Elected President – Confirming a badly thought out scheme?

When this scheme was pushed through in Parliament, it was touted as the cure all remedy to prevent a rogue govt from dipping into the national reserves. At that time it was the best thought out plan to guard against a rogue govt. In the last few days, everyone in Parliament were condemning this as a loosely thought out scheme with many loopholes that needed to be patched. It is not funny for such an important institution in the Constitution to be aired in Parliament as something flimsy and flawed.

Did anyone then notice anything wrong with this scheme? Why suddenly it was like ‘alamak’ this Elected President scheme is so dangerous and must quickly be changed or else in the next GE we will have a rogue as a president.  Which rogue is likely to become the next Elected President? Or was it that Kishore had an enlightenment, or was it that he woke up from the wrong side of the bed and knocked his head, then God spoke to him, that the Elected President scheme can end up with a rogue president? Was this Elected President scheme designed to prevent a rogue govt from robbing the reserves, and now the scheme itself is also feared to produce a rogue president?  And they want a group of appointed men and women to guard the president? Do they need to guard the group of wise men and women just in case they also become rogues? At this point in time they could not see far into the future. Maybe Kishore would wake up another day and shout, die die, the people guarding the Elected President can also be rogues. Then how, form another committee to guard the wise men and women?

Why was this Elected President a scheme deemed necessary then? I remember that they needed the authority and power of the people to be vested in the President, someone that is elected by the people will have the authority to deal with the elected govt.  Is it not funny that they now proposed to have a few appointed men, not elected by the people, dunno where they got their authority from, to control the Elected President, to veto the President?  Can a few not elected men or women check on a President elected by the majority of the citizens, the 35% is an exception and a bad example. It could be a President elected by 90% of the people! Got logic or not? This is worse than having non elected MPs acting as MPs to control elected MPs or to vote against elected MPs in Parliament.

By the way, why they never think of minority interest then? Why now, must explain or not?  And would this compromise the Elected Presidency? The minority MPs had rightly pointed out that they did not want a minority president that is not worthy, not meritocratic but put there because he is a minority. This is the same reasoning as getting a degree from our university by competing fairly with everyone, not being given a place and a degree because one is a minority. That would compromise the person and his degree if done that way. So, how to deal with this concern and reservation of the minority interest?

I hope after this amendment there will not be more Kishores down the road to cry wolf and said got more problems with the Elected President scheme and more amendments must be made. The rogue idea is really getting everyone very nervous and having nightmares, cannot sleep. Naughty Kishore, better not come up with more bright and scary ideas in the future. He is not known to be the only thinker in this city state for nothing. When he thinks, the unthinking and not thinking will take everything he said as gospel truth. It will happen, in the next PE!

It would be better for Kishore to come up with a complete solution instead of what were being proposed that appeared to have more holes than plasters.  The final result will be full of plasters patching over all the holes.  And it would also be better for Kishore to do the explanation as well to make it sound scholarly and coherent and from a disinterested party.

PS. Under our stringent criteria, it is believed that rich and high position men will not be rogues. Only poor and less able men will likely to be rogues. George Bush Jr and Obama would not even qualify to stand for election as an Elected President without executive powers here.

Is the NCMP another scheme due for more tweakings?

The Lee Li Lian snub of the NCMP seat revealed quite a number of problems, that the scheme was not well thought out, just like the Elected President scheme. There are so many lose ends that were flying loosely in the air and it takes a Lee Li Lian to expose the inadequacy of the thinking process towards the NCMP scheme. There is no need for a Kishore to wake up and exclaim, ‘Gosh, the NCMP scheme could lead to rogue MPs being put into Parliament.’

First point, the scheme did not cater for a case when a candidate refuses to accept the offer of a NCMP seat. The provision was to let Parliament to use its discretion. Now they did not know what to do? Who should the rejected seat be offered to and on what grounds? Can the party of the candidate offer another replacement from the same party from the next best candidate? Or should the party appeal or request to the election office or whoever is authorized to make such a decision?

With the provision of a number of NCMP seats, would it be an automatic process for the office or whoever, to offer the NCMP seat to the next best qualified candidate? Or should it be left as vacant when an offer is turned down? If this be so, what if all 12 candidates offered turned down, no NCMP?

Another point, if the best performing losing candidate happens to be a GRC, should not the offer of NCMP be to all the candidates in the best losing GRC?  Why one only? Isn’t a GRC a version of ‘one for all, all for one’?

Another consideration, is the minority interest a matter of concern here?  If a whole GRC team is offered, then the minority candidate issue would not become an issue. If it is offered to one instead of a GRC team, does it not compromise the intent and purpose of the GRC? Don’t simply brush this aside as a non issue in the case of NCMP.

There must be proper procedures to take care of as there are many variable known possibles. And a case like a candidate refusing to accept a NCMP seat is most possible and should have been taken care off before it becomes an issue and wasting so much time in Parliament for people to ‘chut pattern’ or ‘cho kah chiu’ and making everyone looking so lost and angry. It leaves so much room for politicking.

So, when would a COI be appointed to look into this NCMP scheme to patch up the holes?

SGX – The elephant that no one wants to see

It was not just an elephant that no one sees, but no one wants to see or talk about as if there is a dark force telling them not to say anything about it. SGX held a public dialogue and it was a damn big deal. It never happened before! They never think it was necessary to do so. Mohamed must go to the mountain, don’t expect the mountain to come to Mohamed. So there was a public forum, for what, to hear about the elephant, to talk about the elephant? Anyone going there with any inkling of hope that something meaningful would come out of it must have his mental faculty checked.

The people in charge in the SGX and MAS are not idiots. They are the super talents of the land, the crème ala crème of our establishment. They did not know what is happening, they did not know the elephant was there, they could not see the elephant? Heard of the emperor’s new clothe? Who in his right mind, earning millions happily would dare or want to risk telling the emperor he is naked and get slapped?

So what did SGX try to do in the dialogue? As usual, telling the good stuff and hoping the audience would hear only the good stuff. They said, ‘bo how seow bo kong’ if you know what it means. The stock market is very healthy, really, as good as it could be, we are performing better than many major markets in the whole wide world. Ok, enough of ‘how seow’. And sure enough, the remisiers and everyone in the industry present at the forum could not stomach the ‘how seow’ being thrown at them. They did not want to hear the ‘good stuff’.

Hey, don’t think the remisiers, dealers and sundry are really daft, blindly reading the media and hearing only what people wanted them to hear. They are the practitioners, the people on the ground, losing their pants, their clients losing their life savings, and many are quitting a moribund industry. The stock market is doing well, according to who and on what criteria? No sensible person would say that without looking silly.

Ok, I confess I was not at the session, knowing what it would be like it would be a futile and time wasting effort to be there. The only thing good coming out of it, if you think it is good, is for the letting out of steam and frustration, to tell them to look at the elephant.  Luckily the remisiers and dealers did not riot or throw their shoes at the panel. But many would leave the forum more frustrated than ever, knowing that no one that is in a position to do something was there to listen and to want to do something right. They were there to tell everyone that everything was fine, just like when they first decided to bring in the foreign funds and introduced all the changes to make high speed computer trading a bliss, at the expense of the rest of the players, taking advantage of computer power to cheat and fleece the innocents.

Remember what they said? The big funds, the computers plugged into the system, were the way going forward. This was the new thing and must follow market practice. There would be plentiful of liquidity and plentiful of trading activities. The stock market would spin out of control and everyone would be doing roaring businesses. Oops, this last sentence is just my exaggeration. But they did said the future was so bright and business would be so good that tomorrow could only be better. The rest is history.

Yes the stock market is very healthy. In another six months or so, maybe half of the remisiers and dealers would also pack up and leave. The broking houses would be operating on half strength and trying to break even in a losing battle in the best stock market in the world. Now, if the market is so good, why would the Singapore Business Federation rush a paper to appeal to the govt to reinvest in the local stock market that they could not raise fund from the market, a key function of the market, and they had to call the stock market a moribund stock market? Are they lying or someone else is lying?

And if the market is so good, why are the remisiers and dealers fleeing and why are the broking houses starting to make plans to cut staff and downsize? And why were the SGX and MAS deemed it necessary to break protocol, to come to Mohamed, to want to listen to Mohamed? Oops, sorry again, my mistake. They came to tell Mohamed the good news, that everything is fine, just fine.

Ok, let me hold my horses and quote a few comments that Rajan whatsapped to me from SI chat to give you an idea of the farce that happened at the forum and you can make up your own mind on the fruitfulness or futility of the chat session. This is the culture of the establishment. If they cannot convince you, they will confuse you. Remember the clown saying everyday that public housing was affordable? Actually more clowns are still singing the same tune.

 

Ok, here are the quotes:

1. If the remisiers, dealers are frustrated, what would the tens of thousands of lousy listing sufferers from S cheats to sinking SMEs do?
2. The outpour of anger and frustration among dealers and TRs was ‘encouraging’.
3. SGX began the day saying how Singapore exchange healthcare stocks has outperformed…put out a chart that’s says How our index has out performed SSEC since 2007(the grammar and typo errors are inherent in the posts). This went on for an hour, I can’t believe it, …’until a young man from DBSV interrupted and pointed out that they are cherry picking data points. The healthcare computation index was skewed and that if they had used another time period, the outcome would be different. (KNN)
4. He then went on to talk about how sick is the market. At lunch time yesterday half of the counters on sgx were not traded. The top 100 counters has only certain values etc etc. Things get heated up.
5. Soon remisiers one by one poured out their views on how S cheats, lousy SMEs, business trusts etc etc destroyed wealth savings of their friends, themselves and clients.
6. The outpouring was great.
7. It’s heartening to hear TRs questioning the morality, the extend of greed, the damage done to the investing public, the lives of those who depends on the industry from remisiers to backroom were given a chance to air.
8. Heard the young man talked about…remisiers, ex simex driving taxis and colleagues leaving…he grieved at the sorry state of affairs in the industry after years of mismanagement…How billions of market capitalizations were lost…lives broken….

 

The above comments are not new, did not happen yesterday. And you can bet that the people in the govt too knew about it. The sad thing is that all their heads were buried in the sand. No one dares to tell the truth, no one wants to tell the truth, no one wants to know the truth. You can bet Hsien Loong, Tharman, Heng Swee Kiat and every minister know what is happening to the stock market. The big question, why the reticence, why the inaction? Why is everyone looking the other way? This is the biggest mystery. This is the pathetic state of things. Who is responsible for this shit?

 

No one really, no one is responsible though many are taking millions and millions as salaries. ‘No one owes you a living. You die your business.’  Heard of the phrase ‘bo cheng hu’? Did the dialogue achieve anything or meant to achieve anything?

 

Thank you for bearing with me.

The philosphy of Goodlife Makan

The ESM has launched a new initiative in his Marine Parade ward to bring life to the senior citizens. It is called Goodlife Makan, where the seniors are encouraged to do things together, and what else is better than food? Goodlife Makan is all about the seniors and makan. And if I am not mistaken, Monfort Caré is taking care of the cost of the project.

“When we discuss challenges facing old people, we tend to look at them as problems – who will look after them, do they need more funds, what will be the cost of looking after them? That is the wrong approach. It's how to turn that into strengths - what can they do for themselves? How can they help others?” said ESM Goh.

How true is the above statement. Old people all got problems. The poor ones got poor problems, the rich ones got rich problems. Some got no money and would really appreciate Goodlife Makan for a day of free makan, I am presuming here, and a day of socialising. Some got so much money that the money becomes a problem itself.

Yes, the right approach is to turn their challenges into strength. The poor should just enjoy themselves without having to pay for it since they got no money anyway. And the rich should be given the opportunity to show their generosity and pay for the makan. Like that win win. The poor would be grateful to the rich and the rich would be thankful there is a useful way to spend their money. Otherwise so much money would only go to waste. Now they can really do something for themselves, to enjoy the pleasure of sharing a little of their wealth and good fortune with those that have little.

Nice thought on a Sunday morning. But putting it into practice is not easy.

Japanese history repeating itself

Historians read the past to understand what is happening today. There is another way of looking at history by looking at what is happening today to understand what happened in the past. The history of Japan during WW2 is still cloaked with controversies. Who were the real villains that led Japan to its barbaric invasion of Asia and South East Asian? The verdict at the military tribunal put the blame on the Emperor Hirohito, the father of present Emperor of Japan. Many members of the royal families were also found guilty, among them many princes who held command positions in the Imperial Army.

Did the tribunal nailed the real culprits that led Japan to the disastrous war or the Emperor Hirohito was made a scapegoat and the politicians and soldiers who wanted the war and did the butchering of the people they invaded? Emperor Akhihito is now touring the Pacific countries, including Japan and is showing remorse and repentance to the victims of the Japanese invasion and barbarity.  He acknowledged the crimes of Japan in WW2 but was not allowed to say much by the politicians, just like his father during the WW2. The Emperor was just a figure head if what is happening today was the same as the past. The politicians called the shot then and now. Japan was dragged into WW2 by the politicians and the soldiers, not by the Emperor.

While the Emperor and other members of the Imperial household have spoken about the horrors of wars, and feeling repentance over the criminal acts of the Japanese Imperial Armies and the politicians then, the politicians today are shutting up the Emperor and embarking a another mission to rearm Japan, tearing away the pacifist Constitution, and going around the world thumping their chests that they would want to engage in wars. They are building more weapons of wars and signing military alliances and supporting and agitating for wars.

Should Japan embark on WW3 and lose, the fingers must point directly at the politicians and Shinzo Abe and his gang in the govt. They are the ones that are pushing Japan to the path of militarism and war. The Imperial household has nothing to do with what the politicians are doing and wanting to commit Japan on a war path.

In the next war tribunal, the Japanese Emperor must not be made another scapegoat to take the blame from the politicians. The evidence is all there and mounting up daily, the deeds and words of Abe and his gangs of militants.