TR EMERITUS

I’ve just finished participating in a medical workshop and one of the key moments in this workshop was when the moderator asked us if anyone had a different opinion to what was discussed. There was an awkward silence and then she told us, “It’s OK to have a different opinion, you won’t get punished.” This incident brings back memories to one of the biggest truisms of working in Singapore, namely the fact that gatherings of any sort, particularly if it involves a government organization, are not discussion sessions but an opportunity for the institution or person calling the meeting to speak a lot. Ironically, one of the most prominent instances of this happens to be the “press conference,” where the person calling the press conference does a lot of talking and the journalist are inevitably quiet. PR people in other parts of the world spend their time preparing the client for all sorts to face a pack of reporters shouting all sorts of questions. In Singapore, our PR people are actually challenged to effectively get the party started (though to be fair, our journalist get a bit chattier in one-on-one interviews). To be fair, this isn’t exactly limited to Singapore. As a rule of thumb, East Asians tend to be a little reserved in public. If you look at a cross section of Western Universities, you’ll note that the East Asians tend to excel in mathematics and the sciences, where speaking out is not required. Very few East Asians take up arts or humanities, where group discussion is a must (though having said that, the only who got a first in my anthropology class in university was the Japanese girl who didn’t say much in seminars but did what she needed to in exams). A lot of Westerners tend to understand our reluctance to ask questions and disagree in public down to the concept of “losing face.” I believe that there’s some truth to it but would go further and point to the culture that was formed around Confucius’s teachings, which placed the scholar-bureaucrat the top of society. How did the scholar-bureaucrat get there? He (they usually were), got there by studying and therefore having a better understanding of the perfect past. Challenging and having different opinions is in many ways seen as a challenge to very reason for existence itself. If you look at the way Singapore is constructed, you’ll notice that Lee Kuan Yew’s genius was to create a Confucius society with characteristics of a Westminster Parliamentary democracy, with himself and his family of scholar-bureaucrats at the top. Sure, we have elections ever five-years but our parliament has no equivalent of “PMQ’s” in the Westminster Parliament on which we’ve modeled our parliament on. As with most things around Singapore, its hard to convince people that this isn’t exactly healthy. Everything in Singapore seems to work like clockwork and one is inevitably bound to be told off by Americans and Europeans for not appreciating how good the system is in Singapore. However, whilst things may look rosy on the outside, cracks are appearing in the system and as anyone who has had to do repairs will tell you, cracks if not attended to and patched up have a way of turning into potholes and worse. If you want to look at things from a medical perspective “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Unfortunately, you’re not going to fix a crack or get the ounce of prevention of cure from people who aren’t going to challenge the opinion that the crack is there if your opinion is that there is no crack. Everyone keeps quiet because, well, its only a crack and it doesn’t affect me and if I point it out, I will displease the man at the top who will in turn do this bit of squash me. I think back to my first guard duty in National Service. There was a sign that said that the Battalion Order Sergeant (BOS) is “Always Right,” and if he (usually) is wrong, refer to rule No. 1.” This is, unfortunately, extended beyond the realms of the military. Many corporations work on the concept of the man on-top being perpetually right. This system works when the man on top is a wonderful leader. However, when the said leader ages and goes senile and leaves the show to helpless successors, things go wrong. Absolute monarchies failed in most places because for every wise and wonderful monarch who did great things, there were ten awful ones who screwed up so badly that people took to the streets. If you look at Singapore, we had Lee Kuan Yew, who was by most standards a decent enough ruler. He was strict and got things done. Ministers who didn’t deliver or screwed up were dealt with. More importantly, Mr. Lee in his early days surrounded himself with people who were willing to have different opinions. In the funeral of S. Rajaratnam, Mr. Lee talked of “furious debates” in cabinet. Not all the decisions made were perfect but they were at the time ones that had debated and argued over to the point that everyone felt that they were the best possible ones. However, things changed. Nobody questioned or dared voice a “different” (note, I said different not dissenting) opinion and so decisions are now made on the grounds that it’s the right one based on the singular onion without having gone through any form of test. Just look at what happened when Mas Selamat, an alleged psychopathic criminal walked out of a highly secured facility without breaking a sweat. The cabinet rushed to defend the Minister of Home Affairs for not doing his job. Sure, when you have a system which does not tolerate a “different” opinion, you have a system where nobody will point out the cracks because its just not worth it. It’s a system where you will agree with whatever the man on top says as long as you keep getting paid well enough because having a different opinion isn’t going to make a difference or even endanger being paid well enough. Why bother? Unfortunately, bosses are inevitably human and make the same errors that the rest of us make. Bosses who are willing to accept different opinions have the capacity to think before they act. Bosses who believe they know it all tend indulge their mistakes rather than learn from them.   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 →

This is like an story in the Ian Flemmings' James Bond adventure.That it could have happened in the highly powerful administraion of the USA is like a heavenly earth-shaking hoax to dement the people when they are just recovering breath after their nerves are rattled by China's Xi Jinping military manoeuvre over the Taiwan Straits as an invasion rehearsal. Could Joe Biden have stunned the world with his naive remark "I am not concerned" in reference to the highly classifed information leak coming from the President in command of the most powerful country in the world. If he is not concerned then who is. Apart from the sensitivity of the leaked documents there is the more important question of how a national guardsman could have the technical skill to access the highly classified archives.with the extremely tight security could make the Americans look like amateurish Mandarins. The Russians will find this colossal security lapse amusing and something which they could learn to access the American highly classified archives at a propitious time in future. Catching the culprit for the security break-in and sending him to prison is just the beginning of the American big headache. They are confronted with the enormous task of regaining the trust and confidence of close allies who must be greatly shocked by the American homogous security lapse.That the comical melodrama has placed the Americans in the grave quandary is never in doubt and this at the critical time of the intractable US-China conflict. It's going to take a herculian effort to surmount this security behemoth. This is meant to be hilarious by a Nosey Parker.   Yoong Siew Wah   * The author was the Director of Singapore’s Internal Security Department (ISD) from 1971 to 1974. He was Director of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) in the 1960s, and had a distinguished career in the Singapore Special Branch in the 1950s. Mr Yoong has granted TR Emeritus exclusive right to his memoir, to be published on an independent website (work in progress), upon his passing. All the above historic information and more details will be revealed in his memoir.      Read More →

These two days we are overwhelmed by friends and supporters who continued to come down to our Tea Booth@ Geylang Serai Ramadan Bazaar. Over the past few weeks, we have listened to many stories about how the VDS and Vax program have hurt family ties, stressed or even broken up long time friendship and the worst was how heart broken people were when suspected injuries or even death occurred. We have young people who were threatened by parents to be disallowed from stepping into the house if they aren't jabbed. Sad to say, these tensions were only reduced when someone in the family got hurt from the jabs. But there were long term irreparable damage to both health and close family relationship when VDS and all those propagandus scare tactics were put up. Two sisters visited me yesterday and we had a long chat. It is apparent that these sisters come from a relatively big family which used to be closely knitted. Both of them are Unvax but other siblings were "Pro Vax". Naturally arguments and quarrels erupted with their differences in this VDS and coercion of Vaccination. The worse thing to happen is to have intense argument over whether their parents should get the jab or not. The cracks in their relationship widen to a point of no return. Even though the Unvax sisters are willing to patch up, the other siblings would just ignore them. When they suffered suspected V induced health problems, they will still keep to themselves. I just told them it's natural for people to live in self denial, especially when it comes to decisions which affect their own health. No one would believe the Gov will ask them to take something which turns out to be harmful to themselves. No one would believe that they could get hurt by trusting the Gov! I don't believe PAP Gov would do such thing as well, even though politically they are my opponents. However, when the world narratives have changed drastically, with more countries dropping the mRna vaccination altogether, PAP Gov is still sticking to their guns! It's really unbelievable to me. The Vaccines are neither safe nor effective and even German Health Minister has admitted publicly that the Vaccines could result in permanent damage to health! There is a great correlation between high vaccination to high excess deaths but everyone is turning blind to such glaring statistical significance. Nobody is interested to find out whether there is a real causal relationship or not! Every Gov in the world is in self denial while many doctors are in great disquiet when they keep seeing worrying trends of increasing heart issues, stroke, aggressive cancer incidents and other health issues popping up among their populations. These are incidentally PREDICTED by the Real Experts, who were labelled as "Conspiracy Theorists"! More and more doctors all over the world are raising concerns over such phenomenon and the increase in sudden deaths as well as Excess Deaths. But not in docile Singapore. The sisters said that they used to trust the PAP GOV and regarded them as "Good Gov" but now, trust no more. Most probably they won't trust PAP anymore and they would see the importance of having a real voice of courage to put legitimate questions and checks on them. The Irreparable Damage caused by VDS and the foolishness of the mediocre leadership will have a long lasting impact on families as well as PAP's credibility.   Goh Meng Seng      Read More →