Opinions

During a keynote speech at the NTUC Delegates' Conference, PM Lee Hsien Loong (LHL) was quoted by local media to have urged for the strengthening of the relationship between the PAP and the NTUC, amidst the challenging global conditions.

LHL also promised that workers will continue to be at the core of socio-economic development here in Singapore.

The relationship between the NTUC and the PAP is a long-standing one. Historically, it allowed Singapore to navigate through tumultuous economic, social, and political conditions.

Yet this unique relationship should not escape scrutiny. It may have served Singapore's economy well in the past.

Can it continue to do so in the future where AI and automation are expected to transform industries, and more and more workers become part of the gig economy?

The main grouse against this special relationship between NTUC and PAP is the lack of independence of the NTUC. Just look at who the Secretary-General is.

Arguably, independent unions who place the interests of the workers at the core of their existence, would be better able to represent the workers. The interests of the workers are not subordinate to other interests or factors, including those of employers and big corporations. 

Furthermore, such specialised, independent unions are arguably more nimble and better able to react to changing conditions that may affect workers. 

With the PAP in power, it is unlikely to diminish its own position by disrupting this special relationship.

Who can step up to ensure independence of the unions?

“We have so many plans for Singapore, in terms of new industries, new businesses, new schools, new opportunities, new towns to live in, new parks — a new society to be built for the next generation. And what we need are new people — our children,” says PM Lee. But lets look at what he's doing to stop us from actually having children.

Rising costs in Singapore. Can we really afford to have a child nowadays? Everything is so expensive and only getting more expensive thanks to them. Not everybody might have the capacity to pay for a child in their life together with saving for rainy days, paying bills, supporting their lifestyle. Many people are also not as lucky as those white horses earning millions a year. 

PM Lee mentioned having a good infrastructure in infant care, preschool and day care so that mothers can return to their careers in a couple of months after childbirth. But did he think about how these mothers would like to be able to stay home with their children too? Every mother would like to stay at home and look after their child, watch them grow up, nurture them. But because of how everything is so expensive, mothers are not able to afford not going back to work. What's a point of having a child if you don't even get to spend time with them? Not to mention, these infrastructures like infant care need money as well. Who can afford?

The number of FTs coming to take our jobs. Mother's also can't be away for too long in fear of FTs stealing their "lunch". They also feel like they can't slack off at work in fear of getting replaced. If they have to concentrate on working hard for their career, where got time and energy to make baby??

Let's talk about the small space to have sex issue (she claims it was a joke btw). We need a space to have sex. Like it or not. The same space could also be used to bring the child up. Yup, I'm talking about BTOs. With the rising costs of BTOs, everybody is working harder and longer to be able to afford them. And who wants a small house? We all need our own space for our own lives. Having a small space is not good enough for most of us. 

They think they are doing all the right things in trying to get the birth rate of Singaporeans up. But they're actually not. They simply do not understand what all of us are going through.

The Malaysian Parliment voted to repeal the Anti-Fake News ACT (AFNA) yesterday. This is the second time the Lower House (controlled by Pakatan Harapan) has voted for the repeal of the AFNA. They also voted for the repeal in August last year but was blocked by the upper house, or the senate (controlled by Barisan Nasional).

The senate cannot block what has been approved by their MPs for a second time. Therefore, the repeal has a high chance of going through now with the Malaysian King's approval left. He is also not expected to go against the repeal according to experts.

Singapore has always wanted to be first or best in everything. Now, Malaysia is the first one trying to move forward for their citizens and repeal against an act which could be abused by their ministers. What about Singapore? Two days after the introduction of our POFMA bill, they used it to target the main editor,Terry Xu, of the alternative news site The Online Citizen.

All members of the Worker's Party voted No to the bill in the parliament with all of the PAP members voting yes. Is this the road we want to go down? We definitely need more opposition members in the parliament to fight for our rights. How can we be sure that our ruling government will not abuse the law and take down any of their enemies?

Maybe we can wait to see if Singapore can do a Pakatan and take over the current ruling government. With our own Pakatan fighting to repeal against such laws unfair to us as well.

Electricity tariffs will drop by a 0.79 cent per kWh from October to December 2019. In their media release, SP Group claims that this is mainly due to the lower cost of natural gas for electricity generation.

Meanwhile, we citizens have realised that whenever there are goodies for citizens, it means that something is coming soon. That's right. They need us to feel good before the elections come. If they don't make us feel good, we wouldn't vote for them! Slowly but surely, the people in white are awakening from their four to five year slumber to do what they do best - wayang.

I mean just look at auntie lee collecting rubbish:

Help la. 

We don't need people to wake up from their hibernation for a maximum of a year every four to five years and give out chicken wings. We need people to help better our lives every year. I mean.. a quarter of lower electricity tariffs just when the time is coming? What about trying to lower our tariffs for good. Or lowering our cost of living, GST, fare hikes, etc.. We need better people to fight for us and not just seat warmers. 

On Saturday (28 September 2019), Ex-NMP Nicholas Fang, the Managing Director of Black Dot Research warned of possible foreign influence operations taking place in Singapore. He cited the examples of various alternative media websites with administrators based in foreign countries as possible evidence of this potential foreign influence operations, one of which is Legit Singapore (www.legitsingapore.com). However, Mr Fang did disclaimer by recognising it could be the use of proxies to hide the true location of the administrators and this simply represented a POTENTIAL VULNERABILITY. 

What Mr Fang said made absolute sense and we at Legit Singapore are highly aware of our patriotic duty to guard Singapore against potential threats. Hence, we like to point out the POTENTIAL VULNERABILITIES that Singapore faced from another source, from within the PAP itself. 

In case Singaporeans did not know, there are a couple of Singapore PAP Ministers past and present who have married foreign spouses (yes, naturalised as new citizen already). If foreigners can marry into the inner echelons of the PAP machinery, doesn't that represent a much much much greater POTENTIAL RISK OR VULNERABILITY of foreign interference?

Imagine our PAP Ministers who always hint to us they are very hardworking and work 24/7 for the betterment of Singapore, what are the chances of them bringing their work home, their work which contains the many secrets about Singapore. Think about it and imagine the potential vulnerabilities here.

We are not saying anything improper happened, we are simply stating the greater POTENTIAL risks involved, just like how Mr Fang is raising the potential risks of alternative media websites. 

Just to cite a few examples of PAP ministers with foreign spouses: 

Yaccob Ibrahim, Minister of Cyber Security (Such an important role). Wife is an American citizen, children holds dual citizenship until 18 years old. 

Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister. Wife is Jane Yumiko Ittogi (Chinese/Japanese Descent)

Mah Bow Tan, Minister for National Development (build our HDBs till 2011). Wife is Dr Sheryn Kaye Von Senden. 

As a bonus tidbit, our dear ex-NMP Nicholas Fang who is so very worried about foreign interference, also happens to have a foreign spouse. She is quite prominent in Singapore, do you know who she is? So er... got greater potential vulnerability involved here not? 

Conclusion: 

So, to be quite clear, we wanted to establish that nothing has been proven that these individuals are agents of foreign influence, or that they’re trying to carry out. I think we were quite careful to say that this represents a potential vulnerability. Nothing more. You can make up your own minds. Don't take our word for it. 

In the past week we've seen activists getting targeted by the media just for talking to foreigners. Now, we have a NUS boy getting a probation for molesting girls. This boy even admitted that it was not his first time molesting someone.

Terence Siow Kai Yuan admitted that he was unable to recall the number of times he had committed such acts. He has also committed similar acts since he was enrolled in NUS in 2016.

Siow felt the urge to touch the lady when he saw her on the train. he touched her twice on the thighs and once on the genitals after alighting from the train. 

Judge Kaur called the intrusion 'minor'. Siow, two years from graduating from NUS claims that he wants to change and has seeked help regarding his urges. Judge Kaur noted his grades and the recommendation for probation and ended up giving him the probation along with 150 hours of community service, and his parents were bonded for $5,000 to ensure his good behaviour.

So much for this:

Probation just because he had potential to excel in life? And how do you judge his potential to excel??? By his grades? What kind of backward nation are we living in. If I were an employer, I would not care about how good your grades are if you had such offences in the past. I am not going to put my female employees at risk by hiring someone like that. 

Something more has to be done. We have had enough.