Singapore Democrats

I like you last sentence before God bless

Excellent riposte to PM's ND Speech 2010!.

However, your comparison of LHL's luxurious detached bungalow to the masses' flats "stacked one above the other" is inappropriate....S'pore being a small island has no choice but to build housing upwards to accomodate the million or so family units (and counting) of the majority.Many also prefer to live in high-rise residences for various reasons....

Keep up this quick response to every major speech of the PAP from now on till the GE via yoursdp.org.

Thanks and Regds

Congratulations Dr Chee!
You have my vote!!!

Great speech Dr Chee! Thanks for speaking up for us. We need more people like you with the courage and moral conviction to stand up to the PAP and say it like it is. Singapore will be doomed otherwise.

He may be treated as a radical nationalist but he has a history of political overtaking within other opponents of the singapore's democratic alliance, a unprofessional way for political standoffs. A past of corruption when he was lecturer and contempt of court and defamination. How could you then trust and associate with such a 'leader'?

Thanks for taking up the challenge and it was a Great speech.

You look trim and ready for the elections and do take care of your health.

SDP needs to work overtime on the ground to make a real impact and the ground is fertile now, so start and sow the seeds and heap the positive results soon.

http://singaporeanskeptic.blogspot.com/2010/09/art-of-being-unreasonably-reasonable.html


Chee Soon Juan Talking Sense.

"He’s a liar, a cheat, and altogether an unscrupulous man... I could also add that I’ve had several of my own doctors who are familiar with such conduct...tell me that he is near-psychopath." -Lee Kuan Yew on Chee Soon Juan [source]

When I was much younger, I thought Chee Soon Juan was an idiot. A simpleton who was out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Singaporeans; which were bread and butter issues and not abstract notions of democracy and freedom. Little did I realise that I was being manipulated by the local media. Every action, every speech by Chee was mutilated and distorted to portray him as a caricature. But as I got older, I realise that all the information that I had gathered about him had passed through the reality distortion lens of the Straits Times and the local TV news channel.

But now thanks to the Internet, we are able to see his messages straight from the source. It is not just the SDP. The Reform party, the Worker's party and even the PAP... we are able to see their direct messages from their own websites and judge the merits of their messages in the marketplace of ideas. No longer do we have to suffer from the information monopoly of the PAP with their 'take it or leave it' attitude.

Now my question to you is this. After listening to Lee Hsien Loong's speech and Chee Soon Juan's speech, who do you think is out of touch with reality?

I think people who only use the mainstream media will be taken aback by how uncomfortably reasonable Mr Chee sounds.

CSJ's speech is heartfelt and no sugarcoating of words like our dear ministers. And the video is done well too.

Indeed LHL does not have the moral authority to tell us commoners to put up with the overcrowding of foreigners, on the streets and trains because he doesnt have to mingle with them on a personal basis.

This is what the elites sitting on top of their ivory tower missed, time and time again.

@123 on Thu 02 Sep 2010 11:10 AM:

Martin Luther King went to jailed because he disobeyed laws which he believed was unjust & spoke out against the government.

Ghandi was jailed several times for going against the British government.

Nelson Mandela also went to jailed.

So, your Ad Homenien attack on Dr Chee's legal record fails to resonate with anyone.

firstly, political icon of martin luther was jailed by means of causes of economic and political disorder to the country not the means of justice. Ghandi was an independent revolutionary that asked for peace and independence and not the insultation of a statesman. This man however, i would state that it is the unclean record that breaks the trust for legitimacy.

123: Is Lee Kuan Yew's record clean?

Like the National Day "kiddie power" vid, this one has surpassed the 7000-views mark within a few days of its launch; in fact, it is now approaching 8000 views.

In this light, something I have said before bears repeating. Along with the reception to the national day vid, I hope this affirms that hunch that I keep getting repeatedly which is that there seems to be Quiet Revolution taking place in the hearts and minds of Singaporeans that apppears favourable to the SDP in particular and this will keep gathering momentum even beyond the next elections. More people seem to ne pschologically predisposing themselves to the SDP's platform.

However, I feel that it is at the next elections, while still being an uphill battle for the party, that will also be the turning point for the party. This is because the next elections might be the best chance for the SDP to start on the road towards building a critical mass of support for itself.

Of course, I am assuming that the party itself plays all its cards right.

But equally important is that the potential support for the SDP that is waiting in the wings can be derailed easily by the PAP's tried-and-tested Frighten The Monkey tactics that it relies heavily on at every elections.

To that end, I would suggest that the SDP fire the first salvo at the campaign by cautioning its potential supporters about exactly the PAP's use of these deplorable tactics so that they will not fall for the PAP's tricks again.

i would not know of his record but this is a different aspect to chee as he has been made known and well and i could then exclaim it.

September 6th, 2010 | Author: Your Correspondent
Dear PM Lee,
I refer to your National Day Rally speech televised live on 29 Oct 2010.
You said there is a trade off between high growth and the acceptance of more workers. However, we should not grow for growth’s sake but should seek prosperity instead. Many first world European cities do not resort to the mass importation of workers to sustain their strong economies and their high standards of living. There is no reason why we can’t be likewise.
You said the winning design of the Duxton plain site has led to it becoming one of the most sought after HDB projects in Singapore. In case you’re not aware, existing flats around the Duxton plain are also amongst the most sought after in Singapore. Nearly all record HDB transactions come from that area. So it begs the questions of whether Duxton Plain is most sought after because of a winning design or because of its location.
You said foreigner influx is not uncontrolled because we have dependency ratios and foreign worker levies. But having those measures in place does not guarantee that the control will be well functioning just as having drains doesn’t guarantee that floods will be well controlled.
You said Texas’ many immigrants contributed to its vibrancy as well as its cutting edge in medical research. There are many European countries that do not have as many immigrants and yet are also at the forefront of scientific research. You said Texas benefitted from immigration even as neighbouring states like California and Arizona have tightened up. But the per capita GDP of both California and Arizona are higher than that of Texas. So being open to immigrants did not make Texas better than California or Arizona.
You referred to Microsoft’s setting up of an office in Vancouver, Canada across from Redmond, USA as an example of how Canada has benefitted from liberal immigration policies and how the US has suffered from its strict policies. But what exactly are those benefits to Canada and those losses to the US? As far as employment of citizens in rich software development jobs is concerned, neither Canada nor the US will benefit because the bulk of those jobs are going to foreigners regardless of whether the office is in Canada or the US. The most tangible benefit therefore has to be the auxilliary services to these foreigners in terms of the sale of groceries, meals and other daily expenses. These are largely low value added jobs. So if our concern is on the high value added jobs that Microsoft offers, then it makes no difference whether the office is in Vancouver or Redmond.
You said we should cheer for our national sportsmen even if they are foreign born because when they win, the Majulah Singapura is played. When Ben Johnson won gold in 1988 and the Canadian national anthem was played, no doubt all Canadians cheered. But when Ben Johnson was subsequently found to have cheated and stripped of his Olympic Gold medal, it means all the cheering had been in vain. So playing the national anthem doesn’t automatically warrant cheering. Ultimately, the people must feel the legitimacy of the victory.
You said we have given $400 million to 400,000 workers on Workfare and that that’s a lot of money. But on average, each worker gets only $1,000, a pittance compared to SM Goh’s wife’s definition of peanuts.
You said we have 22,000 new flats coming along but we don’t have 22,000 new couples getting hitched every year. Nevertheless, there is a huge backlog of couples who are currently putting up at their parents’ homes because they hadn’t been able to secure a place of their own. If you add those backlogs, 22,000 many not be sufficient.
You referred to MM Lee’s generation of leaders as the founding fathers who built our nation. You are wrong. There is one and only one founding father of Singapore and that is Sir Stamford Raffles. Our nation did not suddenly spring up from nothing in 1965. Behind 1965 were many more years of toiling without which 1965 would not have been possible.
You said the people who came before MM Lee’s generation had separate loyalties to different countries. Are you saying that Lim Bo Seng who died for Singapore while fighting the Japanese had no loyalty to Singapore? While Lim Bo Seng fought the Japanese, your father worked for them instead. Now, as we celebrate national day, Lim Bo Seng is all but forgotten but your father has become the ‘founding father’. We should not whitewash the contributions of the Singapore pioneers who came before MM Lee. If the conceiving and championing of a Malayan identity is an important contribution of the so-called ‘founding fathers’, then it seems odd that our first Chief Minister, Mr David Marshall was not even mentioned at all. There was hardly any fight for independence as far as MM Lee and his comrades are concerned. No blood was shed by him or his comrades. Also, there is no fighting of ‘communists’ as far as the term ‘communist’ is concerned. Even un til today, even after locking them up and robbing them of their most fruitful years of their lives, we still have not been able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they had been ‘communists’. Yet we continue to label them as ‘communists’.
So it is important to not just remember our founding fathers properly but to recognise that they span many generations stretching all the way back to 1819.