Monday, July 13, 2020

Why Won’t They Join?


I got a call from the Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC yesterday. He was intrigued by my last posting which asserted that the last election results had shown that the roots of a two-party system in Singapore had been developed.

As with all intellectual discussions with the Young Muslim Politician, he ended up answering his own question and then it came to the topic of the quality of opposition candidates. He rightfully observed that the quality of opposition candidates was exceedingly good. First there was the news that Professor Paul Tambyah, Chairman of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), had been elected to head the US based Society for Infectious Diseases (see - https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/paul-tambyah-first-singaporean-infectious-diseases-isid-12847020) and then came the performance in of the Dr. Jamus Lim of the Worker’s Party (WP) in the debate against Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, our Minister for Foreign Affairs. An excerpt of the debate can be found at:


Dr. Balakrishnan is a former school debater and considered one of our more articulate ministers. The PAP must have been hoping that Dr. Balakrishnan would wipe the floor in the debate and he did not. Dr. Lim’s performance in the debate was exemplary. He was articulate and consistently on message and somehow, that gave the Young Muslim Politician a great moment of insight, when he told me to look at Dr. Balakrishnan’s expression throughout the debate. The expression was – this guy should be on our team, why the hell couldn’t we recruit him.

Apparently, the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) had tried to recruit Dr. Lim when he returned from Abu Dhabi, after serving as an economist for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which is the third largest Sovereign Wealth Fund in the world. Apparently, Dr Lim turned the PAP down.

This is a problem for the PAP. Like every good business, political parties need to attract good people, and the PAP used to have a monopoly on the brains. The government’s scholarship system was designed to ensure that smart people stayed within the system. The system worked like this, sponsor a bright kid through to university, get him or her into the civil service for a few years and then, after they had cut their teeth, get them to stand for election. 

The Singapore government has been very open about the fact that it competes with the private sector for talent. Our Ministers are the world’s highest paid. Political salaries are comparable with those from top private sector organisations.  The official reasoning is that this prevents corruption (there’s no need to think about dipping your hands in the cookie jar when you’re being well paid) and that its necessary to pay well because if we didn’t pay our public figures well, they’d run off to the private sector and make their fortunes elsewhere instead of working for the betterment of the nation.
Professor Tambyah and Dr. Lim are living proof that Singapore has the people who can compete on the international stage. The problem for the ruling party is that they’re not on the side of the PAP, which given the PAP’s hold on the government, is the only party with the resources to give them things. If you want money, the PAP is in the position to give it to you. If you want the backing of the state to get things done, only the PAP can give it to you.

So, the question that the PAP needs to answer is why aren’t people like Professor Tambyah and Dr. Lim not flocking to join the side of the PAP?

The government has traditionally used the purse strings to attract people. Personally, I don’t disagree with paying people in public service well. Why should you expect people to work for some higher ideal if it doesn’t put food on the table? I know that the guy with the backing of the state machinery can get things done in a way that the guys protesting on the streets will never be able to do. Our entire system has been based on this. Whenever a smart guy even gave the appearance of being interested in joining “the other” (which means any side other than the government approved one) side, the government and PAP would inevitably “buy” them over.

Now, there’s a problem. Bright guys are turning them down to work for the “other” side. These are the people with the expertise needed for the future. Think about this, we are in the middle of a global pandemic that has ravaged the economy. Who else could be better to be leading the charge against these things than a world recognized expert on infectious diseases and an internationally recognized economist? Yet, these people are not joining.

So, the PAP has to ask itself, why can’t it recruit people like this. It’s been doing it successfully and suddenly you get flawed candidates like Ivan Lim. By contrast, the opposition, which lacks the resources to offer great things is attracting brains like these. The ruling party needs to do some soul searching on why it has been unable to get great minds like Professor Tambyah and Dr. Lim instead of trying to demonise the great minds that won’t join if it is serious about ensuring that Singapore’s machinery has the best minds working for it.

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Maira Gall