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09-08-2015, 02:40 AM
An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:
http://www.tremeritus.com/2015/08/08...yond-50-years/ (http://www.tremeritus.com/2015/08/08/pap-inherited-world-standard-results-beyond-50-years/)
PAP inherited world standard results beyond 50 years (http://www.tremeritus.com/2015/08/08/pap-inherited-world-standard-results-beyond-50-years/)
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August 8th, 2015 | http://www.tremeritus.com/wp-content/themes/WP_010/images/PostAuthorIcon.png?0d44b5
Author: Contributions (http://www.tremeritus.com/author/contributor/)
http://www.tremeritus.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/pap_badge.jpg?0d44b5I
refer to the 2 Aug 2015 TR Emeritus letter “PAP’s produced world-standard
results the past 50 years” by “Get it right!”.
Get-it-right wrote:
The PAP has ruled and governed Singapore uninterrupted for more than 50 years
now, winning every national elections which had been held, for the mandate to
rule.
What is it about the PAP government that the people of Singapore find
so appealing?
The Kim dynasty has ruled and governed North Korea uninterruptedly since 1948
for 67 years now, winning every national election for the mandate to rule.
Asking why Singaporeans find PAP so appealing is like asking why North Koreans
find their Kim dynasty so appealing.
Get-it-right wrote:
Governing a nation is not like running a circus. Its not clowning and
entertainment. If it is the role of a government to keep the people happy all
the time, then it would have to be a clown. In that case, the whole nation would
be laughing all the way to its death.
In the earlier generation, there was no clowning around by politicians yet
people were happier. There was more laughter too but no laughing till death.
People do not need clowns to make them happy. Quite simply, whatever the people
needs was more adequately provided for in the earlier generation but not so well
provided for now.
Get-it-right wrote:
Governing a nation is hard work. The factors to consider are numerous and
conflicting. There are many demands and constraints to satisfy. Sometimes the
complexity is intractable. Some other times, there is no best solution, only
optimal one. At any one time, there are more than one problems to be solved. It
requires sound intellect to know how to prioritize them. It requires a lot of
hard thinking, deep intellects. It requires insight to look into the depth of an
issue and foresight to look into the future.
Since the current leadership cannot solve the multitude of problems that are
supposedly numerous, conflicting, demanding, complex and intractable, wouldn’t
that show that they lack sound intellect, prioritization, hard thinking, deep
intellect, insight and the foresight to look into the future?
What is so rocket science about increasing housing and transport capacity to
meet increased population influx? Never mind the lack of foresight or intellect
to plan for population influx, what about the people’s timely feedback about sky
rocketing housing prices as far back as 2007 that fell on deaf ears?
Get-it-right wrote:
Compounding the problems are the multi-ethnic and multi-religion context of
Singapore. On top of these, for tiny Singapore, external factors can have big
influence on the country. Its leader must have that additional ability to have a
good grasp of world affairs and trends.
Under such complex and difficult settings, throughout the past 50+ years, the
PAP government has produced world-standard results in tangible aspects of
governance such as employment, housing, health, education, internal security,
defence, transportation, communication, environment, social services, sports,
recreation, you name it. Bread-and-butter-issues are well taken care of. The
society is peaceful and harmonious. All these have benefited the citizens
tremendously.
Colonial Singapore was already world famous for multi-ethnic and
multi-religious peace and harmony
(https://trulysingapore.wordpress.com...colonial-times (https://trulysingapore.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/singapore-racial-harmony-during-colonial-times)).
Instead, it was Lee Kuan Yew’s political ambition that contributed to ethnic and
racial tensions
(https://trulysingapore.wordpress.com...o-racial-riots (https://trulysingapore.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/lee-kuan-yew-contributed-to-racial-riots)).
The situation confronting Singapore wasn’t entirely difficult but contained
critical favorable conditions instead as Dr Goh Keng Swee explained:
There are four reasons which enabled Singapore throughout her history as a
British colony, and today as an independent republic, to survive and even
prosper in the face of apparently insurmountable difficulties. First, there is
the well-known fact of a superb central geographical location with a natural
harbor swept by currents flowing between the South China Sea and the Straits of
Malacca. The second reason must be ascribed … to Sir Stamford Raffles’ great
vision of the island growing into a great emporium founded on the Victorian
belief in the virtues of free trade. Successive colonial governors zealously
nurtured the port, maintained lean and efficient administrators, and allowed
merchants and bankers full scope for the exercise of their talents. In the
modern idiom, the Victorians who governed Singapore established and maintained
an infrastructure at minimum cost with maximum efficiency. The third reason
derives from the second condition, the nurturing of the free enterprise system.
In the absence of monopolies and privileged business interests, keen and free
competition ensured efficient business. Finally, what made Singapore grow as a
trading centre despite mercantilist policies of neighbours was that the
economics of the business did not add up to a zero sum game. This happy result
emerges from the continuous and rapid economic development of the countries in
Southeast Asia under British and Dutch colonial administrations. For well over a
hundred years Singapore learnt to adapt her economy to changing circumstances.
This ability to adapt which was won in the hard school of experience remains an
asset which the government of independent Singapore decided to retain. It might
have been politically expedient to rid ourselves of institutions and practices
that bore the taint of colonial associations. Had we done so, we would have
thrown away a priceless advantage.
[Goh Keng Swee, The Practice of Economic Growth, Chapter 1: Why Singapore
succeeds, pages 6-7]
Dr Goh further went on to explain how the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s
also made Singapore’s conditions more favorable:
It is a matter for speculation whether in the absence of the upheavals caused
by the Cultural Revolution in the mid and late 1960s, the large American
multinationals – among them, National Semiconductors and Texas Instruments –
would have sited their offshore facilities in countries more familiar to them,
such as South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. These resources had skills superior
to Singapore’s. My own judgment remains that these three areas were too close to
the scene of trouble, the nature of which could not but cause alarm to
multinational investors.
[Wealth of East Asian Nations, Goh Keng Swee, page 256]
Finally, we have Minister Shanmugam telling us how the US military made our
situation even more favorable by underwriting our peace and the peace of the
region.
Modern East Asia, including Southeast Asia is what it is today because of the
crucial role the United States played in underwriting security in Asia-Pacific.
The U.S. provided security and stability that helped to stem the tide of
communism, the 7th Fleet kept the ceilings open. The U.S. generously opened its
markets to the region, and that sustained economic growth and prosperity of many
Asian countries. In turn, that created conditions that allowed East Asia,
beginning with Japan, to seize opportunity to uplift their people’s lives, and
China is a most recent example of that. Success of countries in the region
created a dynamism which has also created new challenges and opportunities, and
let me add … the U.S. did all of it.
[The Brookings Institution, Southeast Asia and the United States: remarks by
National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Singapore foreign minister K.
Shanmugam, 22 Sept 2014]
Thus, if we consider the peace provided by US military presence, China’s
Cultural Revolution scaring investors to Singapore, our four success factors
listed by Dr Goh Keng Swee, our situation was actually quite favorable.
Get-it-right wrote:
So, what would best describe the relationship between the PAP government and
Singaporeans? It is simply a pragmatic relationship of leader and followers –
wise and strong leader, trusting followers.
This could be the relationship of some but not all Singaporeans with the PAP
government. For other Singaporeans, the PAP is not a leader but a conceited,
selfish and unprincipled parasite. Given its lousy record, only fools will trust
the current PAP team.
Get-it-right wrote:
This is how the PAP has been able to govern Singapore uninterrupted in all
these years. It deals firmly with the oppositions to ensure that politics are
conducted at a high standard. With the resultant political stability, it then
concentrates on developing the economy.
To say that PAP’s detention of Dr Lim Siew Hock and Dr Chia Thye Poh for 19
and 32 years respectively resulted in high standard politics is an insult to
both gentlemen and to politics itself. What kind of high standard politics do we
have today when PAP MPs regularly sleep through parliament sessions or
conveniently pontang them?
Get-it-right wrote:
With the wealth brought in by a thriving economy, it builds up the nation’s
defence and social programs and services. The whole nation progresses and every
citizen benefits. This is not what the government has brainwashed the people to
believe. The achievements of Singapore is recognised worldwide. It has become an
exemplary nation that others want to learn from. It is ranked highly in the
world.
Singapore was already a thriving economy during colonial times. Much of the
progress we witness today is rooted in colonial times. Our first and only UNESCO
listing, our Botanical Gardens, is a colonial era inheritance. Many of the
institutions that underpin our success today like Tan Tock Seng Hospital, civil
service, police force all originated from colonial times. Our first high rise
flats and housing estates like Queenstown were built by the British. Lee Kuan
Yew himself received education from a school set up by the colonial government –
Raffles Institution. Singapore’s achievements may be world recognized, but what
is not so recognized is that most of them have been accumulated over long
periods since colonial times. Our example to the world is based on the false
denial of critical colonial era inheritances that Dr Goh Keng Swee described as
priceless.
Get-it-right wrote:
Singapore is one of the world’s major commercial hubs, the fourth-largest
financial centre and one of the top two busiest container ports in the world for
at least the past ten years. Its globalised and diversified economy depends
heavily on trade, especially manufacturing, which accounted for around 30
percent of Singapore’s GDP in 2013.
Singapore was already the 5th most important port in the world in the 1930s.
We were already four places away from becoming No. 1 some 30 years before PAP
came to power. So the greater part of our ascent to the top was achieved under
British, not PAP administration.
The growth of Singapore to its position not only as the key port of the
Straits region by the late nineteenth century but also to a position as a major
global port is perhaps the most exciting aspect of economic change in the
Straits in this period (page 107).
By the early 1930s, Singapore was estimated to be the fifth or sixth most
important port in the world (page 114).
[Goh Kim Chuan, Environment and development in the Straits of
Malacca]
Furthermore, the person who first pushed for the containerization of our
ports was not the PAP but our faithful advisor Dr Albert Winsemius:
“So being in Singapore, I think at that time Dr Goh was once more Minister
for Finance or in his capacity of Deputy Prime Minister and indeed I thought I
need a pusher; I need really a pusher. So I went to Dr Goh, said ‘Look here,
that are my figures on the North Atlantic container-run. And it is going to
happen here. I can guarantee you that. I can’t get them moving. And the World
Bank is against it. They consider it too early. There is only one way, with the
same figures, you and I go to the Harbour Board, to PSA, and in principle you
tell them that you would consider it unwise to put it off. Even if there is a
chance, let’s say half a year that container port is lying idle, using interest
and doing nothing, Singapore has to be the first one as to attract it.
“’And you should tell them, in my opinion, at least give them very clearly
the impression if they do not come with a plan to rapidly make a container port
that you will continue to have them by the planners. On the other hand, if they
do come with it, in as far as co-operation from Finance or even the Cabinet
would be needed, that you will give them that protection.’
“So Dr Goh practically dictated them to build that container port regardless
of the World Bank.”
[Dr Albert Winsemius’s oral history interview, Accession Number 000246, reel
12]
Even our industrialization strictly followed Dr Winsemius’ “A proposed
industrialization programme for the State of Singapore”.
Thus, if we consider all the facts, we should realize that PAP comprised only
a tiny fragment of our entire success story but ended up usurping all the credit
to itself.
Get-it-right wrote:
Singapore places highly in international rankings with regard to standard of
living, education, healthcare, and economic competitiveness. Singapore has one
of the highest per capita incomes and one of the longest overall life
expectancies in the world. The country is currently the only Asian country with
a top AAA rating from all three major credit rating agencies, i.e. Standard
& Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings.
The same can be said of our fellow East Asian dragon economies of Hong Kong
Taiwan and South Korea which are either on par or ranked close by so it begs the
question of where PAP’s value add is given that we do not significantly
outperform these economies with similar backgrounds.
In conclusion, Get-it-right has mostly gotten it wrong.
Thank you
Ng Kok Lim
*
Ng Kok Lim is a regular TRE contributor who specialises in rebuttal.
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://singsupplies.com/showthread.php?212252-NKL-PAP-inherited-world-standard-results-beyond-50-years&goto=newpost).
http://www.tremeritus.com/2015/08/08...yond-50-years/ (http://www.tremeritus.com/2015/08/08/pap-inherited-world-standard-results-beyond-50-years/)
PAP inherited world standard results beyond 50 years (http://www.tremeritus.com/2015/08/08/pap-inherited-world-standard-results-beyond-50-years/)
http://www.tremeritus.org/simages/dmca_protected_sml_120n.png?0d44b5 http://www.tremeritus.com/wp-content/themes/WP_010/images/PostDateIcon.png?0d44b5
August 8th, 2015 | http://www.tremeritus.com/wp-content/themes/WP_010/images/PostAuthorIcon.png?0d44b5
Author: Contributions (http://www.tremeritus.com/author/contributor/)
http://www.tremeritus.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/pap_badge.jpg?0d44b5I
refer to the 2 Aug 2015 TR Emeritus letter “PAP’s produced world-standard
results the past 50 years” by “Get it right!”.
Get-it-right wrote:
The PAP has ruled and governed Singapore uninterrupted for more than 50 years
now, winning every national elections which had been held, for the mandate to
rule.
What is it about the PAP government that the people of Singapore find
so appealing?
The Kim dynasty has ruled and governed North Korea uninterruptedly since 1948
for 67 years now, winning every national election for the mandate to rule.
Asking why Singaporeans find PAP so appealing is like asking why North Koreans
find their Kim dynasty so appealing.
Get-it-right wrote:
Governing a nation is not like running a circus. Its not clowning and
entertainment. If it is the role of a government to keep the people happy all
the time, then it would have to be a clown. In that case, the whole nation would
be laughing all the way to its death.
In the earlier generation, there was no clowning around by politicians yet
people were happier. There was more laughter too but no laughing till death.
People do not need clowns to make them happy. Quite simply, whatever the people
needs was more adequately provided for in the earlier generation but not so well
provided for now.
Get-it-right wrote:
Governing a nation is hard work. The factors to consider are numerous and
conflicting. There are many demands and constraints to satisfy. Sometimes the
complexity is intractable. Some other times, there is no best solution, only
optimal one. At any one time, there are more than one problems to be solved. It
requires sound intellect to know how to prioritize them. It requires a lot of
hard thinking, deep intellects. It requires insight to look into the depth of an
issue and foresight to look into the future.
Since the current leadership cannot solve the multitude of problems that are
supposedly numerous, conflicting, demanding, complex and intractable, wouldn’t
that show that they lack sound intellect, prioritization, hard thinking, deep
intellect, insight and the foresight to look into the future?
What is so rocket science about increasing housing and transport capacity to
meet increased population influx? Never mind the lack of foresight or intellect
to plan for population influx, what about the people’s timely feedback about sky
rocketing housing prices as far back as 2007 that fell on deaf ears?
Get-it-right wrote:
Compounding the problems are the multi-ethnic and multi-religion context of
Singapore. On top of these, for tiny Singapore, external factors can have big
influence on the country. Its leader must have that additional ability to have a
good grasp of world affairs and trends.
Under such complex and difficult settings, throughout the past 50+ years, the
PAP government has produced world-standard results in tangible aspects of
governance such as employment, housing, health, education, internal security,
defence, transportation, communication, environment, social services, sports,
recreation, you name it. Bread-and-butter-issues are well taken care of. The
society is peaceful and harmonious. All these have benefited the citizens
tremendously.
Colonial Singapore was already world famous for multi-ethnic and
multi-religious peace and harmony
(https://trulysingapore.wordpress.com...colonial-times (https://trulysingapore.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/singapore-racial-harmony-during-colonial-times)).
Instead, it was Lee Kuan Yew’s political ambition that contributed to ethnic and
racial tensions
(https://trulysingapore.wordpress.com...o-racial-riots (https://trulysingapore.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/lee-kuan-yew-contributed-to-racial-riots)).
The situation confronting Singapore wasn’t entirely difficult but contained
critical favorable conditions instead as Dr Goh Keng Swee explained:
There are four reasons which enabled Singapore throughout her history as a
British colony, and today as an independent republic, to survive and even
prosper in the face of apparently insurmountable difficulties. First, there is
the well-known fact of a superb central geographical location with a natural
harbor swept by currents flowing between the South China Sea and the Straits of
Malacca. The second reason must be ascribed … to Sir Stamford Raffles’ great
vision of the island growing into a great emporium founded on the Victorian
belief in the virtues of free trade. Successive colonial governors zealously
nurtured the port, maintained lean and efficient administrators, and allowed
merchants and bankers full scope for the exercise of their talents. In the
modern idiom, the Victorians who governed Singapore established and maintained
an infrastructure at minimum cost with maximum efficiency. The third reason
derives from the second condition, the nurturing of the free enterprise system.
In the absence of monopolies and privileged business interests, keen and free
competition ensured efficient business. Finally, what made Singapore grow as a
trading centre despite mercantilist policies of neighbours was that the
economics of the business did not add up to a zero sum game. This happy result
emerges from the continuous and rapid economic development of the countries in
Southeast Asia under British and Dutch colonial administrations. For well over a
hundred years Singapore learnt to adapt her economy to changing circumstances.
This ability to adapt which was won in the hard school of experience remains an
asset which the government of independent Singapore decided to retain. It might
have been politically expedient to rid ourselves of institutions and practices
that bore the taint of colonial associations. Had we done so, we would have
thrown away a priceless advantage.
[Goh Keng Swee, The Practice of Economic Growth, Chapter 1: Why Singapore
succeeds, pages 6-7]
Dr Goh further went on to explain how the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s
also made Singapore’s conditions more favorable:
It is a matter for speculation whether in the absence of the upheavals caused
by the Cultural Revolution in the mid and late 1960s, the large American
multinationals – among them, National Semiconductors and Texas Instruments –
would have sited their offshore facilities in countries more familiar to them,
such as South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. These resources had skills superior
to Singapore’s. My own judgment remains that these three areas were too close to
the scene of trouble, the nature of which could not but cause alarm to
multinational investors.
[Wealth of East Asian Nations, Goh Keng Swee, page 256]
Finally, we have Minister Shanmugam telling us how the US military made our
situation even more favorable by underwriting our peace and the peace of the
region.
Modern East Asia, including Southeast Asia is what it is today because of the
crucial role the United States played in underwriting security in Asia-Pacific.
The U.S. provided security and stability that helped to stem the tide of
communism, the 7th Fleet kept the ceilings open. The U.S. generously opened its
markets to the region, and that sustained economic growth and prosperity of many
Asian countries. In turn, that created conditions that allowed East Asia,
beginning with Japan, to seize opportunity to uplift their people’s lives, and
China is a most recent example of that. Success of countries in the region
created a dynamism which has also created new challenges and opportunities, and
let me add … the U.S. did all of it.
[The Brookings Institution, Southeast Asia and the United States: remarks by
National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Singapore foreign minister K.
Shanmugam, 22 Sept 2014]
Thus, if we consider the peace provided by US military presence, China’s
Cultural Revolution scaring investors to Singapore, our four success factors
listed by Dr Goh Keng Swee, our situation was actually quite favorable.
Get-it-right wrote:
So, what would best describe the relationship between the PAP government and
Singaporeans? It is simply a pragmatic relationship of leader and followers –
wise and strong leader, trusting followers.
This could be the relationship of some but not all Singaporeans with the PAP
government. For other Singaporeans, the PAP is not a leader but a conceited,
selfish and unprincipled parasite. Given its lousy record, only fools will trust
the current PAP team.
Get-it-right wrote:
This is how the PAP has been able to govern Singapore uninterrupted in all
these years. It deals firmly with the oppositions to ensure that politics are
conducted at a high standard. With the resultant political stability, it then
concentrates on developing the economy.
To say that PAP’s detention of Dr Lim Siew Hock and Dr Chia Thye Poh for 19
and 32 years respectively resulted in high standard politics is an insult to
both gentlemen and to politics itself. What kind of high standard politics do we
have today when PAP MPs regularly sleep through parliament sessions or
conveniently pontang them?
Get-it-right wrote:
With the wealth brought in by a thriving economy, it builds up the nation’s
defence and social programs and services. The whole nation progresses and every
citizen benefits. This is not what the government has brainwashed the people to
believe. The achievements of Singapore is recognised worldwide. It has become an
exemplary nation that others want to learn from. It is ranked highly in the
world.
Singapore was already a thriving economy during colonial times. Much of the
progress we witness today is rooted in colonial times. Our first and only UNESCO
listing, our Botanical Gardens, is a colonial era inheritance. Many of the
institutions that underpin our success today like Tan Tock Seng Hospital, civil
service, police force all originated from colonial times. Our first high rise
flats and housing estates like Queenstown were built by the British. Lee Kuan
Yew himself received education from a school set up by the colonial government –
Raffles Institution. Singapore’s achievements may be world recognized, but what
is not so recognized is that most of them have been accumulated over long
periods since colonial times. Our example to the world is based on the false
denial of critical colonial era inheritances that Dr Goh Keng Swee described as
priceless.
Get-it-right wrote:
Singapore is one of the world’s major commercial hubs, the fourth-largest
financial centre and one of the top two busiest container ports in the world for
at least the past ten years. Its globalised and diversified economy depends
heavily on trade, especially manufacturing, which accounted for around 30
percent of Singapore’s GDP in 2013.
Singapore was already the 5th most important port in the world in the 1930s.
We were already four places away from becoming No. 1 some 30 years before PAP
came to power. So the greater part of our ascent to the top was achieved under
British, not PAP administration.
The growth of Singapore to its position not only as the key port of the
Straits region by the late nineteenth century but also to a position as a major
global port is perhaps the most exciting aspect of economic change in the
Straits in this period (page 107).
By the early 1930s, Singapore was estimated to be the fifth or sixth most
important port in the world (page 114).
[Goh Kim Chuan, Environment and development in the Straits of
Malacca]
Furthermore, the person who first pushed for the containerization of our
ports was not the PAP but our faithful advisor Dr Albert Winsemius:
“So being in Singapore, I think at that time Dr Goh was once more Minister
for Finance or in his capacity of Deputy Prime Minister and indeed I thought I
need a pusher; I need really a pusher. So I went to Dr Goh, said ‘Look here,
that are my figures on the North Atlantic container-run. And it is going to
happen here. I can guarantee you that. I can’t get them moving. And the World
Bank is against it. They consider it too early. There is only one way, with the
same figures, you and I go to the Harbour Board, to PSA, and in principle you
tell them that you would consider it unwise to put it off. Even if there is a
chance, let’s say half a year that container port is lying idle, using interest
and doing nothing, Singapore has to be the first one as to attract it.
“’And you should tell them, in my opinion, at least give them very clearly
the impression if they do not come with a plan to rapidly make a container port
that you will continue to have them by the planners. On the other hand, if they
do come with it, in as far as co-operation from Finance or even the Cabinet
would be needed, that you will give them that protection.’
“So Dr Goh practically dictated them to build that container port regardless
of the World Bank.”
[Dr Albert Winsemius’s oral history interview, Accession Number 000246, reel
12]
Even our industrialization strictly followed Dr Winsemius’ “A proposed
industrialization programme for the State of Singapore”.
Thus, if we consider all the facts, we should realize that PAP comprised only
a tiny fragment of our entire success story but ended up usurping all the credit
to itself.
Get-it-right wrote:
Singapore places highly in international rankings with regard to standard of
living, education, healthcare, and economic competitiveness. Singapore has one
of the highest per capita incomes and one of the longest overall life
expectancies in the world. The country is currently the only Asian country with
a top AAA rating from all three major credit rating agencies, i.e. Standard
& Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings.
The same can be said of our fellow East Asian dragon economies of Hong Kong
Taiwan and South Korea which are either on par or ranked close by so it begs the
question of where PAP’s value add is given that we do not significantly
outperform these economies with similar backgrounds.
In conclusion, Get-it-right has mostly gotten it wrong.
Thank you
Ng Kok Lim
*
Ng Kok Lim is a regular TRE contributor who specialises in rebuttal.
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://singsupplies.com/showthread.php?212252-NKL-PAP-inherited-world-standard-results-beyond-50-years&goto=newpost).