TR EMERITUS

Soh Rui Yong Soh Rui Yong has been excluded in the coming Asian Games by the Singapore National Olympic Council (SNOC). This news has been obscured by Tharman’s announcement of his candidacy for the upcoming Presidential Election. But reading about how the SNOC dealt with Soh is all so familiar and disappointing. This is yet another instance of a sickness that pervades Singapore society, one that infects our institutions of authority and power. In the view of SNOC, Soh “continued to make disparaging and derisive remarks [in the] public domain” and did not conform to their “constructive, mature and professional standard”. Tan Chuan-Jin (Speaker of Parliament) is the President of SNOC. What did he say that warranted this action? You can find them here. Our taxpayers’ money is used to pay these people. Millions of dollars are paid to these administrators to manage and boss around our athletes, only to give us this kind of childish bullshit. This is utterly disappointing and petty. Now, Soh Rui Yong is not running for President. He is running to hold on to his four national records. He is the undisputed king of long distance running in Singapore and one of the top athletes in Asia. His performance and sportsmanship in the recent SEA Games is celebrated beyond this tiny island. But too bad, he can’t compete because there are little emperors in the SNOC who did not like what Soh posted on social media. I attribute this kind of self-entitled power trip to elitism. Elitism is a distrust of people considered to be beneath the elite. It fuels a righteousness that “justifies” their opinions. It allows them to dismiss responsibility for their actions in the name of their superior intelligence or whatever it is. That is why their opinions matter and why the rest of us should just accept what they say. Time and again, we see over-extensions and abuses of power by little emperors who are so myopic and self-indulgent. The worst part is that there is no accountability nor transparency in their decision-making. For the people in power, ownself check ownself is becoming a norm. The principles of democratic checks and balances are derided and dismissed as popularism. A first-world country needs a functioning democracy to thrive and progress. There must be a balance of power. People in power must be accountable for their actions and decisions to the people they SERVE. Recent incidents like the Parti Liyani case, Keppel corruption case, and the SLA Ridout saga show that our elitist meritocracy which produces these little emperors who are not only full of self- entitlement but are also very divisive and disruptive to our pursuit of a democratic society based on justice and equality. They can abuse their power to the detriment of society. It is an illness in our society to not be able to properly keep misuse of power in check. Cancerous cells exploit the resources of the body, and ultimately disrupt the proper functioning of the body itself. A healthy immune system regulates the self, and it kills cancerous cells before it becomes cancer. Singapore suffers from an auto-immune disease because we can’t seem to stop cancer cells from abusing the resources of our body. And just like Soh, we as a society are stunted in our ability to develop to our fullest potential if we allow this illness to fester. Remember that we still have the ballot every five years. Time to get rid of these cancerous cells.   Tan Tee Seng * The author blogs on Facebook.      Read More →

Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam resigns from the party and from his positions in government to stand for the presidential election. And in the next instant, he is supposed to be free of the People’s Action Party (PAP), free to be his own man, and ready to be an Elected President with no political baggage. Sounds so simple but we know that’s not how it works. SM Tharman has been a PAP man through and through for a few decades. He can stop wearing PAP colours and stop carrying his PAP membership card. But the umbilical cord is not cut – you can’t suddenly take the PAP out of the PAP man. The PAP knows it too well. Otherwise, why would they go through such great trouble to make sure that the Elected President is always a PAP person? Why is it so important to the PAP that their endorsed candidate takes the seat at the Istana? It goes without saying that the PAP asked SM Tharman to resign and stand for the presidential election, in the same way they asked Mdm Halimah Yacob to step down as Speaker of Parliament and contest the presidency. Still, they have to play the game they always play. The script calls for SM Tharman to write a resignation letter and declare his intention to contest the presidency. In line with the script, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong then regretfully accepts his resignation – it is a “heavy loss” to him and his team but he understands the “sense of duty” to serve the country. PM Lee also expresses his confidence that when SM Tharman becomes President Tharman, he will exercise his duties “with the independence of mind.” There’s that word again – independence. They seem to have a fascination with it. Like when PM Lee said he asked Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean to do an “independent review” of ministers’ controversial occupation of Ridout bungalows. This is the same SM Teo tasked to lead the 38 Oxley Road ministerial committee, the same SM Teo who is a close associate, colleague and comrade of the Ridout ministers. Does PM Lee really want to get to the bottom of things, leaving no stone unturned? Or did he pick SM Teo for an “independent review” because he is someone who has never let him and the party down, who has deputised for him as acting prime minister many times? SM Teo immediately thanked SM Tharman for his “enormous contributions” following the news he was contesting the presidency. SM Teo said he and SM Tharman have worked together for more than 25 years. Both are PAP men to the core. Both will never let the PAP down.   Augustine Low      Read More →

I ran into a British Born Chinese girl at an event organized by my sister tonight. The conversation inevitably turned to the topic of growing up between East and West. Both of us admitted to being Chinese illiterate and she talked about how everyone in Hong Kong called her a Banana (Yellow on the outside but white on the inside), which was a moniker my mother takes pride in when describing us. Where we differed was in attitude. She expressed frustration that people in the Chinese speaking world couldn’t accept that someone who looked Chinese wouldn’t speak Chinese. She said, “Can’t they understand that you could have been adopted by a White Family and therefore wouldn’t know Chinese. I explained to her that while Singapore is predominantly English speaking and I am most comfortable in the English language (and admittedly not comfortable in Chinese), there are situations where I need to use Chinese because the people, I deal with a more likely to reveal things to me in Chinese than they would be in English. I do get where a lot of Chinese kids who are born in the West come from. Why should they speak Chinese when they identify as American, British or wherever they were born. Chinese was at best a language that they spoke to old folks and only when forced to. As far as these guys are concerned, their entire life is going to be in a Western environment and there’s no earthly reason for them to look at the Chinese language. The reason why I get this, is simple. I grew up in a similar situation. I only maintained enough Cantonese to order food in the take away (the quality of food is inevitably better when you order in Chinese) but other than that, there was no reason for me to use a Chinese language. However, I believed and I still believed that the future would inevitably be outside the Western world and so I returned to Singapore. It turned out that my affinity would be the other Asian Giant as well as the Arabian Gulf and so instead of being in more Mandarin speaking situations, I found more value in picking up a phrase or two of Hindi from Bollywood movies as well as the odd Arabic phrase here and there. Still, I understand that I will be in situations where I have to deal with people that will only respond in Chinese. Like it or not, China is a huge market with an increasingly well to do class of consumers. Many of the “good ones” will learn English but their main language will be Chinese and to reach them, you must have some knowledge of Chinese. Then, 2016 happened. The Americans voted for Trump and his brand of self-serving nationalism and the British decided that they needed to protect themselves from people who do work and voted to leave the EU. The problem was both sets of nationalists had no plan to get things done. The “strength” they promised turned out to be nothing more than chest thumping. You’re talking about people who love to provoke fights but when the other guy says “boo” they suddenly discover the ability to fly. The best tell tale sign of how well Brexit has turned out can be seen in this sign in Margate with Nigel Farage, the genius who championed Brexit: The fact that someone like Farage can sell a bad idea so successfully by appealing to the worst in people, should be a sign that depending on a single world for survival is plain stupid. This is not to say that the BRICS countries are paradise. They also have plenty of issues. However, the Western world has shown that it can change for the worse and if you don’t fit into the mainstream, you can find yourself in a sticky situation. I remember being a supermarket promoter at an NTUC and having to communicate in Chinese to the heart landers. It was really tough for me to do it but I kept reminding myself that I better get used to operating in Chinese because Trump was President of the USA and the British had allowed nationalism to triumph over economic pragmatism. This is not to say that English will be replaced as the world language anytime soon or that the English-speaking world will collapse. However, one should always be prepared to operate in a different environment than the one grew up in. The world is constantly changing and if you are only able to work in one type of environment, you’re begging to made extinct.   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 →