Please consider signing the petition.
I have posted the following to soc.culture.singapore - http://tinyurl.com/94s9y. The petition itself is at http://www.petitiononline.com/temasek/
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Elections!
The ruling regime has till about mid-2007 to call for general elections. But the sad thing about the whole affair is that we have a system that continues to honour "walkovers". Walkovers, should be, IMHO, made illegal and inapplicable in the case of elections. What we have seen in previous so-called General Elections, is that on nomination day, the ruling regime has essentially been handed the keys to the next government. All because there was no one to contest.
Together with the now defunct, The Roundtable, I have stated in 2001 and repeated in my NMP application, that every electoral contest must have a minimum number of votes in favour of the winning candidate. So, if there is only 1 contestant, that contestant must garner, say 30%, of the valid votes in favour before she gets the seat in parliament. The bulk of the people sitting in parliament today do not have a single mandate to sit there. They were never voted in. Just as President S R Nathan, they do not have the moral or ethical stand to represent Singapore. They got in on technicality. Shame on you.
The argument has been made that no ruling party will want to make it easier for another party to take over power from them. While that might sound logical, what I am asking for here is a fair playing ground. A ground on which, I as a citizen am able to exercise my fundamental human right to vote. I am sure this nonsense of walkovers is a contravention of the United Nations Convention on Human Rights.
Please join me in signing the petition. We have to fix it NOW!
The ruling regime has till about mid-2007 to call for general elections. But the sad thing about the whole affair is that we have a system that continues to honour "walkovers". Walkovers, should be, IMHO, made illegal and inapplicable in the case of elections. What we have seen in previous so-called General Elections, is that on nomination day, the ruling regime has essentially been handed the keys to the next government. All because there was no one to contest.
Together with the now defunct, The Roundtable, I have stated in 2001 and repeated in my NMP application, that every electoral contest must have a minimum number of votes in favour of the winning candidate. So, if there is only 1 contestant, that contestant must garner, say 30%, of the valid votes in favour before she gets the seat in parliament. The bulk of the people sitting in parliament today do not have a single mandate to sit there. They were never voted in. Just as President S R Nathan, they do not have the moral or ethical stand to represent Singapore. They got in on technicality. Shame on you.
The argument has been made that no ruling party will want to make it easier for another party to take over power from them. While that might sound logical, what I am asking for here is a fair playing ground. A ground on which, I as a citizen am able to exercise my fundamental human right to vote. I am sure this nonsense of walkovers is a contravention of the United Nations Convention on Human Rights.
Please join me in signing the petition. We have to fix it NOW!
Did not quite realize that it has been over two months since I posted. I suppose it is both a good and a bad thing - good in that I was busy, and bad in that poor time-management resulted in this lapse.
It is 2006 now and, personally, and from a family point of view, 2005 was amazing. Firstly, I was on the ground in Banda Aceh as a deputy commander of the SCDF Ops Lion Heart contingent on since December 29 2004 and the way I could usher in 2005 on the 31st was via SMSes to my wife and sons. Did I ever expect to be deployed for a real operation? And when the call came in, I did not hesitate. I will gladly be out there helping when the calls ever comes in again.
When I watched the movie The Towering Inferno in 1974 (amazing that it was over 30 years ago), there was a scene where a man working as a checkout clerk, leaves his job and rushes to put on a fireman's suit. He was a reservist firefighter and the fact that he responded to an emergency and, that he did it willingly, kinda stuck in my mind. That was the mental image in my mind when I got that recall from the SCDF at about 11am on December 29 2004!
I am proud to be associated with an organization such as the SCDF. They are trained for real life - not make believe. Saving lives is their primary motive. I think we need to get that "a-ha" factor into the SCDF reservists (or the politically correct "operationally ready national servicemen"). I say this because we need to have reservists inspire fellow reservists. I tried to do that during my last ICT in April 2005, where I took over one lesson period to share with my men what the SCDF did on the ground. I hope that the sharing did inspire some or all of them to do better and take their ICT stints more seriously but more importantly, raise their respect for the Force.
I have now been transferred to the holding list, meaning that it is unlikely that I will be called up for any more ICTs or operations. That is fine. It is time for younger officers to take over.
2005 was also exciting from another angle - I got inducted into the OSU College of Engineering Council of Outstanding Early Career Enginners. What an honour!
As a final item of reflection, I am glad to have passed the Red Hat Certified Engineer exams on December 31 2005. I was not planning on doing any of these industry/vendor certifications, but I chose this one over others - not because I work for Red Hat, but I wanted to be a sorta inspiration to my sons!
It is 2006 now and, personally, and from a family point of view, 2005 was amazing. Firstly, I was on the ground in Banda Aceh as a deputy commander of the SCDF Ops Lion Heart contingent on since December 29 2004 and the way I could usher in 2005 on the 31st was via SMSes to my wife and sons. Did I ever expect to be deployed for a real operation? And when the call came in, I did not hesitate. I will gladly be out there helping when the calls ever comes in again.
When I watched the movie The Towering Inferno in 1974 (amazing that it was over 30 years ago), there was a scene where a man working as a checkout clerk, leaves his job and rushes to put on a fireman's suit. He was a reservist firefighter and the fact that he responded to an emergency and, that he did it willingly, kinda stuck in my mind. That was the mental image in my mind when I got that recall from the SCDF at about 11am on December 29 2004!
I am proud to be associated with an organization such as the SCDF. They are trained for real life - not make believe. Saving lives is their primary motive. I think we need to get that "a-ha" factor into the SCDF reservists (or the politically correct "operationally ready national servicemen"). I say this because we need to have reservists inspire fellow reservists. I tried to do that during my last ICT in April 2005, where I took over one lesson period to share with my men what the SCDF did on the ground. I hope that the sharing did inspire some or all of them to do better and take their ICT stints more seriously but more importantly, raise their respect for the Force.
I have now been transferred to the holding list, meaning that it is unlikely that I will be called up for any more ICTs or operations. That is fine. It is time for younger officers to take over.
2005 was also exciting from another angle - I got inducted into the OSU College of Engineering Council of Outstanding Early Career Enginners. What an honour!
As a final item of reflection, I am glad to have passed the Red Hat Certified Engineer exams on December 31 2005. I was not planning on doing any of these industry/vendor certifications, but I chose this one over others - not because I work for Red Hat, but I wanted to be a sorta inspiration to my sons!
Sunday, November 06, 2005
The locals have spoken! The daily wastepaper did run the story and the government apparently could not be bothered with the fact that Singapore is ranked 140 in the press freedom stakes. My favourite PM, Goh Chok Tong, says that it is not important because the list has some other countries higher up on the scale who do not make it at all in the economic game.
Well, Chok Tong, it is sad that you have been given the task to tackle this instead of the man who brought it upon us. I am sure deep in you, you feel sad. This country of ours is being laughed at. Isn't it interesting that Loong does not seem to care?
The local press continues to have no credibility and trust (did it ever?). I am sure my friends in the press who earn a honest wage will be sad to see this - but, alas, what else can I say? My friends will not say it like it is for they know that their editors and their upper rung will not allow for honest writing and reporting. My friends are being dragged into this whirlpool of distrust and shadowplay and all they want to do is to see their children grow and live a good life. Choices!
Well, Chok Tong, it is sad that you have been given the task to tackle this instead of the man who brought it upon us. I am sure deep in you, you feel sad. This country of ours is being laughed at. Isn't it interesting that Loong does not seem to care?
The local press continues to have no credibility and trust (did it ever?). I am sure my friends in the press who earn a honest wage will be sad to see this - but, alas, what else can I say? My friends will not say it like it is for they know that their editors and their upper rung will not allow for honest writing and reporting. My friends are being dragged into this whirlpool of distrust and shadowplay and all they want to do is to see their children grow and live a good life. Choices!
Thursday, October 27, 2005
How naive? Here's an email I got from the a local newspaper's online site on September 29 2005:
Suffice to say that I choose not to pay the 16 cents a day for access to what is essentially a self-censored government mouthpiece.
It is amazing that they have an infrastructure to support thousands of online users, only to see that after their new money-making scam, less than 500 people have taken the bait. They claim to be 160 years old this year - the dead tree edition, btw - but what have they to show for
the 160 years? Nothing.
The Straits Times is nothing more than a small town newspaper. It is not the New York Times, or the Times of India, or the Wall Street Journal.
My country is suffering a serious deficiency in robust and healthy debate of issues because the media has failed the country.
Dear STI Reader,
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Suffice to say that I choose not to pay the 16 cents a day for access to what is essentially a self-censored government mouthpiece.
It is amazing that they have an infrastructure to support thousands of online users, only to see that after their new money-making scam, less than 500 people have taken the bait. They claim to be 160 years old this year - the dead tree edition, btw - but what have they to show for
the 160 years? Nothing.
The Straits Times is nothing more than a small town newspaper. It is not the New York Times, or the Times of India, or the Wall Street Journal.
My country is suffering a serious deficiency in robust and healthy debate of issues because the media has failed the country.
Reportes sans frontieres report about the ranking of press freedom in the world for 2005. Nice to see that Singapore make the list at about 140 our of 167. Let's see if it ever gets reported in the local press.
Am back. I have decided to keep this blog for how I view the state of my country. I will have my technology related stuff at LiveJournal.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Open XML from MS?
Reminds me of the debate I had with Peter Moore of MS Singapore a the Accenture CIO workshop in 2003 about the fact that their "openness" is really a lie. FWIW, all Peter could do was to smile.
The games MS will continue to play
This discusses how MS wants to coerce using absolutely stupid "IP" excuses to lock out open source developers. It is still not clear yet, it should be obvious that doing the mono is a dead end (it was a dead end to start with, now it is even more obvious).
Thursday, June 02, 2005
LTSP in Singapore
Will LTSP make sense in the schools of Singapore? Well, let's see if the demo of LTSP to be held at the Nanyang Polytechnic to a bunch of school IT heads of department make any waves. We have to keep trying!
Friday, June 07, 2002
Just returned to the blogger after a long hiatus.
Had an interesting day today. Fixed the problem of not being able to get into two machines that had SuSE as the distribution of choice.
Also got WEP working on the AP at work. Kinda nice to be able to do these minor things. Feels that I am still useful somewhat.
Enough. Sleep time.
Had an interesting day today. Fixed the problem of not being able to get into two machines that had SuSE as the distribution of choice.
Also got WEP working on the AP at work. Kinda nice to be able to do these minor things. Feels that I am still useful somewhat.
Enough. Sleep time.
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