Opinion

by Simon Lim “Singapore can be the best place in the world to age in”, says People’s Action Party (PAP) Seniors Group chairman, Tan Chuan-Jin. Really? How so? Because as of today, Singapore remains the most expensive country in the world to live in. Have we forgotten the words of former GIC Chief Economist, Yeoh Lam Keong who revealed that …

A member of the public Liu Fook Thim wrote a letter to ST Forum today, lamenting why Singaporean students do not want to take up engineering these days (‘Obvious why engineering not popular‘, 15 Oct). Mr Liu noted in the papers that DPM Heng Swee Keat was at the 53rd annual dinner of Institution of Engineers (IES) last week, extolling …

by Simon Lim “We have so many plans for Singapore in terms of new industries, new businesses, new schools and opportunities….and what we need are new people”. I stress. New People. That was what Lee Hsien Loong (LHL) said to Mr Takehiko Koyanagi of Nikkei Asian Review at a dialogue at the National University of Singapore (NUS). My first reaction …

by Michelle Lee My daughter came back from school today and I was informed that drinks in paper disposable cups would cost $0.10 more in school due to an environmentally friendly initiative. I am very surprised why Ngee Ann Polytechnic is taking such measures to mark up the cost of food and drinks to students. Why are drinks not being …

by Roger Rajan on behalf of JMS Rogers The Protection from Harassment Act, (POHA) was enacted in 2014 to provide a range of criminal and civil remedies against harassment, and civil remedies for false statements of facts. POHA has been an important legislative tool in protecting victims of harassment by giving them effective redress. If you take a detailed look …

In a parliament session on Monday (7 October), Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam and Worker’s Party MP Faisal Manap were involved in a heated exchange during the debate about the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act (MHRA). Mr Faisal uttered that he did not quite agree with the idea of keeping religion and politics separate, and this did not …

by Khush Chopra I attended a Lecture by Professor Daniel Ziblatt the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University and co-author of the New York Times bestseller “How Democracies Die” (2018) earlier on Wednesday evening (9 Oct). The talk was essentially about the tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism in that democracy’s assassins use the …

by Simon Lim I refer to the news that bus and train fares will go up by 9 cents per trip from 28 Dec 2019. 9 cents per trip more to an individual passenger isn’t a lot of money but when taken together, 9 cents multiply by the millions of bus and train passenger trips each day will translate into …

In the aftermath of the Yale-NUS saga, playwright Alfian Sa’at has encouraged the public to refrain from making personal attacks and “derogatory comments” against Education Minister Ong Ye Kung, following the latter’s comments in Parliament on Mon (7 Oct). In delivering his speech on the cancellation of the Yale-NUS programme and guiding principles for educational institutions in Singapore, Ong quoted part of …

Yale-NUS College’s cancellation of the “Dissent and Resistance in Singapore” programme has attracted much controversy and criticism from academicians, as well as practitioners in media and the arts. The programme, which has been since renamed “Dialogue and Dissent in Singapore”, was scheduled to be run by Alfian and programme manager Tan Yock Theng of NUS. It was originally slated to …