e pur si muove

Election season in Singapore is heating up. Witness the flurry of articles in the Singapore press about the oh-so-wonderful election system we have, that proves that the people’s voices are being heard in a fair and democratic fashion. Whoopee, yay.

Gotta love Channel NewsAsia for the title to this article: S. Ramesh, 3 Aug 2005, “Contest still possible for Singapore’s Presidential Election.” Still possible? Is that meant to be a subtle hint as to the presence of defeatist, fatalistic minds in our fair city-state? Or merely a roundabout way to say that nominations are still open?

I tried to register for overseas electoral voting, only to realize that I’ve forgotten my SingPass and got myself locked out. So now I have to apply to have it reset, except that I left my IC back home in Singapore, and they require my NRIC’s date of issue. Ugh, what a Catch-22.

Also, I stumbled upon this video clip made by the Elections Department on Overseas Voting. Besides having little useful content other than “stay tuned for more”, the whole production just comes across as incredibly tacky and a show of multimedia for multimedia’s sake. See for yourself.

And get this: Forbes reports that Chee Soon Juan et. al. have launched a podcast in the run-up to the elections. A podcast? Really? Check it out the recording [mp3], part of the so-called RadioSDP channel, on the SDP website. Supposedly launched earlier today so as to be in time for National Day, the so-called podcast is unfortunately yet more rehashed rhetoric against the ruling party. As an aside, is it really a podcast? The cheesy cue-in and cue-out music, and the blatant self-adulation and thinking that podcasting is synonymous with “Internet Radio”, and the fact that Chee sounds exactly like he’s taking some ‘O’ level English oral examination, by reading off a prepared script, say “no”. Its ineffectual activism, reminiscent of podcasting by bloggers, most of whom have no agenda other than making themselves heard, says “yes”.

The policies they are advocating are just as tired and rehashed, such as a minimum wage policy. Like seriously, who is going to set the minimum wage if it were going to be implemented? I really don’t see how much of a difference this is going to make. In the US, where a minimum wage law exists, there is still ample anecdotal evidence for employers and businesses skirting around this law by hiring illegal immigrants, many of them Mexicans, for menial labor and other tasks. And if nothing else, it’s going to make things harder for Singaporeans to compete with cheaper foreign labor, a task that many are already finding much trouble in pursuing.

And come on, demands for protectionism and a mandated “Singaporeans-first policy”? “Only when [employers] cannot find the requisite talent locally, do we (sic) turn to foreigners.” Grammatical mish-mash aside, this is really missing the whole forest for the trees. Which sane MNC will be willing to hang around in Singapore if such a law comes to pass? All the tax holidays in the world won’t be enough to detract from the HR bedlam that would break out if employers were suddenly to be held accountable for why Foreigner X was hired over Local Y. It’s already hard enough to justify our cost advantage relative to Shanghai or Mumbai without throwing in the monkey wrench of red tape.

Whether or not the SDP thinks that the government has wastefully spent decades whoring to MNCs, the fact of the matter is that the economy is going to be severely shaken, if not collapsed altogether, if multinationals decide to pull out. Local companies, be they GLCs or SMEs, are simply no match for giant megacorporations with assets on par with entire nations. The truth will still remain, that we live at the mercy of MNCs being present in Singapore, and if we rock the boat too hard they may decide that all the favorable policies and strategic advantages no longer offset the opportunity cost of investing in the hot and sexy Chinese experiments in capitalism, the underrated outsourcing land of India, or the economic renaissances underway in Japan and Western Europe. Singapore as hinterland to Southeast Asia can only go so far to mitigate against the very real geoeconomic changes that are rocking the world economy.

Which is really the point here. Being so heavily globalized already, Singapore can hardly decide to revoke all the bilateral FTAs it has signed, especially the coup de grâce of an agreement with the United States. Not only will protectionism smack of ill will after a decade of aggressively seeking pro-globalization treaties, it will most likely also be completely against the terms of the free-trade agreements already negotiated. And who’s going to be so stupid as to piss off the US? Look at what the Bush Administration is during to the Middle East. ‘Nuff said. Pragmatic, materialistic Singaporeans will be the last people on this earth to want to risk economic jihad.

And besides, protectionism isn’t going to change the fundamental problem. The problem is not the “exploitative nature of the PAP’s foreign talent policy”, it is that Singaporeans are being hemmed in on both ends of the quality scale. Singaporeans have been told that they are receiving world-class educations; yet for some reason they are not receiving world-class salaries. They are unwilling to do menial jobs for little or no pay, which is perhaps not unjustified for those who have slaved their way through the education system to come out on top, only to be jobless for years on end when they graduate from local universities where the jobs they are supposedly trained for have been few and far between. The real culprit is, of course, the free market and globalized economy. Since the government has chosen to try to stay competitive using the tried-and-true strategy of lowering the cost of labor, economic factors alone can be made entirely responsible for the massive influx of cheap foreign labor, once Singaporeans begin to be unhappy about their wages and are unwilling to provide the supply to fulfil the demand.

(And on the high end, it’s really hard to compete with decades, or even centuries, of experience, and a combined labor market numbering in the hundreds of millions. But it’s clear that even the SDP is not going to be dumb enough to claim otherwise.)

“The PAP is using vulnerable foreigners to make vulnerable locals even more vulnerable.” This just sounds silly to the point of helpless gibbering, almost vulnerable, n’est ce pas? It’s hard to take such political statements seriously, when they are being made without any hard evidence, proof or facts. But then again, it’s not like saying that the SDP is imbecilic is anything new, is it? That everyone knows how pathetic a policy of incumbent-bashing is. It’s really sad to see how anemic the opposition parties in Singapore are.

And is the SDP itself truly democratic in ideology? The SDP is still neglecting to state unequivocally the real issues, even the democratic ones that they claim to champion. Not once have they mentioned anything about the checks and balances that are present in every democratic system, except by denouncing the current régime to be opaque and non-accountable. That the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government should be decoupled from political parties and religious factions, and that no one branch has the power to be able to trump all the others. Nothing about the dangers of plutocracy, or even what they think the extent of it in Singapore is. Or the fact that the constitution of a country exists solely to curtail the powers of the government, and whether or not they think the actions of the current régime are unconstitutional. All they can rant about is “Freedom of speech! Freedom of expression!” Like get real man, who tried to visit Hong Lim Park in the last few years when they were parading those bulldozers around doing who-knows-what to who-knows-what. No microphones, megaphones, or amplifiers allowed, remember? Can you hear the people sing under the roar of heavy machinery?

Spoke to Wannabe Lawyer online; he also found out about the SDP mp3. He’ll have have his say up on his blog real soon.

P.S. The folk at tomorrow.sg have caught wind of it too, as have Merv (Atypical Singaporean), Jacob (Omeka Na Huria, Steve (Singabloodypore), and mrbrown. It has also earned a mention in Today.

Also seen on the Singapore Democrat: shameless, blatant lifting of yet more online content here. Is this montage meant to evoke sympathy for the homeless, or for the poor guy whose work you freeloaded off and didn’t even bother to ask for copyright permissions? Please.

The taciturnity of recent days, nay, weeks, can be best explained by a mélange of factors, being a) the lack of a computer at home, b) the ferocious workload generated by an onslaught of fresh ideas from the boss as a result of having attended a previously alluded-to conference, c) intensely muggy weather, d) a renewed wish of having to actually use the school’s sports facilities, as opposed to merely daydreaming, during summer hours, about going there during summer hours, e) having to move, f) doing lots of reading at home as a result of (a), and g) a general lack of blog-related depression.

List of non-science books read in the past few weeks:

1. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. To my surprise, I finished the whole damn thing on the way back from LA and two hours after arriving home. There goes one of my travel mainstays; it’s time to find a new paperback to pack for trips. Perhaps the prequel, The Fountainhead?
2. Philip Roth, The Plot Against America. I didn’t really like this book, I thought it was not a very good characterization of the anti-Semitism of WWII through the eyes of the protagonist, unless he really was meant to be a completely clueless, hopeless Jewish child. I think the average kid deserves more credit for his/her intelligence.
3. Marilynne Robinson, Gilead: A Novel. Touching.
4. Harlan Coben, The Innocent. Clever but a bit too contrived, a bit too convenient.
5. Mary Higgins Clark, No Place Like Home : A Novel. My very first Mary Higgins Clark book, I like it. I think it’s brilliant how she concocted an entire thriller story out of a legal technicality.
6. J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. This one was polished off at the Barnes and Noble along Santa Barbara’s Main Street. It was 40% off and I was sorely tempted to buy it to read on the way back to LA, but then I finished it. Oops. Is it just me, or is Ms. Rowling beginning to run out of ideas? The Sorcerer’s Stone still had the most intricate puzzles of the lot; it’s such a shame she stopped doing it. It made the first two novels almost take on qualities of a game novel, with its brainteasers.
7. >Neal Stephenson, The System of the World. As recommended by Loy several months ago. I’m still waitlisted on the library catalog for the first two books, dammit. Just finished the first three chapters, it’s quite absorbing so far. Leibniz and Newton duking it out in post-Elizabethan Europe, and the royalty all enthralled! How scandalous!

In perhaps unrelated news, I’ve watched the most recent furore over Sumiko Tan’s recent article with mostly indifference with an admixture of juvenile amusement. Maybe it’s a reflection that I’m almost done in cutting my home country out of my mind entirely. Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe I’m indulging in self-deluding by imagining myself to be a contemporary Francisco d’Anconia, to be conscientiously on mental strike. (He was by far the character I most identified with from Atlas Shrugged.) So what if I can’t cure the stupidity of four million of my own countrymen, let them rot and stew in their own choices. Our scholars biding time, serving their bonds and making like trees after their bond ends? In the case of one who recently attained the status of “paid in full”, we’ll have to see.