NEW INTERVIEW: My first interview with Prabu Ramachandran (Civil Society Activist), 20 May 2019.

Activists, Joo Chiat Road. Dan De Costa, Kieran James, Prabu Ramachandran, Jeanne Ten, Anonymous, 20 May 2019.

My new interview with Prabu Ramachandran (Singaporean Civil Activist)

Date: Monday, 20 May 2019.

Location: Al Falah Barakah Restaurant, 363 Joo Chiat Road, Singapore.

Interview Time: 90 Minutes.

Jeanne Ten: How did a policeman become a social activist?

Prabu Ramachandran: I served two years’ mandatory National Service in the police-force, didn’t want to be a career bureaucrat.

Dan De Costa, Khush Chopra, Jeanne Ten, Kieran James.

JT: What made you change to the other side?

PR: Because politics in this country is a one-way street; I wanted to make it a two-way street, there should be more than one view or argument, the world moves in 360 degrees. There needs to be discussion, dialogue, debate; people need to be free to speak about anything without fear hanging over their heads. Many issues are not being discussed. The ruling elite are doing things with very little consultation.

JT: They always said they know better and have your best interests at heart…

PR: How do they know the experiences of ordinary people? Most of them have never done a real job in their lives. They assume that average people have similar experiences to themselves. But they are totally disengaged.

JT: What do you feel that you can bring to the table?

PR: Direct democracy; voting on issues regardless of who is the leader or ruling-party. The BREXIT referendum really inspired me. People should have the right to vote on issues not just people.

Kieran James and Prabu Ramachandran.

JT: BREXIT lost Britain friends overnight…

PR: Most of their trade is outside the EU. They have more friends out there in the big wider world. Only 15% of their trade is with the EU.

JT: For Singapore, what can we learn from BREXIT?

PR: Democracy for starters; justice and equality. Everyone, rich or poor, gets the right to vote on the issue.

JT: Who is your model in Singapore? Who is a good politician that you admire?

PR: Nowadays there is no-one I look up to but in the past David Marshall. He showed that we [ethnic minorities] don’t need a GRC system to get elected. He is a minority within a minority.

JT: Thanks for confirming that there is no credible opposition.

PR: I didn’t say that. We should have a referendum on GST – should we keep it, should we increase it? And CPF withdrawal age and ministers’ salary. It’s ridiculous that in a country of five million, ministers get a higher salary than Donald Trump or the U.K. PM. We should vote on issues that affect people – cross-border tariffs, water, and electricity. We had one referendum in 1963 – to join Malaysia. But we never had a Leave referendum. We did respect the will of the people to join but the choice should have been given to leave or remain. Since 1963 there has not been a single referendum.

JT: How do you take it from here?

PR: The Anti-Fake News law has been passed. It has been said that the majority of people want that law but it has not been proven. If there was a referendum, I would campaign against that law.

Anonymous: What do you think about the issues of foreigners working in Singapore, education, and housing?

PR: The cost of building public housing has to be broken down to the public to give the cost of each individual unit. We don’t know what profit is being made by HDB. We don’t have any numbers or breakdown.

The education system has to create a system of readers. We don’t have thinkers. They, academics, give textbook answers and not real solutions to practical problems. They are just reading it out of textbooks rather than giving their solutions to real issues.

We need to make sure that our population is over-employed (full-time job plus part--time job). Only then should you open up to non-Singaporeans, non-PRs, and immigrants. Many graduates now can’t find jobs in their specialty area.

We are ranked 153^rd in the world in press freedom, it is shameful. Israel ranks higher than us in press freedom and the democracy index. My aim is to get Singapore Number 1 in the press freedom index and Number 1 in the democracy index. We should open up and give more licences to organizations to open more newspapers. It will create more media jobs and improve our press freedom index. We need less regulation from the government.

Anonymous: Do you have reason to believe that the judges side with the ruling-party?

PR: We must ask who the judges are accountable to. We need mechanisms to make judges appointed and removed easily by the public.

Kieran James and Dan De Costa.

Anonymous: What do you think of the Little India riot? Did Indians live up to their stated reputation?

PR: You answered the question yourself. In any other country the police leader or Minister for Home Affairs would have been fired or resigned. We need an accountability check please.

Anonymous: Can you comment on transport fees going up but more breakdowns?

PR: I think it should be privatized and there should be more small private bus companies up in the market. They should challenge for the lion’s market-share. One of the foundations of democracy is private ownership of income-generating assets. I would like privately-owned taxis and buses owned by individuals and not by big business. I believe that assets such as hawker stalls should be privately owned rather than owned by big business or REITs.

JT: How will you get this to happen?

PR: Heavily tax big business and ultra-rich; progressive taxes rather than regressive taxes such as the GST. It should be abolished and we should move to a more progressive tax system. Taxes should rise for big property owners and high-income earners. Most taxes should be aimed at millionaires with assets of S$100 million and above.

JT: Singapore is now a tax-haven for the rich. But it is known as clean and incorrupt. What is happening?

PR: We can afford to charge the rich under the current system because the heavy tax is on everyone else. The rich gets tax discounts and tax breaks. We are doing reasonably well in the corruption index but we are not Number 1, New Zealand is Number 1. There is no accountability and more deniability. These statements are made famous by Ms Jeanne Ten.

JT: I like that statement.

PR: Look at NUS as a public institution today. It took a victim to come out and run a social justice campaign. We need a proactive police-force and Establishment.

Anonymous: What can we learn from Malaysian election?

PR: You vote for who you like. If people are not working in your favour you vote them out; that’s the beauty of democracy. You should be able to vote out people who are not doing well in [their] positions.

Kieran James: Your comment about Workers’ Party’s performance?

PR: They could start speaking about issues such as the unelected grassroots people you can’t get rid of. Hougang and Aljunied MPs should be able to use grassroots facilities such as Citizens’ Consultative Committees. Only the ruling-party can use taxpayer-funded assets. Elected MPs should be the grassroots leaders not the ruling-party candidates. WP should be speaking on issues such as this.

Anonymous: Why do you think Singaporeans do not want to vote for opposition?

PR: Look online. A poll was conducted by Wake up Singapore; 63% of people are afraid to speak up about their political views; that says a lot anyway. In a proper democracy you praise them for their good acts and criticize them for doing the wrong things. This is why I disagreed with Nicole Seah when she said that we should not criticize PAP.

Anonymous: What will you do with your minister’s salary? Give us a breakdown.

PR: There is no answer to that.

Dan De Costa: The scariest thing right now is that none of us in opposition can read the ground anymore.

PR: They are scared of my idea of giving the people a referendum.

JT: Singaporeans don’t understand that concept. They think that ministers should decide.

DDC: The people want Tharman as their PM; it is the PAP that is racist.

PR: If we were ready in the 1950s for non-Chinese leaders (e.g. David Marshall, Othman bin Wok, E.W. Barker), why not now? The argument is on both sides. Michael Palmer and Murali Pillai got elected against majority candidates.

DDC: One Chinese woman said that 80% of Jurong voters voted for Tharman so the racists must come from somewhere else. I thought that was very cool.

[Note: The conversation continued for a while longer but became more and more scattered and informal so I stopped taking notes at this point.]

*****THE END*****

NEW INTERVIEW: My first interview with Dan De Costa (Singapore Civil Society Activist), 10 May 2019.

Singapore Civil Society Activists. Dan De Costa, Khush Chopra, Jeanne Ten, Kieran James.

My new interview with Dan De Costa (Singaporean ex-Political Activist & current Civil Activist)

Date: Friday, 10 May 2019.

Location: Dunman Food Centre, 271 Onan Road (at Joo Chiat, Singapore)

Interview Time: 90 Minutes

Kieran James: How did you become an Opposition supporter?

Dan De Costa: During my stint in NS [Compulsory National Service], I realised the SAF structure is problematic; the feedback one renders is swept under the carpet into an eventual black hole. I rapidly realized it is deliberately structured in such a manner due to the fact that our political system (bordering a Totalitarian democracy and Statist economics) offers zero to minimal accountability. NS affects every Singaporean and PR male; hence I became dissatisfied with the system during my NS experience. I completed NS in May of 2005 which was about a year away from GE [General Election] 2006. Hence, I decided to step up and assist the WP [Workers' Party] as they then fielded balanced sets of candidates. They even fielded an ITE [Institute of Technical Education] grad. PAP never fails to field a Masters candidate or above. I felt that the WP had a balanced slate that is representative of Singaporeans from all walks of life.

Dan De Costa, Kieran James, Prabu R., Jeanne Ten, Anonymous.

KJ: Your experience of the WP in 2006...

DDC: The game has always been unfairly tilted in the PAP’s favour. The Opposition have to deal with not only gerrymandering but also the blatantly biased treatment from Mainstream Media [MSM]. There was only one online media then, namely The Wayang Party which functioned mainly as a socio-political blog and thus Andrew Loh [ex-WP member] saw the urgent need for an alternative and independent website [The Online Citizen] following conclusion of GE2006. The SDP and its Youth Wing were emerging out of the bad publicity that had plagued them for decades. But they crossed 40% in GE 2011! The joke back then was that if the SDP manages to “crack” 40%, WP will gun down a GRC; SDP as a party never cracked more than 25%. The WP performed relatively well in Hougang, Ang Mo Kio and Aljunied, where voters had sent a strong signal of their dissatisfaction with the PAP's Lim Hwee Hua and Cynthia Phua. They did the same in GE2015, this time with WP's Sylvia Lim and Chen Show Mao. There was a former notorious PAP minister [Lim Boon Heng] who claimed that PM Lee can even close both eyes and still obtain 80% in his Constituency. The WP AMK team shattered that proposition! The WP had begun its renewal with new and younger blood. They attracted Gerald Giam from The Online Citizen around 2009 and Yee Jenn Jong joined a few months before GE2011, to be fielded in Joo Chiat.

KJ: Tell me about your Court case?

DDC: My case erupted because I believe the government (namely K. Shanmugam) has been keeping tabs on the activities of The Online Citizen and monitoring the articles I wrote in conjunction with a former friend under the moniker “Willy Sum”, as admitted by Amin Amrin in a press release. Home Affairs claimed that they had to act as Terry and myself have “crossed the OB markers” of what is acceptable in the vague name of “Public Interest” because I had alleged “there is corruption at the highest echelons” of the PAP government, with tampering of the Constitution, a charge they later backtracked from. They probably realized my analogy of their irritated actions.

KJ: They investigated...

DDC: They instructed Terry Xu to take it down. On 20 September 2018, Terry complied but IMDA [Info-Comms Media Development Authority] still went on ahead and lodged a police report on 4 October 2018 against Terry and “Willy Sum”.

KJ: Why make an issue out of your case?

DDC: They are afraid of this particular article as it touched on the infamous “Lee family saga,” which is a sensitive issue they have always been jittery about. The Public Service Division of the Prime Minister’s office went on to conduct a survey to gauge a sense of the perception civil servants were having toward the revelations by the Lee siblings, which the embattled government has found it hard to refute. I also believe that the upcoming trial of the 1MDB scandal in neighbouring Malaysia may have something to do with it, considering the civil suit that was commenced against a statistical blogger and government critic, Leong Sze Hian. There were improprieties uncovered which passed through our banking sector and the “perpetrators” punished. Now that we are labelled as a currency manipulator, it is also not helping our international prestige and image of a clean country. These are facts by the way; abuse of power is a form of corruption as defined by the World Bank. What makes it so severe and lends credibility to the serious allegations this time is because they are coming from the siblings of the Prime Minister himself, so says Low Thia Khiang during a session of the futile probe in the Singapore legislature. It appeared in the headlines of the New York Times, mind you! As a Eurasian, I reject the notion of “giving face” as this is not a Chinese society.

Kieran James and Dan De Costa, 10 May 2019 interview.

KJ: What will happen next in your case?

DDC: I’m standing trial on 9 September 2019. I do not wish to speculate on the outcome but going by past precedence of political cases, it certainly does not appear bright as these cases have always been taboo subjects. It was also recently discovered that a District Judge of the Singapore Court had plagiarized the Prosecution’s closing submissions on an accused. The PAP often claims that the Courts are a “neutral adjudicating body”. However, for comparison’s sake, as brought up by an ex-Opposition politician affectionately known as Singapore's “Bradxit”, the Judiciary of my homeland, the State of Israel, have always struck down legislations that they deem are unconstitutional and not in the interests of the people. Israel as a thriving and decent democracy even has an Ombudsman as well! I identify myself as “Traditional”. We have always been taught the practical values of Judaism - to speak up courageously for those who are unable to defend themselves. My Jewish religious movement is “Hispanic Sefardi”. I feel the need for Singapore to be urgently liberated from decades of bondages built on a false sense of security / prosperity and past narratives. We did not become independent to be ruled by aristocrats or a class of family as rightly put by Li Sheng Wu but, rather, we became independent to pursue our own destiny founded upon the principles of liberty and justice, and ever seeking the welfare and happiness of our people in a more just and equal society as proclaimed by the late Lee Kuan Yew! We are a civilized society and more than able to govern ourselves well. We Singaporeans do not go about committing gang rape as insinuated by a disgraced former PAP MP that “gang rape is democracy in action!” Why then, do we require an autocratic regime with repressive laws? The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing!

KJ: How did the Jewish community here respond to you?

DDC: They sent an email excommunicating me as they feel uncomfortable with my political activities; they are well connected with the PAP government. They claim I belonged to a different Jewish movement but that is merely a lame excuse. Rabbi Fettman had based his assessment from a pro-PAP, fake news blog. My Jewish movement is currently not represented in Singapore.

KJ: The same thing happened with the Catholics after the Marxist Conspiracy...

DDC: And also with Muslims. I understand the WP’s Muhd Faisal was made to step down from “PERGAS” after he decided to become a Malay-Muslim [Opposition] candidate. The government accused all these Marxist Conspirators of “Liberation Theology”. The Jewish movement my family belongs to does not have a branch here, the nearest would be Melbourne.

KJ: How big is the Jewish community here?

DDC: Two thousand five hundred, 2,320 of them expatriates I believe, most have lived here for several years. What I’m very heartened by is that more than 75% of Jews worldwide are Human Rights defenders; we are and have always been at the forefront of struggles for women's and civil rights. I'm proud to be in this 75%!

KJ: Tell me about your American trip.

DDC: I went to visit relatives and friends; of course I headed to Texas to visit one of my Rabbis. He has not seen me since this ordeal and is extremely concerned. This particular Rabbi converted my mum. My dad is a Portuguese Sephardim, he wanted my mother converted. We have affiliates throughout the world, mainly in Europe and North / South America and they came over to Texas to convert my mum. She is born to a Christian family and she is Chinese. This Rabbi Yitzchak Cohen is an Orthodox Rabbi. He has been a Rabbi for 50 years.

KJ: What did you talk about and what was the response?

DDC: Confidential [laughs]! I spoke with Rabbi Cohen and a Human Rights lawyer “Susan”, who is part of the Jewish Community in New Jersey

KJ: How did they respond to your treatment by the Singapore Jews?

DDC: They were deeply shocked and appalled. They could not believe it initially as they said it is so unJewish to do so, they said that such behaviours would be considered antisocial in Jewish America and they will be raising it to the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA)

KJ: Will there be any progress or change...

DDC: I honestly do not know as worldwide Jewry is presently fragmented and polarized by affluent dictatorships like Singapore.

KJ: Future for the Singapore Opposition?

DDC: Pretty bleak. Tan Cheng Bock is no Mahathir as he has always only been a backbencher. There are also far too many Opposition parties in this tiny island, each wanting to be the Red Indian chief and this is precisely what Singaporeans do not want to witness. The people want to see a united Opposition front consisting of no more than three parties I believe!

KJ: We can trace the high point of the Opposition back in 2013 when WP singlehandedly won the Punggol East by-election...

DDC: However, Low Thia Khiang informed the public that his party is not ready to form the government and from that point onwards, people saw that he mellowed down on several key issues and policies, voters expect you to be better than that. Singaporeans are ready for change; they want to see a united Opposition front with sound policy alternatives. The current system, has failed us, Kieran! The people do not want to see tweaks to PAP policies, the NMPs and NCMPs can do just that. Playing by PAP rules will get you nowhere precisely because these rules are designed to make sure of this and WP is a “testament” of that fact. Dr Tan and WP are clique parties like the PAP and we require a new way forward. At the next election, there should be a “new way forward” by now, seriously!

Dan De Costa with Rabbi Cohen and colleagues.

KJ: Any other Oppositional problems?

DDC: The WP is closely modelled on PAP in operations, demeanour and grassroots. The people do not want the SDP unless there are changes to the leadership. SDP has the right heart and policy initiatives and many of them have been cunningly adopted by the PAP, albeit silently! Due to gutter media, the current composition of SDP’s CEC must depart due to excessive baggage. Dr Wong Souk Yee and Paul Tambyah must rise to the occasion. She is a doctor of Literature while he is a Professor of infectious diseases, he should however, be wary of his expressed anti-Semitic views. They are the ones to lead the SDP which is the hard truth to take the party into the next leap. On Dr Tan's front, he needs younger blood, overwhelmingly led by old Uncles! One thing I dislike about Singaporeans by and large is that we can’t seem to accept and accommodate differences. For an Opposition coalition to work out, they must be different from the PAP in the same manner that “Protestants” broke from the Roman Catholics and reinvented themselves. This “disease” is affecting most Opposition parties in Singapore and it is in imitating the PAP, is it any wonder why they are not making any progress? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. When I do house visits, the main line of questioning I receive is: “how are you different from PAP and what can you offer me?”, “Why then should I vote for the Opposition?” By the way, if you make a promise to the electorate, in the words of Mahathir: “make sure you have every intention to keep it!” This is a stark reminder to the Opposition. The voter determines your future, not the PAP. The WP forgets that it is voters who preserve their power, not the government. Humility is the key; make sure you are contrite before the people because they can see through you!

KJ: What is your intention after final conclusion of your case?

DDC: I intend to enrol in a Yeshiva so I can serve an even wider segment of society. Rabbi Cohen told me I would make a good Rabbi as I love to meet new people and build communities. He said he’ll recommend me as I am not concerned about the pay check! Our ideology is change that affects both the [political] right and left, like POTUS Donald Trump, chuckles! Radical changes disrupt both the Right and the Left and we don’t fit in anywhere. Politicians and Civil Society generally do not welcome divergent or politically incorrect views. PAP as well as the established Opposition here are the same. How can we mature as a society if we cannot even handle simple debates without getting offended and discussing inconvenient truths?

KJ: What is your view about the Black Metal Band, Watain, being denied entry to Singapore by Ministry of Home Affairs?

DDC: My religion is 5,880 years old! My opinion is that we should not have banned it as people can make up their own viewpoint; you simply would not uproot five thousand years of religious culture and history! Watain became better known and popularized only after the ban because the ban appeals to the rebellious nature of people. People are capable of making an informed choice; the knowledge of good and evil is within them after having eaten the “forbidden fruit”. It is a human right to listen to what you wish; my religion cannot be destroyed by a band of 21 years! The ban has made Watain even more famous as most in Singapore had not even heard about them, now that’s not being wise on the fundamental side. If you have nothing to be afraid of, you need not hide behind a ban or legislation, or be fearful of what others have to say. If Watain affects your religious beliefs so strongly, then I suggest you re-examine your religion’s foundations as they must be very weak. I did not praise or glorify “Satan” after listening to Watain, I‘m still Jewish as it did not affect my religion at all.

*****THE END*****