Tag: The Nanyang Chronicle

From efficient to more effective policies

There are signs that Singapore is embracing diversity in society. The government’s latest move to replace streaming in the education system with a grouping system based on subject competency acknowledges that students have diverse interests and capabilities.

It also allows for a mix of students in classrooms, unlike the previous system that bred a sense of elitism when students were streamed solely according to how well they did academically.

In the same vein, Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong’s initiative to review sentencing guidelines also recognises the many types of criminals the court has to handle. The current set of tools of imprisonments, caning and fines is based on the assumption that criminals are all the same and will respond similarly to such punishments.

With a wider variety of sentencing guidelines, judges can mete out punishments that will better help criminals rehabilitate and re-integrate with society.

These shifts in thinking in our education and judicial systems are models for how Singapore society develops. They recognise diversity among individuals and promote a gentler and more inclusive society — as envisioned by our Prime Minister and many Singaporeans. They also represent a shift from efficient towards more effective policies that can better address social issues.

Our political sphere can also benefit from such a change in mindset. The issue of ensuring politics is kept serious exluces more than it includes. It empowers certain individuals to this level of discussion, making politics apart from Singaporeans’ lives rather than a part of them.

With more diversity, there may be some loss in efficiency in governance and policy implementation but it might also be more meaningful and effective.

The Nanyang Chronicle, 9th Oct 2006

Look back to find who we are

In a year, Singapore has lost two men who were at the forefront of its development to a modern nation today.

While many of the older generation mourned the passing of Mr Lim Kim San and Mr S Rajaratnam, such feelings were lost on our youth. There is a sense that the youth today only begin to discover about these great people in Singapore’s history only after they become, well, history.

Mr Rajaratnam himself had feared that the youths today would not have a sense of nationhood as they did not experience the struggles of the pioneers.

And he may be right, despite how well Singapore seems to be doing, a recent survey of teenagers by the Singapore Press Holdings indicated that slightly more than half of them would consider emigration. Perhaps the reasons for emigrating are not explicitly a lack of sense of nationhood, but surely, giving up citizenship for somewhere else does imply a lesser value on what Singapore means to these teenagers.

As I consider heading overseas for exchange and perhaps even a career out of Singapore as well, I find myself going through scenarios where foreign counterparts ask me, “What is a Singaporean?” and I find myself lost for words.

This is where I think history can play a larger role in our lives, because by looking back at our nation’s history we can find out where we have been and where we are going as a nation.

Like many youths, I only learnt about the contributions of Mr Lim and Mr Rajaratnam from the news coverage after they passed away. My history lessons in secondary school never taught me this much.

In fact, I think many youths grew up with the simplest view of our history: Raffles founded us as a modern trade port before Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and the Peoples’ Action Party (PAP) successfully brought Singapore from independence to where it is today. Along the way, we had to deal with communists and racial riots, but we survived them all.

It is this lack of colour and depth that might have failed to capure the imagination of many of our youths, leading to apathy towards our history and nationhood. There is a need to delve much deeper and encompass a much wider scope in the history of Singapore that we are exposed to. Perhaps, in our desire to simplify history to make it easier for our youths, we have made it too bland.

Beyond Raffles, the PAP, the struggles with communists and racial tensions, there is much more.

For instance, who were the Barisan Socialis? For an opposition group that actually won 13 out of 51 seats in the 1963 state elections, the most ever by any opposition even up to today, few Singaporeans know about them. Tell me more about the other men who worked with MM Lee, like Mr Goh Keng Swee and Mr Toh Chin Chye. I do not want to learn about their contributions only when it is time to mourn their passing.

Perhaps due to the necessity of the situation then, some stories could not make the light of the day, but as Singapore forges towards its 41st National Day, there is a need to view our past much more critically to grow as a nation.

Let us hear more points of view so that we can have a more holistic notion of our history. How did the communists themselves view their place in the struggle for nationhood? What was it like being hounded by the Internal Security Department?

Our knowledge of history seems to lack a kind of contrast that will serve to illuminate our understanding of this nation.

So, what is a Singaporean?

I think he is someone who is still unsure of his past and place in today’s world. He is someone who is only beginning to dig deeper into history so that he may one day proudly proclaim: I am a Singaporean.

The Nanyang Chronicle, 8th Aug 2006

Getting an education in politics

I find it a coincidence that the year I began school also marked the beginning of Mr Low Thia Khiang’s start as my Member of Parliament in Hougang.

I was just completing my first year in primary school, when Mr Low of The Workers’ Party defeated Mr Tang Guang Seng of the People’s Action Party to win the Hougang Ward in 1991.

The only thing I remembered then was heading to the Hougang Stadium across from my house with my parents to attend the rallies of both parties.

I was dwarfed amongst the throngs who had come to hear the candidates and we were entertained for hours as they made speeches and jibes at each other. That marked the beginning of my education in politics.

It seemed like harmless entertainment then. Only years later did I learn that it was not that funny after all, as many of the opposition candidates ended up facing lawsuits for libel because of the things they said during their rallies.

In December 1996, my mornings often began with noise from the megaphone of the candidates who had hired vans to literally drive their message home. Sounds of “Vote for Low Thia Khiang” and “Vote for Heng Chee How” confused a boy who would only be beginning secondary school in a few days time.

I remembered asking my parents and myself: Who were these people?

This time around when we headed to the Hougang Stadium to watch the rallies, everything made much more sense.

Aside from the fact that I was taller and could see more of the stage, I had also become a newspaper reader.

The drama that unfolded in the days up to Polling Day filled the newspapers as personalities like Mr Tang Liang Hong and Mr J B Jeyaretnam fuelled the most exciting campaigning I have ever seen till today.

The crowd and I lapped it up, as if it was the only time our inner most grouses about the state of affairs in Singapore was articulated by tthese daring men.

They showed me how the PAP was not always right in their decisions and there was a need for more active citizenry and some kind of opposition in Parliament to ensure things were in check.

Even though both of them got sued for libel, and have become shadows of their former selves, I am still grateful for that 1997 campaign that cemented the foundations of my education in politics.

Politics, I learnt, went beyond the upgrading of flats and handouts, but rather meant a greater discussion about the direction that Singapore should take and what policies it should take to get there.

For the next five years, like every teenager who needed something to stand out, I wore the badge of living in an opposition ward with pride (yes, Mr Low Thia Khiang won again!). I felt a need to defend this pride and it forced me to keep abreast of the latest in Singapore politics through the news.

More often than not, I was disappointed, as the media was more preoccupied with the ruling party and its policies than giving a voice to the opposition. But, with only two out of 83 seats in Parliament in 1997, it is no wonder they were crowded out.

I also got to watch the estates around me get upgraded while there was hardly any upgrading in Hougang. It was the price we had to pay for voting in the opposition, I was told.

Yet, it was not as if my estate was left to crumble. We might not have the frills, but my estate has always been clean and well maintained. What more could I ask from one man as compared to one party?

More important to me, was the fact that the opposition was in Parliament to ask the questions that would often elude other members who came from the same party.

Very often, the opposition brought about a diversity of views that questioned the implementation of possibily myopic policies.

The next general elections arrived in 2001. That was when I learnt about how institution and legislation could act as barriers to the opposition.

The re-drawing of electoral boundaries wiped out the ward across the road from my hosue — Cheng San Group Representation Constituency (GRC) — and it became part of Aljunied GRC. Cheng San GRC was where The Workers’ Party almost won in 1997.

Till today, it still amuses me how you can live in Hougang and not be part of the Hougang ward, but belong to the Aljunied ward instead.

It has been 15 years and I still live in Hougang, an opposition ward. This upcoming general elections mark the first time I will be able to cast a vote. I count myself lucky, because there are Singaporeans out there who have never got this chance.

Moreover, I have been educated in the sights, sounds and thoughts of what an election is about, something which has prevented me from becoming just another apathetic Singaporean.

The Nanyang Chronicle, 29th March 2006