S'pore Muslims relieved

May 9, 2009
Capture of Mas Selamat

THE re-arrest of Mas Selamat Kastari in Johor, where he sought shelter while on the run, vindicates the Singapore Muslim community's stand that they have no sympathy for those who plot violence in the name of Islam, several leaders of the community said on Saturday.

After the Jemaah Islamiah regional leader escaped from the Whitley Road Detention Centre in February last year, there was suspicion among some that he might be harboured by sympathisers here.

Mr Abdul Mutalif Hashim, the chairman of the Darussalam Mosque in Clementi, said that for as long as he was on the run, some suspicion lingered over Muslims here.

'I feel very relieved now, as that assumption did not help race relations,' he said.

[My assumption was that if he were still in Singapore, he was being helped by kind-hearted persons who did not suspect who he was. Or that he was dead.]

Economic growth: The 'new normal'

May 8, 2009

By Kenneth Rogoff

MARKETS are bubbling over signs of 'green shoots' in the global economy. An increasing number of investors see a strong rebound coming, first in China, then in the United States, and then in Europe and the rest of the world. Even the horrible growth numbers of the last couple of quarters do not seem to discourage this optimistic thinking. The deeper the plunge, the stronger the rebound, some analysts say.

Perhaps these optimists are right. But how strong an expansion can one reasonably expect when the worst is finally over? Is the 'new normal' going to be the same as the 'old normal' of the boom years from 2002 to 2007?

I have trouble seeing how the US and China, the main engines of global growth, can avoid settling on a notably lower average growth rate than they enjoyed before the crisis.

Let's start with the US, the epicentre of the financial crisis, and still the most important economy in the world. In the best of worlds, the US financial sector will emerge from the crisis smaller and more heavily regulated. Not to worry, some economists say. The US grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s with a relatively heavily regulated banking system. Why not again?

Sure, but the early post-war financial sector was not called upon to support nearly as diverse and sophisticated an economy as it is today. If the authorities set the clock back several decades on banking regulation, can we be so sure they will not also set the clock back on income?

US consumption, the single biggest driver of global growth, is surely headed to a lower level, on the back of weak housing prices, rising unemployment and falling pension wealth. During the boom, US consumption rose to more than 70 per cent of GDP. In the wake of the crisis, it could fall down towards 60 per cent.

And what about the major political shift the US has experienced? Tired of go-go growth, voters now look for more attention to be paid to environmental concerns, health-care issues and income inequality. But achieving the laudable goals in these areas will be expensive, coming on top of the giant budget deficits the US is running to counter the financial crisis. Higher taxes and greater regulation cannot be good for growth.

True, there is room to run the government more efficiently. But will these savings be enough to offset the burden of a significantly larger overall government? I hope so, and certainly the Obama administration is a breath of fresh air after the stunning ineptness of the Bush-Cheney years. But governments all over the world are always convinced that their expansions can be substantially financed by efficiency gains, and that dream usually proves chimerical.

Chinese growth is set to slow over the longer run as well. Even before the financial crisis, it was clear that China could not continue indefinitely on its growth trajectory of 10 or more per cent annually. Environmental and water problems were mounting. It was becoming clear that as China continued to grow faster than almost anyone else, the rest of the world's import capacity (and tolerance) could not keep up with China's export machine. China was becoming too big.

With the financial crisis, the Chinese economy's necessary adjustment towards more domestic consumption has become far more urgent.

True, even as exports have collapsed, the government has managed to prop up growth with a huge spending and credit expansion. But while necessary, this strategy threatens to upset the delicate balance between private- and public-sector expansion that has underpinned China's expansion so far. The growing role of the government, and the shrinking role of the private sector, almost surely portends slower growth later on.

Europe, too, faces challenges, and not just from the fact that it now has the worst downturn of the world's major economic regions, with Germany's government warning of a surreal 6 per cent decline in GDP for this year. The ongoing financial crisis will almost surely slow the integration of eastern European countries into the European Union. Their young populations are the single most dynamic source of growth in Europe today.

Not all regions will necessarily have slower economic expansion in the decade ahead. Assuming continuing reforms in countries such as Brazil, India, South Africa and Russia, emerging markets could well fill some of the growth gap left by the largest economies. But in all likelihood, after years of steadily revising up its estimates of trend global growth, the International Monetary Fund will start revising them down.

Even after the crisis, global growth is almost certain to remain lower than the pre-crisis boom years for some time. This change may be good for the environment, for income equality and for stability. Governments are right to worry about the quality of growth, not just its speed. But when it comes to tax and profit estimates, investors and politicians need to reorient themselves to the 'new normal' - lower average growth.

The writer, formerly chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard University.

PROJECT SYNDICATE

When TV is no longer a necessity

May 4, 2009
MEMO FROM WASHINGTON

Survey findings an eye-opener for Asia on how Americans view everyday items

By Bhagyashree Garekar

ASIA'S most important customers, the Americans, are looking at everyday items such as the TV set, air-conditioner and microwave in a new light - as luxuries rather than necessities.

The new trend may upend decades of assumption that Americans will keep on driving the exports of such goods from Asia.

'No longer do substantial majorities of the public say a microwave oven, a television set or even home air-conditioning is a necessity,' said a new national survey by the Pew Research Centre's Social & Demographic Trends project.

'Instead, nearly half or more now see each of these items as a luxury.'

What makes these recession-era re-evaluations all the more striking is the fact that the public's perception of what counts as luxury and what is a necessity had been moving in the other direction for the previous decade.

Take the microwave oven. In 1996, just 32per cent of Americans deemed it a necessity. A decade later, 68per cent were willing to swear they could not live without it. Now, only 47per cent feel that way, the Pew survey said.

Another example - the TV set. It has been thought of as a must-have by clear majorities of Americans since 1973, when the question was first asked. Today, just 52per cent of them say so - down 12percentage points from 2006's figure and the smallest share ever to call a TV set a necessity.

Two factors are at work in shaping these new attitudes, said Mr Richard Morin, a co-author of the report.

First, the recession. 'Nothing like the bad economic times to focus the mind. Many Americans are reviewing the basics - how they live, what they have and what they need and this is triggering a rethink,' said Mr Morin.

Simultaneously, the message of thrift is coming on strong. Not just from President Barack Obama, who has often criticised the culture of 'irresponsible spending', but also from family, friends and neighbours who lately see it as their business to drill in the dangers of living beyond one's means.

Second, evolving technology is downgrading the status of some products.

'The young, for example, are abandoning TV in droves, but it's important to understand that they are not abandoning TV shows, only that they are watching them on their computers and are also getting other forms of entertainment,' said Mr Morin.

It is stunning that change occurred in just a short period of three years and reverses some long-standing trends, he added. 'We found it surprising that it involved a kitchen staple like the microwave,' he said.

The other surprise was that the shift was so broad.

'There is no generation or gender gap here. We found a consensus across demographic groups - the rich, the poor, the men, the women, the old and the young.'

The critical thing, from the point of view of the manufacturers of these products, is whether people will fall back in love with these items when the recession ends.

'It's an open question,' said Mr Morin, pointing out as an example that petrol consumption - which fell when the price went over US$4 (S$6) a gallon - has not returned to its previous levels, although the price has retreated.

'If I were an exporter in Asia, I'd watch this space. Data suggests a new frugality, that demand may not return to previous levels. The way Americans think about items is changing.'

The study also establishes that as many as eight in 10 Americans have taken specific belt-tightening steps to ride out the bad times. Almost six in 10 are shopping more in discount stores or are passing up brand-name goods. One in four has cut back or cancelled cable or satellite television services.

The DIY culture is also making a comeback. One in five has started mowing their own lawn or doing home repairs, rather than pay others for the service.

Mr Clyde Prestowitz, founder and president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a public policy research organisation in Washington, said he found the survey hard to believe.

But the signs also point to a larger shift in the nature of the global economy, said the author of several books dealing with the economic rise of Asia, the upcoming rebalancing of the world economic order, and its impact on the United States.

'What is certain is that the American consumer will consume less. With that, it is becoming clear that the export-led growth strategy of many Asian nations - China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore - is in future not going to be as powerful as it used to be.'

People in Asia seem worried about rising protectionism, he added, whereas the bigger problem is that American consumption is not going to be growing any more.

'Policymakers are mistaken if they think that once this recession ends, it will be back to business as usual. There is no certainty that consumption will recoup.'

[An economic model of growth based on consumption to the point of poverty is ultimately unsustainable. Export-oriented economies will need to find a new business model as the US can no longer be the consumer of the world's products.]

Pertinent lessons from a fiasco

May 5, 2009

By Cherian George

THE battle for control of Aware can be a learning experience for civil society activists and the wider public. There are at least three lessons to reflect on.

Secularism

SOME may view the outcome of the Aware showdown as a triumph over religious values - and then despair or gloat, depending on their standpoint. But this would be a wrong reading of events.

The battle for Aware should be seen instead as a struggle over how - not whether - to insert faith-based values into public life. While there are some societies that interpret secularism as delegitimising the entry of religious values into the public sphere, that has never been Singapore's way. Secularism here acknowledges that many Singaporeans are spiritually oriented; it respects their right to inject faith-based views into public life.

Crucially, however, the state stays separate and equidistant from the different religions. Even more crucially, when there are disagreements over public matters, Singaporean secularism cannot recognise religious arguments as a trump card. One could allow one's reading of God's will to dictate how one runs one's own household or faith-based community (and even then only within the limits of the law); but God's word cannot be the final word on how collective decisions are made in the public sphere.

People of a particular faith must therefore be able to translate their values into secular terms to the satisfaction of fellow citizens who do not share those values, or else accept that their desires are, for the moment, incompatible with what the wider society wants.

The Aware battle was not between the profane and the sacred, but between those who understand Singaporean secularism and those who apparently do not. The concerted steps they took to rid its leadership of its traditional diversity showed that the insurgents did not want merely to be part of a conversation; they wanted to be the only voice.

When intolerant voices have surfaced in other religious communities, the moderate mainstream had to reclaim the microphone. One of the most positive outcomes of the Aware saga is the strong assertion by religious Singaporeans as well as religious leaders: We are here, our faith makes us and our society stronger, but we will not impose our values on others.

Representation

THE Aware old guard accused the insurgents of not reflecting Singapore's cultural diversity. The insurgents retorted that their conservatism was more representative of Singapore's majority than the old guard's liberalism. Who was right? Both, probably. But neither diversity nor representativeness is a sufficient criterion for assessing civil society groups.

First, while the expectation that a civil society organisation (CSO) should represent the majority view is superficially seductive, it is in fact fundamentally flawed. CSOs are not political parties, which must appeal to the majority to win elections. One of the chief values of CSOs is precisely that they fill the gaps left by political parties (and by the private sector), by serving causes that the majority may not embrace.

Indeed, if crude democratic logic had been applied to gender issues, there would have been no Aware: when it was set up, most Singaporeans held sexist views about the proper place of women. That many CSOs are not representative is a fact, and a healthy one.

Still, some may wonder if society should tolerate CSOs that embrace seemingly far-out views. Again, it is important not to confuse CSOs with political parties. Electoral politics is more or less a zero-sum game. The winning party controls the government.

Civil society space is quite different. CSOs can gain influence, but have no power to set national policy. Furthermore, multiple CSOs can work within the same space simultaneously. A CSO has no obligation to be representative in its values. If others are fundamentally opposed to its direction, they can set up their own organisation.

While it may be unrealistic to expect each CSO to reflect all colours of the rainbow, a CSO that aims to have national impact should certainly be outward-looking. A homogeneous community-based CSO is not a problem in itself; it should be judged by the friends it has. It deserves to be viewed with scepticism if it is unable to work with groups representing other communities. Fortunately, several faith-based and ethnic-based groups in Singapore have excellent records of working side by side with other groups, regardless of race, language or religion.

Transparency

SETTING aside the substantive disagreements, the Aware saga offers lessons about civil society governance and process. What alarmed many neutral observers was the way the insurgents went about their plans.

Civil society groups should be transparent in their dealings and be ready to account for themselves. It would be an understatement to say that the insurgents were unprepared for the intense public scrutiny they attracted.

They were secretive in their plan to take over Aware and coy about their intentions. Based on their public statements, it is still unclear how much they were motivated by a single issue: their opposition to Aware's liberal stand on homosexuality. If this was their target all along, it does not speak well for them that they did not state it publicly at the outset.

If this was not their primary concern, then an even more troubling concern arises. Their allegations at the height of the dispute, that Aware had been promoting homosexuality to children and teens, smack of a cynical political ploy: win support from the masses by turning a marginalised minority into an object of fear.

In many societies, the tactic would have worked. Fortunately, it did not work here. The Ministry of Education's measured response took the wind out of the sails of the insurgents.

The Government is not known to be sympathetic to Aware's progressive agenda. But if there is one thing that is stronger than its antipathy towards liberal values, it is the Government's resistance to letting its power and prestige become tools in the hands of any lobby group, whatever its ideological complexion.

No doubt, the weekend's events would have made the insurgents feel utterly misunderstood and underappreciated, as losing factions are wont to. They have nobody to blame but themselves.

The writer is an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. A longer version of this essay is available at http://journalism.sg/aware

Process, pluralism, protection

May 4, 2009

The Aware saga shows that transparency and OB markers matter

By Janadas Devan

'THE Aware Saga' has come to an end. What lessons does the episode hold for civil society? There are undoubtedly many, but here is a preliminary set of what I believe are the chief lessons:

Lesson No. 1: Ends and means

The group that captured Aware on March 28 presented themselves as exceedingly moral beings. The group's inspirator extraordinaire Thio Su Mien - lawyer, self-styled 'feminist mentor' and, by the looks of it, the world's foremost expert on homosexuality - described her mentees as just a group of women who wanted to contribute to society.

There is no reason not to accept at face value this characterisation. It is impossible to believe this group woke up one day and consciously decided to do ill by taking over Aware, as the caricature on the other side would have it. Which is precisely why one wonders about the methods they chose to employ.

The means used in pursuit of any cause ought to be commensurate with the ends proposed. Bad means cannot encompass good ends. If your goals are fairness, justice and goodwill, you cannot achieve them by employing surreptitious, opaque and divisive means. The moral universe does have a balance sheet: You cannot be in the red on means and expect to be in the clear on ends

Dr Thio's team got this equation wrong. Whatever one might have thought of their ends - and there are good people on both sides of that argument - it was difficult not to notice that their means did not measure up.

They did not declare openly who they were - until they were pressed to do so; they were not transparent about their policy aims - until their aims became apparent despite themselves; they did not answer questions - until it was too late to dispel doubts.

We know process matters in the law and politics. The Aware Saga has taught us it matters in civil society too, which tends to attract passionate, committed and often self-righteous people.

It is precisely because the self-righteous have so often in history cited their ends to justify whatever means they employed that democracies have learnt to insist on transparent and open processes.

Lesson No. 2: Pluralism matters

There is nothing wrong with religious people involving themselves in secular groups - as individuals. The vast majority of Singaporeans are religious. We would have hardly anyone in politics, Government or civil society if we were to insist people checked in their religious beliefs before entering these secular realms.

But that does not mean that the spiritual and the secular, the church and the state, should be confused. It does not mean that the faithful of any religion can impose their views on others. And it most certainly does not mean that the religious should organise themselves in groups to pursue secular agendas. It is actually against the law in Singapore to have a Buddhist Action Party or a Christian Reform Party or a United Muslim Front.

There is no reason to doubt the assurances of Dr Thio's group that they were not acting on behalf of any particular religion. The clear statement on Thursday by Dr John Chew, president of the National Council of Churches of Singapore, that the NCCS did not condone any church getting involved in Aware's leadership tussle, set the record straight.

It was nevertheless daft - no more appropriate word comes to mind - for six people from the same church to have attempted this takeover at Aware. What were they thinking of?

That people wouldn't learn they came from the same church? That people wouldn't mind a secular organisation being taken over by a group clearly identified with a particular church in a particular denomination of a particular religion? And if they had won last Saturday's vote of confidence, having depended on support solely from their co-religionists, that they could have continued credibly as leaders of a secular organisation?

If they had prevailed, Dr Thio's group would have established, inadvertently perhaps, a new benchmark for social activism among the religiously-inspired. It's hardly credible that Buddhists and Taoists - who together constitute close to half the population - or Roman Catholics, Muslims and Hindus, would have, in response, left the field uncontested to Protestants.

Everyone realised that would not be good for Singapore. Thus Dr Chew's statement and the strong support it received from other religious leaders. It was good that they combined spontaneously to draw a firm line.

Lesson No. 3: OB markers matter

As controversies go, The Aware Saga was minor. It did not permanently alter the body politic. Socially, it was the equivalent of a group of women, setting off on what they assumed would be a diverting walk, falling into a ditch. But it could have been worse - and that is precisely the point.

There were moments when things got uncomfortable. Ms Josie Lau, the erstwhile Aware president, received a death threat. The pastor of her church, Mr Derek Hong, spoke in terms that he later regretted. There was loose talk of Christians versus the rest.

The so-called 'liberals' in Aware have won. I am personally glad they did. But here is something that some 'liberals' may not be comfortable with: This episode proves why we need many 'illiberal' laws - including the Religious Harmony Act, Group Representation Constituencies, HDB racial quotas, etc.

Religious and racial harmony here are not givens. You have got to work at maintaining them. The Aware Saga shows we still have some work left to do.

[In summary, I believe that the "insurgents" were well-meaning women with strong faith and strong views. Views so strong that Clare Nazar called them "stormtroopers", and resigned as she did not want to deal with the hassle of bringing them in line.

Constance Singam also resigned in frustration and despair when her views were not respected and not heeded.

Members were left in the dark as to the plans, intent, and objectives of the new committee.

Maybe there was something sinister, but I believe it was nothing more than human nature. The new members did not know AWARE except what preconceptions they already have about its sex education programme. That coloured their perceptions of the society as well as the previous leadership. As new members, they had more affiliations to the other church members in the committee. Church membership is a form of social "shorthand" in terms of understanding each other and trusting each other on the basis of shared faith and values.

So instead of connecting with the members and the former leaders, they naturally gravitated or chose to look inward and form their own clique. In any case, they had ulterior motives that would not have sat well with the the other members. So they naturally had to exclude the others.

When they had their own ingroup, the rest of the members and particularly the old guards became the outgroup and the division was as much of their own making as it was thrust upon them by their own faith and religious affiliation. They knew they could trust their church members, but they don't know if they can trust the other members. Perhaps they even knew that the other members would not share their views or their objectives.

And so they tried to remake the old into the new without understanding, and perhaps naively thinking that the war had been won with the elections.

And that is the folly of new members trying to lead what they do not understand.

You can't put new wine in old wineskins. ]

AWARE, The Straits Times exposed!‏

from
http://wayangparty.com/?p=8714

May 1, 2009 by admin
Filed under Daily Musings

By Yeo Toon Joo, Peter, who ceased to be a newspaperman when he found none left


The inordinately extensive and daily coverage of the AWARE leadership tussle exposes and underscores the provincialism of Singapore’s press, the Straits Times in particular.

Any thinking person, with a modicum of appreciation of what constitutes news, must marvel over the MSM’s (mainstream media) ability to ignore the real issues of the day in Singapore while focusing so much of its might on what was primarily a parochial affair.

Instead of enlightening Singaporeans on the pressing issues confronting us – events that beg many questions and offer much scope for enquiry – our national press chooses to rivet readers’ attention through a daily barrage of reporting on the dispute of a marginal organization, till recently, of no more than 100 or 200 feminists.

Has the subservient MSM lost its way, just as AWARE allegedly had lost its own focus and objective?

It is incredible that the full strength of the MSM’s reporting staff had failed so remarkably to ferret out the real issue of the leadership coup – until spoon-fed by the protagonist.

In the not too distant days of yore, one of my rookie reporters would surely have enlightened us, and quite early on, too.

The Straits Times’s willingness to manipulate, or be manipulated (wittingly so) by minority interest groups, is so clear for all to see: any image consultant worth his salt will promptly point out how the ST’s photo/news editor had deliberately selected for publication the most frumpy photos of the new committee while editing so dramatically the most flattering portraits of the old, ousted committee members.

Sure, concern over AWARE’s alleged espousal of the cause of lesbianism and homosexuality was at the crux of the crisis. But this is no longer the hot issue of the day.

Aren’t there other pressing national issues worth examining? Is Singapore so boring that a storm in a teacup should excite the brains of its handpicked leaders? Should the people who wield the mighty pen (in our newspaper offices) engage in such peevishness? And be so actively stoking it up into a national controversy?

If our national press is truly unable to focus on what concern more Singaporeans than what used to engage a handful of AWARE feminists, may I suggest that it thinks about real national issues and cease its tomfoolery. May I offer some news gathering tips to our wayward press:

· Stop conducting yourself like a mosquito press while holding – by default only – the mantle of a national daily

· Be serious and desist from propagating a modern version of yellow culture in your pages or so-called Life-style sections (“Bollywood’s newest hotties”! My foot! Only good upbringing constrain me from a rude retort; MITA whither art thou?)

· Stop flaunting semi-nude bodies in your life-style pages or flashing regularly the bust lines of dumb broads, and exalting the careers of those engaged in promoting the bacchanalian life styles of geeks and Zouks

· Desist from playing up the prating of some misguided, immature, amorous young reporter who boasts about squeezing some exposed part of a film or rock star (such a confession should, in a court of law, rightly result in a charge of criminal molestation)

· Tell us about the vast disparity of incomes in our so-called 1st World economic miracle and how suffering Singaporeans are coping with the recession

· Instead of giving him scant attention, tell us more and truthfully about Kenneth Jeyaretnam, JBJ’s second son and his dream for the Reform Party. What about his brother Philip?

· Tell us also about the millions being frittered away everyday to finance the myriad failed bio-tech start-ups, and round it up with a balance sheet of Singapore’s successes-failures in this field – and what prospect the future holds

· Tell us something about how our Ah Bengs and Ah Lians are coping in this new world order and with unemployment, or do they not exist?

· Explain how that Singapore family could lose its 5-room HDB flat, and fall through the cracks of MCDYS’s social benefits safety net to spend the past year cadging for food and sleeping on park benches

· If the Straits Times press could devote a full page to profiling China’s five rising stars, why do our leaders in Temasek remain anonymous? Can’t get an interview with them? Surely!

· How will Singapore hope to recover some of its lost national wealth in the world’s economic downturn?

· If even a Warren Buffett could be caught out by the economic downturn and make some massive investment mistakes why is blogosphere so unkind to and unreasonable with Ho Ching?

· If Singapore could throw up a Ho Ching, a truly remarkable woman, why are so few women in parliament and just one has become a full fledge cabinet minister? (This is one issue the old AWARE could have shown some gumption in pursuing)

· Tell us how are our million guest workers, especially the lower-skilled ones, coping with Singapore’s recession and what is their likely fate; this study could also include the sub-standard living conditions of these people, the prostitute camps that used to spring up overnight around their dormitories, and their exploitation by hard-pressed and ruthless employers

· We read that, together with the 1.8k workers whose contracts were terminated prematurely, total redundancy in Singapore increased to a record 12.6k in 1Q09. Obviously, poor people do not exist in the MSM’s world; everyone seems to be happily employed only in media and marketing, if not in the press

· Tells us also what it means to our society to have a trade volume that is three times our GDP; does this not affect our values?

· Throw the spotlight on our local banks, e.g. how did the still independent OCBC and UOB manage to escape being caught more deeply in CDOs and toxic assets of other banks?

· How is Wee Cho Yaw planning his leadership renewal and how he built up his father’s little bank into the behemoth it is today without a foreigner at the helm, while OCBC still struggles to raise its profile, and why DBS with all its patronage is not faring so well

· Stop publishing all the incredible ‘feel good’ stories that we read daily, e.g. how our displaced unemployed workers are merrily engaging in community work, how Mr Mohd Zainuddin is happily adapting to a lowly paid job (1/3 what he used to earn) and is so optimistically looking forward to promotion in his new found position, and signing for self-improvement marketing courses in his late middle-age

· And, if you are truly interested in why and how people become homosexual, conduct a real examination of this subject. Give us, in a non-partisan and objective manner, an intelligent digest of the question. So many people, including even senior cabinet ministers, still labour under much misunderstanding of this subject. Apparently, too, even our Minister Iswaran (Education) and the Ministry’s director of education programmes have not read the old AWARE’s manual on sex education before issuing a defence on the issue a few days ago.

The ideas thrown up above are quick from-the-hip suggestions that any news editor worth three-quarters his salt would suggest on a daily basis, even hourly if need be. That’s because, unlike now, the journalists of old used to be trained, sensitive, experienced and fiercely jealous of their independence. We were not automatons who had to wait for cues from news editors who reside outside the newsroom.

I know Saturday’s EGM at AWARE will throw up more morsels for the MSM to continue its feeding frenzy. If it is true that the newspapers of a country reflect the caliber and depth of a society’s intellect, then the MSM does Singaporeans much injustice.

[There are two charges Yeo makes against The Straits Times.

1) The Straits Times (and other mainstream media in Singapore) is a parochial newspaper (in the case of other MSM, news agencies) that writes up insignificant fluff and passes it off as news; and 

2) The AWARE situation is largely the domestic affairs of a marginal organisation with little impact or relevance beyond the gay issue and sex education.

Taking the first point, Yeo charges that the Straits Times shouldn't be presenting fluff like "Bollywood Hotties" and "semi-nude bodies in [the] life-style pages" (Perhaps Yeo thinks these should be on Page 3 as is traditional?)

His remedy is that MSM should focus on real news with real issues of the day affecting Singapore and Singaporeans. In other words, this AWARE business is just "petty politics". (Now, who else characterised this sad affair as "petty politics"? I guess Yeo concurs with him.)

Well, Yeo (and the powers that be) are free to characterised this issue as "petty politics" or fluff, or not "real issues of the day". The fact is that there is a variety of issues that interests and affect people. There are days when the front page news do not grab my attention. There are sections of the papers that I never bother to read (soccer news for example). Certainly, sports news, horse racing information, and lottery results are not issues of the day. But they are in the papers, and people do want to read them.

So is the Straits Times supposed to be some elite newspaper intended for the well-read, well-informed, serious policy maker and policy commentator? Or is it intended to be a mainstream broadsheet with something for the whole family? Then it has to cater to all these interests, and that means bread and butter issues, jobs, employment, the economy and economic outlook and government policies - all the important issues of the day, as well as sports news, entertainment news, lifestyle, food, fads, health and so on.

The ST has done rather well in continuing to be profitable, maintaining and even increasing it's readership in a era of falling readership worldwide for print media. That means that it has managed to stay relevant and hold the interests of its readers. And if Yeo thinks that the ST is parochial, he should check out newspapers in countries such as Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia and many other countries. Even some of the "international" papers in the US, is more US-centric, than truly international. Because of Singapore's position in global trade, I would argue that the ST is in fact one of the more "globalised" in perspective.

Which brings us to the second charge: that the whole AWARE issue was fluff. There is nothing wrong with fluff, but does it deserve pages and pages of newsprint? Yeo is of course entitled to his opinion as to the relevance and importance of the AWARE issue. He can remain convinced that it is nothing more than a storm in a teacup over some gay issues and the syllabus of some sex education programme.

But based on the interest and arguments raised on the internet, I put it that his opinion is not shared by many others. The discussion, arguments, criticisms, and posts on the matter extends beyond the explicit bone of contention (sex/gay education) to what netizens identified as the expansion of the religious realm and an encroachment into the secular common space. It has become an public discourse (a rowdy and passionate discourse!) on the role of religion and what is secular common space, and the expression of religious values in secular terms.

In other words, netizens and the ST recognised that the crux of the matter was not simply a debate about sex education and family values, but about how religious values relates to civil society organisations. Concerned parties recognised that the strategy of the insurgents was tantamount to an attack with no interest in discussion or debate.

The ST may have been tipped off to this story by their contacts in AWARE, but the other factor that weighed in as newsworthy was the amount of cyber-chatter on the issue. If the ST had ignored the new media, then wouldn't they be guilty of selective blindness or traditional media snobbery?

So, no. The ST is probably one of the least parochial papers in the region. And no, the AWARE story was not just a petty politics story about a marginal feminist organisation.

So Yeo, who "ceased to be a newspaperman when he found none left" was probably never a newspaperman because he couldn't recognised news if it bit him on the arse.]

How it got to this

May 2, 2009

Aware's new exco has shrunk from 12 to 8 in just five weeks

THE women who founded and ran Aware for 25 years had a rude shock at its annual general meeting on March 28, after more than 100 people turned up. They were expecting 30 or 40.

Most of those who came were new members who had joined in recent months. Aware's rules made it easy for anyone to join, and any member could stand for elections.

When the election of new office bearers began, outgoing president Constance Singam nominated Mrs Claire Nazar to be president and she was returned without a contest. But when longtime Aware member Chew I-Jin was put up for vice-president, she lost to new member Charlotte Wong Hock Soon by a wide margin.

The leadership takeover was completed with nine unknowns making up the majority of the new executive committee. Longtime Aware members did not get many answers when they asked the newcomers who they were, what they stood for and why they staged such a takeover.

In the tumultuous weeks since, the old guard expressed doubts that the new team shared Aware's values of equality for all, or were acting in its best interests.

When Dr Thio Su Mien revealed her role and her reasons for the takeover on April 23, the old guard had to fend off accusations that the group had been promoting lesbianism and homosexuality.

They also had to defend Aware's sexuality education programme against charges that it promoted homosexuality, and said it gave youngsters comprehensive information to help them make good choices, based on their own values.

If today's meeting gets round to it, the old guard and their supporters hope to table a vote of no confidence in the newcomers and get back Aware.

IT WAS not until April 23 that the reasons for the power grab at Aware became clear.

That was the day senior lawyer Thio Su Mien finally revealed how she encouraged several Christian women to join the association and change its leadership.

She began looking into Aware's affairs in 2007 after reading a letter in the Today free tabloid, from a man complaining about the choice of a lesbian-themed movie, Spider Lilies, for an Aware charity show.

She said she then discovered that Aware's comprehensive sexuality programme for students aged 12 to 18 treated homosexuality as a neutral term, not a negative term.

Upset, and fearing that calls for same-sex marriage would come next, she started telling people to join and change Aware.

Aware's sex education programme is clearly an issue that the new team and its supporters are unhappy with. This week, the Education Ministry began receiving complaints about it.

Dr Thio, who called herself a 'feminist mentor', said she had been guiding some of Aware's new faces for up to 10 years. She is the mother of Nominated Member of Parliament Thio Li-ann, and new Aware president Josie Lau is married to her nephew, Dr Alan Chin.

Dr Thio also knew Mrs Claire Nazar, who nominated Ms Lau for an exco position and resigned as president after only 11 days.

Dr Thio, Ms Lau and five other new exco members attend the Anglican Church Of Our Saviour, which also takes a strong position on homosexuality.

Three long-time members who were on the exco have resigned too, leaving the women who were unknown just a month ago firmly in control.

The members of the new team have yet to explain why they never declared openly what they were upset about or what they wished to change, before launching their takeover.

[On 2 May at the EOGM of AWARE, 3000 members turned up. for the meeting. When the meeting started at 2.30, the new Exco took the stage to jeers and boos from the crowd. The Exco was, according to reports on the meeting, grilled on various issues and generally had a hard time. At several points, the President Josie Lau asked security to escort unruly members out of the hall. One report said that this was not carried out. At another point, an Exco member, Sally Ang yelled at the crowd to shut up and sit down. She was booed and the crowd demanded that she leave. Josie apologised and tried to move on from that.

Eventually, the meeting skipped to the issue of the no-confidence vote. At about 4.00 pm the voting begins. The results were announced at 8.00 pm with about 1400 votes of no-confidence, and 700 votes supporting the new Exco. At about 9.00 pm, Josie announces that the Exco will be stepping down.

I feel sorry for the ex-new Exco. They may be having a "why have you forsaken me" moment this evening. Certainly the EGM doesn't seem like it was particularly fun for them. That they naively thought that the "forces of evil" would just roll over and let them win speaks as much about their faith as it does about their inability to grasp the realities of life.

I thought the supporters of the old guard did not carry themselves well. They acted like hooligans if the reports are any reflection. Perhaps the ex-new Exco brought it upon themselves. Perhaps passions were running high. Perhaps the lesson to learn is don't rile a mother bear by trying to take away it's offspring.

I feel sorry for them because they don't get it. They will walk away from this defeat thinking self-righteous thoughts and seeking comfort in prayer and solace in god, and wondering where they went wrong with their plans but never once asking if perhaps they were wrong in the first place. About AWARE. About its objectives. And about homosexuality and gender orientation.

Because in their minds, they are right, and they are right with the force of their faith and with the divine backing of God almighty. And yes, they won't get it.]