The Online Citizen A Community of Singaporeans
By Jacky Winson Sim, Founder of BeProud SG
Recently, Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued a statement stating that foreign entities should not fund Pink Dot, citing the government's general position has always been that foreign entities should not interfere in our domestic issues, especially political issues or controversial social issues with political overtones.
This reminds us of our National Day Parade, an event that is proudly celebrated by Singaporeans. An event that portrays a strong Singapore identity towards its citizens and also the world.
Looking at their partners page, I was shocked and surprised. There's a list of foreign brands and companies that are partnering with National Day Parade.
Shouldn't National Day Parade be in line with the Government's general position. As it is our Singapore National Day, foreign entities (Companies and Brands) should not interfere in our domestic issues.
To name a few of the companies:
Akamai - Akamai Technologies, Inc. is a content delivery network (CDN) and cloud services provider headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States.
Energizer - Energizer Holdings is an American manufacturer of batteries, headquartered in Town and Country, Missouri.
Garnier - Garnier is a mass market cosmetics brand of French cosmetics company L'Oréal. It produces hair care and skin care products.
HP - The Hewlett-Packard Company (commonly referred to as HP) was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
KPMG - KPMG is a professional service company, being one of the Big Four auditors, along with Deloitte, EY and PwC is seated in Amsterdam
(and many more other companies...)
Shouldn't only be Singapore companies be partnering with our Singapore National Day Parade? Why is it that only Pink Dot (at this present moment) being targeted for having foreign companies as partners? Shouldn't National Day Parade be an event that we should ONLY have Singapore companies partners as it is our national event.
There are also many other groups that should not support their local events or organizations such as Focus On The Family, which started off as an American Christian conservative organization founded in 1977 by psychologist James Dobson, based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. And this organization (who have also registered as a business in Singapore, have unknowingly supported many Christian based causes in Singapore. And this inevitably creates disturbance in the social issues that they have been interfering with.
Charity organizations have also been well supported by such "foreign companies" and hence all these events should not be taken lightly and also the laws should not be directed only to a specific group of people, or events but to across all as laws should not be discriminating to any organizations and citizens of Singapore.