I thought I would just write a short post on moral courage, which seems to be sorely lacking in society today. I feel that Moral Courage is the courage to speak up against people in powers if you feel that what they did is not right. I specifically choose the words “not right” instead of “wrong”, as “wrong” seems too strong a word. Chances are there are times where the person might have done something which is not desirable, and can be improved, so I termed it “not right”.

What I think is this: Our lack of moral courage stems from how we are educated as kids, and our lack of basic responsibility that comes with maturity. If we were never encouraged to speak up in class, we wouldn’t speak up to raise suggestions to improve current processes, flawed as they may be; or just slightly cracked.

Case in point: We always do reviews on what happened in the day; how we can improve certain processes or dynamics. At these times, it is great to have participants speak out on what they thought were the bad points and how they thought it could be improved.

I once did raise a point up during such reviews, and the situation was this: As trainees, we have to maintain sufficient hydration to reduce the chances of heat exhaustion during physical training like runs and exercises. As such activities are usually conducted in the morning, we are always required to drink water the night before (at least 500ml). What usually happens is that sometimes you drink right before you sleep, and hence you have to wake up and go to the toilet; which is rather detrimental to good rest. Otherwise you can choose to hold it there, but then you wouldn’t be resting rather peacefully would you?

Would a suggestion of drinking water some time before we sleep be a good enough solution? I think it would, and it would definitely help everyone. If it was a valid safety regulation in your company, would you have raised the issue?

Or perhaps the question is: Would you raise the issue knowing that you might get condemned by peers whose mentality and maturity are different from yours? Considering how people who are usually more vocal gets sidelined from the “group”, I think most people are contented with just not speaking up.

What if the situation was more severe? If we couldn’t find the courage to speak up for lesser events, would we have the courage to speak up for other situations? Or would we just encourage the “suck it” mentality?

As future leaders in our respective fields, companies, and what have you, it is always important or rather imperative to have this reflection process within ourselves and within our groups, and to encourage people to speak up, so as to constantly generate new ideas and improve company processes.

I would just like to end off with something I thought:

It does not matter what position you hold in an organization, be it a junior staff or just a cadet, but the behaviour and actions that you carry defines you and defines how valuable you are to your organization. Like a small ant being able to carry 50 times its weight, a small staff can carry an idea improving productivity and morale that grows exponentially.

But aren’t we being a little over sensitive at times? I’m talking about the latest feminism hoo-har on the internet, where London Weight Management showed this video where it seems to suggest that fatter woman won’t make it in society.

I agree its demeaning, and LWM should just be shot for this advertisement, but woah let’s just be less hostile towards it yeah? Just to bring up food for thought, I wondered, isn’t it demeaning for the men as well?

I mean, hey it portrays men as such figure-only people that we judge people’s working abilities by their size, and stop loving our women because she isn’t that stick thin like other women. Hey, we are not that shallow alright? If you are going to open your mouth to say “isn’t it true that looks play a factor?”, just shut it cause women do it to us men too.

I’m not going to degrade this post into a post where I belittle feminism or try to stroke for men-ism, but let’s just think of it this way: when we feel outraged, I think its better not to view every single thing as sexist. There’s always the other side of the coin.

Just the other day our former minister mentor asked a female phd student if she has a boyfriend and all hell broke loose. Is it sexist to ask that? Sometimes I wonder, had it been a male phd student, would he have been asked whether he had a girlfriend? Would Mr Lee similarly advise him to get one? With the situation being dire, that we are marrying later or not at all, and not producing babies fast enough, perhaps they are trying to get everyone to be more focused on building families. So why is it sexist?

Then AWARE said something which puzzled me. That the fact we have less paternity leave signifies that society views women as the primary caregiver, and hence the feminist women is still relevant in fighting for such rights?

I wouldn’t mind having more paternity leave, but how is that a strong reason to show we are a sexist society? From the friends around me, I discovered that most of us don’t bother whether our future wives know how to cook, or whether they are going to work or stay home. Society seems to be liberal enough that we condition ourselves to care for our kids as well.

Or is AWARE not aware of why maternity leave need to be that long? I am not a women, neither have my close friends given birth recently, but isn’t giving birth a tiring process where the female needs more rest to recover in comfort? The men, on the other hand, only needs to accompany their wives in the delivery segment; they can very well be fit to even take IPPT the next day!

Alright so my point is this: the feminism movement needs to tone down a little and fight for areas where women are indeed being looked down upon or not taken care enough. It should not be a movement to push women’s rights beyond men, not that I think it is doing so at the moment. But to tell the truth, sometimes we men feel disadvantaged. With the woman’s charter and all, we feel: if the woman wants to be equal, then be equal. Not that “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”, if you get what George’s saying.

The Online Citizen’s FB page posted a short note about female Chinese Nationals coming to steal Singaporean men, claiming that they don’t have family and friends to care about hence are able to dedicate their time more to the Singaporean men. Or that they dress to kill while Singaporean girls dress casually in slippers and t-shirts and what have you.

I thought the discussion that followed was a little funny. There were many stereotypes and stuff. There were xenophobic discussions on how “Foreign Trash” were coming to steal our husbands and stuff like that. Another comment talked about how Singaporean men think with their small heads and not with their big heads hence they end up with China wives. Or how China wives contributed to the divorce rates. Or how the Singapore government should do something. I was thinking, how?

And then someone made a very good point. We are also losing Singaporean females to the ang moh expats. Does it make any sense if we substitute China women with ang mohs in the above paragraph? Somehow the situation seemed to change. So women think with their small heads too even though they “don’t have” one literally?

The thing is that we cannot blame anyone for “stealing” our husbands or wives or stuff like that. In the first place, there are unions of citizens from different countries that work out pretty well, and did not begin due to one of them being a third party. It is just that we have grown to hate foreigners due to our sudden foreign flood gate policy, such that we would seek solace in pointing fingers rather than deciding.

Besides, if the guy leaves you for a China woman when you two are already married, then that guy is a jerk anyway. Hence he doesn’t deserve you. Not all Singaporean men just lust after women. Many of us have emotional needs too that lust cannot fulfill. And many of us are nice people who are very different; men who don’t mind that you have friends and family; men that know marrying you means marrying an entire family.

It’s just whether you meet the right guy at the right time.

I read this in the papers today. I think it gives you something to think about. Our laws are not as “just” as we think they are. There are plenty of unjust cases where we cannot be truly sure of a person’s guilt.

A case for discussion on death penalty
I REFER to last Wednesday’s article (‘Man accused of murder freed after 6 years in jail’).

This case supports Maruah’s position that various aspects of the death penalty in Singapore contravene international human rights norms.

The principle of proportionality requires that the death penalty applies only to the most serious cases.

Singapore also allows someone to be convicted based solely on his confession to the police. It is difficult, if not impossible, for an accused person to prove that his confession was involuntary.

Maruah calls for the death penalty to be unavailable in cases where the conviction was based only on a confession, as well as especially rigorous supervision of police interrogations in potential capital cases, such as having video-recording of interrogations.

More importantly, Ismil Kadar reportedly has an IQ of 73. Maruah is troubled by the apparent lack of safeguards when interrogating persons with mental disabilities, and asks the police to clarify the protections that are in place.

More fundamentally, Maruah believes that it would never be just to hang a person with mental disabilities based solely on his confession.

The recent introduction of criminal discovery, 13 years after the Law Society first called for it in 1998, has addressed the historical disadvantages to the defence in the criminal justice system. But we have to wonder if there had been potential miscarriages of justice before this.

The irreversibility of the death penalty demands the most rigorous of processes before someone is convicted and hanged.

Maruah believes that Singapore needs to have an open and informed debate on whether the death penalty has a place here, and if so, in what shape and form.

Maruah also calls for a moratorium on executions in the interim. Cases like Ismil’s demand that we do this, to ensure that Singapore never comes close to hanging an innocent person.

Peter Low
Death Penalty Committee
Maruah

There has been talk about the casinos ever since the Presidential Elections started heating up. This time, TOC’s post on Tan Kin Lian stirred up emotions again, and the arguments about casinos have not changed nor matured over the years. One would have thought opponents of the casino system be more hardworking at collating arguments and restructuring them to withstand the test of time.

This is what stirred the debate:

Tan Kin Lian: it is not the job of the government to stop Singaporeans from gambling at casinos.

As usual, many opinions were placed forward. Yes, even opinions that has nothing to do with the argument at hand, just mildly related to the topic of casinos.

In this post, I would just briefly touch on some of the arguments I have seen, and provide my opinion on those arguments.

1. Casino is a social ill
Opponents of the Casino system often talk about the social ills that come along with the casinos being built in Singapore. Supporters would then quote that there were already gambling ships available etc, but in my opinion, building one casino does increase the accessibility, thereby making it easier for some people to gamble; especially those that do not like to gamble aboard ships. However this then begs the question: “Does the benefits of the casino system outweigh the social ills?”. Opponents could possibly argue that “Any form of benefit is irrelevant as the social ills are a high cost to pay”, which does make sense. However a new question is this: “If we can come up with policies that eradicate or minimize such social ills, doesn’t that allow us to reap the benefits of the casino system without the harmful parts”? However at this moment nobody seemed to be arguing strongly that the current policies are inadequate, more seem to just be contented at arguing generally about the social ills.

Besides, midway throughout the discussion I note that someone mentioned how casinos have been around Macau for a long time, yet the citizens are not affected by it. I am not too sure how accurate this information is, but if it is true, we could strive to emulate it, thereby weakening the stance of the opponents.

2. Casino brings in jobs for foreigners, not Singaporeans
Now, unless we know people working inside, or have been into the casinos, most of us would not know anything about the situation, yet a huge proportion of people freely go around claiming that the casino only brings in jobs for foreigners. If the postings of a person in the discussion is to be believed (as she worked there), the casino does provide jobs for the people in the lower rungs (dealers etc) but the jobs in the higher rungs are left to the foreigners (managers etc). I won’t be too surprised that the foreigners occupy the managerial positions. I guess a study has to be done by the government to determine if the position was filled by a foreigner because no one else could occupy it. Since the casinos are a new addition to the Singapore landscape, it is not surprising that most of us do not have any relevant skills or experiences in managing casino operations. Hence I wouldn’t be surprised if the high management were all occupied by foreigners, as long as they had the relevant experiences.

3. Casinos are built using taxpayers money etc etc and hence it makes no sense to levy the $100 on citizens
To tell the truth, I always felt that the income tax in Singapore is quite low as compared to other countries like the United States. Calculating my income tax based on my starting salary always makes me feel happy that I am not contributing much money. The point is, most of us pay less tax than that in the form of income tax, and the amount of money is not enough to pay for basic services like policing, subsidizing of education for our children etc. Then I realize that since we pay so little tax, our tax is probably not used to built the casinos. These tax that are so abundant are from the ultra rich who earned a lot of money, or are buying properties and what have you not such that they pay much more tax than the rest of us. I know this point of view is not solid, but it just gives me this sense of perspective. Hence I won’t argue against casinos by riding on the taxpayer’s monies argument unless I pay so much tax that I feel gross injustice at the levy. Chances are, if I pay so much tax, $100 is negligible anyway.

Over the years we have been schooled in proper English. Our standards were not perfect, mind you, but comparatively with ah beng speak, it is miles and miles ahead. When we speak with friends, no matter how broken the language might be, it does not cross the minimum boundary. That is to say, it does not transcend into ah beng speak.

But somehow there is this weirdly effective and calming effect when a speaker speaks in that manner. The tone, the accent and the words he chose, carefully modeled like someone who didn’t study hard enough, the ah beng. Yet it is all so familiar in our hearts as army speak. Our regular sergeants are not all made up of poly or jc students, and the older csms do not have much schooling. Somehow speech has evolved there. The English might not be entirely bad, just the manner of how things are phrased, you know it’s army style.

Recently in the general elections, our former chief of army talked in this manner when he talked about Lan Fang republic and also the new favourite word in the blogosphere, ki chiew. It does not sound like what a scholar or an army chief would say. I have no doubt that he is able to speak perfectly well in proper English, but he chose to speak in that way for a reason. In some weird way or another, it resonates with the crowd he is speaking with.

It is as if breaking a sentence into smaller bite sizes portions helps in understanding. We all do that from time to time, especially when talking in army. It’s like an NS tradition, something that cannot be eradicated? Perhaps that is the reason why such speak still stirs our heart from time to time. It feels as if you are included in the excitement when you hear such a speech.

Or perhaps, it is just a sense of familiarity of such talk. That you do not need to be highly educated in any language to understand. It’s as if you can be connected to the speaker. I don’t know why.

Have you ever seen places where people chope seats in hawker centers with their tissue paper? Chope, for the uninitiated, is to reserve; in this case, tissue packs have been used to reserve seats in food centers. Typically we don’t see this happening often, just occasionally, unless you happen to be at Raffles City where everyone has only one hour to have lunch and you can’t have much variation in meal times. It’s always about 11-2pm. And there’s always so many people.

I encountered this debate once in the forums, and it is also discussed on newspapers. However I have always wondered, what is so rude about using tissue papers to reserve a seat? For busy people, they cannot afford to waste time. For example, if a group of 4 needs to settle lunch, one of them would have to sit down to reserve the seats. After one of the 3 finished buying his food, then the last guy can go and queue. If you have seen the queues in Golden Shoe in Raffles Place, you do know that some queues are insanely long. Time is wasted, and this doesn’t benefit those who wait.

Those who are waiting want a seat faster. Hence, the faster the team of 4 is able to finish their meal, the faster the turn-around time for empty tables. This actually benefits people who are waiting isn’t it? Of course there are rude people who just refuse to budge, but then if they are such rude people, whether they use tissues or not doesn’t really change the ending doesn’t it?

So sometimes I wonder, what is so rude about tissue paper? Is it the confusion that arises since a tissue paper cannot talk? Or is it just plainly rude to reserve seats?

If it is the former, then it is something about being considerate enough to consider that it has in fact become a way of life for most of us busy Singaporeans, and just accept it. If we throw away those tissue papers, then are we not just as rude and inconsiderate? Unless those tissue papers are left by irritating people who are not coming back, then I would be upset and angry. However such instances are few and far between.

If it is the latter, then no matter whether we leave a human being there or not doesn’t really matter. Even if you open your mouth to ask, the seats are still reserved; does that truly make you happier?

So far I can only think of one more irritating aspect of using tissue packs. That is, in the case of 2 people at a four seater. We might end up thinking that there’s 4 people, and hence waste the 2 seats. Which is a pity, unless someone can come up with a better method.

But then again, if we use bags to chope seats, does it make it any better? Is there any difference? What do you think?

The Singapore elections has officially concluded. The only fun part of it was in guessing the final results with my friends, and eventually winning the prediction with no errors at all. It isn’t difficult to predict the result if you just think of it as a credibility issue; which parties are credible enough for the public to have confidence in choosing it over the incumbent.

Lately I have gotten really sick of all the election news around social media. I mean, it has concluded, and the fight should have stopped already. Never mind that people haven’t learnt to respect other people’s political views.

There’s a lot of little movements here and there, and it is really irritating to see people signing petitions being upset that the police came in to intervene based on the crowd present during the signing of the petition.

First off, the petition is an act against the very democracy those people claim to be protecting. On polling day, everyone has one vote and everyone has decided whether they want to vote for the incumbent, the opponent or void their vote. No matter what reason you have, unless there is fraud, the winner has been democratically chosen. Signing a petition is like not recognizing the right of everyone else to have their own decision. It’s like, my favourite politician just lost, let’s have a petition so everyone can re-vote again. Childish and shows a lack of respect for people who think the opponent is better.

What is the point of a petition anyway. Assuming a by-election is called, using the same two politicians, will the results change. If we assume that everyone voted according to their wishes, the results will not change. If the results change, then it begs the question: Which stupid idiot suddenly changed his mind and why. Why didn’t he/she respect her vote and give it to the person he or she thinks can best serves her interest?

Even if people do change their vote, how does anyone know who will win? Even if the people who voided the vote had to choose, would they choose the politician you are supporting or would they choose the winner instead? In that way, the result would still be the same, but with a bigger gap.

If you argue that, “There are people who choose to vote for the opponent thinking that most people would vote for the incumbent”, and since now they know the result, they would change it, then it can be applied to any place and we might as well re-poll the whole country. Some people would definitely argue that a by-election should be done due to “the small difference in votes”. Then I might ask, how do we know how many people would change their votes and truly vote for who they wanted? How do we know that the number is not more than the difference? What if this number is more than 10% of the electorate? That way, even Aljunied deserves a by-election.

Besides, I’m confused. If you know how people voted, and then a by-election is called and hence you change your votes, is that democratic? It’s like voting with prior knowledge of how other people vote.

I’m also tired of the petition to remove Tin Pei Ling and put George Yeo instead. Do any of those people think before supporting such a petition? The movement against Tin Pei Ling is because people feel she is not good enough to be an MP, and hence when she won due to the GRC effect, it is undemocratic. I agree the GRC is not a good system, but putting George Yeo in does not make it more democratic. In fact it is an abuse of the system when you can swop MPs like that based on a petition of the few. It is also a mark of disrespect to those who voted for her. What if there were people who genuinely liked her? Just because your friends and family doesn’t share those views doesn’t mean no one has those views.

This election has also made me see how people are swayed by the media. The media is a crucial tool. It can propel a politician to fame and it can destroy him. Granted that ST isn’t exactly the best source of political news, but blindly following The Online Citizen or Temasek Review isn’t going to help. If I would want to rank the three together, I would put Temasek Review at the bottom. TOC and TR are openly anti-establishment, only writing articles for opposition and against the incumbent, and TR doesn’t have an editorial direction since anyone can contribute an article. In such a way the accuracy and integrity of the site is always in question.

Until now, we have people pointing fingers at each other, blaming the others for returning the government in power. The country is still divided along political views and I am not sure if that is the best for us.

What I think is this: If you are genuinely concerned with the GRC system and the gerrymandering that you are convinced that it exists, then lend your hand to the opposition so they can be stronger in the next election. An election is a logistics battle, so even if you are unfamiliar with national issues, you can help in putting up posters, giving out pamphlets etc. If you are smart and trained in an important field like economics and finance, then help to draft out policies and scrutinize existing policies. If you are smart and you have ideas, think of how to bring GRC down instead of claiming it to be unfair. The GRC system will remain until someone comes up with a method to have single seats and still solve the problem of minority representation. Personally I thought the government could top up the representation by adding NMP seats to prominent leaders of each community. Such suggestions do more good than just mere complaining that the ground isn’t level.

But please, the elections are over. Let us respect the results and respect our fellow Singaporeans who voted. We each have a vote, and our vote is equal. Our vote does not weigh more than the other person on the street. There is no such thing as four legs good, two legs better. Especially when you rail against unfair practices but practice such unfairness yourself. So please, let’s just move on.

The past few days had been an exciting time for me. Watching videos of rallies and reading TOC’s live news feed on Facebook had been an interesting experience. Many issues had been raised about the failure of the incumbent, but few suggestions had been made; where suggestions were given, I think we should applaud them and then think it through to see if we can improve on them.

One of the suggestions more close to my heart is about the education sector. The members from the SDP suggested to halve the class size so we can engage students better. I agree, but somehow I seemed to have heard that from the PAP some years before. I vaguely remember it being one of PAP’s points, together with the push to have a full graduates only teaching force. So this idea isn’t original is it? I might be wrong as memory fails me sometimes; maybe I thought of the idea myself?

The idea is great but what I want to know is how to do it. I would be reading their manifesto when I have the time to, but I think rallies are a good chance to explain ideas. Rallies are like marketing. It’s time to market your ideas. At this moment, I see a very nice looking Ayase Haruka holding the SK II bottle. Time to explain why SK II is the best.

In my opinion the situation is tricky and it is simplistic to suggest the halving of class sizes without going deep to find the problems plaguing the industry. On the top of my mind, I can already identify a few problems. Inability to attract teachers to join the education sector would render the proposal moot. This arises from the inability to provide excellent working conditions with factors like long hours, high workload, ccas and external events to manage like school’s anniversary dinner etc.

The pay of a teacher is quite desirable actually in terms of it’s numbers. A 2nd lower class honors graduate can command about $3,400 per month. That’s respectable as opposed to the average of $3000 for a typical engineering graduate. But after considering the workload and time spent on the job, the money doesn’t seem so attractive after all.

It is easy to talk ideas without going in depth. Nobody in Singapore has managed to solve this problem properly, including the incumbent.

What we need is passionate people to serve in the civil service. For this blog entry I would just talk generally for the education and defense sector. Passionate people who want to make a difference. People willing to work from ground up, identifying problems and solving them.

The sad thing is that such people are few and far between. The culture of Singapore is such that the civil service is viewed as inefficient and ineffective, never mind that we are ranked highly. People see no future in the civil service, that the private sector is efficient and has better prospects. How often have we heard people saying that civil servants are people who cannot survive in the private sector. This stereotype has propagated from parents to children and it became a reality for them, even though in actual fact it is not. As such talents end up joining the private sector, and people who are left behind take up civil service jobs as the last resort. If this is allowed to continue, our education and defense industry will not improve.

In reality are those bias raised above valid. Is it true that civil servants cannot survive in the private sector? Perhaps but it is something made true after many years of bias. If you have the bottom of each cohort joining the civil service, how can you expect them to win you if they joined the private sector? The reality is this: ineffective and inefficient people are everywhere in each company whether private or public. Whether it is from the civil service or not. Prospect also depends on whether your boss values you. Does it mean that private sector bosses are more well trained in the art of managing employees? No.

So to the many passionate people out there trying to make a difference in politics: if you are young, why not take the civil service route and change things from within. Gain some experience working in the civil service and you may gain an additional perspective in how you view and perceive policies. We do need passionate and talented people to change everything, before we can successfully hire more quality teachers and halve the class size. Or trim the fat cats in SAF, which is what I read in a comment on Facebook.

Solve these problems first, before talking about crazy ideas like free education. You already need double the budget to hire double the teachers and build double the schools existing infrastructure. Where would you get money for free education? Food for thought.

In the recent few weeks, there has been much furore over the words published in MM Lee’s new book, Hard Truths. One of the more hotly discussed topics is on the issue of race. In the book, MM Lee says that Muslims are distinct and separate, and that they should be less strict so as to bring about more interaction amongst the races. MM Lee was referring to issues like having to change one religion for an inter-racial marriage. The issue on race then branched into many different paths, with people deciding to sue MM Lee for “seditious” comments in his book, which, in my opinion, doesn’t seem too seditious. But back to the main point, one of the issues recently discussed was about scholarships awarded by the Public Service Commission.

The discussion was triggered when The Online Citizen posted a link to this article. In it, figures were shown that the minorities are under-represented. The article gives valid reasons for why this may be the case. But I do not wish to talk about the article, but on the responses generated on the internet.

1. The issue of Meritocracy
Meritocracy, in my own opinion, is about awarding the scholarship to the more deserving party, according to guidelines set by the commission. Some netizens claim that the system is not meritocratic, that it is similar to the Chinese method of selecting Imperial Scholars, making references to how it is insufficient to only get 4As; that one has to have good CCA records, good S papers etc. But I fail to see how all these isn’t meritocratic. Ultimately each and every person is awarded the scholarship based on their own merit, and not because of external reasons.

2. Fulfilling a racial quota
Is not meritocratic, in my opinion. It just means that the PSC would have to let in someone less deserving because of a certain race. For example, a Chinese student who is judged to be more deserving than a Malay student would be denied the opportunity because we have to meet the racial quota. This isn’t meritocratic. Similarly, if in a particular year, the Malay students have done exceptionally well, and because there are only 10 slots for Malays, the 11th Malay might not get the scholarship even though he has done better than the Chinese or Indian counterpart. Imposing a racial quota simply does not make it meritocratic anymore.

3. Give everyone who get 4As a scholarship
Does not make economic sense. I remembered writing a post titled “When perfect scores at A level is just average” in 2008. The feeling of getting a 4As in A level does not equate to much happiness or satisfaction when you find that about 1/4 of your cohort has obtained the same grades. In my year, there were about 700+ 4As students in HC and RJ combined, about 200 from NJ, and 200 from VJ and the same for TJ. That adds up to more than a thousand 4As students, and it is stupid to award every 4A student a scholarship. Are there even that many jobs in the public sector? When everyone is a scholar, there isn’t much prospects to talk about, making the worth of the scholarship drop. This is precisely the reason why people then look at S papers, or H3 in today’s terms, as well as CCA records and teacher’s opinion on the student’s character. In addition, the interview process further tests your thought process on policy making, and sieves out those who are smoking through and those who have given much thought to the system.

4. Interview Process may be abused
And that is true. There is always a potential for abuse since we are talking about human judgement according to the words people say. There is also a potential for abuse such that the interview process MIGHT be structured to disadvantage minorities. However, to question the interview process, one has to show that there isn’t any confidence in the fairness of the system. Showing that the numbers are not proportionate to the racial proportion in Singapore does not show that the interview process is biased. Had there be a bias against minorities, the bias could also be applied before the interview. Why waste time interviewing candidates in the first place?

5. The main issue lies not in the scholarships but..
In the universities, JCs and down below. The root of the problem is not about scholarships but about whether there is even a proportionate pool of minorities to select PSC scholars from. Any university student would be able to give a rough estimate, and that the minorities are not even represented properly in university. If the pool is smaller, the number of potential scholarship applicants would have dropped. It is therefore a no-brainer that the scholarship holders are disproportionate. In addition, scholarship is only awarded if you have a school that accepts you. For foreign universities, you have to be admitted into a good university before the scholarship would be awarded. There might be racial bias at the foreign universities end, or it could be that people do not get admitted based on meritocracy issues. If one cannot get into a local university, then the chances of getting into a top foreign university is significantly reduced, is it not?

Hence before even talking about whether the scholarship system is fair or not, maybe as a nation it is of greater importance to see how we improve the education level and social standing of the minorities. Once we have a sizable representation in our local universities, we could then relook at the figures again. Only then can we be skeptical about the scholarship process, or should I say that we can say with greater confidence that the scholarship awarding process might need fine-tuning or reforms.