TR EMERITUS

In 1988, Lee Kuan Yew revealed that minister S Dhanabalan had been a possible candidate to succeed him as prime minister but then concluded that Singaporeans were not ready for an Indian prime minister. Several people had privately expressed the view that Lee Kuan Yew had in mind a certain person to be a future prime minister. The reason that Singaporeans were not ready for a non-Chinese prime minister did not pass the test of credibility. I personally was sceptical of the reason. While 75 percent of the residents of Singapore were of Chinese origin, they had lived for several decades under the colonial rule of the British until self-government in 1959. In April 1955, a non-Chinese lawyer, David Marshall, led the left-wing Labour Front to a narrow victory in Singapore's first Legislative Assembly elections. He formed a minority government and became Chief Minister. Clearly, the majority race in Singapore had accepted a non-Chinese as the government leader three decades before Lee Kuan Yew expressed that astonishing opinion. Furthermore, Singaporeans had for several decades been imbued with the concept of meritocracy and to select the best people “regardless of race, language and religion”. Singaporeans had seen the success of this approach in building a harmonious society that achieved remarkable social and economic progress. I held an immense respect for Lee Kuan Yew for his foresight and insight on international affairs and for his approach in running the government of Singapore. There were however a few matters that I differed from his views. This was one of them. Goh Chok Tong succeeded Lee Kuan Yew as prime minister on 28 October 1990. He was later succeeded by Lee Hsien Loong (eldest son of Lee Kuan Yew) on 12 August 2004. The question of the successor for Lee Hsien Loong came up in December 2017. Goh Chok Tong, who held the position of emeritus senior minister after retiring as prime minister, said that it was urgent for the leadership of the ruling party to identify the next prime minister to take over from Lee Hsien Loong before the end of 2018. Many people among the general public were in favour of senior minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam to take over this position. An economist by profession, Tharman served in the private and public sectors for several decades, before entering political life in 2001. He subsequently became the minister of education, minister of finance and deputy prime minister. He had also served with distinction as Singapore’s representative in several international bodies, including the G20 Eminent Persons Group, the International Monetary Fund and in the United Nations. The decision to select the next leader for Singapore was not taken by the people at large. It was decided in secret by the elected members of parliament from the ruling People’s Action Party. In May 2018, the party decided on another Chinese, namely finance minister Heng Swee Keat. In March 2019, Heng Swee Keat defended the party’s decision to select him, in favour of the more popular non-Chinese candidate, in a university forum. He said that the people would still prefer a Chinese to be the prime minister and made this statement “I can tell you that it is not easy because it triggers all the feelings about race, which are not obvious. But for an election, it becomes an issue.” A few days after this assertion, 19,900 individuals responded to a viral Facebook poll and 92 percent voted for Tharman Shanmugaratnam to succeed Lee Hsien Loong and become the next prime minister. This poll did not have any binding power. A more scientifically based Blackbox survey commissioned by Yahoo Singapore found that 69 per cent of 897 respondents said they would prefer Tharman to become the prime minister. In a survey conducted by Channel NewAsia and the Institute of Policy Studies in 2019, 69.6% of respondents said they could accept a Singaporean-Malay and 70.5% said that they would accept a Singaporean-Indian as the prime minister. These percentages were higher than a similar survey conducted in 2016. The choice of the people, if these polls were to be believed, was clearly in favour of a non-Chinese to take over as the next prime minister. This issue of racial pre-requisite for the head of government came up for discussion in 2008, when Barack Obama became the first black person to be elected as President of the United States of America. Prior to his election, the office had always been held by a white person, who formed the majority race in America. If America could elect a minority as the president, and one who came from a community had served as slaves in America, why can’t Singapore? I recalled that Lee Hsien Loong gave a weak answer to his question. It was never debated actively anyway. This question of the racial prerequisite came up again recently, in November 2022, when Rishi Sunak was elected by the ruling Conservative Party to be the prime minister in the United Kingdom. This was the first time that an Asian was elected to the top office in the UK. The election of the prime minister was decided internally by the ruling party and not the country at large. (Singapore follows this practice). If a former colonial power, who ran an empire that “the sun never sets” for two centuries, could accept a non-white, and one whose grandparents came from a former colony, to lead the country, why can’t Singapore. This time, I did not see any active debate, so far. Let me give an answer to the question – is Singapore ready for a non-Chinese prime minister? My answer is – the people have been ready for many decades. But the ruling People’s Action Party is not ready yet.   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →

新加坡是不是一个民主平等的国家？您認为人民行动党是不是真正为人民服务还是一群贪婪的江湖政客？这世界有那个国家的领袖拿过百万人民的钱为人民服务？美国是世界最强大的强国而美国总统的年薪是少过李显龙四份之一。是不是狂妄自大不言而谕。他認为自己比美国总统四倍的重要. 我们这班公务员在五十年初在紧急法令下所作的牺牲才能給李显龙这班瓜子拿人民的钱来享受豪华生活。 我们所得的酬劳是赤贫的养老金。 因为生活费的续渐的高涨。 我们公会的会长和副会长便向部长和总理要求加些我们的养老金令我们过得比赤贫一点高的生活。他们很傲慢的拒绝， 他们对我们的代表说。 你们服务已经够妥当, 你们所得的养老金是足够 我们是等着你们去世。 他们究竟是不是人 能够讲这样无人道和缺德的话。 他们正在享受豪华生活。他们可能不知道街上有老婆婆坚捡纸匣谋生。有很多在赤贫上过活。有很多在街上或草萍晚上睡觉。在这时侯这些总理和部长是在他们的豪华住宅抱着他们的娇妻高枕无忧。您们说这是不是平等的社会？您们或者还在解谜如何会有这麽多晕着头脑的选民每届都投票给人民行动党组织政府。各有各智。而很难得到一个真实的答案。看情形在短时间内很难推反行动党。 所以得守得云开见月明。人民一定会重见天日。   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.   ** Edited slightly for language, maintaining the author's intended message.        Read More →

The main stream media as well as some blogs have started to become TEMASEK Apologists. They argued that nobody could possibly know the problems of FTX in advance or how crook and fraudulent those young punks were. They listed all the Big Names funds which were also caught in this "unfortunate" fraud and lost tons of money, over a total of $2B at least. You see, not only Temasek Holdings lost money but all other sophisticated institutional investors also lost money! However, what they didn't tell us is, there were even MORE institutional investors and fund managers have seen through the bunch of punks led by SBF as frauds and scammers, thus didn't even invest a single cent in it! Warren Buffett would never invest in them! Losing money isn't the only serious problem here. All investors big and small will lose their money from time to time. But we must differentiate between pure financial illiterate speculators or unsophisticated retail investors like those aunties and uncles on the street vs institutional investors. Sophisticated Institutional Investors like Temasek Holdings have all obscenely paid experienced talents, analysts and fund managers to do proper due diligence, getting more insights and information or intelligence gathering on any entities they wish to invest in. That's alot more advantage they have over those retail investors or speculators on the street! Secondly, it's a total shame that such institutional investors could be scammed by a bunch of young punks right under their nose! They should at least feel ashamed of themselves! Third, even amateur investors would be alarmed with that kind of PE ratio which is a sign of overpriced and over valuation. Worse, the purpose of fund raising of FTX was clearly to amass huge amount of money which was intended to buy in more risky assets or crypto companies in the midst of a possible high risk total crypto melt down situation! Sophisticated Institutional Investors like Temasek Holdings don't seem to understand the great amount of risks involved in crypto exchange, apart from crypto currency itself. They thought it would be safer to invest in crypto exchange or crypto related platforms rather than the crypto currency itself. They forgotten that unlike traditional stock exchange, crypto currency can be created out of the exchange which is the issuing platform itself. Worse it wasn't properly regulated! Most importantly, Temasek Holdings has basically forgotten that they are SWF. Unlike other institutional investors, their mission statement should be slightly different. Their mission is to make good use of the gov funds to get reasonable returns while making sure that they would not lose the value of these funds in risky investment. They are not supposed to be too greedy and ended with high risky assets which may give high returns but would also mean great risks that may just wipe off the investments altogether! SWF may suffer paper losses from time to time but they should not engage in investments which are known to be highly risky that may result in total bankruptcy and total loss of the investment. Regardless of how well or bad Temasek Holdings due diligence was, it should not even consider investment in FTX at all right from the start. This is from a proper SWF perspective. There were double risks. Crypto currencies and the platforms are all considered risky sector. Secondly, investing in FTX which will use the funds to buy up more troubled crypto companies or exchange, added another high level of risks! Temasek Holdings in particular, should know very well how risky it is to go into a collapsing market and trying its luck to get bargain hunting. Didn't it learn anything from its losses in 2008 Merrill Lynch misjudgement and misadventure? Temasek Holdings is building a track record of high appetite of risk which doesn't fit its role as SWF. It is behaving more like aunties going shopping to look for bargain buys or basically believing every words the street salesman tell them or just basically jump into rumor buying speculative stocks! It shouldn't be so. MOF should reset the guiding principles for both SWF GIC and Temasek Holdings for managing our countries' money. There would be risks in investment but they should not take excessive risks at all. Thus my rebuttal to those Temasek apologists, nope, your argument doesn't stand at all because TH isn't just any other hedge fund or venture fund. It is a Sovereign Wealth Fund. The fundamental issue here is that it is taking too much risks and behaving like other venture funds or worse inexperienced retail investors. This fundamental issue must be addressed.   Goh Meng Seng      Read More →