Chua Mui Hoong, balancing writing the right stuff and saying the good stuff

Many readers may be wondering why local journalists/reporters are so fond of writing about their dogs, the kind of underwear they used, or how they snored, and things like that. Pardon me for a bit of exaggerations. Often by writing such stuff, some may come out looking like bimbos instead of professionals. And when they tried to write something serious, they are always writing about the right stuff.
 
The question then is whether these journalists/reporters have the grey matter to be accorded the titles of journalists/reporters? Why couldn’t they write stuff like the netizens, serious, exciting and captivating, and set the mind thinking, not about dog poo and underwear?
 
Of course they are very capable and able young people who could easily outshine anyone in social media. These are the best talents trained in the best universities and with the rare skills to wield a pen like a painter’s brush or the sword of a warrior. Unfortunately they are mostly constrained by the OB markers that kept them from blossoming, writing flowery proses and critically incisive pieces on social political issues. Their expertise and talents did not have a chance to flower and to intoxicate their readers. It is so sad that so many talents have been wasted from excelling in their chosen profession. Many would have been candidates for the Pulitzer Prize if given the chance to do what they are good at, trained for, and to indulge freely, to stimulate and to inspire, and to put their readers into bewilderment and in a pleasant state of frenzy..
 
Below are some quotes from Chua Mui Hoong showing the spread of ideas she is capable of, one writing the right stuff and the other, the good stuff.
 
Chua Mui Hoong was quoted to say, “But if you were to read some of the comments online, you can see the rise of such polarised views – such as when bloggers and commenters paint the PAP as a bunch of self-serving elite people who pay themselves multi-million-dollar salaries to perpetuate a system in which they and their family members can become very rich.”
 
Was she implying that this is a myth? Read the Parliamentary Pensions Act to decide for yourself whether it is a myth or a ‘real’ fantasy.
 
4(2) The annual amount of pension payable to an office-holding Member shall be —
(a) in respect of every completed year of reckonable service in any office, or where he has served in more than one office in each office, at the rate of one-twenty-seventh (1/27) of his annual salary in that office; and

(b) in respect of any remaining uncompleted year of reckonable service in any office, or where he has served in more than one office in each office, at the rate of one-three-hundred and twenty-fourth (1/324) part of his annual salary for each completed month of reckonable service in that office.

(2A) The annual pension payable to any office-holding Member under subsection (2) shall not exceed two-thirds of the highest annual salary of any office held by him.

(3) Subject to sections 13 and 15, a pension granted under this section shall continue for the life of the person to whom it is payable but shall not be payable in respect of any period during which he is again an office-holding Member; at the end of that period the pension shall again be payable and shall be re-computed with the addition of that period to the period of his former reckonable service as an office-holding Member.

(4) For the purposes of subsections (2) and (2A), “annual salary”, in relation to any office, means the annual equivalent of the highest monthly rate of salary (excluding any non-pensionable allowances) received by an office-holding Member during any period of reckonable service as a holder of that office.
 
Also, The Act says that the pension can be commutated. This means that can be paid in 1 lump sum instead of monthly payments for life. The lump sum is equivalent to 175.14 months of pension, i.e. 14.6 years of pension. It doesn't matter that the minister asks for it because he has terminal cancer and has 3 months to live. He will get 14.6 years of pension paid to him in 1 go, and it will be tax free.
 
Now look at the other side of Chua Mui Hoong. This was what she wrote:
 
“A good government first needs to create the conditions for business to flourish. Then it needs to spend and redistribute the wealth created to maintain harmony and fairness in a society, to enhance citizens’ well-being. Doing the latter is not being populist.”:
 
• Spending money to ensure universal health coverage is not populist but just a responsible thing to do for “any decent, humane government”
• Helping the jobless and underemployed get back into the job marketplace via wage subsidies and training is not populist but just good old common sense to get people back onto their feet
• Spending on early childhood education to help poor children do well in school is not populist but just good investment in kids’ futures
 
“If a government has rich state coffers, but its people feel stressed and anxious at every stage of their lives, it cannot be a good government,” she said.
 
It would be nice to give Chua Mui Hoong a free hand to write what she thinks and what she really feels, the good stuff from a talented journalist. Maybe she is already writing what she feels and thinks and no one is preventing her from writing her stuff. Han Fook Kwang has lately been writing things from his own thoughts and perspective, giving a more balanced picture of what the reality is. What would Chua Mui Hoong be writing, like Han Fook Kwang, writing in her true self and showing the flair of what true and good journalism could be? And this applies to practically all the journalists and reporters. Would they be unmuzzled to write freely in the likes of Berstein and Woodward, and to raise the quality of our main stream media to a higher level and spare the readers for paying good money from reading the mundane and mediocrity? I don’t believe we are seeing the best of them yet. They are made of better stuff.
 
Set them free, give them dignity - Redbean

Kopi Level - Green