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11-04-2015, 01:40 PM
An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:
http://www.straitstimes.com/news/opi...alive-20150410 (http://www.straitstimes.com/news/opinion/more-opinion-stories/story/keeping-the-singapore-dream-alive-20150410)
I chanced upon this article in Friday's issue of the Straits Times, written by one Ho Kwon Ping, chairman of Banyan Tree and a former journalist. It is, in my opinion, a sub-standard and half-baked piece of crap, especially the part about Freedom of Information legislation, which I have pasted here for discussion purposes and to facilitate my criticisms in later posts. Nonetheless, I give Ho credit for having learned and applied the art of subliminal messages, no doubt from the editors of Straits Times and not the Far Eastern Review. Please feel free to chip in and do try to detect the hidden (but factually inaccurate) messages.
Rumpole of the Bailey
* Rumpole is the main character in a British TV series about an ageing London barrister who defends any and all clients (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpole_of_the_Bailey for more info). The author, who is an NUS law grad living and working abroad, chose this moniker to encourage an interest in legal issues because it does not just affect lawyers and their clients. The everyday layman needs to be informed of his rights and obligations and in the context of the “Little Red Dot” to avoid being talked down to or misled by their highly paid Ministers, including those that don’t have any portfolio, or civil servants with bad attitude and poor knowledge of the laws which they are supposed to be enforcing.
Quote:
When I first entered university some 40-plus years ago, the target of student activism was an obscure Latin expression, "In Loco Parentis" - which is a legal doctrine whereby certain institutions such as universities actually assume the legal powers of a parent.
The Singapore state has not assumed the same level of paternalism over its citizens, but it has come close, making decisions which might elsewhere be individual responsibilities. While this has been widely accepted in the past 50 years, a paternalistic governance culture may need to change to a collaborative model in the future. This is already happening with the abundance of debate about directions facing Singapore in the post-Lee Kuan Yew era. However, such a governance culture of participatory democracy can work only if the institutions of civil society can be actively engaged in decision-making.
For that to happen, civil society players need access to that lifeblood of robust discussion: freely available and largely unrestricted information. Information is the oxygen without which civil society players suffocate in their own ignorance and resort only to repetitive drumming of their causes, but without the ability to really engage with their own members, with other players, or with government. Access to information is an existential imperative for civil society to perform its functions responsibly and knowledgeably.
The currently unequal access to information is called "information asymmetry" by academics, and one of the reasons all governments are averse to sharing information is not just because of the sensitivity of secrets, but because information is power, and asymmetry between seeker and owner of information shapes their relative power relationship.
To rectify this imbalance, some civil society activists have called for a Freedom of Information Act or FOIA. This would require open access to and declassification of all government archives after 25 to 30 years, and almost unfettered access to information about oneself at any time.
So should Singapore simply adopt a FOIA? Just joining the bandwagon is not by itself meaningful. Of the 99 countries which have FOIA legislation are such beacons of liberal democracy as Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe, China, Pakistan, Thailand, Russia, Yemen, and all the "Stan's" of Central Asia. The reputations of these countries for good governance are so questionable that one must wonder whether their own FOIA are actually devices to smoke out and track potential dissidents.
Of course, most Western liberal democracies do have effectively functioning FOIA, but while it has redressed information asymmetry, the downside is that it also exacerbates the adversarial relationship between civil society and government. While this may be the underlying basis for a check-and-balance system in Western political cultures, it does not encourage a collaborative governance style. It can even be dysfunctional for the conduct of diplomacy and general statecraft, which must often require total confidentiality between parties.
One possible way to redress information asymmetry within a collaborative governance culture is to legislate a Code on Information Disclosure which is not legally enforceable but morally binding, and sets out the principles by which ministries can or should not protect information, and the importance of open sharing of information for a civil society.
Ministries would be required to employ independent access-to-information officers such as retired judges, to evaluate and give written replies to information requests. Media attention and public pressure would serve as leverage in cases of non-compliance with the code, or where there is controversy. Hong Kong, I understand, has a system similar to what I have described.
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://www.singsupplies.com/showthread.php?204581-Ho-Kwon-Ping-s-Half-Baked-Take-on-Citizens-Right-to-Freedom-of-Information&goto=newpost).
http://www.straitstimes.com/news/opi...alive-20150410 (http://www.straitstimes.com/news/opinion/more-opinion-stories/story/keeping-the-singapore-dream-alive-20150410)
I chanced upon this article in Friday's issue of the Straits Times, written by one Ho Kwon Ping, chairman of Banyan Tree and a former journalist. It is, in my opinion, a sub-standard and half-baked piece of crap, especially the part about Freedom of Information legislation, which I have pasted here for discussion purposes and to facilitate my criticisms in later posts. Nonetheless, I give Ho credit for having learned and applied the art of subliminal messages, no doubt from the editors of Straits Times and not the Far Eastern Review. Please feel free to chip in and do try to detect the hidden (but factually inaccurate) messages.
Rumpole of the Bailey
* Rumpole is the main character in a British TV series about an ageing London barrister who defends any and all clients (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpole_of_the_Bailey for more info). The author, who is an NUS law grad living and working abroad, chose this moniker to encourage an interest in legal issues because it does not just affect lawyers and their clients. The everyday layman needs to be informed of his rights and obligations and in the context of the “Little Red Dot” to avoid being talked down to or misled by their highly paid Ministers, including those that don’t have any portfolio, or civil servants with bad attitude and poor knowledge of the laws which they are supposed to be enforcing.
Quote:
When I first entered university some 40-plus years ago, the target of student activism was an obscure Latin expression, "In Loco Parentis" - which is a legal doctrine whereby certain institutions such as universities actually assume the legal powers of a parent.
The Singapore state has not assumed the same level of paternalism over its citizens, but it has come close, making decisions which might elsewhere be individual responsibilities. While this has been widely accepted in the past 50 years, a paternalistic governance culture may need to change to a collaborative model in the future. This is already happening with the abundance of debate about directions facing Singapore in the post-Lee Kuan Yew era. However, such a governance culture of participatory democracy can work only if the institutions of civil society can be actively engaged in decision-making.
For that to happen, civil society players need access to that lifeblood of robust discussion: freely available and largely unrestricted information. Information is the oxygen without which civil society players suffocate in their own ignorance and resort only to repetitive drumming of their causes, but without the ability to really engage with their own members, with other players, or with government. Access to information is an existential imperative for civil society to perform its functions responsibly and knowledgeably.
The currently unequal access to information is called "information asymmetry" by academics, and one of the reasons all governments are averse to sharing information is not just because of the sensitivity of secrets, but because information is power, and asymmetry between seeker and owner of information shapes their relative power relationship.
To rectify this imbalance, some civil society activists have called for a Freedom of Information Act or FOIA. This would require open access to and declassification of all government archives after 25 to 30 years, and almost unfettered access to information about oneself at any time.
So should Singapore simply adopt a FOIA? Just joining the bandwagon is not by itself meaningful. Of the 99 countries which have FOIA legislation are such beacons of liberal democracy as Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe, China, Pakistan, Thailand, Russia, Yemen, and all the "Stan's" of Central Asia. The reputations of these countries for good governance are so questionable that one must wonder whether their own FOIA are actually devices to smoke out and track potential dissidents.
Of course, most Western liberal democracies do have effectively functioning FOIA, but while it has redressed information asymmetry, the downside is that it also exacerbates the adversarial relationship between civil society and government. While this may be the underlying basis for a check-and-balance system in Western political cultures, it does not encourage a collaborative governance style. It can even be dysfunctional for the conduct of diplomacy and general statecraft, which must often require total confidentiality between parties.
One possible way to redress information asymmetry within a collaborative governance culture is to legislate a Code on Information Disclosure which is not legally enforceable but morally binding, and sets out the principles by which ministries can or should not protect information, and the importance of open sharing of information for a civil society.
Ministries would be required to employ independent access-to-information officers such as retired judges, to evaluate and give written replies to information requests. Media attention and public pressure would serve as leverage in cases of non-compliance with the code, or where there is controversy. Hong Kong, I understand, has a system similar to what I have described.
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://www.singsupplies.com/showthread.php?204581-Ho-Kwon-Ping-s-Half-Baked-Take-on-Citizens-Right-to-Freedom-of-Information&goto=newpost).