From Sg Review

Dear All

I had on the morning of 25th October 2006 responded with biting criticism to the Straits Times report on MP Wee Siew Kim’s comments in defiant defence of his dear daughter.

I was totally disgusted by MP Wee’s comments which I will not let go pass untouched.

The ST’s Forum Editor had passed over my response and published another letter which was far less critical.

I am a strong proponent of freedom of expression, I will not stop at being silenced by elements of the mainstream press. Attached below is the letter that was targeted at our PAP AMK GRC MP Wee Siew Kim.

My purpose for publishing this letter is to encourage greater freedom of expression stronger and unrestrained criticism of the Ruling Party by all and I am taking the lead here.

Coincidentally, MP Wee made a statement in the press today which was of course published. This statement claims to be apologizing to the readers who were offended.

I have read MP Wee’s statement and I am not of the view that the apology is full and unreserved. I trust Singaporeans can come to their own conclusions on the matter.

“RESPONSE TO PAP MP FOR AMK GRC MR. WEE SIEW KIM’S COMMENTS IN STRAITS TIMES REPORT OF 24TH COTOBER 2006.

I had read in amazement of what Ms Wee Shu Min had written in her blog. I ruminated on her statements and her lineage and illustrious background and after much thought, decided not to criticize her in spite of the callousness she had exhibited at such a tender age.

For to me, there is simply no reason to overreact to the ignorant bigotry of an 18 year old girl and that the matter is best left to rest after the barrage of criticism she met with on the internet.

However, when I saw the Straits Times report of 24th October 2006, I read with disgust what Ms Wee Shu Min’s father PAP MP for AMK GRC, Mr. Wee Siew Kim had said in brazen defence of his dear daughter justifying her callousness and adding further insult and injury to Singaporeans.

MP Wee, in his dismal attempt to soften the effect of his daughter’s ramblings, had sought to downplay the incident as a lack of sensitivity on her part and to quote him “Some people cannot take the brutal truth and that sort of language, so she ought to learn from it.”

Whilst the less discerning may opine that MP Wee has apologized on behalf of his daughter, in truth both father and daughter have exhibited no more empathy or remorse than when the remarks were first made in Ms Wee’s blog. MP Wee’s remarks albeit more diplomatic had in fact exhibited an even higher level of arrogance and lack of empathy.

MP Wee must note that her daughter has since removed the offending posting from her blog. That is itself discordant with the stance he exhibited in his interview in the Straits Times. One wonders whether the removal of the posting was a father-sanctioned public perception management exercise for damage control or was it a true indication of remorse and regret?

If indeed MP Wee had similarly been just as careless with his callous remarks, he ought to acknowledge so and then extend nothing short of an unreserved apology to all Singaporeans especially those who are in situations similar to that of Mr. Derek Wee.

And upon doing so, MP Wee should also take steps to inculcate the appropriate level of humility in his daughter and do so in an early stage of her life, for MP Wee must remember that the government that he backs has taken bloggers to court, punished and shamed them for the undue comments they have made similarly for a limited audience.

Whilst I do not hope that the current establishment gets richer as a result of whatever discussion that takes place, I do hope that the former does get a lot humbler and wiser for Singapore will need leaders who can truly empathize with the people instead of having to live with parrots perched tree high above ground and their dissonant cacophony of callouness and insensitivity.”

The PAP and its supporters are invited to attack this posting with unrestrained fervour.

Regards

Chia Ti Lik

REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS URGES INTERNET USERS TO JOIN IN 24-HOUR ONLINE DEMO AGAINST INTERNET CENSORSHIP

Where: www.rsf.org
When : 11 A.M. on 7 November to 11 A.M. on 8 November

No one should ever be prevented from posting news online or writing a blog, but they are in the 13 countries singled out by Reporters Without Borders for a 24-hour online protest against Internet censorship.

Worldwide, 61 people are currently in prison for posting "subversive" content on a blog or website. Reporters Without Borders is compiling a list of 13 countries whose governments are "Internet enemies" because they censor and block online content that criticises them. The Internet scares. Censors of every kind exploit its flaws and attack those who pin their hopes on it. Multinationals such as Yahoo! cooperate with the Chinese government in filtering the Internet and tracking down cyber-dissidents.

The defence of online free expression and the fate of bloggers in repressive countries concern everyone. So Reporters Without Borders is offering Internet users tools to campaign against Internet predators and is calling on them to participate in an INTERNATIONAL CYBER-DEMO.

Everyone is invited to support this struggle by connecting to the Reporters Without Borders website (www.rsf.org) between 11 a.m. (Paris time) on Tuesday, 7 November, and 11 a.m. on Wednesday, 8 November. Each click will help to change the "Internet Black Holes" map and help to combat censorship. As many people as possible must participate so that this operation can be a success and have an impact on those governments that try to seal off what is meant to be a space where people can express themselves freely.

Protests will also be staged by Reporters Without Borders bureaux around the world to condemn Internet censorship and ethical misconduct of the Internet giants when operating in one of these countries.

Reporters Without Borders will publish the list of the 13 Internet enemies on 7 November and at the same time will launch its blog platform, rsfblog, and an Arabic-language version of its press freedom website.

The agency Saatchi & Saatchi has created an Internet ad calling on the entire Internet community to take part in the 24-hour campaign. All media, websites and blogs that want to support this large-scale protest are invited to get in touch with Cédric Gervet at +33 1 4483-8474.

You know what they say, a pat on the back is only a foot away from a kick in the arse. And Seah Chiang Nee (LittleSpeck.com) delivers the boot:

Informed media watchers in Singapore couldn’t help but chuckle when they came across this recent headline: “Straits Times keeps No 1 spot, drawing 1.35m readers.”

I’m not sure why it bothered to proclaim this victory considering the newspaper is running in a one-horse race. It’s the only national English-language broadsheet on sale here, competing against itself.

It’s tantamount to SBS Transit claiming to be Singapore’s best bus operator. I doubt it will get any message of congratulations from the public.

(With due respect to it’s staff, TODAY is no editorial competitor. It is neither national nor provide full coverage and is competitive to the ST only in advertising.)

The second caveat to its claim lies in its purported rise of 30,000 readers to 1.35m compared to 1.32 in 2005 (quoting the latest Nielsen Media Index survey).

“It retained top spot as the favourite daily in Singapore,” it declared, obviously regarding TODAY, Business Times, Lianhe Zaobao, Berita Harian, Tamil Musasu, etc as competitors.

To the newspaper, this increase “is very good” compared with the rest of the declining world outside.

"Readership is falling in many newspapers round the world because news is available free on the Internet, on TV and on radio, “ says the ST editor.

"We face the same challenges in Singapore, and to be able to gain new readers in such a difficult environment is very encouraging."

Audited circulation, please!

Generally, readership surveys have limited worth, useful in determining the reach of the newspaper and detailing – for advertisers - readership profiles.

In other words, they show what age groups are avid readers and what they read to help advertisers plan their campaigns.

Some are actually wary about readership surveys, preferring to know the audited circulation figures - or actual sales figures (net of complementary copies) as the minimum requirement.

Conducted over one issue of over a period of say three months, these surveys are purportedly done on thousands of households. Figures are always higher than circulation data.

This is because several family members or office workers (in ST’s case 3.5 readers) share the same copy.

I have also noticed that in recent years, when circulation figures had shown stagnation or declines, the Straits Times had increasingly been emphasising on “readership” rather than “audited circulation.”

(Actually a truly transparent media would offer both because they complement each other.)

Many advertising firms in a non-monopoly environment (where they had a wider adv choice) would insist on detailed audited circulation information rather than merely “readership” surveys as the primary data source.

“Readership” surveys, if professionally carried out, are useful too, but recognisably would always have an element of error or distortion, less accurate than actual circulations.

When newspapers hike prices or during a serious economic downturn, it is possible for sales to drop but readership to go up as sharing becomes more prevalent.

This means that the number of readers may go up from say, 3.5 to 3.7 per copy. That doesn’t result in a better bottom line.

Besides readership often rises during general elections, wars or other major developments of special interest to Singaporeans – faster than audited circulation.

To be fair, The Straits Times do publish circulation figures except – as in the case of the recent gloating report – it doesn’t emphasise them. Understandable so when advertising costs depend mostly on a newspaper's circulation.

With sales trending downwards (it could be worse if not for its near-monopoly and a huge population jump in Singapore), the management probably felt it wiser not to play up ‘circulation’ figures.

How do we know ‘circulation’ had dropped? See for yourself: -

Daily ST average circulation:
1998 = 391,612 (population: 3,490,356)
2004 = 380,197
2005 = 386,167
June 16, 2006 = 381,934 (when population had risen to 4,492,150).

Please, get out of my [Wee Shu Min ] elite uncaring face. by Brennan Sinbun #2

Other Sources:RJC girl Wee Shu Min gets slammed by netizens

What in the name of "Justice" is going on?
From Singapore Democratic Party
26 Oct 06

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse…

On the second day of the trial the DPP Ms Lee Lit Cheng dropped the ball when it was discovered that one of her police witnesses was sitting in the courtroom listening to the testimony of other police witnesses.

This is disallowed because witnesses are required to testify independently and not collaborate with each other.

The trial involves Mr Gandhi Ambalam, Dr Chee Soon Juan, and Mr Yap Keng Ho who have been charged with speaking in public without a permit on 22 Apr 06 during the election period.

Halfway through the hearing, Dr Chee asked the DPP to identify the persons who were seated behind her.

After saying that one of them was ASP Jeremy Koh from Jurong Police Division, the Investigating Officer (IO) of the case and who is the last of a list of 12 police witnesses, the DPP quickly acknowledged the obvious: "It was my omission to have sought the Court's permission to have the IO present in the courtroom."

She apologized for the oversight and explained that she had asked ASP Koh to be present so that she could "activate him to contact the next witness."

Flabbergasted, the Defence queried why the Prosecution needed the IO to be a coordinator when he was a material witness. Was the Police Force so short handed that it could not find someone to assist the DPP to coordinate the witnesses?

Dr Chee pointed out that in previous trials that he was involved in, the DPP did not have a witness to "contact" other witnesses.

Turning to Judge Eddie Tham, Dr Chee asked if it was proper for a witness who was waiting to give evidence to be seated in the courtroom whilst the trial was going on.

The Judge conceded: "It is not proper for a witness who is supposed to be giving evidence to be seated in the courtroom." He added that the DPP's omission to ask the Court for permission to allow the IO to be present during proceedings was "regrettable".

Dr Chee then pointed out that ASP Koh was not just seated in the courtroom. The IO had been going in and out of the witness room and speaking to the other witnesses, and not merely helping DPP Lee Lit Cheng to ensure that other police witnesses turned up on time for their turn to give evidence. Was he collaborating with the other witnesses?

At that point, Dr Chee asked if ASP Koh was in the witness room. The court bailiff took a look and confirmed that the IO was indeed in the witness room with the next witness.

The Judge then summoned ASP Koh and put him on the stand. He asked if the officer had spoken to other witnesses about the testimony given by other police officers who had already testified. The IO said no.

Upon cross-examination, Mr Koh revealed that he had come to the courtroom on his "own initiative" and received "no specific instructions." This contradicted what DPP Lee told the court earlier that she had wanted the IO to be present to "activate" him to contact witnesses.

In addition when Dr Chee queried whether ASP Koh had been with the fourth witness in the witness room, the IO said he did not know who the fourth witness was. If the ASP Koh's role was to help DPP Lee "contact the next witness", why did he not know that the person he was with in the witness room was the next police witness to be called? The discrepancy widened.

Lawyer M Ravi then appeared in court to assist Mr Yap Keng Ho in arguing that the trial be stopped because of the tainting of evidence by the Prosecution.

Dr Chee conveyed his misgivings about the matter. As this was a serious development, the Defendants wanted time to seek legal opinion on how best to proceed.

The Judge stopped the hearing before lunch and adjourned the matter to Friday morning.

From Singapore Democratic Party
23 Aug [Should be dated October?] 06

Dr Chee Soon Juan today did an interview with CNN which centred on the banning of the Far Eastern Economic Review by the Government and the lawsuit taken by Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Mr Lee Hsien Loong against the journal.

According to CNN, the interview will be broadcast on 24 Oct 06, Tuesday, the eve of the FEER lawsuit hearing fixed for 25 Oct 06 at the High Court.

The presenter, Ms Eunice Yoon, started off by asking Dr Chee his thoughts on the ban and the lawsuit to which the SDP secretary-general replied that he was not at all surprised because of the history of litigation by the PAP.

Having domesticated the local media the Singapore Government had to now silence international critics in order to continue its propaganda that it ran a successful system based on transparency and democracy, Dr Chee added.

The FEER case was just one example, the Singapore Democratic leader cited. He brought up the Andy Xie sacking by Morgan Stanley for writing an email that Singapore was depending on money-laundering from the Chinese and Indonesians.

Ms Yoon then asked if the PAP's reputation as a clean Government was deserved. Dr Chee replied that with on-going suspicions about Singapore being a money-laundering hub and the scandal over the Temasek-Shin Corp deal, the Singapore Government had to rely on silencing the media to propagate the falsehood that it ran a clean government.

The CNN presenter than commented that Singaporeans seemed to be more concerned about their financial security than their political rights. Dr Chee stressed that this is not true especially when one looks at the Internet where there's a free flow of information. Where Singaporeans are given the opportunity to freely express themselves, they show that they are very concerned about the democratic freedoms and rights.

Singaporeans, having been deprived of an open discussion in the mainstream media, are turning to the Internet to express their frustrations and their desire to see a more open and democratic system.

Dr Chee was also asked what he thought of the label 'martyr' that the PAP has sarcastically used on him. The SDP secretary-general replied that it did not bother him the names the PAP used on him. He added that what mattered most is the work that needs to be done to for democracy and justice in the country. Every name and every action that the PAP took against him only made him more resolute to fight on.

The 10-minute interview will be edited down to a couple of minutes for broadcast. In the past Dr Chee has been interviewed on the network on programmes like Q&A with Rhiz Khan and, more recently, TalkAsia with Lorraine Hahn.

By Koh Gui Qing
REUTERS

7:16 a.m. October 25, 2006

SINGAPORE – The Singapore attorney-general has filed a bankruptcy order against an opposition politician for not paying about S$24,000 ($15,300) in legal costs in a move that could potentially cripple the tiny Singapore Democratic Party.
Chee Siok Chin – the sister of SDP leader Chee Soon Juan, and herself a senior member of the party – is facing a bankruptcy order after she failed to pay S$23,550 in costs, according to court documents seen by Reuters.

'They do want to incapacitate me,' she told Reuters on Wednesday.
Chee Siok Chin led the handful of SDP candidates in Singapore's May 6 general election. The party did not win any seats in parliament but did get 23 percent of the vote in the wards it contested.

If declared bankrupt herself, Chee Siok Chin would be unable to run for parliament again under Singapore law, putting the SDP's future at risk.

Her brother Chee Soon Juan – Singapore's most vocal opposition politician – was declared bankrupt in February after failing to make libel payments of S$500,000 to former Prime Ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong.

Chee Siok Chin said she incurred the legal costs after she challenged a move by the Singapore police to disperse a peaceful protest in August 2005. The protest, by Chee Siok Chin and three others, took place outside a public building in Singapore and called for greater transparency in state institutions.

Public protests are rare in the city-state. Any public gathering of more than four people requires a police permit and a person convicted of unlawful assembly can be fined up to S$1,000.

Activists and critics such as human rights group Amnesty International say that Singapore's leaders used defamation lawsuits to cripple opposition politicians.

But Singapore's leaders say such legal action is necessary to safeguard their reputations.

Government leaders have also filed defamation law suits against foreign media, most recently against the Far Eastern Economic Review.

In the 2006 Worldwide Press Freedom Index released by Paris-based Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday, Singapore was among the worst-ranked countries. The city-state has slipped six places to rank 146th out of 168 countries following the government's latest legal action against the foreign media.

Chee Siok Chin, who spoke on the sidelines of a trial where her brother and two other SDP party supporters were being charged for speaking in public without permits in the run-up to the election, said she plans to challenge the bankruptcy order, which is due to be heard in court on Nov. 3.

From The Star

SINGAPORE: Convicted Malaysian child killer Took Leng How will go to the gallows after his final plea for clemency was rejected by the president.

Took, 24, a Penangite who worked here as a vegetable packer, was convicted of killing eight-year-old Chinese national Huang Na in October 2004 at the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre.

He was sentenced to hang in August last year.

Took filed an appeal shortly after but in January this year, the Court of Appeal upheld the death sentence in a split two-one decision, prompting his family to start a campaign to save him from the death sentence.

As many as 34,000 signatures were collected in the petition for clemency. [online petition]

Took’s lawyer urged the president to reconsider the views of the dissenting judge but on Monday, the lawyers received a letter stating that the death sentence would remain, The Straits Times reported.

In Singapore, hangings will normally take place within two weeks after the final plea.

Huang Na’s disappearance from the wholesale market in October 2004 sparked a massive search by police and volunteers.

The police had also questioned Took in connection with the murder.

He later fled Singapore for Malaysia, sparking a nationwide search for him by Malaysian police.

He was arrested when he returned to the republic.

Took later led Singaporean police to the child’s naked and decomposed body, which was stuffed in a box in a park several kilometres from the market. – Bernama

[Sketchbook]
Questionnaire for compiling a 2006 world press freedom index

From a regular read of mine... Singapore Patriot

RSF compiled its Index by asking freedom of expression organisations, journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists, to answer a survey of 50 questions about press freedom in their countries. The questionnaire covered various challenges faced by journalists ranging from violence and physical threats against them, government restrictions on their work and state control of the media. While Singaporean journalists do not suffer from physical violence like in the Philippines, some of the questions which Singapore scored low on probably included:

14. Improper use of fines, summonses or legal action against journalists or media outlets?

19. Problems of access to public or official information (refusal by officials, selection of information provided according to the media’s editorial line etc)?

26. Censorship or seizure of foreign newspapers?

28. Independent or opposition news media?

29. An official prior censorship body systematically checking all media content?

30. Routine self-censorship in the privately-owned media?

31. Subjects that are taboo (the armed forces, government corruption, religion, the opposition, demands of separatists, human rights etc)?

32. A state monopoly of TV?

33. A state monopoly of radio?

34. A state monopoly of printing or distribution facilities?

35. Government control of state-owned media’s editorial line?

38. Opposition access to state-owned media?

42. Licence needed to start up a newspaper or magazine?

44. Serious threats to news diversity, including narrow ownership of media outlets?

45. A state monopoly of Internet service providers (ISPs)?

46. ISPs forced to filter access to websites?

48. ISPs legally responsible for the content of websites they host?

49. Cyber-dissidents or bloggers imprisoned (how many?)

From The Australian, a worrying development in the Shin Corp saga that may initiate a cascade of problems for the beleagured acquisition by Temasek Holdings and open a Pandora's box of retroactive litigation regarding similar shady deals.

New kick in the Shin for Thaksin
Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent
October 25, 2006

OF the slew of actions now afoot over the sale of Thailand's Shin Corp to Temasek Holdings, the one that could most hurt the already bruised Singaporeans is an action initiated by a junior academic at Bangkok's Rangsit University.

The Central Administrative Court has agreed to try an action by Sattra Toa-on, a 28-year-old law lecturer, against state regulators over their alleged failure to enforce rules that would have prevented then prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's family from selling control of the Shin Corp communications group for 73.2 billion baht ($2.6 billion) to the Singapore government investment company.

After initially buying 49.6 per cent of Thailand's biggest telecoms group from Thaksin's children and relatives in January, the Temasek-led consortium now owns 96 per cent of Shin Corp equity. Temasek itself claims an "economic interest" in 76 per cent of the group.

Thaksin is exiled in London, having been overthrown five weeks ago by a coup that culminated in a series of explosive events sparked by the initial Shin Corp purchase.

This deal was already turning into a stinker for the Singaporeans. They're currently down about Bt23 billion on the market value of the investment and, though they insist they behaved with perfect propriety, Singapore Inc's reputation for fastidiousness has hardly been burnished.

Sattra's legal action is further bad news because it calls into question the fundamental legality of the Shin Corp deal. It alleges the use of nominally Thai-owned but Singapore-controlled front companies to flout the country's 49 per cent limit on foreign ownership of strategic assets was clearly in breach of the law but that the state regulatory agencies refused even to investigate.

That's a bad thing by implication too for the 13,000 or so foreign investors in Thai corporations and property who use nominee structures to dodge foreign investment restrictions. Already 16 other large takeovers that employed apparent nominee companies have been singled out for retrospective investigation.

Sattra's suit makes more difficult Temasek's attempts to produce what might be described as an administrative resolution to the foreign ownership problems it created by grabbing for Shin Corp when Thaksin's family offered it on a plate.

The case will delay any attempt to dilute Temasek's stake below the legal foreign ownership ceiling before other adverse findings arise. (The alleged use of a suspected nominee company, Kularb Kaew, is under police investigation and a report is expected by the end of November.)

Several Thai investment funds have indicated tentative interest in helping Temasek lighten its holdings at "reasonable" prices - that is, considerably less than the unprecedented Bt49.25 per share Temasek's consortium paid Thaksin's kin in January (the shares are trading around Bt34 this week). But there's little apparent interest from the big corporate investors Temasek would need to bed down much of what, even at current depressed prices, would amount to almost Bt50 billion of stock.

In any case it's hard to envisage anyone taking a share placement large or small until Sattra's action is settled.

If he succeeded in proving to the court that the regulators, under Thaksin's thumb, refused even to investigate foreign ownership breaches, the state licences for Thailand's largest mobile phone, the iTV television network and the country's only commercial satellite operator, among other assets, would be at considerable risk.

Most foreign investors in Bangkok blame the system for the Shin Corp fiasco. It's certainly undeniable that for three decades, Thai governments and bureaucrats have winked at increasingly barefaced abuses of foreign ownership rules, arguing, when pressed, the country's need for imported capital.

Rather than address that need and confront the naive economic nationalism that still prevails in Thai public discussion, successive governments have allowed the use of nominee companies and other devices to create the legal fiction of Thai ownership of assets that have in fact passed into foreign control.

In doing so they have allowed a whole class of fixers and rent-seekers to line their pockets - among them some of the kingdom's wealthier people - because what better circumstantial evidence is there that you are not a foreign corporation's puppet if you have the means to own what you say you own? In the current case, the funding and ownership entitlements of the Thai partners in Temasek's consortium become a crucial issue.

No prime minister should have been more aware than Thaksin, a billionaire former businessman on intimate terms with international investment flows, of the distortions and corrupt possibilities in his country's defacto foreign investment regime. And no previous prime minister had Thaksin's opportunities to fix the problem - two clear terms in office during which he thoroughly dominated the government, the parliament and the bureaucracy.

Instead, Thaksin sat on his hands until, in what turned out to be his final months in office, his family and Temasek conspired to exploit the system's shortcomings in the most spectacular fashion. One consequence was that the Thaksin family was able to cash-out of Shin Corp at a price never seen before or since.

Now foreign business people in Bangkok, the law firms who facilitated exploitation of the current system and the Board of Trade, which mediates between foreign investors and the government, are quietly urging General Surayud Chulanont's interim administration to let Temasek off the hook, on condition it divests to below the 49 per cent ceiling.

Then let's start again with clear, realistic foreign ownership rules, say some, warning that the alternative is a permanent loss of confidence in Thailand as an investment destination.

Almost incredibly, however, others urge a cooling-off period, then a quiet return to the old "pragmatic" system. Prominent among them are property developers and lawyers who know the ways they've been marketing land titles to foreigners would not survive scrutiny even under more enlightened and transparent foreign ownership regimes.

In the meantime, however, Bangkok lawyers and corporate advisers are telling foreign investors they need to expect their investment structures to be carefully scrutinised by Thai regulators. Everyone now awaits developments in the Temasek case.

From Singapore Elections

You agree with PAP or you're a whiner. That's the message PAP is trying to achieve in so called New Media aka blogs. Mr Wee Siew Kim, a MP(PAP) voiced support for his daughter's rebuttal against our hero Derek Wee who wrote a blog entry entitled "Future of Singapore" which later attracted criticism from Mr Wee's daughter. She posted this entry on her blog...

mom's friend sent her some blog post by some bleeding stupid 40-year old singaporean called derek wee (WHY do all the idiots have my surname why?!) whining about how singapore is such an insecure place, how old ppl (ie, 40 and above) fear for their jobs, how the pool of foreign "talent" (dismissively chucked between inverted commas) is really a tsunami that will consume us all (no actually he didn't say that, he probably said Fouren Talern Bery Bad.), how the reason why no one wants kids [continue reading... ]

 

From OFF/Beat by Emil Steiner

Talk about your all-time wardrobe malfunctions. StarHub Cable Vision of Singapore is being fined $6,350 for showing footage of lesbian sex and bondage during episodes of the reality program "Cheaters." According to Media Development authorities, the country's lone cable provider breached "guidelines which disallow the promotion, justification and glamorization of lesbian lifestyles and their explicit depictions" by airing footage of a pixelated woman tied to a bed in a "bondage session" with two other women. (Maybe it would have been less glamorous without the pixels?) In Singapore, voluntary "carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal," can still be punished by life in prison. Gum chewing is also illegal in the repressive city state, though it is unclear if airing footage of people chewing, enjoying or promoting a lifestyle of gum mastication could be similarly punished.

Source: Cable TV broadcaster fined for airing lesbian sex and bondage

Singapore - StarHub Cable Vision (SCV) has been fined for airing lesbian sex and bondage footage contained in a US reality TV show, Singapore's regulator said Tuesday.

The Media Development Authority (MDA) said the footage breached the 'guidelines which disallow the promotion, justification and glamorization of lesbian lifestyles and their explicit depictions,' in a statement on its website.

Singapore-based cable television provider SCV was fined 10,000 Singapore dollars (6,410 US dollars). Homosexual acts are illegal in the conservative city-state.

The show, "Cheaters," exposes ordinary people whom their partners suspect of having affairs.

A woman was seen having sex with another woman in an episode aired between May 22 and 26. There was also a bondage session involving three women.

StarHub's corporate communications manager Caitlin Fua told The Straits Times that her company was disappointed with the MDA's decision.

"Cheaters" has been aired in such countries as China, India and Indonesia 'without any difficulty,' she was quoted as saying.

The reality programme featured cases handled by the Cheaters private agency where a person seeks to find out if his/ her partner is being unfaithful in their relationship. The episode concerned was aired during the period of 22 to 26 May 2006 and repeated on 29 August 2006. It contained footages of a woman engaging in lesbian sex acts with another woman. While pixilation was used during the sex scenes, it was still obvious to viewers that the women were naked and engaging in unnatural sex acts. The programme also showed the woman tied to a bed in a bondage session with two other women.The visuals were deemed to be sexually suggestive and offensive to good taste and decency

The programme also promotes lesbianism as a lifestyle, which breaches the Programme Code. The woman manages to get her boyfriend to accept her lifestyle and to invite other people to engage in threesomes with them.

Spotted on Singapore Election

John Dean, Ex-ade to US President Richard Nixon explaining the concept of authoritarian followers.

In Conservatives Without Conscience, Dean explains this body of scientific work to general readers and shows its direct relevance to contemporary conservatism. Counsel to President Nixon for a thousand days, John Dean also served a chief minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee and as an associate deputy attorney general in the US Department of Justice. He writes a bi-weekly column for FindLaw. He is the author of Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, and six other books.

From Dr Chee

20 Oct 06

Given the revelations of the scandalous deal between Temasek Holdings and Shin Corp which continue to trickle from Bangkok, it is impossible for Singaporeans not to take notice.

The transaction has not only provoked outrage among the Thai people, leading to the souring of relations between Singapore and Thailand.

This reinforces the Singapore Democrats' stand that the Government has to get out of being directly involved in business as it arouses, not without reason, suspicion in the countries in which it makes deals.

In addition, with the questionable performance of the Temasek-linked companies and some high profile debacles, including

- The sinking of Micropolis which cost Singaporeans $630 million

- The ill-advised acquisition of Optus by SingTel which stands to face a write-down of between $5 billion to $8 billion,

- And the present eruption of the Shin Corp deal in which due diligence was not exercised which may yet incur a loss of up to $3 billion

it is clear that Madam Ho Ching, wife of PM Lee Hsien Loong, has failed as head of Temasek. Her decision to buy into Shin Corp has even provoked a criminal investigation into the deal in Thailand.

And while Mr Thaksin Shinawatra and his family are laughing all the way to the bank, Temasek has lost the hard-earned money of Singaporeans which now looks unrecoverable.

While all these developments have taken place, the Government and the company continue to remain tight-lipped apart from the few platitudes offered by the Prime Minister that serve no purpose or have any meaning.

In light of all this the SDP calls on Madam Ho Ching to resign as chief executive of Temasek Holdings.

In addition, in the interest of transparency and accountability Singapore should hold its own public inquiry into the affair and have Temasek come clean about all the related matters. There are reports that the non-transparent deal was influenced by members of the Lee family.

If Temasek is indeed a commercial entity that adheres to the corporate code of conduct, then it will make itself transparent to its shareholders, that is, Singaporeans.

Singaporeans must be given all the information to determine for themselves if there were any wrong-doings by all the players involved.

Chee Soon Juan
Secretary-General
Singapore Democratic Party

Singapore

By NELSON BENJAMIN

JOHOR BARU: While most Malaysians regard Singapore as a land of opportunity, landing a job in the island republic has turned into a nightmare for some.

These workers, all unskilled or semi-skilled, are the victims of unscrupulous recruitment agents who lure them with promises of good pay without giving them a true picture of their terms of employment.

And despite facing terrible work conditions, they are unable to return home as the agents have held on to their passports as collateral until their “bonds” of between S$1,600 (RM3,558) and S$3,260 (RM7,251) are paid up.

Many of these workers have been forced to run away and seek help from the Malaysian High Commission in Singapore while staying at the Tanjung Pagar railway station or even taking refuge in mosques.

The more desperate ones have even tried swimming across the Straits of Johor to get back to Malaysia or sneaking into the agents' offices to recover their passports.

In fact, the situation has reached such an alarming stage that the High Commission is handling such cases on a daily basis, especially during the present festive period.

It had even felt compelled to conduct a study, which started in January, involving 184 cases

Among other things, the study revealed that most of those exploited were from Johor, Sarawak and Sabah, and they had been the target of both verbal and physical abuse.

Labour Department director-general Datuk Ismail Abdul Rahim has gone as far as to liken some of the cases to slavery.

“We are shocked that despite so much publicity in the newspapers, Malaysians continue to fall victim to such scams,” he added.

He said the department was aware of cases where the agents were willing to betray their own friends for hefty commissions.

“The scams are becoming more sophisticated. Now they target people from the villages, using their friends to talk them into going to Singapore.”

While acknowledging that the department, through its enforcement division, could take bogus agencies to court, he said none had been prosecuted so far due to lack of evidence.

High Commissioner Datuk N. Parameswaran said most of the victims were labourers, cleaners and gardeners.

“My staff have been using their own money to help these people return home as many of them do not even have the RM50 – the equivalent of S$22 – needed to get an emergency certificate from us to exit Singapore,” he said.

He blamed the scams on unscrupulous or illegal recruitment agents operating both in Malaysia and Singapore.

The embassy has sent out the findings of its study to at least 13 relevant government agencies in the two countries, alerting them to the growing problem.

Johor police chief Deputy Comm Datuk Hussin Ismail hoped that Malaysians who had been duped would lodge reports to enable the police to work with their counterparts in Singapore to nab the agents.

Here's a strange article I found on Singapore Window originally published by Forbes and allegedly authored by Uncle Lee himself. I struggled while reading it trying to decide what he was really trying to get at; It starts off by describing the Mid East conflict, talks about Malaysian muslims, and then finally gets down to our Singaporean born and bred muslims... Surely this is the seguey to the part where he gives a speech about how our muslims have great anger management skills. Oh wait, no. The subject goes straight back to the Middle East. And finally a flimsy argument for dessert as to why America needs to stay in Iraq.

If the US were to make a precipitous exit from Iraq, the Shiite and Sunni militias would be left to battle it out. Iraq's neighbors would likely join in, destabilizing the region. No American President--Republican or Democrat--can afford to let this happen.

Sameer Dossani October 19, 2006

Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco

Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

It's 2 a.m. on a Saturday night. I'm in a Singapore police station. No, this story doesn't involve alcohol. Fortunately neither the death penalty nor caning are likely.

The story begins earlier on September 16, when I arrived in Singapore, the site of the annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF, from neighboring Batam, Indonesia. My companions and I were organizers of the International People's Forum vs. the IMF and World Bank (IPF), which wasn't feasible in Singapore. In January the Singapore government threatened to cane protesters and in the days before the events they made public an official blacklist of 27 people who would not be allowed entry to Singapore.

Their justification: they had already prepared a protest space at the venue, namely an enclosed area roughly the size of a large prison cell. Some friends who were not on the official blacklist were turned away at the airport, indicating that the unofficial blacklist must be much longer.

Naturally, activists, researchers, and Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) representatives expressed their outrage to the Singapore authorities, IMF and World Bank staff, and to their own governments in Europe, North America, Asia, and elsewhere. To the displeasure and discomfort of the IMF and World Bank, we launched a boycott of the official meetings, and this boycott was joined by nearly all NGOs who work on policy issues. For the first time in living memory, the Singapore government backed down. They “un-blacklisted” 22 of the 27 individuals on the official list.

In response, the “un-banned” and the “still-banned” issued a statement renewing our pledge to boycott the official events and stating that the moves of the Singapore government were a case of “too little, too late.” To read the statement, two of the “un-banned”—Joy Chavez from Focus on the Global South (Thailand) and Antonio Tricarico from Campaign to Reform the World Bank (Italy)—were to go to Singapore where a press conference and public event on the IMF was already scheduled to take place.

I was among those chosen to escort these activists, as we had no reason to believe that the Singapore government would uphold its end of the bargain. Though Antonio and Joy were taken aside at the border, they were permitted to pass after being given a sheet of paper advising them to (please) abide by Singapore law.

At midnight the Singapore police call. Turns out our event MAY be illegal. Great.

After a meeting and some discussions with an ad-hoc Singapore legal team, we determine that the meeting/press conference we are planning the following morning is indeed legal. (It may not have been had it been taking place on the ground floor or had there been see-through windows in the conference room.) Armed with this information, we contact the police again who assure him that, yes, the conference could be legal, but that it may need a license. We need to just stop by the police station for some questions and filling out some forms.

Three of us arrive at about one a.m. to negotiate with the police.

When the officers who called us here come down to greet us and escort us to the room where we'll be “interviewed,” they are exceedingly polite. Half an hour later, they explain that the only reason for all the questions is to determine whether or not we need a license. We do indeed need a license, they say, and after half an hour spent filling out forms we are free to walk out the door. At 2 a.m.

Aside from the lost sleep, the only cost for the license was $20. Free speech may not be free in Singapore, but it is cheap.


Sameer Dossani is Director of 50 Years Is Enough: U.S Network for Global Economic Justice in Washington, DC and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org).

Singapore - The Great Exception

AT Kearney and Foreign Policy magazine

With all the recent talk about spreading democracy, we revisited the question of how globalization and democracy fit together. Comparing the index with Freedom House's annual rankings of political rights and civil liberties in countries worldwide, we found that they work together quite nicely: There is a strong positive relationship between globalization and political freedom. Globalization may also be one of the best ways of keeping politicians honest, as more globalized countries have far lower levels of perceived corruption, as measured by Transparency International.

Engaging countries at the bottom of the globalization index such as Iran and Egypt may help foster increased political rights and civil liberties for their citizens. Furthermore, increased integration may lead to the adoption of higher international standards for transparency, which in turn would discourage corruption and increase government efficiency.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. Singapore, the world's most globalized country, is home to a modern, open economy that exists alongside tight government control over media and limited individual liberties. On the other end of the spectrum, South Africa has a relatively high level of political freedom but a mediocre globalization ranking. Going global does not offer any guarantees but it clearly can give countries a leg up.

Singapore

Yes PM Lee is correct Singaporeans should not be discouraged by the negative coverage from the foreign media. The PAP and those in government should feel disgraced. The PAP has yet again managed to paint a picture on the world stage of an authoritarian regime.

"[T]hey wanted Singapore to open up" sums up the post below from Today Newspaper. Using the term 'they' implies that there are no Singaporeans demanding more openness in Singapore.

If that is what 'success' looks like - I'll take 'failure' any day.

Wednesday • October 18, 2006

Tor Ching Li
chingli@mediacorp.com.sg
SINGAPOREANS should not be discouraged by the negative coverage — mainly from the foreign media — on the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-World Bank meetings held here last month.

At an appreciation event for some 2,700 IMF-World Bank volunteers last night, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said: "The foreign media had another agenda — they wanted Singapore to open up, to conform to their standards, their norms.

"Whatever line we drew, they wanted to push us, to go a little bit further. But we had to decide where the line was, and stick to it."

Singapore was criticised for keeping out some Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) due to security concerns, as well as for banning outdoor demonstrations.

Said Mr Lee: "The IMF-World Bank wanted us to be a bit more open, and we tried our best to accommodate. But in the end, we were responsible for the safety of the delegates, and we could not shirk the responsibility of whom to let in."

The fact was that IMF-World Bank officials acknowledged "in private" that, as the host country, Singapore had to decide who to let in and what security measures to take, said Mr Lee.

He added that the CSOs issue attracted a "disproportionate" amount of media attention.

The reality is that Singapore "did the right thing", he said.

"All the S2006 delegates knew the truth. They were impressed not just with our efficiency, but also with the pride which everyone showed, and the commitment of every staff and volunteer," said Mr Lee, who congratulated the volunteers on the success of the meetings.

Mr Lee cited some examples of those who went the extra mile, such as a chauffeur who took photos of a delegate with his own digital camera and printed them as a gift.

"One officer so impressed a foreign delegate with the quality of service that he jokingly asked if she would marry him," he said.

The visitors also related how their liaison officers went beyond the call of duty to buy them lozenges for their sore throats, or of one who helped retrieve a pair of lost glasses late into the night.

Said Mr Lee: "You have shown how, at a critical moment, ordinary Singaporeans can rally together, rise to the occasion and put up an extraordinary performance."

P65 MPs Hip-hoping:

Singapore

From World Development Movement

Peter Hardstaff has been attending the World Bank and IMF annual meetings, following the ban placed on Martin Powell by the Singapore government. Peter's blog and reports on the meetings are available at: www.IMFWorldBank.org

Peter Hardstaff's video diary is also available on google video along with videos of interviews with activists.

Temasek Holdings of Singapore said Monday it is willing to reduce its shareholding in Shin Corp "at the appropriate time and in an appropriate manner" in order to ensure an orderly market.

However, Jimmy Phoon, senior managing director, investments of Temasek, said the share reduction is part of Temasek's original intention to keep Shin Corp's listing status in the Thai stock market following a public tender offer in March 2006.

He did not address the controversial and pending question as to whether Temasek has relied on nominees to circumvent the Thai ownership law in its Bt140-billion acquisition of Shin Corp, formerly controlled by the Shinawatra and Damapong family.

In the tender offer, almost all of the shares of Shin Corp were tendered to a consortium controlled by Temasek, which ended up holding about 94 per cent of all the oustanding stocks. This has made the shares illiquid for trading on the stock market.

To maintain the active trading of Shin Corp stocks, it will be necessary for Temasek to fulfil the stock exchange regulations by selling the Shin Corp stocks back into the market so that there are free-floated stocks of at least 15 per cent.

"As a responsible investor, we also respect the views and are sensitive to the feelings of the Thai people," Phoon said. "We want Shin Corp to remain a Thai company that Thailand and Thais will continue to be proud of. We are happy that Shin Corp continues to be managed by competent and professional Thai people."

Singapore

A survey request from the best/only journalist in Singapore.
Survey: Singaporean attitudes towards HIV risk and education

Please do this survey - whoever you are (straight, gay, male, female...). It will help me make a presentation at the upcoming Aids conference. The survey is anonymous and basically seeks your opinion about various issues.

http://plu.sg/poll1/index.php?sid=1

I would also appreciate it if you would help me publicise this on your blogs or via email.

Thank you.

Singapore

The speech below from Lee Hsien Loong is far from insightful and seems to be the same speech that he has delivered on a few occasions in the past. I place it here though for my own records and also to highlight the false interpretation that Lee Hsien Loong has of 'Western Media'. Aside from the error of lumping the diverity of non-ASEAN nations into one umbrella group of 'Western', the major mistake I feel is that he has inadvertantly accepted the myth that the US, UK, EU media are 'a liberal press'.

The Manila Times

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore delivered the keynote address at the opening of the Seventh Asian-European Editors’ Forum held in Sentosa, Singapore, on October 5 to 8.

Sponsored by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the annual forum bringing to Asia senior editors from Europe to discuss specific topics with their Asian peers and dialogue with Asian leaders.

The following excerpted from, Lee’s remarks about the “Role of Media” were the closing part of his speech which mainly covered the forum’s assigned theme “India-China-Japan: The New Power Triangle in Asia.” He tackled the various key challenges now confronting the Asian, particularly the Asean, countries and peoples.

The role of the media

Good government delivers economic growth and prog­ress, and builds a resilient and inclusive society. Responsible journalism, which understands and furthers the larger national interest, supports both of these goals. Ultimately, both exist for the people they serve.

In every country, the media occupies a position of power and responsibility. It is the source of news and views, accessible to all. It informs, educates and entertains. It influences and shapes public opinion. How­ever, the media operates differently across countries. In some, media players consciously seek to uphold their responsibility to society and further the broader national interest.[The prefered PAP interpretation of the owning all media outlets in Singapore, with all other interpretations classed as 'ideological', says more than I can possibly state here.] In others, the media reports and publishes stories based on what sells, or pushes particular ideological views, on the theory that the marketplace of ideas will automatically sort out the good from the bad.

The Western, particularly the American, model is an unfettered and rambunc­tious press, championing issues, competing to set the agenda, holding the elected government to account, and subject to minimal legal restraints.[Liberal?] In Asia, some countries approximate this Western model of the media more closely than others. But the countries which have been most successful at improving the lives of their people do not always have the most aggressive media. For example, the Japanese media are less adversarial, and put more emphasis on consensus building. Their approach is different from the Western one, but it suits Japan’s culture and circumstances and has contributed to Japan’s success.

As with the political system, each country will have to evolve its own model of the media that works for it. Here too the situation is dynamic, not least because the Internet is changing everything.

The Internet is enabling ordinary citizens to post news and views on the web, making information available more quickly and plentifully than ever. The conventional wisdom is that the free flow of information on the Internet is universally a good thing. It is undoubtedly very difficult to control information flow. But as we find terrorist groups using the Internet to plan murderous attacks, and pedo­philes using it to prey on defenseless children, we are learning that while the Internet is a great boon to mankind, it is not an unmitigated one.

In the pre-Internet age, newspapers and television stations not only reported news and opinions, they also filtered, processed and verified the information, in order to present coherent perspectives which shape the public debate and the public’s collective understanding of the world around us. The Internet short-circuits and undercuts this model.

Even in the Internet age, there will still be a role for serious journalism, whether in print or on the web, because people will still seek out information sources which are reliable, verified and insightful. But it will not be easy to keep the public debate on this high plane, especially on controversial issues. For the Internet also enables clever propaganda, inflammatory opinions, half-truths and untruths to circulate freely and gain currency through viral distribution, and these are not always easily countered by rational refutation or factual explanation. How to deal with this is something, which every newspaper, and indeed every society, is grappling with.

Singapore regulates the Internet with a light touch. But the same laws of sedition and defamation apply whether on the Internet or in print, and we have prosecuted persons who have incited racial and religious hatred on blogs. The media in Singapore must adapt to these changes, do their best to stay relevant, and continue to contribute constructively to nation building.

John Pilger
"Guardians of Power ought to be required reading. It is the most important book about journalism I can remember."
Noam Chomsky
"Regular analysis of the media has never been more important. Media Lens carries out this task with energy and care."

This book parallels very closely in terms of its ideology other classic works of media criticism on corporations and corporate media, such as The Corporation (Joel Bakan) and Manufacturing Consent (Chomsky and Herman). But whereas Chomsky's work focused on American media, this work looks at the ways in which the "liberal" media in Britain works to reinforce corporate prestige, power, and government propaganda.

The book looks at a plethora of issues, such as media coverage of the Kyoto Protocol, the Kosovo bombing, Iraqi sanctions and the 2003 invasion, among other issues.

The following video was first spotted on Singapore Election. It features a Yale University Phd explaining the indicators of despotism which is founded on a series of continuum.

Producer: Encyclopaedia Britannica Films - 1946

Measures how a society ranks on a spectrum stretching from democracy to despotism. Explains how societies and nations can be measured by the degree that power is concentrated and respect for the individual is restricted. Where does your community, state and nation stand on these scales?

Singapore

Culling a few members of staff in order to passify the master?

By Netty Ismail

Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Morgan Stanley asked two bankers to leave after distributing an e-mail critical of Singapore that cost Andy Xie, the firm's former chief economist in Asia, his job, people with knowledge of the situation said.

Celicia Ong, a Singapore-based equity saleswoman, and Hani Abuali, a proprietary trader in Hong Kong, were asked to resign after they forwarded the e-mail, the three people said, asking not to be identified because the information is confidential. The e-mail was marked ``internal'' and should not have been distributed outside the bank, they said.

Ong's clients included the Government of Singapore Investment Corp., the people said. GIC has placed more than $30 billion of state assets with fund management companies. Xie left New York-based Morgan Stanley on Sept. 29 after he characterized Singapore as an economic failure dependent on illicit money from Indonesia and China.

``We do not wish to comment,'' GIC spokeswoman Loh Wei Ling said today, when asked whether they received the e-mail from Morgan Stanley or about its contents.

Morgan Stanley doesn't comment on personnel issues, Cheung Po-ling, a spokeswoman, said by telephone from Hong Kong.

The departures were reported yesterday by capital markets news service IFR Asia, which said the two bankers' resignations will be effective in January to ensure they receive their bonuses, citing a person it didn't identify.

E-mails sent today to Ong, an executive director, and Managing Director Abuali's Morgan Stanley addresses were bounced back. Abuali's automated reply said that he will be ``out of the office through Jan. 2, 2007'' and referred queries to Scott Gaynor, a Hong Kong-based Morgan Stanley banker.

Merger Adviser

Gaynor declined to comment when contacted by telephone today, and said he wasn't able to pass on Abuali's contact details. There was no listing under the name Abuali in the Hong Kong telephone directory. Calls to the Singapore number of Celicia Ong, the only entry under that name, went unanswered.

Morgan Stanley ranks second as adviser on mergers involving Singapore companies this year, handling $6.5 billion of transactions, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It advised Temasek Holdings Pte., the Singapore government's investment company, in the purchase of a 9.9 percent stake in Mumbai-based Tata Teleservices Ltd.

Morgan Stanley, the No. 4 arranger of stock sales in Asia outside Japan, hasn't underwritten a Singapore deal this year, Bloomberg data show.

GIC, which manages more than $100 billion of Singapore's reserves, has earned an average 9.5 percent a year since it was set up in 1981, Chairman Lee Kuan Yew said on July 11. Lee, 83, the founder of modern-day Singapore, remains in the country's Cabinet today with the title of Minister Mentor.

His eldest son Lee Hsien Loong became Prime Minister in 2004 and Ho Ching, the younger Lee's second wife, is the chief executive of Temasek.

Xie, a Shanghai-born economist who worked at Morgan Stanley for nine years, sent the e-mail to his colleagues after attending the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings last month in the Southeast Asian island state. The economist questioned why Singapore was chosen to host the conference, and said delegates ``were competing with each other to praise Singapore as the success story of globalization.''

Building Casinos

``Actually, Singapore's success came mostly from being the money laundering center for corrupt Indonesian businessmen and government officials,'' Xie wrote in the e-mail. ``Indonesia has no money. So Singapore isn't doing well.''

Singapore's $118 billion economy is recovering from three recessions since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and is expecting growth of as much as 7.5 percent this year. The city- state is grappling with growing competition from China and India, two of the world's most populous nations, where labor costs are less than a quarter of those in Singapore.

The Singapore government, which is ending a four-decade ban on casinos, plans to triple tourism revenue to $19 billion and double visitors to 17 million by 2015.

``To sustain its economy, Singapore is building casinos to attract corruption money from China,'' said Xie, who ranked No. 2 among regional economists in a 2003 Asiamoney magazine survey.

Genting Bhd., Asia's largest gaming operator by market value, Kerzner International Ltd. and Eighth Wonder yesterday submitted bids to build Singapore's second casino on its southern island of Sentosa.

To contact the reporter on this story: Netty Ismail in Singapore at nismail3@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: October 12, 2006 06:21 EDT

(Adds finance minister comments, fresh analyst, updates shares)

By Viparat Jantraprap

BANGKOK, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Thailand is likely to order Singapore state investment firm Temasek to cut its holding in Thai conglomerate Shin Corp. to resolve a foreign ownership dispute, the Nation newspaper said on Thursday.

The paper quoted a government source as saying a top-level Singaporean official had approached interim Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont to resolve the issue "in an amicable manner".

"One likely recommendation from the Thai government is that Temasek ... should comply with the Thai foreign ownership law by quickly reducing its stake in Shin Corp, which is estimated at 96 percent, to below 49 percent," the source said.

Temasek's [TEM.UL] $3.8 billion purchase of Shin -- it took a controlling stake from the family of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and then bought the rest through a tender offer -- has been dogged by problems since it was unveiled in January.

Its tax-free nature contributed to the public anger that eventually saw Thaksin deposed in a Sept. 19 coup, and then critics alleged the deal had broken laws that prevent foreigners owning more than half of any Thai company.

A Thai Commerce Ministry probe into the complicated web of holding companies behind the deal has already found that Temasek may have broken the foreign ownership laws, and has submitted its findings to the police. Temasek declined to comment.

Newly appointed Finance Minister Pridiyathorn Devakula suggested government intervention was not imminent, saying Shin Corp's current and former owners should sort it out.

"This has nothing to do with the government. When they bought the shares, they did not ask the government," he told reporters. "The private sector should talk among themselves, talk to the private shareholders who have sold shares."


INVESTOR RELIEF

The paper also quoted an unnamed Singaporean investment banker as saying he understood Temasek chief executive Ho Ching was prepared to make compromises to resolve the holding issue.

"Temasek, from what I have heard, is willing to pay a fine or make other concessions in order to end the controversy rather than allow the issue to drag on," the paper quoted the banker as saying.

The alleged rule-breaking and various ministry and judicial investigations have weighed on Shin shares, which have dropped from above 48 baht in March to below 29 baht this week. Temasek paid 49.25 baht per share for the firm.

Shin shares rose 4.4 percent amid relief that the reported contact between Temasek and Bangkok made it less likely regulators or courts would impose punitive sanctions on Shin's businesses, analysts said.

"If the deal is resolved this way it will help ease the worries about concession cancellations that have plagued the share prices of Shin group companies, such as ITV and AIS," Therapong Vachirapong, an analyst at Phatra Securities.

Shin's main subsidiaries are Thailand's biggest mobile phone firm, Advanced Info Service (AIS) , satellite operator Shin Satellite and television broadcaster ITV .

AIS rose 7 percent, Shin Satellite 6.3 percent and ITV 2.2 percent, helping lift the overall Bangkok bourse 1 percent.

(additional reporting by Jan Dahinten in SINGAPORE)

The author of The J Curve, Ian Bremmer was recently on The Daily Show and seemed to be talking alot of sense so it might be a timely read for the likes of Lee Hsien Loong...

With this timely book, political risk consultant Bremmer aims to "describe the political and economic forces that revitalize some states and push others toward collapse." His simple premise is that if one were to graph a nation's stability as a function of its openness, the result would be a "J curve," suggesting that as nations become more open, they become less stable until they eventually surpass their initial levels of stability. In other words, a closed society like Cuba is relatively stable; a more open society like Saudi Arabia is less so; and an extremely open society like the United States is extremely stable. Bremmer expertly distills decades—sometimes centuries—of history as he analyzes 10 countries at different positions on the J curve. North Korea is perhaps the most disturbing example of the left side of the curve, where a closed authoritarian regime produces effective stability; on the right of the curve sit stable countries like Turkey, Israel and India. This leads Bremmer to conclude that political isolation and sanctions often work against their intended results and that globalization is the key to opening closed authoritarian states. Bremmer persuasively illustrates his core thesis without eliding the complexities of global or national politics.

Singapore

Andy Xie has a differing interpretation however...

October 10, 2006

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A third of Singapore's high net worth individuals are of Indonesian origin, according to a report by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini.

At the end of 2005, Singapore had an estimated 55,000 high net worth individuals, holding assets worth $260 billion, the report said.

A third of these individuals were Indonesians with permanent resident status in Singapore -- 18,000 in all -- with assets worth $87 billion.

"Singapore has a very open immigration policy to attract talented foreigners and that has also attracted a lot of high net worth individuals from Indonesia," Tho Gea Hong, market director for Merrill Lynch Global Private client, told a news conference.

High net worth individuals are defined as people who have net financial assets of at least $1 million.

Tho said the number of high net worth individuals in Singapore has risen 13.4 percent from 2004. A total of 1.3 percent of these individuals are ultra-high net worth individuals, with assets exceeding $30 million.

Kong Eng Huat, Market Managing Director, South Asia, for Merrill Lynch Global Private Client, said Asia-Pacific excluding Japan would need 10,000 bankers to serve a million high net worth individuals, compared with an estimated 5,000 bankers now.

He said Merrill expects its Singapore headcount to increase by 20 to 25 percent over the next few years because of strong growth in the wealth management business in Asia.

From the Singapore Democratic Party
9 Oct 06

Dr Chee Soon Juan was charged today for attempting to leave Singapore in April 2006 without permission from the Official Assignee. He had his passport seized at the airport when he was scheduled to attend the 4th Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy (WMD) in Istanbul, Turkey.

Dr Chee was made a bankrupt after he couldn't pay the damages of $500,000 that was awarded to Messrs Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong in their defamation suits.

Because of this, the Official Assignee's (OA) office has refused to allow the SDP secretary-general to travel overseas.

The OA has repeatedly rejected Dr Chee's applications to attend conferences overseas even though in every case, the organisers undertook to pay for Dr Chee's expenses in full (see box on left).

The latest occasion is the International Civil Society Forum for Democracy organised by the Qatar Government in Doha, Qatar from 29 Oct-1 Nov 06 and supported by the United Nations.

Towards the end of March 2006, Dr Chee applied to attend the WMD conference. The OA wanted Dr Chee to submit a breakdown of his monthly income and expenditure so that it could determine how much Dr Chee would have to pay the PAP leaders. It promised that if Dr Chee undertook to do so, the OA would consider his travel application (see exchanges of emails below).

But when Dr Chee complied, the OA then shifted its position and asked him to make a proposal to pay Mr Lee and Mr Goh before it would consider his travel application.

The exchange of emails continued until the day of Dr Chee's scheduled departure during which the air-ticket had to be purchased. Not having received a reply from the OA, Dr Chee made his way to the airport during which his passport was impounded.

The OA then proceeded to charge the SDP leader that he "did attempt to leave Singapore, on or about the 1st day of April 2006, without the previous permission of the Official assignee and have thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 131(2) of the Bankruptcy Act (Chapter 20) read with Section 511 of the Penal Code (Chapter 224)."

In another case, Dr Chee is charged with Mr Gandhi Ambalam and Mr Yap Keng Ho for speaking in public without a permit. The trial is set for 25 Oct 06.

Forum on Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falungong Practitioners in China
Venue: Peninsular Excelsior Hotel
Time: 1430 hrs

The forum on the Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falungong Practitioners in China, held in the Tulip room of Peninsular Excelsior Hotel sees an approximate attendance of about 150.

David Matas, who is an immigration, refugee and international human rights lawyer, and one of the two, involved in the writing, preparation and research of the report, was at the forum to make his presentation. The other person who contributed to the report is David Kilgour, a former member of parliament and a former Secretary of State of the Govenrment of Canada for Asia Pacific.

After a short video presentation containing mainly clips on the Chinese government persecution on falungong and telephone recorded evidence of organ transplants in hospitals, David Matas explained the circumstances to which he was approached by The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of the FalunGong in China (CIPFG) to manage this project.

He continued to explain the methadology prescribed and the diffiiculties faced in preparing the report. Nevertheless, they managed to come up with 18 elements of proof and disproof, which, though are not hard evidence, however shed light on the truthfulness of the allegations. The report also listed 17 recommendations for further actions.

The elements of proof and disproof includes the existence of an official policy of persecution towards Falungong practitioners; massive arrests of practitioners; a huge gap between the transplants and the sources commonly believed to be from executed prisoners and willing donors; incriminating evidences from websites; blood testing of arrested practitioners; and testimonies from practitioners detained in labour camps among other evidences.

During the question and answer session, many questions were posed including if these acts were systematically executed and endorsed by the Chinese government; the response of the Chinese government to the allegations in the report; and what Singaporeans can do.

Mr Matas responded by saying that the Chinese government have responded to the report by making vilified remarks on Falungong, accusing it as an evil cult; but been unable to come up with any counterarguments on the points raised by the report.

Mr Matas also reiterated that there are many ways that Singaporeans can highlight the issue. He suggested that the local medical community could carry out research pertaining to Singaporeans who have organ transplants in China. He also said citizens can raise this issue with their MPs or write petition letters to the Chinese embassy.

More details of the report can be found at:
http://investigation.go.saveinter.net/

By John Ruwitch

The Far Eastern Economic Review will vigorously fight a defamation suit brought against it by Singapore's prime minister and his father and regrets the city-state's decision to ban the magazine, its editors said on Friday.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and former premier Lee Kuan Yew filed the libel suit against Hong Kong-based Review Publishing Company Ltd. and FEER editor Hugo Restall on August 22 over an article published in July on opposition politician Chee Soon Juan.

"We are planning to defend the defamation lawsuits vigorously and look forward to having our day in court in Singapore," Restall told a news conference in Hong Kong.

'Singapore's Martyr: Chee Soon Juan'

"We believe that the original article was not defamatory in any way and could not be read by any reasonable reader of the Review as alleging the things that Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Lee Hsien Loong claimed," Restall said.

The article that sparked the lawsuit, entitled "Singapore's Martyr: Chee Soon Juan", criticised the government's handling of a pay-and-perks scandal at the country's largest charity. The magazine also quoted Chee attacking the Lees.

Restall said Chee never said he thought any particular member of the Singaporean government was corrupt.

"He never said that and I certainly didn't write that, and I don't believe that," Restall said. "I think it's just ridiculous to read the article in that way. It's preposterous."

Singapore has for decades taken a tough stance on foreign media when they report on local politics. International media organisations have been banned, slapped with defamation suits or seen their circulations restricted when they published articles deemed offensive by the government.

'Barometer of Asian Development'

The suit is the latest in a series brought by Singapore's leaders against foreign media and opposition politicians.

The Review celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2005 and on Friday unveiled a new "Barometer of Asian Development", scoring 12 countries in the region over the past five years on a variety of data such as education, human mobility, capital access, creative rights, gender equality and labour flexibility.

China and Thailand were tied at the top, with Singapore a close second.

"We're trying to be very fair to Singapore, and I think the index reflects that we are not seeking to criticise them unfairly or trying to only emphasise the negative," Restall said.

Paul Gigot, editor of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, which with Review Publishing is owned by Dow Jones & Co., said the government's decision to ban the Review in September did a disservice to Singaporeans.

"We really regret that decision," he said.

The government said it banned the sale of FEER, which has about 1 000 subscribers there, because it failed to comply with its press regulations.

Singapore's leaders have won damages in the past from media groups, including the Economist, the International Herald Tribune, Bloomberg, and FinanceAsia - as well as the Far Eastern Economic Review when it was published as a weekly news magazine.

In November 1989, a Singapore court found FEER guilty of libelling then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and ordered it to pay 230 000 Singaporean dollars in damages.

At the time, Justice LP Thean said Lee was entitled to aggravated damages against the magazine, owned by Dow Jones & Co., because of "express malice" by the defendants and the conduct of their lawyer Geoffrey Robertson during the trial.

The case stemmed from an article published in 1987 dealing with the arrests that year of 22 people, mostly lay church workers, for alleged involvement in a Marxist plot to subvert the government.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which ranks Singapore 140th out of 167 countries for press freedom, slammed the government's decision in August to issue restrictions on five foreign publications, including FEER.

The government ordered Time, Newsweek, the Financial Times and the International Herald Tribune to post bonds of 200 000 Singaporean dollars and appoint representatives in Singapore. - Reuters