I’ve been sick (again) this past week, so the monsoon surge couldn’t have come at a better time—it’s perfect weather for staying at home, catching up on sleep and reading. I think we should treat monsoon surges the same way people in temperate countries treat snow days: school’s cancelled, work from home, nobody leave the house unless they absolutely have to. Wouldn't that be nice?
(1)
Election fever is really heating up. Now that the boundaries are out, political parties are taking stock and pondering territorial adjustments. Some opposition parties have found their old stomping grounds sliced and diced or subsumed into bigger constituencies. It’s likely that there’ll be more multi-cornered fights this election; particularly when it comes to the bigger opposition parties like the Workers’ Party, Singapore Democratic Party and Progress Singapore Party, it just doesn’t make sense to give way to other contenders. Ultimately every party will have to weigh up the resources they have with the likelihood of success (or, failing that, at least not losing their deposit) in a particular constituency.
We’re also starting to see resignations from the civil service—a director from the Ministry of Transport and a deputy secretary in policy from the Ministry of Health, for instance—which is the usual precursor to them popping up again dressed in white from head-to-toe (and ideally also from inside to out, no one wants to see anyone’s colourful underwear through PAP trousers). It makes me wonder: if a senior civil servant was such a supporter of an opposition party to the point of being ready to quit their job and run as a candidate, how would that have been received at work? 🧐 (Yes, this is a rhetorical question.) Of course, the PAP aren’t the only ones with new hopefuls to tease: opposition parties, too, have their darlings.
One other thing that parties need to do ahead of an election—well, everyone except the PAP, anyway—is fundraise and recruit. Election campaigns are super expensive: apart from the deposit needed for each candidate, there are posters and flyers to be printed, rally stages to be put up and torn down, volunteer expenses to cover and many other big and small expenses that I’m sure haven’t even crossed my mind yet. They also need lots of bodies on the ground to help with walkabouts and outreach, as well as all sorts of logistics and labour. And don’t forget polling and counting agents—I’d recommend experiencing at least one of these roles once in your life.
Dr Chee Soon Juan of the SDP kicked off fundraising some time ago—I was invited by a friend to a fundraising dinner at Orange & Teal not long before new boundaries were announced, when his focus was still on his campaign in Bukit Batok SMC. He’s got another series of fundraising buffet dinners coming up, if you’d like to get a ticket. Meanwhile, PSP is tugging on the heartstrings of those of us who like cute shit by launching a series of otter (their mascot) keyring plushies. I might just have to get one for the squee—I mean, for democracy. Yes. Supporting political plurality and all that. That’s it, no other reason.
Anyway, my point is that if you’d like to support any of the political parties for the big fight that’s coming, now’s a good time to check out their websites and social media platforms to see how you can support their fundraising and volunteer recruitment drives.
(2)
The Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics has a new report on the use of goods vehicles to transport migrant workers. Check it out here. The report covers the legislative history relating to the transport of workers in lorries owned or hired by their employers, even when the transport of anyone else by this means has long been banned. It also tackles all the common arguments against the banning of lorry transport, bringing in the voices of migrant workers to counter these profit-oriented justifications and excuses. If you need a one-stop document to understand the history of this issue and how shameful it is that the government is still not budging, then this is it. Here’s a little excerpt from the report in response to the usual government excuse about higher costs and “knock-on effects”:
…such framing about the cost impact for Singaporeans when implementing safer modes of transport for migrant workers assumes a direct trade-off between the well-being of Singaporeans and that of workers. It also presumes that workers’ right to safety is a commodity that can be negotiated or traded off, and that safer transport for workers is a zero sum game that causes detriment to others (i.e. businesses and local residents). In other words, this narrative does not consider that migrant workers subsidise costs for others with their safety and lives, if no action is taken to improve the safety of their transport conditions.
(3)
The Citizen Lab has published a new report and yeesh, Singapore gets a mention again. The Citizen Lab, based in Canada, focuses on “research, development, and high-level strategic policy and legal engagement at the intersection of information and communication technologies, human rights, and global security”. Their latest report scrutinises Paragon Solutions, an Israeli company founded in 2019 that flogs the spyware Graphite, “which reportedly provides ‘access to the instant messaging applications on a device, rather than taking complete control of everything on a phone’”. By infecting specific apps rather than a device’s entire operating system, Graphite might be more difficult for forensic investigators to detect. Paragon claims that it only sells to a select group of democratic governments to support their “national security missions”, but the Citizen Lab points out that:
Many democratic states have histories of using secret surveillance powers and technologies against journalists and members of civil society.
Mercenary spyware is no exception, with multiple democracies deploying spyware against journalists, human rights defenders, and other members of civil society. Indeed, organizations working against the proliferation and abuse of spyware, including the Citizen Lab, have warned that the temptation to use this technology in a rights-abusing way is so great that, even in democracies, it will be abused.
Meta has also investigated Paragon. WhatsApp, one of their companies, found a Paragon zero-click exploit and, at the end of January, notified about 90 accounts that “they believed were targeted with Paragon’s spyware, including journalists and members of civil society”.
Why am I covering this in WTC? Because of this bit of The Citizen Lab’s key findings: “Based on a trip from a collaborator, we mapped out server infrastructure that we attribute to Paragon’s Graphite spyware tool. We identified a subset of suspected Paragon deployments, including in Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Israel, and Singapore.”
Around the region
Looking for writing from elsewhere? Check out these newsletters from around Asia:
✊🏼 Currents
🌏 Asia Undercovered
🇰🇭 Campuccino
🇮🇩 Indonesia at a Crossroads
🇲🇾 The Malaysianist
🇻🇳 Vietnam Weekly
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