TR EMERITUS

One of the most interesting moments in my years of blogging was to have an article I wrote on SPH get picked up by Independent Singapore. The article went round my professional circle and my employer called me asking me if I was “crazy” because I was risking being sued for stating that SPH failed as a business. The truth is, I would love for SPH to sue me, an insignificant blogger. At worst, I would be financially ruined and forced to spend whatever’s left of my working life cleaning toilets. The management of SPH would have had to explain in open court how they went from printing money because they controlled virtually all the advertising space in the country to needing government welfare in a country that prides itself in having no welfare. My perverse desire to be sued by SPH for pointing out the obvious was further enforced by the news that the police had been called in to investigate a scandal where SPH had inflated its circulation figures. In the article, the former CEO, Mr. Ng Yat Chung is quoted to have said, “I note with regret and disappointment that certain individuals in the SPH Media circulation department appeared to have misconducted themselves in relation to circulation numbers during the period of review by the (audit and risk committee).” The extract can be found here. Given that Mr. Ng is a former artillery man, I guess should be kinder to him. However, while he may have come from the same army formation as me, Mr. Ng has had a habit of demonstrating the reasons why there’s been a sense of dissatisfaction with what one can call the “Singapore Elite.” The background is simple. Guys like Mr. Ng seem to get parachuted into the type of jobs earning the type of pay that most of us can only dream of. We are told that this needs to happen because guys like Mr. Ng are the best and brightest that Singapore has to offer. If you look at Mr. Ng’s qualifications, they are impeccable. The argument is that people like him are so intelligent that they need to run all sorts of places for the benefit of the nation. It’s been sold that our elite are so elite that they’ll automatically turn everything they touch into gold. It’s this line of thought that got Mr. Ng his job at NOL despite no proven record of having boarded a ship. When he later became CEO of SPH, he had no record of ever having reported on a story or sold a page of advertisement. Yet, somehow the boards of those companies believed that he had the magical talent to turn things around. When you live in the real world, you’ll realise that the mess at both NOL and SPH were to be expected. This is not to say that outsiders to an industry can’t run particular businesses. However, the outsider needs to invest considerable time in learning how the industry that he or she has been entrusted to run before they are start doing anything. In such situations, the insiders usually retain a lot of power but at the same time, the person who remains responsible for everything is the guy in the leadership position. Ironically, the organization that seems to understand this best is the army. If you look at armies around the world, you will notice that officers, particularly junior officers are paired with non-commissioned officers (NCO) who are vastly more experienced. The young officer understands that he needs the NCO to get things done while the NCO knows he depends on the officer for guidance on the mission. A relationship of mutual respect has to develop. I remember asking a former US Army Sergeant-Major who one deals with a superior who could be your son. His reply was “The NCO has a duty to train the young officer to be the best officer possible.” This clearly didn’t happen at both SPH and NOL. Take one of Mr. Ng’s first decisions at SPH as an example. Within a month of becoming CEO, Mr. Ng conducted a mass retrenchment exercise. Sure, the company’s revenue was falling at the time and he must have assumed that cutting people would have saved cost. Unfortunately, the people he culled were the people who create the product that the business was selling. As such, the media business became weaker and the management was too busy defending a monopoly position that was becoming increasingly irrelevant. While incompetence is not good, the refusal to acknowledge mistakes was worse. The public may have forgiven the screw ups if Mr. Ng had been the military officer he’s supposed to be and lead from the front. However, in ever instance, Mr. Ng has behaved more like a bullying-bureaucrat hiding behind his desk. Think of his infamous “umbrage” moment when he tore into a reporter for doing her job and asking him a question he had to know was going to be asked. Now that there’s a scandal, it was someone else’s fault. Sure, nobody expects the CEO of a company that was the size of SPH to know minute detail of daily operations. However, what expects of a CEO is accountability. A boss is paid more than the employees for a particular reason. He or she has far greater responsibilities. Sure, bosses take credit when things go right even if it’s obviously not all their work. At the same time, bosses also get the blame when things go wrong, even if its not their fault. That’s clearly not the case that’s happening here. Mr. Ng is now scrambling to distance himself from the things that went wrong during his tenure as CEO. Here lies the problem. Mr. Ng has shown that he’s more than happy to take the perks of top jobs but not the responsibilities that come with it and the only person who seems to think this is OK, is the Artful Arse-licker, who has a talent for thinking of justifying the unjustifiable. [LINK] He is unfortunately for him; a symbol of what people find wrong with our elite. We don’t expect people to make perfect decisions but we do expect leaders to take responsibility. BY refusing to take a shred of responsibility for the failures under his tenure as CEO, Mr. Ng has also made us grateful that we’ve never had to fight a war with him in charge. It says a lot about his character and we cannot expect our elite to make things work if all their interested in is getting the perks of the job without the responsibilities. As stated, the beginning, Mr. Ng and his management team are welcome to take me to court if they believe if pointing that they did not preside over what can only be called failure of management.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able to meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →

I agree with both Ho Ching and George Goh, the potential Elected Presidential candidate, that the elected President's role is not to check on the government. Reading the many daily postings online, it is unfortunate that too many netizens are swayed and even got carried away by the word 'Independent' and thus harbour confused, unrealistic and misinformed expectation about the roles of the Elected President. 'Independent' seems to be a very sexy, seductive and over-sold word during this elected presidential run-up. Under our constitution, the Elected President is not another centre of power. Apart from acting as a second key to our reserves and whose permission must be obtained before senior appointments can be made for key public offices, the President is merely a figure Head of State. I only have one question for George Goh. Bearing in mind that one of the EP's key role is to safeguard our collective reserves, would he be willing to Publicly Assure all Singaporeans, I repeat, publicly assure all Singaporeans that he will live up to the seriousness and the likes of the late President Ong Teng Cheong and ask the pap government bravely and resolutely to give a full and proper account of all our reserves, ie, the moveable, immoveable and all other related information etc...in order for him to do his job competently and effectively because if he has no idea about the details of our reserves, how then is he going to be able to do a truly proper job of acting as the second key if he is successfully elected? ( Please read this paragraph again). On the other hand, Tharman Shanmugaratnam being a former finance minister, Chairman of MAS and a senior cabinet minister will not have such a problem. And even if George Goh does that, I am unsure if the pap government will be forthcoming and co-operate or reply with something like they might now need 100 men years to tabulate because our reserves have grown much since the time of the late OTE presidency. 'My loyalty is first and foremost to the people of Singapore. It has always been so and will always remain so' - Ong Teng Cheong. I urge each and every of our Elected President to equal the above quote or at the very least, do not fall short of it. Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →

George Goh’s statement was such a disappointment. He said “you can’t check on the government” and continued to prattle on about “heart”, “brain” and “trust in the government” exactly to the tune of Ho Ching’s asinine Facebook post. I guess rich men need friends in power. It is such a shame to kill the momentum he could’ve built for himself. Now, how is he going to compete with someone who had worked in the government for at least 22 years? Trust in government is not surrendering or prostrating to the powers that be. It is the belief in the reliability and ability of the structure of governance for the good of the citizens. Trust in the government must be earned by the governor. A mandate of five years does not mean anything goes for five years. Trust is conditional upon acting in the interest of the governed. Ultimately, a functioning democracy is the basis of this trust. The application of the principles of checks and balances aim to achieve this end. It follows that if the president is unable to “check the government”, then the presidency is dysfunctional. Under the constitution, the president must be non-partisan and elected by popular vote. This is a kind of two-factor authentication of independency. Non-partisan so that it can check on the government of the day. Elected by popular vote so that it has the moral authority to stand up to the elected representatives. And just in case, if he still lacks the confidence talking to high salaried people, he is paid a salary bigger than the chief executive with tax payers’ money! It is so bizarre to hear this narrative of the President not being political or not to “check the government”. It is clear that what they mean by “working together” is synonymous with “do not challenge the status quo”, “just follow what they say no matter what or you will disrupt the country”. The whole point of the Elected President holding the second key to the reserve is to ensure the government is accountable to the people. There is a dire need to usher in more democracy in Singapore. The PAP does not commit itself to democratic principles such as accountability. The Presidential Office has had significant changes over the years due to the way the PAP amends the constitution on their whims as if it’s their own personal diary. As of right now, this office is neutered. And even the so-called independent candidate doesn’t have the balls to stand up against the bullies in white. Given the unfettered dominance of the PAP government and lack of genuine channels for feedback, Singapore’s Presidential Election has become a much eagerly awaited referendum of sorts for its citizens. In the first Presidential Election in 1993, Ong Teng Cheong, a former Deputy Prime Minister and PAP’s choice scored 58.7% against a reluctant candidate, Chua Kim Yeow, who polled 41.3%. This followed a historical breakthrough by opposition parties in the 1991 General Election when 3 SDP members and 1 Workers Party member were elected to parliament. There were no Presidential elections for the next two terms (1999 & 2005). Subsequently in 2011, another former Deputy Prime Minister, Tony Tan was elected as the fourth President of Singapore with 35.2% of the vote which followed another political breakthrough in the General Election that took place earlier in the same year. How would a maturing electorate articulate their demands this time? Since the Elected Presidency was instituted, the election results clearly show that the PAP’s candidate for the Presidency is not overwhelming popular, if at all, because the people recognise that the President should be able to hold the PAP government accountable. Ong Teng Cheong’s meagre winning percentage against a non-committed candidate who did not even campaign and Tony Tan’s minority win illustrated the expectation of the voters. Whoever wins needs to hold the government accountable. If George Goh is unable to meet this standard, he should just step aside. If he is serious about the contest, perhaps he should relook at his theme of his campaign.   * Facebook post by Tan Tee Seng.      Read More →