Finally the last word on Anton Casey

You know, I've written so much on the Anton Casey saga, so I thought I'd leave the last word on the issue to a Singaporean reader of mine who has great insight into the whole episode. I wish I had a bit more information about this reader, but I don't. S/he goes by the name Unknown and clearly prefers to remain anonymous. I challenged my readers with the question, so you get rid of Anton Casey, so what? What next? There are still over 2 million foreigners in Singapore with plenty more just like Anton Casey, not to mention plenty more like him who will be arriving in the future. Can anything positive come out of this or are Singaporeans once again distracting themselves with this scapegoat whilst ignoring the greater problems with the country?

This is an extremely well-written piece which looks at the wider picture, discussing a whole range of issues and problems (with Anton Casey only getting one paragraph) that has led to where we are in Singapore today. Whilst it provides a very good summary, I must add one point: so many Singaporeans do not want the population to grow any further with already too many foreigners (like Anton Casey) in Singapore, yet they keep on voting for the PAP who have been perfectly honest about their intentions to grow the population to 6.9 million. To quote Albert Einstein, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." I feel that Singaporeans who are so frustrated and angry today have to bear part of the blame for having gotten themselves into this mess in the first place because they keep voting for the PAP. You have no one to blame but yourselves - you voted for it, so don't be surprised when you get exactly what you've voted for. At this stage, I even don't blame the PAP, I blame the insane people who vote for the PAP and expect things to be different, to get better.

Whose fault is it? Who do you blame in this case?

Anyway, over to my reader 'Unknown' for the last word. This was first posed on my last post on Anton Casey.

A lot has happened in the past week. First there was the rant by Stephanie Koh on why she was not proud to be Singaporean, the insensitive remarks by Anton Casey and the furore that led to his exile to Perth, the anger at fare hikes amid more frequent MRT disruptions and higher profitability, and not to forget the riots in Little India, population protest and free my internet movement last year. Do all these things add up? Do they collectively hint that there is a larger problem in Singapore or are they just isolated incidents?

Stephanie Koh is not proud to be Singaporean.

First let me start with the educational system in Singapore. Its meritocratic system only allows a small fraction of locals to study at its local uni. Students are streamed at primary 6 and split into normal, express and special stream based on their abilities. Then at 'O' Levels, students are channelled into ITE, polytechnics or junior colleges again based on their abilities. For ITE and polytechnic students, most of them do not get the chance to study at local unis. They stop at their level or pursue foreign degrees if they can afford it. For JC students who finished 'A' Levels, most will be absorbed into local unis. A small number of exceptionally smart 'A' Level students who aced their exams will be offered government scholarship. Some of these scholars will go on to become elites in the system and exert great control over the lives of Singaporeans. In order to find those elites at the top of the pile, the educational system has to be made as rigorous and difficult as possible, forcing many students to become study robots (coined by Stephanie Koh). When one studies too much (or rather have too much things to study), one mind's becomes too rigid due to lack of self-expression. One study for the sake of study, accept whatever is spoon-fed by teachers as the truth and never pause to question things on a deeper level. No wonder Stephanie Koh says (i) Sinkies are narrow minded and believe everything the papers says (though more have become sceptical and since turned to alternative media), (ii) not creative, (iii)submissive and (iv) laments that talented people can't enrol in uni unless they are booksmart. But too bad for sinkies, the meritocratic educational system is a necessary evil for the government to pick the elites from the crowd so that they can fill high positions in government ministries, GICs and Temasek companies, etc.

Let's move on to government control. The government controls virtually everything in Singapore, the press, unions, election department, the domestic economy via GIC and Temasek, grassroots, people's savings through CPF, etc. They are able to exert heavy influence on civil service and courts. The government also has a special weapon called ISA to detain people without trial for as long as they want. With so much controls in place on such a small island, everyone follows the rules (another Stefanie Koh complaint). Nobody except the very brave like JBJ Jeyaretnam dare cross the line. Moving on to the economy, 35% of our salary goes to CPF and over time this has allowed Temasek and GIC to build up a portfolio of companies so competitive that very few if none of the local companies can challenge them. With their savings locked up in CPF and also due to risk adverse mentality cultivated by a rigid education system, entrepreneurship amongst Singaporeans is almost non-existent.

Now blessed with so much power and money, the elites now want to conquer the world. They don't want privates jets, they want to own multiple airlines (SIA, Scoot and Tiger). They don't want private yatches, they want an entire shipping company (NOL and APL), they don't want private chateaus, they want to buy an entire town (Stuyvesant Town which unfortunately went kaput). They want to show off to oil rich countries that they can compete with their sovereign wealth funds even though Singapore has no natural resources.

To raise more funds for Temasek and GIC, the elites decided to privatise public companies and ramp up GDP as quickly as they can, in the process collecting more income tax, stamp duty, GST, COE, ERP and other taxes. The modus operandi is to increase the population, open casinos and attract more funds to Singapore by positioning Singapore as a centre for wealth management. To cater to the housing and transportation needs of a higher population, the govt imports tons of third world labour to build new infrastructure and work in service industries. To cater to the rich, the finance industry imports many wealth managers like Anton Casey into Singapore. All these policies eventually lead to the stratification of society. At the very top, you have a small percentage of elites who pay themselves multi-million dollar salaries working in govt, Temasek and GICs, next comes highly paid foreigners like Anton Casey working in wealth management and finance. Lower down the food chain are the hollowed out middle class who find their salaries stagnated by the influx of foreign PMET and struggling with higher cost of living. At the very bottom you have the lower class competing with third world labour and struggling to get by. The influx of foreigners only serve to increase asset prices, benefiting the rich and making life more difficult for the middle class and poor by making them pay longer installment for their houses. In fact many middle class people have been relegated below poverty line (as defined by World Bank to be earning less than half the median income). With a widening rich poor gap and dilution of Singapore identity due to the govt's liberal immigration policy, there is bound to be more tension and conflict in the society. With such a society, it is no wonder that Stephanie Koh says sinkies are not happy and nice.

Moving on to the riots in Little India. When people riot, they riot for a reason. They just don't riot because they are drunk. They riot because their anger and frustration are not addressed. Alcohol is one of the cause but not the root cause. When the bangalas see one of their comrades knocked down and killed by a bus, they decided to take matters into their own hands and seek justice for him because they no longer believe in the system. The bangalas feel that they are not properly protected by labour laws and exploited.

There is no minimum wage (yet another Stefanie Koh complaint) to protect them, many of them incur heavy debts to come here to work, and can be repatriated at any time if they don't do as their bosses say. Many of them are forced to work even when they are genuinely ill or injured and some are not even paid. Their contracts are ambiguous and they have no legal recourse in disputes. Throw in the discrimination showed by sinkies towards these people, it is no wonder that they riot to release their pent up frustrations. Of course the elites will want you to think that the riot is an isolated incident. They want the exploitation to continue to keep their grassroots leaders (many of whom own construction companies) happy and profit from foreign levies.

Remember the Little India riots?

Now to Anton Casey. There is a lot of friction between locals and foreigners lately. Frustrations of the locals include the lose of jobs and higher education opportunities, wage stagnation, higher living costs as a result of influx of foreigners, discrimination by foreigners against locals in the workplace, etc. Sinkies have no channels to vent their frustration due to a lack of human rights and freedom of speech in the country. All feedback to the govt has fallen on deaf ears as they are hell bent on pursuing their target of 6.9 million population. When a rich foreigner who has benefitted so much from the system at the expense the locals comes out to insult the locals, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Sinkies hit Casey with a wave of tsumani attacks, eventually forcing his exile to Perth.

Next the fare hikes and protest amid higher profitability and more frequent service disruptions. When the Public Transport Council said that fare hikes and service disruption are unrelated, you know whose side they are on. The public transport operators enjoyed a fare hike in 2011 and increase profitability since then but allowed service standard to deteriorate. How can fare hikes and service disruption not be related? It is not a coincidence that the Minister of Transport and CEO of SMRT are both former generals from the elite, serving the interest of Temasek who have already received more than half a billion in dividends from SMRT since SMRT was privatised.

Moving on to the population protest. As mentioned earlier, the elites want to import more people to ramp up GDP and collect more tax revenue to feed GIC and Temasek. They do not care about the costs to the society. They don't care if there will be more tensions and conflicts between people of different social class and nationalities. Already the middle class is hollowing out and disappearing, leading to a larger lower class at the bottom against a richer and more powerful upper class. Imagining another 1.5 million foreigners coming into Singapore, what will Singapore be like with foreigners outnumbering locals?

The Little India Riots and Anton Casey furore is only just the beginning and the tip of the iceberg. There will be more to come, don't be surprise to see blood on the streets soon. Of course the government will want you to think that they have everything under control. They believe that they are in control of everything including online news and the blogosphere, hence the introduction of new licensing rules for websites. But the only thing that they cannot control is the people's mind.

To conclude, the elites are obsessed with power and money and their greed knows no bounds. 'Whither Singapore' says George Yeo after the fall of Punggol East. Sinkies better take his words seriously and start thinking about what they want for themselves, their future generations and Singapore.

With readers like that responding to my blog posts, I feel honoured to attract such a high quality of readership to my blog. Please feel free to respond to Unknown's piece and let me know what your thoughts are on the issue. Thank you very much for reading. (Now can we move on to a different topic, please?)