Waz petition lady’s game?

(Or “Were lawyers in the past so dumb and cowardly?”

The court case on whether the PM has unfettered discretion to call a by-election will soon be heard. Despite it being overtaken by events, the petitioner, Mdm Vellama, is continuing her suit after the AG refused her request for the AG not to ask for costs if she withdrew her petition.

She has juz doubled yet again. She will give up her court case if PM makes declaration on by-elections in Parliament . The AG has told her to bugger off (of course politely). She had juz raised the stakes, wanting PM to testify.

Waz her game? Is she a principled, brave citizen? A publicity hound? Qui lan lady? Clueless? Or juz badly advised?A worrying tot is that her love of doubling her legal “bets” could mean that she is a compulsive gambler by nature.  

To recap, she had asked the court whether the PM has unfettered discretion to call a by-election in Hougang. She was afraid that she might not have an MP to seek help from. 

Her lawyer helpfully pointed out that thrice, no by-elections were called:

– In 1983, when the Havelock seat became vacant, then PM Lee Kuan Yew said: “There is no reason why the people of Havelock should have a by-election.”

– In November 1986, the JBJ was disqualified from holding the Anson seat. In his answer to opposition member Chiam See Tong’s query in Parliament, Minister S Dhanabalan said : “He  has been convicted of a criminal offence and fined and sent to jail. They [Anson constituents] have to learn to live with the consequences of their choice.”

– In December 1986, the Geylang West seat became vacant after its MP, Teh Cheang Wan, committed suicide. Then Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong explained that there would be no by-election in the ward because the government was “contemplating introducing a Bill to form Town Councils.”

I wonder why no-one had petitioned the court to get the government to call a by-election until this year? Surely there were lawyers* at that time who are as smart and brave as Ravi** ? As Chiam was an MP on two of the above instances, perhaps someone should ask him why he never bothered to bring a case? Does he agree that the PM has an unfettered discretion on whether to call a by-election or not to fill a vacancy?

Whatever it is, the lady is likeky to end up with a huge bill to pay: AG’s costs.

As AG has rightly pointed out, a by-election has been called and held, so there no need for judge to decide anything. The petitioner is wasting court’s time and should be “punished” (my word, not AG’s) by having costs awarded against her. Technically, AG is right.

As a trained lawyer who did some court work as a very junior lawyer, I think the original petition was brought too early. The petition should have been brought on 16th May, three months*** and a day after the was seat vacated, the day incidentally that PM announced the date of the by-election.

But the lady was too impatient it seems to have an MP to look after her needs. Or was she badly advised? Her lawyer was the same guy who advised TRE to fight a request from LKY’s younger son to remove some defamatory material. He wanted to go to court and argue that the request was unconstitutional. TRE settled instead without paying anything, and on fair terms. If it had gone to court, the legal bills would have huge, win, lose or draw.

Let’s hope that when costs are awarded against her, the people who promised to fund the petitioner’s costs will folk out the money. Otherwise the lady petitioner may have to clean the AG’s offices for free for the rest of her life to avoid being made a bankrupt. Her day job is a cleaner, remember.

Doubtless she will be thanking Ravi the lawyer while she cleans and sweeps the Chambers. And doubtless, the other Ravi, P the social worker, will be trying to help her.

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*There was JBJ who although, not very smart, was brave. And there was Francis Seow, a former Solictor-General, a good litigator with the brain of an intellectual, and the heart of a lion. He is still alive though not in practice. He is a Harvard Fellow, wanted by the S’pore government on some tax charge. He was detained under the ISA for a short while in the late 1980s.

**The lawyer who argued that a drug mule who refused to testify against an alleged drug lord should have his conviction set aside because the state should have compelled said drug mule to testify against said drug lord: fortunately the judges saw thru the Alice-in-Wonderland logic of lawyer Ravi, even if he and other “Free the mule” groupies didn’t.

***Three months is some kind of marker among activists because of a previous constitutional provision that a by-election had to be held three months after the seat was cacated. This requirement was later removed. I’m simplifying the issue.

Why TJS never got invited for tea and biscuits

(As I recently wrote about an RI boy, I tot I might as well write about another RI boy, especially one very, very proud to be from RI. So proud that it annoyed me.)

The JBJ Memorial event five weeks to the day yesterday (Saturday), entitled “Heroes in Our Hearts”, turned out to be more than a tribute to JBJ. What has gone uncommented (until now) is that a speech there solved a puzzle.

During the May GE campaign, Tan Jee Say told us that he had been told when he was a civil servant (in the early 1980s presumably?) that the PAP had considered him as a possible candidate-MP. But nothing happened and he never heard about the matter again. (Three other scholars born in the same year as him, 1954, Teo Chee Hean (in 1992), Lim Hng Kiang (in 1991) and George Yeo (in 1988) were tapped to become MPs and ministers.)

During the same election, his ex-boss, Goh Chok Tong, said that TJS was not gd enough to be a Permanent Secretary, and so he left government service.  TJS denies this. More details.

TJS’s speech at the JBJ Memorial tells us that he openly cheered in the 80s for JBJ at JBJ’s public appearances and rallies.

That he openly showed his support for a non-establishment figure and knowing the views that the PM of the day, one LKY, held abt JBJ, it is very clear (to me at least) why TJS was never invited to a tea-party, and why he couldn’t ever be a Permanent Secretary. He was ”unsound”, likely to be unreliable when the call came to close ranks against the “enemies of the state”, and other trouble makers.

That he rose to be the Principal Private Secretary of the then Deputy Prime Minister (and PM in waiting), despite such open support for JBJ, speaks well of the system of meritocracy in the admin service in the 1980s, and how decent a man Goh Chok Tong was. (Regular readers will know I am usually no fan of GCT or of his policies.) 

Yes, yes, I know that a cynic should say that there is only TJS’s word that he attended and cheered at JBJ’s rallies. But I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt even though I know people who were his senior in Morgan Grenfell Asia in 1991, who are annoyed that he claimed the credit for MGA winning the privatisation mandate from SingTel, three months after he joined MGA: “He makes S’pore sound like Indonesia”; “MGA had been cultivating SingTel for years”; and “What else did he win?”.

(Reminding me of what George Orwell in All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays wrote,  “A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.” A good reminder why not to boast.)

My one criticism of his speech is that the speech came across as more about TJS* than about JBJ. But then brave men often have big egos, witness JBJ.

TJS is brave, not because of what he said he did 27 odd years ago, but because at age 57, he decided to do something very different and difficult, and which doesn’t pay well most of the time (he is out-of-pocket by at least S$127,000: enter politics on the side that always gets thrashed badly, like our national teams in sepak takraw, weightlifting, archery, basketball, footie, golf, dragon boat,  petanque, shooting, fencing and silat.

At the very least, even if he is an opportunist, he loves a challenge like Ulysses in Tennyson’s poem of that name which ends:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

What the poem does not tell us is that Ulysses was drowned when a wave hit his ship and he was washed overhead. Heroes do not have the luxury of dying peacefully in their beds.

Finally, if anyone knows when he joined and left Standard Chartered, his designation(s) there, or whether he was in investment banking, fund management, or whatever there, please drop me an email. I know nothing of this period except that he was in StanChart. Likewise for his stint in Peregrine. BTW, interestingly, between 1991- 1997, he worked for  three different firms. I only worked for one.  

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*It reminded me of LKY’s eulogy of Dr Goh Keng Swee. There was a credible rumour that some members of Dr Goh’s family were upset that the speech seemed more abt LKY than Dr Goh.

Do we need more political parties?

So now there are voices calling for Tan Jee Say and Dr Tan Cheng Bock to each form a new political party. And I’m sure, there are voices out there asking the “Voice of the People” to make a fool of himself again (this time with his daughter by his side) by forming the VP Party or VPP.

I’m sure some of these callers are thinking, genuine and sincere people, while some of the callers are PAP activists hoping to split the votes of voters unhappy with the PAP. But most of these calls are coming from very daft, but sincere and genuine people.

Think of where the parties of TJS and TCB will position themselves.

There are two slightly left-of-centre parties, the Workers’ Party and the Singapore People’s Party. Further left (but not on extreme left, despite what the local constructive, nation-building media say), we have the Singapore Democratic Party and somewhere between the WP and the SPP, and the SDP, there is for the moment the National Solidarity Party.

The NSP is forever changing shape in between general elections and, at the moment, is undergoing yet another metamorphoses. The WP and SDP have strong brands and active supporters, while the SPP is finally trying to make a serious effort to move away from brand “Chiam”. Let’s hope it succeeds. Chiam deserves to leave behind a political legacy. He showed us that an ordinary, decent man could take on the PAP and survive. There was no need to play the matyr game.

Now where will brand Tan Jee Say fit in? Based on his behaviour during the presidential election, his party will be further left of the SPP and WP, and right of the SDP. A space that the NSP, with two of his scholat mates in its management committee, is now trying to make its own. Kinda crowded, aint it?

As for Dr Tan Cheng Bock, the man, who waffled on during the election about not being the preferred PAP candidate and abt unity via footie and multiracialim (If I sound mean, I remind that I voted for him. Yup I can be that irrational), where will his party stand? Right of the WP, and SPP most likely, based on his waffling.

Even if it occupies some of the right-of-centre space dominated by the PAP, it will be fighting for some of the very moderate left votes.

The space on the left is crowded, with these six parties. There may not be enough seats to satisfy the ambitions of these six parties in a general election. There may be three-way contests. Then there are the absolute no-hopers, Singapore Democratic Alliance and the RP: making a total of eight parties on the left. The only place left field unoccupied is on the extreme left.

Establishing a new party is not easy. Remember the Reform Party? Set up by the late JBJ, it had to be resurrected by his son, KennethJ,  because of JBJ’s death soon after its founding. Despite all the goodwill that the memory of JBJ attracts, the RP had problems recruiting. And anyway, the newbies soon left, leaving King KJ to play and fantasise alone.

So please, let’s not encourage bored men with large egos, deep pockets and axes to grind to form new parties of the left. The field is crowded left of centre with eight parties.

Now, there is plenty of space on the extreme right. Anyone bored with a big ego, deep pockets and an axe to grind interested? I’m sure one LKY will be the party’s patron if the party ideology is a mixture of fascism, capitalism, socialism and his Hard Truths.