Politics: Campur tangan? Say people say yourself

Observers of Singapore’s mainstream media and educational institutions are familiar with an obvious disjoint. While they promote feisty discourse about our neighbours—say on 1MDB, race-relations or coups in Thailand—they’re terribly meek when it comes to local affairs. A separate disjoint concerns the right of Singaporean politicians to speak on the international stage. While grandees of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) are free to say whatever they want wherever they want—Tharman Shanmugaratnam’s memorable sparring with the BBC’s Stephen Sackur in Saint Gallen in 2015 just one instance—opposition politicians must tread carefully. Last month, the PAP criticised Pritam Singh, Workers’ Party chief, for appearing on “Keluar Sekejap”, a popular podcast hosted by Khairy Jamaluddin, former Malaysian health minister, and Shahril Hamdan, former UMNO information chief. Singh’s appearance on a foreign podcast “raises serious questions about why the secretary-general of the Workers’ Party would choose to speak about Singapore’s politics on foreign soil, to a foreign audience”, the PAP said.

The two contradictions were this week jointly skewered by Khairy, currently a visiting fellow at the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS). He called the PAP “juvenile” and said it “needs to grow up”. After Pritam’s appearance, ISEAS held an event where Khairy and Tricia Yeoh, another Malaysian, were asked to comment about UMNO, the Malay party in power for most of its post-independence history. “When they want to talk about other people’s politics, it’s ok,” he said. “ISEAS’s regional outlook forum talks about the politics of every other country. But when it happens to you, when Pritam came here to talk about the Singapore election, suddenly you say it’s ‘foreign interference’.”

This past week, Pritam finally did appear on a local talkshow, “The Big Show” on Kiss92 FM. He explained the party’s decision not to contest in Marine Parade, said he’d hoped to win one or two more constituencies, and fielded questions from kids. The kicker? He’d actually accepted Kiss92’s invite before he appeared on “Keluar Sekejap”. The PAP has not responded to media inquiries about Khairy’s comments, and with so much egg on its face, may not. One can trace the original accusation not to any senior member, but to Petir. The party’s official newspaper is more like a ragtag outfit run by bros schooled in trolling, not thought. The PAP should fire them before they do more damage.

Economy: The first macro test for Lawrence’s new wonks

In Singapore, elections are often won more on grassroots connections and local, municipal performance than high-falutin policy chops. Against the inescapable backdrop of unfair electoral competition—such as handouts, gerrymandering and the GRC system—the hard work of their predecessors enabled the new PAP candidates to float in on the coattails of ministers in group constituencies.

The most promising Mandarins-turned-politicians have just been thrust into their first real public exam. Amidst numerous global disruptions, including geopolitical realignments and technological change, they, alongside a few older ones, have got a year to tell us how to reform and restructure our economy. Five new Economic Strategy Review (ESR) committees will each be led by two PAP politicians. All but one are now either acting minister or minister-of-state, and most will form the likely backbone of the PAP’s next, fifth-generation (5G) of leadership. They’ll report to the curmudgeonly, professorial Gan Kim Yong, the deputy prime minister whose retirement appears to be repeatedly delayed by one more task.

Low Yen Ling and Jeffrey Siow will chair a committee on global competitiveness; Goh Hanyan and Jasmin Lau on technology and innovation; Alvin Tan and Dinesh Vasu Dash on entrepreneurship; Koh Poh Koon and David Neo on human capital; and Desmond Choo and Goh Pei Ming on managing the impact of restructuring. The last two will be of particular interest to those concerned about inequality and the historically poor bargaining power of workers vis-a-vis firms.

Skeptics might roll their eyes at yet another economic committee, though perhaps we’re in a different phase of implementation. “Innovation, digitisation, workforce transformation have been around for years,” Sumit Agarwal, professor of finance, economics and real estate at NUS told CNA. He said the deeper challenge concerns proper execution of ideas. “For example, we’ve talked about upskilling for a decade. But are mid-career workers really seeing the results? Are SMEs adopting technology in a way to boost productivity? Or just ticking some boxes?...these [ESR] committees will now take this to the next stage, in not just ideas, but outcomes.” So, Lawrence’s new wonks, even as you help your residents clear their corridors of mosquitoes, remember that your next PSLE year begins now.

Society: More people, fewer rides

Between 2019 and 2024, Singapore’s population rose from 5.7m to 6.0m. Yet, total daily public transport rides—bus and trains—fell from 7.7m to 7.4m, and have almost stayed flat so far this year, per Land Transport Authority data. What gives? Buses, mostly. Daily bus trips slowed from 4.1m in 2019 to 3.8m this year. This is driven partly by the 43km of new MRT tracks, and more stations, added over the past six years. Instead of taking feeder buses, commuters are more easily able to walk or bike to stations, a researcher from the Singapore University of Technology and Design told The Straits Times (ST). Possible, but daily train ridership has barely chugged past 2019 levels. Meanwhile, ride-hailing and taxi usage remains nearly 20 percent below pre-pandemic highs.

A possible reason for the overall decline may be tourism, yet to venture near the unprecedented numbers from 2019. More likely, residents are simply commuting less. This tracks with other global cities: train ridership in London, Seoul, and Shanghai has yet to recover; in San Francisco, it’s less than half compared to six years ago. A Bloomberg review of over a dozen cities revealed varied causes: in New York, rising subway crime has been linked to falling ridership since the pandemic. For Singapore, the likeliest explanation is work-from-home, now the most sought-after perk after high salaries, among white-collar workers. Over one in five already give their offices a wide berth. 

If the trend holds, it will have profound implications. As fewer people take buses and trains, transport systems will cost the exchequer more, drawing public resources from other areas. F&B outlets, especially those dependent on office-going lunch crowds or after-work chuggers, will be squeezed even further at a time when they’re already struggling with rents, and rising labour and ingredients costs. On the other hand, being able to work from home will draw people away from the centre, putting pressure on the housing market in outlying districts; this is already happening. The city is transforming before our eyes, defined not so much by where people work as by where they choose to stay put; and posing new challenges for policy wonks, entrepreneurs and established businesses.

Society: Rethinking education isn’t child’s play

“Materially, our children are fairly comfortable, rich even, by world standards, but from an emotional, relational, spiritual viewpoint, a lot of them are actually impoverished [compared to those in poorer countries],” admitted Adrian Loh, psychiatrist, at “Why Children Can’t Wait: Making Holistic Child Development a National Priority”, a panel organised by the education reform NGO EveryChild.sg. Loh and others didn’t shy away from criticising the glacial pace of change in education policy, despite mounting evidence of its detrimental effect on students. “Maybe by the time I have grandkids, maybe we’ll get a new system,” was the first of many zingers unleashed by fellow panellist Michelle Choy, a parenting coach whose eldest child took the PSLE about 15 years ago; her sixth, and youngest, sat for it last year.

Happily, it wasn’t all mere sniping. Instead, Loh, Choy and fellow guests Razwana Begum, professor at Singapore University of Social Sciences, and Alvin Chua, lecturer in the NUS Department of Social Work, spent the next hour discussing the roles of parents, communities, and various government ministries in restoring joy to childhood. Choy urged parents to outfit their children with social and emotional resilience (not the type built by going on Outward Bound in Secondary Three, she said) even before concerning themselves with academics.

For Chua, the key was in civil society getting their “hands dirty”, conducting smaller-scale experiments in education, the data from which can then be used to convince government servants naturally skittish about systemic overhauls. “You say, ‘oh we already saw the promise’ of this [approach]. That’s a conversation.” Loh called for something akin to a unified citizens council to replace the “piecemeal” feedback doled out by individuals and myriad groups. Such a council could work regularly with the government on education issues, trying to hold the current dispensation accountable to its promises of more engaged policymaking. Razwana reminded the packed auditorium that while many children were suffering, systemic approaches had to be nuanced enough to account for varying social, economic, and emotional backgrounds.

All agreed that agencies like the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, and others need to work closely together to tackle childhood stress. Especially because, said Choy, “there is a realisation that everybody is trying to do their best, and everybody does have children at the heart of what they’re doing.”

History weekly by Faris Joraimi

At the National Museum of Singapore’s latest exhibition, “Once Upon a Tide: Singapore’s Journey from Settlement to Global City”, you’re given an electronic tag to wear on your wrist. You step into a deep blue gallery, through large sloping screens displaying ocean waves. “Chapter 1: Always on the Map” shows European and Chinese sea-charts revealing that Singapore—in its many names—was already a known location before 1819. There’s a section recounting Sultan Abdul Jalil IV of Johor offering the island in 1703 to Alexander Hamilton, who declined because he thought it better suited for a company instead of a private trader. An interactive panel in a corner puts the same proposition to the visitor: What would you do if you were given an island? Make it a wildlife reserve? An archaeological dig-site? A holiday resort? Or an economic centre? I made my choice with the electronic wrist tag, thinking about the question. Here was a place imagined in so many ways, in different languages, but ultimately portrayed as an empty sandbox. The visitor, probably a present-day Singaporean, is imagined as someone receiving the island like a gift. But it’s not clear who is imagined with the authority to give it. 

”Once Upon a Tide” is billed as a story of “how the sea and river have shaped Singapore’s evolution”, but is really an SG60 commemorative show following the 700-years script. At times, water bodies and maritime geography do feature as critical historical factors. “Chapter 2: The River Road” guides visitors along a corridor of individual lives and commodities, as the tempo of history quickens like a fast-moving current through colonial-era settlement and trade. Subsequent chapters voyage over the decades through concepts like “flows” (of people, goods, and ideas), changing “horizons” (through land reclamation and urban transformation), and making “waves” (on the world stage, through sporting and artistic achievements). Visitors make choices for Singapore with their electronic tag at each gallery, finally being asked what they think is the most crucial ingredient for a country’s success: culture, wealth and living standards, an equal society, or environmental consciousness. Choices tallied, you’re assigned an avatar reflecting what you value most about Singapore’s future. All the avatars co-exist in harmony.

The exhibition concludes with open-ended optimism for the future, but some displays cast quiet shadows. Sim Chi Yin’s images of present-day land reclamation, and portraits of today’s migrant workers by various artists (including Jom’s Charmaine Poh) show ongoing processes of environmental damage and inequality. One wrist-tag station asks whether migrants belong here. Just as the exhibition began with multiple points of origin, it leaves you wondering about multiple futures, and other possibilities lying beyond seemingly fixed options.

Some further reading: In “Living with Tumasik and Temasek: meditations on our ‘national’ history”, we interrogate the notion of a national history.

Arts: This is why we can’t have nice terungs

About two decades before 🍆🍆🍆 became common sexting parlance, there was “Still Life” by Suzann Victor. In 1992, the Singaporean artist pinned a hundred eggplants to the slate walls of 5th Passage, the art space she’d co-founded in Parkway Parade. Victor, who often makes playful and poetic interventions in public spaces, wanted to interrogate the rot at the root of patriarchal structures. She let gravity have its way in her display of masculine decay; over a fortnight, the aubergines shrivelled, secreting flesh and seeds onto the mall floor. These flaccid fruits have made a comeback: for the National Gallery Singapore’s recently revamped Singapore art history exhibition,“Singapore Stories: Pathways And Detours In Art”, which now features significantly more women and minority artists. The Gallery’s audio guide asks: “How does masculine dominance hold its shape in social spaces?” Well, it didn’t even have time to stay erect. Despite the usual “do not touch” warnings around the installation, several fruits have been reported stolen. The Gallery’s polite media statement thanked the “curiosity and enthusiasm” of its visitors, and reminded them to engage with the work “in a respectful way...so that everyone can enjoy it in its intended form.” The terung thievery both amused and confused observers. “POV: You’re at NTUC but it is curated by someone with a Master of Fine Arts,” went a Reddit comment. Others lamented food wastage. The Gallery clarified that all the eggplants would go to green non-profit Ground-Up Initiative as compost for its community farm. Victor, no stranger to moral panic, told The Straits Times that she hoped the public wouldn’t diminish art in an “essentialising way”. 

These terungs weren’t the only ones in the spotlight. Last Friday, medical anthropologist Syahirah Rasheed gave a scintillating lecture on the 19th-century spiritual practitioner Khadijah Terung (sometimes also spelled “Khatijah” or “Terong”), the only woman known to have produced a collection of ilmu pengasih (love magic). While straight men had at their disposal volumes of charms to bend women to their will, here, finally, was a work dedicated to feminine pleasure. Excerpts from her 1911 manuscript Perhimpunan Gunawan Bagi Laki-Laki dan Perempuan (“A Compendium of Charms for Men and Women”) formed the basis for a work-in-progress showcase by husband-wife dancer-choreographers Norhaizad Adam and Hasyimah Harith, whose sensual body of work has consistently explored the intersection of classical Malay dance, sexuality and social codes. Their ongoing project, “Berahi: Holy Unions”, reinterprets various azimat or charms from this compendium, which—if you’re curious—is available in the British Library (or at the very least, the parts that haven’t been eaten away by insects). Charm 41 promises an “appetizer of the vaginal vortex” (jamu selera pusaran puki); Charm 36 invokes a “magical jasmine flower spirit” (ilmu semangat bunga melur). Norhaizad and Hasyimah, turning on the charm, quizzed audience members about their romantic and sexual desires as they arranged flowers in a vase for a distilled version of the spell. “Dirty talk,” one begged of the spirit. “Lots of kisses!” requested another. With any luck, we’ll soon get a more fully-fledged version of their project that brings the erotic of the past into the arousal of the present.

Arts: This is home—truly? 

Surely a cinema has never been this nomadic. The Projector first carved for itself a cozy nook in the brutalist bones of Golden Mile Tower in 2014. Arthouse aficionados purred over the theatres, which embraced shabby industrial chic with their creaky seats, narrow aisles and steep rake. The Projector quickly went the pop-up route, transforming an abandoned KTV lounge in Riverside Point into a micro cinema-bar with neon fixtures and a siam diu menu; occupying the cineplexes at the classic Cathay building, where you’d see partygoers, adorned with feathers and glitter, streaming in and out of queer-friendly parties and retro raves; then going full-on teenage dream at the Cineleisure, where elder millennials made pilgrimages to their former afterschool daycare. The indie cinema held out, no matter the millions of dollars other cinema operators buckled under, mainstream and indie alike. (Cathay Cineplexes might very well be next; its owner mm2 Asia’s received eight letters of demand for S$17.6m, but insists it “can continue as a going concern”.) 

The Projector’s latest tie-up with the island’s most popular chain, Golden Village, led it down some big hairpin turns. Golden Mile Tower was up on the en bloc chopping block, its fate uncertain, and The Projected hedged its bets, spreading its offerings over several venues. That guillotine has been stayed—no sale and no new developer, for now—and The Projector announced it would be moving back home this week. “We opened The Projector with a dream and a handful of indie films, and over the years, our audiences have made it into something far greater than we ever imagined,” founder Karen Tan said in a press statement. “Now, with the en bloc no longer moving forward, we have the chance to return home. This isn’t just a move, it’s a return to our roots, a rewilding of sorts.”

And its first film lineup back home does, quite literally, feature five Singaporean directors returning to their roots as they pay tribute to formative films. “MAJULAH CINEMA!”, running throughout August and September, gives the curatorial reins to the likes of BAFTA-nominated animator Calleen Koh and Cannes vet K Rajagopal, whose cinematic degustation pairs their own features with the auteurs they adulate. You’ll get to see Quen Wong’s breakout documentary, “Some Women”, following the intimate journeys of three trans women in Singapore, astride the beloved Leslie Cheung rom-com, “He’s a Woman, She’s a Man”—and trace how the global flows of film connect conversations on personal and national identity abroad, and at home. This is where we won’t be alone. 

Some further reading: In “Prashant Somosundram, the space creator”, the former general manager of The Projector talks to Jom about how the indie cinema builds community.

Tech: Scholars and gamers wanted for Singapore’s AI rush

Singapore’s AI scene just got a double espresso shot of adrenaline. In one corner, Google and NUS are playing the studious scholars, cooking up AI tools for healthcare and legal buffs. In the other, Razer’s bringing the party with AI that’ll help you be a sharpshooter faster. The Google-NUS collab will experiment with ideas such as AI professors, law bots that actually understand Singapore’s weird parking fines, and healthcare tech that might finally convince ah ma to take her meds. They’re building a sandbox too, where AI solutions across sensitive verticals can be rapidly prototyped and tested before releasing them into the real world. Meanwhile, Razer’s new AI hub will hire 150 brainiacs to build robot coaches that’ll tell you why you suck at Valorant. Their secret weapon? QA Co-AI, a tool that automates quality assurance testing and bug detection, cutting game testing time in half and probably saves some poor intern from playing the same zombie level 500 times.

Singapore is clearly banking on both serious and fun tech. Google’s stuff might save lives, but Razer’s tech will save gamers from rage-quitting. Both need talented engineers, to be nurtured through AI-focused professorships, certification programmes and internal talent development programmes. The real winner? Local tech talent. Between Google’s certifications and Razer’s hiring spree, Singapore’s AI geeks are about to become the hottest tickets in town. Just don’t tell them we’re using their talents to both cure diseases and get more headshots in Call of Duty.

Tech: BlueSG left red in the face

Singapore’s electric car-sharing experiment just got a brutal reality check. BlueSG has announced a full operational shutdown, with just four days’ notice. It recorded a S$31.1m net loss between January 2023 and March 2024. The company has promised to return next year with a new platform, a fresh fleet and better reliability. BlueSG was Singapore’s green mobility crown jewel, with over 1,000 EVs, 1,500 charging points, and the promise of car-lite living. But it never became the revolutionary service it aspired to be. The cars were clunky and tight spaced, the tech was temperamental, and the business model clearly didn’t add up. 

BlueSG was Singapore’s only point-to-point carsharing service, which allowed users to pick up a car at one place and drop it off at another. The bosses of GetGo and Tribecar—which require users to pick up and drop off at the same place—told CNA that a point-to-point service is operationally more challenging, and they won’t consider moving into that space soon. (Drive Lah said it’s “possible” they’d consider it in the future.)

Now Singapore’s left holding the bag with a bunch of soon-to-be-obsolete charging stations and a whole lot of disappointed would-be green commuters. Maybe this “pause” will give birth to something better. Will BlueSG users, for instance, return to its “reimagined platform” next year? Or like jilted lovers, will most rebound to Grab; perhaps even embrace higher COE prices? Either way, whichever operator next attempts a point-to-point service will regard this as a cautionary tale. 

Faris Joraimi, Abhishek Mehrotra, Corrie Tan, and Sudhir Vadaketh wrote this week’s edition. Sakinah Safiee contributed.

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