TR EMERITUS

The “degree of training” that Singapore’s leaders go through before moving up the ranks is what sets them apart from leaders of other countries. This was highlighted by Minister K Shanmugam in an interview with the South China Morning Post last weekend. However, that’s only half the story. To get the full story, we have to ask: Training for what purpose? Training to what end? The answer lies in the cabinet we have before us. There is a sameness about the ministers – the sameness of men and women cut from the same cloth, straight from the same assembly line. So much so that it is difficult to tell one minister apart from another. Look how Minister Indranee Rajah put up her defence for the Keppel bribery scandal and how Minister Josephine Teo did it for the SPH Media circulation scandal. Both put on the same impassive face, both addressed what they wanted to address, one singled it out as an “in-between” solution, the other singled out readership (not circulation) as the focus. The same “magic formula” from the assembly line. So it doesn’t matter who said what, who did what, it could have been one or the other. While many ministers claim to be of a humble origin, their path to the cabinet, more often than not, runs straight through the road of elitism – elite school, elite scholarship, then elite training ground for a career as a political elite. The SAF has become the most prolific breeding ground for top dogs – first stop general, next stop minister. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was the first one to take that route, so you could say that he was a forerunner of the assembly line formula. Whether they are former generals or they had their training with the administrative service, with NTUC or some Temasek-linked company, they carry a swagger that one senses comes from two things: the belief that it’s their destiny to be a minister, and the belief that a minister can do no wrong. Even if they start out different, they soon gravitate to be like each other, to be birds of the same feather. They know that the system is uncompromising and the only way to succeed is to fall in line, to toe the party line and to conform – they have to look the part, they have to sound the part. For example, ministers who do not have the chops will learn soon enough that they must double up as discipline masters when the opportunity strikes. The system demands it of them. Apologise! Apologise! Apologise or else! It is as if the ability to extract apologies is a key performance indicator. In the short time he has been in Parliament, Leong Mun Wai of the Progress Singapore Party has been pressed to apologise by a host of ministers. Sylvia Lim of the Workers’ Party was badgered by no less than three ministers to apologise over remarks on GST test balloons (which eventually turned out to have some vindication). But when the tables are turned, it’s a different story. Minister Josephine Teo claimed she had not come across even one migrant worker “that has demanded an apology” so no need to apologise over COVID-19 outbreak at dormitories. So the same assembly line formula can be used one way or the other to suit their purpose. PM still-in-waiting Wong For an indication that over time, they become more and more like each other, look no further than Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. He has done awfully well with his smirk lately. You could swear that before becoming DPM, he didn’t have that smirk. But with his elevated status, he now has a smirk to rival Minister Chan Chun Sing. The Oxford dictionary defines a smirk as a silly or unpleasant smile that shows you are pleased with yourself, and know something that other people do not know. It’s no surprise that they bring their best smirk to Parliament – as the Opposition only knows too well. Not long ago, Heng Swee Keat was Prime Minister-in-waiting, today it is Lawrence Wong, and it could just as well be Chan Chun Sing or Ong Ye Kung. It doesn’t matter whether it’s one or the other since they are all trained to perpetuate the system of ownself check ownself, ownself praise ownself, ownself excuse ownself. They are all products of the same assembly line, making conformity and groupthink their trademark.   Augustine Low      Read More →

I’ve just finished participating in a medical workshop and one of the key moments in this workshop was when the moderator asked us if anyone had a different opinion to what was discussed. There was an awkward silence and then she told us, “It’s OK to have a different opinion, you won’t get punished.” This incident brings back memories to one of the biggest truisms of working in Singapore, namely the fact that gatherings of any sort, particularly if it involves a government organization, are not discussion sessions but an opportunity for the institution or person calling the meeting to speak a lot. Ironically, one of the most prominent instances of this happens to be the “press conference,” where the person calling the press conference does a lot of talking and the journalist are inevitably quiet. PR people in other parts of the world spend their time preparing the client for all sorts to face a pack of reporters shouting all sorts of questions. In Singapore, our PR people are actually challenged to effectively get the party started (though to be fair, our journalist get a bit chattier in one-on-one interviews). To be fair, this isn’t exactly limited to Singapore. As a rule of thumb, East Asians tend to be a little reserved in public. If you look at a cross section of Western Universities, you’ll note that the East Asians tend to excel in mathematics and the sciences, where speaking out is not required. Very few East Asians take up arts or humanities, where group discussion is a must (though having said that, the only who got a first in my anthropology class in university was the Japanese girl who didn’t say much in seminars but did what she needed to in exams). A lot of Westerners tend to understand our reluctance to ask questions and disagree in public down to the concept of “losing face.” I believe that there’s some truth to it but would go further and point to the culture that was formed around Confucius’s teachings, which placed the scholar-bureaucrat the top of society. How did the scholar-bureaucrat get there? He (they usually were), got there by studying and therefore having a better understanding of the perfect past. Challenging and having different opinions is in many ways seen as a challenge to very reason for existence itself. If you look at the way Singapore is constructed, you’ll notice that Lee Kuan Yew’s genius was to create a Confucius society with characteristics of a Westminster Parliamentary democracy, with himself and his family of scholar-bureaucrats at the top. Sure, we have elections ever five-years but our parliament has no equivalent of “PMQ’s” in the Westminster Parliament on which we’ve modeled our parliament on. As with most things around Singapore, its hard to convince people that this isn’t exactly healthy. Everything in Singapore seems to work like clockwork and one is inevitably bound to be told off by Americans and Europeans for not appreciating how good the system is in Singapore. However, whilst things may look rosy on the outside, cracks are appearing in the system and as anyone who has had to do repairs will tell you, cracks if not attended to and patched up have a way of turning into potholes and worse. If you want to look at things from a medical perspective “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Unfortunately, you’re not going to fix a crack or get the ounce of prevention of cure from people who aren’t going to challenge the opinion that the crack is there if your opinion is that there is no crack. Everyone keeps quiet because, well, its only a crack and it doesn’t affect me and if I point it out, I will displease the man at the top who will in turn do this bit of squash me. I think back to my first guard duty in National Service. There was a sign that said that the Battalion Order Sergeant (BOS) is “Always Right,” and if he (usually) is wrong, refer to rule No. 1.” This is, unfortunately, extended beyond the realms of the military. Many corporations work on the concept of the man on-top being perpetually right. This system works when the man on top is a wonderful leader. However, when the said leader ages and goes senile and leaves the show to helpless successors, things go wrong. Absolute monarchies failed in most places because for every wise and wonderful monarch who did great things, there were ten awful ones who screwed up so badly that people took to the streets. If you look at Singapore, we had Lee Kuan Yew, who was by most standards a decent enough ruler. He was strict and got things done. Ministers who didn’t deliver or screwed up were dealt with. More importantly, Mr. Lee in his early days surrounded himself with people who were willing to have different opinions. In the funeral of S. Rajaratnam, Mr. Lee talked of “furious debates” in cabinet. Not all the decisions made were perfect but they were at the time ones that had debated and argued over to the point that everyone felt that they were the best possible ones. However, things changed. Nobody questioned or dared voice a “different” (note, I said different not dissenting) opinion and so decisions are now made on the grounds that it’s the right one based on the singular onion without having gone through any form of test. Just look at what happened when Mas Selamat, an alleged psychopathic criminal walked out of a highly secured facility without breaking a sweat. The cabinet rushed to defend the Minister of Home Affairs for not doing his job. Sure, when you have a system which does not tolerate a “different” opinion, you have a system where nobody will point out the cracks because its just not worth it. It’s a system where you will agree with whatever the man on top says as long as you keep getting paid well enough because having a different opinion isn’t going to make a difference or even endanger being paid well enough. Why bother? Unfortunately, bosses are inevitably human and make the same errors that the rest of us make. Bosses who are willing to accept different opinions have the capacity to think before they act. Bosses who believe they know it all tend indulge their mistakes rather than learn from them.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able 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 →

This is like an story in the Ian Flemmings' James Bond adventure.That it could have happened in the highly powerful administraion of the USA is like a heavenly earth-shaking hoax to dement the people when they are just recovering breath after their nerves are rattled by China's Xi Jinping military manoeuvre over the Taiwan Straits as an invasion rehearsal. Could Joe Biden have stunned the world with his naive remark "I am not concerned" in reference to the highly classifed information leak coming from the President in command of the most powerful country in the world. If he is not concerned then who is. Apart from the sensitivity of the leaked documents there is the more important question of how a national guardsman could have the technical skill to access the highly classified archives.with the extremely tight security could make the Americans look like amateurish Mandarins. The Russians will find this colossal security lapse amusing and something which they could learn to access the American highly classified archives at a propitious time in future. Catching the culprit for the security break-in and sending him to prison is just the beginning of the American big headache. They are confronted with the enormous task of regaining the trust and confidence of close allies who must be greatly shocked by the American homogous security lapse.That the comical melodrama has placed the Americans in the grave quandary is never in doubt and this at the critical time of the intractable US-China conflict. It's going to take a herculian effort to surmount this security behemoth. This is meant to be hilarious by a Nosey Parker.   Yoong Siew Wah   * The author was the Director of Singapore’s Internal Security Department (ISD) from 1971 to 1974. He was Director of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) in the 1960s, and had a distinguished career in the Singapore Special Branch in the 1950s. Mr Yoong has granted TR Emeritus exclusive right to his memoir, to be published on an independent website (work in progress), upon his passing. All the above historic information and more details will be revealed in his memoir.      Read More →