Singapore: A capital choice for the world

As the age of empires fades, Edward Carr argues that the world needs a federal capital.

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, September/October 2011

Have you ever been to Canberra? Dull and safe and good for nothing but politics, it’s as if an alien had taken up town planning. Its lakes, bridges and low-slung offices are triumphs of sterile coherence which cannot begin to match the soft beauty of Sydney Harbour or the ethnic hum of Melbourne. And yet, Canberra is the ideal capital for a federation of rival states, each jealous of the others. Were Sydney the kingpin, New South Wales would have too much power. Were the government in Melbourne, Victoria would once again rule Australia.

In the age of empires, the world’s capital was inevitably the Imperium. Rome, London, Paris and Washington, every dome had its day. But the age of empires is fading. If you think London and New York are too Western to be the world’s capital, that is because the West needs to make room for the rest. If you are not convinced by the claims of Washington, Beijing or Delhi, that is because no one country looks able to conquer its way to global supremacy. Increasingly, the world is a federation of rival states that all guard their independence and all expect their say.

Happy 88th Birthday, Mr Lee Kuan Yew

Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew celebrates his 88th birthday today.

Mr Lee also launched the Chinese edition of his best-selling book, Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew in NTU for dialogue session with students -5 Sep 2011

Meritocracy

Meritocracy is the only way to tackle inequality fairly

Dr Khor Swee Kheng (ST Forum, Sep 13, 2011)

MRS NURHIDAYAH Hassan-Le Neel made two arguments against meritocracy last Saturday ('Address the problems of meritocracy').

According to her, meritocracy is flawed because it does not work in Singapore's rigid class system that is based on economic and cultural clout.

Second, meritocracy demoralises those who fail to climb the social ladder.

Both claims are untrue. Meritocracy is the only way people break out of a rigid class system fairly and proudly, as affirmative action discriminates against another demographic group.

While failure can demoralise, could this be a chance to encourage hard work and some government intervention to equalise opportunity, rather than an excuse to throw meritocracy out the window?

Singapore's Gini coefficient - a measure of income inequality on a scale of 0 to 1, with 0 denoting perfect equality - of 0.45 does indicate that there is a gulf within its society.

How to correct this is the first dilemma: meritocracy or affirmative action?

Redistributive justice is a difficult concept, but meritocracy is not mutually exclusive from the Government helping the poor. If a child of a taxi driver is poor but talented, one offers him all the opportunities he needs, not the outcome one thinks he deserves. Opportunities or outcomes, that is the conundrum of the second dilemma.

Should we aim for equality of opportunities or outcomes?

Communism tried to achieve equality of outcome, but we now know that it bred poverty and gross inequality.

A government's role may simply be to provide the tools and ensure equal access to opportunities.

What happens next is as much nature as it is nurture, although this, admittedly, is a subsidiary debate in which the answer is likely to be a bit of both, plus diligence and luck.

The final dilemma is when to stop. Societies will always be unequal, with a bell curve of income and cultural capital.

Let us concentrate on moving the curve to the right, instead of focusing on making the curve narrower.

Micromanaging an entire country detracts from the proper focus on a rising tide that lifts all boats.

I call it compassionate meritocracy, which is still a government's best way to ensure equality of opportunity.

What happens next is up to the kids.

First-past-the-post

Alternative voting formats not the answer
Chen Junyi (ST Forum, Aug 30, 2011)

MR FOO Chee Choong ('First-past-the-post system unfair in multi-cornered contest'; yesterday) argued against the first-past-the-post voting format, offering the options of giving each voter two votes, and a run-off by the top two candidates after the first round of voting. However, these do not address the issue of fairness, nor can they prevent slim margins between the winner and runner-up.

Each voter has a fair chance to decide for himself which candidate to support, or none at all through spoiling his vote. There is only one vacancy for the office of president. If the voter knows who he wants as president, even if given two votes, he would still cast both to the same candidate. An indecisive voter who splits his votes is ceding the advantage to others who are decisive.

Saying president-elect Tony Tan has 65 per cent of the voters against him does not stand up to scrutiny.

First, going by that 'logic', the other candidates, Dr Tan Cheng Bock, Mr Tan Jee Say and Mr Tan Kin Lian, have 66 per cent, 75 per cent and 95 per cent, respectively, voting against them.

Second, the election is to vote for the president one supports, not who one is against. Anyone who chooses to act otherwise does so at his own peril.

Having elimination rounds does not do justice either. Why should a voter who has chosen a candidate be compelled to vote for another in a subsequent round? Such coercion cannot be construed as genuine support to the second-round candidates, making hollow any claims of majority backing.

Without the coercion, it is possible that no candidate may be able to garner more than 50 per cent of the votes. Even with the coercion, there will be voters who would rather cast spoilt votes than vote for a candidate they do not support.

Resentment occurs even if the candidate wins more than 60 per cent of the votes in a single round. All sorts of arguments can be made against a winning candidate who captures anything less than 100 per cent of the votes, in which case there would have been no contest in the first place.

It is right to curtail Web anonymity

Doing so would result in not the curtailment of freedom, but the expression of it
by John Gapper, The Financial Times, 2 Sep, 2011

One of the founding principles of the Web - not only the technology but the culture that has grown up with it - is that, as The New Yorker cartoon once put it: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

The policy that people are free to interact online anonymously - or at least using pseudonyms - is now under attack from social networking companies. Both Facebook and Google, which in June launched a competing service called Google Plus, have cracked down on people trying to use pseudonyms rather than full identities.

"The Internet would be better if we had an accurate notion that you were a real person as opposed to a dog, or a fake person, or a spammer," Mr Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman, said at the Edinburgh International Television Festival last week. He was echoing Ms Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook's former marketing director, who declared earlier this year that, "anonymity on the Internet has to go away".

These arguments are half right. Anonymity should not be banned in every corner of the Internet any more than it is in the physical world in democracies - it would breach civil liberties. But there are good reasons to discourage it. Most users would gain if anonymity were the exception rather than the rule.

President Tony Tan

Dr Tony Tan Keng Yam, 71, was sworn in at the Istana as the Republic's seventh President, and the third to be elected.

The passing of the baton from Mr S R Nathan, 87, to Dr Tan was witnessed by Members of Parliament, senior civil servants, foreign dignitaries and grassroots leaders at a stately ceremony held at the Istana.

President S R Nathan

Our 6th Head of State, President S R Nathan steps down today, 31 Aug 2011, after 12 years in office.

A man with the ability to connect with ordinary Singaporeans, from the highest to the lowest, here are my favourite quotes from him:

"Whether in the office of the President or in the executive arm of Government, we'll always need people of strong character and vision who resist populist pressures and the temptation to sacrifice the long-term interest of the nation in response to those who merely snipe without having to take responsibility."

"One of the things you must remember is that with all these gripes that you hear, people forget how we have arrived to this stage in our country. Could it have been done without the Government? That's my question. Much has been achieved. There are probably faults that have to be remedied, but we just can't distance ourselves from the Government."

"I've done the best I can. If it's good enough for some people, fine. If it's not good enough for some people, and there will always be noise in the environment, you can't stop it. You don't do it because you want to leave a legacy. You do the best you can."

On having a duty to Singapore;

"We can criticise, we can comment, we can abuse, we can say...but ultimately if it fails, we all fail. So that's the duty we have. To uphold it, to let it grow, to let it stand in the eyes of the world as something important, something worth recognising. So that's the duty."

On social media;

"I hear from my grandchildren about Facebook and whatever you have. So after I've stepped down, I have time and I will have to learn all that. But anyway, I'm not going into Facebook and tell stories. No point. Not all people on Facebook or whatever you call it, are honest people. Some of them are very critical of things without responsibility."

Confidence for the Future

Quotes for posterity,

"Candidates should run for the office that exists, not for the one they wish to have."

"The President must be above politics."

"One has to be frank and open about what he wants to do and why he wants to do it...When you set your mind to do something, you must have the determination to see it through."

"His unruffled manner has become as distinctive a trait of his public persona as his signature smile and slicked-back silver hair."

The man whose passion is Singapore, you have my vote, Dr Tony Tan.

Will mindless street violence ever descend on us

On 10 August 2011, British PM David Cameron delivered a statement on the violence and looting in a number of cities across England. The following excepts are food for thought;

"We needed a fight back and a fight back is underway. We have seen the worst of Britain, but I also believe we've seen some of the best of Britain: the million people who've signed up on Facebook to support the police, communities coming together in the cleanup operations....

This continued violence is simply not acceptable and it will be stopped. We will not put up with this in our country. We will not allow a culture of fear to exist on our streets....

It is all too clear that we have a big problem with gangs in our country. For too long there's been a lack of focus on the complete lack of respect shown by these groups of thugs. I'm sure that they are in no way representative of the vast majority of young people in our country who despise them, frankly, as much as the rest of us do, but there are pockets of our society that are not just broken but, frankly, sick.....

For me, the root cause of this mindless selfishness is the same thing that I have spoken about for years. It is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society. People are allowed to feel that the world owes them something, that their rights outweigh their responsibilities and that their actions do not have consequences. Well, they do have consequences. We need to have a clearer code of values and standards that we expect people to live by and stronger penalties if they cross the line. Restoring a stronger sense of responsibility across our society, in every town, in every street, in every estate is something I'm determined to do."


*Let's hope as Singapore matures, our society does not take such a sinister path.

When 'an eye for an eye' is best justice

Justice? Vengeance? You Need Both

By Thane Rosenbaum, The New York Times, July 27, 2011

Norway, a nation far removed from the wickedness of the world, is now facing one of its greatest moral challenges: What to do with Anders Behring Breivik, the man who has confessed to massacring 76 people, many of them children. Norway does not allow for capital punishment, and the longest prison sentence a killer can usually receive there is 21 years. A country of such otherwise good fortune and peaceful intention is now unprepared — legally and morally —to deal with such a monstrous atrocity.

The United States, unfortunately, is much more familiar with this problem. Americans have spent several recent weeks in a vengeful fury over the acquittal of Casey Anthony, who partied for an entire month while her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, was supposedly missing but might have actually been murdered — by Ms. Anthony. Many believe that Caylee was denied justice; her mother, meanwhile, has been released from prison and remains hidden in an undisclosed location, largely to protect her from vigilante justice.

The inadequacy of legal justice is one thing, its outright failure is quite another. But in both cases the attraction of a nonlegal alternative is a powerful one. Are these vengeful feelings morally appropriate? The answer is yes — because the actual difference between vengeance and justice is not as great as people think.

NS deferments

Mindef: Disruption for medical course applied uniformly
Aug 5, 2011, The Straits Times Forum

WE REFER to Ms Lim Guay Cheng's letter on Tuesday ('Mindef should spell out NS deferment criteria').

The Ministry of Defence (Mindef) grants disruption for full-time national servicemen (NSFs) to obtain their medical degrees, as the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) has operational needs for doctors.

This is a long-standing policy and uniformly applied for all servicemen who meet the criteria.

They are disrupted just before their university term begins and serve out their remaining national service (NS) liabilities soon after completion of their medical courses. Currently, about 120 NSFs are disrupted every year to study medicine locally.

Prior to 1992, disruptions were also allowed for NSFs to obtain medical degrees in approved overseas universities.

Our records show that 86 such disruptions have been granted. The length of disruption varied depending on the time taken to complete the medical studies. This was about five to six years for medical courses in countries such as Britain and Australia.

Primary One Registration

Advice few heed:

From the Ministry of Education;
Every child is assured of a place, one should pick a school as near as possible to home as Primary school is a foundation so children shouldn't travel too much. Every primary school will strive to do its best to achieve the best for pupils.

I would add;
Brand-name and dream schools are good but the reality is if your child cannot cope, you will be "advised" by the teacher to consider private tuition to "supplement" his education and so begins the pain of education for your children!