An “almost” personal BE

IT’S a public holiday for all workers, but probably not the Bukit Batok election candidates. The Singapore Democratic Party launched a blistering counter-attack on the People’s Action Party last night for engaging in character assassination. SDP speakers, including candidate Chee Soon Juan, raised the Lee Wei Ling saga in which she accused the Prime Minister of being a “dishonourable son”.

We’re not sure how to describe the way this was raised. Obliquely? Sneakily? Indirectly?

Some choice quotes by Dr Chee : “Up until tonight, I have never brought up the issue of what his sister said about him.” And no, he didn’t enlighten the crowd about the issue. Instead he said he had  “ample opportunity” to attack him on this but didn’t.

“It would have been very potent because it’s not a political opponent saying it, it’s your own flesh and blood making these statements about this”.

The coup de grace line was this: “If it were my sister saying such things about me, do you think the PAP will not go to town with this?”

He spoke right after Mr Paul Tambyah whose earlier comments on how a person shouldn’t be defined by his actions or words had caused even Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat to take to Facebook. The SDP’s argument is that mere “public” knowledge of a person is not enough to judge someone’s character. What mattered more was intimate personal knowledge from, for example, family members…wink…wink..nudge..nudge.

Maybe because it was May Day, the political parties engaged over whether Dr Chee has a job or not.  Would you consider that Dr Chee has a “job” writing and selling books?  That’s part of his response to PAP’s Grace Fu’s comments that he hadn’t held down a full-time job for some time and this should be considered by voters who want to pick someone to run their housing estate.

Whether he has a job or not, we’ve got more pressing problems.

Yesterday, PM Lee gave this anecdote at the May Day rally which should worry us. Talking about the impact of the global economic slowdown, he gave the example of how PSA’s Tanjong Pagar Terminal has experienced days when two of its three shifts of workers did not receive a single ship!

So we can expect more retrenchments unless workers can change jobs quickly or affected companies have enough of a buffer to absorb the effects of down time.

Or maybe more mid-career people might want to think about taking up one of 28 new courses to be introduced in a  new partnership between NTUC and the Nanyang Technological University.

Here are some details: Lasting 13 weeks, these part-time courses include data analytics, digital electronics and enterprise and innovation. Aacademic credits can be accumulated to qualify for a specialist certificate or degree if you want to go for a degree, that is.

Course fees range from S$1,300 to S$2,000. You can use your $500 SkillsFuture credit to pay for them, while union members can benefit further from a fee subsidy of up to S$250 per year.

Funding training programmes is the preferred method of the G and the labour movement to stay erred method to help  people stay employed and relevant in the economy, not retrenchment insurance which Dr Chee and others have been lobbying for.

You can read about the issue here.

Said PM Lee:  “I tell them: Actually, we have something even better than unemployment insurance, because (for) unemployment insurance the worker has to pay out of his salary. And then when he gets unemployed, you are subsidising him, helping him to stay unemployed while he looks for a job.”

By the way, if you wanted to go away for the long weekend but didn’t manage to secure tickets, let us take you to Bukit Batok. Or rather watch what these tour guides have to say.

 

Featured image from TMG file. 

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