Politics

By siva • February 22nd, 2009

Much happened since the turn of the year - a new president was inaugurated in the USA, the global economy has not recovered despite the trillions of dollars that have been poured into it, and Singaporeans are gearing up for the biggest challenge to their living standards in recent memory.
Many people have already been laid [...]

After last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, I sent a sms text message to a friend in the city asking about the situation. Her one-word reply summed it up: “Madness.”
Terrorists cause mayhem in the largest possible scale to send a message about their cause. They know no boundaries, and merely shrug their shoulders when “collateral [...]

As a young boy growing up in Singapore in the 1980s, I looked up to the United States of America. It was the land of innovation, epitomised at that time through the McDonalds Big Mac and Michael Jackson’s Thriller album. It was the country of ideals, which stood firm and stared down the “evil” communist [...]

Almost 10 years ago to the month, the National University of Singapore’s newspaper, The Ridge, published an interview with the late Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam. At that time, he was the Workers’ Party secretary-general and in Parliament as a non-constituency MP. This may be 10 years old, but some of the issues that he touched on [...]

My first memory of Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam is of him selling the Workers’ Party newspaper, The Hammer, at a neighbourhood market in Ang Mo Kio in the early 1980s. With his distinctive loud British-accented voice, looking like a serious man on an important mission, the then Workers’ Party secretary-general would call out: “The Hammer! Buy [...]

Emotions usually run high when Singaporeans discuss foreigners, but irrationality has reared its silly head in the ongoing debate involving the Serangoon Gardens housing estate.
Many residents are against a plan to house foreign workers at a disused school, which will be converted into a dormitory, in the estate. Given that I live nearby and have [...]

So the Beijing Olympics will end with Singapore having a solitary silver, the first medal of any hue since the 1960 Rome Games when this was not even an independent country.

Just a week after Singapore celebrated National Day the country’s table-tennis players reached the final of the women’s team competition at the Beijing Olympics. Despite guaranteeing Singapore’s first Olympic medal since 1960, the country is not yet in the grip of Olympic excitement.
Many families have been here for two or three generations, enough to reinforce [...]