Being President of this Country is Entirely About Character – Andrew Shepard, the American President

One of the great memories I have of student days was watching “The American President,” in the US at the time of the Lewinsky Saga. The movie is about a President who is a widower, who falls in love with a lobbyist. His girlfriend gets attacked by his political opponents and he ends up screwing her for political expediency. However, at the end, he realizes his mistake and decides to fight back and one of the key lines of his final speech is “Being President of this Country is Entirely About Character.”

I am reminded of this movie because I’ve just seen a Facebook posting by the Fawning Follower, who is one of the more interesting members of the cult of Singapore’s Ruling Party. True to form, the Fawning Followers post is a long tirade against the people who “hounded” former candidate for Member of Parliament, Mr. Ivan Lim from running in the elections. I’m pasting a snap shot of the Fawning Follower’s posting and to get the full post you can click on:

https://www.facebook.com/CriticalSpectator/posts/2948815981892776?__tn__=K-R

The thrust of his argument is that we, the Singaporean voters should not be such namby-pamby babies because Ivan Lim has arrogant elitist tendencies. The Fawning Follower goes onto list a range of great men, who brought great innovations to humanity but were at the same time arseholes of the highest order.

The Fawning Follower proceeds to remind us that, “if you want to judge controversial people do it on their merit (or lack of it) not their character.” He makes the point that “being an a**hole is actually a strength.”

Like most cult members, the Fawning Follower misses the obvious points in his eagerness to defend the cult of the ruling party. His key failure is this – he forgets that we’re not talking about a cult that he belongs to. We’re talking about a political party and because that political party is a governing party, we’re talking about the government of a country. As a citizen of that country, I and every other citizen have a moral obligation to tell our government when they’re f***ing up.

I stress that I am not against the government or the ruling party. As often said, I think they’ve done a good job on balance. As long as I and my little girl have a safe and clean environment, I’m not going to complain too much.

However, there have been major f*** ups that have the potential to affect my basic life. First, there was the issue of exploding Covid-19 cases in foreign worker dormitories. This exposed what is essentially a slave racket and there was no defense for a part of the system that had failed from every standpoint

Then there’s the issue of Ivan Lim. As mentioned in my last posting, the entire saga brought into question the selection process of our governing party and the integrity of a candidate for public office. This wasn’t just a case of keyboard warriors having a issues with Ivan Lim, it was a sad reflection of how a party that normally wins elections by blinking several times was behaving like an organization that could not post letters. This is best explained by my former boss, Mr. PN Balji, former editor of Today in his article, which can be found at:

https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/pn-balji-3-steps-disaster-ivan-lim-affair

While Ivan Lim’s “arrogant” behavior got most of the online attention, the most crucial factor to the story was the fact that there was an allegation that he was involved in a corruption scandal in Brazil. While no evidence of wrong doing has come to light, the question is, how did a ruling party, which places so much stress on its integrity in governance, even consider someone who had an allegation of corruption attached to his name? Surely, the ruling party of the world’s most famous hypercompetent government would have screened a potential candidate more thoroughly. While Ivan Lim has denied he had any involvement in the corruption scandal in Brazil, there are reports that things may not be as he says:

https://mothership.sg/2020/06/ivan-lim-keppel-brazil/

I don’t disagree that high achievers can be difficult to work with. It’s often said that it is the “unreasonable man who gets things done.” Visionaries like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and dare I say Lee Kuan Yew were difficult but they had a vision and got it done. 

However, the Fawning Follower misses the point completely. He fails to distinguish between personality and character. Ivan Lim’s personality is not the issue, it’s his character. Issues of arrogance can be forgiven if they are compensated by hyper competence. Issues of character and integrity are different story. Let’s remember, we are talking about someone who wants to represent people at the highest of levels. Why should we, the paying public, employ him to speak for us if there are reasons not to trust him?

Let’s leave the issue of the issue of corruption in Brazil aside. There was an allegation that he was willing to put lives of foreign workers at risk:

Once again, the accusation has not been substantiated. However, there is an allegation of behavior that would suggests that Ivan Lim is not suited for public office. 

Any normal person running for any elected office would have to be aware that one’s skeletons would be exposed. While nothing has been proven, he has merely denied that accusations and ran away as fast as he could. Is this the behavior you want in your elected representative? The fact that the Prime Minister himself had said that he was accepting the resignation because there was no time to hold a proper inquiry? Is this the reaction you’d expect from a leader whose told that there are serious issues about one his men? 

Running for an elected office is entirely about character. Ultimately, the electorate can forgive you if you’ve got personality issues and if you make mistakes along the way. What they will not and should not forgive is dishonesty, particularly when you’ve been asked about serious allegations. 

Thank You Ivan Lim - You've Proven the Case for the Opposition!

As mentioned in my last posting, there’s very little to say about Singapore’s General Elections. The result is a forgone conclusion and it’s a question of how badly the opposition parties get drubbed. As I’ve argued constantly, while the PAP governments have made mistakes, they’ve not done enough to lose elections. If you look at the results of the last few elections, the results have been pretty much the same. The ruling party enters this contest with the crucial advantage of a brand reputation for competence in governing.

Furthermore, the ruling party has used its advantages of incumbency. It called the election not long after giving out money to help people with the economic damages of Covid-19 and at a time when rules limiting the size of gatherings are in force, thus hobbling the opposition parties’ chances of holding large rallies. This is in addition to famously redrawing electoral boundaries in its favour. Despite its obvious advantages going into the fight, the ruling party famously does not leave things to chance. You can think of Singapore’s General Election as a fight between a gorilla that ties the arms of the chihuahua before stepping into the boxing ring with the chihuahua.

Change must be coming faster to Singapore’s political scene than anyone imagined. The ruling party has a single stroke, proceeded to give the opposition a gift that shreds one of its most crucial tenants – namely the reputation for competence. This has been done before a single shot has been fired in the proverbial war.

Mr. Ivan Lim, who had planned to stand for election as a candidate for the ruling party has just announced that he is no longer standing for election because of pressure from the online crowd. The story can be found at:

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3090873/online-backlash-forces-singapores-pap-drop-ivan-lim-election 

If you read the story of Mr. Lim’s withdrawal, you’ll realise that it’s a sign of Singapore politics being more normal. Candidates who run for political office most democracies have to be prepared for every detail of their private lives to be scrutinized and the unwritten understanding is that when a candidate runs for office and gains office and all the power and perks that go with the said office, that they sacrifice the right of privacy.

At the most basic level, you could say Mr. Lim failed that hurdle of not being able to withstand public scrutiny and that the ruling party had failed to realise that the times had changed. While can rely on favourable coverage from the mainstream media, this the age of social media, which allows alternative voices to speak loudly.

This is the kindest thing that one can say about the ruling party and its former candidate. Further discussion would suggest that the ruling party’s machinery has major issues.

Mr. Lim was selected as a candidate because he checked the usual boxes of having the right credentials – namely former military officer and senior executive at a large local company linked to the government. However, within a matter of days of announcing his candidacy, one of the men who served under Mr. Lim posted something about Mr. Lim being an elitist and arrogant shit and which lead to other people posting things about him at his work place. The posting can be seen below:

More seriously, this led to allegations that Mr. Lim was involved in a bribery scandal over a project that his company was involved in, in Brazil. A report of the allegation can be found at:

https://mustsharenews.com/ivan-lim-keppel/?fbclid=IwAR0kdvahfCc2DLYD7apTTdTPtrH7Ec337OyjNWagDVR4CiGD5S2YCBS1YCc

Despite an online petition, Mr. Lim at first promised to fight the election and was even supported by the Minister for the Environment, Mr. Masagos Zulkifi. Mr. Lim’s defense of the allegations and Mr. Masagos’s reaction can be found at:

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/ge2020-paps-ivan-lim-breaks-silence-criticisms-over-character-says-he-will-stay-course?fbclid=IwAR26ALaCjfsJyiVFzaNwy5xLPtno2Zw8fVBfW1mrrv8MufPQISMACAi0P7Y; and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZOxPYCqrvE

All of this could be a mistake that was corrected if this was any other party. However, this is not the case. Our ruling party has built its entire reputation around its competence and getting the best people possible. More importantly, Singapore’s government has stressed to the world that it is a vigorous champion of honest government. Our message to anyone planning to invest in Singapore is that while we may be a little pricier, we are transparent and you will never pay a bribe or be shaken down by officials. 

Lee Kuan Yew was very clear about this point. He paid ministers well but insisted on the highest standards of integrity in public office. Any government official caught with his or her hands in the proverbial cookie jar was always humiliated in public. 

So, the fundamental question here is, how did Mr. Lim even get selected to become a potential MP? The PAP has always made it a point to stress that it gets people of not just high levels of competence but character and basic integrity. 

Leaving aside Mr. Lim’s alleged elitst attitudes, there was an allegation floating around the internet that he may have had a connection to a major bribery scandal that was reported in the international media. How is it such that this most careful of political parties did not pick it up? It’s not like they didn’t have the resources to check on him.

Mr. Lim was a “tainted” candidate and the most charitable conclusion is that there was a fault in the vetting process. The next best thing you can say is that someone in the ruling party didn’t think it was important that there was such an allegation attached to Mr. Lim or that they could cover it up. 

Mr. Lim has just proven to the electorate that Singapore needs a stronger opposition presence in parliament to ensure that the highest standards of competence and integrity that Lee Kuan Yew’s initial PAP governments told us to demand are maintained. 

You’re Lucky We Let You Live

I usually don’t have much to say about Singapore Elections. The results, like any libel trial involving our senior political leaders, is a forgone conclusion. The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) is an expert at using the vast powers and resources of incumbency to its advantage and our opposition remains fragmented and too filled with different egos to focus on the main prize. Furthermore, if you work on the principle that elections are not won by opposition but lost by governments, the PAP government, while having made some serious mistakes, has yet to do enough to lose the election.

Having said that, it’s been unfortunate that a member of the ruling party has decided to put display a very disturbing attitude towards ethnic minorities. The background is as simple. Dr. Tan Wu Meng, a member of parliament (MP) for the ruling party took issue with the playwright, Alfian Sa’at.

I must admit that I’ve never read Alfian Sa’at’s works. However, from what I’ve heard of him, he’s by no means a violent revolutionary nor has he ever suggested that he’d support any damage to Singapore. What he has been is critical of certain government policies and certain members of high society. In short, Mr. Sa’at is not much different from the rest of us when it comes to discussing politics. He is merely more vocal. He was described by Professor Tommy Koh, one of our most respected diplomats as a “loving critic” of Singapore.

Dr. Tan, however, decided that Mr. Sa’at was not a loving critic but a dangerous “anti-Singaporean” and when Dr. Pritam Singh, leader of the Workers Party (the only opposition party with seats in parliament), defended Mr. Sa’at in parliament, Dr. Tan decided to go for the proverbial jugular and in doing so, put on display one of the worst displays of “Chinese Privilege” ever seen:

Dr. Tan’s point is this simple – he, as part of the ethnic Malay minority in Singapore was ungrateful for the fact that Chinese majority Singapore had given him an education and allowed him to make a living. The argument was simple, had he been born as an ethnic minority elsewhere, he wouldn’t live the life he lives or even been allowed to live.

Nobody denies that ethnic minorities don't have it easy. In Southeast Asia, the ethnic Chinese minorities, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia have had to live with, at best legal discrimination or been at the wrong end of a violent mob, as happened to Indonesia’s Chinese back in 1998.

While Singapore’s ethnic Malays have not been on the wrong end of violent clashes, Dr. Tan misses the point. Just because ethnic minorities get it worse elsewhere, it doesn’t make treatment of our own ethnic minorities right nor does it make Dr. Tan’s attitude correct.

For a start, the attitude of “You the ethnic minority are lucky” goes against the ethos of what Singapore is supposed to be. I cannot stress enough that the ruling party, which Dr. Tan is a part of wrote our national pledge as “Regardless of Race, Language or Religion.” Our national pledge is based on us being “Singaporean” first rather than our ethnicity or faith.

Sure, racial prejudice does exist on a personal level and you can’t expect these prejudices to vanish overnight. There is no doubt that ethnic minorities will have to deal with personal prejudices on a personal basis. However, you’d expect that elected representatives of the people would have a duty to combat such prejudices in the public sphere rather than to use the fact that ethnic minorities are just that and to use that as a threat.

Mr. Sa’at was educated in Singapore and makes a living here. Isn’t that the right of every citizen of Singapore? Why is that even an issue?

I am sure that there are plenty of issues that one can take up with Mr. Sa’at but the fact that he’s an ethnic minority that had the good fortune of being able to receive an education and make a living in Singapore should not be one of them.

The leader of the ruling party should demonstrate that we are serious about being “regardless of race, language or religion” and make Dr. Tan pay with his seat in Parliament. There should be no room for politicians to use the race card in a progressive society.   

Nobody in The World Does it Like That – Nobody in the World Has Problems Like Ours

One of my favourite movies is a Bollywood flick called 3 Idiots, which tells the story of three college friends. One them turns out to be a brilliant mind called Phunsukh Wangdu, who invents a host of gadgets in a remote part of India. Not only did this movie made me laugh throughout, it also gave me a sense of happiness to see the simple Mr. Wangdu coming up triumphant against someone who had become a corporate big shot.

It turns out that the character of Phunsukh Wangdu was based on a real person, an inventor called Sonam Wangchuk, who is from the Ladakh, the Indian State which shares a border with Tibet. Mr. Wangchuk has essentially become famous for building a campus run entirely on renewable energy and a technique of storing fresh water using artificial glaciers. More on Mr. Wangchuk and his inventions can be found at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonam_Wangchuk_(engineer)

Mr. Wangchuk is what I’d call one of the best things to emerge in the science of development. He’s a local innovator, who creates solutions that are unique to a particular region. If you look at Mr. Wangchuk’s two key inventions, you will notice that they were perfect for the Himalayan region. Who else but someone who grew up in that part of the world could have come up with solutions for the issues faced by that part of the world?

While I believe that globalization has on balance been a positive force, there has been one major flaw. It’s worked on the assumption that what is good for the Western (mainly American) world has been good for the developing world. This has been clearly seen in business where global business has come to mean American multinationals and it’s also happened in the area of development – one only has to visit any given developing country to witness the number of “development” agents from Western NGOs hanging around.

This is not a bad thing in as much as both multinationals and NGOs do provide capital and training for the local population. I think of Singapore, a small island that has managed to achieve economic maturity within a generation. Part of our success has been due to the fact that our economy is built by multinationals and our people and businesses are placed in a situation where “best in Singapore” is not acceptable – you have to be best in the world.

There is however, one problem. When you get solutions from elsewhere, they don’t always in the local context and finding a solution to the solution ends up becoming a very expensive process for all parties involved. Business is many examples of how failing to take into account of the local context has failed. Ford forgot that locals in South America are Spanish speaking rather than English speaking. Hence, the launch of the Ford Nova was a failure. Who wants to buy a car called “No Go” (direct translation of Nova from Spanish). Closer to home, international burger chains found themselves getting beating in the Philippines because they didn’t adapt to local taste and got a kicking by the local player, Jollibee.

When this happens in business, its merely a case of the business failing to make the money they hopped they’d make. It’s a little more serious when it comes to development agencies and NGOs. When the foreign solution fails, the development agencies and NGOs ask for and get more money. However, the locals don’t see their lives improving. Hence, the common criticism of development agencies being that they only develop the employees of the development agencies.

Home grown solutions provided by the likes of Mr. Wangchuk tend to be more effective in the goal of helping the local community. The reason is simple, they understand the local context such as what the local communities will accept, the local geography and the available resources. I read an interview by Mr. Wangchuk who argued that his home province of Ladakh did not need the industrialization as the rest of India. The interview can be found at:

 https://www.theweek.in/news/sci-tech/2019/11/30/the-planet-doesnt-need-money-needs-behavioural-change-sonam-wangchuk.html?fbclid=IwAR3HsZRkpJG2MlOegFuoVnLtaLl3rAR1F2hd4RjsoXwCJ5OW642FNIwevCs

Once again, I am by no means rejecting the role of the outside world in developing and creating prosperity. It’s vital for the world to be interconnected if it prospers. However, the most effective solutions cannot be imposed on a community because they worked elsewhere. The cost-effective ones are inevitably developed from the ground up by the people who understand the ground and aided by people with the skills to execute no matter where they come from.

My nation of Singapore has been thus far successful with imported solutions. However, we’re discovering that as the economy matures, we need a different way of solving problems. How do we do that? The answer is clearly to look to the people who understand what’s going on.

It will take time for a culture of encouraging home-grown innovation to develop, especially when the old method of importing solutions worked so well. I think of a local inventor who once developed something for our water utility. The civil servants told him, “Nobody else in the world does it the way you’ve proposed.” His reply was “Nobody else in the world has water issues like ours.” This is an answer that we need to apply to the way we do things if we are to encourage the development of necessary home grown innovation.

When David Became Goliath

Just received an op-ed from the New York Times in my email. The story is entitled “Tech Goliaths Act Like Davids,” and the main thrust of the story is that the tech giants like Google, Apple, Facebook, Uber and so on have become the corporate bullies that they once fought against. The story can be found at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/22/technology/big-tech-underdogs.html

If one studies history, one will notice that this isn’t a new story. History is filled with examples of young, vibrant revolutionaries who fought to overthrow an overbearing power and once they had succeeded, they proceeded to behave as the power that they overthrew.

As an ethnic Chinese, I think of Mao, who lead a peasant army to overthrow a corrupt regime that was oppressing the poor. However, once in power, the communist proceeded to enforce an iron grip on power and proved to be as nasty if not more so than the nationalist that they overthrew. There are other examples. In the Middle East, there’s the example of Naser who overthrew a corrupt and repressive monarchy, only to replace it with another form of dictatorship that has stifled progress.

I think of Singapore, the country that has been my home for the last two decades. We’ve been run by the same party since our independence in 1965. While the party has delivered prosperity and done well by the citizens for the most part, they’ve moved a long way, as in a very long way, from the party that was a plucky upstart fighting to rid us from the yoke of colonial rule and later race-based politics of the Malaysian Federation. The part that once wrote a national pledge of “Regardless of Race, Language or Religion,” now stresses the fact that “The population is not ready for a non-Chinese Prime Minister,” and delightfully uses every trick in the book to ensure that it wins more than 60 percent of available seats in parliament (it remains an achievement for our rag-tag opposition to contest let alone win seats).

Why is this the case? The answer is as simple as this fact – power is exceedingly addictive. The people who get power tend not to want to lose it. Young idealist who become revolutionaries to get rid of entrenched powers becoming the very entrenched powers that they overthrew. This remains true in business and politics.

Some systems have found a way to survive this. In America, the political system was designed to limit the damage a bad leader could do. Presidents have to share power with Congress and a Supreme Court and much of the power over citizens is devolved to local governments. Furthermore, Presidents are limited to two terms of four years. Thus, you only put up with an incompetent leader for eight years at the most and no individual has to chance to hang on for years until they get drunk and senile with power.

This system works in America because there’s a reverence to the constitution and laws and there’s a press to keep the powers that be on its toes. In places that don’t have this, there is a real danger that the man in charge can merely change the laws. China is a case in point. Prior to President Xi’s ascension, it was understood that a generation of leaders would step down after a decade. While China didn’t have elections, it had some form of leadership renewal. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case and one cannot assume that President Xi, may enjoy his power a little too much, even at the risk of the wealth that the Chinese people have grown used to.

The same is true in business. The story in dynamic economies is that of plucky start-ups with a bright idea or a new technology taking on and taking market share from established firms. The problem is that once the start-ups become big firms with deep pockets, the game no longer becomes about coming up with new products that delight consumers but about enhancing market share and getting consumers to continue buying what you’ve been selling them. As I was once told, “Big firms don’t innovate, they just buy small firms that do.”

While the dangers of minimal competition for businesses are less obvious than that for political leaders, they are non the less very present. Businesses that become too interested in their market position tend to forget that consumers can find and will find alternatives. I think of Singapore’s media scene, which could not accept competition and kept peddling the myth that Singapore was too small for media competition. The established media powers were so busy defending their turf that they failed to see people moving away from printed newspapers and terrestrial television. They even got the government onto their side in branding online media as “anti-establishment.” There was one small problem. Consumers stopped reading newspapers and the advertisers noticed. Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) has had to diversify into old folks’ homes to keep shareholders happy and more recently had to suffer the indignity of being kicked off the stock exchange index.

Successful big firms are the ones that find a way of growing big but keeping their units running like start up enterprises. Big law firms are trying to do that, working as a big unit in the centre for things like branding and HR policy but getting their respective practices to compete for business like sole proprietorships. In theory this should prevent the groups from becoming immune to market forces.

The other factor for businesses is law. Laws that prevent companies from becoming monopolies should be made stronger.

Let’s go back to tech as an example. Microsoft was once a start-up that had a clear goal of having a desktop on every desk running its software. It became a monopoly and defended it tooth and nail. Unfortunately, Microsoft was late into the internet and thus lost ground to Google. Microsoft has only become a dynamic player under its current CEO, Satya Nadella, who moved it away from defending its old business market.

Limits on power are not just good for consumers or voters. They are actually good for incumbents as it keeps them on their toes and forces people to innovate. The Goliaths of the day should remember that they had their best victories as Davids and trying to crush today’s Davids will only lead to them sharing the fate of Goliath.    

Who Wants Transparency when You Can Have Magic? – Edward, Duke of Windsor – Netflix – The Crown

Thanks to Covid-19, I’ve been discovering a host of programs that I might otherwise not have watched. One of them is “The Crown,” which tells the story of England’s current Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen is currently the longest serving Head of State and the longest ever reigning British Monarch.

One of the most poignant moments in the series was the story of her coronation, which was the first one ever to be televised. It showed her Uncle (who did not attend), explaining the beauty of the coronation and his classic line was “Who wants transparency when you can have magic?”

This line of the series underlines the key reason why the British Monarchy has endured for so long. Despite having no political power, the monarchy has survived and, in some cases, thrived because it has been a symbol or a fantasy for the average man. She and her family are perhaps the British nation’s PR spokespeople, responsible for selling a certain image to the world. Royal Weddings are an example of this, when the world’s cameras are tuned onto the United Kingdom (the converse being Royal divorces)

The key to the Queen’s success is that she’s stayed out of politics and never gives any hint of her personal opinions on the matters of the day. She is, however, by many reports sharp and knows what’s going on and whenever she has to do something, she does it. As was portrayed on Netflix, she did dress down Winston Churchill for having a stroke and keeping it from her. The classic line being “My job is not to govern but to ensure there’s governance.”

By staying out of anything remotely political, the Queen stays out of anything grubby and as they say, ensures the magic that keeps the monarchy going. As a constitutional monarch, the last thing the Queen needs is to be transparent about the nitty gritty of the institution that she represents.

However, while constitutional monarchs may exist on the concept of magic, the same should never be true for elected politicians and civil servants, who are in the grubby business of running the country.

Unfortunately, there have been cases of elected politicians and bureaucrats who have forgotten that they are in the business of running things and that actually requires transparency. The most famous example is the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who has famously refused to release his tax returns (something which all his predecessors have done) and appointed relatives the politically influential positions (something which real Princes have avoided doing).

This is, unfortunately, not limited to the USA. In Singapore, we’ve had the example of the Ho Ching, the Chief Executive of Temasek Holdings, an investment firm that invest on behalf of the Singapore government. One of the largest issues in Singapore is the fact that nobody knows what Madam Ho’s salary is.

If you look at it from a legal perspective, there’s no need for Madam Ho to reveal what she earns. Temasek Holdings is a private company and as such has no obligation to publish any accounts or any details about the salaries paid to its directors. Her salary, as they say, should be no one’s business except hers and her employer, which in this case is the Ministry of Finance.

However, when you look at what Temasek Holdings is, you have to ask why there’s so much secrecy about its financial performance and the salaries of the top directors. Temasek Holdings, as is known to everyone is mandated by the Ministry of Finance to invest and grow the nation’s wealth. My pension money (CPF) funds are utilized by Temasek Holdings and while I may not have a direct share of Temasek Holdings, they are using my money to do what they do. So, the point is – surely their business is also my business and what Ho Ching as CEO is paid is my business.

The consistent argument for keeping all of this secret is that it’s part of national security. However, this argument does not wash. Madam Ho’s husband is the Prime Minister and his salary is public knowledge. Are we to say that the CEO of Temasek Holdings has a higher national security priority than the Prime Minister?

When it comes to Constitutional Monarchs, magic can override transparency. However, when it comes to the case of the people involved in running the country and with their hands on the public purse, the answer is no – we cannot accept that they live in the world of magic. Transparency is required in their case. Let us never forget that politicians and civil servants are employed by the tax payer and what they get up to is our business.

Teaching Asians to Think

Just saw a letter in the Straits Times Forum page entitled “Time ripe for a pan-Asian university,” which argues that in light of the blame game for the “Covid-19” and growing anti-Chinese sentiment (which affects non-China Chinese) in the West, it was time for Asians to produce a “Pan-Asian University.” The letter can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/letter-of-the-week-time-ripe-for-a-pan-asian-university

This letter also reminded me of a talk I attended that was conducted by Her Excellency, Ms. Kara Owen, the High Commissioner of the United Kingdom, a few months ago (back in the pre-Circuit Breaker days). In that talk, the High Commissioner acknowledged that Singapore had sent many students to the UK and said that she hoped that there would be more student interaction between the UK and Singapore with more UK students heading to study in Singapore.

Interestingly enough, the topic of universities is one of the classic cases of Westerners having more confidence in the future of Asia than Asians. I remember telling someone of South Asian decent what the British High Commissioner had said and his only reaction was “She must be mad, why would they want to come here when they have the best universities there.” This reaction is, sadly, not a lone one. As far as most Asians are concerned, the world’s best education remains Western.

To an extent, this is true. If you look at rankings of the world’s best universities, they are, with the exception of Oxford and Cambridge, inevitably American. A look at the Times Higher Education Ranking can be found at:

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universities/best-universities-world

These rankings are pretty entrenched and if you look at the normal Asian mindset, unlikely to change anytime soon. I look at Singapore as the prime example. We invest heavily in education. We are proud of our universities and we spend a lot of money on them. Yet, despite all our pride in our home-grown universities, our country is inevitably run by people who went to Oxbridge for a first degree and did an MBA in an American University.

There are of course, reasons for the dominance of Western Universities in the top ranks of the world’s best. For all the apparent issues with Western societies (think social unrest on American streets at the moment), they remain societies that are open to free expression and more importantly the free flow of ideas. America in particular has rolled out the welcome mat for the world’s best brains and allowed them to flourish. Furthermore, as in the case of America, there is a culture that encourages experimentation. Part of that culture includes a tolerance for failure, which remains an anathema to many Asian societies

For many Asian governments, there is also prestige in having people trained by the world’s best. Here in Singapore, we take pride in the fact that our top people have not just proven themselves at home but in world-renown places like Harvard, Cambridge and so on. Governments in places like China have also done the same.

Having said all that, the question remains – why can’t Asia produce a world-class university and why can’t we accept the idea that people from the West might want to come to study in this part of the world.

The economics are certainly making Asia a more attractive place to be. For all it’s faults, China is the world’s second largest and most dynamic economy and other Asian countries are also following suite. Business interest in the West has certainly become more focused on Asia. I remember, when Ogilvy hired Tham Khai Meng as its global creative head. While the local media made a song and dance about the first Singaporean to be a global creative head of a major ad agency, there was also another person who got promoted, which was Miles Young, who became CEO. Mr. Young cut his teeth in Asia-Pacific.

A major ad agency thought it was important to fill its key positions with people with Asian experience because it saw that this was where the future consumers would be. However, are Asians being more than just copycats of a Western Mind?

Developing a great university would be the right start to proving that the answer is no. There are positive signs. I think of John Chambers, former CEO of Cisco Systems singing the praise of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). I think of the efforts of Singapore’s Universities to create a start up system in the same way that Stanford did around Silicon Valley (as a matter of disclosure, I am working for NTU’s start up and commercialization arm and I have worked for the IIT Alumni).

However, more needs to b done. Asian societies will need to encourage greater innovation, which means a culture that allows experimentation, failure and questioning of established rules. The money is there to spend on research but cultures need to match. Think of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), which has the full financial backing of Saudi Aramco, the world’s most profitable company. The facilities are wonderful and its hired famous names but has the culture created innovation and great research?  

Admittedly, I didn’t shine in university but if you look at what universities do, you’ll see that they are the bedrock of producing an innovative and prosperous economy. America has ruled the world in just about every sphere. It has most of the world’s best research universities. Surely that cannot be a coincidence. Instead of sending students there, most Asian governments could do well to ask what makes American universities so good and to replicate it within. There’s no reason why there can’t be a great Asian university.

When You’re Poor, what’s due to you is a cost

I Got Scammed by a Media Masterstroke.

After expressing my delight that Singapore’s Sunday Times published a news snippet stating that eight out of ten Singaporeans were willing to pay more for essential services if it meant giving the workers more money, I’m now disturbed.

You could say that after a decade of dealing with the news media, I’m getting my just deserts. It’s just dawned upon me that my delight in thinking that my fellow citizens were more kind hearted than I gave them credit for, was in fact a total distraction from the reality. Call it an endorphin shot that distracts you from the fact that you have cancer. It is a PR master stroke that stops you from asking hard questions.

Background to this started in April 2020, when Covid-19 cases started exploding in foreign worker dormitories. Singapore, which before then, had been basking in the international spotlight for its management of the virus, suddenly saw its reputation for basic competence tarnished. Instead of focusing on the “brilliant” job that the government was doing, the focus shifted to the fact that Singapore had an underclass that was being royally screwed.

In fairness to the government, it did act quickly to shut down the dorms and it offered assistance to the migrant workers, who had been screwed by the disease and the ensuring confinement. Instead of focusing on their plight, a good portion of the workers were suddenly given a reason to be grateful to the government. While the government did upset the more extreme elements who felt the government was spending too much tax payer money on ungrateful foreigners, it did take away a motive from the foreign worker population to cause any civil unrest.

The second stroke of genius was to focus on one simple question. This question was “Would you be willing to pay more for services if the wages of the poor and needy were to be increased?” This was done very subtly and it slid in between all the noise about the need to improve conditions for foreign workers and so on.

At the lowest end of the scale you had the likes of the Fawning Follower, who argued that poor living conditions for Singapore’s underclass were in fact good for Singapore (despite the evidence brought by Covid-19). At the more intelligent end of the scale, you had the likes of the CEO of Centurion Corp, who replied to my forum letter on his profit margins. He appeared reasonable, did not “hide” from the obvious, explained that he was doing this and that to make things better and then somehow it was going to costs money and the tax payer would have to pay for it.

This question frames the issue into one of self-interested costs. Think of the various ways in which this has been framed:

1. Yes, we understand that living conditions for Indian and Bangladeshi workers need to be improved – but you do know that it’s going to costs the employers more and they’ll raise prices so your road tax and building maintenance fees will go up; or
2. Yes, poor aunty carrying the trays at the food court only earns $7 an hour for a 12-hour day – but you know,, if you raised her salary to $10 an hour and reduce working hours to 10 hours a day, the stall owners will need to recoup their costs and are you willing to pay $7 for your noodles instead of $4?

When you frame the issue in this manner, even the most well-intentioned person, will think twice. This is especially true if your own wages are barely keeping up with inflation and rising costs. Think about it – nobody wants aunty to slave at the food court of the Thambis to come home to a slum after a day in the hot sun – but it means that I have to pay more …… Sure, its inspiring that people will say that their willing to pay more if it goes to the workers but the counter to that is that is inevitably – since we don’t know the money will go to the workers, why should we risk paying more.

The second problem with framing the debate this way is that it distracts people from the real issue, which is why is the cost structured the way it is.

In my earlier posting “Lucrative Problems,” I made the point that in the case of foreign labour in Singapore, foreign labour is not cheap and the labourer gets paid badly because there are too many parties taking a cut in between the employer and employee. The biggest cut goes into foreign worker levy to the government. This increases the employer’s costs but does not benefit the worker at all.

I’ve also argued in my piece "The Obvious Answer to Cheaper Hawker Food" that the government has the capacity to reduce rents on land that it controls so that businesses keep more of the money they earn. 

If you look at the way the question is phrased, you think it’s just an employer-vs-employee issue. It makes you look at your own pocket without looking at the real issues. Imagine if we took the examples provided and said the following instead:

1. Since foreign workers live in awful conditions, why don’t we reduce the levy and regulate agent fees more, so that the employers and workers have more to spend on better accommodation; or
2. Why don’t reduce the rents at the food court so that the stall owners have more money to pay the cleaning aunties more?

It’s not going to happen because too many powerful parties have an interest in keeping things this way. These parties consider the reduction of the profit margin (take 50 percent instead of 80) as asking them to make a loss. Thus, they’ll fight tooth and nail to keep things the way they are.

However, there is a case to self-interest to be made. If the government took less from businesses and people through hidden levies and rents, it would create higher spending, which in turn would lead to more business activity and tax revenue.

While I’m happy that my fellow citizens are open to having more compassion for the less fortunate, we shouldn’t get distracted from asking real questions and addressing the real issues.

Happily, Non-Essential

The Straits Times, Singapore’s flagship newspaper has got itself into the crosshairs of Singapore’s professional classes, thanks to a survey it conducted and published in its Sunday edition (14 June 2020), which revealed what Singaporeans thought about certain professions and their necessity to the rest of society. The now infamous infographic can be seen below:

Essentially, the graph showed that what the 1,000 odd Singaporeans surveyed thought of as essential, included people like doctors, cleaners, garbage collectors and deliverymen. The people who topped the list were the artist, social media managers, PR specialist, Business Consultants and Human Resource Managers. It was clear that the with the exception of doctors, the “essential” professionals were primarily blue-collar workers while the “non-essential” guys were what you’d call “working-professionals.”

The survey has royally pissed off our professional classes. There have been snide remarks about how the Straits Times conducted a crappy survey, thus showing why it’s becoming less relevant. There have been a few remarks from professionals that can be summed up as “if you think I’m non-essential, wait till you need this,” and I even read someone complain that society was being selfish because people were sitting at home watching Netflix but not respecting the work of the artiste who produced the movies they were consuming. There was an accusation that the Straits Times was dividing society into the essential and non-essential.

As someone who has made his living by selling “non-essential” professional services (advertising, public relations, legal and liquidation and accountancy), I was actually delighted to see the results of this survey. For far too long, Singapore has been a society that has literally spat on people in “blue-collar” jobs (I never tire of talking about the horny aunties who thought I was a reforming convict based on the fact that I speak the way I do but worked in a restaurant) and we’ve worshipped the “professions” to an over the top extent. I remember my oldest friend who had given up a lucrative legal career to be a primary school teacher. She told me that she had to sweep floors as part of her job and then said, “Remember how we were told that we didn’t study hard, we’d end up sweeping floors for a living.”

She was right. People of my generation (I’ll be 46 soon, so it’s Gen X) were told that the punishment for not studying was a bright career in sweeping streets. Parents, who had worked humble jobs like sweeping streets, would sweat blood and tears to ensure that their kids would never follow in their footsteps.

I think of my ex-wife’s family. The one person in her family that I admired was my former father-in-law who drove a Mercedes and put two kids to university by selling eggs (he literally picked up from his wholesaler and drove around his clients, the industrial cafes of Singapore). However, all his hard work was meant to ensure that his kids would never deliver eggs. The hero of her family was my former brother-in-law, who ended up working for Defense Science Organisation (part of the government) after getting all sorts of fancy degrees. For me, the tragedy of her family was that it abandoned something valuable (years of building up a network of relationships and physically demanding work) for something that produces very little value (with all due respect to my former brother-in-law, do we really need to think of more ways to exterminate people, especially for a country that is unlikely to face war?)

Our worship of the professions, which worked alongside with our disdain for blue collar jobs has helped us create one of the widest pay differentials. A working professional with at least five-years-experience in Singapore should be able to draw around S$4,000 plus (based on an averageaccountant pay). By contrast, blue collar worker with a similar number of years of experience would be lucky to make around $2,500 a month. This hit home when I got once paid $800 for drafting and disseminating a press release, which took me all of two or three hours. That was exactly what I took home from a month of working in the Bistrot (based on four hours a night for 26 nights a month).

Well, whatever one might say about Covid-19, I’m glad that its finally made us realise the importance of the guys doing the menial work and the lack of importance of the “high-flyer” jobs.

As a matter of clarity, I’m not suggesting that there’s no value in anyone’s work. Lawyers, for example, are important when it comes to contracts. You need an accountant to help you keep track of where your money is going. I’d always stress to clients in my incarnation in PR that you need someone to ensure you look good to the public, even when things are bad. Advertising professionals help drive sales.

It’s good that the working professionals are getting upset in as much as it shows that they take their profession seriously and have enough passion to do a good job. However, the question at stake here is – whether your job is “essential,” which is a word often associated with the break down of things.

I take myself as an example of a remarkably unremarkable person in these circumstances. I’ve never had much money to begin with, so why do I need an accountant. Since I don’t have much money to begin with, it’s highly unlikely that I’ll need a lawyer and let’s not talk about my need for a PR or advertising consultant to promote my non-existent image.

However, when we have a situation where I could easily come down with a nasty bug, I definitely need a doctor. I happen to take clean streets as a given and I expect the trash to be collected. Being clean has become especially important as it reduces the likelihood that I’ll get a nasty bug. Are we surprised that the average Joe (or Ah Beng, Mutu and Ahmad) think that these jobs are the “essential” jobs to their lives?

What’s heartening is the view that Singaporeans are willing to pay more for these services if it means the workers get more and it’s also heartening to see that the majority of people understand the difficulties of these jobs in as much as while they’re jobs that are regarded as essential, they’re also jobs that people don’t want to do, even if more money was offered.

Let’s hope that the understanding of the importance of blue-collar work leads to people backing up their new found understanding with their wallets. Let’s not accept excuses that improving the lot of blue-collar workers is harmful consumers. Singapore needs to move beyond being a place for “cheap” this and that, when cheap means keeping people poor so that a group of middle men can get rich.

At the other end of the scale, I would suggest that it’s time to relook at how professions look at themselves. If I look at the industry that I grew up in (advertising) and the industry that I work with on a regular basis (legal and accounting), it’s reached a stage where groups which were initially advisors have to industry have become industries themselves.

While this is for the most part, a positive thing, its also had an unintended consequence of getting the respective industries to treat themselves too seriously. In the case of advertising it came from the complaint that advertising people became too focused on making ads for themselves at award ceremonies rather than on selling products, while in the legal industry, it became about keeping problems alive. People in professional services became guilty of falling in love with being professionals. The profession becomes a mystic art and practitioners indulge in titles like “guru.”

Look at the way these industries bill – through the time sheet, where they charge by the hour. This system encourages professional services to think of themselves as a mystic art, where the customer has to pay for wise counsel. It goes without saying that this system does not encourage efficiency.

I never saw an issue in “results” payment. I’ve billed clients based on coverage obtained and been ticked off by fellow professionals for taking a risk. Lawyers in America charge on their ability to win cases. This is the way things should be. The client comes to you for advice because you are an expert at this or that. Your payment should be based on how well you achieve the objective rather than on your ability to delay the problem.

Unfortunately, in places like Singapore, you end up having “champerty” laws, which make payment by results illegal and encourage the professions to view themselves as “cults.”

Covid-19 should be a social changer as much as an economic one. Respect and increased value for blue collar work should accompany a desire by working professionals to remember their original purpose of using knowledge to serve rather than to turn their knowledge into a cult.

There are hopeful signs. The example that comes to mind is a friend who named his law firm after an ice cream flavor His argument was thatlaw should be a simple process and used to serve businesses and not the otherway round. To put his money where his mouth is, he developed a document assembly system that reduces the time a client needs a lawyer to draft documents. It goes without saying that this has upset his fellow professionals (drafting documents is a major money spinner for lawyers). However, his argument is simple – he’s there to serve the businesses rather than his fellow professionals and he’ll do what he can to demystify his profession, which in the end is good for the profession.

Lucrative Problems

I got to admit that I love Bollywood and being forced to stay at home and having access to Netflix has allowed me to catch up on a few Bollywood movies. The smattering of Hindi I’ve been able to pick have come from watching Bollywood movies.

Anyway, I watched Aiyaary, where there was a scene about an incident in Kashmir (the long-disputed sore in Indian-Pakistan relations). In this scene, the younger character asks his mentor, “There are intelligent and capable people on both sides. Why is it that we can’t solve the problem?” The reply of the older character replies, “Kashmir is an industry,” and he goes onto explain that too many people on both sides are making money from the problem. He then let’s his protégé understand that, “When you’re making money from a problem, you safeguard the problem instead of solving it.” The dialogue can be found at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-we3SC-NzA

This section of the movie caught my attention because the world is going through a lot of problems. We have a global pandemic, the depletion of natural resources, climate change and now there’s racism in much of the Western world. Old conflicts like Kashmir and the Israel-Palestine issue seem set to get worse.

None of these problems are new. These problems were highlighted in the global media some thirty years ago and if you followed the news in that time, you’d get the impression that these were insolvable problems.

However, if you look at the technological advances that have been made in that period, a sane mind would have to ask, “Why can’t we solve these problems?” Why, for example does South East Asia and the South America get covered in a haze every so often? The annual bout of regional choking haze comes from the burning of forest, which is meant to clear land for cash crops.

When environmentalist complained about the ecological devastation, the standard reply in Southeast Asia (and is now being loudly used by Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro) was that “the poor world needed to feed people,” and the subtext was “even if it pissed off Western environmentalist,” who were merely imperialist trying to keep us poor.” While this might have been the case in the 1960s, why does this have to be the case in 2020? You’d imagine that we’d have found a way to substitute palm oil in certain products or found a way for farmers to clear land that didn’t kill off the rest of us.

Unfortunately, it’s not been in anyone’s (or at least the people who count) interest to find a solution. The plantation owners keep poor people busy and politicians have been convinced that its in their interest to keep the plantation owners happy.

Here in Singapore, there’s the issue of foreign labour, which has become an issue now that Covid-19 has exploded in foreign worker dormitories. Suddenly, Singapore’s media has shifted its focus on the condition of foreign workers and there have been letters galore about the need to rely less on foreign workers.

True to form, the industry has hit back and there have been a number of letters from “industry” groups, which called for any cut to the supply of foreign labour to be “short-sighted” and detrimental to the economy. One of the most prominent forum letters can be found at:

 https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/forum-call-to-cut-number-of-foreign-workers-here-is-short-sighted

The argument against having more foreign workers is unfortunately the same as it is the same argument against any basic improvement to the welfare of foreign workers – namely less foreign workers like better foreign worker welfare will increase the costs for employers who will then have to charge more and make everything more expensive for us, the consumers.

This argument has been used very effectively to dodge solving the actual problem, which is the fact that employing a foreign worker is not actually cheap for employers nor does it give foreign workers the money they thought they’d have but the system benefits a host of other parties like labour suppliers, dormitory operators, labour agents and repatriation companies. Any disruption to the system will inevitably upset a host of other people. Nobody explains the problem better than Alex Au, who works at TWC2, an NGO for migrant workers:

http://twc2.org.sg/2020/05/01/the-dorms-are-not-the-problem/?fbclid=IwAR1nhYuPYZ_hYyigLs3VbUrfO4CLtEXz9XuTbB20EOFyKNU6aOInlRGp5GQ

Crudely put, every foreign worker is a money spinner for a host of parties. The government, despite its generous support for the migrant workers in this pandemic, is in fact one of the guilty culprits. The revenue from the foreign worker levy is a major money spinner (average of $750 per worker per month – the stress of this being an average) for the government. However, in addition to that, there is a quota system, which limits the number of foreign labourers that a company can hire.

The official reason for the levy and quota is that it reduces the price differential between foreign labour and local Singaporean labour. The reality is that it has created a very lucrative niche called Labour Supply. The basics are simple – hire a labourer on the cheap and then “rent” them out to other companies that need labour but don’t have the quota. As one former accountant for a labour supplier says, “The worker works the overtime while the labour supplier pockets the overtime pay.”

Other laws get exploited too. There is a lucrative niche for lawyers working on workman 

compensation. All you need is to find a worker involved in a workman compensation claim. You pay for the housing, flight ticket and perhaps give him a bit of pocket money and once he’s gone back, collect the workman compensation, which is inevitably higher than what you paid.

The answer to our foreign labour problems is simple. You just need to reduce the people in between the labourer and the employer. If you reduce the army of middlemen, the employers can get cheaper labour and the workers can get more money. The key parties would benefit. However, the middlemen form an industry in themselves.

I look at the situation with maids as an example. At one time, a maid in Hong Kong earnt up to $700 a month because there wasn’t a powerful middleman. In Singapore a maid would costs an employer around $700 a month but the maid would only get $400 if she was lucky. The difference between the Hong Kong and Singapore scenario is the fact that there is a levy to be paid in Singapore.

I’ve never argued against the need for middlemen. Agents and even labour suppliers have a role to facilitate the relationship between employer and employee. Dormitory owners also serve a purpose in housing workers. Nobody is saying that these businesses should not be allowed to make a profit.

What is being argued here is that the system needs to be changed so that the most important players (namely the employer and employee) get a fairer deal. The system as it is, remains a problem. It’s a choice between increased costs for employers and basic welfare for workers (which is defined as livable wages and accommodation that does not make people sick.)

Entrepreneurial thinking is needed to restructure the system and the sooner the government bites the bullet and goes through the pain (including losing the addiction to easy levy money), the better it will be for all of us.

Why Are You So Dark?

I’ve often argued that the human race has an incredible talent of finding areas of differences, there is one unfortunate factor that seems to unite the world. That unfortunate factor is the inability to view anyone of a darker skin tone as a normal human being.

Racism, particularly in the West, is currently a “Black-versus-White” issue. The murder of George Floyd, an African-American at the hands a “white” police officer on video ignited many years of pent-up anger that the Western world’s “black” population has had from years of laws that were designed to keep them down and when those laws were abolished, the fact that prejudices that lingered were for many parts accepted.

Unfortunately, the issue of racism is neither limited to a case of “blacks-versus-whites” nor is it limited to the Western world. In America, there is the undiscussed issue of “Asian-Black” relations. This was first seen in the 1992 LA Riots (caused by the beating of a black man by White Police officers and the subsequent acquittal of the police officers despite the evidence), when the city’s black population tried to loot stores owned by America’s Korean population. In the most recent incident, it was a cop of Asian decent who looked away while his “white” colleague murdered Mr. Floyd. More can be found at:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/officer-who-stood-george-floyd-died-asian-american-we-need-n1221311

Like it or not, Asians who have settled in the Western world have not been helpful to the issues faced by the black communities. The reason for this is simple, the Asian inability to see the suffering of other minorities in the West is the very thing that makes Asians valued immigrants – material success.

In America, they’re known as the “model-minority,” or the poor migrants who arrive with nothing and within a generation are part of the educated professional class (so much so that the Old Rogue, used to say “If American universities really admitted by merit, there wouldn’t be a single round eye). In Britain, Asians, particularly the Chinese were well regarded as the group that stuck to its corner, prospered (no state handouts) and avoided contentious politics. My stepfather, who works in a hospital in Germany says that unlike many of the other minorities, the “Yellow People,” never went onto German welfare. This same sentiment was echoed by Finnish friends who stated that Japanese and Vietnamese were welcome because they worked hard and kept to themselves.

As an Asian, who grew up in the West, I felt proud that “my people” came to the West with nothing and built something. While this achievement of Asian communities in the west is a good thing, it blinds “us” to the realities to the harsh realities of other communities. When the Black talk about social justice after screwed by the history of slavery, the Asians shrugged with the “so what, we were once poor and made it out – what’s wrong with you,” mentality. Yes, we were fresh off the boat but we didn’t have the conditioning that many American blacks suffered. Contrary to what Ben Carson would argue – slaves were not immigrants.

Being a “model minority,” has given the Asian communities a false sense of security in the status quo and many Asians forget that they too once benefited from the struggles of the African American Community as this clip from the comedian Hassan Minhaj explains:

https://etcanada.com/news/652740/hasan-minhaj-calls-on-fellow-asian-americans-to-stand-with-protesters/

The situation that “dark-skinned” people face is not exactly prejudice free in Asia too. One of the biggest examples of how Asian people are proving to b as awful was from an infamous ad from China, which showed a black man approaching a Chinese girl, who then shoves him into a washing machine, where he emerges Chinese and therefore desirable;

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/28/china-racist-detergent-advert-outrage

With attitudes like these, it’s not surprising that the Chinese in Africa are often regarded as arrogant arseholes (sure, unlike the Western Colonial powers before, there’s no lecture on human rights, but the Chinese are far from liberating heroes).

Over here in Chinese majority, Singapore, we claim to be “multi-racial.” Unfortunately, beneath the lovely exterior, it is politically acceptable to endorse racism. The official line is that, “Singapore’s majority Chinese population is not yet ready for a non-Chinese Prime Minister,” even if the one politician with global credentials and accepted by all races is a non-Chinese.

While it was heartening to see many Singaporeans (including the Chinese ones) open up their hearts and wallets to foreign workers as cases of Covid-19 erupted in the dormitories, an unhealthy number thought nothing of denigrating dark skinned labourers who were doing the work they wouldn’t do.

The only salivation for the Chinese race in this respect is that it’s not the only race in Asia with an issue with the dark skinned. The Indians (many of whom are dark skinned, particularly in the South) also have a strange fixation with trying to get fairer. Take a look at this commercial, staring Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan, which while not as obvious as the Chinese detergent ad, isn’t exactly subtle in its messaging:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl7pa4PPqp8

The message is clear. Fair equals handsome, hence if you’re a guy who wants to pick up girls, you invest in skin whitener. I think of one of my best friends, who is a good looking Nepali, who takes great pride in the beauty of his kids because ….they’ve got his colour.

I’d go as far as to argue that it’s almost worse than in the West. While the Western worlds are erupting into violence on the streets, the problems are clear cut. Blacks are clearly being screwed over by the system, particularly the police force. While America is the focus, I’m old enough to remember when the Algerians rioted in Paris and when the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Found Police forces in the UK to have major issues with race. Sure, current leadership hasn’t helped. However, these are problems that can be solved with the obvious – i.e. legislation, money and so on.

In Asia, its almost as if the prejudice against the dark skinned is part of accepted culture. Let’s go back to “fair and handsome.” Think of it, it’s probably not meant to be racist against dark skinned people. It’s just an accepted fact that fair automatically gets equated with handsome. I remember my late grandmother telling me, “These Indian girls are actually pretty – it’s just that they’re dark.”

Changing culture will take time. I think the obvious is to encourage mixed race marriages (or as one Jewish guy said “My dick is not racist”). This will be particularly tough, especially when you consider that most Asian marriages are about families as much as the individuals. Yet, as the Western situation has shown, the prejudice against dark skinned people has to be eradicated to a level where dark skinned people don’t feel that it’s the natural order of things for them to be screwed.

Both the West and Asia need to re look at the way they treat the dark skinned. It’s not just a black and white issue but a human issue that needs to be addressed. Racism and ancient prejudices don’t have a place in the modern world.   

He Stung Like A Bee

Thanks to Covid-19, I’ve been consuming lots of Netflix moments. One of my most recent was to watch Ali, the 2001 film that depicts the life of boxing legend Muhammad Ali. This is perked my interest in boxing and the story of the man himself.

I could not have found a better time to get interested in the life of Muhammad Ali. Like most people, I’ve been glued to the TV, watching images of protest and riots caused by the murder of George Floyd, the black man, murdered by a white policeman. The Western world is going through a lot of angst about racism and police brutality. I’ve argued in a previous blog posting that Singapore, which, while geographically in Southeast Asia, has the same underlying problems that the Western World in terms of race relations, particularly with a dark-skinned underclass.

However, if you look at the life of Muhammad Ali, you’d find that there is a glimmer of hope. While his boxing achievements are well known, there are small, lesser well-known anecdotes from his life, which should inspire hope. What I found most interesting, came from the eulogy given by his fourth wife, Mrs. Lonnie Ali, where she told the story of how he got started in boxing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fpiQJH8daA

Muhammad Ali or Cassius Clay as he was known before then, grew up in Louisville, Kentucky in the 1960s. This was during “segregation,” a period of American history that was pretty similar to apartheid in South Africa. Government policy was designed to keep black people poor and while slavery had been officially been abolished a century or so ago, the laws were designed to keep the black population down. Kentucky was one of the places where segregation was not just law but culture.

So, when you look at this era of American history, in which he grew up, the first great sign of hope was the fact that the man who got him into boxing was a white policeman called Joe Marten. Mr. Martin, who had a sideline as a boxing coach. As Mrs. Ali said the funeral, “Something is going on when a cop from the South gets along with an inner-city black kid.”

The main point here is that goodness is possible in culture that is racist and small acts of kindness can make a bigger difference than brute force. The comparison that comes to mind is the American military campaign in Vietnam, which involved lots of bombing and the British campaign against the Malayan Communist, which involved a hearts and minds campaign. Superior force only united the local population against the Americans. The hearts and minds campaign brought the locals onto the side of the British. In the current situation, the cities that have managed the riots best are places where the cops put down their batons and hugged the protesters. The places where the situation that got inflamed were places where the cops treated the protesters like they were part of the battlefield.

The next point from the life of Muhammad Ali was the fact that he was associated with the Nation of Islam, an organization that is effectively promoted black supremacy (the other extreme). His first political mentor was Malcolm X and in between Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali, he was Cassius X.

As he grew in his boxing career, the man known as Muhammad Ali was particularly sensitive about his name. As far as he was concerned, his name was “Muhammad Ali,” and “Cassius Clay” was his “slave name,” which was thrust upon him by white slave owners (the original Cassius Marcellus Clay was a 19^th Century Republican Abolitionist). One of the most vicious beatings he gave anyone in the ring was to an opponent who called him “Cassius Clay.” Legend has it that with each beating he gave, he’d yell “say my name.”

Eventually, like his political mentor, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali moved away from the Nation of Islam’s more extremist ideology, towards mainstream Islam. He embraced people of all colours and faiths and was loved for it. There is a scene in the movie Ali, when his second wife tells him “Those brothers Xs and Ys are only there when you’re the champ and no longer there now you have no use to them.”

What does that say? I believe that this point of Muhammad Ali’s life shows us that going to the opposite extreme is not the answer. Extremist groups are only interested in themselves and you gain so much more when you cross lines of race and religion. At Muhammad Ali’s funeral, there was a point that religious leaders from all faiths would be present and acknowledged.

Muhammad Ali was not a saint. He was a philanderer (four wives and nine kids) and his “trash talking” which promoted fights did hurt. His rival, Joe Frazier, who had helped him out financially in the period where he was not allowed to box because of his opposition to the Vietnam War, grew very bitter towards him because Ali did insult him (called him a gorilla – didn’t help that Ali by contrast was very good looking in his youth).

However, he was a man of great courage, who overcame the circumstances of his birth and rose above the racism of his era. He gave back to the world. In an age where brutality towards the underclass and racist undertones are encouraged at an official level, his life story should inspire us to make a world of what it should be instead of what it is.       

It Could Happen Here

As an Asian, particularly a Singaporean, the temptation to feel smug has never been greater, particularly when you look at events in the world’s most prominent nation, the USA. While Singapore has problems and has lost some of its shine from the explosion of Covid-19 cases, our problems remain relatively mild, when compared to say the hundred thousand odd Covid-19 cases in the US and the riots across America that were sparked by the murder of George Floyd, a black man who was murdered by white police officers on video. Our problems, as they say, are rather “first-world” when compared to the USA.

However, as tempting as it is to get smug, it’s probably best not to get smug at all. While Singapore’s apparent tranquility might give one the impression that all is well, many of the underlying problems that have exploded in the USA are present in Singapore. We’ve merely been better at applying the cosmetic dressing.

Like the USA, Singapore is an unequal society. The latest figures on inequality based on the Gini-coefficient (which measures inequality on a scale of 0 to 1, with 0 being perfect equality), Singapore hit a two-decade low of 0.452 last year. The report can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/income-inequality-in-singapore-falls-to-lowest-levels-in-almost-two-decades

By comparison, the USA has a Gini-coefficient of 0.485. Singapore compares well to its main Asian rival, Hong Kong, which has a Gini-coefficient at 0.539 (joke being the tycoons control Hong Kong the way the government controls Singapore) and unlike top placed Lethoso (0.632), its not a case of a handful of people owning everything else. However, Singapore compares badly to the European nations, like Germany, which has a score of 0.27 and even some of our fellow ASEAN neighbours like Indonesia which has 0.368 (this being a country which has some of ASEAN’s richest people while having visible signs of poverty).

Whenever the issue of the Gini-coefficient is brought up, Singapore’s powers-that-be, inevitably argue that the Gini-coefficient isn’t the most accurate measure of anything in particular, rather like the way my old headmaster used to argue against school league tables (that being until the tables showed him something he liked to see).

What’s particularly interesting about the “inequality” in Singapore is that it is often colour related. You have the professional and executive classes, who are more often than not Westerners or well-educated local Chinese, and much to the dismay of many locals, a growing number of Indians from Mumbai and Delhi. At the lower end of the spectrum are the guys doing menial jobs like cleaning our streets, manning our ship yards and construction sites and looking after our kids. These guys are predominantly from what Donald Trump calls “Shithole” countries of the Philippines, Bangladesh and India (specifically the Southern Parts).

The wage differentials are staggering. While our CEO’s have yet to experience American style 100 million annual stock options, the pay at the higher end of the scale is not to be sniffed at. DBS’s CEO, Piyush Gupta famously had a salary of SG$9,000,000 a year. Our Prime Minister is the world’s highest paid head of government (US$1.61 million per year versus the USD400,000 for the US President) and the CEOs of our top companies are not doing too badly either.

At the other end of the scale are the labourers and maids who would be lucky to have a thousand Singapore dollars in their pockets. I still remember a labourer of a company we put into liquidation telling me that he earned a princely sum S$18 a day for a 12-hour workday.

What’s particularly interesting is the attitudes towards the pay differentials. When it comes to paying working professionals, it called “talent retention,” and we’re told that we’ll lose our competitive edge if we don’t pay better than first world salaries to people from the first world. It was always interesting to see the extent of our efforts to “retain” and “attract” talent, especially when it came to the vices. The police parked themselves across the streets so that working professionals could have their pick of prostitutes and overpriced booze without any interference (men, will be men).

By comparison, when it comes to anyone from “developing” Asia, the line of defense is – “they’re earning far more than they’d ever get back home.” This on its own wouldn’t be a major topic, but when you add the way law enforcement looks upon migrant workers, which is as a source of potential problems. Bored policemen on petrol inevitably cannot help questioning workers who are damaging the neighbourhood by sitting in a corner and having a cup of tea.

Just as there’s an economic defense for paying “talents” from New York or London well, there’s an economic defense for paying people from Dhaka and Manila badly. The argument runs like this, if we didn’t pay them badly, we would not be able to give you the Singaporean quality housing and infrastructure at affordable prices.

This argument is faulty. It enforces the idea that dark skinned people are less worthy of human treatment and places the profits of companies above that of basic human decency. What’s more shocking is that official attitudes seem to support this. There have been too many cases of senior politicians making blatantly racist statements in the public arena and keeping their jobs as the following illustration shows.

Furthermore, with the explosion of Covid-19 cases in worker dormitories, you’d imagine that people would finally understand that its in the national self interest to ensure the workers get better living conditions. Unfortunately, you have too many like the Fawning Follower aka Critical Spectator, who still insist that the downtrodden need to remain that way for everyone’s benefit.

As the fashion designer , Lisa von Tang says in her Instagram account – “The racism in Singapore is very different than the racism we are protesting this week. It's less overt and more systemic(under-regulated maid abuse against Filipinas, Indonesians, Myanmar helpers,poor treatment of Bangladeshi construction workers). It's more muted and normalized (growing up a brown kid in a predominantly Chinese school). The racism here shares the bias against darker skin, but there's no legal ability to protest. Particularly as a foreigner, if you come to work in Singapore, you accept the rule of the land. If you're not happy, you can leave.”

The foreign worker population like the black population inthe USA have born a disproportionate amount of Covid-19 cases. They are generally law abiding and as stated on many occasions, what they want is to get what is due to them for their labour and some fairness.

To be fair to the Singapore government, its acted quickly to contain the spread of Covid-19 in the dormitories and been generous in giving welfare to the affected workers. However, this is only cosmetic and doesn’t solve the real problem.

Let’s remember that the cause of the 2013 riots came as a result of the police appearing to show more interest in protecting a bus driver who had killed a worker than in the welfare of the worker itself. While mild compared to what is happening in the USA, our system needs to be revamped to such a way where our “anti-racist” rhetoric actually means something and we don’t justify the exploitation of an underclass in economic terms.

Let’s start with this. Politicians who make “racist” remarks in public should pay with their jobs. It would show that we’re actually serious about combating racial discrimination. If our leaders can get away with making “racially insensitive” remarks in public, what type of example does it set for the rest of the population?

We’ve been lucky in our race-relationship management. However, we have underlying problems and let’s not waste a good crisis and use the time to take stock and reform the system for the better. The sooner we do it the better for the rest of us.