News this week included: CDC lai liao!; Lawrence Wong on boosting fertility, AI-enabled disinformation, and a potential Cabinet reshuffle; Justice for Myanmar says 13 Singaporean arms-trading firms still active; Bombardier’s expansion; Shopee’s retrenchment; local interest in SpaceX’s IPO; the (limited) ways unions here have been helping retrenched white-collar workers; the ongoing debate about food, rental and other cost pressures for hawkers; CapitaLand helps delivery riders with parking; conditions suitable here for underground storage of nuclear waste; a new AI supercomputer for climate and health research; century-old “King of Bedok” bungalow up for conservation; CNA commentary on the risks with Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs; ST multimedia story on “unseen” abused husbands; “Don’t just stare, give us a smile,” says mother of son with autism; commentary by NUS’s Simon Chesterman on the need for better privacy rules to deal with AI companions; NParks employee among those investigated for alleged illegal handling of snake in the wild; a dead dugong at Bedok Jetty, a rare dead whale (discovered last year) in our waters, and “Into The Ocean: Journey Beneath”, the new exhibition at ArtScience Museum; and ST’s suggestions on eating and sleeping well, and avoiding excessive screen time, during the month-long World Cup that starts next week. (Better still, as Jom has argued, just boycott most of it.)

Below are the issues we explore in depth:

International: India’s turn

Surya Kant, India’s chief justice, seems to harbour a peculiar aversion to his nation’s youth. In the past, he has called them “oversmart”—a uniquely Indian term for someone who speaks out of turn, especially in the presence of those older—while boasting that he knows “how to deal with them.” Last month, hearing a case that prima facie was about something else entirely, India’s chief unc labelled youngsters “cockroaches, who don’t get any employment…Some of them become media, some of them become social media…”

It came at a time when Indian youth have been brutalised by an unforgiving education system. In May, it was announced that the 2.27 million aspirants who had just taken the NEET exam—a funnel to roughly 130,000 undergrad medical school places (and upward mobility)—would have to sit for it again because the paper had been “leaked”. A spate of suicides followed news of the cancellation. On the heels of this controversy came another: nearly 1.8 million Class 12 students affected by a flawed, new online evaluation method, implemented by a software firm that won an allegedly corrupt tender process.

Amidst all this, Surya Kant’s remarks fell like a spark on dry kindling. (His clarifications the next day were too late.) Riffing off the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), an Indian student at Boston University launched the satirical Cockroach Janata Party (CJP)—the “Voice of the Lazy and Unemployed”. Being “chronically online” and capable of ranting professionally were the other membership prerequisites. Tens of thousands signed up through a Google form; and within days, CJP’s Instagram account amassed 23 million followers, 10 million more than the BJP (which has harvested bushels of political fruit from seeding disharmony and misinformation on social media).

CJP has demanded the resignation of the education minister. Failing that, its founder, currently in India, has threatened to launch nationwide physical protests in addition to the one held last week in New Delhi, the capital. “It is high time,” said an attendee. “We are grappling with numerous problems and challenges, yet the youth are being channelled towards the IPL [a hugely popular cricket tournament], films, and religious issues. This protest seeks to foreground discussions on education and freedom of speech.”

The movement has drawn inevitable comparisons with recent Gen Z-led movements in neighbouring Nepal and Bangladesh. But there are fundamental differences. Despite its name, the CJP is not a registered political party yet, nor is the BJP nearly as unpopular as the governments those movements toppled. Indeed, it’s currently on a high, having just come to power in West Bengal, a state long considered immune to its virulent Hindu nationalism. What may give the party pause though is an astonishing result in Tamil Nadu where twin Gen Z waves of excitement and resentment washed away interests, including BJP allies, that had ruled for decades.

Its reaction to the “cockroaches” reflects this uncertainty. As the movement spread with astonishing speed, the party instinctively reached for its authoritarian toolkit—blocking the CJP website and X accounts on “security” grounds, hacking other social platforms and rolling out ministers to incant the familiar litany of libel and lies: anti-national conspiracies funded by foreign actors seeking to destroy India. Lately though, it has softened its tone: “It’s part of democracy. Such things happen in democracies,” one senior leader said of the New Delhi protest. 

They do. But as Jo Teo argued in their recent essay for Jom, the experience and practice of democracy itself is being transformed in Gen Z’s device-wielding hands. Geriatric elites ignore this at their own peril. 

Society: It’s the cockroaches Indians again

Disinformation divides. From Russia’s attempts to drive a wedge between blacks and whites before the US presidential election in 2016—“intentionally pouring gasoline on racial division”, said one analyst—to China’s efforts to demonise Ukrainians as Nazis, sophisticated psyops globally destabilise societies by exploiting ethnic caricatures or divisions. Amidst the recently concluded Shangri-La Dialogue, perceived by many in China as a pro-West jamboree, it’s now Singapore’s turn. 

This week the government announced that it had ordered YouTube, Facebook, and X to block 14 posts, likely from a China-based platform, which “target the Indian community and undermine Singapore’s model of multiculturalism”, under the Online Criminal Harms Act. Among the narratives perpetuated: that Singapore is “overcrowded” with Indians, leading to a “concentration of curry”, alongside videos of packed Little India streets; and that Indians are overrepresented in government, with one showing Tharman Shanmugaratnam, president.

No social issue enlivens Singaporeans as much as the notion of over-immigration by those derogatorily called “CECA Indians”, referencing the 2005 free trade agreement. Ho Ching and Calvin Cheng, the establishment’s social media doyens, railed against the “BS” racism online. Others, like Ravi Philemon, leader of Red Dot United, and Jack Sim, “Mr Toilet”, sought to explain the attractiveness of the disinformation, pointing to everything from housing and labour woes to the “credential inflation problem” and the “sovereign wealth paradox”. Anthea Ong, former nominated MP, suggested that societal resilience must be nurtured through a reimagination of cohesion—“the capacity to surface tensions without tearing the social fabric”—and harmony—“not the absence of conflict but the ability to remain in relationship despite conflict”. She said we must create spaces to ask “uncomfortable and necessary questions”, such as: “How much immigration is optimal?” and “How do Singaporeans experience competition?” 

To aid these important conversations, we believe the government must live up to its commitment to transparency. Release full immigration data, including for instance, the number of dependents and long-term visit pass holders that came to Singapore on the back of Inter-Corporate Transferees, a CECA provision. This will allow society to finally banish the idea that CECA markedly changed our demographics. Bigotry thrives in opacity. Also, given its commitment to truth, the government should encourage a full interrogation of Singapore’s historical bias against non-Chinese, beginning with the racist musings of Lee Kuan Yew. One of the claims made in the recent “criminal” videos was that Singapore’s stability cannot be attributed to its multiracial policy, but to its majority Chinese demographic. 

Wonder where they got that from. In 1989, Lee said that the lower Chinese birth rate justified the government’s programme of encouraging Chinese immigration from Hong Kong. According to him, the Chinese majority must be maintained, “or there will be a shift in the economy, both the economic performance and the political backdrop which makes that economic performance possible.” He implemented a discriminatory policy, still maintained, to give preference to Chinese immigrants, in order to ensure that the Chinese never lose their supermajority status. Some “global” city, huh. (The policy’s been laughably repackaged in recent times as minority protection.)

So even as the government does the important work of censoring racist and hate speech, it must also engage in the more difficult job of fostering a more open, honest, collaborative public discourse about race and immigration. Otherwise, particularly in this AI-fuelled era, we’ll simply be engaged in an endless game of whack a mole—without understanding why they keep popping up in the first place.

Some further reading: In “Why always LKY?”, Jom argues that Singapore’s preferred ahistorical approach to dealing with contemporary issues is a mistake.

Society: A Singaporean alongside Shakira

TIME’s 100 Philanthropy 2026 list, showcasing the “most influential people shaping the future of giving at a pivotal moment”, was divided into four categories. “Leaders” featured the likes of Idris Elba and Sabrina Dhowre Elba, whose eponymous foundation does work in food security, sustainability, and youth advocacy in both the UK, the actor’s birthplace, and Sierra Leone, his father’s homeland. “Titans” include MacKenzie Scott, unceremoniously dumped by Bro Bezos, who looks for organisations that are “unsexy but have competent leadership”, such as community colleges, and “gives them a no-strings-attached sum of money often large enough to be transformative but not so large as to overwhelm them.” (And thereby offering the world, thank heavens, some restitution from the exploitative beast that is Amazon.) 

The “Trailblazers”, featuring the likes of actor Kate Capshaw and director Steven Spielberg, singer Rihanna, and footballer Lionel Messi, seem like the rich people you’d most want to have dinner with. Finally, the “Innovators”: alongside Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, singer Shakira, and many others is Laurence Lien, the co-founder and chairman of the Asia Philanthropy Circle (APC)—a membership-based platform for philanthropists—and chairman of his family’s eponymous Lien Foundation. 

The only Singaporean on the list is lauded for “radical giving”. He defined it to TIME in two ways. “One is getting to the root cause of problems. Rather than just looking at the surface and dealing with symptoms, what are the structural and systemic issues that cause a problem or suffering to arise? And the other aspect is around innovation. Our approach is: Has this been done before? Is anyone paying attention to it? If there’s a real gap and people are not paying attention, or if it is an area that needs new ways of thinking and doing things, then that’s where we play.”

The organisation’s 20-year-old approach found a global audience in the early 2010s through two rankings, as Lien described to TIME, looking at society’s oldest and youngest: a “Quality of Death Index”, which assesses how countries fared in terms of ensuring a dignified and pain-free death; and a “Starting Well Index”, which compared early childhood education globally. (Disclosure: Jom’s editor-in-chief was a part of the team at the Economist Intelligence Unit for the latter.) The Foundation’s current focus areas are palliative care, eldercare, rehab, and maternal and child health.

Through APC Lien hopes to change mindsets amongst Asia’s rich. “Are Asian families doing enough?” he responded to TIME. “I still don’t think so. Philanthropy is not an area where people change their behaviors too quickly. But the trajectory is positive.”

Society: Elderly jaywalking

Last month, an elderly man jaywalking on Serangoon Avenue 3 twice escaped calamity, once when a taxi rushed past him and then when a bike almost slammed into him. Others haven’t been so lucky. He was one of 18 elderly jaywalkers The Straits Times (ST) noted in the area in a half period, with similar numbers in Novena and Yishun. 

The number of traffic accidents involving jaywalking elderly pedestrians increased from 95 in 2024 to 101 in 2025; the number of fatalities from seven to 15. Several elderly pedestrians told ST they knew jaywalking was dangerous but did it anyway because it was faster than walking to the nearest crossing. Tay, a 73-year-old Yishun resident, struck a more defiant note. He told ST, “I’m not afraid of anything at this age”. Is this reckless bravado or something bleaker—a diminished stake in one’s future? 

The experience of old age involves a culmination of many losses—retirement (loss of working role, status, and income), the passing of loved ones, and the rapid transformation of one’s neighbourhood—that may cause some to lose their zest for life. A fading vitality ran through the accounts of 34 seniors who participated in a study on loneliness. They questioned the worth of their present lives, not from dread of a specific future but from a sense of alienation surfacing in moments of emptiness. They kept busy, the researchers found, to hold that emptiness at bay.

Other ageing societies show where such loneliness can lead. In Japan, elderly women who struggle with isolation and poverty court jail time as it comes with regular meals, free healthcare and eldercare, and companionship. In 2018, almost one in five women in Japanese prisons was over 65. Their crimes were usually minor, mostly shoplifting. An older survey by Tokyo’s government found that more than half of seniors caught shoplifting live alone; 40 percent either don’t have family or rarely speak with them. Those who did described being recognised only as the elderly who did house chores. 

South Korea, which became “super-aged” in 2024, is seeing a similar phenomenon. This trend hasn’t emerged here yet, although there have been some reports of geriatric (petty) crimes like shoplifting and illegal bird feeding. Notably, a 2021 study on elderly offenders in Singapore’s Community Courts found that while 85 percent of the research participants were living with family at the time of offending, a majority reported having poor relationships; almost half said they had no support from family members. 

Superficially, the connection between reckless jaywalking, shoplifting, and illegal bird feeding may not be obvious. But a rapidly ageing society must interrogate whether they are all symptomatic of a bubbling isolation and loneliness.

History weekly with Faris Joraimi

A political gridlock befell the Malaysian state of Negeri Sembilan in April. Though multicultural, its predominant Minangkabau population’s traditions have shaped the state’s distinct character. While the traditional homeland of the Minangkabau is in the highlands of west Sumatra, places like Negeri Sembilan are known as the “rantau”: areas to which Minang people later travelled to live, work, and establish communities. (Many Malay Singaporeans, including Yusof Ishak, our first president, and Zubir Said, composer of our national anthem, are of Minangkabau descent.)

Because of this unique history, Negeri Sembilan is one of only two constitutional monarchies in Malaysia that isn’t a sultanate (the other being Perlis). Since 1773, it’s been ruled by a Yang Dipertuan Besar (“The one who is made a great lord”) elected by a council of four chiefs called the Undang. The current state constitution specifies that the Yang Dipertuan Besar has to be Muslim, male, and a descendant of Raja Lenggang (d. 1824), a prince from the Minangkabau highlands sent directly by the sultan of Pagaruyung to rule the people of Negeri Sembilan. The system seems to have worked fine for over a century now, but went off-balance in April when the Undang suddenly deposed the sitting Yang Dipertuan Besar, Tuanku Muhriz, accusing him of misconduct. But Aminuddin Harun, Negeri Sembilan’s menteri besar (head of the state government), blocked the move claiming one of the Undang was already stripped of his position due to 33 breaches of custom and law. In a tit-for-tat, the Undang then tried to get Aminuddin sacked. 

By April’s end, the drama had thickened. Within the state government, 14 UMNO-BN assemblymen withdrew from Aminuddin’s (and prime minister Anwar Ibrahim’s) Pakatan Harapan (PH)-led coalition because they didn’t like how Aminuddin handled the royal crisis, accusing him of disregarding the state’s customary laws. Defence of traditional Malay institutions had predictably become a form of leverage. After an emergency meeting, the UMNO chief made a conciliatory statement that his party respects the assemblymen’s loss of confidence in Aminuddin, but “will continue to support the Unity Government in Negeri Sembilan to ensure stability and the well-being of the people.” 

Not for long. On the pretext of restoring the people’s mandate to govern, the state legislative assembly was dissolved in early June with state elections to be held by August 2026, two years before it is due. With Johor also holding state elections, where BN is likely to win big, PH may be trying to outmanoeuvre them, checking any momentum that BN may gain in Johor: partnership at federal level, it seems, stops outside the capital. For observers, this incident exposed the fragility of the national coalition government, with fraying edges threatening the centre. But it also suggests how “traditional” politics still spills over into electoral and partisan rivalries, despite the constitutional containment of the former from “real” politics. Pre-empting similar intrigues in his state, the ruler of Perlis, Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin Jamalullail, issued a stern reminder against politicking that may frighten investors, and to let the current chief minister complete his term. “I would like to remind all Honourable Members that this government is my government,” he said to the state assembly.

Arts: Our funny Valentine

Valentine Willie got into art for the warmth. The young Sabahan law student, accustomed to the thick swaddle of tropical heat, was struggling through a frigid winter in 1970s London, forced to pay for heating by the hour in a cramped bedsit with a grim view of a women’s prison. He soon discovered that he could instead work in the city’s museums and galleries, where there was free heating. He began to haunt the halls of the National Gallery, completing his legal degree beneath the hallowed canvases of the Dutch Golden Age, masters of light and shadow: Vermeer, Rembrandt, van Eyck. “You’re spending too much time in the northern Renaissance,” a security guard told him. “Why don’t you go to the Italian Renaissance?” He found: “Michaelangelo, Botticelli, Raphael all there...Imagine, for somebody like me.” Willie passed the bar, pocketed a master’s degree, and returned to Malaysia both a practising lawyer and a passionate art collector—and on the way to becoming one of South-east Asia’s most influential gallerists. 

But Willie wasn’t just a collector, he was a connector, and he wanted to reconnect himself with the archipelago he’d spent years away from. His earliest acquisitions—baskets, mat and textiles woven in Borneo—reflected his own roots, part migrant Chinese, part indigenous Kadazan-Dusun. He began to sell his “extras” at a small concession stand in a local department store; eventually, others came to him with their wares. “Some of these jars were 16th or 17th-century Chinese and in perfect condition. But how did they get to Borneo? This was the kind thing that fascinated me,” he said in an interview with 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. His legal profession facilitated travel all across the Malay Archipelago, a privilege in the pre-budget-travel era. He’d chat his way into artists’ studios and school himself in the visual cultures of each city. He began to trace patterns in the region’s conversations, seeing art as the connective tissue that bound thousands of islands together, the material manifestation of its sociopolitical conditions and cultural movements. “It was easy. Especially when no one else was doing it, I had almost the whole field to myself. I’d go and sit in a cafe in Yogyakarta. Word would go around and artists would turn up with their works.” 

Willie had a gift for spotting emerging artists and courting established ones. In 1996, he set up his eponymous gallery, which would go on to have outposts in Singapore and beyond. Its reputation was cemented by his relationship with Latiff Mohidin. Then, the Malaysian painter and sculptor was selling his work for 800 ringgit apiece. Latiff would later become the first South-east Asian artist to score a solo show at Paris’s Centre Pompidou. The independent Ilham Gallery, Willie’s passion project in Kuala Lumpur, became a microcosm of his itinerant island-hopping, gathering the strands of contemporary art-making in the region and weaving them together.

When Willie died earlier this week, age 71, the grief across the archipelago was immediate, and unprecedented. Artist Yee I-Lann, fellow Sabahan: “Valentine, my V, I’m going to miss you, the person who always told me straight, without the bells and whistles but an orchestra all to yourself.” The Malaysian theatre-maker Jo Kukathas: “You introduced my generation to our artists as well as our young curators, who are also now established powerhouses.” The Filipino art critic Katrina Stuart Santiago: “Valentine...was always generous with me, even when I remained distant as a critic who would appear on random days at his gallery”. Addressing him affectionately as oom, or uncle, the acclaimed Indonesian puppet artist Maria “Ria” Tri Sulistyani: “You saw what we couldn’t see. Your hands always opened for us.” In a polyphonic chorus from Jakarta to Manila to Kota Kinabalu, Willie’s warmth connected all.

Arts: Power moves

There’s a specific genre of viral video dedicated to power washing. You might self-soothe by watching some carpet cleaning, where grubby rugs soiled by years of grime and gunk are caressed by foam to reveal brilliant colours beneath. Or you might turn to pressure washing, where companies and contractors rack up millions of views by promising “#satisfying #asmr”, where mossy, mud-caked patios give way to elegant stone parapets and walkways. You might think: what better place to cultivate a client base than the manicured Garden City herself. That may have been what 24-year-old Marcus Pang had in mind when he started power washing artwork on the path outside his Marine Parade home. He’d collect buckets of rainwater, then use it to fuel his pressure washer. “Reverse graffiti,” he called it in an interview with CNA, likening his temporary, zero-waste artwork to drawing in snow or on windshield dust. 

SMRT didn’t think so. Hours after Pang cleaned out the concrete outside Mountbatten MRT with a veiny human heart and an accompanying slogan (“Heart of Mountbatten”), a member of the public complained, the artist was detained by SMRT, the police were summoned, and his piece was washed off the sidewalk. This, even after the police had told Pang that “no wrong was done”. Still, they advised that he get a busking permit, or a letter from an MP, to avoid the ambiguous category of alleged misdeeds that constitute “simi sai also call polis”. Gho Sze Kee, member of parliament for Mountbatten, has since weighed in on the situation: “This incident stirs up larger questions for our society. There will always be tension between artistic creativity, free expression and the rules that hold our shared spaces together.” It’s a more temperate response than what artist Sam Lo received, when he slapped cheeky stickers on road signs and traffic lights (“press once can already”) and spray-painted statements onto the tarmac (“my grandfather road”). Lo was arrested in 2013 and charged with public mischief, then got off with 240 hours of community service. “That period was certainly a huge learning curve for me,” Lo told Vice. “Looking back, I have conflicting feelings but I can confidently say that I have no regrets doing what I did.” Lo has since taken up clients the likes of Google, Netflix and Nike—and it looks like Pang is being courted by the same. He’s received at least 20 business inquiries, he told ST; he’d previously worked with hotel The Standard and sprayed a game of snakes and ladders onto the alleyway behind Joo Chiat Community Club, his winning submission for a People’s Association hackathon to transform underused spaces. 

In the wake of a public outcry, SMRT vacillated. “We’re flattered you chose the pavement outside our station as your latest canvas—clearly the power washer was feeling particularly inspired that day,” it posted to social media. “As enthusiastic supporters of the arts, we’d love to chat about collaborating on something with a longer run. We champion non-disappearing art.” This baffled the public, who questioned the operator’s “hypocritical” stance. Perhaps it’s a sign that civic discourse has matured in the decade since Lo’s public interventions. With so many parties jostling for jurisdiction over public space in Singapore, there’s rarely room for freedom of expression, much less spontaneous creative expression. Busking requires a license, live art requires a permit, and artists who test the waters tend to end up in a legal and media maelstrom. The odds are still stacked against the power washer given the powers that be. But Pang’s creative forays might just have a ripple effect when it comes to policy on public art. So long as we’re cleaning within the lines.

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

Letters in response to any blurb can be sent to sudhir@jom.media. All will be considered for publication on our “Letters to the editor” page.

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Correction notice: A previous version stated that Negeri Sembilan was the only one of Malaysia’s nine constitutional monarchies that is not a sultanate.