SDP to launch Malay policy paper

[yellowarse]

No, you already said that segregation was racist.

De jure segregation (enforced by law) is racist. De facto segregation is not, but racist public policies and institutionalized racism can be major factors in shaping de facto segregation, in addition to 'tribal instincts'. That said, de facto segregation exists to one degree or another in all societies in the world today, even in the most vibrant, progressive, cosmopolitan cities, especially re residential neighbourhoods.

The absence of a desegregation policy is ipso facto a segregation policy.

In the absence of de jure segregation, wherein lies the need for a 'desegregation' policy? In fact, 'desegregation' policies have been ignominiously used as a cover by tyrannical regimes worldwide to disband minority communities and locales of political resistance deemed inimical to the regime's interests.

It changed the mindset of Chineseness into something that was a little more foreign, something that could be better controlled by the government. Thus, they can act like they know what your Chinese culture is by calling their own policies "confucianist"

This statement is in essential agreement with what I was saying. Erasing clan and ancestral regional fault lines and imposing a supra-identity allows for a more homogeneous voting bloc which can be manipulated to entrench PAP's power.

While I am not denying that LKY has always had an inferiority complex where his abilities at Chinese were concerned, I have to point out that Peranakans have always been better at dialects than mandarin.

True, but LKY was a non-Mandarin, non-dialect speaking banana. (He only learned Mandarin and Hokkien after he entered the political arena.) To the degree that this zero contact with Chinese in his formative years had alienated him from the emotional and psycho-cultural underpinnings of the language, he probably under-estimated the impact of the Speak Mandarin Campaign and the eradication of Chinese-stream education on Chinese Singaporeans, even as he used these deculturating policies for political ends.

Also, you have said that the Speak Mandarin campaign had something to do with Malays being excluded from job applications. Why would this be the case?

It was something that had puzzled me too, back in the eighties and early nineties when a lot of my minority friends – Indians & Eurasians; Malays didn't have the means – emigrated to Australia and NZ because of diminished employment prospects.

Their explanation was that the campaign had had a trickle down effect: the vast machinery used to encourage Mandarin and de-emphasize dialects had led to a generation of Chinese moving away from using dialects and pasar Melayu as a lingua franca towards using Mandarin. The upshot was that English standards suffered, more Chinese used Mandarin among themselves, and private sector employers (SMEs in the large) started insisting on Mandarin as a prerequisite for job applications. When 75% of your customers are Chinese, you'd want to do business in their language.

Yes to the first two, no to the third. For the second question, racial quotas in parliament are actually the secondary effect, not the primary effect. We all know that the primary effect of the GRC is to entrench PAP political power.

32 years ago, at the height of PAP's dominance, an Indian man won an historic by-election in a Chinese-majority constituency and defended it successfully 3 years later.

58 years ago, a Jewish man won his constituency in a three-way fight against 2 Chinese candidates and led his party to victory in Singapore's first Legislative Assembly elections. He became our first Chief Minister.

And you're saying a minority candidate can't get elected today on his own merit?

I've just read the Malay policy paper. These jokers are actually saying that allowing Malays to participate in the Chinese market for resale HDB flats is going to be good for the community. The biggest headache for Singaporeans in general are the real estate prices, and the ability of the first time home owners to secure a piece of property, and now they're saying that they want the real estate market for Malays to be sky high like they are for Chinese?

I didn't write the paper. The resale market is an abomination of the public housing system, and completely undermines the fundamental tenets on which the raison d'être of public housing is based. For Chinese, Malays and everyone else.

 

[metalmickey]

De jure segregation (enforced by law) is racist. De facto segregation is not, but racist public policies and institutionalized racism can be major factors in shaping de facto segregation, in addition to 'tribal instincts'. That said, de facto segregation exists to one degree or another in all societies in the world today, even in the most vibrant, progressive, cosmopolitan cities, especially re residential neighbourhoods.

Segregation is segregation. And the lines between de jure and de facto are very blurry. The streaming thing - I'm sure it came from some Chinese parent who didn't want to see his kids mixing too much with those hwang kia and keleng. Then it got codified into law. And it got democratic support because so many people are Chinese, and you have a few sucker minorities who believe in this type of "meritocracy". Why there are special assistance plan schools for Chinese and no comparative things for Malays and Indians to excel academically.

Shit like this always happens in the absence of official policy. Shit flows downwards. Rich get richer and poor get poorer. People of different races grow apart and live apart.

In the absence of de jure segregation, wherein lies the need for a 'desegregation' policy? In fact, 'desegregation' policies have been ignominiously used as a cover by tyrannical regimes worldwide to disband minority communities and locales of political resistance deemed inimical to the regime's interests.

Really? Like how? As far as I can see, ethnic cleansing is almost always segregationist.

32 years ago, at the height of PAP's dominance, an Indian man won an historic by-election in a Chinese-majority constituency and defended it successfully 3 years later.

58 years ago, a Jewish man won his constituency in a three-way fight against 2 Chinese candidates and led his party to victory in Singapore's first Legislative Assembly elections. He became our first Chief Minister.

And you're saying a minority candidate can't get elected today on his own merit?

There will always be the token minorities. There will always be the exceptional minorities who can always get elected no matter what skin they're in. One or two minorities will not guarantee a balanced composition in the parliament. One JBJ and one David Marshall are not enough. We need 20 Malays in parliament, and you're only telling me two heartwarming stories. You still have 18 more to go.

GRC is obviously a very flawed solution to this problem, but I don't believe I will see a balanced parliament without some form of enforcement.

 

[yellowarse]

There will always be the token minorities. There will always be the exceptional minorities who can always get elected no matter what skin they're in. One or two minorities will not guarantee a balanced composition in the parliament. One JBJ and one David Marshall are not enough. We need 20 Malays in parliament, and you're only telling me two heartwarming stories. You still have 18 more to go.

You're aware, aren't you, that the problem isn't the lack of opposition minority representation in parliament but rather the lack of opposition MPs per se? And that prior to the introduction of the GRC system in 1988, there had been only 2 opposition candidates in post-Independence Singapore, one of whom was Indian – a whopping 50% of the opposition representation in parliament!

GRC is obviously a very flawed solution to this problem, but I don't believe I will see a balanced parliament without some form of enforcement.

You're also aware, aren't you, that GRC – flawed or otherwise – was never meant to be a solution to the problem of minority representation, since in a near-monopolistic situation the PAP could have put any number of monkeys, much less humans of various shades, in parliament if they so wished?

And that when the GRC was first mooted it came on the back of CST's election into the parliament as the 2nd ever opposition member in history, and JBJ's later expulsion from parliament? That it transpired that LKY had brought up the idea even further back, in 1982, just after the shock Anson by-election?

And that up to that point, there was no evidence whatsoever that the electorate were voting along racial lines?

Really, it would be quite commendable if racial tokenism were the only aim of the GRC system.

 

[metalmickey]

I'm advocating some form of enforcement but I don't believe that the GRC is the right way to do it. The GRC solves the race problem in parliament, but at the cost which is even more severe than the race problem.

There are other ways of enforcing racial quotas in elections. Just have a rule that says for every 10 candidates, you need to have 2 Malays and 1 Indian. This is not perfect because it gives the electoral commission excuses to disqualify candidates, but all the seats can be SMCs.

 

[Liquigas]

I'm advocating some form of enforcement but I don't believe that the GRC is the right way to do it.

Not to worry, with or without GRC there will always be Malay representation in parliament. The PAP has never and will not disregard the fact that in the bigger geographical area of S E Asia Malay people are a 350-million strong community though Malays formed a minority (15%) in this country. Yes there are no Chinese SAP-style schools catering to the Malays but when it comes to their employment you will notice that many jobs at the junior appontment level in the civil service and stat boards are 'reserved' for them. The result is that the majority of the Malays reciprocated by voting favourably for the ruling party.

 

[yellowarse]

I'm advocating some form of enforcement but I don't believe that the GRC is the right way to do it. The GRC solves the race problem in parliament, but at the cost which is even more severe than the race problem.

Level the electoral playing field. Get rid of GRCs, revert to SMCs. Independent elections department. Free press and media coverage for opposition parties. Stop using bankruptcy and defamation suits to cripple opponents. Stop gerrymandering and pork-barrelling. Depoliticise grassroots bodies and community-based organizations (PA). Stop saddling elected legislators with municipal responsibilities.

Then we'll see whether a minority candidate can get into parliament on his own, whether minority representation in parliament falls way below their respective population distriubution. Then we'll see if there's indeed a 'race problem' that needs to be solved.

 

[vtran2684]

will they launch Indian and Eurasian papers too?

 

[rushifa666]

i really dont think unity in stupidity is the right communal spirit to cultivate. the govt is getting more "chinese" new residents, like grouping chimps with humans, and do they think they will get a loudly voice in the future as they get overwhelmed? its not as if their two clowns in parliament are heavyweights.

 

[metalmickey]

OK, a study about whether the HDB quotas are racist:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...icity-maps-from-an-ethnic-conflict-professor/

"The one consistent finding for ethnic conflict is not about fractionalization but about group concentration, That where ethnic groups have distinct areas apart from each other within a country, there is more conflict. Why? Well, partly because it facilitates separatism. Partly because groups that are separate have a secure base from which to launch attacks. Partly because intermingled groups may be deterred from attacking since they themselves are vulnerable (kind of like mutual assured destruction)."

From this point of view, quashing ethnic enclaves within a country by forcing all people of all races to live side by side goes a long away towards eliminating conflict between races / ethnic groups.