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Alexander Dumas's avatar

It wasn't only the idiotic Trump's idiotic tariffs that rode the Singapore elections and brought victory to the PAP. To attrubute the win to almost exclusively to tariffs and uncertainty is naive, shallow and a fallacy. Lawrence Wong, newly installed by ex-PM Lee Hsien Loong as his successor, used the tariffs to inject fear into voters' heads and hearts about the uncertainty for the economy going forward and who was best to manage tge tariffs fallout. This ambit also played well for Canada's Mark Carney and Australia's Anthony Albanese. But tariffs is only part of the story. Brewing beneath Singapore' perennial superficial political surfacewere a host of insidious domestic factors that directly confronted and even confounded the fascist one-party PAP state. Thankfully for Wong, Trump and his odious stupidity came to his rescue. It's laughable you think Wong's speech on the threat of tariffs to Singapore's livelihood was "sombre". That''s complete nonsense. It was political theater designed to instill fear amongst sterile, zombified Singaporeans -- while whacking the WP opposition -- into believing only the autocratic Chinese PAP could save the zombie nation from the deranged Trump. And tgey swallowed Wong'' Chinese soap opera hook, line and sinker in a totally false show of nationalism. Since Covid, the PAP had been struggling to produce credible solutions not only to a slowing economy but also to the plethora of socioeconomic problems, as well as the overrated Singapore bureaucracy that, for instance, tried to belatedly deal with what the fascist a

PAP regime tried to cover-up -- the specter of corruption with its ministerial ranks, cronyism, even nepotism, and the overseas Chinese family offices saga that caught out the bureaucracy. The Singapore "dragon"/"miracle" economy is possibly passe or on its knees. It cannot engineer high growth rates anymore, and certainly can no longer boast its old and longsuffering export-oriented economy (any more than can China). Journalism in Asia is so awfully pathetic these last few decades, with editors and media owners sucking up to or unwilling to rile up cretinous politicians, including those in Sibgapore who use their aucratic rule by law and pliant judiciary to cage them. Singapore's media, especially the state -controlled and censored SPH Group, is not only woeful but a complete disgrace to the idea of journalism and analysis. Have the courage to be truthful and tell it like it is, for Pete's sake.

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