Who Says We’re Not Creating Jobs?

 

The main and longest feature in Singapore’s portion of cyberspace is focused on one single issue – namely the issue that foreigners, specifically those from India have been unfairly allowed into to Singapore to rob our local population blind. The grouses on the net comes can be summed up as “This government cares about everyone except the local Singaporean.” If you explore enough websites in Singapore, you will inevitably run into someone with some horror story about this or that company discriminating against nice hard-working Singaporeans in favour of nasty, cheating foreigners from what Donald Trump would call “Shitholes.” The question that people inevitably ask is why is the Singapore government creating an economy that in turn creates jobs from people from everywhere else, except Singapore. The pressure has reached a stage where there is an equal amount of gibberish being sprouted about the importance of building a “Singapore-Core” in the economy.

I’ve described this as gibberish because, well, if you look at Singapore’s political system, you can’t accuse the government of not creating jobs for Singaporeans. The structure of our governmental system would indicate that Singapore has created a number of high paying and highly secure jobs, which can only be filled by Singaporeans.

However, given that I work in corporate restructuring and insolvency, the question that I would ask is whether these jobs are actually producing any value for the Singapore Inc as a whole and whether these jobs could be, well for want of a better term – better utilized. Let’s remember the basics – Singapore is a tiny island, or a small red dot. 

Let’s start at the top. We have a Head of State, who functions pretty much like a combination between the English Monarch and the House of Lords in as much as the President is primarily ceremonial but does have the reserve power to say no to the government, should the government choose to tap on the reserves. Our President was paid in excess of S$4,000,000 a year until 2011, when the public felt that there was no reason for a ceremonial figurehead to earn more than the “Chief Executive” or the “Prime Minister.” The salary of the President was slashed by three quarters, which is still a fairly respectable million plus a year and the question remains, what do we get for a million dollars?

Well, the president does wave on National Day and once in a while they do host a dinner or so for a visiting dignitary. Former President SR Nathan, did spend a good deal of time trying to organize charity events. However, that’s pretty much it. Can anyone think of a President who used their time in office to create nation wide projects? Mr. Nathan was criticized in some quarters for being a laky of the government. However, in fairness, he did initiate the President’s Star Charity, which raised money for charitable organizations.  As a prominent member of our local Indian business community (one of the few local Indians to have made it to a regional role in a multinational) said, “At least we knew we had a president.”

Then there is the management committee or the cabinet. Where we have a grand total of some 30 over appointment holders. To set this into context, we have a similar amount of people in the cabinet as some of our larger Asian neighbours, or should I say countries that are faced with issues like poverty and social unrest. By way of a quick comparison, Singapore (population of 5 million and few problems) than Japan (population of 120 plus million and nasty neighbours with nukes) and slightly less than India (population over a billion and an equal amount of problems). The links of the respective cabinets can be found at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Japan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Council_of_Ministers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Singapore

Furthermore, if you look at the Singapore cabinet list, you’ll notice a few interesting facts. We have two senior ministers. The post of senior minister was used to give Lee Kuan Yew a consultancy gig. The post was later abolished in 2011. So, why do we need to revive the post and give it to our two former deputy prime ministers? If memory serves me correctly, the senior minister was the second highest paid person after the Prime Minister.

Then there is the fact that our Ministries have one minister, a second minister (ministry of finance has two), and a minister of state (several grades) and senior parliamentary secretary. Let’s not forget Singapore is a small island with limited resources, so it’s not unfair question to ask why our ministries need so many appointment holders.

One might argue that there are a number of names that appear more than once. Josephine Teo is both Minister of Manpower and Second Minister at the Home Affairs Ministry. Mr. K Shanmugam is most famously in the “non-conflict” position of both Minister of Home Affairs and Law. The valid question here is, are they getting more than one salary per ministry or if they are only getting one salary, how do they divide their time between ministries (At a million dollars a year, exclusivity is a fair demand).

Let’s not forget that Singapore’s ministers are the world’s best paid. The lowest paid one gets a million a year. A cabinet of 30 plus ministers is 30 million a year.

Then if you go down the food chain, you’ll come to the interesting fact that Singapore has five mayors, each one earning around $600,000 per person per year. Mayors in the Singapore context run Community Development Councils (CDCs), which is a collection of several constituencies. Mayors are supposed to run social programs on the ground.

I stress the point that Singapore is a tiny place. We are like the “City-States” in Ancient Greece and our geographical size (or lack of) means that the most appropriate comparisons are not with countries but with cities, and even then, we’re still pretty small. Our Prime Minister’s job is not like his global counterparts, it’s more like the mayor of other big cities. Think of London, for example, as a separate from the rest of the UK. Sadiq Khan would then be called “Prime Minister” instead of Mayor.

Yet, the City of Singapore has five mayors and the question that should be asked is “Why?” What value do our mayors bring to the table. Are they doing something beyond the scope of ordinary members of parliament?

Covid-19 has screwed up the global economy. Companies round the world are downsizing to save costs.  Given that Singapore’s leadership likes to compare itself with the best of enterprises, isn’t it time we started looking at slimming down unnecessary layers of bureaucracy? Unless that is of course, this would ruin the chances of certain Singaporeans to stay in high paying and highly secured jobs.   

The Great Singapore Movie

 

In my previous posting, “Welcome to Singawood,” I argued that Singapore had failed to produce any form of artistic expression in the film arts because it relied on a single script writer, namely the government. I also mentioned that the most compelling movie stemmed from an event in which the government had no control over. I am of course, referring to the trial and subsequent acquittal of Parti Liyani, the Indonesian maid who was accused of stealing from the home of the former Chairman of Changi Airport Group.

This incident had all the elements of a good drama. It had the poor heroin being bullied by the rich and powerful and assisted by the heroic actions of the pro-bono lawyer and non-government organization (NGO). To add to the drama, you had the story of government collusion with the rich, thanks to the police bungling the investigation. In any other country, aspiring authors would already be bashing our chapters in their books with dreams of selling the rights to the movie.

This, however, is Singapore. Shakespeare’s analogy of “All the world is a stage,” is perhaps the most apt when it comes to describing the system of governance. The powers that be, are the studio executives, script writers, producers and directors of the system. The rest of us are supposed to be the “extras” on the set, grateful for the roles assigned to us.

One only needs to look at the type of books and TV series that get produced. The only real author was Lee Kuan Yew, who was under the impression that he was writing the Quran (well, ok, that’s probably unfair to the Quran – in Islamic tradition, Prophet Mohammad took dictation from the Angel Gabriel. In the Singapore system, LKY was the one giving dictation). Everyone else limited themselves to writing ghost stories and pouring out romantic ideals of life in the kampong (Malay for village). As for our movies, well the only ones that get produced (or at least the ones that can be watched) are cute little comedies about exams and national service.

The system worked for many years. The guys who wrote our scripts, actually got round to helping us produce the movie of our individual lives. When the government said that the best thing, they could do for us was to send us to school and we’d get better jobs, we really got better jobs. Sure, a few of us (myself included) fell through the cracks, but by and large there was some sort of follow through on the script they were writing and things could work. In a way, the Great Singapore Movie produced by the Istana was both aspirational and relatable.

However, somewhere along the line, the powers that be forgot that you can’t repeat the same script over and over again. More importantly, getting the script to movie stage actually required them to produce and direct. For me, the most noticeable came in 2007 when the so called “worst terrorist,” Mas Selamat strolled out of a highly secured facility and could only be caught by the Royal Malaysian police.

Instead of admitting to an error, the script writers in the government proceeded to try and jam through more meaningly propaganda about the great job that the government was doing on the security front. Suddenly, we had a government we generally trusted, telling us things that were neither believable or relatable. I mean, how can you be doing a good job on security yet you can’t even get the security cameras to work in the prison for the worst type of criminals?

Somehow, what was a “boring” family drama was turning into a comedy of farce. Take the constant break down of MRT trains around 2017. Yes, we slowed the trains down but the general running the train system continued to collect a high salary and insist that everything was fine. In fact, when the general decided it was time for him to bow out, the casting directors in Singapore decided to find the man’s successor as Chief of Defense Force as his successor of the train system. Despite his inability to get to the route of the problem, the man was hailed as a hero for rescuing the system. How did he rescue the system? He sold the problem to the government, was hailed as a hero to his shareholders of which the most significant one was the government.

Somehow the great Singapore movie has staggered on despite the lack of production. In part, it’s been helped by the fact that the producers in other parts of the world have been more incompetent or rather their incompetence’s have been harder to hide. Whatever is said about access of our ministerial salaries, our Prime Minister has not been found with a billion in his personal bank account. Whatever is said of our handling of Covid-19, at least our Prime Minister is not proclaiming the good job he’s done as doctors struggle to get protection equipment in hospitals.

Having said all of that, it doesn’t mean that we’re doing well and Parti Liyani has helped exposed how the studio producing the Great Singapore Movie is has failed to produce a movie that we can relate to and believe.

What we are believing is the script that the script writers have lost control over. Ms. Liyani has just got leave of court to go after the police and prosecutors. We, the extras and audience on the set of the Great Singapore movie can’t help but believe that there is something rotten in our system and that this Indonesian maid is somehow going to force us to clean up. We sit riveted by what happens next. In the meantime, prominent figures having warning us not to prejudge Mr. Liew and reminding us what a great chap he is, despite the fact that what the evidence says. It goes without saying that the case has made the powers that be neither believable to relatable. If we had a choice about what theater we visit, we would walk out of the place showing us a movie that we cannot relate to or aspire to and move onto the place showing us something that we can watch.

The government needs to take action and change course. Slapping PORFOMA orders against people who say things they don’t like is not going to solve the problem. While it may be sometime before Singapore’s more liberal minded can “Parti,” the government will need to act in order to clean up certain things that are in danger of exploding.  

Welcome to Singawood.

 My dad is an advertising film director and my stepdad was a prominent creative director at an international advertising agency and so, most of the people who I met growing up were primarily in the business of creating images. For me, going to see a movie with my dad was more than just about seeing a movie. For him, watching movies or TV was more than just about watching TV or a movie. It was about studying the craft of storytelling. I guess it should be no surprise that I spent most of my working life in the busines of storytelling and creating stories.

So, having been around people who made their living from telling stories for around 40 odd years, I guess the question that most people would have for me, what makes a good story. I would argue that the most successful stories are those that involve our aspirations and/ or the things that we can relate to. I take the examples of my favourite brain frying activities – binge watching all sorts of movies.

Take Bollywood as an example. I love Bollywood movies. Sure, the story lines are pretty much the same (in fact there seems to be a limited number of actors on any given number of films) and the song and dance sequences drag the film out unnecessarily. Bollywood is as far away as it gets from the brutal reality for 90 odd percent of India. If Bollywood of ones only source of information about India, you’d get the impression that everyone in India was beautiful and very wealthy.

Yet, despite being all of that, Bollywood is the world’s largest film industry (by volume) and interestingly enough, the money coming into Bollywood comes from India’s poor masses. Why would the poor want to watch something that they have no relation to? Well, the answer is because Bollywood sells a fantasy. The four hours of your average Bollywood movie is four hours of being able to live in a life you can only dream of living rather than the life you actually lead.

However, I discovered the other element, which is realism. I discovered this when watched “Designated Survivor – Sixty Days,” which is the Korean version of “Designated Survivor.” Somehow, the Korean knock off seemed more compelling than its American original. Why was that? Then, I realized it was because South Korea has a nasty twin called North Korea and when Korean TV started showing a president having to deal with an external threat, it seemed all the more real. This is something that the American version didn’t quite match (Since we live in a Post-Cold War era, there’s no compelling villain).

I’ve now discovered Nollywood TV serials. Unlike Bollywood with its’ super slick productions, the Nollywood productions look like they’re shot with a handheld video camera and the sets are pretty much existing locations. The actors are not particularly beautiful and the topics they cover are about real-life nasty stuff that your average Nigerian would find oddly familiar, like government corruption and lawlessness on the streets. If Bollywood is about selling what you’d like to be, Nollywood sells you the life that you actually lead.

One might ask, where does Singapore’s film industry fit in. The truth is that we’re stuck in a neither here-nor-there. If you observe Singawood for want of a better term, you’ll notice that we’re not terribly good at selling the fantasy but we’re also not much good at producing anything that your average Singaporean can relate to. Cop shows for example, appear to distort anything resembling reality. Our TV programs always show fighting fit guys who get into shootouts and make Bruce Lee at his peak look like a geriatric. Given the inability of our actual cops to taser someone successfully, nobody is going to believe a story where the SPF is filled with people who can do the ground level stuff.

I think the problem here is the nature of the film business and dare I say the regulation of that business. Both Bollywood and Nollywood are havens to entrepreneurial activity. Who are the people who make movies in these “Shithole” countries (This Trumpism always works want you want to make a point)? It’s creative sparks, who somehow get out there, look for a backer to make their reality and then someone to distribute the final product. Like Hollywood, most of the production in Bolly and Nolly wood ends in financial failure and the majority of people in the industry struggles. However, the stuff that does succed really succeeds (as a fun fact, the richest actor in the world is Bollywood legend Shahrukh Khan). The film industry is generally brutal and you have to be really good to make it. Who determines “good?” In this case it’s the market. Either you compel people to watch you or you don’t. As a result, every film maker has to pour his or her heart out to ensure that every product sells.

By comparison, there is only one studio in Singawood, which happens to be owned by the government (via Temasek Holdings). Nobody actually starves. The situation is such where our aspiring actors, directors etc don’t need to become waiters just to make ends meet. Most of the “stars” in our local media scene get paid by that one single studio. Pay is not too bad (around $10-15 thousand a month) and you get to top it up by doing MC gigs and so on. The script writers are also on a steady pay cheque from the government. In short, Singawood is an extension of the civil service.

Sure, I have enjoyed some local Jack Neo movies like Ah Boys to Men. But these aren’t films that feel compelled to watch. They’re things you watch because there’s nothing else on TV or you feel obliged to support the local industry. They’re not things that glue you to the television or the movie screen.

The shareholder of our single studio will inevitably make the point that Singapore is too small to have a film industry and the only films that Singapore will make are either projects funding by the very wealthy trying to express themselves or by the government.

However, that’s not quite true. Hong Kong, which is of a comparable size to Singapore has a thriving film industry that sets the standards, particularly for Chinese films. Surely, with its greater cultural diversity, Singapore should be able to produce films that appeal to someone outside the heartland shopping centres.

The powers that need to realise that scripts that people want to read and brought to life cannot be written by civil servants who have gone through vast layers of approval. They should take note that the most compelling story out of Singapore comes from an event that didn’t follow its government written script.

 

Buddy Capitalism Continues

 A few nights ago, the Young Pork Guzzling Muslim Politician sent me a photo of several Linkedin profiles of people working at Standard Chartered Bank. The only thing that that connected them, other than the fact that they were working for Standard Chartered Bank was the fact that everyone was from India. I told him that I didn’t know why he was sending me the photo; a copy of which can be seen below:

He called and explained that people in one of his WhatsApp chats were getting agitated by the fact that Singaporeans were getting upset that plum jobs were going to Indian Nationals and not to Singaporeans. It was, as they say, the same story about the Indian Nationals stealing jobs from locals and only helping themselves and so on and so on. As far as most Singaporeans (or at least the ones on the net are concerned) the Indian Expats are a group of unqualified louts stealing from the hard working honest, Singaporeans graduate.

Unfortunately, this isn’t quite true. While it’s easy to take a snap shot of someone’s Linkedin profile, it’s another thing to actually read that person’s profile and assess whether he or she has gotten to where they have been through fair or foul means. If you look at the 15 profiles, you’ll note that one of them was from the National University of Singapore and another one was from INSEAD. If you look at those who were from Indian Universities, one was from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA – the place that gave you Ajjay Bangha, CEO of Mastercard) and another was from Indian Institutes of Management Calcutta (IIMC, - the place that gave you Indra Nooyi, former CEO of Pepsico). If you were to delve deeper into these profiles, you’d notice that the majority of them had at least a decade of experience working with the bank and more often than not, they had experience in the big market of India and within the Southeast Asian region.

So, while I don’t doubt that there are Indian Expatriates who are not qualified to be where they are (which is the same that can be said for any other group), Singapore as a collective, needs to get rid of the idea that the only talented people in the world are Westerners and Singaporeans as the loyal servants of the West.

The reality is that “developing” Asia is producing people that are qualified to do great things and are doing great things. If you look at the world’s game changing companies, there is Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, who from Indian Institutes of Management Kharagpur (IIMK) and there’s Microsoft CEO Staya Nadella from Manipur Institute of Technology. It may be hard for the average Singaporean to swallow, but the fact is Mr. Nadella is credited for making Microsoft sexy again after years of being dull when it was being run by Steve Balmer.

By contrast, I can’t think of a Singaporean, trained in Singapore who has gone onto run a company outside the Singapore and the Singapore government. OK, Ogilvy hired Tham Khai Meng to be its world-wide creative head, but Khai was trained in the UK. There was apparently a vice-president on the board of 3M who was from Singapore.

However, nobody talks about this because it’s politically inconvenient. For the “opposition” camps in Singapore it’s easier to talk about how our government has sold us out to India and China. It’s easy to talk about how unfair life is for the ordinary Singaporean who will be overwhelmed by unqualified Indians stealing their jobs.

If the “opposition” camp is guilty of playing on native resentments against dark skinned people, the government is playing an equally insidious but far more subtle game. The government is currently playing a rather confused game. On one hand, it is claiming that welcoming foreigners is good for Singaporeans and on another it is calling Singaporeans racist and xenophobic when they complain that they are being discriminated against in their own land. What is going on here?

I believe there’s an element of distraction here. If Singaporeans were to look at the “real” cause of their job losses, they’d realise that they’ve been screwed by what I’ve called “Buddy Capitalism,” rather than by evil geniuses from India and China. This came out very clearly in a blog piece by Emanuel Daniel, on Piyush Gupta, the CEO of DBS. Mr. Daniel’s blog entry can be found at:

https://www.emmanueldaniel.com/singaporeans-dont-deserve-piyush-gupta/

Mr. Daniel, who runs the Asian Banker, is a well-connected figure in the Asian Financial Industry and he’s spent decades studying trends in the industry. He takes Mr. Gupta to task for not doing enough to prepare his bank for the future (He’s accused Mr. Gupta of believing his own hype and enforcing a system rather than preparing for a changing world), but at the same time he argues that Mr. Gupta has done more for DBS and Singapore than his four immediate predecessors (all foreigners) and when compared to the CEOs of the other Government Linked Companies. Mr. Daniel points out that under Mr. Gupta, DBS has continued to see a growth in revenue and profits (https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DBSDY/dbss/revenue) unlike a good portion of the GLCs who have lost money despite having a near monopoly on their respective markets.

A few people were offended by Mr. Daniel’s article, arguing that he was ignoring the fact that the other GLC’s like Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and the Singapore Mass Rapid Transport (SMRT) were run by military men who had been parachuted in with no commercial experience and thus screwed it up. It wasn’t Singaporeans per se.

However, I think their missing the point. Mr. Daniel has very clearly articulated that the key issue in Singapore is the fact that “talent” is inevitably about creating compliance rather than competence. Brilliant people are taken over by the government and made so comfortable that they have no need to excel at anything in particular. One only has to think of the number of military scholars who have been promoted effortlessly to very cushy positions. In the SAF, competence can be a handicap. You will inevitably be replaced by a scholar with no experience. I think of 21 SA in my day. There was a CO called Tan Chong Boon, who was what we call a farmer (A-levels, worked his way up). The then, Major Tan turned a sleepy unit into a fit fighting force by sheer guts. Then, 21SA was awarded the best artillery unit, they posted him out so that a scholar could replace him and get the glory.

The second point that Mr. Daniel makes is that the big GLC’s have a habit of knee caping small enterprises with the blessing of the regulators. In another blog piece, Mr. Daniel argues in another blog piece that the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has made it such that all Fintech Systems must have an actual bank account with an established bank, unlike say China or the USA. This ensures that the Fintechs will never be able to take away from the banks and in turn serve as convenient contractors rather than competitors.

https://www.emmanueldaniel.com/why-dbs-is-not-the-worlds-best-bank/

Why would the government do that? I believe that as much as the government talks about wanting to be “future ready,” it is in fact unwilling to prepare for the future and thus moves to protect its established companies from anything resembling competition. As such, you get companies that think of monopoly profits as a right rather than something that has to be earned.

Let’s look back at the attempt to introduce competition into the media in the early 2000s. That experiment ended within four years when both MediaCorp and SPH found they were losing money. They then spent the next few years arguing over whether readership or viewership figures were more meaningful without realizing that people found more relevant news sources online than they did in print or TV. Unfortunately for both media houses, the advertisers noticed too and before you knew it, SPH was trying to reinvent itself as a real estate company and has shed Singaporean jobs.

Why does the government mollycoddle companies like that? Well, it’s a case of buddy capitalism. Where can you put your buddies if you don’t have profitable sectors?

Our system has worked to make the Singaporean incapable of shinning in their own land and the need to hire foreigners to run the show is the inevitable result. If you listen to government communications, you’ll notice that its always the same theme – Singapore has a limited talent pool and therefore you need to rotate buddies from the government and private sector and supplement them with people from elsewhere.

In 2016, this was proven untrue at the Rio Olympics. We had Joseph Schooling, who beat the world’s greatest swimmer to win our first ever gold medal. What should be very telling is the fact that had Mr. Schooling stayed behind, he probably would never have won anything. His good fortune was to have parents who were willing to leave Singapore so that their son could develop his talent and in the end, bring glory to Singapore.

You’re not going to make life better for Singaporeans by mollycoddling them on this island and telling them everything is OK when it isn’t. You’re not going to help by banning foreigners. You will only get a solution when you break up the buddy system and ensure that Singaporeans have to develop their talents.  

The Problem with Buddies

 One of the most prominent items to be put on display as a result of the acquittal of Parti Liyani, the Indonesian maid who worked for Mr. Liew Mun Leong, the former Chairman of the Changi Airport Group, was the extent to which Singapore’s high-level businesses were connected.

Within moments of that rather damning verdict being made public and the explosion of anger towards Mr. Liew and the businesses where he was serving on proceeded to rush out and defend him in public. The most noticeable was our state-owned holding company, Temasek Holdings, which went out of its way to remind the public that Mr. Liew had contributed a lot to Singapore (which was an irrelevant point in light of the fact that Mr. Liew had very likely been involved in something where the legality was questionable). Why would such large organizations rush out to defend the reputation of a man whom had publicly been exposed for trying to illegally fix someone with so much less than him?

While I don’t have concrete answers for the individuals who defended Mr. Liew in public, the answer is probably because Mr. Liew was one of them and they were simply defending their own kind. This leads to one of the most problematic issues in Singapore – crony capitalism.

According to Transparency International, Singapore ranks as one of the top five least corrupt nations on the planet and it is the only Asian nation on the list. Lee Kuan Yew was very particular about ensuring that the public sector would be known for its integrity. His vision was for Singapore to be a shinning beacon of honesty in a rather turbulent neighborhood. He saw to it that there would be a stick for anyone of his public servants who had a whiff of corruption surrounding them (this is the man who gave a minister the choice of suicide or public humiliation) but at the same time he paid his public servants well (think of the world’s highest paid ministers). The system is seemingly good. As well as our ranking on Transparency International’s list, we are also praised by everyone else for having clean public administration. In Singapore, don’t even think about handing over a brown envelope with cash if you are dealing with any public servant.

There is, however, one slight problem to the Singapore system. While you cannot hand money to public servants, knowing people seems to work in business deals, hence while we may rank highly and alongside the Nordic Countries in terms of corruption, our ranking in the index of crony capitalist is closer to that of our neighbors and that bastion of honest government – Russia. Our ranking on the crony scale can be found at:

What’s particularly noticeable about this list is the fact that the “crony industries” or the industries where knowing people is an essential part of the game form a particularly large chunk of our economy. These would be things like construction, property and shipping.

The extent to which this was brought home to me came from a conversation I had with a director of company we had just put under. I told him that I didn’t understand how small subcontractors would make money. First you have to come up with vast amounts of cash to do the project. Then, at a certain stage, you send it a “progress claim” which is essentially telling your pay master what you think you should be paid. He (they usually are in construction) then has to verify the value of your work, and if he needs to keep the bean counters happy, its inevitable that he’ll find fault (in theory there’s a legal mechanism, in practice, the one holding the money is the one with the power). Once you agree to a price, then you send in an invoice and the credit terms are at least 60 days. I cannot comprehend how this power distortion makes it possible for small businesses to survive.  His reply was telling. He told me that I was looking at things as an outsider – the insiders always ensured there was a godfather inside the paying party’s organization that would take care of them.

There is, technically no corruption in Singapore. Yet, somehow contracts are inevitably awarded to the same people and since the industries like construction and property development inevitably involve large numbers of manpower and machinery, the sums we’re talking about are huge – hundreds of millions if not billions. If you study Singapore’s rich list, you’ll notice that the big fortunes are inevitably in one thing – property. It’s also a case of the same names coming up again and again.

Now, this is not particularly unique to Singapore. America’s rich list has also been pretty much the same. However, the American list isn’t in the industries that require you to have a “Godfather.” Gates, Bezos, Jobs and Buffet needed a vision and did create something different. Our guys built real estate and ensured that their profits would forever remain healthy.

While you cannot accuse anyone of dishonesty here, the hold of these industries and the practice of needing “Godfathers” to protect you cannot be healthy in any shape or form. Innovation for one, is never encouraged. More worryingly, government becomes compromised in times of crisis. Just look at the explosion of Covid-19 cases in worker dormitories. The whole world knew that the conditions in the dorms was essentially a breeding ground for diseases. There were previous cases reported in the press. The Minister of Manpower herself admitted that the dormitories were simply not up to standard and more worryingly she admitted that the government had known about this for sometime but never made the moves to force the industry to clean up because the industry complained about rising cost.

What’s a little less spoken about was the fact that the dormitory owners had “Godfather’s” to look after them. Think Centurion Corp, which is admittedly one of the better run dormitories. The main characters were involved in the grassroots. The compromise, the government stepped in to pay for cash rich companies to make conditions livable. No matter how you spin it, it cannot be right for a government that prides itself in honesty, bailing out a cash industry to do what it should have done in the first place.

You can’t bribe people here but if you are in certain dominant sectors of the economy, you need to find a godfather to look after you. Sure, who you know is always important but it cannot be to an extent where who you know becomes a driving force in getting things done. We need to build up dynamic sectors, those with creative destruction rather than those which function on back scratching. It’s the only way we’ll progress to the next level.

 

What Went Wrong?

 

One of the most interesting things about watching politics in Singapore is trying to decipher cryptic messages. This was first brought to my attention sometime in 2005 when the then President SR Nathan was contemplating his second run for office. He started out by announcing that he was old, in ill health and wanted to live out his days without the stress of being in the Istana. A few weeks later, he was asked the same question and he gave a cryptic reply of “Ask God,” and God promptly sent him back to the Istana for another six years. It was a former editor-in-chief of the Today newspaper, who recounted this incident to me and he said, “In Singapore, there’s only one God.”

Tonight, I was reminded that we’ve had another great cryptic line, which came from our law and home affairs minister (in Singapore there is no conflict of interest between the law maker and law enforcer) at the end of the Parti Liyani trial. Mr. K. Shanmugam said, “something has gone wrong.” The report can be read at:

 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/parti-liyani-changi-airport-group-chairman-maid-shanmugam-13091378

While most of us (politicians being in the minority) saw that something was clearly wrong, the question was put to me – “Would he have said something has gone wrong if the appeal had failed and the maid went to jail?”

I’d like to think better of the minister, but I’d probably be wrong. Had Ms. Liyani been convicted, nobody would have made a sound. Sure, the internet would have been ablaze with tales of how screwed up life is for poor domestic workers but eventually things would have died down and people would have shrugged and moved on with their lives. Liew Mun Leong would still be contributing greatly to the country by collecting an outsized pay cheque and the majority of middle-class Singaporeans would probably the relived by the fact that the foreign domestic worker population understood their place in the scheme of things.

That didn’t happen. Liew Mun Leong’s friends have been busy rushing to remind us that he’s done a lot (without mentioning that he was paid a lot) for the country and the man in charge of the justice system (both upholding and enforcing it) has become very busy trying to find out what went wrong.

The question for many of us is what does the man in charge of making and enforcing laws believe what went wrong. My cynical friend said that the main thing that went wrong was the fact that a maid earning $600 a month refused to be brow beaten into knowing her place in the system and a judge found that she had facts as opposed to the multimillionaire former CEO who had reported her to the authorities.

I’d like to be more optimistic and believe that our minister in charge of the police and the courts is very keen as to how the police felt that it was OK for them not to take evidence into custody and allowed the Liew’s to use materials in the boxes where the “stolen” goods were supposed to be kept. I would like to think our minister running our justice system would be interested in how a district judge felt that an unreliable witness was as credible as a rock.

So, the question remains – what went wrong and what is that wrong that the Minister is keen to discover. I’d be grateful if someone would tell me that I’m right and my friend is wrong about the Minister’s focus on what went wrong.    

They Stood Up for a Maid – They’ll Stand Up for US

 The case involving the former Chairman of the Changi Airport Group, Mr. Liew Mun Leong and his Indonesian maid has helped to spark off the old age debate on equality in Singapore. If you read enough of the online chatter, you will notice that there is common thread – Singapore is an increasingly unequal place and this small island is increasingly two societies – those with $50 million in the bank and the rest of us.

Many of us who have taken to the online space (myself included) are often filled with examples of how there seems to be one set of rules of the rich and well connected and another set of rules for eh rest of us. We say a lot but then resign ourselves to the fact that, well this is the way life is and you either learn to live with it or leave. It’s a case of thinking that this is the way things are and going to be, so what else can you do other than complain about it in cyberspace and the Powers that Be are happy to let us have our grumbles on cyberspace because it allows us to let off steam rather than get organized into anything in particular.

For many of us, the acquittal of Parti Liyani comes as a relief to many of us because it seems to be something like a big stop into the slide into decline that many of us believe our society is going through. This story of David beating Goliath gave us, the little people, a sense of hope that we have the chance to get our voice heard. If you ask enough Singaporeans, most of us will say that we don’t need to hear the side of the story of Mr. Liew and the rest of his friends because they are the ones writing the story for everyone else. It is, contrary to what Mr. Dilhan Pillay Sandrasegara, CEO of Temasek International, would tell you, it is the story of the likes of Ms. Parti Liyani that need to be heard. As Mr. Anil Balchandani, the lawyer for Ms. Parti Liyani argues, she is only one of many cases that goes unheard. Mr. Balchandani’s interview can be seen at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4Az5koGHKo

We need to remember that the main point of this case was the fact that it involved a lot of pain and hard work from various parties. The reality of taking on the powerful is that its often a thankless and expensive task. As Mr. Balchandani says in the interview, plenty of foreign workers will plead guilty to accusations because in the cost-benefit analysis of things, it’s the easier option. Let’s remember, Parti Liyani, an Indonesian maid who never earned more than $600 a month, had to stay in Singapore for four years to fight those charges. Even if she didn’t pay a single cent towards her living expenses in Singapore, she was unable to earn money to send back home, which is the very reason why people work as maids or construction workers in a foreign country.

While one might argue that “well, nobody asked them to plead guilty,” we have to understand that most of us who read this post, have very rarely been in a position where we’ve been the significantly weaker party in a negotiation, particularly when it’s a negotiation where the lives of our loved ones is at stake. Like it or not, foreign workers and maids are the forgotten people of our society and we tend to dismiss the work of Organizations like HOME, ACMI and TWC2, because, well they are trying to give a voice to the people whom many of us don’t bother thinking of.

However, we can’t ignore the abuses against the downtrodden based on the fact that they’re not from around here. We need to care about abuses against them, because, well – if the system that is beholden to a rich and influential man like Liew Mun Leong can be used to against a maid, it can be used against us. The fact that Parti Liyani can win against Liew Mun Leong is hopeful because it says, we can win should we be able to win too, should we ever be in that situation.

Yet, we need to remember that there was hard work involved. While we do have laws to protect us on paper, getting the laws to work for us, is a painful process especially when you have the might of the State or someone like Mr. Liew against you. The cost of having a lawyer fight for you in the court system is prohibitively expensive. “Cheap” lawyers in Singapore cost around $500 an hour and lawyers don’t solve things in a single hour. Then there’s things like having to take time off just to deal with lawsuits.

Parti was lucky that her resolve to fight the charges against was supported by the likes of HOME and Mr. Balchandani, who worked tirelessly for her case without measuring the benefits to them. How many of people end up giving up because they don’t get the help.

Think of what happened in 2010, when Dr. Waffles Wu, had an elderly employee take the rap for him for a traffic offense. Sure, Dr. Wu did not go out of his way to get someone more vulnerable to take his place on the wrong end of the justice system. Dr. Wu was finned a grand (spare change to Dr. Wu) and had his license suspended for four months. Dr. Wu has said that he was investigated and feels bad for it:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/woffles-wu-singapore-plastic-surgeon-on-the-record-10586278

However, for most members of the public, this incident was a case of the powerful working under a different set of laws from the rest of us. If you want Alex Au’s opinion on it, you’re going to get Alex’s apology:

https://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/woffles-wu-case-hits-a-nerve/

So, what can we do? Perhaps, we just need to do the simple things like trying to support the good works of NGOs and Civil Society moments like HOME. We should also go out of our way to try and support small businesses like Mr. Balchandani’s. Why do we need to do this? The answer is simple, these are organisations that support us. The people who supported a maid, the lawyer that took a long case for maid free of charge against the full weight of the state, will be the people who stand up for us should we ever be at the wrong end of the system.

Do You Get Why We’re Pissed?

 The big news today is the Chairman of the Changi Airport Group (CAG), Mr. Liew Mun Leong has decided to retire. Mr. Liew who had accused his maid of stealing, ended up facing an angry backlash from people as it was revealed in open court that he had actually tried to frame the maid. Details of his announcement can be found at:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/liew-mun-leong-retires-cag-temasek-parti-liyani-13099110

As mentioned in my previous posting, Mr. Liew came out of the incident looking like a cheap elitist bully who tried to bend the power of the state against someone who is classified as one of the lowest possible wage earners. The anger against Mr. Liew has spilled out and rebounded onto the organisations he was leading. The biggest target was Changi Airport, our proverbial jewel that we show off to the world. The airports Facebook page was bombarded with angry post as the following report describes:

https://www.asiaone.com/digital/changi-airport-facebook-page-bombarded-angry-comments-against-cag-chairman-liew-mun-leong

Mr. Liew made the international headlines, though admittedly not in the way that he would have wanted:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-09/singapore-changi-airport-chairman-faces-backlash-on-maid-scandal

I guess you could say that with this type of PR backlash, it was inevitable that Mr. Liew would have to bow out of every position he was holding. I guess you could call this a face-saving solution. While this was inevitable, its still not enough.

What’s particularly interesting about this whole incident is that there are those who aspire to be elite circles who don’t get why the public is upset. The Young Pork Guzzling Muslim Politician called to ask for my views on the matter and he sounded genuinely shocked by the public anger against Mr. Liew.

He isn’t alone. Our Minister of Law who is somehow unconflicted by the fact that he’s also the Minister of Home Affairs, said that something went wrong somewhere and it would be investigated but cautioned against a “witch hunt.” Then there was Mr. Dilhan Pillay Sandrasegara, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Temasek International (subsidiary of our second Sovereign Wealth Fund) came out to announce to us that Mr. Liew had made great contributions to Singapore and that we needed to hear his side of the story. It goes without saying that this has only made people angrier and the powers that be seem astounded.

I remember repeating the crux of the issue to the Young Pork Guzzling Muslim Politician – here we have Mr. Liew Mun Leong earning several million a year, going out of his way to crush an Indonesian maid earning what most Singaporeans would call a slave wage. It is an elephant going into a boxing ring with a gerbil.

This situation could have been easily avoided if Mr. Liew had been a little more generous with his most obvious strength – money. What he considers miniscule, she considers a fortune. While asking her to work in two additional areas is technically illegal, he could have offered her an extra hundred or two a month and she would never complained. Yet, it was $20 dollars extra for an additional 100 hours of work, which even the people from “Shithole” countries (just to use a Trumpism) would find exploitative. When she complained about the illegal deployment, he could easily have offered her say a grand for every year of service and she would have offered to work in another four areas.

Yet, he decided that she was to be destroyed. He’s now claiming that he suspected she was stealing for many years but tolerated it. If he really suspected she was stealing, logic has it that he could have stopped it years ago (Mr. several million dollars a year can’t afford to install cameras in the house?) I remember asking the Young Pork Guzzling Muslim Politician if he’d allow someone, he suspected of theft to pack their belongings on their own when you were sacking them – obvious answer – no.

It was clear that the intention was to set her up and what people find unforgivable was that it became a criminal and so it was the State against a maid instead of Liew Mun Leong against a maid. Had the police followed proper procedures and behaved like an impartial party, it wouldn’t be so bad. But as the judgement shows, they acted more like Mr. Liew’s force. The first judge allowed it dodgy evidence to be used. This wasn’t the elephant against a gerbil. It was a blue whale against a goldfish with the goldfish being tied up in his bowl while the whale gets to do whatever he wants.

Mr. Pillay coming up to talk about how we needed to hear Mr. Liew’s side of the story. Mr. Pillay, former Managing Partner at one of the most prominent local law firms forgot that the events leading up to Ms. Parti Liyana’s acquittal came out in court, the one place where raw facts are what matter most. Mr. Pillay forgot that Mr. Liew had been writing Ms. Liyana’s script as well as telling his story.

It’s like this, courts consider extenuating circumstances for example – a beggar who hasn’t eaten for 10 days deciding to steal an apple from the grocery store. A case of its technically wrong but his situation was such that he was compelled to do it. What were the extenuating circumstances for the whale to stich up the goldfish?

Singaporeans accept many things. We accept that life isn’t always fair. Yes, the rich and powerful have advantages and yes, the system is often stacked in practice. However, we do expect some equality before the law and we do expect the facts to speak regardless of who says them. This was a clear-cut case of the powerful not just using the full might of their power but also using illegal means to crush the insignificant. Then, when the rich and powerful get caught, the other rich and powerful rush to his defense, as if they’re trying to drill it into our heads that is somehow benefits us to allow the rich and powerful to do illegal things. Wealth and power should not make what is illegal – legal just because it is done by the rich and powerful.

How Cheap Can You Get?

 It’s often said that you can tell the nature and quality of a society by the way it treats its most vulnerable and I’m glad to say that Singapore’s High Court proved Singapore’s value as a society on 4 September 2020 when it acquitted Ms. Parti Liyani, an Indonesian maid who had been accused of theft and had previously served sometime in jail. Ms. Liyani was the maid of Mr. Liew Mun Leong, Chairman of Changi Airport and one of Singapore’s most prominent businessmen.

The facts leading to her acquittal can be found in the written judgement by Justice Chan Seng Onn at:

https://www.supremecourt.gov.sg/docs/default-source/module-document/judgement/-2020-sghc-187-pdf.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3V7PRkM0gLerbuA36cLiAt_rsmPavCCwqGgx-2SKU7Dznw5OxN9Hr6jvY

In many ways the judgement reads like the plot of a Korean Drama and exposes Singapore’s institutions as being, well pliable to the whims of the rich and powerful. The police in particular come out looking exceedingly bad. One of the most obvious points recorded in the judgement is the fact that the police allowed the Liew family to use items in the boxes where some of the allegedly stolen items were kept. If you have watched enough shows on TV, you’ll know that this is clearly wrong.

Then there was the fact that Ms. Liyani, who is not conversant in English (one of the reasons why Indonesian maids are paid less than their Filipina counterparts) was questioned in – English and that was translated for her in Bahasa Melayu when her native language is Bahasa Indonesia. While Malay and Indonesian are similar, there are significant differences in the mean of various words – significant enough for misunderstandings to occur in legal situations. Nobody bothered to inform Ms. Liyani that she had the right to have a Bahasa Indonesia interpreter present.

Then there’s the role of Mr. Liew Mun Leong and his family and that is perhaps the biggest tragedy. Mr. Liew was once one of Singapore’s most respected businessmen. In many ways, he’s what you’d call the type of business hero that Singapore needs. While his is not quite the rags to riches story, he didn’t come from an elite school (Queenstown Technical) and he worked his way up. He is one of those very rare creatures. A Former civil servant who succeeded in the private sector and it’s not just Singapore that recognised his achievements. On 12 September 2017, Mr. Liew was conferred the rank of Knight in the French Legion of Honour (Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur) for his contributions to the French economy. More can be found at:

https://sg.ambafrance.org/Changi-Airport-Group-Chairman-Mr-Liew-Mun-Leong-awarded-with-the-Legion-of

Yet, when you read the efforts that he went through with his family to effectively stiff a maid earning something like $300 to $600 a month (Ms. Liyani started out on $300 a month and they doubled her pay towards the end of her service), one can’t help but feel that Mr. Liew has shown himself to be nothing more than a power hungry ghoul and you’re left wondering if Mr. Liew’s previous achievements were really due to anything more than the ability to peddle influence?

 One of the most striking points against Mr. Liew is the fact that he got his maid to work for his son in addition to himself (she had to clean his house, his son’s house and office). This is against the rules, though there are families who get around this by compensating the maid. Well, to be fair to Mr. Liew, he did compensate her to the princely sum of a few bucks a month, which he allegedly took his time to pay.  

Mr. Liew is not the only businessman who has proven to be an arsehole. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were notoriously temperamental bosses and both Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have been known to be jerks. However, while these men may have been difficult to work with, there is no record of any of them going all out to destroy someone so much lower on the proverbial social scale.

At one stage, Mr. Liew was making around $5,000,000 a year. In 2007, his bonus was over S$20 million. A summary of where Mr. Liew ranks of the pay scale can be found at:

http://www.sandboxadvisors.com/singapore-jobs-news/ceo-salary-singapore

If you read the judgement, you’ll realise that the Liew family put in quite a bit of effort to get Ms. Liyani locked up. Think about it, a man who helms big companies and earns at least $5,000,000 a year went out of his way to “fix” a maid earning $7,200 a year (based on Ms. Liyani’s maximum salary of $600 a month).

I stress that Ms. Liyani should not have gotten free pass if she had stolen things. However, based on the evidence as laid out in the judgement (this is a court judgement not an editorial piece), it is very clear that the Liew family conspired to frame a maid who had served them loyally for nine-years (she was accused of stealing a DVD player that didn’t work).

What makes this worrying is that once the verdict came out and Ms. Liyani was acquitted, the powers that be proceeded to rush to defend Mr. Liew. One of the worst defenses came from that bastion of business transparency – Temasek Holdings, which bleated on about how Mr. Liew had contributed so much and the public should hear his side of the story. The report can be found at:

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/cag-chairman-liew-mun-leong-has-contributed-spore-public-should-hear-his-side-story

Not to be outdone, the government lead by it’s least conflicted minister, Mr. K Shanmugaratnam (Minister for Law and Home Affairs – somehow there’s no conflict between the law maker and the law enforcer) proceeded to give a spiel about how there was not to be a witch hunt and the government would look into what went wrong:

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/government-to-deal-with-what-went-wrong-in-prosecution-of-cag-chairman-liew-mun-leongs-maid-k-shanmugam-073314380.html

One cannot help but want to scream at officialdom for being “tone deaf,” and ask if the ruling party really wants to lose more seats. Sure, Mr. Liew has been a very successful businessman but that cannot distract us from the fact that he and his family have been guilty of several offenses that have been exposed in open court. By rushing to defend him, it gives the impression that the government is only interested in protecting one of its own, which is the very thing that Singapore tells the foreign investment community it does not do.

The Prime Minister needs to reign in his wife and ministers. A bit of distance from Mr. Liew would help. He should look no further than predecessor who distanced himself from TT Durai of the National Kidney Foundation in 2005. There, the government had the sense to realise that Mrs. Goh’s peanut remarks were unhelpful and nobody rushed to defend Mr. Durai when his misdeeds were uncovered.

While Mr. Liew and the government don’t emerge looking good from this entire saga, I believe that the incident shows that there is hope. There is hope that civil society groups like HOME (which supported Ms. Liyani) exist. These organisations provide some hope for the least of us.

It’s also encouraging that there are lawyers like Anil Balchandani the Managing Proprietor of Red Lion Circle Advocates and Solicitors, who worked tirelessly and for free to see that Ms. Liyani got some justice.

Lastly, there is the man that all Singaporeans need to be grateful for – Justice Chan Seng Onn, who weighed the evidence carefully and looked at the circumstances in a fair and impartial manner. He was not swayed by the influence that Mr. Liew had in the business community, ruled according to the evidence and even went as far as to commend Mr. Balchandani for representing Ms. Liyani so effectively.

Justice Chan has given hope to Singapore by showing that there is a possibility of receiving fairness from the system and for the powers that be who might condemn fairness as an airy concept, they would do well to remember that foreign investors like places where there is rule of law rather than rule of personality.     

Barbarians and the Wall.

Went to see Mulan, the live action remake of Disney’s animated cartoon with Kiddo yesterday. There were two struck me about the movie. One is the shallow point that Gong Li looks fantastic and it’s hard to believe that she’s in her 50s. The other point that struck me is the fact that the “bad guys,” or the “Northern Invaders” led by the villainous Bori Khan, looked hell of a lot better than the Chinese. It was like these guys were dressed in black, could scale walls and while on horse back they could turn around and fire arrows. The Chinese by contrast could merely march in formation and follow orders and kept bleating on about duty of the empire, country, village, family and so on.

While the movie is clearly Disney’s creation, they did get one thing right about Chinese history – namely the fact that Chinese history is the story of the constant conflict between tightly controlled central authority and lone wolf units. Thanks to Confucius, the Chinese have had a mad obsession with strong central authority and while Confucius was not wrong in his suggestion that government be staffed by intelligent people there was one flaw in his entire philosophy. It worked on the assumption that there was a golden age of a wise and benevolent ruler who always acted in the best interest of the people and any good ruler worth his salt would model himself on the rulers of the past.

As a result, the people who were revered in Confucian society were those who worked to preserve the status quo and looked inwards to keeping the system running, namely bureaucrats and farmers. The people who went beyond their shores and had to mix with different people, thus being exposed to outside influences, namely merchants and soldiers were spat upon in Confucian society. The Chinese built a “GREAT” Wall at the cost of millions of lives to keep invader or outside influences out.

What was the result of this obsession with a mythical golden age and looking back to the past? For over a thousand years, the highly civilized Chinese empire had its buttocks kicked on the battle field by “barbarian” hoards like the Mongols and the Manchus. The Chinese only got rid of “barbarian” overlords once the said overlords discovered the finer things about Chinese civilization and became as soft and flabby and the Chinese. This pattern ended when the Chinese got wacked by the European powers and it turned out that the Europeans had at that stage advanced beyond anything the Chinese had.

While the Chinese had a strong state and a unifying culture that got everyone to look to the centre, that very state stifled innovation. The emperor was always right and the only way to succeed in society was to study hard (specifically ancient text) and not create anything new. Change was bad because it meant a deviation from anything in the past, which was always better. China, was the world’s largest economy and as an ancient civilization it was a highly innovative one. Then, they stopped innovating and stayed in the Middle Ages while the Europeans went through the Renaissance and Reformation.

The barbarians by contrast had to struggle to survive. In their environment, one had to look after one’s self. Kids grew up working with animals, hunting and gathering food. Rather than a state, they were a confederation of tribes or small units that came together for bigger things. Collaboration and competition were a part of life. You had to be tough in order to survive and you needed to know how to collaborate and compete.

While the “GREAT” Wall worked initially, the barbarians found a way around it and China did end up being ruled by them. What happened? The Mongols found a leader in the form of Genghis Khan to unify them and they got round the Wall. While Genghis Khan probably didn’t know his Chinese characters, he was actually an openminded thinker. After taking China, he discovered Chinese technology and used their siege machinery to very great effect in his further conquest. It only went wrong for Genghis Khan and his decedents when they got a wee bit too comfortable as “Emperors” in China and became like the Chinese.

Confucius probably had noble thoughts in what he said. However, the practice only encouraged insularity, which screwed China up to the modern age. For much of modern history, Chinese people only succeeded when they got out of China and moved to places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and the Chinatowns of the West, where they got away from overwhelming central authority and had to be open to outside influences.  

One might point out that China has grown its economy despite strong central government. It is true that companies like Sinopec, the Bank of China and so on are global behemoths, the real strength of the Chinese economy lies in small and innovative companies. These are the companies that you don’t hear about. These are the companies that do not have the comfort of easy loans from state banks or the protection of the communist party. 

It’s nice to be comfortable and its nice to stick in your comfort zone. It is nice to keep outside influences – out and not to mix with people who are different. However, Chinese history has shown that when this is carried to an extreme, you end up getting your arse kicked whenever you face any form of challenge. Chinese history has shown that you should never look back to a past or that government, even with one with bureaucrats with good degrees will keep you in comfort forever. Better go out into the world and face challenges. It will toughen you up and who knows, it will probably make you an arse kicker instead of someone who has his arse handed to him. 

Exclusivity Should be a Two-Way Streak

 

One of the biggest storms in the aftermath of the opening of our new parliament came from the MP for Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC, Mr. Chong Kee Hiong, who suggested Singaporeans be allowed to take two jobs. Mr. Chong’s speech can be found at:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/parliament/videos/september/debate-on-president-s-address-chong-kee-hiong-on-benefits-of-13071436

Mr. Chong, who works as CEO of Suntec Real Estate Investment Trust (Suntec Reit) by day, was pillared for being out of touch with the lives of ordinary Singaporeans. The common theme in the criticisms of Mr. Chong was that he didn’t fully understand what we wanted, which a single and secure job that paid well as opposed to having two jobs. A sample of the reactions to Mr. Chong’s remarks can be found below:

https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/forum-taking-up-2-jobs-does-not-ensure-job-security

While I understand where the objections to Mr. Chong’s remarks are coming from, I actually agree with Mr. Chong. Why do we the workers have to be tied down to a single employer, especially in situations where working lives are becoming increasingly shorter (in the name of being more productive) and pay and other benefits are being reduced (in the name of profitability). Why should employees be forced into an exclusive relationship when their employers are not bound by the same rules?

I make this point as someone who worked two jobs for the better part of five years. I worked for the liquidator by day and I had what is known as a “permanent part-time” gig at the Bistrot. In fairness to both my former employers, they knew that I was working for both jobs. The liquidator gave his express permission for me to keep my part-time gig in the Bistrot and the Bistrot owner knew that I was working in a full-time job during the day.

It was a little tiring to work both jobs in as much as I would finish the office job between six and seven in the evening and only reach the Bistrot by around seven thirty to eight and by the time I was finished with everything I’d only be able to hit the sack at around one in the morning and would have to wake up and leave the house by around 9:15 to get to work at 10 (which was a special privilege that I was granted by the liquidator).

However, working two jobs gave me the benefit of two incomes, which meant that I had the security that I would not be stuck if I didn’t have the other and my virtually nonexistent CPF (Singapore’s national savings scheme and foundation of our pension system) grew quite fast. I also did my best to ensure that both my employers benefited. I tried to entertain at the Bistrot and if I met lawyers at the Bistrot, I’d often get in touch with them to link them up with the liquidator for further business opportunities.

Things only started to go downhill when the demands of my day job were such that I barely had time to work the night job and I was being constantly reminded that the situation of two jobs could not last forever and it was assumed I’d go with the job that provided a clear career path. In the end I left the day job at a point when I was expected to be exclusive to the point of being exclusive.

Now, as I look back, I realise that I was in a very privileged situation in that I had an employer who allowed me to work a second job. While Moonlighting is technically not illegal for people outside the civil service, private companies generally discourage it and often place a clause somewhere in the contract that prohibits it. More on the legal situation of moonlighting in Singapore can be found at:

https://singaporelegaladvice.com/moonlighting-illegal-singapore/

I do understand that there are concerns about conflicts of interest. Employers, particularly in the professional service area, should not want employees in position of leaking information to competitors. However, this exclusion on secondary jobs includes blue collar labour. Why, for example do port operators expect Stevedores to work only in their port or restaurants expect their line cooks to work only for them?

Why is there such a premium placed on exclusivity of employment? Why do I have to depend solely on you for my survival, especially when I’m not exactly a prime decision maker in the organisation? I’ve noticed that employers have this weird obsession with tying down the employee in an exclusive. I remember the reaction of an HR professional for a big bank telling “Oh like that ah,” the moment I told him I was working two jobs. That reaction was “Loser.” By contrast, when I was interviewed by an American, the reaction was “wow – that’s great,” or “hey, you’ve got drive.”

Like it not, the job market is changing. One can either be displaced by someone cheaper, especially when you have places like China and India opening up and offering pools of cheap labour. Or if a job is not killed off by cheaper labour, automation (in manufacturing) or artificial intelligence (AI – the for boring repetitive stuff in the office) will do it. The Singapore government talks about retraining and reskilling. However, in addition to that, they should allow employees to develop alternative sources of income beyond their standard employers.

The rules on allowing dual citizenship should also change. As of now Singaporeans are not allowed to hold dual citizenship. The argument is that Singapore is in a vulnerable geopolitical position and holding dual citizenship would put people in a position of conflict of alliances.

However, we need to look at the fact that we are now living in a different more globalized world than the world of the 1960s. The government has shown that it has no qualms it has no qualms in doing what is necessary to grow its population of new citizens to augment the skills of its current population. So, the reverse question should be asked, why can’t the citizens have two citizenships in case one of them doesn’t work out for them?

Let’s remember that exclusivity only works if it works for both parties. It’s like men who play around yet expect their wives to remain faithful and exclusive to them. How can this work out in the long run?   

It’s Just Paper

 I’ve been blissfully out of the office for the last three days and thus missed one of the most interesting debates around. The Office Spice declared that she is taking the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT – the standard exam for the better known MBAs) and somehow, during the conversation with the rest of the office, she said something about GMAT being recognised unlike the qualification issued by the Association of Certified Accountants (“ACCA”), which she said was only recognised in Asia and nobody in the USA or Canada had heard of ACCA. Leaving aside the merits of her comments, the end result was that she ended up infuriating the Wobbly Pudding (her supervisor, who happens to be sitting for several ACCA papers). Apparently, I’ve missed the great drama.

I get why the Wobbly Pudding was upset. She’s been busting her guts just to get the papers and the last thing that she wants to hear is any suggestion that the papers that she has worked so hard for, are anything less than what she expects them to be.

However, I believe that there is a broader issue at play here and its one that we need to look at in our education system – namely the obsession with the paper qualifications. OK, in fairness, Singapore isn’t the only place on earth where parents tell their kids that they need to study hard, get a degree and get a good (defined as well paid) job. However, Singapore is probably the only place where this is taken to an extreme. Our all-pervasive government is helmed by people with beautiful qualifications from the world’s best universities (basic degree from one of the Oxbridge universities and an MBA from an American Business School) and it’s not just the degree. The job application form for anything in the civil service goes as far back as requiring you to produce your primary school certificates.

In a way this is the secret of Singapore’s success. We are a society obsessed with education. Our school system is famously tough. We excel at taking exams and as the mantra goes, we remain a wonderful destination for foreign investment because we provide them with a well educated and disciplined work force. I also think that the Singapore government is right when it emphasizes training as a means of helping the unemployed get back to work.

However, as with most government proposals, the emphasis on education either gets taken to an extreme or defined so narrowly that very few people actually benefit from being “educated.” The most extreme example being the so called “cushy” life that government scholars lead. In theory the system is right. Government should be run by the best and brightest. However, in practice, we don’t get the results one would expect from the best and brightest a nation can offer.

Case in point was our subway system, which was (and still is) run by generals. The two generals who were promoted to run the subway have beautiful degrees from top-notch universities. Both served in the military but never actually had a problematic command let alone anywhere close to seeing combat. Somehow, a lifetime of playing war games in a simulated environment qualified them to run a subway system which they had never ridden on, let alone found the technical details for, previously (it made the news when the second general took a ride on the subway he was supposed to run). The pay for running the system is sinfully good.

When you have a situation like this, any parent with half a brain cell realizes that they key to success is the paper. As such, parents will push their kids into getting the right papers. Once they are noticed by the government, they are given a scholarship and then, magically, every conceivable challenge that life may throw at them vanishes. As such, education and thinking stops after they get a degree.

One should not dismiss paper qualifications out of hand. The nature of modern jobs is such that you need to spend an increasing amount of time in an educational institution to train your mind. We have reached a situation where a bachelor degree is increasingly the entry level requirement to get your CV read. We should also remember that theory is also important. The guy who knows the theory before he has to practice it, does beat the guy who is supposed to just put it into practice (whatever the “it” may be).

Having said that, we need to remember what is a paper qualification. I believe that a paper qualification merely tells someone that you were interested in something and went to explore further. My anthropology degree for example, doesn’t qualify me for anything but it does indicate that I like human interaction and should stick to roles that require some of it. I resisted the liquidator’s pleas to study accountancy because that would have ensured that I spent more time dealing with spreadsheets than with human beings.

The other area where I believe I did some learning was from living in London. Daddy had a flat in Soho and I had the good fortune to live in the vibrant part of a world city. I have “three-years” of the London experience and what I “learning” I did came from the people I met. Interestingly enough, my lecturer at Goldsmiths did point that most of the learning we’d do was not in our “sacred halls” but from each other and being in the city.

I made good friends during my university days. I actually had fun in London and the friendships, particularly with the Roman Brothers and the Finnish Gang proved to be priceless. However, I never thought that being a graduate made me anything special. It merely said that I had the good fortune of being born into a decent enough family.

Paper qualifications are good to have as they help you progress through a career. They are good to have if they help you move into something you want to do. The experience of getting a qualification can be very educational. However, let’s remember that at the end of the day, its just a piece of paper and doesn’t define you as a person. Where you go from your qualification is a question of character rather than the paper itself. It’s a fact that many of us would do well to remember.  

The Old Youth Speaks

 I’ve mentioned it in a previous posting and I’ll happily say it again, but of all the “isms” that we have, ageism is probably one of the worst. Racism and Sexism are good at grabbing headlines. It’s been especially so since the current Occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania got himself plonked into the Oval Office and we got a range of news headlines relating to those “isms.” Nobody seems interested in “ageism,” particularly when so much of the world’s attention is focused on the two Septuagenarians battling for the Oval Office.

However, as any job seeker will tell you, ageism is particularly rife and here in Singapore. To put it crudely, people after a certain age (In Singapore it’s around 35) are unlikely to get a job if they lose their current one. The situation has gotten so bad that it has taken one of our more senior and popular politicians to get out and announce that “Nobody is too old to be hired.” Yet, the problem persists. Just visit any food joint and you’ll notice that the staff are inevitably over 45. When I grew up in the UK, I understood the job at the fast food joint was what you did as a student so that you had a few extra bucks. Here in the “Land of Asian Values and Filial Piety,” working in a fast food joint is what you do when you’re too old to run around because no one else will hire you.

When I got hired by the liquidator in 2014 (my 40^th birthday) everyone told me that I had to stick onto it because it was the only job, I was likely to ever have. I was 40 and had worked mainly freelance for most of my working life and nobody was rushing to hire someone with my track record. So, I held on for five years in an industry that required me to have the one thing I refused to have – paper qualifications and regulation. In the five years of working in an accounting practice, the only job offer I received was from Burger King, which I ignored because, well they wanted me to work exclusively for them, which would have meant I’d be stuck with them for the rest of my working life.

Sure, I get that employers want young and impressionable fresh graduates that they can mold. Old Farts like me can be expensive. We’ve been round the block a few times and we’re a little less likely to get conned. When I had my first agency job, working 24/7 was all about learning the ropes and part and parcel of laying the ground work if you wanted to succeed in life. At 40, when you’re required to work 24/7 all the time, you start to question if you’re working for someone who is obsessed with being inefficient and hates productivity. The only way you’re likely to accept doing this at 40 and dare I say 50 is because you’re paid a criminal amount of money. At 20, you accept things like “sacrifice” for the company and job as being good for you and your future. At 40, it’s a different story.

Yet, if I take myself as an example, I have to question why old farts like me should become less employable. May be its because Covid-19 and the circuit breaker changed my lifestyle but I am healthier than when I was in my thirties. Just take a look at me eight years ago when I was on my first holiday in Vietnam. In the words of my mother “Your tummy is enormous.”

 

By contrast, I am significantly lighter at 46 than when I was at 38 and I feel better for it. While I had significantly less responsibilities then, I actually feel more energetic and a little more confident about taking on the world. Here’s me at 46.

Incidentally, my situation is not a freaky one. I work in an office where the only other person who could last more than five minutes on an escalator is three weeks older than me. Back when I was in my last agency job (Bang PR in 2005), my main director used to make the point that he was significantly older but at the same time healthier.

So, the question stands – if our aging population (ie people like me) are healthier than ever before, why is it so difficult for us to get a job.

I put it down to employers having a “feudal” mindset. They still want employers who will “fit in” and stay with them for years. They still want employees that can be molded into a certain image and are dependent on the employer to provide a livelihood. I can understand this mindset and it worked well for so long. It’s like the weird obsession with the office and all the gatherings that people have. In this frame of mind, you worry that the person over 40 may not fit into your cog.

While this may have been the case in the industrial revolution, we need to understand that we are no longer in that era. I hate this mindset that in order for the economy to function you need lots of people whom you can work for long hours and for cheap, which was precisely the argument that everyone used when it was suggested that foreign workers should not live in conditions that caused disease.

You have a growing population of over 40s. They have skills and the capability of doing work. Sure, if you can’t give them the same full-time job, outsource things to them. May be its less money but it’s better than nothing at all and you can let them find other paymasters concurrently. You have an army of growing and still capable people. Why can’t you find a way of using them? Surely that would help productivity.