Tan Cheng Bock and Tan Jee Say were seen out on walkabout with Tan Kin Lian this morning and both of them endorsed him. As neither of them are elected representatives it’s perfectly acceptable for them to make personal endorsements.

However at the same walkabout TCB also described the criticism of Tan’s “pretty girls” Facebook posts as “gutter politics”, to quote AsiaOne.

I want to be clear here. Calling TKL out for public posts he made is not gutter politics. Women having a voice of their own and voicing out what they feel is also not gutter politics. I would describe gutter politics as the surreptitious surveillance video of Nicole Seah and Leon Perera that mysteriously surfaced at a convenient time for the PAP as gutter politics. Their affair had been over for a year at that stage.

TKL had posted these photos by himself. He clearly saw nothing wrong in taking photos of women in shorts and singlets and drawing people’s attention to them. Many of the Opposition parties, including Reform Party, have active and vocal Women’s Wings. He disenfranchised them in one stroke when he doubled down on his posts.

It is the commentators saying that the women who objected were ugly or jealous that really dragged our into the gutter and showed us to be a backward nation out of step with the modern world that only pays lip service to its national pledge.

However this could have been and should have been a learning moment for TKL. He apologised shortly after his nomination but his apology was also a form of doubling down.

“I did say there are some pretty girls, but the pretty girls take the effort to dress up to be attractive. When I say that they are attractive, most of them actually feel quite happy,” 

“But in case some other ladies, after reading this, think that they are uncomfortable, I want to apologise to them,”

And he then went into a long spiel about the timing and the number of people who had seen his post over the last ten years.

I’ve got news for him. In the last ten years he hasn’t stood for President and people thought he had retired in the interim. It’s now that the interest is intense. In the time since 2011 also the PAP have started to fracture, the PM’s grip is weak, he hasn’t yet secured the succession for his son and the citizens have much greater access to the internet and the experience from travel abroad and are unafraid to use it.

In other countries such as the UK, during a candidate’s selection process candidates are asked to give permission to a third party agency to trawl through a candidate’s internet history and see if there is anything that raises flags. You can’t delete anything on the internet but this way they can at least get ahead of any negative publicity if they decided to proceed with the candidate.

I believe that the PEC should also do this but if Tharman wasn’t disqualified for breaching the Official Secrets Act then clearly their scrutiny leaves a lot to be desired.

Here’s what TKL could have done. Before going into this arena he should have put together a team of advisers and that should have included women, or at least one woman not his direct blood relative. It should have also included reputable people with gravitas from at least the two main ethnic minority communities. He didn’t do that and the fact that he applied last minute is no excuse.

Once these posts had become a public issue he should have requested a meet with AWARE. I also feel that AWARE could have asked to meet him first before this blew up to explain how his behaviour impacts on all of our women and given him a chance to make a proper informed apology, put it behind him and move on with a new “AWAREness”. In an ideal world a joint statement would have been issued. Thus Singapore comes together and moves forward rather that gets bogged down in division.

Instead of that today we have this car crash commentary by TCB today. Dr Tan said that he’s sad that the “political landscape is in such turmoil and,  despite saying that Singaporeans want transparency, described the criticism of Tan’s “pretty girls” Facebook posts as “gutter politics”. Clearly he seems in favour of censoring the internet.

The reason Singapore’s political landscape is in turmoil is mostly because of the lack of a new generation of leaders. TCB’s comments today have shown me beyond doubt that he and PSP are mired in the past. What he wants is a PAP in his image from some imagined halcyon days. PSP has always been and will never be anything other than PAP 2.0, but one that looks backwards not forwards. Despite this I do hope that they take a couple of GRCs at the next election and that in combination with the other parties on the Opposition benches they can deprive the PAP of a two-thirds majority.

Ng Kok Song made a comment along the lines that political parties shouldn’t endorse candidates. He should know about not mixing up politics. When he was at MAS he made sure I couldn’t have a career there and that was purely a political decision. This was proven when in a blind test my cv was selected, I was interviewed and I was employed by a financial institution, because the CEO being from England didn’t know what my name meant.

Meanwhile Ho Ching, who has no business commenting, as she remains an active executive with Temasek at the moment, has put up a comment by The Kritical Spectator calling Singaporeans who vote for TKL insane.

Nothing could be dragged further into the gutter than calling the supporters of eligible political opponents insane. This shows that the PAP has nothing but contempt for a large swathe and probably the majority of the electorate. Her ties to two of the candidates are as well hidden as PSP’s ties to the other. She should be made ‘aware’ of FICA and get sanctioned for spreading the Polish PAP IB.

We’ve had a long history of this in Singapore. Many of my supporters are aware that her father-in-law called my father mad. I can assure you he was compos mentis till his last breath. I think they did something similar to Chee Soon Juan.

TCB is throwing his weight behind TKL because he’s hoping to capture some supporters for the PSP. I haven’t yet thrown my weight behind anyone in my individual capacity. It’s not for me to speak for Reform Party and as a party we wouldn’t endorse. But I have had negative personal interaction with two of the other candidates and knew one well at university and I wouldn’t trust them to look after the jar of coins I keep on a back shelf in the kitchen.

The PAP is being brought dragging and screaming into conflict with the modern world’s demands as it struggles to keep on doing business as usual, censoring citizens with rule by law, insisting ownself check oneself isn’t a travesty of good governance whilst defending its status as a haven for banking secrecy and dirty money.

Have we all got a little overexcited? The EP is a sham brought in by the PAP out of fear. It’s not worth this much comment.

At least TKL has said he would call for a Commission of Inquiry which is a better response to calls for transparency and accountability than I’ve ever had from Tharman or previous EPs. Whatever you think TKL embodies, electing him would send a clear signal to the PAP that they are living on borrowed time as far as the electorate is concerned. It might be too much to hope for but a TKL Presidency might finally force the Government to reveal more about the size of the reserves and the justification for not being able to spend more on investing in the people. So a vote for TKL is a vote against PAP arrogance and being taken for granted and treated like fools.

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