The Legal Janitor

Disclaimer: I am writing this post off the top of my head, and therefore, if I have failed to acknowledge here any intellectual debt that I owe to any legal philosophers, I apologise in advance.

A recent op-ed by Andy Ho published in the Straits Times attempts to address the issue of human rights in Singapore’s context. He argues that human rights advocates are being simplistic for couching their discourse only in binary terms. According to him, such a ‘black-and-white’ treatment ‘glosses over the political, economic and social considerations that shape each country’s policies’. He then cites an essay by Dr Cheng Tai Heng, and Prof Michael Hor, in support of his conclusion.

I don’t agree with Andy Ho and I outline my reasons below.
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But unfortunately, the SDP is. With ‘champions’ like these, democracy needs no enemies.

The ‘podcast’ starts off with a rant against the PAP, using the same old accusations and assertions that attempts to stir up anger and hate. The really funny part was when CSJ immediately went on to claim that they would offer alternative policy proposals, rather than just criticising the PAP, because ‘they believe in being constructive’.
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Yawning Bread wrote about human rights and political apathy the other day, and there’s a little something there which I’d like to comment on.

He quotes Straits Times of 27 June 2005:

The rising index bears watching as a harbinger of future social unrest, experts warn. When Mao and the communist party started the peasant revolution in the 1920s, the Gini index was at 0.51.

I think the Straits Times got it wrong as a matter of reasoning. The Gini index is a fundamentally useless measure of standard of living. The question that we must ask ourselves, is not whether X is paid more than Y, but rather, are X and Y better off than they were when comparing between now and before.
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