TR EMERITUS

Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam By all accounts, Tharman Shanmugaratnam seems like a very decent man. He is absent the dismissive, obnoxious demeanour of Teo Chee Hean (Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security), the Mandarin entitlement posturing of Chan Chun Sing (Education Minister), or two combative rottweilers Indranee Rajah (Minister, Prime Minister’s Office, Second Minister for Finance and Second Minister for National Development) and Grace Fu (Minister for Sustainability and the Environment) or fawning kings-in-waiting Lawrence Wong (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance) and Heng Swee Kiat (Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic Policies). Tharman looks more like a stern bureaucrat than a politician. As Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies, Tharman once made the anti-government statement that the policy of continual dependence on foreign labour is unsustainable. That certainly caught the attention of many in light of the extremely unpopular CECA, the Free Trade Agreement with India. A People’s Action Party’s (PAP) self-criticism or admission of mistake is as rare as the Cullinan Diamond. Alas, it was an unlocked potential that sputtered, never allowed to be explored. Was that a one-off comment for the gallery or he received some ominous phone calls that evening? A million-dollar salary has a way of sorting things out in one’s brain. Psychiatrists call that a moral hazard. Will this moral hazard as a PAP stalwart be simply carried into the presidency? Is Tharman, after all, simply switching a million-dollar chair for a two-million-dollar seater? Kenneth Jeyeratnam reminded us of Tharman’s breach of the Official Secrets Act when the latter, as a Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)’ Economics Department, allowed some journalists to have a glance of the flash estimate of second quarter 1992 economic growth before it was officially released. Tharman was eventually fined S$1,500 for a lesser charge of negligence, and the journalists poorer by S$2,000. In Uniquely Singapore legalese which can explain how one man can form a mob, it was easy explaining why the one who gives is punished less than the one who receives. Tharman was careless. Was the court watching out for Tharman’s planned political trajectory? A fine above S$2,000 disqualifies a person from standing for election. I am curious. In all his travels overseas, when Tharman fills the disembarkation card, which box does he tick when asked ‘have you ever been convicted in a criminal court”? Government mouthpiece media Channel News Asia screamed this headline.: “Lee Hsien Yang unlikely to meet criteria to run for elected presidency given court finding of lying under oath: Lawyers” (4 Mar 2023) CNA reported “.. lawyers said that earlier court findings that he (LHY) and his wife had lied under oath in judicial proceedings could see him fail to meet the criteria of being a candidate. This is regardless of the outcome of ongoing police investigations into the couple for potential offences of giving false evidence in the proceedings over Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s will.” CNA quoted “lawyerSSSSSS” but mentioned no names. Quoting an unnamed source is unethical journalism, and quoting many unnamed sources is highly unethical journalism. I would like to ask Navene Elangovan and Charlene Goh, who filed this report, which lawyers they spoke with because the last time I checked Sec 19 of The Singapore Constitution, there is nothing that disqualifies LHY from running for President. The only way LHY can be disqualified is for a compliant Presidential Selection Committee (PSC) to be not satisfied “that he is a person of integrity, good character and reputation”. That determination will have to rest entirely on their take on the judicial proceedings CNA mentioned. This will be on a slippery slope because it was a case relating to the professional misconduct of LHY’s wife where LHY was not on trial. True that a police investigation into his purported perjury is in progress. It would be prejudicial for the PSC to discuss this. Should the PSC have a higher calling to consider this course of action, it must weigh whether the fact that Lee Kuan Yew’s lawyer M/s Kwa Kim Li, who has now been found guilty of lying in the case regarding 38 Oxley Road, mitigated the actions of LHY. More importantly, PSC must then hold Tharman’s breach of the Official Secrets Act to the same moral accountability. As a matter of fact, even without LHY in the race, PSC has to demonstrate it has evaluated Tharman’s brush with the law and why they find no issues with integrity, good character and reputation. PSC needs to address this, even if it is to a reticent public. Failure to do so calls their credibility into question. In the political divide in Singapore, pro-PAP voices, and certainly our ever-present Polish blogger Critical Spectator’s knee-jerk reaction to Tharman’s announcement of his resignation from the PAP to enter the presidential race, is to jeer at the opposition’s inability to produce a candidate. This irritates me to no end. It borders on a juvenile inability to understand the presidential election is non-political. And it is the PAP’s stealth legislation that has turned it into a political event. It is fast becoming a six-yearly farce of PAP musical chair to push a cadre to the elevated ceremonial role. The fact that Tharman gets to sit on the chair itself is troubling. In PAP’s changing of the guard, unofficial polls put him as the people’s choice to lead the ruling party. The Party decided he was not suitable and was bypassed. He, however, is now deemed best suited for the top job in the land. What is good for the gander is not good for the goose. It feeds the speculation the party is inherently racist. On paper, the terribly restrictive constitutional criteria for a presidential candidate lulls the citizenry to the PAP’s contention of the need for someone with a rare DNA who can guard the national reserves from a rogue government. In reality, it denies Singaporeans of choices. Because the schema enshrines candidates coming from the dominant PAP factory, the Office of the President has evolved into the Mother of ‘ownself check ownself’. “Ownself check ownself” is a unique Singlish slang for self-monitoring or self-regulation. This is a deprecating attack dressed in humour by the opposition on the government’s propensity to whitewash shortcomings by appointing individuals or entities within the Executive to investigate their own actions. This PAP weakness has been argued in parliament. For the PAP, self-policing is good. For the opposition parties, self-policing is good but external policing is better. The PAP has been in power since independence in 1965. Lord Acton’s quote on the corruption of power rings true. The men and women in Whites now see themselves as omniscient. “Ownself check ownself” has been normalised as a management doctrine of the government. Goh Chok Tong has sung in praise of it. Ong Ye Kung said at a forum organised by the Institute of Policy Studies last year: “People can say ‘ownself check ownself’, but I see it always as a virtue — if ownself cannot check ownself, you’re in big trouble.” The PAP has now made “ownself check ownself”, a faulty generalisation fallacy, into a thought-terminating cliché – a commonly used phrase to quell cognitive dissonance to end the debate with a cliché rather than a point. It is an intoxication of power to the extent of an inability to discern impartiality is the mainstay of the search for truth. Certainly, a self-monitoring mechanism is good for an individual, a system or an entity. Everyone needs the little voice inside of us otherwise known as conscience, to check ourselves and help us make rightful, ethical and moral choices. In systems, there are built-in self-checking utilities like redundancy tests. For entities like companies, self-policing or self-regulation, there are functions like internal auditors, to proactively monitor their own conduct or performance to ensure compliance with standards, rules, or ethical guidelines. The PAP captures the essence of “ownself check ownself” as internalised functions. If this is all there is to it, the PAP might as well close down the Inspection Department of MAS and all external auditors are unnecessary. It is a terribly erroneous view that the opposition and 47% of Singaporeans have been trying to get through to the government. Any management guru worth his salt will advise the PAP that the applicability of “ownself check ownself” is contextual. As an ongoing concern, there is the issue of who checks the checkers. Thus the need for MAS inspectors, external auditors, head office inspectors etc. “Ownself check ownself” is essential for internal line management. For third-party satisfaction, an external check is the norm. Thus we have external auditors, MAS inspectors, health inspectors, inspectors from far away head offices and the government has its Internal Auditor General, etc. The crux of the public’s discontent is PAP’s application of “ownself check ownself” to investigations into wrongdoings or failed services. It cannot be that the ruling party of scholars do not believe in independent reviews. The further removed from the Executive, the better, in such circumstances. The normalisation of “ownself check ownself” is disingenuous and borders on fraudulent practice. I have no problems with Tharman as our head of state. At the personal level, he has the decorum for the office. However, the Constitution places the presidency in a uniquely critical role of guardian of our national reserves. Tharman has been a government and PAP man his entire adult working life. As President, it would make him the Mother of “ownself check ownself”.   Patrick Low * Article first appeared on Down The Rabbit Hole.      Read More →

Jocelyn Chia Saga is actually a result and extension of PAP's extensive propagandus indoctrination via its leaders and the controlled Main Stream Media. PAP is so used to use negative compare and contrast with other countries, in particular Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, HK and other countries around us to talk bad about them, thumb them down in order to make PAP's governance look good! This has been the tactic used since LKY's time! The MSM controlled by PAP will hardly report anything Bad about Singapore, not even social problems, lest PAP's bad governance like massive of conflicts of issues eg Ridout Gate Saga etc, not even the numerous suicides which happen almost everyday. But MSM will focus and amplified social and political issues in other countries! If we want progression and better governance, we should be looking at the good practices of other countries and improve ourselves. 三人行 必有我師焉! There will always be something that we could learn from others!   Goh Meng Seng      Read More →

This weekend, I met an American who had volunteered to send his son to do national service. He was proud of the fact that his son was posted to be a medic and he was also glad that his son, who had been to international schools finally got the chance to make Singaporean friends. He had, however, one complaint, which was the fact that from what he saw, basic military training (BMT) was “soft.” He told me that when he went for the initial parent’s visiting at Pulau Tekong, he saw an army of Bangladeshi workers raking the leaves. While I generally try to avoid getting into the “It was tougher” in my day line when it comes to national service, I did tell him that there was a time when raking leaves was considered “rest” for soldier in BMT. His immediate reaction was “Yes, if those boys raked the leaves, they will look at Bangladeshi workers in a different way.” OK, I get that the Singapore of today is very different from the Singapore of the 60s and the nature of warfare has also changed. Technology has seen to it that you can get the firepower at the push of a button that once required several men. I am reminded of the time I was invited by the then Chief of Artillery to “review” the Primus Gun in 2003 because he felt that it was worth getting the perspective of someone trained on the old Field Howitzers. My first question to the young commander was “What’s your gun drill like?” He stared at me blankly and then the S3 had to sheepishly say, “Our gun drill is called push button.” So, like it or not, this is the way things heading. With our small population and lack of strategic space, our military needs to have the best technology available if it is to have an edge against any potential adversary. When my batch got the FH2000 in 1998, it was considered the state of the art. I take my alma matter, the artillery as an example. In 1998 my batch were told that we had a wonderful gun called the FH2000, which required an eight-man crew and could send rounds up to 40km away. This was progress because we had eight instead of 12-men on a crew and we did considerably less hammering of things. However, in 2003, Primus came along and artillery was no longer about sitting there and firing rounds. It was about mobility. Then in 2011, we became one of five US allies that got to use HIMARS, where a single HIMARS unit could do as much damage as an entire six-gun battery under the old system. Technology in the military like elsewhere is supposed to give you more bang for your buck. Having said that, there are something that shouldn’t change. Soldiers, for example, need to be physically more resilient than your average civilian even if the technology the soldiers of today allows them to do more damage with a single shot than their predecessors could. What is true of a professional army should actually be more so on a conscript army like what we have in Singapore. For your average Singaporean, national service is often the first “away from home” experience that our young men have and it’s supposed to be the place where you get some of the harsh realities of life kicked into you. It is, for example, the place where you actually discover that Singapore is much larger than the small magic circle your junior college would have let you believe. However, in 2011, we realized that this was increasingly untrue. Someone caught a young recruit walking to camp with his maid: This caused something of an uproar and the Ministry of Defense had to come out and say that it had counselled the young man. However, whilst many old folks like me had lots of grumbles about, there were those who thought differently and actually didn’t see what the issue was. I’ve even found a note written in 2017 telling us not to be mean to our boys in green: [LINK] Whilst I do believe soldiers should be respected for the work they do; I think the writer is missing the point. National Service is the first time that many of us actually thinks of us. The boys from well to do families who went to top schools suddenly experience what its like for the wider world to think of them as nothing but another nuisance. It’s in that moment where they have to bond with the boys from less well of families and be actual humans rather than part of the magic circle that they were told was their birthright. Well, that’s clearly not happening if you have recruits getting their maids to carry their rucksacks or Bangladeshi workers doing area cleaning. When you allow this to happen in national service, you actually normalize the idea that you are too good for certain things and certain entitlement attitudes are normalized. When I thinks of national service today, I inevitably think of how we treat construction workers. It rained today and as the bus drove past a group of construction workers, I noticed that nobody was going to stop the work. Interestingly enough the SAF actually has protocols to stop training if the rain gets heavy or if there’s a thunderstorm. So, what’s the message here. Nobody cares about construction workers because they’re usually dark skinned and don’t vote in elections? National Service boys cannot be put into anything that might scratch them because they’re kids of people who vote? Or is the message simply this. We no longer produce men in Singapore so we cannot expose them to a knock or two. Again, this is not to say that we should return to the “brutal” training of the 1960s. However, we should not go through the other extreme where we panic every time one of our boys gets a nose bleed. You cannot talk about foreigners “taking” from us until our young men actually go through experiences that give them resilience. Our guys need to be able to take a knock and get right back up and fight. You can’t outsource resilience to Indians and Bangladeshis. The point of National Service is to toughen us up. I think of the current UAE President, Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who felt that his people needed to be toughened up and imposed ju-jitsu in schools and national service. When you mollycoddle our boys and tell them that they don’t need to carry their bags or clean up after themselves, you turn them into the type of people who are only good for being automatons in cubicle land and in need to be told what to do by people who once experienced what it was like to pick up their own bags. 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 →