Recently a video clip has been circulating of the Speaker of Parliament, Tan Chuan Jin (TCJ), calling Jamus Lim a “f**cking populist’ during a Parliamentary session in April this year. Like me you’re probably horrified that the Speaker could speak like this. So this foul mouthed expletive from the Speaker happened in April. There’s no doubt in my mind that the July 3rd parliamentary session, a result of my whistle blowing of Ridoutgate, has made citizens angry but also that they are feeling braver in demanding accountability from all our elected public servants. It must have been noticed at the time but better late than never. Maybe we’re finally entering a post- Ridout era where we start to stand up for ourselves.

TCJ put up a Facebook post apologising to the public for using “unparliamentary” language. He said he had apologised to Lim as well and that Lim had accepted his apology. This is completely inadequate. The Speaker is the highest authority in. the House and responsible for enforcing the rules prescribed in the Standing Orders of Parliament for the conduct of business in the House . To quote the Parliament website:

In carrying out the duties in the House, the Speaker must remain impartial and fair to all MPs. The Speaker regulates and enforces the rules of debate. He decides who has the right to speak and puts the question for the House to debate on and vote. The Speaker does not take part in the debates of the House but can abstain or vote for or against a motion if he has an original vote as an elected Member. The Speaker has no casting vote. As the guardian of parliamentary privileges, MPs look to the Speaker for guidance on procedures and he gives his rulings on any point of order, if necessary.

The PAP’s absolute control of Parliament and unchecked power has led to a situation in which the role of the Speaker, who is supposed to be impartial, has been perverted to just become another tool in LHL’s armoury to use against his opponents. How can anyone claim that the Speaker is impartial? He’s clearly a PAP man and worse, he’s a misinformed brainwashed PAP man who thinks the opposition are the populists.

When my dad was an MP in the 1980s he used to complain vociferously that Yeo Ghim Seng was spineless in not standing up to LKY and just used his power to curtail his own attempts to speak during Parliamentary sessions. JBJ was always being reprimanded or admonished by the Speaker and censured by the House with frequent fines from the Committee of Privileges merely for trying to do his duty in holding the Executive accountable. Today the same is true as illustrated by the Deputy Speaker Christopher DeSouza’s (a man who should have been forced to resign from Parliament after having been found guilty of professional misconduct) refusal to let Leong Mun Wai speak at the end of the Parliamentary debate on Ridout on 3 July or TCJ’s similar curtailment of interruptions or attempts to speak by the Opposition.

But while the Speaker stands ready to interpret the rules of Parliament against the Opposition, it’s clear that he doesn’t feel himself bound by the same rules that apply to everyone else. It is disgraceful that the man in charge of seeing that other Parliamentarians don’t use profanities and call each other names should do precisely that. I would prefer that he resign or be sacked as he is not fit to perform the role but at the very least he must be heavily fined and suspended as happened to my late father merely for trying to do his job as a one man Opposition. And JBJ never swore!

Unfortunately as TCJ is in charge of Parliament there’s no one to discipline him. Even more unfortunately Janus Lim has accepted the apology without demur. Sometimes we need the actual ground not the moral high ground. Lim had an opportunity here to demand that a better Speaker be found who was more cognisant of the demands of the role for impartiality. TCJ perfectly exemplifies the PAP’s philosophy that they don’t need to be bound by the same rules that govern everyone else. Whether it’s employing one’s wife on a salary that the government won’t reveal or Shanmugam (and Balakrishnan) taking two of the crown jewels of state properties at absurdly low rents, rents that he as head of the SLA had a power to influence and that represent a cavalier disregard for the proper management of our precious land reserves or achieving the best value for taxpayers. TCJ’s loutish behaviour is a perfect illustration of how Singaporeans allowing the PAP to “ownself check ownself” has led to situation where absolute power has corrupted absolutely, to paraphrase Lord Acton.

That’s not all. Calling Jamus Lim a ‘f**cking populist” for saying that the Government should do more to help the elderly and extend Silver Support to those under the age of 65 is especially ironic in view of the fact that the Singapore Government is itself populist or rather fake populist/authoritarian populist.

Isaiah Berlin, the famous philosopher whose book “In Defence of Liberty” I bought with my prize money for getting a First in Part I of the Economics Tripos, “identified a core populist idea: the notion that an authentic ‘true people’ have been damaged by an elite, whether economic, political, or racial, some kind of secret or open enemy.” Since LKY’s time, who rode to power on a Populist left wing anti capitalist and anti colonial wave before turning on his fellow Party members and arresting them with the help of the British, the PAP have sought to portray themselves as standing up for Singaporeans, particularly the Chinese, against fabricated external enemies, such as our majority Muslim neighbours and internal supposed enemies such as JBJ. By portraying JBJ amd others like myself as soft liberals who would introduce welfarism and human rights the PAP paints us as an an enemy designed to weaken Singapore and hold back economic growth. Their populism is of course fake since under their watch unions have been dismantled, Singaporeans have been forced to compete with mass inflows of foreign labour without even the protection of a minimum wage, the glaring loophole of easily acquiring PR status and then citizenship without doing NS hasn’t been closed but actually widened, to name just a few examples.

Meanwhile the PAP continually lecture you on the need for thrift and austerity and hide from you $3 trillion in reserves whilst accusing those who want cheaper HDB prices of draining the reserves. At the same time the Minister who is supposed to be working to ensure that we get maximum value for our land so mismanages our precious reserves that he is able to rent a mansion (and one for his buddy) sitting on one of the biggest plots of land in Singapore at a rent which is certainly a fraction of what his own GCB fetches in the open market.

Not so long ago I wrote about how TCJ bragged about how he had caught a man who got a free meal at his constituency by pretending to be disabled. I reminded everyone that in Singapore the only free lunches are for the PAP elite, their friends and relatives. Teo Chee Hean has similarly declared that the land Shanmugam wanted to acquire adjoining his property at 26 Ridout Road was virtually valueless when it suited the Ministers. At the same time, echoing LKY who had forced Mr Chiam to admit that land has value, Indranee Rajah and Desmond Lee recently lectured LMW on the land having value and how not valuing it is draining the reserves, stealing money from our children and our children’s children when that land is underneath an HDB unit. Are you following? Land has no value when it is land for a Minister’s park but suddenly has value when it is suggested that HDB owners be given a financial break,

As I said in my previous blog, Shanmugam previously mocked those who wanted accountability by saying “Who Watches the Watchers”.The TCJ episode is just another illustration of PAP abuse of power. Though profanity by the Speaker in charge of regulating bad behaviour in the House might seem a minor peccadillo compared to Ridout pr the PM’s refusal to disclose what the Government paid his wife it really is not. Of course TCJ needs to resign or be removed as unfit. But as the announcement today by Lawrence Wong that the Transport Minister is “assisting CPIB with their investigations” shows, the need for Singaporeans to demand transparency and accountability from their leaders is more urgent than ever. I am glad that I started the ball rolling and I am so happy to have the support that I am receiving in my quest not just for accountability but for a better economic future for Singaporeans.

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