TR EMERITUS

The OBS investigation shows you how business is done in the real world. It need not be illegal, but there is always a line that seduces you in. It’s call the integrity line, and at times, you walk over it without even knowing it. No one is inoculated from it. We lie to ourselves when we think that, in all circumstances, we are above that line. We deceive ourselves when we claim that we will not cross it, come what may. That’s imagined reality. It’s a fantasy we take consolation in just to give ourselves that self-elevating pat on the back. All men are tempted, but not all resist it, especially all the time. Only those reported are caught. Many go to their graves with a pensive smile. That is the real fortune of life. It’s call the luck of the draw. And it takes mental fortitude too, particularly the kind that knows when enough is enough. For an intemperate mind can never be a reformed crook. Anyway, Ong Beng Seng (OBS) is a businessman. He knows his way around. He knows the tracks he had laid for the win. Read his dealings over the decades and you detect a trend. It’s about cultivating relationship. It’s no trade secret there. Who doesn’t know that? Relationship is the lubricant that sets the wheel of fortune spinning. Mr S Iswaran and Mr Ong Beng Seng at the F1 Grand Prix in 2022 (S Iswaran's Facebook page) ST reports some prominent transactions in the past. He has dealings with top politicians and leaders in the country. In 1996, OBS sold four luxury condos to the Lees, father and son. It was developed by HPL, owned by OBS. It was purchased at “unsolicited discounts” between 5 and 12 per cent. They were early bird discounts, across the board, and as a show of goodwill, the discounted sums were donated to charity. In 2018, OBS was “linked to a scheme where Maldives’ then president Abdulla Yameen and other officials leased out at least 50 Maldivian tropical islands to tourism developers without a public tender…Yameen and his deputy Ahmed Adeeb were later jailed for embezzlement and bribery.” And the recent inroad is in May 2022. “HPL was part of a consortium - along with (Temasek) - that bought the real estate assets of Singapore Press Holdings…for US$2.8 billion.” These assets included Paragon shopping mall and the Seletar shopping mall. Now, he and our transport minister are both arrested and questioned. They are out on bail. While he will be traveling, Iswaran is grounded, having his passport impounded. Lesson? Just one. Thucydides wrote: “The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.” You can see how the world has been going thru seasons of convulsions just to reverse that order of things. It is the tireless march of civilisation. It is a dreaded fate poets, sonneteers, bards, philosophers and even rappers have been bemoaning (or bitching) about. The building blocks of our history is essentially about this restless, at times, desperate fight for equality, fraternity and justice. And it has always been a wicked trail of martyrs’ blood still pinning for the promised new heaven and earth. It’s a utopian dream that is tragically inspiring. Alas, the fight for the weak (and poor) has never stopped since the beginning of time. We have time and the vast numbers in our hands to spare. Yet, power favours the strong, and in their hands, they bend fate, structure and the wills of men and women to their personal design and delight. So, the rich will do what the rich does best; and the poor will do what the poor does best. Never the twain shall meet because they work in different universes. But the poor, just like the weak, will suffer what they must because the vain hope is that one day the lucky ones will rise from the ashes, and discover for themselves the ironic truth that they differ little from those they have been spending most of their life overthrowing. That is the cycle of the march of civilisation between those who rule and those who are ruled. And OBS, Iswaran and the billions of us are just its chess pieces, existing or thriving for a brief forgettable season, before our time is up and a new game is set based on the same rules before and that familiar roll of the weighted dice.   Michael Han   * The writer blogs on Facebook.      Read More →

Of late, we have gotten into the habit of using Parliament to exonerate politicians of perceived wrongdoings. In 1996, the late Lee Kuan Yew defended himself admirably in parliament over the Nassim Jade saga, even telling opposition Members of Parliament to “grow up” as businessmen won’t give popular politicians “extra fish balls” as their patronage is good for business. By the way, the businessman involved in that saga was billionaire Ong Beng Seng. He has just been issued a notice of arrest in connection with the current probe by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) of Transport Minister S. Iswaran. Then in 2017, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong defended his reputation in parliament over allegations of abuse of state resources to reverse his father’s will to demolish 38 Oxley Road. Recently, the Parliament was again the setting when Ministers K Shanmugam and Vivian Balakrishnan were cleared of all wrongdoings over allegations of abusing their positions to rent state-owned black and white bungalows. But is Parliament the appropriate place? What is the function of the Parliament in the first place? Parliament is one of three arms of the government. It is the arm that is directly elected by the people and therefore is accountable to them. Its function includes representing the wishes of the people, debating state policies, ratifying treaties, making laws and overseeing the executive arm. The executive arm is the cabinet, comprising the prime minister and his ministers. Its function is to execute the policies agreed upon in parliament using the laws made by the Parliament. The third arm is the judiciary. Its function is to check that the laws made by parliament and the exercise of power by the executive, are within the Constitution, the supreme law of the country. When the power of the three arms are separated, when all three arms are independent of each other, when they do their respective jobs and guard their respective territory fervently, they check and balance each other. Unfortunately, parliament here is dominated by the executive arm. This in part, is due to the fact that leaders of the majority party in parliament also serve as ministers in the executive. The agenda of parliament is thus driven by the executive, rather than the other way around. Voting of bills into laws is enforced by the party whip, so that parliament is merely a rubber stamp for the executive, given that the ruling party has a supermajority. That majority, critically, allows the executive to amend the Constitution at will. When the judiciary makes a judgment in court that the executive does not agree, the executive can amend the constitution, making the judiciary moot. Former Attorney-General Walter Woon said of Singapore’s legal system: We effectively don’t have a Constitution. We have a law that can be easily changed by Parliament, and by the party in power because the party is Parliament. James Madison, one of the founding fathers of the United States Constitution, said: If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. That is to say power has to be structured such that it is separated and checking on each other. The French Enlightenment political philosopher, Montesquieu, said: When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner. Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression. Sadly, power in our government is fused and dominated by the executive arm. Thus internally, there is little check and balance. Externally, as Madison said, the people are the primary control of the government, but how can it be done when there isn’t a free press, only a state press? When there isn’t a Freedom of Information Act and thus transparency? How can the people check the government when parliament has made it illegal for people to assemble peacefully and make known their views when they feel aggrieved? When free speech, even with no ill intentions, comes with a risk of being sued? In effect, what we have is a dictatorship, not a democracy despite the fact that we have elections every five years. To be fair, this dictatorship has generally delivered on the material aspects of life, but what about the wishes of the people for a smaller population, fewer foreigners to steal our lunch, lower cost of living, less stressful life, more sharing of economic gains, more participation in the running of the country, a broader definition of success, more transparency? Do the wishes of the people not matter? The role of parliament in upholding democracy cannot be over-emphasized. Parliamentarians are, after all, elected by the people. Their main role is to represent the will of the people and to oversee the executive. But sadly, many have lacked the courage or the moral rectitude to stand up to a tyrannical executive more intent on serving the needs of big business, the rich and powerful, rather than the needs of the people.   Foong Swee Fong      Read More →

The Iswaran case reminded me of the importance of independent institutional checks. The more robust and resilient our institutions, the more reliable and effective they are in smoking out or preventing corruption. For a careful man watches himself carefully. But a wise man allows himself to be watched by others even more carefully. I recall a book I read recently. It’s titled “Party of One - The Rise of Xi JinPing & China’s Superpower Future” by journalist Chun Han Wong. It’s quite an eye-opener for me. There is an interesting conversation between the Great Helmsman Mao and American journalist Edgar Snow (@ p92-93). Snow wrote that Mao exhibited a curious level of modesty when Mao scoffed at the hero worship of him in the country. Mao said the personality cult over him was overdone. “As he courteously escorted me to the door, he said he was not a complicated man, but really very simple. He was, he said, a lone monk walking the world with a leaky umbrella.” That remark left a positive impression of Mao in Snow’s account. However, some observers felt there was more than meets the eye. Snow apparently missed out on the sinister subtlety expressed by Mao. One Sinologist Pierre Ryckmans (pen name Simon Leys) shed some light into Mao’s “cynical immodesty”. Simon pointed out that Snow’s command of the language was “never very fluently” He said: “”It is no wonder that (Snow) failed to recognise in Mao’s description of himself as “monk under an umbrella” was in fact a popular Chinese joke.”” Simon explained that the expression Mao used, heshang dasan, or “a monk opens an umbrella,” forms a riddle typically answered with another four-syllable phrase wufa wutian, or “no hair, no sky”. In other words, “no hair no sky” (wufa wutian) is translated to “I know no law, I hold nothing sacred.” Chun wrote: ““For many Chinese who lived through his reign, Mao was the law. His despotic “rule of man” was often a recipe for chaos, unleashing purges and mob justice against class enemies on a grand scale.”” ““Mao had even suggested that “rule of man” was better than the rule of law, saying, “an editorial in the People’s Daily gets implemented across the country, why is there a need for any laws?”” Alas, the lesson I have learned from history is that people are emotional beings, whose appetite for self-glory is boundless. And the one in power will always struggle to check on himself and others, especially when he or she is someone the one in power is beholden to, whether in ties, affection or favours. Mao is the tragic cumulation of that frightening embodiment. No matter how honourable we claim to be, we cannot guarantee that we will not be swayed when the rubber meets the road, or when push comes to shove. That is why we establish laws and these laws are premised on time-tested rules that prescribe the strict boundaries for its application. We then leave its enforcement to trusted and impartial institutions. Going back to Iswaran case, Lawrence Wong said: “But what I would say is that this is concrete proof of how we do things in Singapore and how our system works.” “We have always upheld a clean and incorrupt system of government, and our track record on this over the decades is clear and evident to all….This case is completely driven by CIPB from the beginning; there was no public complaint.” That’s the ruling party’s “zero tolerance” stance against corruption. That standard is set at its highest and is maintained by entrenched impartial institutional safeguards, for example, the CPIB. Of course, this is not a good time for the status quo. The hot seasonal wind had blown 2 controversies in - the Ridout Rd Properties probe that went up to parliament and the recent TCJ’s “unparliamentary language”. And now, we have the investigation of the transport minister, a veteran politician and stalwart of West Coast GRC. The political pall is indeed cast over the landscape. It’s leadership teetering at the edge of the straight and narrow. (Anyway, I sincerely wish him and his family well). And it is no less a test for PAP. Thus far, it is apparent that CPIB is investigating without fear or favour. The rule of law still rules, and that is the stellar system Lawrence was boasting about. I supposed it is still early in the investigation process, and we will just have to wait for its outcome in the coming weeks. While I don’t know whether there is going to be another parliamentary session to gingerly plaster the cracks in the trust reposed on the ruling party, I feel that this is the first crucial step towards transparency and accountability. It is a step in the right direction, if it is done clean and proper, above ranks, file, and board. And while the numerous hot mic incidents and the recent Ridout-gate seem to skirt precariously at the edge of a moral slippery slope towards elitism, an establishment mindset and a paternalistic “we-know-better”, I trust we are nowhere near the state where we can say that our leadership is one that is “no hair, no sky”. (Ps: it’s either they ban the use of mic in Parliament altogether, and allow the acoustic of the place to bring what is meant to be audible to the seated parliamentarians or risks more Freudian slips to shine a floodlight at what they really think about those who stand on the opposite side of the white line).   Michael Han   * The author blogs on Facebook.      Read More →