With the GE fast approaching the PAP are planning to use every one of their repressive laws, media monopoly and lack of an independent Elections Commission to tilt the election in their favour. In response to a leading question from a PAP MP, Sun Xueling said that “S’pore will use Fica and Pofma if there is social media manipulation during GE”.

The Government have never provided any concrete evidence of foreign interference in Singapore’s elections. In any case their definition of “foreign interference” only covers foreign media that criticise the PAP, which is extremely rare given the extraterritorial inducements and threats that the Government employs to ensure that almost all foreign media coverage is cringingly sycophantic. Obvious falsehoods are endlessly repeated till they become truths in the eyes of foreign readers such as that Singapore was transformed from a fishing village into a first-world metropolis under LKY.

By contrast the PAP have a monopoly of the MSM, since 1972 when the last independent newspaper, the Singapore Herald, was closed down, using without a shred of evidence the bogeyman of foreign interference which is echoed in the current justification for FICA. The PAP use their media monopoly relentlessly to bury unfavourable news, present their mediocre leadership in a flattering light and disguise their wealth while pretending they are just ordinary SIngaporeans, and denigrate the Opposition. The state media’s campaign to re-elect the PAP runs non stop funded by taxpayer money when even a monopoly can’t make enough money. In many countries, including Israel and Austria, leaders have been prosecuted for corruption for using state resources and bribes to ensure favourable coverage but the PAP have institutionalized their control of the media which is called necessary for national security.

Sun even had the audacity to say, when asked by Pritam how the Government would independently ascertain if a social media algorithm had been manipulated (newspeak for the PAP getting anything less than overwhelming coverage) that “if the minister is satisfied they have been used by foreign entities with political ends in mind to influence Singapore’s politics, then he will be empowered to use pre-emptive measures”.

Just as with POFMA the PAP decide what is foreign interference and what is fake news. Conflict of interest is not a word in Sun’s or her fellow Ministers’ vocabulary when it comes to them. No POFMA has ever been issued against a PAP MP or Minister or any organ of their media monopoly. How can there possibly be a free and fair election when these repressive laws are monopolised by the PAP to be used against their opponents while they use their state media monopoly to try to ensure their re-election. To compound matters we don’t have an independent Election Commission, only an Elections Department under the control of the PM.

The PAP has long attempted to convince Singaporeans that surrendering their rights to freedom of information and expression is the smart thing to do and will lead to prosperity. However at the coming election, as they struggle to make ends meet and receive grossly inadequate support from a Government with likely more than $3 trillion of reserves, accumulated by condemning Singaporeans to unnecessary economic hardship while misleading them as to its ultimate purpose, Singaporeans will have to decide who is really getting wealthy. Is it them or the Ministers whose spouses work at Government-owned companies on undisclosed salaries, who refuse to make their assets public and who own often multiple GCBs whose price appreciation, exacerbated by deliberate Government policies to encourage the super wealthy to take up PRs and citizenship, has far outpaced that of HDBs. Who do these repressive laws really serve or aim to protect? Let’s hope that Singaporeans are finally able to see through the PAP’s smokescreen to their real self-interest.

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