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Abstracts of essays; news; announcements; short takes.
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- Yawning Bread Sampler
- This blog carries summary abstracts of Yawning Bread essays, with space for comments.
Here too are other tidbits that are too short for the main Yawning Bread site.
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Blog Archive
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2009
(80)
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January
(10)
- Saving jobs, savaging filmmakers
- Obama White House uploads its gay agenda
- Israel's unpleasant surprise
- Move on, shut up
- Muddy Singapore swallows China workers, parts 3 and 4
- Are our economic priorities right?
- The pretty boy barber
- Independent investigation needed over Tang's kidne...
- Why there mustn't be an election this year
- Singapore government rejects AIMS' key recommendat...
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January
(10)
Posts
13 comments:
I think its possible for an election. I remember that PAP called of election committee's preparation late last year. And coming from its forever insecurities in its holding to power. I will be quite looking forward to how well PAP will fare this time, after its dismal results in 2006.
A prolonged period of economic distress presents such a danger. A failure to deliver ever-rising prosperity is their Achilles Heel.
If an election is called, and it is not due to greed for power, but instead due to this reading of our economic future, then it is really bad news indeed. That somewhere in the economic war room, our government leaders have no confidence that Singapore will remount its growth curve in one or two years, and that the pain will last all the way to next election year at least."
All signs point to the current batch of mandarins being pretty clueless.
an election is normally preceded by redistribution, candidate recruitment, etc; I dont think there have been such developments lately; what happened to MP Seng is not exactly good recruitment publicity; they will at least want to wait for him to recover, honour him, maybe give him a promotion, before encouraging new brave souls to come forward
bad times could sometimes be good times for election, if people feel the need to rally around the flag; this was the case after 911; however, the present does not look like it
It would be too risky to wait till 2011 or 2012.
I suspect the above would be the reason for the overwhelmingly dominant PAP incumbent to call for a vote now. At least now they can blame global economy and Singapore's open economy (touted as a good thing) instead of their lack of ability for Singapore being the 1st in Asia to enter the recession.
By 2011 when other countries in the region turnaround (given that HK, Taiwan, South Korea, even Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia all have stronger domestic entrepreunership and markets), it will not be so easy for the PAP to excuse themselves from the effects of their myopic policies.
Plus, many will still survive in short-term (e.g. 6 months) on past savings if hit by the recent financial storm. However, few will have enough to see them through 2 years of poor economy in our "crutchless" state.
Yes they already have clear mandate with 82 of 84 seats. Maybe that is the crux of the problem. There is no check and balance on how the country is run. I don't think Singapore prospered in the post independence era (LKY) because of bad leadership decisions and I don't think we are suffering now because of good leadership decisions. We definitely have a bunch of clueless Mandarins leading us...
Laugh! Why care what the pap thinks abt the future. The great investors in shin corp, UBS, etc, who predicted one year ago that we are entering a golden period are economic geniuses? =)
But personally, I think that for them, it is a very bad idea to call an election. There will be no flight to safety this time. The tipping point is already passed. Too much anger around.
such an optimistic chicken you are, a kind of chicken!
:P
do you think the older generation is angry? I think most of them aren't. well except for that old man who toasted the MP. most of them aren't angry... those who aren't grateful seem pretty indifferent.
I'm not convinced that an election would be a bad thing for the opposition. The idea that THIS government led us into this mess (not the general recession, but all the surrounding failures) is still very fresh in everyone's mind. Time for a change, I'd say.
Your last reasoning is what I suspect too for calling an early election this year. There were more compelling reasons to call for a snap election in 2001, this was after the Sept 11 attacks in NYC. Sometime in Oct/Nov 2001, Channel News Asia (CNA) got wind of a Spore operative assisting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, they even dispatched one of their ang moh reporter from London to Afghanstan to go cave hunting for this Sporean terrorist & ang moh reporter was filmed doing it. I watched with fascination what CNA was churning out & pondered on its implications being that it definitely must be the Malays who are involved in the terrorist activities.
The Spore govt was caught by surprise that news had leaked that a Sporean terrorist was at large & had to do damage control quickly as they were afraid that the larger Malay community would be ostracised by the rest of the population & the Malays may alienate themselves from the PAP community if the PAP decided to adopt hard line tactics to snare these Sporean Malay terrorists.
A snap election was called swiftly in late Nov or early Dec, cannot remember the exact date. The Sporean terrorist factor was in my opinion the larger reason for calling the snap election. It was only less than a month AFTER the election that the Spore govt revealed the full extent of their hard line tactics to rein in the rogue Malay terrorists & there were plenty of them operating clandestinely which was quite shocking. So you see the PAP knew beforehand the population's expected shock reaction & called for the early election.
As for 2009, the impact of recession/depression is only keenly felt at USA for the moment, it takes about another 6 months to one year for its full impact to hit us. It was the same situation with the dot com industry if you look at how the dot com bubble burst, the Spore economy took a while longer to feel its full impact.
So your little bird from SPH is quite correct in his/her assessment.
You missed out one important factor.
If one is held in June, the old one is still around to make an impact. He's also probably keen to know the outcome before his time comes.
By 2011 or 2012, you can't have that certainty.
PAP needs to hold the election before the PM's wife and father are forced to admit how much public money had been lost.
Me not optimistic. =)
But I am saying that as a rule, we should ignore the PAPs analysis. Not that this time they are wrong.
Anon 14Jan 14:11 has a point. There are also rumours of a Jun 2009 election going around on Sammyboy.com, btw.
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