BREAKING: Flyers with Lee Bee Wah’s face printed on toilet bowl pasted at BBQ pit outside RC!!!   13882.1    We were tipped off by a Khatib resident that Lee Bee Wah will be attending a grassroots event on the morning of 24 May 2009 and as such we sent 2 field reporters there with the hope of meeting her and submitting our letter and petition. The event was a brisk walk cum free breakfast organized [...] BREAKING: wayangparty joined Lee Bee Wah in brisk walk at Nee Soon South!!! ER Lee Bee Wah has been missing in action for over a week since she made the remarks about ex-Table Tennis coach Liu Guodong’s speech in the media. Liu flew to Singapore in person to ask for clarifications, but Lee refused to meet him and send two STTA officials to con him to sign a [...] BREAKING: Shin Min kicked off SMEAR CAMPAIGN against Liu Guodong to rehabilitate Lee Bee Wah!!! As expected, the shameless state media has begun its smear campaign against Liu Guodong to justify Lee Bee Wah’s remarks that he lacked professionalism and integrity. Shin Ming daily published a full page article castigating Liu for almost causing the Singapore table tennis team to “break up” prior to the Beijing Olympics. Quoting from anonymous sources from [...] BREAKING: Siew Kum Hong made police report against astroturfers!! From The Informant Network Team The relentless attack on NMP Siew Kum Hong in the aftermath of the Aware EGM has culminated in an organized campaign to sabotage his re-application for a second term of NMP. A week ago, astroturfers flooded REACH portal with baseless, malicious and vicious comments about Siew in a desperate bid to smear [...] Online petition to remove Lee Bee Wah as STTA President For those of you who haven’t signed the petition, please click the link below: http://www.petitiononline.com/lbh/petition.html State media spinning tales to cover up for Home Team’s negligence in allowing Mas Selamat to swim across to Johor By Eugene Yeo with input from the Field Report Team The state media has been busy manufacturing myths to cover up for the gross negligence, ineptitude and incompetence of the Home Team with the revelation that Mas Selamat manage to make his escape by swimming across the Straits of Johor. We are made the laughing stock of the world [...] Teo Chee Hean to his khakis: please wayang abit to show some empathy and sensitivity to the lesser mortals By Eugene Yeo Poor Teo Chee Hean must be wishing he can relinquish his portfolio as the minister in charge of the civil service as soon as possible. Not a week passed without some outrageous faux pauses by his khakis hitting the headlines to make him see red in the face. “Civil servants should show understanding, empathy [...] LIVE from Suntec, AWARE EGM on 2 May 2009 LIVE from Suntec, AWARE EGM [Read the full coverage here] 9.30pm: The EGM has ended proper. Freelancers and associate bloggers, please email us your reports, reports and audio recordings latest by 2pm, 3 May 2009. 9.20pm: Constance Singam thanked everybody present for their support. There is joy and ebullience in the air. 9.16pm: Constance Singam asked the audience to [...] Another “wayang” by Thio? Parents’ appeal to Education Minister to express concern about CSE From The Informant Network Team We have received a tip-off that an online petition has been set up by a group of “concerned parents” to lobby the Education Minister to review AWARE’s CSE. It is not known if the originator, K F Khoo, is a member of COOS. Since AWARE is now led by a new exco which [...] BREAKING: Change in AWARE EGM venue Dear all, We just receive a tip-off from one of our informant that the AWARE EGM venue has been changed due to intense pressure from the new media after we exposed that the “Transformation Conference 2009″ co-host by COOS will be held at the Singapore EXPO too on the same day. The new venue is: Exhibition Hall 402 Suntec [...] EXPOSED: AWARE EGM venue moved to EXPO, next to “Transformation Conference 2009″ co-organized by COOS and 40 other Churches!!! From The Informant Network Team We have received tip-off from a COOS member that the church is mobilizing its members to attend the “Transformation Conference 2009” on 2 May 2009, 9am to 6pm at the Singapore EXPO, right next to where the AWARE EGM is held!! In a statement, Aware said it made the change because membership [...] BREAKING: MOE rebukes Dr Thio Su Mien’s claims about sexuality education in schools The Ministry of Education has issued an official statement on its website today in reply to recent comments and claims about AWARE’s Sexuality Education Programme in Schools. The sexual education programme started in 2007 and has reached about 12 secondary schools, run for small groups of students selected by their teachers to attend. To date 500 [...] The AWARE saga: Time for government to respond to its ramifications to draw a clear demarcation between secularism and religion By Fang Zhi Yuan Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, the Minister of Community, Youth and Sports had finally broken his silence on the AWARE fiasco. Speaking on the sidelines of his visit to Nee Soon South on 26 April 2009, he said: “There will always be some issues where you cannot get everybody to agree. We need to be able [...] Open letter to Environment Minister Yaacob Ibrahim to set up an independent panel to investigate the Geylang Serai market food poisoning Mr Yaacob Ibrahim Minister for Environment and Water Resources Republic of Singapore   Dear Sir, RE: REQUEST FOR INDEPENDENT PANEL TO INVESTIGATE GEYLANG SERAI MARKET FOOD POISONING   I am Eugene Yeo, Chief Editor of socio-political blog Wayang Party. I am writing to you to highlight to you in the apparent discrepancies in the accounts given by both NEA and the Geylang Serai [...] Regressive Public Order Act serves more of a political than security purpose By Eugene Yeo The new Public Order Act passed recently in Parliament is a regressive law put in place by the PAP to serve their own petty partisan interest rather than to maintain public order and security as claimed. (read article here) The Act will give police officers new powers to issue pre-emptive “move-on” orders, which will be in written [...] Are we paying too much for too little accountability? By Eugene Yeo The recent Geylang Serai food poisoning has shown once again the word “accountability” does not exist in the dictionary of the PAP. In spite of glaring oversights and lapses on the part of NEA and the management committee of the market, none of them have been taken to task as of yet. Predictably, the brunt [...] Naive to expect IRs to give priority to Singaporeans in job applications By Jeremy Koh, Guest Columnist I refer to the letter written by Tan Shao Ken entitled “IR jobs: Are Singaporeans being given priority?” (read letter here) Mr Tan wrote that Singaporeans must have priority and right of refusal and the Government and the IRs must work to ensure that Singaporeans who are qualified and want a job [...] 4 month delay in food grading label & 61 rats at Geylang Serai market: Has NEA been complacent? By Fang Zhi Yuan and Eugene Yeo According to the NEA website here, it is the “leading public organization responsible for improving and sustaining a clean and green environment in Singapore.” Two of its stated missions are: 1. Public hygiene and cleanliness: Conducts regular checks on food establishments, cooling towers, swimming pools, and public toilets to ensure a [...] The Thai and Perak Constitutional crises: the problem does not lie in democracy, but in politicians who do not believe in democracy By Fang Zhi Yuan and Lim Siow Kuan The recent constitutional crises in Thailand and the Malaysian state of Perak have been given extensive coverage by the state media in a lame attempt to highlight the pitfalls of democracy. The papers were splashed with photos of the Thai “red shirts” confronting the police and of the scuffle [...] YPAP needs to use TOC as a platform to project its influence in cyberspace By Eugene Yeo It appears that the YPAP has finally realized the failure of its obsolete cyber-strategy so far to utilize the New Media to reach out to netizens and is desperate to make up for lost ground and time. According to a TODAY report,  the YPAP is set to launch an offensive in the weeks ahead, with a [...] Hong Kong Civil service reveals pay scales of ALL its administrative officers By Eugene Yeo It has been nearly a month since rumors about the 8 months bonuses received by two Northwest CDC staff first erupted on the internet and we still do not know the truth. One would expect the Mayor of Northwest CDC, who is the overall in charge of its staff to know the answer. Unfortunately, [...] An appeal to family and friends of David Widjaja to step forward It has been a month since the unfortunate suicide of NTU EEE student David Widjaja and we have yet to receive an official statement either from NTU or the police regarding the cause of his death. The autopsy results, which should have been finalized by now, remains a mystery. The father of David Widjaja has recently lodged [...] Family of Dr Allan Ooi wants MINDEF to conduct an independent inquiry to investigate circumstances leading to his suicide By Eugene Yeo Finally after nearly a month of silence, the family of the late Dr Allan Ooi had expressed in explicit terms what they really want: to pursue the case to find out what exactly happened. In a letter sent to the media, the family had requested for an inquiry by an independent panel to address [...] Cabinet “reshuffle”: Is it for self-renewal or self-preservation? Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has described his recent Cabinet reshuffle as another step in the long process of self-renewal. (read article here) Mr Lee added that there is no change in the total number of office holders in this reshuffle and he is keeping some of the older ministers to help out so that [...] Say No to Senior Minister/Minister Mentor - Gerontocracy in disguise By Lee Chong Meng, Guest Columnist First, there was one. Then, there were two. Now, we have three. Sooner or later, the number of senior ministers and minister mentors will catch up with the junior ministers, judging by the increasing lifespan of Singaporeans. In companies, some CEOs retire to be Chairman of the Board. Some still collect [...] Bloated cabinet and rank inflation bear uncanny similarities to the Myanmar military junta When Burmese Prime Minister General Thein Sein called on his Singapore counterpart last week, we can be sure they did not merely discuss about the name of the orchid our nation has so kindly bestowed on him (we hope that orchid has not wilted yet by the stench of its new name). A few days later, [...] Introduction to Self-censorship: Singapore’s shame By Dr James Gomez, Visiting Scholar, Department of Political Science, Law Faculty, Keio University Even though a variety of global incidents such as the 1997 Asian economic crisis, the 2001 September 11 incident, SARS, the global financial meltdown of 2008 have been touted at varies times as catalysts for political change in the region, the wave of [...] Reasons behind site shutdown Dear readers, Our web hosting company has replied to us. They have completed the necessary investigations. The cause of our site shutdown yesterday has nothing to do with the server or traffic. The possibility of a temporary blockade by ISPs, external sabotage or a combination of both cannot be excluded. The crash may be timed to prevent us from [...] Server of wayangparty.com restarted Dear readers, Our site was down for 8 hours under mysterious circumstances and we only manage to get our web hosting company to restart the server now. We are terribly sorry for the inconvenience caused. According to them, there is NOTHING WRONG with the server. It was not shut down due to heavy traffic either. We are hosted [...] Latest update on site problems Dear readers, Our web hosting company has not got back to us yet. This is most unbelievable as we usually get our queries answered within 2 hours. Our site is hosted under a Virtual Private Server (VPS). The traffic is not particularly heavy today. There is no reason why it is shut down. If it is shut down for [...]