The Savings and Employee Retirement Plan, or Saver scheme, for commissioned SAF officers was launched with much fanfare in 1998. Two years later, the PREMIUM scheme, for warrant officers was launched. Last month, it was announced that the career schemes for officers and WOs will be 'enhanced' and that a third career track, the Military Domain Experts Scheme (MDES), was being created.

This post recalls some of Saver's backstory and how that might illuminate possible issues for EOCS, EWOCS and MDES. A caveat: as they like to say, especially regarding security and military affairs, those who know don't speak and those who speak don't know so readers are forewarned not to take the following as definitive. Corrections and clarifications are, as always, most welcome.

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The exit of Ho Ching can be seen as the rebranding of Temasek as a Government-Linked Company to a domestic crowd, and as a Sovereign Wealth Fund to an international audience. Ho Ching's send off is overall a nicely timed publicity move to restore some hope in Temasek, especially when its high profile strategic investments in Wall Street have suffered considerable short term paper loses brought about by the subprime crisis.

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Almost a year and a half ago, I wrote about the everyday forms of resistance in Singapore on Singapore Angle. In recent months however, I began to take more interest in the other side of the coin, which is more troublesome to think and write about but perhaps far more intriguing - the issue of collaboration or participation in Singapore. This has been partly inspired by Dr. Timothy Brook's recent groundbreaking work on collaboration in China during World War II. Brook's book is both haunting and compelling. He challenges us to consider beyond the binary of collaboration and resistance to think about issues of appearances, costs, rivalry, and depth of state penetration that is associated with the disentangling of the binary. He hopes that one day, that could be a separation of the moralizing power of the rhetoric of collaboration from the scholars' professional investigation of the everyday forms of collaboration on the ground. In addition, he makes a more limited definition of collaboration and renders agency on both the state and the participants, instead of arguing along the thesis that everyone collaborates. Given this context, how do we think about everyday forms of collaboration in Singapore then?

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In times of crisis with people gravitating towards the government for assistance in domestic concerns, it is usually a good time for ruling parties (from UK to Singapore) to call for a general election. With recent happenings in Singapore, is it worth the effort of the ruling party of Singapore to call for a general election? In this article, we examine the progress made by the government and the factors that might be for or against their favour in calling for one in the coming year.

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Dr. Ong Chit Chung, a military historian and a member of parliament (MP) for the Group Representative Constituency (GRC) of Jurong, has passed away. His passing away is indeed a lost for Singapore. Not only did he take keen interests in the foreign and military affairs of Singapore as a backbencher, he also served faithfully in various committees in parliament. Dr. Ong was the chairperson of the estate committee. His various articles and books on the military history of Singapore llikewise deserve a wide readership among Singaporeans.

Yet Dr Ong's passing away triggers a related political question. Will there be a resulting by-election in Jurong GRC?

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