TR EMERITUS

It takes years to build a brand and for it to be recognised. A political party’s image, logo, values and what it stands for need to be marketed and sold to potential voters, brand recognitions and royalty warrant followers. PAP & WP are established brands with a history and elected members with recognised personas and track records, with 100% representation in Parliament, any others are wannabes. A GE is a serious business with no odd for luck or egos, in every GE, a couple of new parties would pop up offering all sorts of value propositions that are doom to fail and would fail miserably. In every GE, these small parties are energised, so eager to change the political landscape of Singapore. But they failed to build a brand, failed to get enough support. KJ writes well, LT is outspoken, Ravi is courageous, these are great guys that I respect, but would never make it on their own. Please do not waste limited resources and energy, consolidate, swallow pride and ego to join a bigger and better party to fight. I hope to see these small parties with big egos dissolved like SingFirst, TJS despite joining SDP in the last minute to fight in H-BT loss by a big margin. Too little too late, needs time, branding and positioning, not haphazard last minute to join a fight that’s destined to lose. No better luck next time, only recognition. Start marketing now, SDP may stand a chance to win some seats in 2025. Voters would not care if Oppo united or 3-corner fights, they only recognise the familiar logo of choice and mark an “X” to vote. Focus on selling the logo, market the brand and position the values. Every political party needs a Financer and a Marketeer, strategies, money and brains to work. PAP has everything, the whole works to crush any oppo if required. PSP is a classic example of wannabes with founding members with recognised personas and track records, failed with honours and 2 NCMPs, great for a 1 year old start up. With a Financer to back, PSP will be a brand to look forward to in the next GE. I have always felt sympathetic for CSJ and SDP, a “never say die” fighter, a persona gradually being accepted by and large. Lacking in funds can makeup with memberships recruitment and sales of memorabilia, creative, fun and yet subtle. For a dollar a download, how much can you raise for a “East Coast Plan Rap” ringtone? I would put on a baseball cap that says “Pay and Pay”, and a T-shirt printed “Born Free, Taxed to Death”☹. What are the differences between WP, PSP and SDP? Do we even need 3 opposition parties? IMHO, even 2 is too many, there’s no room for small party. Positioning defines where your party stands in relation to others offering similar values in the GE as well as the mind of the voters. A good positioning makes a party unique and makes the voters consider voting it as a distinct benefit to them. A good position gives the party a unique selling proposition in a political landscape cluttered with lots of parties offering similar benefits, a good positioning makes PAP stands out from the rest, confers it the ability to charge a higher price and stave off competition from the others. Just remember, we bought the PAP brand and gave them the power to charge higher prices, paid $200K for a part-time MP to sleep in Parliament and millions of dollars for inefficient Ministers, increased costs of living and make our lives miserable. PAP have the brand recognition, control of the media, power to change the game and rules. Well, almost everything required to hold on to power. Just because PAP is overly mighty and powerful had created a different set of problems, it is rotting from within its values, members joined for status, money, self-interests, etc. With non-preforming MPs and inefficient rubbish-talking Ministers, the erosion of the PAP brand had started, just need another 2 terms to crumble. Or, it may just realise these problems and wake up with radical transformation, LHL must go, 4G not happening, can Tharman be the transformer? The CCP faced memberships’ crisis with massive disciplinary issues before Xi took charge and revamped and revived the confidence in the party. 90% of Chinese trust their government today. If a similar “Do you trust your Government?” survey is done today for Singapore, I think the PAP can barely hit the half way mark. New medias are not just for the young or for fun, as they evolve in offerings for the young and the olds too, online polling and surveys can highlight the current issues and policies, feelings on the ground and resulting in better improvements. Opposition should utilise all alternative medias and means to reflect these sentiments. Just for the fun of it, say: would you like to know Ho Ching’s salary? Make a wild guess between $1 to $99M, etc. Seriously, do we have a right to know the top salaries of executives managing our sovereign wealth funds? No fear of Pofma. One does not need to be highly educated to understand the concepts of branding, or a Master to do it, any fresh grad in marketing from any poly or uni can do it. More can be done, just do it.   M Gen      Read More →

Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong has called the formal appointment of Workers’ Party chief Pritam Singh as Leader of the Opposition a “very significant move.” The significance can come in different ways. Having live broadcasts of parliamentary proceedings would be a significant move to usher in the appointment of Leader of the Opposition. How the opposition is treated in Parliament also has to change significantly. The Workers’ Party has asked many serious, pertinent questions, only to be rebuffed time and time again. Will Pritam Singh as Leader of the Opposition be accorded greater respect? Will he get the answers that not only he and the WP but all Singaporeans deserve? Early this year, when Pritam asked for specific government employment statistics, Minister Chan Chun Sing replied: “We can get you the numbers. But let me say this. What is the point behind the question?” When Pritam asked about the size of the country’s reserves, DPM Heng Swee Keat shot back: “It is neither in the interest of Singapore or Singaporeans to repeatedly ask about the size of the reserves. We are in the middle of a storm, and I’m very disappointed that Mr Pritam Singh has used this occasion to raise this question again.” You may also recall that when the WP’s Png Eng Huat queried about the remuneration given to key management staff at Singapore’s sovereign wealth funds, GIC and Temasek, Minister Lawrence Wong sidestepped by saying: “Government maintains an arms-length relationship with the companies and does not interfere in their operational decisions such as remuneration.” Is the Leader of the Opposition entitled to get answers on the size of the country’s reserves and the salaries of top Temasek executives such as Ho Ching? If Pritam Singh and our elected parliamentarians continue to get stonewalled, sometimes even chastised, for asking inconvenient and tough questions, then there would be no change to the status quo. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has said that the election results show a “clear desire for diversity of voices in Parliament” and that “younger voters also want to see more opposition presence in Parliament.” His concessions, coupled with Pritam Singh’s designation as Leader of the Opposition, ought to result in more robust debate and constructive Q&A in Parliament. Otherwise it would just be lip service.   Augustine low      Read More →

I got a call from the Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC yesterday. He was intrigued by my last posting which asserted that the last election results had shown that the roots of a two-party system in Singapore had been developed. As with all intellectual discussions with the Young Muslim Politician, he ended up answering his own question and then it came to the topic of the quality of opposition candidates. He rightfully observed that the quality of opposition candidates was exceedingly good. First there was the news that Professor Paul Tambyah, Chairman of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), had been elected to head the US based Society for Infectious Diseases ( LINK ) and then came the performance in of the Dr. Jamus Lim of the Worker’s Party (WP) in the debate against Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, our Minister for Foreign Affairs. An excerpt of the debate can be found here. Dr. Balakrishnan is a former school debater and considered one of our more articulate ministers. The PAP must have been hoping that Dr. Balakrishnan would wipe the floor in the debate and he did not. Dr. Lim’s performance in the debate was exemplary. He was articulate and consistently on message and somehow, that gave the Young Muslim Politician a great moment of insight, when he told me to look at Dr. Balakrishnan’s expression throughout the debate. The expression was – this guy should be on our team, why the hell couldn’t we recruit him. Dr. Jamus Lim Apparently, the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) had tried to recruit Dr. Lim when he returned from Abu Dhabi, after serving as an economist for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which is the third largest Sovereign Wealth Fund in the world. Apparently, Dr Lim turned the PAP down. This is a problem for the PAP. Like every good business, political parties need to attract good people, and the PAP used to have a monopoly on the brains. The government’s scholarship system was designed to ensure that smart people stayed within the system. The system worked like this, sponsor a bright kid through to university, get him or her into the civil service for a few years and then, after they had cut their teeth, get them to stand for election. The Singapore government has been very open about the fact that it competes with the private sector for talent. Our Ministers are the world’s highest paid. Political salaries are comparable with those from top private sector organisations. The official reasoning is that this prevents corruption (there’s no need to think about dipping your hands in the cookie jar when you’re being well paid) and that its necessary to pay well because if we didn’t pay our public figures well, they’d run off to the private sector and make their fortunes elsewhere instead of working for the betterment of the nation. Professor Tambyah Professor Tambyah and Dr. Lim are living proof that Singapore has the people who can compete on the international stage. The problem for the ruling party is that they’re not on the side of the PAP, which given the PAP’s hold on the government, is the only party with the resources to give them things. If you want money, the PAP is in the position to give it to you. If you want the backing of the state to get things done, only the PAP can give it to you. So, the question that the PAP needs to answer is why aren’t people like Professor Tambyah and Dr. Lim not flocking to join the side of the PAP? The government has traditionally used the purse strings to attract people. Personally, I don’t disagree with paying people in public service well. Why should you expect people to work for some higher ideal if it doesn’t put food on the table? I know that the guy with the backing of the state machinery can get things done in a way that the guys protesting on the streets will never be able to do. Our entire system has been based on this. Whenever a smart guy even gave the appearance of being interested in joining “the other” (which means any side other than the government approved one) side, the government and PAP would inevitably “buy” them over. Now, there’s a problem. Bright guys are turning them down to work for the “other” side. These are the people with the expertise needed for the future. Think about this, we are in the middle of a global pandemic that has ravaged the economy. Who else could be better to be leading the charge against these things than a world recognized expert on infectious diseases and an internationally recognized economist? Yet, these people are not joining. So, the PAP has to ask itself, why can’t it recruit people like this. It’s been doing it successfully and suddenly you get flawed candidates like Ivan Lim. By contrast, the opposition, which lacks the resources to offer great things is attracting brains like these. The ruling party needs to do some soul searching on why it has been unable to get great minds like Professor Tambyah and Dr. Lim instead of trying to demonise the great minds that won’t join if it is serious about ensuring that Singapore’s machinery has the best minds working for it.   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 →