TR EMERITUS

So few people today have the courage to be disliked. They bend over backwards and even sell their honor and integrity to be liked by everyone – friends, family, social media followers, and even people they don’t know. Many people try so hard to please everyone else, that they have forgotten how to please themselves or to even be themselves anymore. While there is nothing wrong with being polite and pleasing others, it becomes wrong when it means everything to you or when you had rather please others than do what is right. Many compromise their honor and integrity by going as far as lying to tell others what they want to hear, instead of having the courage to simply speak the truth. Others refuse to stand up for what is right or to call someone out for malicious and underhanded actions, because they want to stay in their good graces. The justifications are endless, but they all boil down to one thing – people do not have the courage to be disliked. They would rather compromise their honor, their integrity, and even betray their very being before taking a chance that their actions might offend someone or might cost them in so way. You cannot be honorable and, at the same time, lack the courage to be honest and to stand up for what is right. If you are trying to please everyone no matter what, you are compromising your integrity; if you are trying to be everyone’s friend, you are in reality, no one’s friend. A sincere person will not try to please everyone and will absolutely be selective when it comes to his or her friends. If you are afraid of doing the right thing because it might offend someone, then you are a coward, period. If you sit quietly, trying to stay in the good graces of someone who is committing an injustice or hurting others, then you have compromised your honor and integrity. And, if you do these things, while at the same time calling yourself a martial arts master or grandmaster, or a man or woman of honor, you are simply deceiving yourself. You are not a master or a grandmaster, and you have no honor. You are simply another hack who is playing politics to keep your standing with others instead of doing the right thing. If you don’t have the courage to be disliked, to stand for what is right in spite of the consequences, then you are a coward who lacks honor and integrity, period. If you call yourself someone’s friend, but continue to cozy up to your “friends” enemies or those who are trying to destroy your “friend,” then you are not really his friend at all; you are merely someone who is playing both sides, not unlike the sleazy politicians which we all despise. Men and women of honor have the courage to be disliked. They stand up against those who are doing wrong, committing injustice, or who are hurting others. They don’t ride the fence because they are afraid of offending someone on one side or the other; they simply do what is right and let the chips fall where they may. Martin Luther King stated, “In the end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” This is true, as the silence of our friends, during the times when our enemies are coming against us, reveals that our “friends” are not truly friends at all. People like this are what we commonly call “fair weather friends,” which is just a phrase to describe fake friends who are only interested in themselves. Have the courage to be disliked! Do what is right no matter what anyone else thinks about it. Have the intestinal fortitude to take a stand instead of cowering down like some spineless coward. If “they” dislike you, the hell with them! In the end, you don’t answer to them; you answer to yourself and to God. Warriors have the courage to be disliked; politicians, wimps, cowards, and fake friends do not. You have to make up your mind what kind of man or woman you want to be. Nobody is going to make that decision for you. Do you want to be a man or woman of honor, character, and integrity or do you want to be just another cowardly hack who doesn’t have the backbone to stand for what is right? The choice is yours, and the stakes are much higher than you may realize. Choose wisely! Bohdi Sanders ~ award-winning and bestselling author of, MODERN BUSHIDO, MEN of the CODE, BUSHIDO: The Way of the Warrior, DEFENSIVE LIVING, WARRIOR WISDOM, and DEFIANCE: Exposing the Dark Side of the Martial Arts.   Goh Meng Seng      Read More →

For a few days, I have been trying to read the incredulously complicating provisions governing the powers of our elected president. I am amazed at the number of amendments made to the the provisions relating to this so called prestigious $2m post since its enactment in 1991. These amendments simply show the incompetence or fickle mindedness or utter disregard of our lawmakers for the supreme law of our land. Judges should stop trying to persuade us to believe that our Constitution is sacred. While the chief architect of the elected president, our first prime minister had only intended the president to look after our reserves acquired by the PAP government and would not allow any opposition parties who may over time form the government to utilise these reserves, subsequent amendments literally tie the hands and feet of the elected president and do away with all his limited power. Whatever discretionary powers of the president, even the mundane appointment of civil servants, is diminished or removed by the powers of a eight-member Council of Presidential Advisers and ultimately, our parliament. This Council incidentally is paid for by taxpayers. We do not know how much they are paid but it can safely be said that they must be paid good money! With this Council, the majority of members being appointed by the prime minister and the chief justice, the president is literally left without any power. Further, if parliament decides to make him completely powerless, it can easily amend the Constitution with its present overwhelming majority. All it needs is a two-third majority and this explains why the Election Office keeps increasing the number of members of parliament. For decades, the Singapore Constitution has been amended over and over again because of the super majority of the PAP in parliament. I will not be surprised if this two third majority requirement for amending the constitution will be reduced to a simple majority should the PAP sense that it is losing popularity. So good luck to whoever is contesting this coming presidential election. Bear in mind that JB Jeyaretnam and his Workers' Party colleague were disqualified from standing as candidates in 1993 and Ong Teng Cheong scored 58.7% against Chua Kim Yeow who was relieved to lose the election even though he won 41.3% of popular votes. [LINK] If there is a contest, will Tharman Shanmugaratnam win more than 60%? Will his contender do better than Chua Kim Yeow as unlike Chua, George Goh is putting a lot of energy, time and money into making his dream come true!   Teo Soh Lung      Read More →

One of the most interesting moments in my years of blogging was to have an article I wrote on SPH get picked up by Independent Singapore. The article went round my professional circle and my employer called me asking me if I was “crazy” because I was risking being sued for stating that SPH failed as a business. The truth is, I would love for SPH to sue me, an insignificant blogger. At worst, I would be financially ruined and forced to spend whatever’s left of my working life cleaning toilets. The management of SPH would have had to explain in open court how they went from printing money because they controlled virtually all the advertising space in the country to needing government welfare in a country that prides itself in having no welfare. My perverse desire to be sued by SPH for pointing out the obvious was further enforced by the news that the police had been called in to investigate a scandal where SPH had inflated its circulation figures. In the article, the former CEO, Mr. Ng Yat Chung is quoted to have said, “I note with regret and disappointment that certain individuals in the SPH Media circulation department appeared to have misconducted themselves in relation to circulation numbers during the period of review by the (audit and risk committee).” The extract can be found here. Given that Mr. Ng is a former artillery man, I guess should be kinder to him. However, while he may have come from the same army formation as me, Mr. Ng has had a habit of demonstrating the reasons why there’s been a sense of dissatisfaction with what one can call the “Singapore Elite.” The background is simple. Guys like Mr. Ng seem to get parachuted into the type of jobs earning the type of pay that most of us can only dream of. We are told that this needs to happen because guys like Mr. Ng are the best and brightest that Singapore has to offer. If you look at Mr. Ng’s qualifications, they are impeccable. The argument is that people like him are so intelligent that they need to run all sorts of places for the benefit of the nation. It’s been sold that our elite are so elite that they’ll automatically turn everything they touch into gold. It’s this line of thought that got Mr. Ng his job at NOL despite no proven record of having boarded a ship. When he later became CEO of SPH, he had no record of ever having reported on a story or sold a page of advertisement. Yet, somehow the boards of those companies believed that he had the magical talent to turn things around. When you live in the real world, you’ll realise that the mess at both NOL and SPH were to be expected. This is not to say that outsiders to an industry can’t run particular businesses. However, the outsider needs to invest considerable time in learning how the industry that he or she has been entrusted to run before they are start doing anything. In such situations, the insiders usually retain a lot of power but at the same time, the person who remains responsible for everything is the guy in the leadership position. Ironically, the organization that seems to understand this best is the army. If you look at armies around the world, you will notice that officers, particularly junior officers are paired with non-commissioned officers (NCO) who are vastly more experienced. The young officer understands that he needs the NCO to get things done while the NCO knows he depends on the officer for guidance on the mission. A relationship of mutual respect has to develop. I remember asking a former US Army Sergeant-Major who one deals with a superior who could be your son. His reply was “The NCO has a duty to train the young officer to be the best officer possible.” This clearly didn’t happen at both SPH and NOL. Take one of Mr. Ng’s first decisions at SPH as an example. Within a month of becoming CEO, Mr. Ng conducted a mass retrenchment exercise. Sure, the company’s revenue was falling at the time and he must have assumed that cutting people would have saved cost. Unfortunately, the people he culled were the people who create the product that the business was selling. As such, the media business became weaker and the management was too busy defending a monopoly position that was becoming increasingly irrelevant. While incompetence is not good, the refusal to acknowledge mistakes was worse. The public may have forgiven the screw ups if Mr. Ng had been the military officer he’s supposed to be and lead from the front. However, in ever instance, Mr. Ng has behaved more like a bullying-bureaucrat hiding behind his desk. Think of his infamous “umbrage” moment when he tore into a reporter for doing her job and asking him a question he had to know was going to be asked. Now that there’s a scandal, it was someone else’s fault. Sure, nobody expects the CEO of a company that was the size of SPH to know minute detail of daily operations. However, what expects of a CEO is accountability. A boss is paid more than the employees for a particular reason. He or she has far greater responsibilities. Sure, bosses take credit when things go right even if it’s obviously not all their work. At the same time, bosses also get the blame when things go wrong, even if its not their fault. That’s clearly not the case that’s happening here. Mr. Ng is now scrambling to distance himself from the things that went wrong during his tenure as CEO. Here lies the problem. Mr. Ng has shown that he’s more than happy to take the perks of top jobs but not the responsibilities that come with it and the only person who seems to think this is OK, is the Artful Arse-licker, who has a talent for thinking of justifying the unjustifiable. [LINK] He is unfortunately for him; a symbol of what people find wrong with our elite. We don’t expect people to make perfect decisions but we do expect leaders to take responsibility. BY refusing to take a shred of responsibility for the failures under his tenure as CEO, Mr. Ng has also made us grateful that we’ve never had to fight a war with him in charge. It says a lot about his character and we cannot expect our elite to make things work if all their interested in is getting the perks of the job without the responsibilities. As stated, the beginning, Mr. Ng and his management team are welcome to take me to court if they believe if pointing that they did not preside over what can only be called failure of management.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able to 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 →