One of the biggest points that gets raised in Singapore
whenever there is a debate on the cost of living and wages, is the fact that
Singapore is a proud meritocracy where people get promoted according to their
abilities rather than their race, religion or gender.
If you look at Singapore on the surface level, you’ll
believe this to be true. I remember the renowned journalist Tom Plate gushing
about how Singapore had come up in the world many years ago because it treated
its women so well. Mr. Plate had completed a series of interviews at MediaCorp
where he had been interviewed in connection with his biography of the late Mr.
Lee Kuan Yew by a couple of ladies and felt that this experience gave him an
incredible insight into the way Singapore ticks.
However, if you look beyond the headlines and actually
live in Singapore, you’ll notice that meritocracy is a very loaded word. Yes, if
you compare us to some other places, you’ll notice that gender, race and
religion play a relatively minor role in promotions. However, what does play a
major role in things is academic qualifications. As long as you are from the
right junior college, scored significantly well in your exams and went to the
right university, you are considered a person who has achieved “merit.”
The paper qualifications imply that you are not an idiot.
Places like the Oxbridge universities or the American Ivy League to demand certain
standards and you could say that our top people (who inevitably go to those
places) must have some brains to get good degrees from such places.
However, as everyone who works in the productive
sector (non-government) of the economy will tell you – just because a person
has the right papers, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re any good at the
actual job they’re assigned to do.
Funnily enough, one of the most prominent examples where
this plays out is in the military. We have generals who get the top jobs in
their early 40s. None have seen any form of action. All have great paper
qualifications. Are our generals clever? The qualifications our generals have,
imply that they have brains. However, are those brains good at leading men in a
war front? Nobody knows because nobody as been tested.
This on its own would be bad enough. However, what
makes it particularly bad is the fact that proving that you have the abilities
to be a good military leader might actually be detrimental, especially if you don’t
have the right papers. Case in point, Major-General Tan Huck Ghim, who lead a
task force in Timor Leste and was praised by everyone, including the Australians
and New Zealanders he led. His reward was to get knocked down to Brigadier-General
on his return to Singapore. As far as our ministry was concerned, he was “old.”
Second case in point was Rear-Admiral Bernard Miranda who led a task force to
combat piracy in the Gulf of Aden. Everyone said he did a fantastic job. That
is everyone except the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Defence who saw to it
that the Rear-Admiral got bumped back down to colonel and retired from active
service as soon as possible.
Here were two men who proved that they had “merit” to
do the job that was assigned to them but they failed to meet the official
definition of merit and so they were actually demoted.
Meritocracy is a wonderful idea on paper. If you think
about it, why shouldn’t things be run by the best and brightest. Our scholarship
system is often praised by everyone else outside Singapore because the idea
looks good on the outside.
We, the people, are a little less enamoured with the
idea because the results are well, a little less desirable.
The problem here is not only the definition of merit
but the fact that system tends to waste brains by placing them in bureaucratic
silos. Scholars who proved their intelligence and ability to study are
essentially placed in environments that ensure they never have to face
challenges. The brain, like the other muscles in the body, has way of rotting
when its not challenged. In military terms, good officers are never placed
anywhere near problematic platoons and get promoted half-colonel within six-years
as long as they sit there and behave.
Bureaucracy has a way of stifling the desire to be better
and when you have situations where its about climbing up the ladder and
position becomes a sign of godhood, you get the worst of many worlds. Yes,
there’s a meritocracy of sorts but its not necessarily the meritocracy of
ability to the job.
If you think of the outsized role that the government
has in our economy, you’ll understand that many private enterprises end up
trying to model themselves on the government bureaucracy, which is essentially the
main customer. I think of someone in the construction industry who made the
point that one of the most important things in the business was ensuring that
you had a “Godfather” in the organisation above you. The skill that becomes
essential in business is “Por Lamba,” or “Angkat Bola” (the Hokkien and Malay,
which roughly translates to “carrying balls”)
https://sg.wantedly.com/companies/wantedly_sg/post_articles/197850
Now, as one of the smoother operators I’ve known once said “it doesn’t cost me anything to say nice things,” and one has to accept that every relationship needs to be greased. An ego stoked boss is bound to be more malleable when the ego is pumped.
However, the problem sets in when the man on top only
values the skill of ego pumping. There are, for example times when the man on
top needs to be told that his idea is downright suicidal. When I worked
freelance, I had to make the clients feel good. However, I also needed to have
enough respect from the client to tell them when they were being ridiculous. I
am pleased to say that I had clients who respected that.
If you, for example, depend on a boss who is more interested
only listening to praise than in what you actually want to do to make business
better, sooner or later you’re going to find that its actually better for you
just to sit there and smile and nod at whatever the boss says, regardless of
how idiotic.
Is Singapore like that? Again, let’s go back to the
issue of foreign worker dormitories. Activist like Jolvan Wham have spent years
trying to raise the issue of conditions in the dormitories. Nobody wanted to
listen. In fact, the activist were often wacked with all sorts of lawsuits for
being trouble makers. Why? The activists were trying to tell the powers that be
that things were not hunky dory on the ground. The construction industry on the
other hand were talking about how great things were. What did the government
want to hear?
So, I guess you could say that we are a meritocracy –
it’s just a question of what we are actually good at that matters.
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