News this week included: a year after GE2025, ST examines the performance of new political office holders, and new MPs across both parties; ST analysis on AI as the next potential political battleground between the PAP and the WP; SMU professor’s commentary on whether Singapore’s “protect every worker” doctrine can deal with the AI disruption; some UN member states call on Singapore to end executions, reassess POFMA, and establish a human rights body (and MFA’s response); Tekka.sg, a community-led digital platform to help traditional business sell online; ST comparison of premium BTO projects with private properties; Sheng Siong's facial recognition technology helps nab woman who stole 19 bottles of wine over seven occasions; SCMP on Singapore’s attractiveness as an investment haven amid global uncertainty; ST on the rise of Chinese food brands and restaurants here; female board directorships on the rise, but still much work to be done; chronic kidney disease on the rise; pregnancy loss coach’s commentary on supporting parents who’ve tried and failed to have kids; Yishun 10, Singapore’s first multiplex, is set to be redeveloped; Jho Low seeks Trump pardon; and an investigation by Israel’s Channel 13 finds soldiers operated with shoot-to-kill orders for any male in Gaza, killing an Israeli hostage in the process (and we’ve written many times about Singapore’s complicity in the genocide).
Below are the issues we explore in depth:
Society: Kabel networks
What’s a cable but a bundle of wires sheathed in plastic, ferrying electricity or light. But the word, and its brethren, carries a second life in several languages. In vernacular Malay, pakai kabel—literally “use cables”—describes the leveraging of personal connections to land a job or climb the career ladder. Spanish has enchufe, meaning electrical plug, which doubles as shorthand for the same practice. Thai offers เส้นสาย (sên-sǎai), a word for the body’s connective tissues and pathways, repurposed to describe the invisible networks that open professional doors. The presence of similar metaphors in such varied languages reflects the universal recognition that educational qualifications, work experience, and skills, no matter how impressive, will only get you so far. Who you know and what you’re part of is as important.
Vincent Chua, an NUS sociologist specialising in social networks, has articulated the importance of social capital in Singapore—resources embedded in our networks—for social mobility and for helping individuals navigate difficult times. What does that mean for communities with limited social capital? In a 2016 paper on the intersecting effects of gender and ethnicity on social capital, Chua and his team found that because Malay men are underrepresented in universities and in senior professional positions, they are less likely to know people in high-status occupations than Malay women and non-Malay men and women.
Things don’t seem to have changed much in the past decade. A new study by the Centre for Research on Islamic and Malay Affairs (RIMA) on intergenerational educational and occupational mobility within Singapore’s Malay community found that social capital deficit remains despite generational improvements in respondents’ education level and self-assessments of financial standing. Over three in four (79 percent) respondents had a higher educational attainment than their parents, and almost three in four (73.4 percent) perceived their financial status to be much better or better. Malays appeared across junior and middle tiers of white-collar work but were scarce in upper management and largely absent from higher-paying sectors like finance and professional services. Even though Malay men exceeded national averages in diploma and professional qualifications by 2020, they remain underrepresented (by nine to 11 percent compared to other ethnicities) in universities—the precise threshold that unlocks the most lucrative tracks. Many reported financial constraints and family responsibilities as hindrances to a university education.
The other barrier blocking access to upper-tier white collar work appears to be a lack of the kind of social capital Chua wrote about. Respondents described growing up without the informal infrastructure on which professional advancement often depends: networks, mentors, or family members. Existing formal programmes by Yayasan Mendaki and Skillsfuture Singapore help, but only if you already know how to find and access them—insider knowledge that tends to live in families with prior university or professional career experiences. Those who did have such networks navigated their education and careers more effectively, proactively upskilling and adapting to their work environments. Networks expand when the people in them do. Helping more Malays access universities—worryingly, the number for men dipped slightly between 2010 and 2020—and professional environments would mean more nodes, more connections, more pathways for the next generation to eventually pakai kabel.
Society: Explosion in ‘The Spice Islands’
They were there long before we were. From the imposing Himalayas to the majestic peaks of tropical South-east Asia, humans evolved in awe of, and in harmony with, mountains. We mythologised them, as with Meru, centre of the physical, metaphysical, and spiritual universes in Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain cosmologies. Gunung adalah rumah para dewa, the mountain is the home of the gods, said Indonesians long before there was an Indonesia, long before we understood tectonic plates, seismic activity, and the interconnectedness of all matter along the Pacific Ring of Fire. With over 130 active volcanoes across their 17,000-odd islands, Indonesians have an innate, intimate understanding of their power. Some much further away have an inkling. When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, artillery-like sounds were heard in Mauritius, almost 5,000km away. Because of fine particles hitting the upper atmosphere and scattering sunlight, sky hues changed as far away as Europe, with blood-red skies reflected in the paintings of that time.
