50th Anniversary of Operation Cold Store

Yahoo News : More than 400 mark anniversary of political arrests

50th Anniversary of Operation Cold Store 2 Feb 2013
Speech by Dr Poh Soo Kai



Dear comrades and friends,

Dear fellow ex-detainees of February 2 and the waves of repression thereafter till today,

Today, we gather to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Operation Cold Store, launched on February 2, 1963. On that day, The British colonialists, with the connivance of Lee Kuan Yew, arrested over a hundred left-wing activists, including myself. In one fell swoop, they wiped out the entire leadership of the Barisan Sosialis, the main opposition force in Singapore.

First and foremost, I want to take this occasion to pay homage and respect to the hundreds of brave young men and women, cut down, cruelly and undemocratically, in the prime of their lives on 2 February, and in the relentless waves of detentions thereafter.

This is also the moment to honour their families and loved ones, who endured immense pain and sufferings, and provided the unquestioning support throughout those endlessly dark days, months, years, and decades.

Every person arrested in that historical juncture of February 2;
every person arrested from the 1940s to the 1980s;
each and every one has undergone a persecution that is so deep that none is unscarred.

• Today, no one among us, the ex-detainees, should feel that his or her pain, sufferings, and sacrifices had been in vain.
• No one among us should feel any shame or humiliation that the cross had been too heavy.
• No one among us should feel he or she had contributed less than another detainee.
• Today, it is time that we all heal the wounds for we have been vindicated in our youthful pursuit of a better humanity.

For today, the unimaginable has happened. That we can stand, tall and straight, in Hong Lim Park (in this bright sunshine) – exactly 50 years after the sinister mass arrests of February 2 – and say, loud and clear:

WE, THE SURVIVORS OF 2.2, WE ARE VINDICATED IN OUR PURSUIT OF OUR YOUTHFUL IDEALISM IN 1963.

Our youthful idealism in 1963 called for an independent, multi-racial, multi-communal nation that is non-discriminatory towards any race or community.

Our youthful idealism called for a nation where the people would enjoy economic dignity and social assurance. A Barisan Sosialis government would not have permitted the current obscene disparity in income between those whom we voted into power and the lowest strata of society. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Our youthful idealism called for a nation that would enjoy full democratic and human rights. A Barisan Sosialis government would not have permitted any arbitrary detention without trial. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Can the youth of today in Singapore imagine, the excitement, and magic in the air after World War II, where the youth of all races, on both sides of the causeway, dared to aspire for a united Malayan nation, free from communal politics, free from the Internal Security Act, free from economic humiliation experienced by the poor, the sick, the disabled and the aged?

Yes, our generation, cut down on February second 1963, was the proud inheritor of the People’s Constitution, the Hartal, the Malayan Democratic Union, and the PUTERA-AMCJA coalition that flourished from 1945 till 1948.

Are our youth of Singapore hearing these great names for the first time?

Yes, there existed a People’s Constitution, drafted by John Eber and Willie Kuok of the Malayan Democratic Union.

It was adopted after extensive consultations with the people of all races, up and down, the length and breadth of the peninsula of Malaya, and the island of Singapore.

It is salient to recall the fundamental principles of this constitution. They are:

1. Singapore is an integral and inalienable part of mainland Malaya;
2. There should be equal citizenship rights for all persons hailing from the various communities who qualify to be citizens of this country; the citizenship is to be known as Melayu citizenship;
3. Melayu citizenship is to be given to all persons born in this country and others who had settled continuously in this country for the past 10 years irrespective of whether they came from: Java, Sumatra, the Rhio islands, China, Burma, India, etc.

However, the British colonialists refused to listen to the people’s aspirations.

As a result, the PUTERA-AMCJA coalition, on the suggestion of Tan Cheng Lock, decided to hold a one-day HARTAL which was a call for a peaceful complete stoppage of economic activities on a pan-Malayan scale. On that day 20 October 1947, from Singapore to Malacca to Kuala Lumpur to Penang, workers did not go to work; shops and offices were closed; buses, trains, taxis and cars came to a standstill.

The HARTAL was a convincing proof that all communities, especially the Malay community, supported the non-communal politics that is at the heart of the People’s Constitution.

Imagine in the days when there was no internet or twitter, when even the telephone was an expensive luxury, a Hartal could be organizationally possible in the time span of a week or 2 , with teams of bicycle riders peddling away furiously from towns to villages to kampongs throughout the length and breath of Singapore and Malaya. So invigorated was the youth’s spirit for a People’s Constitution that no logistical problems could deter them.

This mass, non-communal, democratic movement had to be crushed. And so the British colonialists, who returned after World War II crushed this people’s movement with an array of repressive and deceptive instruments:

• With the brute military force of the Emergency of June 1948;
• With the inhuman uprooting of entire villages and their re-settlement in New Villages, which were, in actual fact, concentration camps. The people were bodily searched upon leaving and entering the camps. All communities – Chinese, Indians and Malays - were affected by this Briggs resettlement plan. The policy achieved the insidious aim of the British “to divide and rule’ over their subjects, especially the Malays and the Chinese – physically.

The British “divide and rule” also privileged communal politics and parties to replace the genuinely nationalistic MDU and PUTERA-AMCJA. If any political parties were not communal, then they were treated as subservient to British interests, like the PAP This disastrous communal politics rolled back the democratic and racially non-discriminatory Malayan nation concept of 1947. When the Malaysian merger was proposed in the early 1960s, it was already infested with racialism. The Malaysian merger was a distorted concept and a far cry from the 1947 Malayan model.

David Marshall characterized the phony referendum for the Malaysian merger in September 1962 as offering choices to beat your mother, or your wife, or your sister. Yet, Lee Kuan Yew forced Singapore into such troubled and turbulent waters, just to save himself from the Barisan Sosialis taking power from him, through the ballot box, scheduled in the second half of 1963.

Our generation, cut down by the mass arrest on 2.2.1963, was the proud inheritor of the momentous People’s Constitution, the peaceful and all-powerful economic boycott of HARTAL, the genuinely non-communally inspired parties like MDU, PUTERA, and AMCJA.

But we can be equally proud that we made progressive history in our own rights with

• the Fajar Sedition Trial;
• the May 13 movement of the Chinese middle schools students against compulsory conscription, in other words, they refused to serve as cannon fodder to British imperialist interests in the region;
• the struggle to set up the Nanyang University to popularize higher education;
• the massive trade union struggles for workers’ just pay and compensations.

It was we, who were the bedrock of the pro-people, anti-colonial constitution of the PAP when we founded the party together with the LKY faction.

Looking back, it is ironical that we had legitimized Lee Kuan Yew in those days!

But the people of Singapore were (and are) no fools. They quickly saw that their democratic aspirations were betrayed and, like all responsible people, they used the ballot box to express their dissatisfaction to the PAP-LKY faction then as they did in 2011 and last Saturday in Punggol East . They delivered two resounding defeats to the PAP in the Hong Lim and Anson by-elections of April and July 1961 – for LKY's failure to release political prisoners.

TODAY, YOU CAN DO IT AGAIN. YOU CAN REPEAT HONG LIM & ANSON AGAIN TODAY!

Looking back, it is so ironical that we had legitimized Lee Kuan Yew in those days!

• Had British imperialistic interests not been in the way;
• had there not been the ISA;
• had the playing field been level or BERSIH, as our neighbours across the causeway today called their mass movement for clean and fair elections;
• had there not been OPERATION COLD STORE of February 2,
Singapore’s history could have been different. And another generation of youth may not have to “restart” again today for they could build upon the democratic foundations that we could have laid in 1963.

WE CANNOT CRY OVER THE PAST.
OUR ASPIRATIONS TO BE DECENT, HUMAN BEINGS WILL NEVER DIE,
AND TODAY, WE CAN REPEAT HONG LIM AND ANSON AGAIN THROUGH THE BALLOT BOX!
I REPEAT:
WE CANNOT CRY OVER THE PAST.
OUR ASPIRATIONS TO BE DECENT, HUMAN BEINGS WILL NEVER DIE,
AND TODAY, WE MUST DELIVER HONG LIM & ANSON AGAIN THROUGH THE BALLOT BOX!

Thank you, my comrades and friends, my fellow ex-detainees … THANK YOU.

Dr Poh Soo Kai

Dr Poh Soo Kai was one of 133 persons opposed to the terms of Singapore's joining the Federation of Malaysia who were arrested on 2 February 1963 in 'Operation Coldstore'. At the time, he was Assistant Secretary General of the opposition Barisan Sosialis. He was released in December 1973, but was rearrested in June 1976 and is currently held in the Moon Crescent Detention Centre.

After his release in 1973, Dr Poh returned to the practice of medicine but at the same time continued to be outspoken in his criticism of the Government. He attacked the Government for curtailing the application of the rule of law and detaining political prisoners without charge or trial. His rearrest came shortly after the withdrawal of the ruling People's Action Party from the Socialist International. At a meeting of the Socialist International in London in May 1976, the Dutch Labour Party had demanded the expulsion of the PAP for, among other things, violating human rights by detaining political prisoners without trial. A Ministry of Home Affairs statement issued after his rearrest contained the allegation that 'Dr Poh has actively helped pro-communist elements, had established links for collaboration with similarly-minded groups abroad, and was preparing the ground for the revival of Communist United Front activities in Singapore.'

The Government also alleged that he had advised 'student agitators' and had supplied medicine to a communist activist said to have been injured by his own bomb while trying to assassinate a local factory manager. This latter allegation was based on a statement made by a political detainee which was later retracted.

In February 1977, Dr Poh's wife, Grace Poh, was detained for 27 days during which she was held in solitary confinement and subjected to a series of round-the-clock interrogations for periods of up to three days.

http://singaporerebel.blogspot.sg/2007/02/political-detention-in-singapore.html

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50th Anniversary of Operation Cold Store, 2 February 2013
Speech by Teo Soh Lung

Good afternoon friends, ladies and gentlemen.

I am privileged to be given this opportunity to speak at this historic event and in this historical Hong Lim Park. I want to thank:

1. The organisers for working so hard in making this commemoration happen.
2. Mr Tan Kok Fang and his team for putting together a very important publication We Remember 2 February 1963 which is available to all of you today.
3. The contributors to this impressive publication for putting their thoughts down for posterity.
4. The survivors of Operation Cold Store and the survivors of all subsequent operations who are here today. Thank you.

The ISA is a cruel and draconian law which allows the government to imprison anyone without trial for as long as it wishes.

The Late Dr Lim Hock Siew had this to say about detention without trial.

“.. detention without trial is not a peaceful action. It is an act of violence. They come to see you not in the daylight with an invitation card. They come in the morning, 4 am. That is the time when decent people sleep, and when political terrorists and tyrants strike. And when you are detained, you are subjected to all kinds of mental and even physical torture.”

The result of Operation Cold Store was to instil great fear in Singaporeans. Wave after wave of arrests throughout the sixties, seventies, eighties and even the turn of this century, silenced the population and enabled the government to enact oppressive laws and policies that curtailed our fundamental freedoms and human rights. Instead of a government which listens to the people and carry out the wishes of the people, we have a government that did what it wanted to do. Those who opposed its plans were put away in jails, sued for defamation and charged for frivolous offences.

Periodic arrests throughout the decades divided the nation and even divided those who were detained. Detainees kept to themselves after their release. Few would speak about their traumatic experiences, not even to their children and grandchildren. The fear that telling their stories would expose them to rearrests and bring shame and discrimination was real. To be critical of the government and to be involved in politics became synonymous to inviting trouble. How often do we hear of parents telling their children to stay away from politics. And that was how Singaporeans became depoliticised.

When I was in prison in 1987, my only knowledge of the ISA dated back to the arrests of the so called Euro Communists in 1977. In that year, my employer, G Raman and several of his friends in the legal profession were arrested. According to DPM Teo Chee Hean, more than 800 were arrested in the 1970s. Though I was strongly of the view that Raman and others were unjustifiably detained, the majority thought otherwise. Their favourite rebuttal to my defence of those arrested was “they must have done something that you and I do not know”.

Raman and his friends were released after a year or so. Like detainees before them, they never tell their stories because the fear of rearrests was real. In all probability, they also felt that no one would believe in their innocence.

In prison, I was threatened with indefinite detention and reminded of Chia Thye Poh who was then still in prison even after 21 years. I was in the dark as to why he was detained and that itself generated even more fear. If the government could imprison a person for so long, how can anyone be sure of a release?

Today, people are beginning to be aware of Operation Cold Store because more and more literature of that era is emerging. Back in the 1970s, I knew almost nothing about those arrested in the 1960s. The first time I heard about Said Zahari was when I saw a friend, the late Francis Khoo, selling a little collection of poems by Said Zahari. The title was Poems from Prison. I bought a copy. I took another copy from him and attempted to sell it to a priest. I can still remember the shocked look on his face. He shook his head, refusing to even touch the little book and walked away hurriedly.

That sadly, was the political climate of the early 1970s. Taking advantage of the silence of released detainees and the fear of the ordinary citizens of being arrested under the ISA, the PAP governed without restraint.

We are very fortunate today that despite the devastation caused by Operation Cold Store, we still have survivors like Dr Poh Soo Kai, Said Zahari, Michael Fernandez, Tan Kok Fang and others. They have not only survived the darkest days of Singapore’s history, they have survived to tell their side of history. They have spoken and written books in the last decade, telling us the contributions of their generation which the PAP government have deliberately distorted and maligned.

And so to all of them and to all the survivors of Operation Cold Store, I say thank you for liberating us from the British colonial masters and thank you for sacrificing the prime of your lives in pursuit of a dream for a Malaya, embracing Singapore and building a land that believes in equality, democracy, multi culturalism and human rights.

Although that dream for a united Malaya was interrupted by Operation Cold Store and wave after wave of arrests under the ISA, I am confident that the decades of silence is over. In the last ten years or so, the internet has returned the voice to Singaporeans. Thanks to you, the young people of Singapore, this voice is getting louder and louder and it will not be silenced again.

Today, there are about 19 people in prison under the ISA, some of them for more than 10 years. This is wrong and I call upon the government to either charge them in open court or release them immediately. We cannot be expected to trust the reasons for their detention, when we ourselves have been wrongfully detained.

The abolition of the ISA is long overdue. Malaysia has abolished this law and I cannot believe that Singapore which possesses the most sophisticated weapons and spyware in Asia cannot do without this law that has caused and continues to cause untold miseries to thousands of detainees, their families and friends and silenced the people of Singapore. And so I call upon the government to abolish the ISA.

It is my hope that all those who have been imprisoned under the ISA will one day receive a public apology from the Government of Singapore. It is important that we recognise the invaluable contributions of an earlier generation of Singaporeans who fought selflessly for our country. An admission of how badly the ISA has been abused will be the beginning of a proud history of Singapore.

Last but not least, I call upon the government to let all exiles return to Singapore without conditions. They have sacrificed their youth for our freedom and they have every right to return home to the embrace of their families.

Thank you.

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COMMEMORATION OF THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF OPERATION COLD STORE ON 2 FEBRUARY 2013

FROM SAID ZAHARI AS TRANSMITTED VIA POH SOO KAI

On 23 December 2012, I visited Said Zahari at the ground floor apartment in Puncak Alam 3, Selangor, Malaysia, where he lives with his daughter Riz and grandsons. As this day was a Sunday, his son Roesman and his family were also there paying their weekly visit to the grand old man.

Said came into the tiny cozy living room in his wheelchair, a broad smile on his face. We were instantly relieved at his cheerful and hearty appearance though we had been given the good news a few days earlier – that he had been discharged from hospital where he had been warded for two mild strokes.

On 16 Dec 2012 at about 8.30 a.m., a text message had appeared on my cell phone informing me that Said Zahari had a second stroke and was in Sungei Buloh Hospital, ward 4A, bed 24. The message was from his son Roesman.

Not knowing his actual conditions, I was anxious and at once, transmitted Roesman’s message to Syed Husin Ali, who fortunately was able to see Said that evening at about 7.45 p.m. After the visit, Husin emailed to say:

"Visited Said this evening. He can speak well, as usual, his mind is alert n memory good. But he cannot move his right hand n leg. He looks normal n not weak."

As good luck would have it, the following day of 17 December at about 10 p.m., I got a text message from Said’s son, Roesman that Said had just been discharged and had gone home.

During our visit on 23 December, Said was very happy and touched to know that many comrades and friends – and we went through their names - were concerned about his condition when they learned of his recent strokes. Among them, the Monsooners and not least was, of course, Soh Lung on behalf of friends in Singapore, who enquired:

"(Got) message from Roesman. Has anyone visited Said? How is he?"

In commemorating the 50th Anniversary of 2 February 1963, Said noted sadly that there are not many of us around any more.

Nevertheless, he has no regrets to have stood up for the editorial independence of Utusan Melayu. He knows today that the historic Utusan strike of 20 July 1961, which lasted for 93 days, continues to inspire the young people of today, who cannot imagine this glorious past of Utusan, given the paper it has become today as a tool of UNMO. This was evident from readers’ posting in Pusat Sejarah Rakyat’s facebook when PSR commemorated the Utusan strike on 20 July this year with a newspaper clipping of that time showing Said with other strike workers. In fact, Said had gleefully gone into Pusat Sejarah Rakyat’s facebook with the help of his grandson, and registered his “like”!

Said and I continued to dwell on the past, about Said’s great friendship with Lim Chin Siong. Recalling his passing on 5 February 1996, Said sighed and wished that if only Lim Chin Siong had lived to see today when the youth on both sides of the Causeway are stirring and moving to a new consciousness. Undoubtedly in early 1963 with Lim Chin Siong in charge of Barisan Sosialis and Said Zahari newly elected to head Partai Rakyat Singapura, this personal and political bond between these two men from the Chinese and Malay community respectively was too much of a threat to Lee Kuan Yew. Both men needed to be ruthlessly put away under Operation Cold Store on 2 February 1963.

In like manner, Said recalled his friendships with Ahmad Boestaman, the great Malay nationalist leader as well as A.M. Azahari of Brunei whose armed revolt provided the excuse for the British colonialists to launch Operation Cold Store under which we were all arrested.

Our conversation went on and on, to the present in Malaysia and Singapore. Said is buoyed by the recent developments and salutes the youth on both sides of the Causeway for giving us hope and cheers in our old age.

25 December 2012

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Lee Tse Tong

Lee Tse Tong was arrested on 8 October 1963. He was held under the Internal Security Act until November 1967. In that month, he was released after bringing a successful application for a writ ofhabeas corpus but was immediately rearrested under the ISA. He was then deprived of his citizenship on the grounds that he had no proof that he was Singapore-born. In February 1968, he was served with a Banishment Order and transferred to Queenstown Remand Prison 'awaiting deportation'. Since 1975, when the Banishment Order was dropped, Lee has been held under the Internal Security Act. He has now been imprisoned without trial for more than 16 years.

A former secretary of the now banned Singapore Busworkers' Union, Lee Tse Tong was elected to the Singapore Assembly for the Barisan Sosialis in the elections of 1963. His case has been taken up by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). At its conference in Caracas in 1979 the IPU passed a resolution urging the Singapore Government 'to release Mr Lee Tse Tong immediately and unconditionally'.


http://singaporerebel.blogspot.sg/2007/02/political-detention-in-singapore.html


Chng Min Oh

English translation of speech here:
http://suaramjb1.blogspot.sg/2013/02/voice-of-victims-abolish-isa-now-author.html

Chng Min Oh was arrested on 3 August 1970. He was Chairman of the Goldsmiths Employees Union. He was held in solitary confinement for the first six months of his detention. In August 1978, he was transferred to Whitley Road Holding Centre for interrogation. While undergoing interrogation at Whitley Road, he was assaulted and forced to pour his urine over himself. In protest at these conditions, he went on a hunger strike. By late September 1979, he had lost 40 pounds in weight and both he and Ho Koon Kiang, another prisoner who had been subjected to similar treatment, were transferred to Changi Prison Hospital. Chng Min Oh later complained of multiple injuries including damaged ears resulting in a loss of hearing. In November 1978, Chng was returned to the Moon Crescent Detention Centre.

http://singaporerebel.blogspot.sg/2007/02/political-detention-in-singapore.html

Michael Fernandez

How the press reported it :

STRAITS TIMES - A report with no byline and a glaring inaccuracy. "Operation Cold Store was the British colonial government's sweep of communist elements in both countries." With that sentence, Lee Kuan Yew and Tunku Abdul Rahman dodge culpability. Note: Many detainees of Operation Coldstore remained in detention even after Singapore's independence in 1965.

LIANHE ZAOBAO - It depicts Coldstore as a joint operation between Singapore, Malaysia and British Colonial governments. And ends with a quote to abolish the ISA, which was the rallying call at yesterday's event.

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Read more :

HARD TRUTHS - Too Hard To Swallow

HARTAL- 66 Years After

A renewed call from the past to abolish ISA

Democracy and human rights in deep freeze: the legacy of Operation Cold Store

PAP mis-AIMed, faces blowback

by Alex Au

21 December 2012

I am a little surprised the story about town council computer and financial systems is not getting as much traction as I think it deserves. Perhaps with the Michael Palmer affair, workers going on strike and climbing cranes, and now a school principal being investigated for corruption, it just got buried by more attention-grabbing news.

However, my sense is that this has the potential to be a big story, causing enormous damage to the People’s Action Party (PAP). Possibly too, the Workers’ Party knows more than they are revealing.

From what has been disclosed so far, it shows the PAP to be a party that is determined to leave a trail of destruction, crippling the state if need be — to hell with the citizens! — should it be forced to leave power. It is contrary to the spirit of democracy and any shred of good governance.

It began with the government trying to be too smart for its own good. The Ministry of National Development said, in its latest Town Council Management Review, that Aljunied-Hougang Town Council (AHTC) got a red score — the worst band — over its management of arrears of service and conservancy charges. Its score for corporate governance was shown in the review as “pending”, with the explanation that “Aljunied-Hougang TC has yet to submit their auditor’s Management Letter, which is material to the banding of the corporate governance indicator”. Everyone knew what the message was:  that the Workers’ Party, which runs AHTC, is incompetent. Many in the PAP must have been gleeful for the chance to take this potshot at the Workers’ Party.

On 14 December 2012, Sylvia Lim, chair of AHTC  — she is also chair of the Workers’ Party — issued a statement that attributed difficulties faced by ATHC to the sudden withdrawal of the provider of computer and financial systems just after the party took over the running of the town council. She said:

After the [general election] in May 2011, the Town Council was served with a notice that the Town Council’s Computer and Financial Systems will be terminated with effect from 1 August 2011 due to material changes to the membership of the Town Council. This Computer and Financial Systems had been developed jointly by the 14 PAP Town Councils over a period of more than 15 months but was in January 2011 sold to and leased back from M/s Action Information Management Pte Ltd, a company which was dormant. This effectively meant that ATHC had to develop its own equivalent systems, in particular a Financial System, within a 2 months’ timeframe.

– http://www.ahtc.org.sg/ahtc/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/TCMR-Media-Release.pdf

A few days later Action Information Management (AIM) tried to defend itself by saying that it would have continued to extend the lease of the systems to the town council if WP had asked for it.

But yesterday, AIM’s chairman S. Chandra Das said in a letter to The Straits Times: “If AHTC had asked for a longer extension, AIM would have similarly agreed. However, after the second extension, AHTC did not ask for further extension.”

The first extension was until Aug 31 and the next, until Sept 9, added Mr Chandra Das.

Last night, Ms Lim said the first extension was achieved through an intermediary, who said the extra month had to be “fought for”.

She said: “We were certainly not given to understand that there could be any extension after this.”

– Straits Times, 18 Dec 2012, WP, computer firm argue over lease

The name Chandra Das would ring a bell: he was a former PAP member of parliament. In fact, it was soon revealed that AIM”s three directors were all former PAP MPs: Chandra Das, Chew Heng Ching and Lau Ping Sum.

Then — I think it was TR Emeritus which broke the story — it was revealed that AIM had a paid-up capital of only $2. Chandra Das and Lau each owned one share (of $1). The company’s registered office (at 36 Robinson Road #17-01, City House, Singapore 068877) was also a shell office.

As Sylvia Lim pointed out, the questions have to be: Why did the PAP Town Councils relinquish ownership of the computer and financial system, and how much did they sell it to AIM for? It was probably developed with taxpayer money by the 14 town councils, with much input and support from tax-payer-paid town council staff, unless — and it is hard to believe — the PAP paid for the development of the system.

What is even more curious is that the service agreement with AIM allows AIM to terminate the contract with only one month’s notice should there be a material change to the composition of the town council. As Sylvia Lim asked: “How is it in the public interest to have such a thing?” (ibid).

The carcass smells even worse than a week’s garbage lying in the hot sun.

Any half-lucid observer will see it for what it is:  an attempt by the PAP to plant booby-traps to snare opposition parties when they win a constituency and take over the town council. But they have done this in ways that raise troubling questions about the possibility of breach of trust.

• What price was it sold to AIM for? How was that price arrived at?
• Was there competitive tendering?
• In discharging their duty as town councillors, how is acting for partisan advantage in the best interest of the residents of the constituency? Shouldn’t they be acting to ensure the continuation of the town council systems?

If a financial controller of a company created some mechanism that ensured that, upon his departure from the company, the financial system of the company would break down, would he not be prosecuted for criminal breach of trust?

If, as they claim, our Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau and Attorney-General’s Chambers are independent institutions, we should expect them to mount an investigation immediately.

Aljunied was a PAP ward before May 2011. I assume it was among the 14 PAP Town Councils that participated and paid for the development of the system. If so, there should be information in its accounts indicating how much its share of costs was. There should also be records in its minutes of meetings from before and around January 2011 pertaining to the sale of the system to AIM. Surely, PAP-run Aljunied would have been consulted and its agreement sought.

This is why I think the Workers’ Party may know more than it is currently prepared to reveal.

On the other hand, maybe the records were deleted before the handover. But if so, the question becomes: Wouldn’t such tampering of accounts and minutes of meetings be illegal?

The PAP likes to cast itself as a party of scrupulous integrity. On this matter, they have a lot to answer for, or they’ll be seen as the opposite: foul and dirty. This is not a case which it can dismiss as the mistake of one lone PAP person; the moves they made involved nearly all PAP MPs in the town councils across the board.

Reforming PAP under Kuan Yew is not possible : Dr Poh Soo Kai

.. But after Kuan Yew's death, there may a fight within the PAP. At the moment, there are 3 factions in the PAP..."

A founding member of the PAP and a former political prisoner of 17 years, Dr Poh Soo Kai offers a perspective of the history of Singapore's struggle for independence and gives his views on the current PAP Government and the recent strikes by bus drivers. Recorded in Malaysia.



  Dr Poh Soo Kai and a History of the Malayan-Singapore Left

Video : Exiled dissident Tan Wah Piow speaks

Article and video by publichouse.sg

“You can resign and go to SBS,” the drivers were told

by Vincent Wijeysingha

The government has acted in our name as is its duty. It purged an industrial action and returned the nation to business as usual. The bus drivers from SMRT recklessly involved themselves in an illegal strike after refusing to bring their grievances to management or their trade union or seek the assistance of the Manpower Ministry. Twenty-nine have been deported, one hundred and fifty more issued a police warning and the five ringleaders will be tried. Industrial harmony has been restored, the tripartite relationship upheld, and public disorder averted.

As fortunate citizens of this prosperous and stable nation, we can heave a sigh of relief. Those refractory foreigners got what they deserved. How dare they come to our land - which our government built from a fishing village - and demand such indulgences as suitable accommodation and an equal wage. Nobody promised them any of that: if they aren’t happy here they can fuck off back home.

There are too many damn foreigners here as it is. The come here to steal our jobs, marry our women, clog the trains, explode housing prices, beat up taxi drivers, and drive Ferraris too fast. They dance outside Wisma Atria and jam the staircases at Lucky Plaza. Oh, and they smell. And talk too loudly. In strange accents.

In short, they are audacious and unpleasant. Oh, and they smell. Did I mention that? They do. And they talk too loudly.

Twenty-nine PRC workers deported means trains that are twenty-nine odoriferous bodies less crowded.

Except that they mostly built the train stations in the last twenty years. And the condos. And the roads. And dug the drains. And sweep the streets and collect the garbage. And keep one million households clean, children fed, grandparents minded, dogs walked, and laundry washed.

All at a cost so miniscule that our taxes can be kept low. And investment can pour in. And we can go to work in comfort, walk clean streets, and come home to clean houses and clean children.

What price do we pay for these smelly philanthropists?

What price do they pay?

Well, we found out this week. If we are to take a position on what could yet be the most divisive moment of the decade, we should know what we are talking about.

The 25 November Baidu website post of one of the ringleaders soon to be tried for instigating the strike bespeaks a frustrated, despairing man. A man feeling the weight of the unfairness of treatment by a large government-controlled transit company.

 “This is not just a labour dispute, it was an illegal strike,” intoned the responsible minister solemnly at his press conference on Saturday. But what if the law is unfair? What if the law makes it so difficult as to be impossible for a worker to claim fair treatment? What if the law masks an even greater injustice? What then?

I exonerate the minister since he is acting within the constraints imposed upon him. Constraints built into the system over decades. Constraints precisely designed to neutralise anyone who dares to ask for respect and dignity. We are, after all, economic digits, and the minister played out the role that history and the PAP high command has laid out for him. He is, in many senses, an economic digit too.

But should we stand by as our fellow workers, whether born upon this soil or not, are given a wage increase of thirteen cents an hour? Are paid less for doing the same work? Are told to go and join another company if they are unhappy with their pay and conditions? Are made to sleep in overcrowded, bed bug-infested dormitories?

Let us examine the facts of the case as they have unfolded, not over this last week since the bus drivers struck, but over almost six months since their contracts were rewritten. For then we will learn that this was not a wildcat strike by a few unreasonable, demanding, ungrateful ringleaders but the last wretched act in a series of grievances which management and the trade union congress resolutely refused to address but which, if they had, might have averted the strike and prevented so many workers (and their families) from having to pay the ultimate price of losing their jobs.

Some several weeks before July, the workers were informed that their contracts were to be varied effective July. Salaries were to be revised upwards. However, the working week was also to be lengthened from five to six days. Recalculating their raised wages against their longer working hours meant an actual drop in wages.

Additionally, their six day work week did not mean working Days 1 to 6 and then resting on the seventh. It meant being allocated a rest day at any time during each seven day period: Thus they could be off on Monday, work twelve days straight and then be off next on the Sunday of the second week.

This did not include the already existing practice of not paying the drivers for the time it takes to prepare their vehicles prior to starting their first run of the day and servicing their vehicles after the end of each shift. Workers estimated that SMRT sucked at least one hour of unpaid work per shift from each driver. That’s six hours per week, or $150 per month. Which is 750 Renmimbi: a week’s wages in China.

Now, bear in mind that these changes were not negotiated with the workers. They were simply announced. In fact, at some depots, management merely posted a note on the canteen notice board.

The workers, both foreign and local, became unhappy, as necessarily they would. They spoke to their management. Some wrote a petition; some approached The Online Citizen; others came to the SDP for help.

Nothing could be achieved in the face of corporate and government obduracy. As The Online Citizen wrote on 1 October, “All negotiations with SMRT’s HR have failed as well. In a closed door meeting with the SMRT drivers, the Senior Operations Manager of SMRT told the drivers, “You can resign and go to SBS”.”

The matter was delegated to Ong Ye Kung, the failed PAP parliamentary candidate for Aljuneid in 2011. He was in somewhat of a difficult position being, in addition to Deputy Secretary-General of the NTUC, also, in the tripartite format that has served the administration so well these last thirty years, a director of the Board of SMRT. Mr Ong resigned in September without disclosing his reasons: perhaps the conundrum was beyond his intellectual limits.

The matter of the SMRT drivers was pushed onto the back burner. The government ignored the reports in the online press. Frustrated drivers even approached a lawyer for legal advice. The workers eventually struck because even the trifling $25 pay increase wasn’t yet in their latest wage packet.

The reason I am acquainted with this sequence of events, which SMRT and the Manpower Ministry has pretended didn’t come to pass and on which the mainstream press has dutifully kept silent, is because the SDP’s Community Service Unit was involved with some of the workers from before their new contracts came into force and had been liaising through a third party with the petition writers.

I am moved to write this note because in those frustrated Chinese bus drivers, I see my own fate. The powers that govern the allocation of resources, that is, governments and corporations, have never conceded better pay and conditions for workers without a fight, sometimes violent and bloody confrontations merely to exact such simple concessions as a living wage and safe working conditions. I have never believed that I can get on in life without a collective attitude to society. Each man and woman contributing their skills and time to make a nation hum. Capital and labour working together, to use the phraseology of a past age. So, in the fate of some workers who, in the intransigence of great power, had nowhere else to turn except to withdraw their labour, their only power against power, as it were, I see my own fate as a worker.

No doubt, there are some who will accuse me of politicking, of turning this into an opportunity to ‘bash’ the government. It is a convenient accusation and one which, ultimately, benefits no one but those who would prefer that we remain economic digits, rather than self-respecting citizens of a free society.

To use that time-honoured word so hallowed by the PAP, I will be accused by some of trying to “politicise” the issue. The first prime minister’s formulation, which writer Catherine Lim found to her cost, that to involve oneself in politics one must join a political party, is both self-serving and dishonest. All citizens, indeed all people, through the very fact of their existence, are responsible for the political structures, economic conditions and social framework of their community. The word politics stems from the Greek for ‘city’. Living in a city, a community, makes us all responsible for its functioning. In Athens, the cradle of democracy, it was not just a responsibility but a duty.

And so, as I have watched events unfold over the last week and heard utterance upon utterance from official sources whose proximity to the truth has been stretched beyond sight, I ask you to consider the key underlying issues inherent in this sorry affair.

I start first with the anti-foreigner sentiments which I think are important because they have thinly-veiled the debate this last week. The levels of xenophobia in our country have been rising exponentially over these last twenty years. I know what xenophobia is. I spent long years in the UK, itself facing a xenophobic assault by those threatened by the presence of foreigners. I spent much time in Australia and in Germany where I saw the same processes unfolding. And at home in Singapore the same trends are emerging.

But have we stopped to consider from where our antipathy comes? Have we wondered why the Singaporean Chinese approach their mainland cousins in so hostile a manner? Why Singaporean Indians have become increasingly antipathetic to those from the subcontinent? Could we not, in our opposition and antagonism to the immigration and foreign labour policies, which we have never had a chance to debate adequately, be railing against the weakest elements in the enterprise, the migrants themselves? Could we not, in our powerlessness against government policy, be attacking he who is easiest to attack?

Every day in the online media, in social discourse, in face-to-face interaction we rail against foreigners. But organise a forum to discuss ways of communicating our displeasure to the government and exploring policy alternatives, and only a hundred people turn up. My view is that we feel powerless and can scarce believe that the government would listen to us. And why should it? Have we ever given them cause to recognise our views as significant and important? We cave in at every opportunity. We acquiesce in each new policy. We watch in silence as cabinet ministers tell us from on high that, despite our opposition to immigration policy, it will remain in place and that we will have to like it or lump it.

In my view, the root of our xenophobia is not our hatred of foreigners. In a sense, all of us, with the exception of our Malay brothers and sisters, are foreigners on this island. Our ancestors all came here, much like the SMRT drivers, in search of a better life. We have grown up exposed to and sharing in cultures totally different to ours. How can we, so outward-looking and globalised, hate foreigners?

Our Indians and Malays swear in Chinese languages! Our Chinese eat fish head curry at Race Course Road with their fingers, halal mooncakes and char kuay teow are freely available, and the Eurasian and Peranakan communities, in my view the best and most colourful elements of our community, are cultural deposits not found anywhere else in the world. In short, in our very beings we are internationalist, globalised and open to diverse cultural forms.

So, we must look elsewhere for the explanations. My view, which I ask you to consider, is that what we are really opposed to is the government’s immigration policy, not the beneficiaries of that policy. We are no more averse to peoples of other races flocking to our island now that our parents and grandparents were three and four generations ago. And if we cannot find some way to communicate our views to the government in such a way that it will listen, then our society is on a collision course with the political equivalent of the Andromeda Galaxy. Why? Because a society resting precariously upon such unhappiness, such alienation, cannot remain peaceful, stable and productive.

Many have expressed outright xenophobic views about the Chinese bus drivers. “Go home, Ah Tiong,” seems to be a popular sentiment. I ask you, in this note, to reflect with me on the wider reasons underlying their action and, so, to clarify what this is all about. Because if you do not, if we do not, we will have missed another opportunity to grow up and take our place in a democratic, free society, not languishing in the infancy of our nation, still content that Big Brother will do our thinking and our value setting for us.

In the light of the inevitable accusations that I suspect may come my way, allow me to share my thoughts on this lamentable demonstration of state power which has attacked the system at its strongest potential point, that is, its labour force, and at its most vulnerable justification, the stability of our economy and its amenability to foreign investment. If I have at the very least got you to ask some questions we have yet left unasked, then I think I can withstand the accusation.

There are three issues to look at.

One is the ‘At All Costs’ argument. It is a rhetoric founded upon the crisis mentality that the government posited in the early years of its existence: that Singapore, bereft of even limited natural resources, lately shorn of its hinterland, and now finding itself in a hostile ‘Malay sea’, could little afford such fripperies as human dignity and joy. Oh no, oh no, it was said, if we let up on our eternal vigilance, if we cast doubts on the probity of our administration, if we slack for even a second, we would be mired in perdition, that favourite word of the apocalyptic Lee Kuan Yew.

And unfortunately, we bought the rhetoric, ceding to our leaders more power than was appropriate to their offices and slumping into a state of intellectual inertia from which only our access to alternative media, books and journals is lately releasing us. So, our leaders consistently voted themselves the highest ministerial salaries in the world to afford mansion homes in Second Avenue and Binjai Park; second homes at Nassim Jade; foreign education for their children; overseas luxury flats in Cambridgeshire or the London Docklands. Meanwhile, the wages of our people flatlined at the middle and decayed at the lower levels and housing and healthcare prices skyrocketed while cabinet ministers consistently tell us to hang on just a little longer for that Golden Age that is just within sight. To our shame, we stomached the oratory, even as our leaders own lives showed a very different outcome. We became hostages to the very discourse of success.

The second issue to consider is the proposition, invented and propagated by the PAP, that Singapore has a fine administrative structure designed purposefully for the wellbeing of the people. We heard it this week when Tan Chuan Jin, acting Manpower Minister, assured us that legitimate processes exist for the settlement of labour concerns and disputes, and that if only the Chinese bus drivers had availed of them, they would have avoided the iron fist of the law that slammed upon their backs early Monday morning.

This is a patent fiction. And the minister knows it, which makes his dishonest pronouncements, all the more shameful. He and his immediate predecessors have, for the last eight years been advised and informed of the structures of the Ministry of Manpower that militate against fair treatment of workers, particularly foreign workers, particularly low-waged foreign workers, particularly low-waged, less-educated foreign workers.

In these last eight years, the activist groups, HOME and TWC2, have bombarded the Manpower Ministry with report upon report and, literally, countless complaints about labour processes that not only disadvantage foreign, low-waged workers but in some instances result in their being maimed or killed.

Tan Chuan Jin and his colleagues are comprehensively aware of this. His behaviour over this last week has shown him to be a man either systematically incapable of telling the truth or of grasping the realities of his department. I posit neither proposal: I merely offer them for public interrogation. (And perhaps a response from the minister himself.)

"There are appropriate grievance handling processes in place, and workers are advised to speak to their HR and management to discuss and resolve any employment-related issues amicably, rather than take matters into their own hands," the ministry pronounced.

In a scathing article on his blog, Yawning Bread, on 1 December, the incisive and, as usual, erudite Alex Au made just this point. He said, “The government pretends there is a process for labour justice, but there isn’t and its absence sows the seed for future instability.” My own stint at TWC2 as its Executive Director and my close dealings with HOME’s Jolovan Wham and other labour activists evidences this to be so.

And as I have narrated the six-month long duration of this deplorable saga, the workers did try every means at their disposal to resolve their concerns. They were told to go and work for SBS. They did not have adequate processes as the minister claims.

Another poorly-advised government placeman, Cedric Foo, Chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Transport, piously said that workers should follow due process. "I think work stoppages are not the way to go, especially in the case of essential services, it shouldn't be the course of action since there are unintended consequences - commuters face disruptions and they are not even involved in the dispute," he said.

Except that the workers did follow “due process”. But they all ended in a blind alley. For six months they tried to talk to anyone who would listen and the government ignored them. For Mr Foo to now pretend that they did not use the means available to them – and the concomitant, albeit silent accusation, that they were precipitate and reckless – is again, I ask you to speculate, either foolish, unintelligent, or just plain uninformed. Mr Foo will need to search his conscience and perhaps if his strength finally finds him, he may wish to respond.

“Workers should go through their unions if they have union representation, or go to the MOM or the Industrial Arbitration Court,” he added. In Sunday’s papers we read that the NTUC thoroughly supported the government’s position on the strikes. We also know, because that is not something that could be hidden, that the relevant Deputy Secretary-General of the NTUC deputised to deal with the workers’ grievances, faced a significant conflict of interest. Mr Foo may wish to explain how the workers might have been expected to obtain redress from such a shamelessly armlocked set-up. Again, I invite him to respond.

"The MOM takes the workers' actions very seriously," said yet another spokesperson. From my adumbration above of the events that unfolded, not over five days, I remind you, but over almost six months, MOM only took their actions seriously when they had the potential to challenge the government in a very public way. When the workers were content to carry their concerns through Mr Foo’s ‘due process’, the government, the corporation and the trade union simply ignored them. For Mr Foo and General Tan to now pretend that they did not follow ‘due process’ is, at the very least, disingenuous.

The new SMRT CEO, Desmond Kuek, replacing Saw Paik Hwa, who left wealthy but in disgrace some months ago, returned from holiday and quickly got his script right. He joined his political masters in repeating ad nauseam that SMRT took a serious view of strikes and the drivers should have used the proper channels to raise their concerns and feedback. “There are open channels of communications with all our Service Leaders (SLs), such as regular townhall sessions and staff dialogues," he is quoted as saying.

I need not repeat to him that they did try all the channels open to them. None worked, as he well knows. The Online Citizen reported way back in September:

On 8th August 2012, a group of SMRT drivers petitioned the Union Chief Lim Swee Say demanding reinstatement of their previous five day workweek and salary package. Their negotiations have reached a stalemate.

I spoke to three drivers from SMRT on the 25th of September and they tell the same story that they have taken a forced pay cut since May 2012. According to the drivers, the Secretary General and Executive Committee of NTUC agreed with SMRT Management to accept the unfavourable proposal. Under the new scheme, the drivers said that they have been taking home about $400 – $500 less each month. It is estimated that each driver will lose in excess of $3500 in earnings from May to December 2012.

All their attempts to negotiate a fair wage have come to a naught. The drivers have also petitioned the Prime Minister, who then referred the drivers to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). The MOM in turn referred them to the Land Transport Authority (LTA), only for LTA to bounce this matter back to MOM. After six weeks, they are back to where they started – MOM has referred this back to NTUC.

Now, the third issue we must address if we are going to make any sense of the matter is the methodology of the government when confronted with challenge or dispute.

As I have established above, the processes that exist at the administrative level to respond to labour concerns are a chimera at best, a delusion or a lie at worst. So we can safely mark down General Tan, Mr Foo and their colleagues’ interpretation of things. They may never have taken a walk through their grievance processes but I assure them that I have. And Jolovan Wham has. And Kenneth Soh of TWC2 has. And Alex Au has. And they will all, to a man, tell you that they only crawl into seeming life when pushed and prodded against their will. Read the numerous reports and press statements and personal stories on their websites and you will know this too.

As Alex Au, who has become very familiar with labour processes through his involvement at TWC2 said in the same blog post I referred to above, “The government therefore is misleading the public by suggesting that it had processes to help. It does not. Our mainstream media do our public no service by not putting their brains to use before printing slavishly what the government says.” I have no option but to join Mr Au in his challenge to the authorities and I issue a new one: Justify the statements you have made in this last week or remain totally vulnerable to the accusation that you have been economical with the truth.

Minister Tan Chuan Jin, pretended to a great deal of ignorance when he said at his press conference on Saturday,

SMRT must take steps to ensure that such severe breakdowns in labour relations should not happen again. We all know that there are statutory requirements that companies need to fulfil and these are expected of all companies but there are also many non-statutory practices which frankly any good company should fulfil as well and this includes how you manage your staff, employees, how you engage them and how you look after them, looking after their welfare and this includes both local and foreign employees and frankly it is common sense, companies are expected to do that.

The issue is really why did this happen? Why was it allowed to fester? We do understand that the channels of communication are there. So the question is, did it filter upwards? Did it not filter upwards? And why not? And those are things we have to examine."

I am afraid I have to tell him his protestations are mealy-mouthed. The nation, through the good offices of The Online Citizen, has known about this matter since September. Mr Tan cannot claim ignorance now: he comes across as either incompetent or not telling the whole truth. I invite him to clarify.

Let us turn then to how the government does in fact deal with dispute? It locks people up as it did this week. It deports them or refuses to allow them back in, as Dr Ang Swee Chai found, or revokes their citizenship if that is possible, and Tan Wah Piow found this to his cost. It tortures people. It bankrupts people or silences them through the threat of defamation suits. It writes threatening letters as Ng Eng Hen did last week. It fabricates evidence – as Dr Vasoo did twenty years ago – to deprive people of their living. Lest I be accused of fabricating this, I draw evidence from the fact that this accusation has been published abroad in my colleague, Chee Soon Juan’s book, Democratically Speaking, available these last three months and against which Dr Vasoo has not raised a whimper.

This is its modus operandi, refined over fifty years. If General Tan knows this not, he knows very little. As his party founder, Lee Kuan Yew, once said so shamefully, “repression is like making love: it’s always easier the second time round.” Indeed he should know.

Now couple that climate of fear and retribution with the PAP’s remaking of itself as an institution synonymous and indistinguishable from the nation itself. Couple that with a media entirely controlled by the government as to function simply and solely as its mouthpiece. Couple that with a 100% success rate at its defamation suits. Couple that with a trade union movement so closely tucked up in bed with both the government and the corporate world as to be largely interchangeable one from the other; Mr Ong Ye Kung being the best example. Couple that with a Societies Act that has phenomenal power to regulate the extent and conduct of civil society. And couple that with the universities who are so anxious to walk the line laid for them by the government that they have not used their talents on even a single occasion to point out the flaws in the system and their damage to innocent, decent citizens.

And crown the whole sorry theatre of absurdities with Whitley Road Detention Centre and the marks upon their psyche that Vincent Cheng and Teo Soh Lung and Chia Thye Poh and more than a thousand victims of the PAP still carry and you arrive at what, this week, Alex Au called a petitionary state and Chan Heng Chee once termed a “petitionary political culture”.

It is not a culture of equals. It is a culture of supplicant and benefactor. The polity that the PAP has habituated us to is one where our just deserts can only come from a Cabinet in a good mood or facing a General Election.

Again, if General Tan knows this not, he knows very little.

If at this point in this limited essay, I have at least captured your attention, if not agreement, allow me to go further and examine the role of trade unions.

The middle 1800s were a time like no other in the history of the modern world. The widespread availability of new materials like steel; the rapid invention of machines; the discovery of electricity; the harnessing of steam and coal; and the expansion of raw material availability and markets in the colonial enterprise gave rise to what historians have come to call the Industrial Revolution.

The new factories divided work processes into minute tasks such that the craftsmen of yesteryear disappeared and a new phenomenon arose, the factory worker, a deskilled, unlettered operative contributing only a small part of the whole production process. There were no more guilds of craftsmen but a huge mass of workers, divided one from the other by favours and bribes. Professionalisation and machinery gave rise to economies of scale in the primary goods market: the farms and ranches. The capital accumulated from these new industrial and farming ventures created great wealth. A new world of exploitation and estrangement, what Marx termed anomie, was born.

Gradually, as the exploitation of workers increased, so did the waking up of these workers, aided by social workers and political activists. Trade unions began to be formed to campaign and later negotiate better wages and healthier and safer working conditions.

Pope Leo XIII became alarmed at what he saw as the increasing exploitation of the common people. With the assistance of Cardinal Manning, the English bishop who placed himself so closely on the side of the workers, the Pope penned a letter to the world entitled Rerum Novarum, where he said,

Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.

The trade union movement, drawing from the support of all right-thinking people gradually came to occupy a central place between capital and labour, ensuring that labour was disciplined and capital was inclusive and not given to cutting corners at the expense of the workers’ wellbeing.

The situation in Singapore in the post-Second World War period mirrored the situation earlier in the west. Trade unions rose up to safeguard workers against the caprice of colonial entrepreneurs and their Asian brothers-in-arms. Lee Kuan Yew, a young ambitious and, as history has shown, thoroughly unscrupulous lawyer, rode to prominence on the back of the beleaguered unions.

In office, as Michael Fernandez and Loh Kah Seng showed in a recent paper, Lee entirely destroyed the trade union movement and then remade it in the form in which we see today, a form propagated by puny plenipotentiaries like Lim Swee Say.

What, fundamentally, does a trade union do? It does not exist to manage supermarkets and chalets, good though these amenities are in themselves. At its basic and best, trade unions protect workers precisely like the ones at the centre of this episode. Speaking on behalf of workers with one voice, they hold management to account, they prevent arbitrary use of management and state power to exploit and to cheat, they guard against exploitation.

The Singapore unions and their Congress reneged on their historical duty to these workers. Feeble, quisling functionaries, they betrayed their workers and sided with a corporation that sought to pay its workers less for working more and then joined in pounding them into the ground when they took matters into their own hands to do what Lim Swee Say and his lamentable deputies could not do.

There is another element which is equally alarming as the behaviour of Tan, Lim et al who, as I said, can be exonerated for they are only acting out their parts in return for handsome salaries, chauffeurs and status. They are frail administrators to whom the inducement of a generous monetary exchange is sufficient to buy their compliance.

It is the online behaviour of my fellow Singaporeans which saddens me equally. People have speculated whether the drivers’ claims were true or not or whether they were excessive and unreasonable. Should we or should we not allow strikes and particularly in the essential services which hold up and inconvenience our lives. We should get rid of these foreigners and employ more locals so that they can’t hold ‘us’ hostage. Surprisingly, some are even angry that their action resulted in rapid remedial action by the authorities. And of course, taking shelter in the safest of all propositions, some have cried that the law is the law and no one should break it.

Nowhere, except among our more gifted commentators such as Andrew Loh and Alex Au have I heard the harder questions asked and challenged laid. Nowhere did I hear anyone ask how their families were coping with a salary increase of thirteen cents an hour. Nowhere did I hear the cry raised that we should at least wait to hear the whole story before moving so decisively to charge these men and then imprison them awaiting trial even though they are no danger to society and will not, cannot, abscond if bailed.

This is unbecoming of us. It is not worthy of us. Their wellbeing is our wellbeing; we cannot presume to enjoy life when the very enjoyments we take for granted have been afforded to us by the workers whom we are content to see paid so little and bullied so much when they, like Oliver Twist, ask for more. We owe them a bit more than that.

Workers rights are indivisible. We cannot ask for concessions on our own behalf but ignore or deny them to others because they happen to come from a different country. To use another hackneyed phrase, we are in this together. I can’t drive my own bus to work powered by petrol I processed myself on a road I laid myself. I can’t build my own office building or office furniture. I don’t cook my own food in the canteen or wash up the tableware.

If, as fellow workers, joint participants in this enterprise we call society, we cannot see this elementary truth, we have a lot of learning yet to do. But do it we must, because make no mistake about it, our government will have on hesitation in dealing with us in the same way it has dealt with the Chinese bus drivers. None whatsoever. Do not rest content that the PAP carries a torch for the Singaporean worker; it does not.

We cannot let these Chinese workers take the rap for asking only for fair employment. And we cannot agree to their punishment when all the processes that exist in our name denied them the basic right to have their grievances heard. Throughout history, concessions have only been won against corporations and governments when they have been demanded. If you think that the right to an eight-hour day, a forty-hour week, a one hour lunch break, and basic safety and health standards were given to you on a platter proffered by Lim Swee Say and his friends, you are very severely mistaken. These Chinese workers, by doing what we have been cowed from doing ourselves so long, have in fact widened the democratic space for us. And in time to come, when we are less afraid to think for ourselves, we will come to thank them.

The government’s final response on the matter, notwithstanding the trial of the five that is to take place imminently, inadvertently admitted that the workers’ grievances were all entirely well-founded. It acknowledged that communication channels are poor, grievance procedures are improper, management and HR policies are wanting, and the accommodation of the drivers is substandard. It also said the paltry wage increases and the differentials should be revisited.

Desmond Quek, admitted, “It is unfortunate that this incident has happened. It shows that more needs to be done by Management to proactively manage and engage our Service Leaders (SLs)." Indeed

And as my description of the six-month history of this affair above has shown, my accusation of inertia, documented by The Online Citizen, is equally well-founded. This being the case, the government position that the workers deserve to be expelled, warned or tried is misplaced and unfair. It has no right to do now that it has admitted itself that their grievances were real.

Speaking for myself, as a citizen, as a worker, and not as a member of any organisation with which I am associated, I support the strike by the 184 Chinese SMRT bus drivers. They took to the picket line only because the union, the corporation and the government singularly ignored their pleas. If that means I contravene the provisions of the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act, then so be it. Someone has to tell the truth. These workers’ plight is not a situation I will pretend didn’t exist or should not have taken place or didn’t need to happen.

Rev James Minchin and our secret police

I have often been asked if there are government-planted informants in our opposition and civil society groups.

My reply : Yes, there are.

The following is based on my investigation as well as observations made by veteran opposition members :

Singapore's Internal Security Department (ISD) had for many decades infiltrated pro-Communist and left-wing groups. When Communism collapsed, surveillance were re-calibrated to focus on three areas - political opposition, government critics and religious organisations (in particular Islamic groups).

How to spot an informant :

1. He or she is likely to join your organisation not at its inception but sometime after your group is publicised, or after some public controversy.
2. He or she is likely to sign up alone.
3. He or she is likely to not display much inclination to your cause although they will complete any task you give them.
4. He or she is not vocal during discussions.
5. He or she may volunteer to take minutes, videos or photographs at meetings or events.
6. He or she is likely to have some connection to Ministry of Home Affairs either by way of a previous vocation or family ties.
7. He or she will not take part in anything that is remotely deemed illegal, such as a protest (outside of Speakers' Corner).

All that said, there is really no need to be alarmed or get paranoid. The informant's job is not to subvert your work, at least not directly. Their job is merely to relay information to their political masters. They are likely to be free-floaters and are paid per assignment.

- Martyn See

Here, former ISA detainee Teo Soh Lung spills the beans on Singapore's secret police.

Rev James Minchin and our secret police
by Teo Soh Lung
21 Nov 2012

When I wrote my last post (11 Nov 2012) on the deportation of Rev James Minchin, I did not even remotely think that two mainstream media (The Straits Times (ST) and TODAY) would on the following day, 12 Nov 2012, inform the world that Function 8 had, more than a year ago (allegedly in Aug 2011), contributed to the Singapore government’s dossier against him. How did ST and TODAY know it was Function 8 which had organised the forum at which Rev Minchin had allegedly said that “the rule of law was bypassed and corrupted in Singapore, and questioned the independence and integrity of the judiciary?” Incidentally, this oft repeated phrase “questioned [or sometimes “undermined”] the independence and integrity of the judiciary” irritates me. Is the judiciary our most fragile and sweetest smelling flower, our beautiful Keng Hua that blooms at midnight and survives only a few hours? Does it always need the government to protect its standing?

As stated in the press release of Function 8 of 19 Nov 2012, it did not invite anyone from the media to any of its forums. How did Janice Heng of ST and the anonymous reporter/s of TODAY know that it was at a Function 8 event that Rev Minchin uttered the alleged words MHA complained about? Did the reporters tail Rev Minchin throughout his stay in Singapore? Or did anonymous officers of MHA instigate the reporters to name Function 8? Was the media aiding and abetting MHA in its preparation for some sinister happening to Function 8? Even if the media intended to aid and abet MHA, shouldn’t its reporters check with Function 8 as to the truth of MHA’s allegations before publication? Compliance with this golden rule of good journalism is surely important when the alleged words had contributed to Rev Minchin’s traumatic expulsion from Singapore.

ST also reported that MHA said that Rev Minchin “had breached regulations on the involvement of foreigners in political talks by speaking at the forum without the necessary permit.” MHA did not cite the law but ST took it upon itself to proclaim that Rev Minchin should have had a “Miscellaneous Work Pass” before he commented on domestic politics. This implied that Function 8, if it was indeed the organiser of the forum, was in breach of the law more than a year ago. Function 8 had in its press release denied any breach of the law.

I don’t know if the ST had consulted its lawyers on this issue. I am very certain that ST is incorrect but the law is not my concern in this article. My concern is this: “How did MHA know that Rev James Minchin had said “the rule of law was bypassed and corrupted in Singapore, and questioned the independence and integrity of the judiciary”” at the forum? Which forum and where and when was it held? MHA must be precise when it makes serious allegations against a person who because of what he is alleged to have said, is deported.

We all know that MHA has the habit of bugging private conversations of citizens, non citizens and members of organisations. It is part of its job and we pay them. But I question the legitimacy of spying on lawful activities of people and organisations. Let me narrate one instance of MHA’s snooping of a respectable organisation, The Law Society of Singapore. 

In 1986, lawyers requisitioned an extraordinary general meeting to pass a resolution calling upon the government to withdraw the Legal Profession (Amendment) Bill 1986. One of the objectives of the bill was to oust the popularly elected Mr Francis Seow from being the society’s president. The meeting was held at a hotel and more than 400 lawyers attended. I was the mover of the motion which was passed almost unanimously. What surprised me subsequently was the revelation that the entire private proceedings was tape recorded by the Ministry of Law, presumably using the good services of MHA. Soon after the meeting,  

I was summoned before a parliamentary select committee at which the former prime minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew questioned me at length about my speech at the meeting. He showed me a transcript of my speech. I quote part of the report of that parliamentary committee. For easier reading, I have inserted “Prime Minister” and “Teo” in the questions and answers: 

Prime Minister: … Read your first paragraph. I have sidelined it for you to make it simple. “We call this meeting simply because …, read it? --- 

Teo: Mr Chairman, can I ask a question? This speech appears to me to have been a transcript of what I said at the EGM. And I would like to know how this manage to get into the hands of Mr Lee. 

Prime Minister: In the age of the tape recorder, you want to know how I am able to get a transcript of what you said? --- 

Teo: But how did the tape recorder get into the EGM room? 

Prime Minister: I am not interested, Miss Teo. I am interested in taking you through what you said. I didn’t make the speech. You did. If you didn’t make the speech ---?--- 

Teo: I don’t deny making the speech. 

Prime Minister: Let’s go through it? --- 

Teo: But I would like to know how that --- 

Prime Minister: How I was given the speech? By the Ministry of Law? 

Teo: So the Minister of Law had set a tape recorder in the room. 

Prime Minister: Yes, please. I assume that?--- 

Teo: Right, thank you. 

Prime Minister: Read it?--- 

Teo: Where do you want me to read?
…. 

Now that I have re-read the Minutes of Evidence recorded, I realise that some words may be missing and they are probably represented by ---. I recall that after asking several questions, the prime minister said “I am told that it was so easy to transcribe your speech”. 

Somehow this sentence is missing from the Minutes. But it does not matter. The prime minister did admit after some persuasion, that the Ministry of Law bugged the room. 

Once upon a time, in Eastern Europe, the secret police spied on everyone. For the secret police, it was a comfortable job (even if it was a loathsome job) that enabled them to live well. For those imprisoned as a result of their work, like the dissident Czech playwright, essayist and poet, Vaclav Havel who later became the president of Czechoslovakia, it was years of torture, loneliness and hardship in cold prison cells. 

In today’s Singapore and in the light of our earnest National Conversation, should the subject of how much money we spend on spies who invade the privacy of individuals and organisations that mean no harm to Singapore be discussed? Are such spies necessary for the progress of our country? Shouldn’t we open our minds about what foreigners say about us and debate with them when we do not agree with what they say instead of shutting them out of our country? Or should we tell the world that Singapore is not a developed country and does not believe in freedom of speech and the rule of law? And lastly, shall we tell the world that our judiciary is as fragile as our lovely keng hua, and has to be protected by the executive always?

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Fr James Minchin barred from entering Singapore
by Teo Soh Lung
11 Nov 2012

I said in an earlier post that “It would have been better for the government to demolish Minchin's arguments using its controlled media rather than to ban him. Its action has defeated itself. Its refusal to change will ultimately bring about its downfall.” 

The deportation of Fr James Minchin, author of “No Man is an Island” may have surprised somepeople in Singapore even though there had been deportations of lawyers assisting the SDP recently. In the 1990s, some of my friends and acquaintances were prevented from entering Singapore. There were occasions when I had waited at the airport for friends who were supposed to have arrived but failed to show up at the arrival hall. They were simply detained in a room, disallowed the use of the telephone and told to board the next flight home. A friend’s friend was interrogated for several hours by “old hands” of the secret police and departed to the last port of embarkation. In those days, there were no handy mobile phones and I wouldn’t know if they would have been allowed to call from their mobile phones and communicate with their friends who were waiting for them when they were denied entry. In those days, I was in no position to comment as there was no internet. So my friends and acquaintances were quietly deported. We simply felt the injustice of it all but did nothing, not that we can do more or anything for Fr James Minchin this time.
In the 1990s, the intimidation of the immigration police and I suspect, officers from the Internal Security Department was common. Anthony Lester QC was stopped at the airport and made to wait in a room while officers apparently checked if he had a right to return to see his former client.

A friend had her passport retained at the airport and told to report to the immigration department to retrieve it. She was interrogated for two days and told to cooperate in order to make life easier for them and for her. In the end, she had the sense to tell them that they can do whatever they want but that her passport did not belong to the Singapore government. 

In the 1990s, there was no internet. The inability of a person to enter Singapore means that his channel of communication with friends in Singapore would have ended more or less. Letters by snail mail would take time and effort and the chances of him losing contact with friends in Singapore would be natural. Today however, skype, emails, facebooks, youtube, twitter, cheap telephone calls and airflights etc would not cut off links between the deported and whoever he wishes to contact in Singapore. So what is the use of the Singapore government barring Fr James Minchin from entering Singapore? 

I can only think of two reasons. Old habits die hard and old methods that worked in the past are hard to discard. The temptation to remind individuals that the Singapore government is all powerful and that its power to deport anyone it deems acting against its interest (not necessarily against the interest of the country) cannot be undermined. That may be so but in today’s internet age, would the Singapore government like to preserve and project the old image that it is intolerant of criticisms, whether from Singaporeans or foreigners? I don’t know. I can only say that by preserving and projecting its old authoritarian image, it has failed to keep up with a changing society and may ultimately bring about its own downfall. It would have been better for the government to openly criticise what Fr Minchin said in the interview with Vincent Wijeysingha of the SDP using its mainstream media, issue press statements or call a press conference, (here I am assuming that this interview sparked the action taken by the immigration for it happened just a few weeks ago), listen to what others say about its views and that of Fr Minchin. After all, “No Man is an Island” was written in the 1980s and even Fr Minchin admits that Singapore is now a more open society. Surely such a view is a compliment to the PAP. But perhaps the government no longer has faith in its own mainstream media since it is always “slightly behind the curve” as Cherion George said recently.

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From the time Lee was a schoolboy, his aggressiveness has been the subject of comment. A story in circulation during the 1960s came from a family source. The eleven-year-old Harry asked an uncle for one of his canaries. The uncle refused an
d thought no more of it until he discovered the dead bird: the boy had pulled all its feathers out. 'If he could not have it, no one else would.' 'Lee would hit anybody' was the testimony of another old family friend.

Since coming to office, Lee has tended to indulge his instinct to bully and demolish. The need to flee from untenable situations have been reduced and dignified by the mechanism of physical or mental withdrawal. Power mostly removes the humiliation of being bested.

Within this dominant characteristic of aggression we may trace elements of rage, fear and self-aggrandisement. They may be proportionate to what arouses them, or they may carry an extra force derived from a previous injury. They make a negotiated settlement so much harder.

Two quite separate sources related the following story: 'A former Singapore newspaper proprietor, now retired, was having an audience with Lee and apparently not toeing the line. Lee leaned over, grabbed him by the collar, and said "I'm a thug, you're a thug, and as one to another, you'll do what I say."

- James Minchin. No Man Is An Island, 1987

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Further readings :

James Minchin refused entry to Singapore

Australian clergyman James Blundell Minchin interfered in domestic politics: MHA

Neither priest nor philanthropist welcome here

Group disappointed with press for naming it in reports