Keep Calm and Carry On Posting

The drama that has unfolded over Singapore’s Media Development Authority’s  decision to license some news websites in Singapore is tragic: On the one hand, we have a government completely bewildered over the reaction towards what they see as a minor update to its regulatory laws. On the other hand, we have freedom-of-the-internet advocates going apoplectic over what it sees as a major policy decision that amounts to a censorship of free-speech and the death-knell of alternative news websites in Singapore.  The two positions, and the reactions, are so far apart and so irreconcilable, that the call for dialogue seems futile.

One reason for the divide is the difference in timeframe from which the two parties view the decision: the Government is looking at the situation now, and its opponents, the possible impact in the future.

The Government’s decision is actually made on very simple logic. 

Current print newspapers at the moment are owned by only two state-owned media groups: SPH and Mediacorp. These old-media newspapers are licensed and regulated. The exact same version on the internet is not. This is a regulatory anomaly given media convergence. Therefore, the regulation was refreshed to cover the online versions. 

Therefore, when some of my blogger friends asked me who I thought was the target of the regulations, the answer is right before their eyes - it is precisely the list of 10 that the MDA has released.

It does not make sense that the Straits Times is regulated but the Straits Times online is not. It does not make sense that TODAY is covered under the Newspapers and Printing Presses Act but TODAY Online is not. It was a regulatory black-hole that did not take into account the invention of the Internet and it needed to be plugged.

Yes, it’s that simple.

The only anomaly was Yahoo which have in recent years assembled a journalistic team that covers Singapore news.

But Yahoo is no independent blogger or internet start-up. It is a multinational, billion dollar media company that hires teams of personnel to deal with Governments in every country they operate in. $50,000 is chump change to Yahoo and it is absurd to think that Yahoo Singapore would shut-up shop because of this bond. It is also naïve to think that Yahoo Singapore is not already ready to work with the Singapore Government and abide by Singapore laws. Make no mistake – Yahoo is not an activist website set up to promote freedom of information but a billion dollar listed Corporation looking to make profits. The regulations in fact puts it on equal standing with SPH and Mediacorp’s online news sites and enables them to operate a fully-fledged, well-financed online newspaper that is not state owned.

The internet advocates are on the other hand not completely unjustified in being concerned, even if some of the reaction borders on hyperbole. ‘Draconian’, ‘Disaster’, ‘Extreme’ and claiming that these regulations will end free-speech on the internet, are surely epithets better reserved for regimes that truly seek to control the internet, like China or North Korea. 

However, it is true that the regulations are drafted so widely that it could foreseeably be used to regulate more than the initial 10 sites in the future. 

These fears are however in my opinion, exaggerated.

Firstly, if a rogue government wants to shut opposition up and censor its alternative views, it does not have to rely on such weak regulatory laws. It already has far harsher laws it can use, such as the Sedition Act and the Internal Security Act. Surely charging someone for sedition, which technically means subversive acts that incite insurrections, is going to strike more fear than asking someone to put up a $50,000 bond? Surely the threat of being interrogated by the Internal Security Department is scarier than being asked to take down objectionable content?

I am thus perplexed when critics argue that the new laws are draconian and drafted to strike fear into Singaporeans.  Are they arguing that it is preferable to rely on the existing laws and charge a website owner with sedition when hate-speech is published, rather than use the new regulations to require him to take it down? That’s quite unbelievable.

Secondly, what some freedom-of-the-press advocates are asking for does not exist. Censorship and regulation of the press is not a choice between two extremes. It is not a choice between complete censorship and no regulation. Every country on this planet regulates their press in some way, either through press complaints departments, independent watchdogs or through press commissions.  Civil and criminal legislation (such as defamation laws and anti-pornography laws)  circumscribe complete freedom to say what we want in every jurisdiction on earth. 

Thus, between the option of complete censorship and complete freedom of the press lies policy options that each State has to decide for itself, not by dogmatic adherence to liberal ideology, and least of all by ‘press-freedom’ rankings compiled by foreigners with no stake in our country. 

Thirdly, even if there are no state regulations on press, the press is hardly free. In the West, the Press is not the independent, morally-upright defender of democratic rights and truth that some would have us believe. Instead, most of the major newspapers and TV stations are owned by media barons whose objectives are to make profit.

I have been seeing the Latin quote Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes (“Who guards the guardians”) quite frequently in the current debate. Some freedom-of-the-press advocates would have us believe that the Press plays this role, and that an independent, free press is the only guard against a rogue government. That is, the American notion of the Fourth Estate.

This is a terrible corruption of democratic values.

The Government in a democracy is elected by the people but who elects the Press? Who elected the media barons who own the press that purport to guard the Government? The question – who guards the guardians – should not be asked about the Government, but instead of the Press. It is the People who guard the Government, and it is the Government who must guard the Press and the unelected, unaccountable corporate interests that own the Press. If Governments are not responsible for regulating the Press than who is? Billionaire media-owners like Mark Zuckerberg? The answer is clear, and getting it the other way round is not only undemocratic, but indeed is a corruption of democracy.

Fourthly, the fear of having our behaviour regulated is exaggerated. Newsflash: our behaviour is already regulated every day by something we call Laws. If people could regulate themselves, human societies would not need laws. I am sure it is nice to believe as some liberals do, that everyone can judge right and wrong for themselves, that good behaviour will crowd-out bad behaviour, and it is politically incorrect to state the opposite. It is however not only politically correct to point out the fact that we already live in societies governed by laws that punish those that are unable to judge right and wrong for themselves, it would be self-delusional to deny it. What is up for discussion is thus not whether the Internet should be regulated, like many aspects of human life in ALL societies already are, but how much regulation there should be.

Finally, the new licensing regime is a massive opportunity for alternative media. One reason for the shock in reading the definitions (e.g. of what constitutes news) in the new licensing regime is that nobody has read the old regulations that regulate print media (the definitions are the same – which is why the Government is also bewildered as to why the fuss). 

The protests against the online regulations are barking up the wrong tree. The problem up until the advent of the Internet has never been the licensing requirements but the licenses themselves. The Government has never issued a license to publish a newspaper other than to the two state-owned media companies, which is why nobody, but the executives of SPH and Mediacorp has ever bothered reading the requirements. (which they probably know by heart)

Now for the first time in history, a non-state owned company, Yahoo has been licensed as a news provider. This is a massive milestone that not only has political implications, but business ones. 

The Government has been forced to recognise that with the Internet, it can no longer choose who to grant the license to, but in fact, has no choice but to license whoever has the ability to write compelling news content that can reach at least 50,000 unique internet users monthly.

This throws up a very interesting and crucial question: if media has converged, and the Government has introduced this licensing regime to treat online news as the same as print news, will it also treat print news as the same as online news? Can Yahoo now, a licensed online news provider, print a paper-edition of its online news (if it wanted to) and finally challenge the duopoly of SPH and Mediacorp? If it cannot, then the Government will be called-out on its decision to treat online and print news as the same. If it can, it will be a seismic development that can finally destroy the monopoly the Straits Times has over print news.

If I had a leading alternative news website that reaches more than 50,000 readers, instead of blacking out my website and going to Hong Lim to protest, I would be right now leveraging off the brand recognition and raising finance to start the Singapore equivalent of Huffington Post. Once I finance such a website, I would be looking forward to hiring a team of full-time professionals to launch an online newspaper instead of relying on volunteers who quit every few months. And if I had such a website, I would be looking forward to fundamentally disrupt the news industry in Singapore by first creating a successful online news website, and then launching a print one based on the same content (since the Government says it is the same).

But I don’t have such a website. Which is why I can only follow the same advice that I would give individual bloggers and netizens who do NOT qualify for such a license:

Keep Calm and Carry On Posting

This article was written for Yahoo Singapore 6 June 2013

More thoughts on Model Price/Wage Fixing - A further reply to the Competition Commission

The Competition Commission responded to an interview with me about the price-fixing decision against the Association of Modelling Professionals of Singapore.

The interview is here:

http://news.asiaone.com/print/News/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20130506-420591.html

The ST Forum response is here:

http://www.straitstimes.com/premium/forum-letters/story/modelling-agencies-price-fixing-had-adverse-effect-market-20130509

I have always found public battle of words on the pages of Forum pages unseemly and have chosen not to write in a reply.

I will blog a reply here insteaad.

I have said what I wanted to say in the interview - that the goals of the association was to raise wages, which we succeeded in. It was a pity that it was interpreted as price-fixing.

Two further points in response to CCS's letter.

First, on commission. CCS stated that the higher wages also increased our commission. This is a true but trite fact. Agency commissions are a fixed percentage that did not change; and given the 75-25 split to the model, the bulk of the wage increases went to the models.

More importantly, if the agencies really wanted to price-fix, they would have colluded to fix commissions, not wages. In fact, US agencies colluded to fix commissions and were taken to court in a class-action suit and also investigated by the Anti-Trust authorities there. This was something the Singaporean agencies did not do.

Secondly, CCS said that there was an "appreciable adverse effect on the market."

The question is: who makes up the market? Who was adversely affected?

The answer will surprise readers.

The modelling association was found guilty specifically of fixing 'prices' (wages to models) for fashion shows and fashion shoots.

The major client of fashion shoots are: SPH and Mediacorp.  The government-linked, Temasek-owned media duopoly. 

In a duopoly, the wage/price setting power lies with them, not the supplier of labour - in this case, models.

For years, the models have been paid a pittance until the association bargained for higher wages.

So who was adversely affected by the price/wage fixing? Answer: the 2 big magazine companies who can very well afford to pay more per hour to these young people.

Who are the biggest clients of fashion shows?

The two biggest employers of show models were the Singapore Fashion Week and the Singapore Fashion Festival.

Who are behind these two national events?

The Singapore Fashion Festival is backed by the Singapore Tourism Board, and the Singapore Fashion Week by IE Singapore.

Yes the Government.

So who was adversely affected by the rise in fashion show wages (prices) - Government Agencies.

Therefore in summary, the biggest 'clients' that were 'adversely affected' by our 'price-fixing' (which increased the wages of poor young people) was not some poor man on the street, but government owned media monopolies and government agencies themselves.

Enough said.

The PAP and Unfair Elections: Is the ruling party guilty as charged?

On the morning after the Malaysian General Elections, I posted a status update on my Facebook Page saying “I hope people who say the PAP is unfair now have a better reference point. Today you know what unfair is”. This elicited a flurry of rebuttals, many indignant that I was trying to excuse the PAP just because the Malaysian elections are allegedly more unfair; some used all sorts of inappropriate analogies of crime to basically argue that one greater crime should not absolve a lesser one. 

This would be true if I thought the PAP was unfair or even worse, complicit in fraudulent electoral behaviour.

I believe no such thing.

My point was the contrary - if the allegations of electoral fraud in Malaysia were true, then we have a clear example of what political unfairness is, because in my opinion, much of the allegations of electoral fraud or unfairness towards the PAP are completely unjustified.

One shining light amidst all the usual nasty comments, personal attacks and fake FB accounts were rebuttals from a group of young undergraduates, in particular a Mr. Lim Jialiang who was upset enough to post a full, well-written FB rebuttal note that can be found here: 

https://www.facebook.com/lim.jialiang/posts/10151709560456844

I am extremely happy that we have in our youth today people who have a strong sense of idealism and fairness. In fact, having lived in several countries, I think that our young people have some of the strongest notions of equity and fair play in the world, which ironically may put them at a disadvantage in the wider world where such high standards are seldom adhered to. But I digress.

The point is that most of the sense of unfairness is to me completely misplaced.

Take GRCs for example. This is one bugbear that I have never ever understood. One can question the motives behind the GRCs – whether it is to ensure minority representation as the PAP says, or to introduce weaker MPs on the coattails of Ministers as their opponents allege. But regardless, the rule to contesting a GRC remains that one has to put together a team of 3 to 6 candidates, including an ethnic minority person.

I do not see for the life of me how this rule could possibly be unfair to the opposition, unless one further assumes that the opposition is too weak to put a good team together to compete with the PAP.

There is absolute nothing to stop the opposition from forming a team of good candidates and take down a GRC, including heavyweight ministers, as the Workers Party has shown in 2011 in Aljunied GRC.

More, it is my opinion that the experience of 2011 has shown the PAP that running as a team means you either win as a team or lose as a team, and you could win 5 seats in one fell swoop but also lose everything. Further, even if some argue that heavyweight ministers make it harder to compete (which may not be a bad thing as in order to take them down, the Opposition team also needs to be stellar), I believe that a chain is as strong as its weakest link.

It is my contention that if the weakest member of the GRC team is sub-par, the whole team should be voted out, even if the anchor minister is none other than the Prime Minister. If the anchor Minister makes a bad judgement in choosing his teammates, and the opposition team is stronger, then the electorate should vote for the latter, regardless if the PAP team is helmed by an important Cabinet Minister.

Absolutely nothing unfair about that.

People should really stop complaining about GRCs being unfair, because there is nothing inherently unfair about requiring each party to field a team of 5 or 6 strong candidates to compete together – the same rule applies to both the PAP and the opposition. In fact, Aljunied 2011 has taught the PAP enough of a lesson that I predict there will be smaller GRCs in 2016, purely because the PAP does not want to risk losing more Ministers to an opposition A-team.

Electoral deposits are widely accepted in many established democracies. What varies is the amount and the percentage of votes needed to take the deposits back. On the most basic level, this rule is fair given that it equally applies to the PAP as well as the Opposition – we do not have the PAP paying a lower tariff or needing a lower vote count to get their deposit back. Therefore, one can only argue that it is unfair if we make two further suppositions: firstly, that the Opposition is too poorly funded to corral the requisite deposits. Second, the Opposition should somehow play with a handicap such that they should be held to LOWER standards than the PAP, such that their vote-count hurdle should be lower than the PAPs.

I find such arguments to be absolutely insulting to the current major Oppositions parties in Singapore. Firstly, what I consider to be the two major Opposition parties, the SDP and the WP have an established enough membership base to be well-funded enough to raise the deposits required. More importantly, these deposits are returned once the candidate(s) receive above 12.5%, a level that is quite in line with other democracies such as the UK. For a major opposition party to lose its deposit, whatever the amount, is considered an embarrassment in most countries, and something I do not see happening to the SDP and especially the WP in 2016.

The next three most common complaints are slightly more controversial.

Firstly, let’s look at the tying of upgrading and estate improvements to election results.

Such tactics are commonly known as pork-barrel politics. Wikipedia gives this definition: “Pork barrel is the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to bring money to a representative's district.”

In the context of the US, this would mean for example, a Republican federal government giving priority of federal funding to Republican states; in the context of the UK, this would mean, for example, a Labour Government giving priority of government funds to Labour town councils.

Why I think it is controversial is because there is no reason to think that just because everybody is doing it, it is okay.

However it is my contention that it is precisely democracies that practice pork barrel politics as politicians have to win votes (if you are a one party dictatorship you don’t), and it is reasonable to expect them to keep promises to the people who have supported them, rather than those who did not. Is it not a bit strange if, after a General Election, the winning party decides to spend money first on the constituencies who did NOT vote for them rather than on the people who agreed with their vision and voted for it? If they did this, what exactly is the incentive for its supporters to vote them in the next election? If I voted for you, because I agree with your vision, but you put me at the bottom of your priority list and instead decide to reward those who rejected you, why should I vote for you the next time?

The tying of upgrading and estate improvement is thus not only commonly practised in many developed democracies, it is fair – you make promises, and you keep them to people who support you. The PAP in this instance in my opinion is not guilty of unfairness, but rather of being overly vindictive. Pork-barrels only work for so long; the people who are denied the ‘pork’ after a while may grow so resentful that they may decide to reject you even if they go ‘hungry’. This I feel is what happened in Hougang and the resentment against the PAP there is so entrenched after years of being victim of petty and vindictive politics, they will vote against the PAP even if they ran against Mickey Mouse.

The final most common complaints are related: Gerrymandering and the lack of an independent election commission. Again, the same points apply as pork-barrel politics: Gerrymandering is common in systems where parliamentary seats are allocated by geographical areas, and Singapore is not the only developed country without an independent electoral commission. 

Gerrymandering was arguably invented in America when Governor Elbridge Gerry re-districted Massachusetts in 1812 to benefit his own Democratic Party. It is still a practise common in the US and the article on Gerrymandering on Wikipedia gives several good examples of Gerrymandered districts in the US still existent today.  

The most blatant examples of Gerrymandering in Singapore have been in my opinion firstly the re-drawing of Cheng San and Eunos GRCs, and the disproportionate sizes of Tanjong Pagar GRC (helmed by Lee Kuan Yew) and Ang Mo Kio GRC (helmed by Lee Hsien Loong). Arguably, if Eunos and Cheng San did not have their boundaries re-drawn, Aljunied (the successor GRC to these two) may have fallen faster. 

Yet, the PAP so far has resisted re-drawing the districts of constituencies they have lost, in particular Potong Pasir and Hougang. 

Gerrymandering may be however one of those things that can never be fully eradicated in any country that allocates seats according to geographical regions. This is because any electoral commission tasked to draw up electoral districts can never be fully independent of political interference.

The point is this: even if you remove the electoral commission from the control of the Executive, who appoints the members of the ‘independent’ commission? The answer: Politicians.

In the UK, the electoral commission has become a tragi-comedy with politicians vying to place their own preferred political appointees into the electoral commission. Gerrymandering still occurs but in a different form: bargaining between the political appointees happen behind closed doors.  Basically, you let me Gerrymander this district and I let you Gerrymander that other one. Even if this provides some form of check-and-balance, voters can still legitimately feel cheated as their choices become subjugated to opaque political bargaining.

What is therefore more important than the ‘independence’ of the electoral commission is the transparency of these institutions. No matter if electoral districts are drawn up by politicians or political appointees, they should make clear the reasons for re-districting. Gerrymandering through political appointees is no better than gerrymandering by the Executive. Instead, Singapore should make sure its Electoral Commission give clear reasoning for re-districting and justify these with statistics e.g. change in demographics. If these rules are not clearly implemented now, if the PAP should one day lose power, one should not expect the new ruling party to behave any differently. Better to establish clear rules for transparency now than suffer the same fates as Western democracies that pontificate fairness and democratic values, but subvert the same values with hypocrisy.

Finally, on the matter of law-suits: I think this is a matter of what we want our political campaigning to be like. Personally, I think that if normally, rules of slander and libel prevent us from telling lies about people, then there is no reason that this should not apply during campaigning. Better this than to have a situation like in the US where somehow the law is suspended during political campaigns, and one can take out advertisements on TV blatantly lying about your opponents e.g. the Republicans taking ads to say that Obama was a Muslim and not born in the US. Much as I disagree with the Workers Party ideologically,  I have utmost respect for its candidates, especially Low Thia Kiang, for campaigning with integrity. If you go on stage and call someone corrupt without evidence, then you deserve to be sued, and politics is the better for it.

At the end of the day, it would take a radical to assert that the situation on Singapore is in any way comparable, even on a matter of scale, to the shenanigans that allegedly happened in Malaysia. There is a huge difference between gerrymandering, pork-barrel politics and rules against irresponsible campaign speech (which happens to varying degrees to all advanced democracies), and the stuffing of ballot boxes and phantom voters (which is outright electoral fraud). The electoral system in Singapore is not perfect, but in my opinion, not any more imperfect than in most advanced democracies. There is always room for improvement, but to compare Singapore to despotic regimes that commit outright fraud is not only inappropriate, it is very unfair.

Cheaper, Better, Faster ?

The question that has always bothered me is why people think that Singaporeans are losing jobs to foreigners merely because they are cheaper.

Why would an employer hire a foreigner merely because he is cheaper? If he is cheaper but worse, I wouldn't hire him.

At the very least, he needs to be cheaper but just as good.

If he is cheaper AND better, than it's a no brainer.

If Singaporeans are losing jobs because they are more expensive but not better, then the problem lies not with the Manpower Ministry but with Education.

If our education system is churning our workers that cost more but perform worse (or merely as well as a foreigner), than it has serious problems. It is the Ministry of Education that needs to soul search rather than Manpower.

By tweaking manpower policies we may be attacking the symtoms rather than the causes. Wrong medicine for the wrong disease.

We may be barking up the entirely wrong tree.

HDB Loses 1 Billion Dollars a Year - Why We Should Care

http://www.moneysmart.sg/money-talks/hdb-loses-1-billion-a-year-and-why-you-shouldnt-care/

Been seeing this article doing the rounds on cyberspace and needed to debunk it.

This blogger argues that HDB makes a loss because it buys land from SLA at market rates and it does not matter since it is from one government account to another.

The alternative to buying land from SLA at market rates is NOT buying land at market rates. Some have even argued that land costs should not be included in HDB prices.

This is fine if we are starting to build HDB flats all from new.

The challenge is that there are many existing HDB flat owners, especially from the baby-boomer generation who have benefited tremendously from their HDBs increasing in price. This asset price includes land price which has become increasing valuable as Singapore developed.

If we take away land costs or if HDB buys HDB flats at a discounted rate from SLA, the new HDB flats will cost a lot cheaper than existing HDB flats, whose prices include land cost.

This will also cost existing HDB flat prices to deflate leaving current HDB owners with massively devalued property.

Young people are understandably upset that HDB prices are spiralling upwards.

But those who clamour for massive deflation of HDB prices selfishly forget that this will be at the expense of the older generation who already own HDBs and whose savings and nest eggs are locked in their property, which can be unlocked when needed.

The government needs to balance the needs of people who have yet to buy homes who need them to be affordable, and those who already own homes who do not want to see their assets deflate in value.

People who argue that it shouldn't matter that HDB loses 1 billion a year are extremely short sighted.

If HDB has to lose so much money buying land at market rates to build affordable homes , it means that it is increasingly difficult to balance the needs of the young generation with the older generation.

We shouldn't care? On the contrary - we should be extremely concerned.

A reply to "We are no longer a nation of immigrants"

My friend Ravi Philemon wrote this blog post( http://www.raviphilemon.net/2013/02/no-longer-nation-of-immigrants.html ) presumably in response to my previous post.

I understand much of what he is feeling. New immigrants also have to be diligently assimilated - I think rigorous citizenship classes is a start. Right now, new citizens do not need to undergo intensive history and cultural classes; it is also my belief that they do not have to memorise the pledge nor the national anthem. These are basics. New citizens also have to make an effort to break down barriers - just as our forefathers did. But barriers are two ways - old citizens should also help new ones assimilate.

What I disagree with is the notion that the assimilation of our forefathers was wholly organic. Prior to 1965, various races still stayed in ethnic enclaves - a remnant of British colonial policy. Raffles in 1822 issued an edict that designated zones for different racial groups. As late as 1950, the HDB's predecessor body the Singapore Improvement Trust commissioned a survey which revealed that not only were the racial groups still living in enclaves, even the Chinese community segregated themselves into dialect groups. (Hodder, 1953).

 It was the PAP Government's public housing policy, a deliberate policy to encourage racial mixing that changed all that. The introduction of Mandarin as the common language of the Chinese people (an Northern Han Chinese language alien to most of the South Chinese descendants in Singapore) also helped the Chinese community coalesce into a more homogeneous group.

Therefore, I agree with Mr. Rajaratnam that being a Singaporean is about conviction and choice. Firstly, conviction in the values in the Singapore pledge, values that did not grow organically but was the result of a vision of the modern Singapore state's founding fathers, that all people should live together in a just and equal society, regardless of race, language or religion. And a deliberate choice to pursue national policies to make this happen.

If new immigrants can similarly subscribe to the same convictions and make the same choices, they should be welcomed with open arms.

6.9 Million People and An Emotional Hump

The protests against the White Paper on Population at Hong Lim Park have been making headlines around the world. In the meantime, in between exhortations by Ministers and pro-Establishment commentators to get above the emotional angst and emotive rhetoric, one is witnessing an anger startling not in its intensity, but by the way it cuts across all demographics of society.

The truth is that even at the apex of its political strength, there was always a 25% anti-PAP core that would not vote PAP even if they fielded Mahatma Gandhi. Even during the discontent that caused the PAP to lose Aljunied GRC in 2011, there was also a different 25% who would vote PAP even if they fielded Mickey Mouse. This time it is different – the anger is widespread, even amongst some staunch PAP grassroots leaders. The question is: Is this really just an emotive issue that the PAP can ride out? Or are there genuine reasons for people to be angry?

The truth is that there is plenty to be upset about.

Firstly, on so many levels, one has to question the need to rush the White Paper through Parliament. To begin with, the timing was incomprehensible – what kind of political acumen leads a party to think that it is good idea to further piss off a population after it has suffered a stunning defeat at a by-election?  Even if the White Paper was slated to be debated during that period prior to the resignation of Michael Palmer, it is not good reason, nor good political timing to continue according to schedule as if Punggol had not happened. Any political party has to know that pushing through an unpopular policy requires huge political capital, and the PAP’s political capital is arguably at an all-time low, even if it still retains a vast majority in Parliament.

In addition, it is extremely odd that in the midst of a National Conversation, a policy that will impact the lives of generations of Singaporeans is off the agenda. Surely a more prolonged public discussion of scenarios and alternatives would have had a chance of creating more buy-in? Surely after years of falling TFR, another few months would not have made a difference to any disaster scenario? It seems that after years of political hegemony, the PAP has forgotten that policies have to be sold when people have power at the ballot box. Technocratic fait-accomplis are the luxury of genuine one-party states and contrary to skeptics, as recent elections have shown, Singapore is still a democracy.

Secondly, the fear of overcrowding cannot be dismissed as an emotional hump. Nobody likes to live like sardines packed in a can. The fear of being squeezed into ever smaller spaces is a real one.

What is irrational is the fear of the figure 6.9 million. This figure by itself is completely meaningless, as are the alternative figures thrown out by other people opposing the White Paper.

Whether the population is 3 million, or 5 million, or 6.9 million, the question of whether Singapore will be overcrowded will depend on whether enough infrastructure is built. Will 6.9 million be overcrowded? The honest answer, if we think about it, is that it depends. 6.9 million living in today’s infrastructure will of course mean overcrowding. But IF the Government is able to execute its land use plan THEN perhaps it does not have to be overcrowded.

And that is the crux of the issue. The people should be worried about 6.9 million people not because that number is the sign of the Devil, but when a Government has not been able to adequately handle a population increase from 3 million to 5 million, what faith do the people have that it can do so from 5 to 6.9? 

It is thus imperative for the Government to first solve the current issues that have arisen from the previous population increase – overcrowding, high prices, competition for jobs – and regain the people’s trust. This is because when one is selling a vision for the future, you are asking people to take a leap of faith. Nobody can realistically imagine 6.9 million people living in a futuristic city made possible with advanced city planning techniques. The people have to trust the Government can deliver and in order to gain this trust, it has to show it can solve the current issues. 

There is however one emotive issue that I feel Singaporeans have to get over – the fear of being a minority and the preservation of a Singaporean Core.

I have no idea what that means.

Singaporean is by definition a nationality, not an ethnicity nor a race. 

It makes some sense for the Japanese to fear immigration as they want to preserve their ethnic homogeneity. Recently, when Hong Kong’s leaders made similar remarks that Hong Kong’s ethnic homogeneity of Cantonese people will be threatened by more Mainland Chinese immigration, it made sense too, even if one argues they are all ethnic Chinese.

But Singaporean? What is that?

It is neither race nor ethnicity, neither a language group nor even a religious community. Singapore is Singapore precisely because of its diversity, not because of homogeneity. 

We seem to have forgotten the Singapore Story. It is a story of an island of immigrants forged from many races, many religions, many cultures. It is a story of a nation that welcomed different people who wanted to make a better life to find a new home. It is a story of a country whose descendants of these original people still celebrate various festivals, where Mosque meets Temple, where Christians live alongside Hindus, and even if most of us speak English or Singlish, we still preserve our ‘native’ tongues.

Therefore when politicians and commentators lament that we are surrounded by foreign faces and unfamiliar tongues, they strike at the heart of our own identity. We are a nation built by foreign faces – the faces of our forefathers. When modern Singaporeans look in the mirror, it is still the faces of their forefathers that stare back at them, and this is certainly not a homogeneous face.   What is Singlish if not a pidgin language that evolved from many unfamiliar tongues? What is the Singaporean accent if not English overlayed with Chinese, Malay and Indian intonations? What is Singaporean if not a ‘rojak’ nationality forged from various people from foreign shores?

If we deny this we deny ourselves. 

In preserving the Singaporean Core, we first have to define it. Like its critics, the White Paper failed to do so, which rendered the amendment itself emotive and ultimately meaningless.

So then - what is a Singaporean? What is this Singaporean Core we want to preserve?

In the end, like others, I feel nobody defined it more eloquently than one of our founding fathers and the author of the Singapore Pledge, S. Rajaratnam. 

He said, "Being a Singaporean is not a matter of ancestry. It is conviction and choice."

That is the Singapore Story. If we want to preserve something, let it be that.