-
IP addresses are NOT logged in this forum so there's no point asking. Please note that this forum is full of homophobes, racists, lunatics, schizophrenics & absolute nut jobs with a smattering of geniuses, Chinese chauvinists, Moderate Muslims and last but not least a couple of "know-it-alls" constantly sprouting their dubious wisdom. If you believe that content generated by unsavory characters might cause you offense PLEASE LEAVE NOW! Sammyboy Admin and Staff are not responsible for your hurt feelings should you choose to read any of the content here. The OTHER forum is HERE so please stop asking.
Tharman to fill up Singapore President application form
- Thread starter ChinaCommunistSG
- Start date
His assumption is that :
If PAP becomes the govt,it is a legitimate govt.
If Opposition becomes the govt,it is a rogue govt.
He like sashimi or tempura or miso soup ?
Will Hum Kah Chan inadvertably address him as Mr President in ParLeement as he did with that minah ?The botak giviing interviews like he is already the president .So vain.
Last edited:
The word "logic" is not inside Piss And Poop's dictionary.
latest from KJ 's blog
https://kenjeyaretnam.com/2023/06/09/why-tharman-is-not-fit-to-be-president/
/
I was greeted this morning, by the carefully choreographed news that Tharman will be resigning from his Ministerial post and from the PAP in order to run for President. This was a mild surprise as I had expected LHL to foist his wife on Singaporeans and that this is why she had resigned as CEO of Temasek to head up its charitable arm. (Now I am really concerned about why she stepped sideways but that’s for another day) I guess pains will be taken to ensure that Tharman is the only candidate and he will be elected unopposed. The PM has carefully tightened the criteria to exclude everyone who has not been a PAP Minister or run a sovereign wealth fund or been a Supreme Court judge or civil servant appointed by him. So it looks like Tharman will be the third Indian President out of the last four.
The PAP will be hoping that Tharman’s general popularity will rub off on them in the impending General Election. To many he represents the acceptable face of the PAP and a success story of assimilation and integration of ethnic minorities.
I know or knew Tharman personally. He was doing an M.Phil, a vanity degree at Cambridge when I was an undergraduate and during his time in the UK he and his Japanese Singaporean wife were friends with exiles such as Tan Wah Piow and Ho Juan Thai (at whose house i saw Jane Ittogi, Tharman’s wife, though she was careful not to introduce herself to my father and me.)
He has demonstrated clearly to me that he will always choose money and career prospects over doing the right thing and that he is not a brave man. I considered him a good acquaintance at Cambridge and indeed we used to regularly meet for coffee after lectures where we discussed economics and he appeared to be quite left wing and to support Marxist economic theory.
However when I tried to meet up with him in Singapore after graduation he was suddenly afraid to be seen with me even for a coffee. He’d started working at MAS by that time and was clearly afraid that continuing any contact with the son of the Opposition leader could damage his career prospects. Much in the manner that his wife avoided us at HJT’s house. He also didn’t continue his friendships with the exiles in the UK once back in Singapore.
Another conclusion could be that he was actually already spying for the PAP in the UK and this is why he kept close to the dissidents in one group and to me at Cambridge. From his behaviour, I don’t see how he can represent all Singaporeans or do what is right when he was scared to even have a coffee. I wasn’t in politics at that time. This is a man who is too susceptible to pressure and the role of EP is supposed be above politics.
Suffice to say I don’t see him as a man imbued with a great deal of moral integrity. But this is not just a personal view. There is also the matter of his criminal conviction for a breach under the Official Secrets Act. Whilst Director of the Economics Department he allowed journalists at a meeting to see advance figures for GDP growth which were written on a document that he had with him. The meeting was with private sector journalists and one of his junior colleagues. He was tried and acquitted of the original charge of “communication” of the figures but the court introduced a lesser charge of negligence. He also contested that but the court nonetheless convicted him and the other accused. Consider that for a moment. The role of EP being to guard state assets may go to a man who when in a senior civil service position was convicted of negligence in revealing our data. Or we can just hope that this works in our favour and that Tharman as EP, writes down the amount of the reserves and leaves that piece of paper in the view of foreign journalists. As a result of the conviction Tharman, the Director of the Economics Department of MAS was somehow fined less than the journalists who viewed his figures. For the conviction of negligence he was fined $1,500 which was just below the limit to disqualify him from standing as an MP. His co-accused were all fined $2,000. Surprise surprise, a few years later Tharman resigned from MAS to stand as an MP in Jurong GRC.
Tharman’s lenient treatment stands in stark contrast with that meted out to JBJ who was barred from standing by the Presidential Elections Committee in 1993 which simply said he was not of sufficient moral character despite the Privy Council having told the Government that it needed to reverse JBJ’s false conviction for a non-existent offence and that JBJ had suffered a grievous miscarriage of justice.
Changes to eligibility based on skin colour were introduced to keep Tan Cheng Bock out of the race yet as I said Tharman will be the third Indian EP in a row.
More recently Lee Hsien Yang was advised that he was unlikely to meet the criteria to run for the Elected Presidency given a court finding in the Oxley Road saga. It is therefore quite astonishing that Tharman, convicted by a court, will face no such impediment.
Sadly I fear that Singaporeans no longer appreciate the basic pillars needed for democracy such as checks and balances. If they even believe that democracy is a desirable form of government. A key reason for me, that Tharman should be disqualified from running for President is that he is a former Finance Minister and thus played a key role in presenting fraudulent accounts at every Budget. I have written extensively about the tricks the Government employs to hide money and to mischaracterize hypothetical future spending as current. In 2012 I wrote a letter to the head of the IMF pointing out that Singapore’s budgetary framework did not follow IMF best practice. Since leaving the role of Finance Minister Tharman has continued in the roles of Chairman of MAS and in 2019 was appointed Deputy Chairman of GIC (LHL is the Chairman) and head of its Investment Committee. It is a patently ludicrous conflict of interest to have someone who was in charge of the management our reserves to move to a position where they are in charge of checking on the past management of those reserves, just as you would not have an investment manager allowed to audit their own investment fund. As we call it : Ownself Check Ownself.
I said earlier that the EP has to be above politics. I wrote an open letter to our current President asking for an Independent Commission of Inquiry into the SLA’s management of the Ridout Road properties and their tenants the Ministers. Clearly the Government cannot run their own inquiry into their own Ministers. She has not replied but also notably silent is Tharman himself even on the moral issues. I am not surprised given my knowledge of Tharman’s character and Tharman himself has also given the Press a very clear account of how he views the role of EP. According to his interview on CNA he would not even see himself as a co-driver but as a back-up driver defending the PAP government from the rear. Say goodbye to any checks and balances with this president. Interestingly Tharman’s humble “just part of the team” sports analogy doesn’t hold up with his love of tennis. He played singles tennis regularly with Tan Wah Piow and I have never heard that he stood in the back of the court allowing himself to be pelted with balls.
For Tharman to be Elected President is just another example of the PAP’s flagrant disregard of any of the normal rules of checks and balances that apply in other countries. It is on a par wh the PM condoning or approving the appointment of his wife. At one point there was a kind of movement to forward Tharman as a candidate for Prime Minister. In response LHL and Heng Swee Kiat announced that Singapore’s government is a racist entity that determines a person’s value by their skin colour. I imagine the Presidency was offered up as a consolation prize to Tharman, for not making a fuss at the time. Although with his card marked by the earlier conviction he hasn’t really ever been in position to express an independent thought. Indeed the EP from the time when the first President was not able to find out the size of our reserves has always just been a Wayang used to demonstrate to the outside world that our government is not authoritarian and presiding over a virtual one party state.
/
https://kenjeyaretnam.com/2023/06/09/why-tharman-is-not-fit-to-be-president/
/
Just a day after Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam announced his resignation from the People’s Action Party (PAP) and his intention to run for the presidency, Kenneth Jeyaretnam, Secretary General of the Reform Party, expressed doubts regarding Mr Tharman’s eligibility as a presidential candidate in a blog post published on Friday (9 June).
In his blog post, Mr Jeyaretnam scrutinised Mr Tharman’s political history and personal character, raising questions over whether Mr Tharman, who had served in key positions in the PAP government, including as Finance Minister, would be an appropriate choice for the role of President, which is seen as a non-partisan role above politics.
In his blog post, Mr Jeyaretnam went into extensive detail about his past interactions with Mr Tharman when they were both studying in the UK.
He claimed that Mr Tharman distanced himself from political dissidents once he returned to Singapore, even avoiding a coffee meeting with Mr Jeyaretnam, fearing it might jeopardise his career prospects.
He also raised the matter of Mr Tharman’s previous conviction.
Mr Jeyaretnam pointed out that Mr Tharman, who was then serving as the Director of the Economics Department of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), was fined $1,500 for a charge of negligence under the Official Secrets Act in 1992. This was curiously less than the fines given to his co-accused journalists who had seen his figures.
Interestingly, this amount was just below the threshold that would have disqualified him from becoming a Member of Parliament (MP). Notably, a few years following this incident, Mr Tharman resigned from his position at the MAS to stand as an MP in Jurong GRC.
Mr Jeyaretnam contrasts Mr Tharman’s past with the treatment of his own father, J.B. Jeyaretnam, who was prevented from running for the presidency in the first Presidential Election by the Presidential Elections Committee due to allegations of moral character issues.
In response to JBJ’s disqualification, the late Ong Teng Cheong said in an interview, “He was not allowed to run because he did not meet the stringent criteria. Maybe it’s too stringent,” Mr Ong commented.
He wrote: “The role of EP [Elected President] being to guard state assets may go to a man who when in a senior civil service position was convicted of negligence in revealing our data.”
Moreover, Mr Jeyaretnam criticised the potential conflict of interest in Mr Tharman’s move from Finance Minister to a presidential candidate, saying that the latter role, which is expected to check the management of state reserves, should not be filled by someone who was in charge of those reserves.
Mr Jeyaretnam expressed concern over a perceived decline in Singaporeans’ appreciation for democratic principles, particularly checks and balances, and voiced opposition to Mr Tharman’s candidacy.
He suggested that as a former Finance Minister, Mr Tharman was instrumental in presenting what Jeyaretnam considers to be misleading budget accounts. He further criticized Mr Tharman’s subsequent roles as Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Deputy Chairman of GIC, saying it represents a “ludicrous conflict of interest” for him to now potentially hold a role tasked with auditing the management of the state’s reserves.
He finished with a stinging remark, describing the situation as “Ownself Check Ownself”.
Mr Jeyaretnam further commented on Mr Tharman’s apparent lack of intervention in recent controversies, like the Ridout Road properties issue, suggesting Mr Tharman’s character would not offer the rigorous checks and balances necessary in the role of the President.
He noted Mr Tharman’s stance on the Elected President’s role, which, according to Tharman’s interview on CNA, he views as a “back-up driver” supporting the government rather than a co-driver providing checks and balances.
Mr Jeyaretnam criticised this, suggesting that Tharman’s tennis-playing analogy of being “just part of the team” doesn’t align with his apparent willingness to back the government without critique.
Mr Jeyaretnam criticised the potential of Tharman becoming the Elected President, viewing it as another instance of the People’s Action Party (PAP) disregarding conventional checks and balances. He equated it to the controversy of the Prime Minister’s wife’s appointment.
Recalling a past push for Mr Tharman as a successor to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, which was followed by a controversial response from PM Lee and Mr Heng Swee Keat implying a racial bias in government positions, Mr Jeyaretnam speculated that the Presidency may have been presented to Mr Tharman as a consolation for not protesting during that period.
“Although with his card marked by the earlier conviction he hasn’t really ever been in position to express an independent thought. Indeed the EP from the time when the first President was not able to find out the size of our reserves has always just been a Wayang used to demonstrate to the outside world that our government is not authoritarian and presiding over a virtual one party state.” wrote Mr Jeyaretnam.
Mr Jeyaretnam’s criticisms paint a complex picture of the challenges and scrutiny Mr Tharman will likely face as he moves forward with his presidential campaign.
It remains to be seen how these allegations will impact public perception and Mr Tharman’s future political trajectory just as it is with Mr Jeyaretnam’s posts about the Ridout estates of Minister K Shanmugam and Vivian Balakrishnan.
https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/20...thers-rejection-and-tharmans-past-conviction/
Last edited:
Goh Meng Seng 's Special Edition :
You're really stupid to believe that every elected government has the interest of its people. Vast majority of elected governments openly take low public salaries but plunder their countries through corruption.
If liddat say then what is stopping an elected rogue President to plunder their countries reserves?
Must then elect an executive senior President to control the decision of the elected President
Last edited:
His assumption is that :
If PAP becomes the govt,it is a honest govt.
If Opposition becomes the govt,it is a rogue govt.
In most countries, absolutely nothing. And Presidents like Mugabe and Marcos have plundered their own countries.
In Singapore, the President plays a goal keeper role, not an executive role.
But this isnt a Reserved election. TCB can run
Goh meng seng live :
Lim Tean was live
Similar threads
