TR EMERITUS

Recently, Viswa Sadasivam, Chief Editor of Strategic Moves, interviewed Bertha Henson on 'Inconvenient Questions'. The topic covered was "Politics In Singapore - What Needs To Change?". Bertha of course used to be a journalist from Singapore Press Holdings for 26 years. Amongst other endeavours, she is currently a lecturer at NUS.

I am not professing Bertha a polymath but her decades pounding the grounds as a journalist gives her street credibility. That much can be said of her views being a closer representative of the general public then ministers' who are fed biased views from interest groups like grass roots organisations and who listen to the science of statistics from online surveys culled from professional online respondents who are people trying to make a buck or two answering some questions with disinterest.

Everyone should have an interest in current affairs. Our participation do make a difference. The best illustration is the SimplyGo fiasco, which surprisingly, and to the credit of the government, notwithstanding their mistakes in product specification, they heeded the public's call to address the system's weaknesses that were brought to light.

It is heartening to see the 'Inconvenient Questions' podcast attracted 63,000 views and 300+ comments. The show of interest is healthy. What I am rather miffed is easily 40% of comments went ad hominem on either the interviewer or interviewee. They discussed people instead of issues. Actually, I think Viswa did remarkably well as interviewer to hem the discussion within topic, occasionally asserting his own views, but just not too much. Bertha, falling into colloquialism most of the time, was merely expressing her views, whether we agree with her opinions or not is besides the point. We are free to critique or support her. That's the whole purpose of a conversation and participation. As a community, we must share and try to add value to ideas.

The discussion covered political and social-economic grounds. The way she put it, Bertha has many issues with the government, but whilst she was blunt on the points raised, she did her best to observe political correctness. The dichotomy is not lost in her criticism of the way some things got done and her paying tribute to the excellent civil service corp,

One point that was mentioned was Singapore's inability to produce world-beaters, or as Viswa put it, Singapore icons. As Viswa said, we only have SIA, and some time back, Creative Technology. I had hoped this line of thought would drive the discussion to a more philosophical level delving into a discussion on the downside of statism, which is the ideological statecraft of the PAP government. Statism is the doctrine of centralised control over economic planning and policy. A discussion on what has been good and what has been bad for Singapore, from the perspective of statism, would have been interesting. Bertha did mention Singapore business inc tend to cocoon itself in the safety of latching onto the leads of the government, such as in AI, the current poster boy of investments, rather than blazing their own trail. This is precisely one downside of statism. Unfortunately the discussion merely scratched on anecdotes instead of core principles which would have provided a better understanding of the status quo.

Viswa tempted Bertha to comment on whether there has been tectonic changes in government. The gist of Bertha's position is Lee Kuan Yew's government was anchored on incorruptibility, that Goh Chok Tong is intrinsically a good man from what she can perceive having covered him for many years as a journalist (implying morally upright), and then she trailed into the soap opera episodes of Minister Iswaran and Speaker Tan Chuan Jin. She lamented Lee Hsien Loong's government has skewed away from morality towards talent. Although not the kind of tectonic shift in terms of economic policies one expects to focus on, Bertha's choice of moral standards to me is interesting because I harbour the acute sense that progressive liberalism has uprooted the moral compass of governments of Western countries. Has this disease visited the shores of Singapore? More importantly, has the PAP internalised their deviation from the moral compass and bring the vessel to even keel? From their handling of the Ridoutgate scandal, it does seem the answer is negative.

This is a topic about 'change', and Bertha's view is LHL's government is predicated on continuity of Same-O-Same-O. It has no new bright spark ideas and coasts along on the coat-tail of continuity of policies of past governments. As a commenter asked, is continuity necessarily a bad thing? I think continuity has been one of Singapore's strongest point. It provides stability and no disruption to ongoing state projects. The business community has a high level of confidence in making their long term plans. Compare our experience to that of say the US and Philippines where a change of government causes massive social-economic upheavals. Biden has made 180 degree turns on most of the policies of the previous admin. In Philippines, Marcos' re-pivot back to the US has basically put a stop to the many infrastructure projects the previous Duterte admin had arranged with the Chinese government.

On the other hand, corporations do not hold dogmatically to the adage 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. Continuity begets staleness, change brings in fresh ideas and energises creativity. Change however, does not mean a tectonic change of products or services, although it does happen, such as in the case of Apple switching from personal computers to mobile phones and wearables. Change mostly takes the form of restructuring from centralised to martrix organisations, or vice versa. It could be along functional lines, resources, markets or geographical.

For the government, change does not necessarily mean drastic ideological and policy changes. It could be some form of structural or procedural changes. Looking at the LHL government, who is to say such changes have not taken place.

Bertha mentioned the government appointment holders are the same small group of people that plays musical chairs. This is a unique problem of a small population base. The challenge of this situation is to prevent the development of a siloed environment. Such an environment invariably develops tribal loyalties and territorial conflicts which discourages cross agency collaboration. People working in a siloed network lose track of the bigger mission. A structural change forces people in siloed networks to re-establish new networks across the bigger organisation. It is this change that brings in a breath of fresh air. It is very evident Singapore Inc is a much siloed network where the ruling party and government has become synonymous.

Tan See Leng, the Manpower Minister and Second Minister for Trade and Industry, was mentioned as the kind of official both Viswa and Bertha like to see in the government. Someone from the industry, a successful entrepreneur, rather than full-time politician who has never held a job in the market. I would add that Edwin Tong is similarly placed as Tan. Bertha recognises the difficulty of enticing successful entrepreneurs to join the government.

I recall many years ago when I moved into a private condominium, I attended some management committee meetings. Except for committee members, not a single resident turned up. Noticing my interest, I was co-opted into the committee. There was no quorum as nobody bothered. We had a new maintenance project - the mandatory re-painting and some repair works. Nobody bothered. So the committee tried to show inclusiveness by notifying all residents of decisions to be made. Nobody was interested. It was left to us to decide on everything. Then on completion of project, complaints started pouring in. Why this colour, not that, and other petty issues. The point being made is let's not act like these residents, let's be more participative and recognise the value of officials.

The usual patsy or punching bag, the foreign workers, was also touched on. But Bertha paid cursory reference to merely suggesting a bad taste in the mouth to see so many foreign workers in our midst. This is an issue that is totally owned by the opposition, with the government on the defensive. Folks understand the necessity of having foreign workers for jobs that Singaporeans do not want. This is a commonality of all developed countries. Singaporeans also understand real talent is in demand in the world as well as those who can create jobs. All these are welcome. What is unacceptable is foreign worker policy has been a cover for the business class to take advantage of a cheaper labour source, gradually hollowing out local PMETs and depressed general wage levels. This is a point that Bertha failed to stress. For me, another important corollary point is the friendly foreign worker policy is a pathway to citizenship. While a country with a decreasing demographic must be creative in managing at least zero population growth, generously turning the faucet for new citizens but denying a generation that has built the reserves more access and benefits to savings built from years of denied gratification, is discriminatory. It is a policy that is forcing Singaporeans to view new comers as carpetbaggers who get to enjoy the benefits of wealth built by those before them.

Bertha was asked what is that fundamental piece of advice that she would like to send to the incoming Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. To her, she would have Wong shed the image of his being a last minute compromise. He should project the image the whole cabinet is solidly behind him. She would like to see Wong gain legitimacy in the coming general election. For me I think these comments are rather lacklustre.. There is a tectonic shift in the world geopolitics as well as the real existential threat of New World Order. I would frame my questions for Wong to share his thoughts in this context. Specifically, I want to know the influence of WEF on government policies, does having a President holding directorship in WEF Trustee signify certain servitude? Are we blindly signing the pandemic treaty and handing sovereignty to a Bill Gates-controlled WHO? Have we woken up from the deep hypnotic spell of novel mRNA vaccines pushed by Big Pharma elites who turned billionaires during the pandemic? Singapore will be isolated by the BRICS community. What are his options for Singapore to remain significant in a BRICS-dominated future where we are barred membership due to our knee-jerk foreign policy of unilateral sanction against Russia, one decision I would think was made in appeasement to, and show of solidarity with, Western countries rather than to the publicised noble policy of standing up for small nations.

I had no expectations of great insights that we are accustomed to from the likes of Kishore Mahbubani, George Yeo, Ngiam Tong Dow, or Phillip Yeo. Nevertheless, Bertha serves to illustrate that one can paint the government negatively without attracting any POFMA.

Patrick Low

* Article first appeared on Down The Rabbit Hole.

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