As predicted, within hours of my latest blog predicting a whitewash, both CPIB and Teo Chee Hean came out and said they found no evidence of wrongdoing by either Shanmugam or Vivian. Yet the following glaring questions remain unanswered:

1. Why were both 26 and 31 Ridout Road allowed to remain vacant for over five years when SLA could have paid at most $500,000 to make them habitable? Why was the management of a precious national resource so poor that it was not considered that the additional revenue would far outweigh the costs of renovation? Shanmugam was in charge of SLA during this period.
2. How can Teo Chee Hean, Shanmugam’s footballing buddy, be the person conducting the review when he was the person Shanmugam informed about the rental in the first place and Indranee Rajah was told to refer to him? This goes against the first principles of good governance but fits the PAP template of “ownself check ownself’ perfectly. It’s like a portfolio manager’s boss being asked to provide valuations of his trader’s positions with no independent check.
3. How did Shanmugam manage to guess the exact guide rent of $24,000 a month for 26 Ridout Road and pay exactly that? Such fantastic prescience. Maybe he can give up his day job as a Minister and become a celebrity poker player as he can clearly see the cards the other players are holding. But joking aside, are we really expected to believe that Shanmugam did not have inside knowledge of the rental rates for the bungalows SLA managed? No amount of recusing himself will negate my disbelief that he started with advantages over the other bidders.
4. Why did SL:A only pay the relatively modest sum of $172,000 for clearance of the adjacent land only when Shanmugam asked them to do it? Why wasn’t this considered before so that 26 Ridout Road could be rented out? Again our precious land reserves seem to be rented out far below what the land is worth while Indranee stands up in Parliament and tells Singaporeans that the full market value must be paid for HDB otherwise we would be draining reserves? As it stands it looks very much as though SLA is (mis)managing its properties toi benefit an elite few.
5. Also an increase in rental of $2,000 per month to cover the additional land looks inadequate. Shanmugam should have been charged the annual value of the land not just the amortised cost of clearance.
6. SLA claims that the availability of the properties for rental was widely known because “For Lease” signs were displayed at the gates of both properties, Yet how many Singaporeans are in the habit of cruising Ridout Road looking for rentals in the first place?
7. SLA paid $515,000 for “essential’ repair works at 26 Ridout Road. This begs the question which I have asked above as to why SLA wasn’t prepared to pay for the repairs before when it was losing $300,000 at least a year in rent by leaving the property vacant. Why did the guide rent remain the same post repairs and why was the property not put out to tender post repairs rather than before.
8. Aerial photos show a considerably larger swimming pool and extensive ground clearance. Who paid for the new swimming pool? Is this included within the $400,000 of additional renovations Shanmugam undertook? If not and it was paid for by SLA then the rent needed to have been much higher.
9. Following on from that, was approval given for the land clearance and felling of ancient trees since no permit appears to have been applied for?
10. Why was the rental paid by Balakrishnan ($19,000 per month later revised to $20,000) so much lower when 31 Ridout Road appears to have been in better condition. Again how did he mysteriously manage to bid so close to the guide rent without the property being properly marketed?
11. Why were such generous renewal terms granted for 9 years in the case of 26 and 8 in the case of 31 without any effort to assess what the properties would have been worth on the open market?
12. The question of why both Ministers were looking to rent run-down black and white bungalows in Ridout Road when they both own prestigious and enormous GCBs in prime areas has gone unanswered. I suggested that this was because both Ministers realised they could make an arbitrage profit, even bearing the cost of the repairs and renovations, by letting out their own properties, probably for $100,000+ a month and taking advantage of the mispricing and mismanagement by SLA. This has clearly been going on a long time and Shanmugam as head of SLA was clearly aware of it. He had a vested interest in SLA’s continued mismanagement of its housing stock.
13. The Ministerial Code says there cannot be even the perception of a conflict of interest yet there clearly was despite Shanmugam trying to bamboozle us. by saying he recused himself from bidding. That was only in the initial stage when he first rented the property yet he remained head of SLA when the lease was renewed.
14. Did anyone really think the CPIB, which falls under LHL’s jurisdiction, would give his mates anything less than a clean bill of health and say they were all good boys who did everything by the book?

This is a sham of an independent review and shows the PAP’s breathtaking arrogance if they think they can make monkeys of Singaporeans. People I meet in the street come up to tell me how angry they are. I demand answers to my basic questions above but know that the Government will be unable to answer them. If Shanmugam doesn’t stand down I will stand against him in the coming GE.

Published by kjeyaretnam

I'm a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That's why I've never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I'm quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don't work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I'm a liberal. I'm not sure what the middle think of me. I don't think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I'm a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I'm not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean. View all posts by kjeyaretnam