But in order to rule and to lead effectively, there is a fundamental pre-requisite. And this is the acceptance by the ground of the social bona fides of the aspirants to political and social leadership in the Republic.

The present generation of political leaders have established their bona fides with the ground beyond any possibility of doubt. They earned it the hard way, over two decades of effort and struggle, and close identification with the real interests of the people.

It is important to appreciate, however, that Lee Kuan Yew and Co. belong to a freak generation. In fact, as individuals, they were quite unrepresentative of the great majority of their social class, the members of which were brought up and educated in the colonial era, and whose major preoccupation was to fend for themselves and feather their own nests. Nation-building and a large vision of the future was not in their line of living and being, for they were essentially a colonially fostered class of people. But because the present generation of leaders exceeded their class characteristics and loyalties, and developed a creative vision of a better society, they were able to establish themselves as the modern leaders of Singapore. In more senses than one, this freak generation are the creators of the vibrant and bustling Republic we know today. However, freak generations are never repeated by history. Indeed, it sometimes happens that their work is undone by those who inherit their mantle of leadership.

It is one of the ironies of development that some of the results of the work of the leaders of development are not what they themselves desired or intended. The emphasis that they quite rightly placed on social and financial rewards for skills and expertise, the accent on quality and excellence, have been the driving force of our economic growth. But one unpleasant side-effect has been the creation of a professional and technocratic elite with an enormous appreciation of their own financial value and a singular lack of any larger social consciousness or commitment. The success syndrome has engendered in many of them, not loftier and more worthy social drives, but baser and narrowly personal and selfish appetites.

It does not seem to be sufficiently well understood that the aspirants to political and social leadership in the next generation will not have the advantage of having led the people from subservience to an independent national identity, and from the old to the new. What then, it may be asked, are their chances of earning the same kind of acceptance from the ground which the present generation of leaders enjoy? Very little indeed, to judge by the values and the motives they exhibit as a social group. Individual exceptions to the rule appear to be distressingly few and far between.

Excessively self-centred,
their primary concern seems to be the constant enhancement of their own market value, and the extra perks they can get for themselves. The ground in Singapore has been educated or persuaded to accept the view that in the interests of growth, the full market value of the new elite should be conceded, as it is being conceded all round.

My colleagues and I in the NTUC have done our part to persuade the workers to accept the growing income differentials between them and the burgeoning new elite of Singapore — the professionals, technocrats and management executives. We think our workers are sophisticated enough not to grudge the new elite their extra perks and special privileges but what they do resent is the lack of any tangible signs of general social concern or commitment on the part of the new elite. This raises the possibility that in the long run, any effort at political and social leadership by members of the elite, distinguished as they are, as a social class, more by self-centred concerns than by social awareness, must be seriously undermined. Flamboyant life styles, and vulgar displays of affluence and spending power, do not endear the elite to the ground. They only estrange. And the most impervious barrier that can, in future, divide the rulers from the ruled, the elite from the ground, is the Dollar Curtain.

Thus far, Singapore has managed to escape any acute confrontation between the elite and the not-so-elite in our society, for the following reasons:

Our classless education system, the absence of hereditary privilege, and the free social mobility up the whole hierarchy of educational, professional and industrial skills.

Many a washerwoman’s son is today a professional or an executive. Long may this social mobility remain a strong feature of our society.

But the virtues of social mobility being granted, the fact remains that an elite in any society must be a minority. And the sole social and political justification for an elite, in the long run, is the degree to which they can lead and inspire a whole society to higher levels of achievement. If they fail to do this, and are content merely to serve themselves and feather their own nests, there can be only one end-result — social and political instability in the Singapore of the future.

Succession to the present political leadership there must inevitably be, for the good reason that our present leaders are not immortal. But the question that exercises many minds is whether this succession will be able to command the same respect and acceptance from the ground which the present generation of leaders clearly do.

Lee Kuan Yew and Co. do not have to prove themselves to the ground. A lifetime of effort and solid achievement, in intimate association with the ground, will take care of that.

But we can imagine the aspirants to political leadership in the 80s and the 90s, even if they belong to the present ruling party, having to face some very searching questions at the hustings:

“Yes, we know what the previous generation of leaders did. But what have you done to deserve the same kudos? We know what you have done for yourselves. But what have you done, and what do you propose to do, for us and for Singapore?”

It would be much easier for members of the emerging elite in Singapore to answer such questions if they took their own market value a little less seriously, and concentrated much more on widening and deepening their social values and commitments. This is the only way to bridge the dollar gap between them and the ground they hope one day to lead.

What is called for is less of the cocktail circuit and more of the community circuit. The greater the identification and active involvement with our community development programmes, our community centres, our labour and co-operative institutions, and with the improvement and upgrading of the skills of our workers, the easier will it be for the new elite to establish itself with the ground as an accepted and respected group. And all this must be done sincerely. For nothing smells more rankly to ground level noses than insincerity and hypocrisy at the top.

After all, it requires only a little reflection on the part of our emerging elite to help them restrain their own selfish concerns. The simple truth is that they are where they are today, with their enhanced market value and special perks, because of the discipline and wage restraint exercised by the working population, without which all the development we see around us would not have taken place. And where would your market value be if the market itself were not kept healthy by the restraint and discipline observed by, and often enforced upon, the non-elitist majority of our working population?

The elitist aspirants to the future leadership of Singapore must be educated to realise that to be accepted as leaders of society, they must be clearly seen to be giving of themselves, their time and their energies, in a whole-hearted way, to the community. Those who choose only to receive, but not to give, will deserve, not the crown of leadership, but the failure of the Singapore effort to create a more just and a more equal society. It will be a failure which will be placed squarely at their doors.

— C.V. Devan Nair, in Not By Wages Alone (Speech: 20 March 1973)

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Papsmearer

Alfrescian (InfP) - Comp
Generous Asset
But you hear instead a citizenry saying that we have a wonderful corruption free system (look our roads so clean) and that people champion grumblers (foreigners appreciate what we have more than we do).

.

when people say that to me, be they locals or foreigners, I tell them that corruption takes many forms. Just because the police man does not ask you for a bribe to look for your stolen car does not mean there is no corruption. In fact, I rather deal with the in your face type of corruption you see in Indonesia, Pinoyland and Malaysia. At least I know what i am paying the bribe for, and I am fairly certain that after paying the bribe, the desired action i want will be taken. In Singapore, the corruption is covert, hidden and u never know the rules of the game. As a result, you cannot plan for it or take action to get to what you want. Take the Brompton Bike case for instance. The asshole putting in the online procurement did so at the last minute, and tailored it in such way that only his buddy and owner of a bike store can bid and win it at an inflated price. In cases like this, others don't even have a fighting chance. I would rather just give a bribe to that asshole and win the contract. In singapore, to do business or get ahead in the civil service, its who you know, who is your godfather, whether you are crassloot leader, connected, etc. How to win in this sort of corrupted system? Give me the old style corruption any day.
 
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