Why getting the boot may not be so bad for Occupy

Posted on November 22, 2011 by

For all the hoopla surrounding the Occupy movement in its early days, the movement seems to be slowly fizzling out. Some encampments like OWS in Zucotti Park have been ordered to evacuate, on the grounds that freedom of expression doesn’t mean a freedom to start building tent cities in parks. Others are starting to resemble squatting areas. The initial revolutionary zeal is all but gone.

Is this the end of the Occupy movement?

I certainly hope not, but it is good everyone’s starting to lose patience with it. Just a month ago, the movement grabbed the world’s attention as the first ever transcontinental revolution under one banner. Having groups of people setting up camp smack in the middle of global financial hubs was a curious sight. The movement has done a good job of decrying the exploitation of the 99 percent by the one percent.

Alas, that is all Occupy has achieved so far. The world has a short attention span, and the window of opportunity for the movement to trigger real, substantive change is quickly closing. It is time for the Occupy movement to evolve.

Maybe court rulings kicking tent settlements out of public spaces is just what the movement needs.

For one, it allows protestors to go back to the comfort of their homes with heads held high. Revolution fatigue is starting to set in for many, and while they may rile when the police comes to evacuate them, I suspect many might be secretly relieved that they don’t have to spend winter out in the cold, with only their integrity to keep them warm.

More importantly though, getting the boot might be just the incentive Occupy needs to regroup and rethink their next moves. If Occupy wants any chance of long term success, it needs to go mainstream. Yes, it may claim to represent the 99 percent, but 98.9 percent of the people are not participating in Occupy. If Occupy is serious about change, they have to organize themselves politically and start strategizing. Camping out in small groups indeterminately is not strategy; it cements Occupy’s position on the fringe of politics.

Political organization can mean creating a political party, but not necessarily. I think the Occupy movement’s greatest potential is in political campaigning.

Political campaigning is the deliberate effort to influence political decisions. It requires strategy, which is why the movement needs to start prioritizing its goals. Occupy has to evolve from a general expression of anger and frustration at the world’s ills to become coherent and constructive force. To do this, it has to deal with injustice in a systematic way: attack one (or a few) specific piece(s) of unjust legislation, and demand politicians to change it. Focus on that one thing and press until change happens, and when it does, move on to the next piece of unfair legislation.

Sounds simple, but why is that not done yet?

I think we’re still waiting for a visionary figure to emerge from the faceless crowds of the Occupy movement. Like it or not, just as much as Occupy is about the masses and not any one person, movements have traditionally relied on symbols and leaders to unify people. The reason is simple: it’s easier for people to relate to people than ideas. That’s why many civil liberties we know today are synonymous with individual names: Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Lincoln. If Occupy is to have any clout, it stands a better chance when an individual gives it voice.

Who is this individual? I don’t have a clue. Ideally, someone competent and intelligent to set the political agenda, yet selfless. Someone who could be in the one percent but chooses not to be. Someone with the charisma to capture our hearts and minds. Sadly, in this age of Twitter where dirt is so easily uncovered, this someone becomes even more elusive.

One thing remains clear to me: if that someone isn’t found, Occupy’s getting kicked out for good.

Posted in Blog, Opinion | Tagged | Leave a comment

Economist quotes G20 Research Group

Posted on November 3, 2011 by

It’s hard not to brag when your compliance research on G20 commitments gets quoted on the Economist. Just in case anyone’s interested, I traced the UK, US and France’s commitment to move towards market-determined exchange rates. The full report can be downloaded here.

Posted in Blog | Leave a comment

Reclaiming Democracy

Posted on October 21, 2011 by


The participants of the ‘Occupy’ movement are a motley crew of diverse peoples that spans continents, unified by a visceral sense of injustice and anger at the current state of politics.

This transnational protest – from Wall Street in the US to London in the UK– has been criticized as too general, too vague, too abstract: what does “fighting to strengthen democracy, and to end the domination of big money interests” look like exactly? How do we go about doing that? Some say these goals are too lofty, idealistic, unrealistic.

But tempting as it is to focus on the practicability of ‘Occupy’s’ objectives, doing so would be erroneous, especially since most agree on its premises.

Money rules the world. It’s a simple principle– I scratch your back, you scratch mine. The symbiotic relationship between decision-makers and their sources of money is both obvious and hidden at the same time.

Big corporations don’t fund only parties who promise openly to legislate in their favor; they are known to fund multiple parties at the same time, in the same race. Go to the Federal Election Commission’s website, check out contributions made to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, and marvel at the overlap.

In return, political candidates find themselves hard-pressed not to say no to big money. Running for office is notoriously expensive – staff salaries,  transport costs, rent, campaign materials etc. Not something Joe Six-Pack would do; one has to be quite financially comfortable and/or able to get huge sums of money to get in the game.

Once in office, it’s the politician’s turn to do some back-scratching. Away from public scrutiny now that campaigning is over, he slips in a favorable clause for his benefactor in a 500 page bill; he leaves a loophole in the draft waiting in the pipeline.

No one notices that the average voter has no impact on how decisions that affect him are made. Right off the bat, voters choose from a slate of candidates who are in the pockets of big corporations. ‘Ideological’ differences between parties are reduced to political flavors. It should come as no surprise then that everyone in government, whatever his/her political leaning, is tied in some way to big money. Few, if any, truly represent ordinary folk.

Therefore, democracy, as practiced today, urgently needs defibrillation and maybe a heart bypass. Money, like fat, is clogging up its arteries, preventing ordinary people from reaching the hubs of decision-making. The result: a world in financial crisis.

We all agree with that, at least to some extent. That said, what does camping out and rallying in the financial districts of the financial hubs of the world achieve in concrete terms?

I think the answer is both nothing much and plenty.

Things won’t change over night. But the very act of protest goes to the core of democracy – power to the people. Sooner or later, someone will have to listen. There’s nothing more inherently democratic than the organic gathering of people expressing themselves to their governments. By bringing the issue to the foreground of global consciousness, the movement compels world leaders to address the situation and not sweep it under the rug.

In a nutshell, the ‘Occupy’ movement is about reclaiming democracy from big money for the public.

Some are already taking note. On Oct 19, 2011, India’s prime minister called the movement a “timely warning“. It’s only a matter of time before other world leaders recognize and acknowledge the problem.

That first step to solving a problem – acknowledgement– is long overdue.

Posted in Opinion | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Opinion: Assange’s Petty Revenge on Journalism

Posted on October 8, 2011 by

 

As an aspiring journalist, I’d be remiss if I didn’t address Julian Assange’s outrageous charges in my previous post, where he denounces journalists as “war criminals”, to the surprisingly approving applause of his audience.

According to Assange, wars are the result of lies. Lies that originate from the “transnational security elite”. This basically refers to parties that profit financially from war – weapons manufacturers, the military (from defence spending), politicians (whose backs are rubbed by lobbyists from the defence industrial complex) etc.

Most governments- certainly not in the US or the UK- can’t invade another country without good reason because citizens don’t support needless agression. So the “security elite” has to invent some to garner citizen support, to justify and cloak war with legitimacy, to persuade the taxpayer that his dollars are going to a just cause. A pre-emptive strike against a country which has weapons of mass destruction pointed in your direction, for example.

To get their lies out, the security elite relies on the journalist-operated news media. And thus, Assange argues, journalists are complicit in this transnational conspiracy to cheat ordinary citizens of their money.

What bothers me is the crowd lapping up Assange’s easy offering of the latest here’s-who’s-guilty-for-the-world’s-ills. It’s like journalism is the new super villain everyone’s not considered before and is happy to blame.

Besides the introduction of this sinister antagonist, much of what Assange says is neither new nor revelatory. That some industries benefit from war is old news; it’s been talked about before and discussed to death. Books are written on the subject.

So let’s talk about journalists as war criminals. Here’s my take: To label them as such is utterly absurd and downright offensive for any number of reasons.

First, even though today’s major journalism outlets are owned by big, private corporations, and the unadulterated pursuit of truth has been polluted by a mishmash of other interests, to say that journalists are deliberately peddling lies is simply untrue.

Did the news media portray the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 as a good thing? Yes, but not because they were out to deceive the public– journalists were equally misguided by the Bush administration. Sure, reporters should have been more rigorous and critical, and it definitely wasn’t journalism’s finest hour. But this is a case of negligence, not a crime against humanity. Most journalists sincerely believed then that there was a real chance that Saddam Hussein had a hidden stash of WMD stamped “America Bound”. To agree with Assange is to believe that an entire workforce of journalists is guilty of deliberately perpetrating war. How can anyone seriously believe that?

Truth is, when it comes to access of information, journalists have the same rights as anyone else in the vast majority of cases. The difference between a non-journalist and a journalist is that the latter actually exercises that right.  If a government chooses to withhold information, a journalist can fight in court for the release of the information, try other means like badgering public officials, or working their sources. But these, anyone can do too.

If journalists are guilty of war crimes, so is the vast majority of the public who supported the Iraq/Afghanistan war at its inception.

Second, by labelling journalists as war criminals, Assange completely insults the work countless war reporters do out on the warfront. Journalists risk their lives to cover the war, enter combat situations often with less training than soldiers, and suffer from PTSD not because they are concocting lies to feed the rest of the world. They do so because they are committed to finding out the truth first-hand on the ground, and not to blindly accept the government’s version of events.

Third, calling journalists war criminals cheapens the term “war criminal”. You’re putting Lara Logan, Anderson Cooper, Christiane Amanpour, Richard Engel, Nick Kristof and countless other reporters on the same list as Hitler, Goebbels, Pol Pot and the like. Assange is saying that all these people are guilty of similar crimes. Really?

Fourth, if Assange truly believes journalists are liars on the side of the security elite, why did he send the leaked cables to traditional news outlets like the NYTimes and Die Spiegel? And if Assange were right, that journalists are unconcerned about truth, why did these news outlets publish much of the material – to the ire of the authorities, their supposed co-conspirators?

These questions are rhetorical; journalists are obviously not war criminals.

The non-rhetorical question is, why did Assange say what he said?

I believe the story is simple. He’s getting back at journalists for doing their job.

Since the leaks were published, journalists left, right and center have questioned Assange’s motivations for his actions. And rightly so. After all, it was the lack of questions and criticism that got us stuck in the wars we’re in. Assange, while happy to weave grandiose webs of transnational conspiracy, doesn’t like it when he and his organization are under scrutiny. One has to be blind to miss the irony.

He also hates it that journalists have been asking him questions about his personal scandals and criminal charges, which he says are attempts to tarnish his reputation. Yet, instead of directly addressing questions about them, he walks off an interview:

Alas, the initial marriage of Assange/Wikileaks and news media’s shared interests in publicity has obviously tuned into a sour divorce. And like any celebrity ex-spouse on reality tv nowadays, Assange doesn’t pass up an opportunity to diss on the ex.

Unfortunately, the Anti-War Mass Assembly had to be it.

Posted in Opinion | Leave a comment

Julian Assange: Journalists are war criminals (video)

Posted on October 8, 2011 by

London, United Kingdon – Wikileaks founder Julian Assange made a rare public appearance today at Trafalgar Square to decry war and accused journalists of propagating lies that lead to it.

The event was an anti-war assembly commemorating the ten year anniversary of the Afghan war, followed by a protest march down to Downing Street, where the official residence of the country’s prime minister is.

In his short five minute speech as a guest speaker, Assange called on the crowd to “form our own networks of strength” to combat a “transnational security elite” who are conspiring to launder taxpayer money through war.

Listing a series of wars, including WWII, Somalia, and the 2003 Iraq War, Assange said that wars like Afghanistan are the result of lies. He also called journalists war criminals because of the media’s role in the spread of such lies.

He concluded by saying that “peace can only be started with truth”, and encouraged his audience to continue sending Wikileaks information: ”Go and get the truth, get into the ballpark and get the ball and give it to us and we’ll spread it all over the world.”

For more information about the event, go to www.stopwar.org.uk.

Posted in Event Coverages, News | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Paris: Marching to the Beat

Posted on September 17, 2011 by

That which is impossible in Singapore society, my European politics professor calls France’s national pastime.

It is my first evening in Paris and I’m about to bear witness to part of what is quite an extraordinary political movement.

I am exploring the cluster of roads right behind France’s iconic Louvre museum, which has already closed for the day. A bevy of police officers, all dour looking, line the streets, geared up in riot attire. They are clearly anticipating something.

Maybe some high ranking diplomat’s in town and the city has pulled out the stops to ensure his security. I wonder if I should ask the officers why they were there but decide against it; they don’t look like they are in an answering mood. Unanswered questions are like an itch you can’t scratch.

Thankfully, some relief is just a corner away. I hear them first: the clanging and banging, the chants and rallies, the whistles and the cries.

I see the demonstrators. They  turn around the corner from the Rue de Rivoli, raising banners proclaiming their message, in French, a language similar enough to English to make out a few words, but not so similar as to comprehend the full meaning. The words indignez, resisté, are on many of the placards.

Many wear bright colors to draw attention to their cause. More than a few have painted their faces; some don masks.

The crowd stops every few yards to chant and dance, in step with percussive, tribal, rhythms. Some demonstrators go right up to the police officers and chant right in their faces. Despite this, the atmosphere while restless, isn’t tense. There are people waving cards that read “non-violence”.

Things don’t remain peaceful for long. Suddenly the dance becomes a scuffle and the marchers caucus around something I can’t quite see. Then from the huddle, a cop drags out a bearded man by the collar, shoves protesters in his way aside, and quickly pulls the demonstrator behind the barricade wall of his colleagues. Though out of reach, the body search is not quite out of sight.

The crowd goes wild. They demand to have their comrade released, shouting at the expressionless wall of police officers. Someone pushes a cop who pushes back harder, and he falls over. Many frantically snap photos. A female cop records the whole thing on tape, just in case an official rendering of accounts is required later, if things get ugly.

Wary of the dangers of escalating tensions, demonstrators with ‘non-violence’ signs and yellow vests are anxious to remind the rest that they are a peaceful protest, frantically waving their placards about.

So the crowd stage a sit in, right in front of the barricade and continued chanting for the police to release the man, which they eventually did. The crowd cheers in ecstasy, and someone cries “la police est avec nous”. The police are with us.

The phrase, catchy in French, goes viral and becomes a chant as the protestors continue on their way.

I stop following them but am no closer to knowing what the fuss is about, though I find it absurd that the crowd interprets the release of a demonstrator as a sign of police support for their cause. What are these people indignant about? What are they resisting? I try asking some of the protestors.

Parlez-vous l’anglais?  

No one speaks enough English to explain clearly what they were protesting about. From what I gather, the protesters are either from Spain, or are marching for something Spanish related. I keep hearing ‘indignant’ and ‘politics’, but it’s like figuring out an entire picture with only two jigsaw pieces.

I’m frustrated because I’m going nowhere and head towards a McDonalds for their free wifi to do some serious googling.

Search:  ”french paris protest 2011 september 17 spain indignant”

Eventually I find out that the march was part of a larger “Indignant Movement”, or 15M, born in Spain to protest against money politics. In particular, austerity measures undertaken and/or being considered to deal with the global economic crisis. Austerity measures mean welfare cuts, which disproportionately affects the poor and less fortunate. This man puts across the point excellently:

It is not we who are against the system; it is the system that is against us. 

These demonstrators are marching towards Brussels where the movement will culminate in a “great manifestation” in October — which I take to mean a reveal of some great manifesto.

Too bad school would have started by then.

Posted in Blog, Event Coverages, Features, News, Travel | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The nuts and bolts of Singapore’s electoral system… and why it needs change

Posted on May 8, 2011 by

The results of the general elections have exposed flaws in the electoral process: it is neither fair nor representative.

George Yeo’s out, Tin Pei Ling’s in.

Need I say more for a system that allows for the ouster of a highly regarded, competent foreign minister (respected by even the opposition), and the ascendance of a highly unpopular political greenhorn to parliament?

Take a look at the result tally. Notice that in the constituencies where the opposition teams lost, they managed to garner anywhere from 30 to around 43 percent of total votes. The PAP only has 60 percent of the popular vote. Yet, with only six out of 87 elected seats, the opposition holds only a less-than-seven percent effective presence in parliament.

Why the jarring discrepancy in government? That’s because Singapore adopts a ‘winner-take-all’ approach in the electoral system. In a Group Representation Constituency, all the winning party’s candidates automatically become MPs regardless of the party’s margin of victory. Unpopular candidates ( Tin Pei Ling) can thus ride the coattails of more popular candidates (Goh Chok Tong) into government. This also exaggerates the political mandate of the majority party because the 30 to 40 percent of opposition votes are effectively ‘wasted’ and not reflected in the legislature.

For Single Member Constituencies, a similar problem of vote-wastage occurs, but at least an unpopular candidate cannot free ride on a more successful candidate.

We have to change the very way elections are conducted to address this discrepancy between the popular vote and election outcomes. Political scientists have devised various methods of reducing wasted votes, and one stands out to me. In poli-sci jargon, what I’m thinking of is called a list-based proportional representation system, or list-PR for short.

Let me try to explain this in simple terms. Take the results of a GRC like Marine Parade: the PAP wins 56 percent of the vote and NSP 43 percent. Under the current system, all five seats in parliament go to the PAP.

Under list-PR, the PAP will get three seats and NSP two. In other words, seats in parliament are divvied up among the contesting parties in proportion to the votes cast. To decide which candidates get seats, the parties rank their candidates beforehand. So say for example, the PAP ranks Goh Chok Tong #1, and Tin Pei Ling #5, while the NSP ranks Nicole Seah #1, and Abdul Salim #5.

Because PAP gets three seats, Goh and PAP candidates #2 and #3 become MPs. Correspondingly, Nicole Seah and NSP candidate #2 also win golden tickets. The lower-ranked candidates go back to whatever they were doing and try again in five years. If we had used this system, it is very unlikely that we would be looking for a new Foreign Minister now.

Obviously this wouldn’t work in SMCs, for which we can try something like a single transferable vote system (STV) which basically means you rank your preferences as you vote. So if your first choice candidate doesn’t get a majority, your second choice will be counted. But because Singapore’s SMC contests rarely involve more than two candidates, this system would yield no difference in results. It will also not solve the vote-wastage problem in a two-way fight. STV works better when there are multiple evenly matched parties, which, if it’s not already clear, is not the case in Singapore.

Maybe all wards in Singapore should be GRCs.

I like to end with some optimism. As I was writing this, I chanced upon this NYTimes article where Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong acknowledges flaws in our election system and promises to ‘put right what is wrong.’ Hopefully, it’s not just talk.

Posted in Opinion | Leave a comment