Over at Currents, Calum has published a podcast episode with Lim Kay Siu, actor and one half of The NeoKELELims, talking about Hollywood versus Singapore, authoritarianism and marrying activism with playing the ukulele. Check it out!
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Wow am I glad I don’t live in Nee Soon GRC. Goh Meng Seng, leader of the People’s Power Party (PPP), has announced that his party will be taking on the PAP in Nee Soon GRC. And not just that: he intends to “take a firm stance to maintain the sustainability and long term survival of this Nation which has a small population”. Translation? He means PPP is going to be running on a platform of homophobia in Nee Soon this GE2025.
This is clearly an opportunistic response to the speculation that Deryne Sim, a former member of the Pink Dot committee, might come forward as a candidate in Nee Soon GRC. Goh basically says as much in the opening of his Facebook post: “There is speculation that PAP might be fielding a well known LGBTQ activist in Nee Soon. PPP is set to contest in Nee Soon GRC and is definitely mindful of such potential move by PAP.”
While asserting that PPP has “absolutely nothing against LGBTQ as individuals”, Goh proceeds to spew complete nonsense. (It’s textbook “I’m not homophobic, but…”) Singapore is “already facing an existential crisis of an extremely low Total Fertility Rate”, he says, so it’s crucial that we “strengthen our Pro Family policies” and “not allow LGBTQ Agenda to distract or divert our attention” of “growing our Core Population”. He generously allows that we “do not discriminate any individual LGBTQ in jobs and such” but insists that we “not promote LGBTQ as a form of lifestyle because it will be detrimental to the fundamental sustainability of our country”. This is the reason why, Goh explains, he has, for years, nobly refrained from attending Pink Dot—it’s because he’s just so dedicated to “the sustainability and survival of our country”. Unlike other parties that are chasing after “Pink Votes”, he says, “PPP is the only political party that is making a principled stance in full clarity.”
Goh is a Grown Ass Man (I, too, can capitalise Random Words) who doesn’t seem to have learnt that queerness is not a “lifestyle choice”. He believes that, as long as we stop “promoting LGBTQ”, then more Singaporeans will pump out kids instead of living big gay lives. That’s not how it works. Oppressing LGBTQ people won’t make more straight people have kids. I’d even argue that his rhetoric only serves to affirm my decision, as a straight married woman, not to have kids. It’s bad enough I have to read this drivel and live in this political reality; there’s no need to bring more humans into this world to share in the experience. 🙄 (I’m also sorry to have this hit your inbox on International Women’s Day.)
The PAP’s team in Nee Soon is led by K Shanmugam—the Minister for Law and Home Affairs, Singapore’s most vocal supporter of the death penalty, Ridout resident and Lord POFMA himself. I don’t envy Nee Soon voters having to choose between a bloodthirsty megalomaniac and a homophobic mess. That said, it looks like Red Dot United has also been walking the ground in Nee Soon, so there’s still a chance that there’ll be a non-ridiculous challenger come the election. (Fingers crossed that I won’t be back here next week with some howler from RDU…)
(2)
More details on what K Shanmugam and Tan See Leng are upset at Bloomberg about. The Straits Times reports that Shanmugam and Tan are saying that parts of Bloomberg’s article on Good Class Bungalow (GCB) transactions were “false, baseless and calculated to disparage and impugn them”.
Not everything is about you, Felicia! said Bloomberg and their journalist Low De Wei in response. Okay, they didn’t say that—it’s just my wishful thinking—but I think that’s basically the vibe. As ST reports, their argument is that the article was merely highlighting that GCBs bought without submitting caveats to the Singapore Land Authority “bring some privacy benefits and typically transact at a higher price” and also that sometimes GCB buyers who don’t want to be publicly identified will use trust structures to make their purchases. Shanmugam and Tan’s transactions were just examples, and Low had made sure that these references were “factually accurate, very short, and presented in neutral terms”.
(3)
Remember that Bizfile NRIC number mess? The review panel convened to look into it has come out with its report. They’ve concluded that there was no “deliberate wrongdoing or wilful inaction” on the part of government officers and that a “confluence of several shortcomings” led to the unmasking of NRIC numbers on the portal.
The Ministry for Digital Development and Information (MDDI), the review panel said, should have been clearer in communicating its policy in July 2024. To make matters worse, no one at MDDI or the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) realised that there’d been a misunderstanding over how MDDI’s instructions applied to the Bizfile portal. The panel observed that there were “internal shortcomings within ACRA in sharing and acting on the information from MDDI”.
The panel found that, by failing to properly balance sharing full NRIC numbers and making sure it wouldn’t be too easy to get hold of them, ACRA had “contravened the Government’s internal rules on data management”. There was also inadequate implementation of some security features for the “People Search” function. Finally, when the shit hit the fan, there could have been better “incident management”. You can find the full report here.
Delivering a ministerial statement in Parliament on 6 March, Teo Chee Hean, Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security, said that “appropriate measures”—from counselling and retraining to reductions in performance grade (which will affect performance-based payments)—are being taken against the relevant officers. He added: “The Ministers overseeing ACRA and the Smart Nation work in MDDI had overall responsibility for the organisations under their charge, and the PM will take into account this incident in his evaluation of the Ministers.” I’m not sure if this means that there’ll also be financial consequences for these ministers who, as Teo said, “have overall responsibility for the organisations under their charge”? I’d like to know what “PM will take this into account in his evaluation” actually looks like.
Around the region
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✊🏼 Currents
🌏 Asia Undercovered
🇰🇭 Campuccino
🇮🇩 Indonesia at a Crossroads
🇲🇾 The Malaysianist
🇻🇳 Vietnam Weekly
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