Singapore Angle: Perspectives

Family Charter?

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:23:41 +0800

Today, in "PRIME: commentary", Senior Writer Andy Ho wrote an opinion piece on "Why men should not be entitled to alimony" in response to Kanwaljit Soin's proposal (read it!) that maintenance obligations be mutual. In this opinion piece, he argues against what he calls Kanwaljit Soin's "egalitarian-sounding" proposal and mentions with implicit approval the argument that since "marriage is a covenant that progressively disadvantages the woman, fairness would indicate that [only] a divorced women must be able to accrue the unrealized gains of her marriage."

Personally, I think that not only should the obligation to pay maintenance after marriage be mutual, all obligations, especially the husband's obligation to maintain a wife during marriage, should be mutual. Marriage is, as the law requires it, a partnership of equals. Section 46 of the Women's Charter demands it explicitly:

46. --(1) Upon the solemnization of marriage, the husband and the wife shall be mutually bound to co-operate with each other in safeguarding the interests of the union and in caring and providing for the children.
(2) The husband and the wife shall have the right separately to engage in any trade or profession or in social activities.

(3) The wife shall have the right to use her own surname and name separately.

(4) The husband and the wife shall have equal rights in the running of the matrimonial household.

One of the main reasons for the enactment of the Women's Charter is to raise the status of women in Singapore back in the 1960s. As you might already have noticed, Section 46(3) provides that the wife shall "have the right to use her own surname and name separately". This assumes that the husband will not have to adopt the wife's surname. Section 47(1) provides that a married woman may have an independent domicile, with no suggestion that a married may have any dependent domicile. Section 51(a) states explicitly that married woman shall be capable of acquiring, holding and disposing of, any property.

Few today can imagine how backward we were then (must have been in antiquity), when a married woman may not even own property! As one may imagine, the status of woman in 1950s Singapore must have been truly unequal, and upon marriage, probably worsened. And the PAP government then, as part of their election campaign, had promised to right the wrongs.

As Chan Choy Siang, during the eventual enactment of the Women's Charter (in 1961) said:

"We of the PAP have suffered hardship and have tried our best to fulfil our Five-Year Plan. We introduce this Bill in order to uphold the rights of women, so that all their problems will be easily resolved. At the same time, we have tried our best to discover the inequalities of men and women in the civil service. We pay great attention to women's problems. These problems were not looked after by the previous governments."

So in the context of grave social inequalities between men and women, the Women's Charter was a noble attempt to, in every way possible, to require husbands to treat their wives as equal partners. It was okay during those days to have one-sided obligations; after all, inequality then too was one-sided (okay, maybe 99.999 percent). However, the egalitarian instincts of the Women's Charter has gone awry as socially, the status of women have progressed to a point where some obligations placed on husbands by way of the Woman's Charter in certain factual contexts are un-egalitarian instead.

The obligation for a man to maintain his wife starts during marriage.

Section 69(1) provides :

"Any married woman whose husband neglects or refuses to provide her reasonable maintenance may apply to a District Court or a Magistrate's Court and that Court may, on due proof thereof, order the husband to pay a monthly allowance or a lump sum for her maintenance."

Only in the continuation of total existing social inequalities between men and women may such a one-sided obligation make any sense. Take a very likely scenario: a handicapped (or sick) husband with a wife who earns a sufficient income to provide for his needs. It is ludicrous that in such a case, the wife will not be obliged to provide for the husband. While the intention and spirit of Section 69(1) is commendable, as it requires husbands to take care of their wives when they can afford to and when their wives are dependent on them; it becomes equally callous to then not oblige the wives to do the same in a similar situation. The expression in Section 46(1) is clear - "the husband and the wife shall be mutually bound to co-operate with each other in safeguarding the interests of the union."

And now to the one sided maintenance obligations after marriage. Well, contrary to what Andy Ho believes, the social context of marriages are not biased in favor of men. Even if it still remains so (which I really doubt), it is no longer biased in all cases. The specific examples Andy Ho gives in his prime commentary are: "Not only does a woman's sex appeal apparently wanes faster with age than a man's, she generally marries a man of the same age or older. Remarriage therefore becomes increasingly unlikely as she ages. That is not the case with men." Can that be right in each case? So therefore a woman should not be obliged to maintain a husband because her odds of getting remarried are lower? So women are therefore to be compensated for entering into marriage and are not equal actually? Such arguments are spurious at best, and cruel to individuals at worst. It demeans woman, discriminates against men, and inherent is this strange and terrible notion - that although on the day the woman enters into the marriage, she promises to be an equal partner in all things, she may one day walk away from the union, if the man she now calls husband becomes destitute, without a care in the world.

And the law as it stands does not oblige her to do any more.

*Am swamped, no time to read it twice-over, and comments (if any) are appreciated, but might not always be readily replied to. Cheers.

The Foreign Donor Bogeyman

Sun, 24 May 2009 17:01:36 +0800

Presumably because NMP Siew Kum Hong was vocal about gay rights and AWARE's stress on gender rather than women's rights per se, his political adversaries shrewdly capitalised on allegations that he and Maruah accepted foreign handouts from a Swede gentleman, Johan Skarendal. Allegations to which Siew Kum Hong angrily denied and strongly objected to. His adversaries were clever enough to open that front to ignite the government's relatively justifiable paranoia, and the police report made by the NMP indicated that he knew enough of the seriousness of the allegations. The Yahoo lawyer categorically denied that he was involved in any inappropriate or illegal funding from the Swede, and by inference as Maruah members were there as well, Maruah was also not implicated in dubious funding, closing the case.

The government's fear of foreign funding of local politicians and activists is not unique. The UK has the Political Parties, Elections and Referendum Act forcing all parties to be transparent about their donations and outlawed foreign funding. The reasons were to prevent corruption and mitigate public cynicism related to the integrity of political parties and donor influence over politicians. However, other countries are even wary of their NGOs accepting foreign donations. Turkey and Russia are such examples. To be fair and understanding the realist realities of the world, the anxiety over the hidden agenda of foreign donations to political parties and NGOs are not unfounded.

Some foreign public and private philanthropies are designed as catalysts of political change in supposedly less democratic states. The objective of funding is to spur on "democracy" and the US' National Endowment for Democracy, which Dr Chee Soon Juan was a fellow in 2004, is a common example of missionary democracy and the need to convert "ignorant heathens" for their own good. However, at the other extreme, sounding the nationalistic klaxon, less progressive governments typically raise the ghoul of foreign intervention as an excuse to choke and isolate local politicians and activists within their borders. Perhaps the tentative balance is that politicians cannot accept any kind of foreign funding while activists can accept foreign funding as long as it is not directly or indirectly engineered by a foreign government. Perhaps.

Regardless if the recent Swede's visit was an innocuous one or not, it paved the way for further questions on what foreign donations political parties and activists can accept without detonating ethical and legal powder kegs. Who else besides Siew Kum Hong and some Maruah activists did Johan Skarendal meet as part of his Singapore itinerary is not public information. Arguably in the interest of the development of a civil society without a paranoid government taking every chance to jump at shadows and curb the honest work of activists, hopefully other parties that met the Swede are not naive and also followed Maruah's example of financial integrity and independence.

The responsibility of eagles

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:35:05 +0800

In the aftermath of mishaps, there's always the question of responsibility. On that subject, I heard an interesting proverb from my grandma some time ago and have been trying to look it up. The closest I could find was on Zaobao:

福建话有一句俚语"鸡仔不合，半天打老鹰。" 指小鸡们不合群、不听放，结果有一只被老鹰叨走了，急得母鸡张开翅膀，追打老鹰。这是比喻自家的孩子不听话，还要去责怪他人。
[My attempt at translation] In Hokkien, there is a proverb: "If chicks are not united, the eagles in the sky get attacked" which means the chicks don't stay together, don't listen (what?), in the end when one gets taken away by an eagle, the anxious mother hen extends her wings, chasing after the eagle. This alludes to cases when one's own children do not behave, the parents try to find someone else to blame.

For a start, what I heard was somewhat different: "鸡仔勿盖，半天打老鹰。" [kua kiah mia kam, puah ti pah lao yoh] Roughly translated, it means: (The farmer) doesn't cover up his chicks and then goes on a hunting spree for eagles (when one gets taken away by an eagle).

This makes a lot more sense than the Zaobao version; the latter suffers from two problems - Are chicks united in a group able to stand up to an eagle? And since when are hens able to attack eagles?

Both versions attack the tendency to blame someone else when the responsibility lies firmly at home. But while the former is an entreaty and exhortation for unity and obedience to parental/governmental authority, the latter version emphasizes personal responsibility in taking appropriate, common sense precautions such as putting bars in toilet windows of detention facilities or doing 'world class' due diligence before investing in potentially non-world class companies.

the very fierce Mai word

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 09:07:17 +0800

MM's Principal Private Secretary Chee Hong Tat has taken a lot flak, some of it unwarranted, but c'est la vie - empathy and sympathy are often in short supply, even for a messenger carrying a message from Upstairs, when the very fierce S word is used. I'm not in favour of the state (that is my taxes) paying for dialect education in the public school system but I also think that urging families not to speak dialects at home was a serious mistake if only because of how it exacerbated the (communication) gap between grandparents and grandchildren.

On a more practical note, for those of us who deal with overseas Chinese in the course of work, do business or even research fieldwork in the Pacific Asia region, the ability to speak dialects is always an advantage.

The gahmen also discourages dialects at home based on the claim that it impedes the learning of Mandarin (i.e. the Beijing dialect). Since most of the Malaysians I know speak decent English, Bahasa, Chinese, Cantonese and Hokkien, I find this claim somewhat doubtful. And since the dialects are related to Chinese aka Mandarin aka putonghua aka guoyu, they might actually have positive feedback loops like those enjoyed by those learning related languages, like Spanish and Portuguese.

So what am I actually going to do about it? For a start, as the individual level, I hope to be able to have simple conversations with my grandma without the need for my relatives as interpreters.

A key word I hear a lot is mai. It means don't, usually implying don't want. In Chinese characters, it is often rendered as 不要 but my uncle tells me that it should be written as 勿愛 though only 勿 appears when it is compounded in phrases like mai gei (勿假 :: don't bluff), mai hiam buay pai (勿嫌袂歹 :: if not picky, it's ok), mai siao siao (勿痟痟 :: don't be crazy), mai sng sng (勿耍耍 or 玩玩 :: don't play around). [Helpful corroboration on this Malaysian forum thread for the Chinese characters added to the TalkingCock dictionary content.]

I've got nothing against the current Speak Mandarin Campaign but wrt the perpetual Don't Speak Dialect Campaign, my response is mai guan ii (勿管他 :: don't pay any attention to them).

Caplan's Twin (Non)Paradoxes

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:02:12 +0800

Dr Bryan Caplan, in a forthcoming piece for Ethos (journal produced by the Singapore Civil Service College; this post is based on the version posted in his blog entry) presents the two puzzles about Singapore's political economy. First, despite unpopular economic policies the PAP has still been continuously re-elected; second, despite having Westminster-style democracy Singapore remains a one-party state.

The paper then explores three families of explanations (His assessments in brackets):

1. Singapore is not really a democracy (Wrong)
2. Singapore's voters are unusually economically literate. (Dubious)
3. Singapore's voters are unusually loyal, deferential, and/or resigned. (Fits Facts Well)

However the puzzles presented have been already tackled by other scholars. To cite the influential ones, Chua Beng Huat (Communitarian Ideology and Democracy, 1995), Paul Trocki (Wealth, Power and the Culture of Control, 2006), Yao Souchou (The State and the Culture of Excess, 2007). If we use the combination of Chua, Trocki and Yao, and these are full-length books with well-researched evidence, then we would have already arrived at 1: wrong, 2: dubious, but 3 would be wrong too. They show instead that Singapore's voters are consciously and rationally making a calculated choice to prefer economic growth over political liberalization. And there is choice; voters have thus repeatedly rejected Chee's SDP which emphasizes political liberalization and privatization and preferred Chiam's SPP and Low's WP because they emphasize greater redistribution of growth.

My main critique of Caplan's paper and his interpretation of the facts ("World Values Survey" results) is that it evaluates the Singapore voter with the yardstick of the contemporary Anglo-American voter. This comparison is simply untenable since Singapore is historically, culturally, geographically, etc., different. In any case, the Whigs ruled semi-democratic Britain (no full suffrage and lots of autocracy) as a one-party state from 1721 to 1770 (with one year of Tory rule in between). The Tories who took over in 1770 to 1782 didn't do much for democracy either, and lost the American colonies as a result, and a lot more can be said about the 1800s and that century of empire, industrialization (and class conflict) and liberalization in Britain.

So really, anchoring the puzzle in so-called Westminster-style democracy is both ahistorical and ethnocentric. After all, we did not inherit a Westminster parliament, but a colonial version of it. Our founding fathers, and here I mean the whole gamut from David Marshall to Lee Kuan Yew to Lim Chin Siong, fought the British and each other for democratic, constitutional, republican government, and the outcome of this politics of decolonization is quite unique. Interestingly, the British, when they first colonized this region, thought the natives, i.e. "Malays", were "unusually loyal, deferential, and/or resigned" to their autocratic political leaders, or in their words, apathetic and fatalistic to their despotic rajas (see Frank Swettenham's "The Real Malay").

In conclusion, Caplan could have reviewed the existing literature more thoroughly as well as taken more cognizance of Singapore's cultural and social-historical context and processes.

Registration of Overseas Electors

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:34:33 +0800

Received this in my email on 7 Mar 2009:

On behalf of the Elections Department of Singapore, the Overseas Singaporean Unit is pleased to inform you that the Registers of Electors is open for public inspection from 3 March 2009 to 16 March 2009, as well as the revised qualifying criteria and registration procedure for overseas electors. The Elections Department's announcement is as follows:
Date: 3 March 2009

Dear Sir/Madam,

REGISTRATION OF OVERSEAS ELECTORS

1. I am pleased to inform you that, in connection with the revision of the Registers of Electors (REs), the Elections Department (ELD) has started to register overseas electors from today (3 March 2009). Overseas Singaporeans who satisfy the revised qualifying criteria may now apply to be registered as overseas electors via the e-services provided at our website (www.elections.gov.sg), at any time up to when the writ for an election is issued, and after the election. Once registered, the registration will remain valid until such time when the relevant RE is superseded by the coming into operation of the next certified RE, or when the registration is cancelled by the overseas elector concerned.

Revision of Registers of Electors

2. As directed by the Prime Minister, ELD has revised the REs of the 23 constituencies based on the cut-off date of 1 February 2009. The revised REs contain the names of all persons who are qualified to be an elector as on 1 February 2009 and are not disqualified under any prevailing law. A person is qualified to be an elector if, as on 1 February 2009, he/she is a Singapore Citizen aged 21 and above, and is ordinarily resident in Singapore.

3.The revised REs are opened for public inspection from 3 March 2009 to 16 March 2009. Do visit our website (www.elections.gov.sg) during this period to check that your name and particulars, if found in the REs, are correct.

Registration of Overseas Electors

4.To facilitate voting by more overseas Singaporeans, the Parliamentary Elections Act was amended in August last year to shorten the required period of residence in Singapore for an overseas citizen to qualify for registration as an overseas elector. With this amendment, you will qualify for registration if you have been back in Singapore for an aggregate of not less than 30 days during the 3 years period immediately preceding 1 February 2009 (ie. during the period from 1 February 2006 to 31 January 2009). The amended law also provides for an extension of the registration period, up to when the writ for an election is issued, and resume after the election. In addition, application for registration may now be made online (using your NRIC number and SingPass for access) via the e-services provided at our website (www.elections.gov.sg). There will also be a new Overseas Polling Station set up at the Singapore Consulate in New York, making a total of 9 Overseas Polling Stations for the next Presidential Election and General Election.

5. For more information about registration of overseas electors and overseas voting, please visit our website (www.elections.gov.sg) or refer to the booklet, Information on Registration of Overseas Electors [PDF]. If you find yourself qualified to be an overseas elector and wish to cast your vote at any of the Overseas Polling Stations, do apply for registration now. If you happened to be an overseas elector registered in 2006, do note that with the REs having been revised, your registration is no longer valid. You are advised to apply for registration again if you meet the revised qualifying criteria to be an overseas elector.

With Best Regards,

REGISTRATION OFFICER
ELECTIONS DEPARTMENT
11 PRINSEP LINK
SINGAPORE 187949

Getting to know online knowledge

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:28:25 +0800

The special issue of Episteme (Vol. 6 No.1) on the epistemology of mass collaboration is currently available free - though not sure for how long. Not surprisingly the examples cited are Wikipedia-heavy even as major changes are being proposed.

A quick and dirty run-down of the articles:

'Wikipedia and the Epistemology of Testimony' by Toffelsen - how do people reliably know stuff by discussing it with other people rather than necessarily observing or experiencing it themselves? Take that, hard-core empiricism!

'Web 2.0 vs the Semantic Web' by Floridi - why will efforts by dispersed, imperfect humans to make the Web intelligible succeed while efforts to automate the processing of semantic content will fail? NEEDZ MOAR POWDERFUL A.I.Z?

'The Epistemic Cultures of Science and Wikipedia' by Wray - What are the different goals, social norms and incentive structures between Science with a capital S and Wikipedia (capitalized just because it is a proper noun)? Especially when comparing apples and oranges.

'The Fate of Expertise After Wikipedia' by Sanger - LOL is this just a shameless Citizendium plug?

'On Trusting Wikipedia' by Magnus - It's not just how knowledge is produced on Wikipedia but how it is read/used. I think Michel de Certeau said something like this, in general, best. Though the Onion also had a great shot at it.

'Prediction markets' by Bragues - How can we Digg for better divinations of the future? Put your money where your mouth/keyboard/mouse is!

Of course, the flippant two-liners above do the articles a great disservice and you should read them for yourself. BTW can anyone recommend a good introductory text to the philosophy of knowledge?

You think, I thought, FP confirmed

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:09:22 +0800

It's not that surprising that Singapore isn't a think tank hub. Although government support, especially in terms of funding, is very generous wrt ISEAS and RSIS-IDSS, think tank hubs also tend to be university hubs and that, in turn, is largely a factor of the size of the possible student population which in turn tends to correspond with the size of the population of the city in question. Likewise, the most influential institutions also tend to reside in the cities of great powers. Not surprising that Beijing or Tokyo will rank highly in terms of Asian think tanks. As such, our institutions haven't done badly at all.

A look at Foreign Policy magazine's taxonomy does raise some questions though. Our think tanks are not really 'policy makers' - RAHS excepted, I can't think of a single policy where local think tanks had a decisive influence.They are not particularly 'partisan' in the sense of pushing for party-political ideology, mostly because there isn't much political competition. Calling all of them 'phantoms' is IMHO unfair; RSIS does a lot of useful Track II work, what comes out of ARI and ISEAS is scholarly, critical and even enjoyable to read, LKYSPP... er... no comment. 'Scholars' - I think the think tanks themselves are pushing in this direction but we're not quite there yet, a lot due to the reasons mentioned above. 'Activists' - are you kidding?

Regarding that fifth category of the 'Scholar' type think tank, Alan Chong and Tan See Seng's piece, 'Teaching international relations in Singapore: 1956-2008: from supporting development to global city aspirations?' in the most recent issue of International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (Vol.9 No.1) hits the nail on its head when they identify how the tensions between

the dialectics of whether the future lies in open-ended knowledge inquiry or hewing to some version of state-associated pragmatism remains unresolved.

The spiral paradox here is open-ended knowledge inquiry is the dominant ethos of the think tank community on a global scale; kind of like how being able to do good basic science is often regarded as the bedrock of doing good applied science, the ability to generate knowledge for knowledge's sake is a pragmatic necessity for the ability to generate good, actionable policy-relevant knowledge. But as long as we continue to harp on the second to the neglect of the first, I'm afraid we'll continue to chase our own tails in the one area of possible improvement where we possibly have some room for manoeuvre.

The Job Credits Scheme as a Perverse Incentive

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:45:14 +0800

KTM has been on a roll, frying up special Job Credits Scheme (JCS) char kway teow that I can't resist the aroma. I am prepared to give JCS the benefit of the doubt but I also suspect that there might be unforeseen and undesirable problems and consequences down the road.

JCS is basically an incentive designed to get employers to minimize the level of unemployment of Singaporean citizens and PRs. Based on available information, JCS looks well designed in achieving its objectives. But the sociology of public policy dysfunction in general as well as the use of carrots and sticks in particular gives me pause in my enthusiasm for it. For example, banks gave big bonuses to reward performance, even if it meant taking too much risk. But we know how that is turning out. Or, likewise, in football:

In 1994, FIFA tried to encourage more attacking and exciting football at the World Cup by increasing the number of points a team were awarded for a win, from 2 points to 3 points. The points for a draw or a loss remained at on 1 and 0 respectively. It was thought that if a team stood to win a greater marginal win by winning rather than tying, they would be eager to score more and quicker.

Sounds logical, right? But the actual effect was, well, not a happy one (also see this 5 min video for more details).

How could JCS be a perverse incentive? Firstly, as highlighted by one lady MP (can't remember who), in the short term, employers could split up their payrolls. Anyone paid, say $3,000 a month, would have their pay reduced to $2,500. New employees (their wives, old enough chewrens, their siblings, auntie, uncle etc etc.) could be brought in to take up the extra $500. The taxpayer ends up having to fork out an extra $60 a month. Of course this is easy for CPF to spot and red flag but some firms may be unscrupulous and/or desperate enough to resort to this. If many firms do this, the bill will be considerably larger than budgeted for and will cost additional money to claw back.

Secondly, as it has been commonly pointed out, JCS may have completely zero effect on employers' decisions. Especially as salary/CPF costs are only one (albeit large) factor in the considerations of firms calculating profit/loss (other biggies are GST, depreciation, finance costs, professional fees) and cashflow (especially trade receivables and inventories).

But the more serious problem, IMHO, is that as there is no control group for purposes of measurement, we will never know for sure. But firms will definitely be incentivised to say (very loud): 'Yes, JCS lagi bagus!' Who doesn't want extra cash from gahmen? And given that our gahmen, like most people, like to be praised and believe its own propaganda, it is more likely than not that JCS will be declared a great success but no one can say for sure whether it was or not. I don't pretend to know how to solve this. It may also be easy to solve but, not surprisingly as I only had farmer CEP, I'm just not seeing how, based on what I've read.

Thirdly, leading on from the second point, it has been said that gratitude is merely the lively expectation of future favours. JCS may be temporary, gahmen say for one year only, but carrots are often harder to rescind than sticks - suppose this recession doesn't blow over in a year, guess what will firms say?

Sure, gahmen give firms the 'no free lunch' lecture and tell them to go fly kite but what if firms were actually right and start massive retrenchment? The gahmen would have actively committed an error of commission like how the Japanese government raised consumption tax from 3% to 5% in the face of widespread opposition and got the blame for sending the economy back into recession in 1997.

Conversely, if JCS is retained for too long, it may become embedded as a structural distortion to the labour market. Many Singaporeans may have been smugly critical of the NEP (oso supposed to be temporary only) in Malaysia but we may end up having our own version at home. It is a curious thing how policies evolve and take a life of their own and policymakers can't get off the tiger, like how CPF was meant to be first and foremost for retirement savings but nowadays its most important function is (1) pay HDB mortgage, followed by (2) medical bills, and then only if there's anything left (3) retirement savings.

Using the Copyright Act to Strangle the Blogosphere

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:56:24 +0800

Singaporean bloggers might worry about being sued for defamation or charged with sedition but not that many seem at all concerned by the possibility of being hauled up for copyright violations, merrily cutting and pasting text and photographs from The Straits Times or posting video excerpts taken from CNA reports.

Could media owners make use of the Copyright Act to selectively strangle and silence the blogosphere? Some blogs or websites could be told to remove numerous posts and to cough up royalties and legal costs. Given the ostensibly commercial nature of such actions by SPH or MediaCorp, it could seem a much less heavy handed way of cutting some up-and-coming websites down to size.

Why haven't they done so yet? Could it be that the fair use provisions in the Copyright Act actually provide bloggers with sufficient protection? I am not a lawyer and don't really understand how various parts of the Act will be interpreted in a court of law.

For example, some of the considerations involved in determining fair use include:

Whether it is 'of a commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes' [35(2)(a)] - does having ads adversely affect your defence even if it isn't enough to pay for hosting?

What determines if a blog is part of 'research or study' [35(3)]? Is being a student enough?

Or will the defence that 'it is for the purpose of criticism or review... a sufficient acknowledgment of the work is made' [36] be allowed if one cuts and pastes a ST Online article and appends it with: 'What a load of nonsense from the States Times again. LOL'?

How about 'if it is for the purpose of, or is associated with, the reporting of current events... in a newspaper, magazine or similar periodical... or by means of broadcasting'? [37(a) and (b)] Interestingly, Ganga has pointed on his post about Films (Amendment) Bill that 'reporting of current events' to be changed to '...reporting of news by a broadcasting service licensed under any written law'. Does it mean that a current affairs blog could still be covered WRT copyright issues?

But at the end of the day, it may not be in the interest of SPH/MediaCorp to clamp down on the blogosphere using copyright. It's not entirely clear how much profit bloggers cost them, given the relatively small reach of Singapore blogs.

More importantly, the dependence on material from the mainstream media allows it (and its political masters) to continue to set the agenda for what is newsworthy. It is true that online discussion of that Hougang rally photo or French cooking lessons has made news in the MSM but these seem to be reactive rather than proactive and the exception rather than the rule. You may disagree with it, but they still get to choose what you can disagree with.

Tocqueville on the ABS

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:23:56 +0800

My initial reaction to the announcement of the formation of the Association of Bloggers Singapore was something along the lines of Huh? But I also absolutely agree with Aaron on how ABS started out on the wrong foot, especially the quote that he singled out. The tone (dunno about the intent) of the post was, well, rather adversarial.

Most Europeans look upon association as a weapon which is to be hastily fashioned and immediately tried in the conflict. A society is formed for discussion, but the idea of impending action prevails in the minds of all those who constitute it... In America the citizens who form the minority associate in order, first, to show their numerical strength and so to diminish the moral power of the majority; and, secondly, to stimulate competition and thus to discover those arguments that are most fitted to act upon the majority; for they always entertain hopes of drawing over the majority to their own side, and then controlling the supreme power in its name.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book I, Ch 12:

I suppose the ABS's self-introduction had been more sweetness and light, the response might have been more muted. Anyhow, regardless of all the flames, criticisms and brickbats, it's nice to see that no one really attacked their right to associate.

Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association.
Book II Ch 5

He might have added: When, in Singapore, Gahmen form something, they comprain interference in their lives. When prominent Singaporeans cobble together some random group, they cry elitism. When ordinary folks do the same, lots of other people laugh and say they will never amount to anything.

When the members of a community are allowed and accustomed to combine for all purposes, they will combine as readily for the lesser as for the more important ones; but if they are allowed to combine only for small affairs, they will be neither inclined nor able to effect it. It is in vain that you will leave them entirely free to prosecute their business on joint-stock account: they will hardly care to avail themselves of the rights you have granted to them; and after having exhausted your strength in vain efforts to put down prohibited associations, you will be surprised that you cannot persuade men to form the associations you encourage.
Book II Ch 7

This paragraph always floats up in my mind whenever some Minister or other complains that young Singaporeans are apathetic. But, contra Tocqueville, Singapore does have plenty of Government-sponsored/approved organizations like RCs, CCCs, PA, or my favourite bugbear, the PCF with its sprawling network of childcare cum education centres. These have not unsizeable membership numbers and give succor, as a source of real grassroots boots/shoes/slippers on the ground, to Das Partei itself. Their importance to the PAP is recognized by the Workers' Party which proposed to abolish them in their 2006 Manifesto (4.D.1). Even some US/EU-designated terror groups know that, lots of internet propaganda aside, they need to provide schools, clinics and other social services to build popular support and win hearts and minds.

Tocqueville on Malaysiakini

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:14:38 +0800

The AFP report, 'Malaysiakini at vanguard of media revolution', was slightly irritating in the way it conflated Malaysiakini and the Malaysian blogosphere. I tend to think of the former as a newspaper and a very different creature compared to blogs. While I take the essential point that both are part of the online ecosystem and are linked by feedback loops, Malaysiakini offers considerable news content and has a commerical for-profit (rather than free-to-view) subscription-based (rather than ad revenue-based) model.

Without question Malaysiakini was on the vanguard of the Malaysian online news phenomenon and provided a brave, bold example that this whole generation of online bloggers and news providers has been able to draw on

It was Crispin's quote (reproduced above) that got me thinking about what Tocqueville had to say about The Relation Between Public Associations and Newspapers:

The effect of a newspaper is not only to suggest the same purpose to a great number of persons, but to furnish means for executing in common the designs which they may have singly conceived...

Tocqueville describes how a newspaper may (1) spread ideas to many individuals, (2) serve as a site where the many individual minds with the same idea may meet and (3) keep these minds united and spur them to further action.

Underlying all this are certain assumptions. That a platform has sufficient readership; it can't spread ideas to many if it's only read by the author and his dog. That there is a certain degree of interactivity whereby fellow readers are aware of each other; a bit of a problem when comment threads are filled with spambots, trolls and sock puppets. Or the feeling of 'Who the heck are these people??' when one reads the Straits Times Forum. That the site has sufficient holding power (lol burnout) and habitual visitors (lol crickets/tumbleweed). Malaysiakini fulfills these assumptions but it's doubtful if any Singaporean websites have reached that level yet. Thus it would be more helpful to know how, in a lot more detail, Malaysiakini achieved its current success.

A newspaper can survive only on the condition of publishing sentiments or principles common to a large number of men. A newspaper, therefore, always represents an association that is composed of its habitual readers.

I was immediately reminded of a particular quip from Bernard in Yes, Prime Minister about The Sun. It's undeniable that sex, celebrities, scandal or some combination thereof generally gets many more eyeballs. Just look at how the most sordid article that tends to be the most read article for the Straits Times Interactive. Or The New Paper. Or Wanbao. And yet Malaysiakini managed to survive and prosper without that kind of news and, what more, has turned a profit for the last four years. At this point, it's safe to say that habitual readership of the Straits Times is still way higher than a lot of non-MSM online platforms combined, even counting non-MSM websites that are largely derivative of MSM content (cut and paste, discuss, refer to). Though the treadlines might be unfavourable to the MSM, it still has a large entrenched advantage - with good strategy and clever marketing, it's not impossible to reclaim lost territory. How does our non-MSM sites draw in, maintain and grow habitual readership?

Mahbubani on Rule By Law

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 12:12:29 +0800

Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Kishore Mahbubani, wrote in his book The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistable Shift of Global Power to the East (New York: PublicAffairs, 2008):

The Western notion of the rule of law, in which all human beings are to be treated equally under the law and all citizens subject to the same laws, goes against the grain in Asian minds... Indeed, in the minds of the [Asian] ruling classes, the only function of the law was to enable them to discipline their subjects... To the Western mind, in contrast, the rule of law is to protect the individual citizen from arbitrary use of the powers of government. (p.85)

I'm pretty sure that Mahbubani did not intend to include Singapore as part of those terrible Asian ruling classes. And the Singaporean mind is not a Western one either (leaving cultural determinism aside).

In Asia, virtually all the elites (with the possible exception of those in North Korea and Myanmar) recognize that they have to gravitate towards greater respect for the rule of law. They know equally well that is impossible to build a modern society and a modern economy without a modern rule of law. This is the pill that all Asian societies will have to swallow, bitter though it may be in the early years of application. (p.90)

Will be very bitter for non-ruling classes meh? Also 'greater respect for the rule of law' seems to suggest to me that, over time, with increased economic development and social complexity, politics needs to shift from the rule of/by good men to greater reliance on institutions (in both senses i.e. the types that reside in buildings and the types that reside in norms).

In theory, China enjoys the same rule of law found in other modern societies... The Chinese government also realizes that no modern economy can function without effective rule of law. If China, for example, cannot provide the same property rights enjoyed by other modern societies, that fact alone will eventually stifle China's economic development. (p.138)

So there we have it: you can have 'the same rule of law' but only 'in theory'. Would have loved to seen him elaborate on that. And it's nice to read that civil and political rights are not just Good To Have on their own but also intrinsically linked to that supreme pragmatic good of economic growth.

Nardin on the Rule of Law

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 11:29:59 +0800

Prof Terry Nardin, Head of the Department of Political Science at NUS published an article, a while back, in the Review of International Studies [Vol.34 No.3, 2008 (subscription or institutional access required)] that argues, particularly against political realism and postmodernism, that law is not merely an instrument of policy. He goes on to argue that the 'rule of law is a moral idea, if we understand the word "moral" as implying limits on the means by which governments as well as persons pursue their goals.' [p.385]

Nardin does not defend or attack any real-life legal system. His piece is pitched at the abstract theoretical level of legal theory and his focus is on international law, i.e. legal relations between states rather than within them. Nonetheless, a mention of Singapore still manages to pop up. After arguing against a thin, or minimalist, definition of the rule of law, he then tackles what he deems to be overly inclusive definitions:

To say, for example, that in some countries the rule of law is 'appreciated in instrumental terms' and 'dictated by efficiency and stability imperatives' is to use the expression 'rule of law' where it does not belong and where 'law' would suffice. [p.397]

The quotes he takes issue with come from Dr Thio Li-Ann's chapter, 'Rule of Law within a Non-Liberal "Communitarian" Democracy: The Singapore Experience' in Asian Discourses of Rule of Law: Theories and Implementation of Rule of Law in Twelve Asian Countries, France and the US, ed. by Randall Peerenboom (London: Routledge, 2004).

From the piece, I got a very strong sense that the author is also normatively committed to defining the rule of law as a moral idea.The author carefully built up his argument based on clear definitions of key terms like law and the rule of law and how, even though they are often conflated, we should not confuse them with policy and the exercise of power. Nonetheless, I cannot help but doubt whether the power of a moral idea and reasoned argument, on their own, can really speak truth to the powerful who have a vested interest in defining the terms of debate in some other way.

The 229-page AIMS report recommends maturity and common sense

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:12:53 +0800

The author has identified himself as "An Anonymous, Opinionated, All-Powerful Warrior Who, Because of His Endurance And Inflexible Will To Win, Goes From Conquest To Conquest, Leaving Fire In His Wake, And Who Is Also a Local With A Very Cantonese Name That Starts With The Letter L, Just So You Know".

AFTER 229 PAGES of rumination, the superfluously-named Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (or AIMS, as they insist) have turned in a list of recommendations to the government.

Broadly, the group recommend: relaxing laws on Internet election advertising; the repeal of legislation outlawing so-called "party political films"; establishing an "independent advisory panel" to determine which films can be banned because they contravene the "public interest"; and to lift a ban on 100 "undesirable" websites. Most interestingly, the group recommend "limited immunity" for "civil and criminal liaibility" for defamation in online media, which reflects a growing confidence in the limitations of online grouses.

In the background of deplorable media restrictions, AIMS' recommendations are sound, surprising and welcome. Even the manner it has been put together is (for Singapore) novel and beyond reproach, with a number of prominent bloggers and some of the country's more level-headed thinkers consulted for input. A perhaps bigger surprise is that the panel is chaired by Cheong Yip Seng, who used to call the shots at the Straits Times, a newspaper which may not be the People's Daily, but is not a world different either.

Cynics will be rightly sceptical about how many of these recommendations will become word of law. But there are several signs that bode well. In particular, Mr Cheong's involvement is telling - his insider status will soften the more hardline opinions. The former journalist Cherian George describes his former boss at SPH as a "master of the art of the possible".

A bigger reason why the recommendations are likely to become reality has much to do with the Internet's limitations. Despite the hype and "potential", the Internet has not changed the complexion of local politics as much as some people hope. Even excluding the media restrictions, there already are more than enough restrictions in the system to curb enthusiasm for the cut and thrust of politics. In any case, with only two opposition seats in a parliament of 84, there should be room to experiment with these ideas. There is little risk, some political capital and considerable goodwill to be had from easing online media regulations.

Let the heathens spill theirs on the dusty ground

Let the heathens spill theirs on the dusty ground
Lord will make them pay for each sperm that can't be found

For the vast majority of Singapore's internet denizens - the male ones, anyway - the most interesting proposal is the one to unban 100 "undesirable" websites, mostly pornographic. It is practically impossible to provide a virtual shield to pornography. There are far too many resources, far too many opportunities for the expression of the onanic arts. And there are even more lonely adolescents with a spare hand or two. (Probably just one in this day and age.)

But why block pornography at all? The AIMS panel is only for unbanning the websites after a "holistic" media literacy package for minors, which is a typically harebrained (and Singaporean) thing to say. The government did not interfere with the sexual feelings of the teenagers of the 70s - and they have less reason to do the same today. As long as it is legal and harmless, it is not the government's business - and nor should the government dictate what constitutes "undesirable".

Pornography might be artificial, unsubtle and foster a less than savoury attitude towards women, but the blocked 100 websites have not suddenly created a generation of rapists and perverts in the world, never mind the other 300-odd million of them. On the other hand, using a national firewall to block off some universally condemned smut, such as child pornography, will only arouse unwanted curiosity.

Unfortunately the AIMS panel does not go further in asking where the government stops and the parents start. Parents have a duty to explain to their children the right attitudes about sex in as much as they have a duty to tell their children to look both ways before crossing the road. The Internet has changed the world in many ways with its (now usually) wireless magic. But it is surely a road too far to use it as an excuse to defer one's duties as a parent.

Let the pagans spill theirs o'er mountain, hill and plain
God shall strike them down for each sperm that's spilled in vain