TR EMERITUS

Having told the opposition that their job is not just to ask questions, he then tells his People’s Action Party Members of Parliament to expect sharper questioning and more robust debates in Parliament. Post GE2020, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is clearly anxious about what’s going to happen in Parliament, now that there are 10 Workers’ Party MPs and two Progress Singapore Party Non-Constituency MPs. Beyond sharper questioning, PM Lee went a step further, urging the PAP MPs in his “Rules of Prudence” letter to “express their views frankly, whether for or against government policies” and to “speak freely and with conviction.” Do PAP MPs take the words of PM Lee at face value? By “speak freely” does he mean that nothing is off limits? The Prime Minister is essentially asking his PAP MPs to break out of their mould. For decades, their motto is to do no wrong to the party and no harm to themselves. It is their custom to throw softball questions. Any tough questions and critical views, let the opposition toss at the ministers. Old habits die hard. Can PAP MPs raise their game and suddenly speak freely and speak out against government policies with conviction? Seeing (and hearing) is believing. The litmus test is whether PAP MPs dare to take on sacred cows. Will they, for example, wade into the politicisation of the People’s Association and grassroots organisations? Will they for the first time express on behalf of constituents that it is unfair and undemocratic that elected opposition MPs cannot be appointed grassroots advisers and cannot make use of publicly-funded PA facilities for meet-the-people sessions and community events? Will PAP MPs seize the opportunity to speak up for an electorate that expects free and fair elections? Unilateral redrawing of electoral boundaries are always a bone of contention that only opposition MPs bring up. An Elections Department coming under the purview of the Prime Minister’s Office also does not convey any semblance of independence. Perhaps Ho Ching and Temasek Holdings are the most sacred of sacred cows for the PAP MPs. Will they summon the courage to ask for a more acceptable level of transparency on reporting and remuneration? Much has been made of the opposition’s GE2020 call to the electorate to deny the PAP a blank cheque. There is a way for PAP MPs to deny the opposition a blank cheque in Parliament too – ask questions and raise issues that are customary for the opposition to do so. This is how they nullify the opposition’s stance that without them, there is an absence of checks and balance, and no tough questions and hard issues will be raised in Parliament. It’s asking a lot of the PAP MPs. It’s asking to them the break the habits of five decades. It’s asking them to go where others before them fear to tread. The safest best would be on the PAP MPs playing it safe and doing no harm to themselves, despite PM Lee asking them to speak freely. Why trample on something that turns out to be off limits and sacred? Why run the risk of being a last-term MP?   Augustine Low      Read More →

The minister for transport Ong Ye Kung explained about the cost of operating public transport in the Bukit Panjang area in this letter to the Straits Times [LINK]. He explained why it is necessary for his ministry to remove two bus services to streamline the public transport services in the Bukit Panjang area. But the problem is not restricted with that specific area only. It probably occur with many other parts of the island. We have overbuilt on the MRT lines and still run a complicated network of over 300 bus services. There is duplication and low usage in many bus services I suggest that the minister publish the figures on the deficits that are being incurred in each MRT line and bus service. This will help the public to understand the need to further rationalize the public transport services in many parts of the island. There is a case for public transport to be subsidized. However, we still need to rationalize the system so that the subsidy is more or less the same for all services. There is no point to have some services that are being operated inefficiently with low ridership compared to other services. I have raised this issue on several occasions during the past year. I have raised this issue on several occasions during the past year. I have observed that some services have too many buses relative to passengers. The buses seemed to be under occupied most of the time. They also appear more frequently. I have wondered why the ministry did not study the data of rides and rationalize the frequency of the bus services. I consider that this will be a necessary first step. I suggest that the starting point is to publish the comprehensive data for the public to be aware of the situation. The minister can then form a panel to study and recommend the rationalization and restructuring of the public transport system. I hope that the new minister takes this step.   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →

You have to hand it to Singapore’s Ruling party for having a sense of impeccable timing when it comes to releasing information. It waited a month after the General Election to release the news that Singapore had entered a double-digit recession and more crucially there was an announcement that 47 employers had been put on a watch list for unfair hiring practices. The report can be found at: [LINK] The report was focused on the PMET (Professional, Manager, Executive and Technicians) class and it focused on the financial sector, where it found that there were remarkably few local Singaporeans occupying top jobs. There was as the report states quite clearly that in many cases there was a concentration of a certain nationality (since I don’t need to be politically correct, the report meant Indian national). As a matter of full disclosure, my main benefactors have been Indian Nationals and if I look at my three proudest moments in what I have as a career, two of them were as a result of dealing with Indian Nationals. I’ve also taken the view that being a “professional” is not what it’s cracked up to be. I am happy to talk about cricket, find it perfectly natural to eat with my hands, understand that Diwali and Deepavali are the same festival and appreciate the beauty of spoken Hindi and Bengali. For years we were happy with expats that were white and accepted being told what to do by that lot and only changed our tune when the said expats were a little darker. Having said all of that, this report is rather striking. I cannot think of any other country where there is an issue of discrimination against the local people. In most places laws on discrimination are aimed at protecting minorities. The “native” born is usually the one with the advantage. In America, affirmative action is designed to ensure that women, blacks and Latinos can get jobs and that companies don’t turn into exclusive places for white men. In India, the discrimination is based on cast and Indian law makes it such that certain jobs are reserved for people for “Dalits” or “Untouchables.” Our laws by contrast are there to protect the “native” born Singaporean from being discriminated against. Isn’t there something wrong here? The next question is why do we need laws to protect our locals in the job market? Is it because the job creators are inevitably from elsewhere or is it because our locals don’t have the skills for the jobs available? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, the government has some explaining to do. This is after all a government that prides itself in being much better at planning life than anyone else. As I was once told, “Why worry so much, the government will take care of you?” When it comes to the first question, the answer is that Singapore has inevitably positioned itself as a haven for foreign companies. We are often told that our economy is dependent on foreign investment and with that, we were to understand that a god part of our economy would be run by foreigners from elsewhere. Things were relatively comfortable when the expats were primarily the white variety. Companies had to pay extra to move people from the West and there were simply not that many professionals from the West that were willing to move for love of money. As a result, the multinationals had to hire and promote locals. This was comfortable (both materially and psychologically) for all as everyone knew their place. The expats got the life they’d never get back home and the locals were happy to rise up to the level that didn’t require them to be expats elsewhere. The government also made a point of drilling it into the minds of the locals that it was bad to be a “quitter” and good to be a “stayer” (even if they were happily getting other people to quit other places). Things were a little different when it came to the Indians, who had more than enough people who were willing to relocate out of India and the natural balance of things got upset. Leaving aside the multinationals from elsewhere, there are the GLCs or government linked companies, which are the local and increasingly regional behemoths. Many are looking at expansion in the region and this means increasingly looking at top management from elsewhere. DBS Bank started hiring former members of Citibank. Piyush Gupta, the current CEO is an Indian National and former CEO of Citibank’s Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand operations. He succeeded Richard Stanley, an American who ran Citibank in China. His predecessor was Jackson Tai another American who had previously worked for JP Morgan. The only Singaporeans who seem to get hired in the GLC sector are the former military men. Think of the SMRT Corporation which famously did a global search and conveniently found that the most talented replacement for the former Chief of Defense Force that was the CEO of SMRT to be – his successor as Chief of Defense Force (they were probably telling the truth; the global search may have involved spinning a globe). So, if the multinationals and the GLC’s are closed for our local PMET’s, who will create jobs for them? The obvious answer is in the SME sector. While the government has been more generous in the name of promoting entrepreneurship (for disclosure sake, I am working with a government linked institution to promote a start-up accelerator), the truth is that SME enterprises are regarded as inconvenient insects and should the SME enterprise have the audacity to take market share from either a multinational or even worse, a GLC. As far as officialdom is concerned start-up enterprises are acceptable to meet quotas but unacceptable should they take a sliver of a market that a GLC takes for granted. As such, Singapore’s start-ups need to understand that government help will be of minimal use and they will need to work in consortiums with other SMEs from Singapore and beyond if they are to survive. Then, as my favourite data analytics entrepreneur (who is incidentally an Indian National) said, “You’d get better returns if you gave some of the money that you spent on foreign investors to local start-ups.” Unlike the multinational, the local enterprise has no choice but to operate in the country and hire and promote local. The second question relates to the skill set of the locals. In the report, it was said that the employers found that the locals did not have the right skill set. Apparently, the government has told them that they need to “cast their net wider” (that’s coming from an organization that cast its net so wide it inevitably finds the same people). The main question here is what exactly are the skills that our locals seem to be lacking? Our local universities are highly regarded and with the exception of particular technical skills, its hard to think of our locals lacking any real technical skills that most jobs would require. So, why aren’t they getting hired? The answer might come from a reader of TRemeritus, who made the point that most workers in Asia are still factory-workers at heart. The entire Asian continent built its prosperity on the floor of the sweats shop and this particular reader pointed out that our workers are still thinking like sweat shop floor workers. This mentality needs to change particularly in the more developed economies like Hong Kong and Singapore. Unfortunately, to move away from the sweat shop floor, you need a worker with a different type of mindset and that mindset doesn’t gel well in a social system that requires you to question the status quo. Unfortunately, Asian governments find it easier to pay Westerners more to move here and do the thinking that to train their own people to think. There are some positive signs. China, which had positioned itself as the “workshop of the world” has produced technology innovators like Jack Ma. There is more worry about China Technology than China manufacturing these days. If a communist dictatorship can produce people who think, why can’t Singapore? Unfortunately, the thinkers are usually brought in to work for the government and the need to think is removed. For example, Ministry of Education Scholars are sent to schools where the kids will succeed regardless of what you do. They didn’t get sent to schools where the kids barely show up. Our most notable ones, the military ones, are inevitably placed in war games centres to play chess rather than being in places that might see anything resembling combat. This needs to change. If you can spot intelligent people and spend money on sending them to the world’s best universities, surely you can utilize those brains by setting them to solve complex problems. I don’t believe in shutting borders and as a small trading nation, Singapore needs to be open the world. However, expecting foreign investors and foreign “talents” to get our economy and society moving is not a long-term solution to anything. Building a competent local core is the real backbone of building a strong society that will endure. The answers are clear, its now up to the powers that be to decide if this is what they want.   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 →