Interviewing a political candidate

The setting was in a posh hotel. It was done to impress the candidates that this is the right place to be, to be in the right company and everything is fine, first class stuff. All the riches money can buy. The décor and ambience were like those gold bullions and diamond bucket shops, a façade done to impress the impressionable, with superficial finesses.

The candidates must be awed by the opulence of such an interview setting. It is like walking into the temple of god, and in the company of gods. And the godlike interviewers will field their cleverly crafted questions to assess the candidates, at the same time to impress them that the interviewers are the super talents and assessing the super talents wannabes. The unspoken ethos, you need to get pass them to be seen as good enough to be a super talent. They will assess the candidate’s potential and aspiration.

In the course of a few days of interviews, the candidates tried their very best to be the one to be selected and they will muster the most ingenious ways, at times queer, but always different, to impress the godlike interviewers. Some will bring themselves so low, to prove humility, that they are in politics to serve the people, anything but for personal glory and money. They don’t mind becoming social workers, very highly paid social workers, to look after the oldies and the poor, the special needs children, a very noble sense of wanting to give to the downtrodden, to care for them. Some would go down one level further by confessing their greatest love for animals, the non sentient beans. They rather care for animals than the already blessed human beans.

The smarter ones will try to game the system. They did their homework and know what the interviewers were looking for. So they showed off their management skills and said they want to manage town councils. They know that the skill to run town council is a mandatory skill to run a country. Anyone that is incapable of running a town council means no good to run a country. Instant failure. They would not mind being paid $16,000 pm or more with the perks, to brag how well they can sweep floors and make sure public toilets are clean, and the roads have no pot holes.

The not so bright ones, who thought they are brighter, would tell the interviewers their aspirations to be great politicians, great leaders and even want to chase the rainbows, and be prime ministers or ministers. They want to live with the true spirit of meritocracy and being high achievers.

The interview is a very serious process to pick out the deserving candidates to be politicians, to be paid in the millions, at least $16,000 a month to start with, and only part time. Many candidates were picked and shortlisted, and after the interviews, many more days and nights would be spent sorting out the real and good stuff from the pretenders.

Finally, after a long wait, the list will be announced. Those aspiring to be road sweepers, to manage town councils are chosen. Those wanting to be highly expensive social workers or animal lovers were also desirable candidates, the type of people to become political leaders and to look after the welfare of animals in the islands, like stray dogs and cats. Those that want to be great leaders, to run the country, to be ministers and prime ministers, were unfortunately not chosen. Who needs such ambitious brats? There are enough godlike talents and the pyramid at the top is very narrow. No room for smart alecs and bright and ambitious politicians.

The interviewers studied their needs very carefully and picked the right people to fill in the slots from the best candidates available. They need town council managers, not political leaders, they need people who have a big heart for the down trodden, for the poor animals. They need people to sweep the floors and clean toilets. There is no need for real leaders, leaders that can solve national issues. They already have plenty of them in the stables. What, glorified and over paid social workers and animal lovers? Are they being paid too much for what they are doing? Not really, unless you want to employ foreign workers to do these jobs.

My inspiration for the above story comes from the Animal Farm. It is 100% fictional and would be good for another 100 years as a political piece of crap.

A Tribute to a Malay Intellectual – Said Zahari

‘Another unsung hero from our anti-colonial struggle in the 1950s and early 1960s has left us. Unlike the victors of history, Said Zahari, age 88, went quietly as he had done for the most part of his life, be it when he was fighting against the British for Singapore’s independence or when he sat in prison for 17 years under Lee Kuan Yew’s rule.

His calm demeanour belied a spirit of steel that saw him bear the cruelty of long imprisonment without trial and yet not for a moment compromising on his principles to seek release from incarceration.

Pak Said had publicly called Lee Kuan Yew “a political coward”. He had said only a coward would resort to jailing his opponents instead of taking them in a political contestation of ideas and letting the best man win…’   By Dr Wong Souk Yee

Wong Souk Yee wrote a tribute on Said Zahari posted in the TRE. Said was among the Malay intellectuals of the era when PAP was fighting tooth and nail with the Barisan Socialis, the left leaning political party then. Said was in the same company as those arrested during Operation Cold Store and served the second longest detention of 17 years after Chia Thye Poh, strongly committed to his cause and like Chia Thye Poh, would not denounce his belief throughout his detention.

Said was tri lingual, fluent in Malay, English and Mandarin, an asset most feared in the political arena. He was also the editor of Utusan Melayu.

One by one this first generation of political leaders will fade to oblivion only to live forever in the history books of Malaysia and Singapore.

China’s peaceful rise

Jean Pierre Lehmann, emeritus professor of international political economy at IMD, Lausanne, wrote an article on the above in the ST on 9 Apr.  His story centres on the rise of international powers starting with the Portugal, Spain , the Netherlands, Britain, France, US, Japan and The USSR.  He traced the history of these powers and the use of violence and wars as an intrinsic part of their ascents. War and violence as parts of conquest and world domination were inevitable before a new power took the pole position.

And now comes China. Would China’s rise as a super power be peaceful, be an aberration and not in the mold of the western powers, predated by wars and violence?  The western narrative has constantly harped on a belligerent and expansive China that would swing its big clubs at everyone on its way up, like the western powers. China would be like one of them, no exception. So beware, China is coming.

China today is the Number Two super power after the US. In a way, China has risen, peacefully, without the need for wars and conquest. This alone would have been enough proof that a super power can rise without resorting to violence. China is what it is today, without the need for conquest but by trade and commerce.  Is this enough to assuage the western thinkers and media to accept China as a risen power, peacefully?

The other notion, China is not there yet. It has to overtake the USA and this last step would force the issue and a war with the Americans. And in Lehmann’s view China has the right to engage in wars. It was the victim of aggression when major powers came to being. China should follow the same pattern in the rise of a super power, through war and conquest, to challenge and defeat the incumbent super power, the USA.

However, according to Lehmann, ‘if China succeeds in achieving a peaceful rise to great power status – that is, dispensing with war, pillage, slavery, conquest and exploitation – it will be the first rising great power to have done so.’ This could be a welcoming outcome if China is left alone to continue in what it is doing for the last 30 plus years. Unfortunately this may not be the case. The Americans are in the way of the peaceful rise of China with its confrontational approach towards China, the pivot to Asia, building anti China trade and military alliances, escalating and precipitating armed conflict, particularly in the Korean Peninsula and the South China Sea.  Today it is reported that the Americans would be conducting sea and air patrol in the South China Sea, not freedom of navigation, as if the South China Sea belongs to the American Empire. Here it is not China challenging the Americans to a show of force. It is the Americans that are standing up to China, confronting China and putting up obstacles to contain China’s rise.

Though the American patrol is only a token show of force, it is a bad precedent. China could ignore this little insect, but in principle it is bad. What the Americans are doing, violating other country’s sovereignty and economic zones, China could do the same. China could announce conducting air and naval patrol in American economic zones as well. Both sides can play the game of bully. The American’s blatant flexing of military muscle to exert control of the South China Sea and in the Korean region should not be ignored by the world community.

In Lehmann’s view, the world must work with China to achieve this historical aberration, that a super power can rise to the pole position without having to go the disastrous and destructive road of war.  China’s march towards the Number One super power status, to eclipse the Americans through economic means, economic development could be a possibility and only a matter of when. It is in the interest of the rest of the world that they work with China for a peaceful rise instead of following a confronational course set by the Americans.

China has risen and will continue to rise peacefully as an economic and military super power. The main protagonist against such an eventuality is the intent of the Americans and its bellicose policies towards China. China is no western nation, has its own culture and values, and is not seeking conquest and colonization. It is a super power more in the economic sense and would grow to be a bigger economic power, without having to control and colonise any country like the western powers did.

China is not seeking war, and war is unnecessary in the Chinese model to be the greatest power on earth. The world can and must work with China for this to happen, peacefully. The world must not allow the Americans to force an issue with China leading to a conflict of epic proportion and destruction. The Americans too knew that a war with China is inconceiveable. China knows that too and is trying to avoid a collision course with the Americans.

If good sense prevails, the peaceful rise of China will be a welcome aberration in the history of humankind.

Free parking is a subsidy, what about free air?

Minister of National Development Lawrence Wong today (April 11th) said that free parking in some car park spaces are not “free” and are in fact subsidies from the government.

“Free parking is not free, it’s a subsidy to the motorist, paid for by non-motorists.”

This is an example to prove that Singaporeans are daft. Only super talent can like that. It requires a very high level of intellect to reason why free parking is a subsidy.

What about free air? Is free air also a govt subsidy? What else that is free is govt subsidy? Sunlight? Haze free air?

What would opposition parties say?

 

Food for thought.

Singapore paying the price for decades of failed education policies

This verdict is controversial of course, depending on how one  measures success and failure of our education policy. If one measures it in our uniquely Singapore ways, like dignity is measured by how much one’s income, and education is measured by how many straight As, then we are very successful. We produced probably the most straight as in the world on a per capita basis. Even the new International Baccalaurette programme that was introduced recently, our students are acing the exams every year since it started. Students that used to score average grades would now get full scores possible.

Producing straight As and more straight As is a matter of moderation, a process that allows the examiner to move the scores of the students left or right of the median grade for whatever they set out to do. It is scientific or mathematical in a way, but whether the students deserves the As is subjective.

What is apparent today, after a few decades of producing straight As students is that the flaws are showing. We are getting a bunch of very brilliant parrot that could regurgitate everything perfectly. But when ask to think, they began scratching their heads, what is that? And in the industries, the lack of thinking talents, people who walked around on two legs and can think, is simply not there. And that is why so many foreigners from God knows where are here and touted as talents because, despite their dubious academic records, they could talk and think and run circus around our duds, the unthinking parrots.

Sure we have many very brilliant Singaporeans here and abroad. The really good and bright people would not be subdued and made stupid by a stupid education system. They would shine under any system or no system. But for the rest, the elite parrots and the masses, the inability to think, and the unique ability to receive and to be taught to repeat what they were told is getting to a very frightening stage, to a point when you tell them eating shit is good, drinking shit water is good, and they will eat and drink with gusto.

The daft Sinkies, not invented by me, I just regurgitate this phrase, like unthinking parrots do, oh, unthinking parrots never used this phrase in their vocabulary, will accept everything they are told to be good. I have recently wrote an article about the things the daft Sinkies were made to believe in. Some of the daft things that Singaporeans would swear to be good are: we are too small, not enough political talents, so cannot afford to have two political parties, when one opposition candidate is voted to become an MP the country will collapse, they dismissed the wisdom of not putting all their eggs in one basket, that power corrupts, and instead believe in one party is best for a democracy and nothing is better than ownself checks ownself.

The idiocy of the unthinking reaches a climax when I read this comment in the TRE.

‘Mr Lee Kuan Yew is not only founder father of spore, he also a war hero. Country everywhere always celebrate and remember war hero and their found father.’

This is a comment posted by someone calling himself True Blue Singaporean. The only consolation is that he is a fake, or at best a new citizen. And everyone reading his comment will know he is not even writing in Singlish. This guy even advised Singaporeans to read our history to verify his claim. With no due disrespect to LKY, I don’t think anyone in govt would dare to glorify him with this war hero title, not even in a state of drunken stupor.

The stupidity of Singaporeans is now legendary. Go ask those PMETs that are now driving taxis and working as temp workers, who replaced them and made them redundant and they would not have any clue. They would not want to know why someone from the 3^rd world with dubious academic qualifications and experience is more suitable and qualified to do his job. He simply accepts the fact and his fate, that he is no good even if he is the product of a world best education system. He is just not taught to think, to be smart, to be smarter than fakes and cheats, so getting cheated is only something deserving in his case.

Not to worry, daft would not make a scene and will disappear into the wilderness, quietly. Oh, he is trainable and very willing to be trained, to become a low skilled worker despite his experience and qualifications as PMETs. This must be a special asset of these daft Sinkies. In Singapore you can literary trained old dogs with new tricks. Just tell them to go for training, for what they don’t care, to be better or worse, they don’t mind. Tell them training is good, like put all the eggs in one basket is good, and they will nod their heads in agreement.

And they can’t even fall back on their life long savings in the CPF when they lost their job or when they retired. The money is kept by the govt for them, for their future well being. And they accept this fate as well.