The Limitations of a Brand

 

Robinson’s one of Singapore’s most iconic retail brands has just announced that it will be shutting its doors for good, after 162-years. The local fashion icon was a victim of growing competition and Covid-19 was perhaps the final nail in the proverbial coffin.

With the death of Robinson’s, Singapore is left with one less home-grown brand and as my former boss, Mr. PN Balji says, “The reality is that Singapore has only produced two notable brands – Lee Kuan Yew and SIA.” True enough, if you mention Singapore to anyone outside of Singapore, the two things that would come to mind would be LKY and SIA. I remember growing up in the UK and whenever I mentioned that I was from Singapore, the inevitable remark was “Is Mr. Lee still in charge.”

How is it such that our nation of some five million, reasonably smart people, only ever produced two brands that the rest of the world recognised? I guess the answer is simply the fact that they got lucky.

SIA was lucky in the sense that it is in an industry where Singapore’s limited air space means that being protected by the Singapore Government is pointless. With no domestic market to speak of, SIA had to compete on commercial grounds against the world’s big players. Unlike, say, Singapore Telecom, SIA actually had to fight for its customers. Because it was necessary to fight for customers, SIA had to build a brand and deliver on its promises. To give credit where credit its due, SIA is recognised in the international arena as a world class airline.

Lee Kuan Yew was also lucky in as much as he was the first of his kind and his timing was immaculate. He was lucky to be active when the British were trying to get rid of colonies as expensive liabilities after World War II. He was lucky to be born in Singapore which was the commercial centre (something which Singapore’s history books tend to forget) and he was lucky enough to attract very talented and dedicated people like Dr. Goh Keng Swee to his side. So, when we were booted out of the Malaysian Federation some 55-years ago, Lee Kuan Yew had available elements to help him to turn Singapore into the thriving metropolis that it is today.

Singapore’s story is the best example of not what you have but how you use what you have. Lee Kuan Yew was a rare post-colonial leader who welcomed the former colonial powers. He was strict about things like integrity in the civil service and Mr. Lee was quick to use things like technology and learn from the best in the world to make up for Singapore’s geographical limitations – just look at our urban planning and the ability to get a constant flow of drinking water as prime examples.

Both SIA and Lee Kuan Yew deserve their brand recognition. However, like all good brands, there are limitations, which was the target audience.

In the case of SIA, the audience has never been the average Singaporean. Although it is “Singapore” Airlines, the real target of the SIA brand is the International or Western business traveler, who will be traveling on a long-haul flight on nothing less than business class. Everything that SIA does is to ensure that for the eight to 12 hours, the business traveler gets to indulge in his (they’re usually guys) gets to indulge in a fantasy of what being in Asia is about.  

That isn’t a problem in as much as SIA is a commercial business and expected to deliver a profit to shareholders. It makes sense that it caters to a certain niche of the market. As a Singaporean student living in the UK, I could never afford to fly SIA back home ands that didn’t matter to anyone because, me and people like me were not simply not the target market delivering a vital section of revenue.

It is a similar story with the Lee Kuan Yew brand. Ever since his official retirement (and taking on the consultancy role as senior minister), Mr. Lee Kuan Yew devoted an increasing portion of this time in building his brand and “Governing philosophy” to the world outside Singapore. He wrote books and had a regular column in Forbes Magazine. Whenever the government was supposed to “open” new markets, they sent him.

He was, as they say, the brand face for the nation. To the Western World, Lee Kuan Yew, was their expert on all things Asian. American Presidents and British Prime Ministers saw him as the man whom they could trust when it came to the ASEAN region and even China. To the Chinese, Lee Kuan Yew was their expert on getting the economics right without having to give away political control (Lee Kuan Yew often told the story of how Deng Xiao Peng told him “if only I had just Shanghai to deal with” after seeing Singapore).

As an international trading centre, Singapore does rely on the goodwill of the international community, so it is important that Singapore maintains a good relationship with the outside world and the outside world has an emotional interest in Singapore. However, unlike SIA, we’re not talking about a commercial enterprise here. We’re talking about a government designed to serve the average Singaporean and the brand values have to be directed at this audience. Sure, the international investor is important but that’s not the “customer” in this case.

Sure, Mr. Lee’s successors have tried to turn him into an “Elvis” like figure. Singapore’s book shelves are inevitably filled with books by Mr. Lee and dare I say he’s even become a cartoon for teaching children about their history.

Mr. Lee was in many ways; an exceedingly wise man and I don’t have an issue with him writing books. It’s admirable that the “wise” pass on their wisdom through books for future generations. What I do have an issue with is the fact that “Brand Lee Kuan Yew’s” values have become increasingly directed at the international business crowd at the expense of the average Singaporean.

Take the debate on foreigners. The message is very clear to the expatriate community. It is come and stay in Singapore for a nice, safe, clean life and the chance to work a good and well-paying job. There is also an underlying message to the expat crowd that the natives are well behaved and don’t get involved in things like strikes or demand “high” pay or worse, set up a competing shop.

The messaging to the locals is simple – behave or else the foreigners will run away and all the good things that you have will vanish. Hence, whenever Singapore’s online crowd says anything about lose immigration policies, the government gets defensive.

Brands are like personalities with values. They attract a certain type of customer who can identify with the values that a particular brand stands for.

In many ways, Singapore has a good “LKY” brand of “no-nonsense, we get things done without screwing you over,” type of values. It’s an attractive brand proposition and somehow the foreigners get sold on it.

However, is this not the wrong audience, particularly in a democratic system where governments are chosen by the voters. In this scenario, aren’t the customers supposed to be the voters, who happen to be local. The increasing focus on communicating brand values to the international crowd comes at the expense of the local or the buying crowd.

As I’ve often argued, Lee Kuan Yew did many things right and Singapore on the whole has benefited from his wisdom. However, we need to acknowledge that he was human, had faults and made mistakes.  As a rather well to do former customer at the Bistrot said, “I respected him until….” His so called “Brand Custodians” need to remember that the man is no longer around and so, its easier to enforce brand values in as much as you can filter the good from the bad.

However, does not seem to be task his current brand custodians are keen on doing. It seems easier to deify the man and speaking to an audience that the man was engaging with in his golden years rather than who he had to deal with in the initial years. The results of the brand mismanagement was seen in the 2020 election.

To restore Lee Kuan Yew’s brand, his brand custodians need to recognize that they made mistakes. While speaking to the investing community is important, they have to understand that the core audience is the local voter. Brand messaging and the promise and delivery needs to be focused on the primary audience. Failure to do so will be seen in continuing elections.  

Not Acting on Advice

 

The news from across the Causeway is that the Yang Di Pertuan Agong (King) of Malaysia, High Royal Highness,“Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri’ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah,” has just declared that there is no need for an “Emergency” to be declared in Malaysia, despite the advice of the government of Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. A full report can be read at:

https://www.thevibes.com/articles/opinion/3940/a-king-for-our-time-has-spoken-terence-fernandez

What makes this news interesting is that puts into question of the role of the Head of State. Malaysia, like Singapore has a system of government based on the Westminster model, where all governing actions are done in the name of the Head of State, which is always “on the advice of,” the Head of Government. If you look at countries that follow the Westminster System, you will notice that the roles of Head of State and Head of Government are inevitably separate and that the Head of State, whether it’s a constitutional monarch or a president, fulfils the role of a symbol, namely something that’s good to look at but has no actual function. This division was best summed up by constitutional scholar, Walter Bagshot, who talked about the “dignified” and “efficient” parts of government.

The rationale behind this division is simple. It’s the Head of Government who has the democratic legitimacy to get things done and while the Head of State is essentially there to look good on certain occasions (in Singapore we think of our President’s wave on National Day), nobody expects them to do much. In the case of the Queen of England (whom all Heads of State in the Westminster are modeled upon), the Head of State has three rights when it comes to getting things done – namely the right to be consulted, give advice and to warn. In layman terms, it’s a case of being asked for your thoughts on a matter and being able to voice your opinion in private but nothing else.

This is not to say that unelected Heads of State can’t get their own way when dealing with an elected head of government. However, they can only really succeed if they understand their role and work within the limits of that role. This is usually done most effectively by traditional monarchs who build up “moral authority.” The late King Bhumipol was a genius at this. He made sure that he was always seen getting involved in non-political ways of helping the people and his only interventions in government were to “protect” democracy as he did in 1992, when he was seen to dress down a military appointed Prime Minster for ordering the shooting of protestors in the streets of Bangkok and he famously dressed down Thailand’s judges in 2006 by telling them “How can you let an election take place with only one political party – that is not democratic,” which was an interesting contrast to Singapore’s elected politicians who had somehow worked out that Singapore was too small to have more than one political party. The late King was revered without the need for Thailand’s Lese Majeste Laws.  

His son by contrast, is rather happy to be seen to grab an increasing amount of political power and as Covid-19 hit, he was happily staying far away in Germany, locked up with his concubines. It goes without saying that the current king has a very different image from his father and he should perhaps look at what happened to the Nepalese Monarch, King Gyanendra, who seized absolute power in an effort to crush a Maoist rebellion, failed and then found his institution abolished.

Hence, there is a paradox for constitutional monarchs in that they become powerful when they recognize they are not supposed to have any form of political power and for all their regal status, they are servants of the public will. They do especially well when they show that they care, as the Queen of England did during the Grenfell Tower incident, when she showed up to comfort the victims, which was in stark contrast to the Prime Minister who stayed away.

Malaysian monarchs seem to have understood that role. In the space of my lifetime, Malaysia’s royals have gone from being seen as irresponsible party goers to people that fight for the people. When the Crown Prince of Johor got into a public disagreement with one of the federal ministers, I remember a Malaysian telling me, “At least someone is speaking for us.”

The success of Malaysia’s monarchs in transforming their image and being able to become more powerful, is seen by the Agong’s move not to declare a state emergency despite the elected Prime Minister. The unelected Agong is presented as a defender of democratic rights and avoids getting involved in the mess that is Malaysia’s political scene.

If all that is true for constitutional monarchs, what can be said of non-executive presidents, particularly those with a supposed democratic mandate. Prior to 1991, Singapore’s president had a role similar to the British monarch. The President was supposed to merely wave on National Day. However, the Presidency was transformed in 1991, when this single office was turned into an elected one.

In theory, Singapore’s President is the only person elected by every Singaporean and has no party affiliations. While the President’s powers are still limited, this gives the president a certain legitimacy that a government would have to think twice when confronting.

Unfortunately, the record of Singapore’s “elected” (in inverted comas because only two have actually faced an election) has been unfortunately less stellar than Malaysia’s unelected monarchs when it comes to disputes with the government. Our first elected President, Mr. Ong Teng Cheong voiced his disagreements with the government after he left office and for that he was punished in death when the government denied him a State Funeral (an international given for anyone who has been a head of state). The only other president who had to fight an election, was Dr. Tony Tan, who upon winning, vanished and as is often said when compared to his predecessor “At least we knew we had a president when SR was around.”

So, how is it such that our elected Heads of State have had such a poor record of being seen to do something different, when the unelected ones in the region have actually taken on elected politicians for their people and gotten away with it?

The standard Singapore answer would be the fact that our governments have been much better and more honest than those in the region, hence there’s never been a need for the Head of State to confront the government.

That may be true an extent. However, Singapore’s government is not perfect. The late President Ong went on record to state that he asked what was in the reserves and was told that it would take the machinery of government 54 man-years to provide an answer. It seems that the machinery is right because since President Ong left office in 1999, we still have no figure as to what is in our reserves. However, both President’s Nathan and Yacob have allowed the government of the day to draw down on the reserves. The question remains, what exactly did President’s Nathan and Yacob allow the government to draw down?

Unelected Head’s of State in the region are showing that they are willing to offer and alternative point of view in the name of benefiting the people. Surely, our Heads of State with a democratic mandate should be able to do something similar. Otherwise, the question remains – why do we have a Head of State to begin with.   

Natural Born Singapore Winner

 I’ve often said that Singapore is in many ways what a city should be – namely rich, clean and green. A large part of our success was due to the fact that our post-colonial leadership took a different turn from most post-colonial nations. Instead of turning away foreign investment, we took what was considered an unusual turn at the time and welcomed Western multinationals, who provided us with capital and skills to produce what is now a well-documented economic success story.

However, as the rest of Asia has started to catch up, Singapore has been at something of a loss. The role of being a bridge between West and East has started to vanish, as the Western multinationals have gone to the bigger Asian markets directly (think of prominent Westerners like former Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd who speaks fluent Mandarin to appeal to China directly) and the foreign investment community has found us increasingly expensive.

If you look at the economic policies of the last decade, you’ll get the sense that our government is scrambling to look for a “winner” that will propel our economy. We’ve done industrialization, trying digitalization and reinventing ourselves as a fun place for the world’s well to do – just think of the casinos and Formula One. Our government, which has become used to instant formulas of success, is now at a loss and is seeking all sorts of ways for that Holy Grail of shinny economic figures.

I had the privilege of being summoned by my old “food buddy” for a meal at the Sheraton hotel today. He had run into a common friend whom we had known as the manager of the Bar & Billiard Room in the Raffles Hotel, which was an old haunt of ours (back in the days when I had a magic card that gave huge discounts). This friend of ours had described the offer at the Sheraton as a “Die-Die Must Try” meal.

The meal was delightfully display of Peranakan (Straits Born Chinese) culture and then it hit me. If there’s one thing that Singapore can win at, it’s our cuisine. Singapore is a “foodie” paradise in as much as you’re going to get decent quality cuisine of any culture on the planet (I used to eat Nigerian food in Singapore). However, in addition to the availability of good cuisine of most cultures, there is a distinctly unique Singapore cuisine that combines the best of Chinese, Malay, Indian and to a certain extent some Western influence. If you look at my meal at the Sheraton, you will note that the dishes cannot be classified as particularly Chinese or Malay and they are unique to this part of the world.

The food was delicious. Meat dishes were tender. The coconut rice was flavorful and the vegetables were fresh – I am told that the Sheraton has a garden on its premises and the produce was grown in house, literally.

What makes this Singapore cuisine so special, is the fact that it was not something created by the government. Ever since he took power, Lee Kuan Yew and his successors have spent some 55-years trying to invent a culture for Singapore and Singaporeans. They have tried to enforce rules on “mother-tongue,” (a Chinese is only supposed to speak Mandarin) and tried to redefine cultural identity. Yet, these government led initiatives have largely been costly and ineffective.

However, while the government was trying to redefine culture and winners for Singaporeans, the people came together and worked together and produced something. Our Singapore cuisine is the result of people from different cultures, living together, trying each other’s cuisine and adapting what they liked and what they didn’t like thus creating something wonderful.

It’s not just at the Sheraton end of the market where this is happening. About a week back, I was in the Chua Chu Kang area of Singapore, where I met a Chinese hawker, selling Nasi (Malay for Rice) Rempah, which was his own invention – a take on the normal dish of Nasi Lemak. Once again, the meal was exceedingly enjoyable and a true celebration of our home-grown Singapore cuisine.   

If there’s anything encouraging about Singapore, its in the areas that have been overlooked by officialdom. This is the small spaces where people have been allowed to mix together free of the influence of dictated thought. This is the space where cultures have been allowed to meet at a particular cross roads and where people have been able to find common ground.

If the government is struggling to find a winner for Singapore, they should look into these spaces and encourage them to grow. Rather than dictate, they should allow people to feel their way. The results will be as tasty as our organically developed cuisine.

Folksy Thoughts on the Workers Lot

 

The debate on having a minimum wage is back and this time it’s back with force. The reason for this is simple – Dr. Jamus Lim, who is the Member of Parliament for Sengkang Group Representation Council (GRC) for the Workers’ Party and a star economist. Dr. Lim managed to make what has traditionally a placid affair (the usual case being a state of every time someone suggests what little the poor get should be protected by law, the ruling party inevitably comes up with a statistic suggesting that its bad for the poor) into a news storm because he had the audacity to suggests that we needed to find hard statistics to prove that minimum wage legislation was bad rather than to reply on “folksy wisdom.” Singapore’s normally placid unions have been up in arms over the adjective of “folksy.” More can be found at:

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/do-not-belittle-us-union-leaders-say-s1300-too-low-minimum-wage-reject-folksy-wisdom

This event underlines some of the more serious fault lines in Singapore’s “meritocratic” society. The first one is the fact that we are a society that seems to link wealth with achievement. The official line is that if you are good, you will rise and earn a lot of money. Hence, whenever there’s a debate on ministerial salaries, the bottom line that the government stresses that you need to pay top dollar for top talent and Singapore has done well in the world because we paid good money to have honest and very competent ministers running the show.

However, it’s a different story at the other end of the scale. Whenever anyone floats the idea of any form of legislation that faces the realities of the free market system, the idea is instantly shot down. Things like a minimum wage or unemployment insurance are considered bad for the economy because they’ll somehow raise labour costs and scare away the investors who have made Singapore so wealthy.

Using the military analogy, the message is clear. Generals have to have more money because we need them to plan. The foot soldiers (i.e. the people who actually put their life on the line in a battle) should not be mollycoddled.    

The second point of Dr. Jamus Lim’s speech is the focus on the role of unions. In the 20-odd years that I’ve lived in Singapore, this is the first time that I remember seeing our unions say anything. The unions normally prefer to stay mum and let their umbrella organization; the National Trade Unions Congress (NTUC) be the public face on all issues relating to workers.   

NTUC is an exceedingly successful organization. It runs a chain of supermarkets and an insurance cooperative amongst many other enterprises. It provides discounts to a number of commercial enterprises (most of which it has a stake in). What is less clear is whether the Union of All Unions has been good at helping the working man. The Secretary General of NTUC is inevitably a cabinet minister, whose main role seems to talk about the success of our “tripartite” model of industrial relations between employers, workers and the government. However, the question remains, what exactly have the unions done for all industrial relations?

The government’s line is that it has done a successful job in as much as Singapore seems to have confined strikes to the history books. I think of the press business where the last strike in journalism was back in 1971 (before I was born). The leader of that strike once admitted that the end of the strike was perhaps good for journalists working conditions but not good for the independent media in as much as the government helped make conditions so comfortable that challenging the status quo was frowned upon.

NTUC will also point out that they offer discounts and in some cases payment for people who want to retrain and thus make themselves more employable. I have yet to take on the paper work required to get paid to learn.

However, does that mean that NTUC has been successful in ensuring harmonious working relationships? As in the case of foreign workers, the answer is likely to be no. Employers begrudge the extra dollars paid to workers as costs and the truth of the matter is that workers continue to struggle. The basic line on wages in Singapore is that the average salary in Singapore is around $4,500 a month and two thirds of us earn below that. Furthermore, costs continue to rise in Singapore. If you want to give the government a headache, just repeat the findings of the Economist Intelligence Unit, which has found that Singapore is the world’s most expensive city for expats. If we’re expensive for an expat with all sorts of perks like housing allowances, then what must it be for locals?

The standard line that the government has used as that Singapore has a “progressive” wage model which is better than the Worker’s Party proposal of a minimum wage. They have pointed out to the fact that the poor saps earning $1,300 a month do get “workfare” supplementary support.

As someone who has received workfare, I will say that its nice to see a few extra bucks in your account every quarter. Workfare is a good incentive to help you stay in a job. However, it is by no means a serious supplement to ones living expenses. I take myself, a 46-year old worker as an example. How much I’d get in income support, assuming I earned the proposed minimum of $1,300 a month:

https://www.workfare.gov.sg/Pages/CalculatorEmployee.aspx

 

Let’s be realistic, the most I’ll be able to do with the money is to buy the family a meal when I receive it. It’s not going to do anything beyond that.

Something needs to be done to ensure that workers at the lower end of the scale have a means of getting a living wage. Rather than dismissing Dr. Lim’s remarks about “folksy wisdom,” the unions should gather their “folksy wisdom” and lead a discussion on making our model for industrial relations better. Unions are after all supposed to protect the rights of the workers as well as selling them products.

Doing Her Job

 New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Ms. Jacinda Ardern has just won a landslide in New Zealand’s latest election. Ms. Ardern won some 49.1 percent of the votes cast and has 64 seats in the 120-seat parliament. It is, as the BBC reported, one of the rare occasions when a New Zealand Government has an outright majority.

What makes Ms. Ardern’s victory so incredible is the fact that, on the scale of things, a “newbie” politician who had not held any ministerial posts prior to her elevation to the premiership. Ms. Ardern had been a researcher prior to being elected as a Member of Parliament on the Party List in 2008 and only faced her first election in 2017, when she became a Member of Parliament for the Mount Albert Constituency in 2017, the year she became Leader of the Opposition and then Prime Minister. Within three years of taking the top job in politics, Ms. Ardern has gone from a relative unknown leader of a small country tucked at the edge of the world to being a global figure that has defined an ideal of leadership.

How did Ms. Ardern do it? The first part of the answer is what former British Prime Minister, Harold McMillian called “events.” Mr. McMillian argued that careers in politics were defined by events. Winston Churchill for example, was defined by World War II. How a politician reacted to a significant enough event would have the ability to define his or her legacy.

In Ms. Ardern’s case, history decided to give her not one but two major events, namely the March 2019 Christchurch Mosque shooting and the 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic. Both these events defined Ms. Ardern as someone that could be relied when the proverbial crap hit the fan.

The second part of the answer as to what turned her into an international superstar is the fact that she simply did her job as a leader. She showed she had the ability to communicate clearly and to provide real information when it was needed. She showed that she could be tough and empathetic at the same time and more importantly, she had the ability to get things done during the down times.

Copyright – theweek.in

In the Christchurch mosque incident, Ms. Ardern was quick to done a headscarf to show solidarity with the victimized community and refused to speak the name of the gunman, thus denying a terrorist publicity he hopped to gain. New Zealanders stayed united by the tragedy as the following Maori Hakka by a biker gang showed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIcfVTP43Yk

More importantly, Ms. Ardern used thus momentum to get gun control legislation passed through parliament.  

If the Christchurch Shooting put Ms. Ardern on the world map, her handling on theCovid-19 pandemic further enhanced her status as an icon of great leadership.  New Zealand does have the advantage of being relatively small and geographically isolated but this should not detract from the fact that Ms. Ardern once again provided text book leadership. New Zealand went into lockdown mode early and Ms. Ardern was quick to communicate to New Zealanders that they would face economic hardship but it was necessary to get the pandemic under control. The results speak for themselves. At the time of writing, New Zealand has less than 2,000 cases.

The most important part of her leadership was the fact that she showed that she was willing to enforce the rules with no exceptions. She demoted her health minister, Dr. David Clark who took his family on a beach vacation during the first week of the lockdown. The message was clear, nobody was above the rules.

https://www-businessinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.businessinsider.com/nz-health-minister-david-clark-demoted-beach-trip-coronavirus-lockdown-2020-4?amp

New Zealand has come as close as has been possible to beating the virus. It did have certain advantages like geographical isolation. Yet, that alone would not have been enough to make New Zealand one of the key success stories in the Covid-19 pandemic. Ms. Ardern’s leadership shown that it’s not so much a case of size but what you do with it that counts.

Let’s start with the obvious. Ms. Ardern has recognized the seriousness of the situation and communicated facts quickly, clearly and most importantly factually. Unlike her American counterpart, she’s avoided “downplaying” the virus and unlike her Brazilian counterpart understood that the virus is serious. Ms. Ardern has led by example and stayed healthy and not turned the seat of government into a hotbed of infection.

Unlike her Indian counterpart, she’s also done things that have been possible to execute and hence you don’t have the congestion of infrastructure that was seen in India as people were forced to stagger back to far away villages at the last minute.

Ms. Ardern has also done what her Singapore counterpart could not do, which was to remember ALL New Zealanders. While Singapore has a similar death rate from Covid-19 to New Zealand (and similar population), its case load was significantly higher. Why was that? The answer is simple – Ms. Ardern focused on doing her job at hand and remembered ALL living in New Zealand. While Singapore’s statistics remain comparatively good on the global scale, it was too focused on headlines that it forgot about a certain segment of society that was living in conditions designed to spread the virus. 

Her insistence that her ministers followed the same rules as everyone else also made it easier for ordinary New Zealanders to go through the economic hardship caused by the lockdown.  She turned down a salary increase and ensured that the ordinary person understood that the rules were for everyone for a reason.

Covid-19 has been tough on everyone. However, like all good crisis, it has helped to show up real leaders that the world needs and thanks to Ms. Ardern, New Zealand has shown that a small nation can show the rest of the world how things are done by doing her job.

Daddy Issues

 

There is a local Singapore joke that states that we are a very Christian country – we were run by the Father, the Son and the Holy Goh. This is a reference to our first Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, his son and our current Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Hsien Loong and the Holy Goh is our second Prime Minister, Mr. Goh Chok Tong.

This joke was most relevant in the period between 2004 and 2011, when our current Prime Minister ruled alongside his father as the “Minister Mentor,” and his immediate successor as “Senior Minister.” The “Holy Trinity” of Singapore politics seemed to work until the 2011 election when a public that had been facing rising costs started to question why our government’s job creating abilities seemed limited to the top. The Father has since died and the Holy Goh announced his retirement from politics. With these two events, one might say that the appropriate Christian analogy to describe our political scene can be seen through Netflix series – Lucifer, which shows that the Devil was merely the first being to have “Daddy Issues.”

I’m not suggesting that our Prime Minister is “devil like” in his behavior but like the character of Lucifer from Netflix, he’s struggled to deal with his father’s legacy. While one has to credit the first Mr. Lee for doing many things right, he made one key mistake, which was to allow himself to be turned into God. Instead of fading away after his retirement in 1991, the elder Mr. Lee plonked himself into the cabinet of his successor, Mr. Goh Chok Tong as senior minister and more worryingly in the cabinet of his son, as “Minister-Mentor,” which sent the clear message to the world that ministers in Singapore needed to b mentored. The late Mr. Lee used to make it a point to say, “I’m no longer in charge,” which the rest of us understood to mean, that he was very much in charge.

The inability to let go, has unfortunately remained beyond the grave. Although it’s been five years since the elder Mr. Lee passed on, the living Mr. Lee has failed to live beyond his father’s legacy. Policies and tactics that worked well in the 1960s are repeated with the hope that they will have the same results. One only has to look at the continuation of defamation suites and attempts to silence bloggers with libel laws.

Unfortunately, Mr. Lee’s inability to let go, even from beyond the grave has set a sad example for the rest of the nation’s leaders. Somehow, everyone in a position of power felt that they only had value of they never let go.

In many ways’ leadership is similar to parenting. A good leader needs to know when to be there and when not be there. Like a parent, a leader needs to prepare his or her people to be able to function and even thrive without them.

It’s like with children, you look after them by feeding and clothing them but you also need to train them to survive and eventually you have to let them succeed or fail on their own merits. As I often find myself saying to my kid – “What happens to you if I drop dead?” She says I should drop cursing myself but being aware of my own mortality focuses my mind on the fact that I have a responsibility to the kid to ensure that she has the ability to live and even thrive when I’m not around.

My former boss, Mr. PN Balji, founding editor of the Today Newspaper took great pride in the fact that the paper turned a profit after his tenure as CEO. His argument was that he had seen the paper through its stage of development and positioned it in a place where it could operate at a profit.

I think of bosses in the SME sector who have the habit of reminding employees that they would be “nothing” without the boss. Employers are as a rule of thumb inclined to use the tactic of “without me you would be ….”as a means of getting employees to do more for the same.

However, if one looks at the situation from a parental point of view, reminding someone that they’d be nothing without you is a failure of leadership. It implies that you failed in your ultimate duty as leader to train your people to the point where they could survive without you.

I think of my own parenting experiences and my ultimate line with my kid is “what happens to you if I drop dead?” Her usual reply is that I’m not allowed to curse myself. However, I find that reminding myself of my mortality helps reminding me that I have a duty to my kid to ensure that she can survive and thrive without me.

Lee Kuan Yew did many things right. However, he failed in this crucial respect. He kept telling Singaporeans that they needed him and leaders trained in his current mold to survive and prosper. When a parent says that this type of thing to a grown-up child, it’s a sign of failed parenting. Likewise when a leader of a nation says that, it’s a sign of failed leadership.

What Exactly is the Singapore Core?

 One of the main discussion points in the last month or so has been the topic of jobs or more accurately the good paying jobs that are going to people other than the local graduates. It goes without saying that this topic has raised passions and the government has been caught between a rock and a hard place. So, as anyone tracking Singapore’s media will notice, there have been a lot of noise in the mainstream media about how we can’t afford to shut ourselves to the outside world but at the same time the government will always preserve the “Singapore Core.”

While it’s good to see the government talking about preserving jobs for the local population, I believe that there is a bigger issue at stake, namely the fact that Singapore’s business model is stuck in the 1960s and while the talk about a “Singapore Core” may make an attractive soundbite, it’s never been actually defined.

On the superficial level, the talk of a Singapore Core simply means that local Singaporeans will get priority in looking for jobs. While the intention of the powers-that-be is to placate the population, one should ask why this discussion is even necessary in the first place.

In most places, its assumed that all things being equal, it’s the natives who have the upper hand in looking for employment. There’s no magic explanation for this. It’s simply easier to higher the guy who doesn’t require you to spend hours on end in an immigration office to fill out paper work to ensure he’s allowed to stay and work in the country.

Yet, the experiences of the local population don’t seem to reflect what should be obvious. The sentiment on the ground is such that expats who once felt like a treasured part of the community are now being made to feel like they are less than valued and one has to look what is the underlying issue.

In the age of unthinking populism, the answer has been that there are too many foreigners in Singapore “stealing” jobs from the local population and to placate the voting segment of the population, the government has started making hiring people from elsewhere a little less easy.

Unfortunately, I believe that the issue at stake is not one of immigration. Rather, it is one of economic structure. In many ways, Singapore is the Playboy centerfold for Western Economist. Unlike the rest of the post-colonial world, we embraced our colonial past and welcomed Western and Japanese multinationals.

In fairness, this strategy worked brilliantly. Singapore developed rapidly, and our people got used to working at “world-class” standards. A growing portion of young and bright people were recruited to work in world-class companies and were well paid for it.

However, there was never really was a “Singapore Core.” Our bright young things understood that the boss would ultimately be a Western or Japanese expatriate who had the vital task of supporting our economy by paying overpriced rents, drinking overpriced alcohol and patronizing overpriced prostitutes.  We were not encouraged to venture out of Singapore (stay with family, don’t be a quitter and so on) and we were told by our Founding Father himself that Singapore simply didn’t have the economies of scale to produce anything world class.

In any other country, a “Core” essentially means the engine of wealth creation, which in most cases involved Small and Medium Enterprises. In the USA, there are several American cores, of which Silicon Valley is the most prominent. The “American Hero” is a kid who has a bright idea and succeeds in getting it off the ground. In Germany the “German Core” is the Mittelstand, or the small and medium enterprises that specializes in supplying small but crucial components to industries (in F&B, we think of the Rationale Combi-Ovens).

As far as Singapore’s government is concerned, this “Singapore Core” never really existed, which is unfortunate in as much as SME enterprises still employ the majority of people. As far as the Singapore Government is concerned, the sector that should be the “Singapore Core” is nothing more than an inconvenience that soaks up the best and brightest who don’t get hired by the multinationals or government linked companies. Let’s not forget that the closest that Singapore has ever gotten to a “Singapore Hero” was Sim Wong Hoo of Creative Technologies couldn’t raise funds in Singapore.

There is recognition that something has to be changed. There are noises being made about how we need to support home grown SME enterprises, particularly in the technology sector. However, as Covid-19 showed us, too many sectors still rely on good old-fashioned stuff. Any suggestion that foreign workers be housed in something other than a rat’s nest is met with resistance from the construction industry as cost increasing. Suggest that you can work from a caffe without going into the office and the real-estate industry gets on the defensive paying for editorials to remind us of the fun we have in the office.

We are not going to have a “Singapore Core” if we cling onto old fashioned economic models because too many of the “right” people have a stake in the status quo. If anything, we shouldn’t worry about not having a “Singapore Core” if we persist in holding onto these notions -there may not be a Singapore worth speaking about….

A New Measure Needed

 

I know it’s not cool to admit to it, but I’m doing well. I am the official owner of a flat that, once you minus the outstanding liability (ie the outstanding mortgage), leaves me with a sum of at least S$200,000 plus. I have a main job in professional services (accounting) and statistically speaking, I produce around US$103,181 worth of value every year.

Yet, despite my statistical wealth, I am economically unsecure. My best hope is that my main job will keep me on for at least another 20-years and a significant number of you who are reading this will support the advertisers on this blog so that I can afford to buy an extra cup of coffee every month. If, God forbid, I have any serious ailments in the immediate future, my best bet is to die instantly so that I don’t become a burden to my family.

What I’ve expressed would seem strange to anyone living outside of Singapore. However, anyone from Singapore will understand because what I’ve mentioned reflects the disparity between “Statistic” Singapore and “Real” Singapore.

As part of “Statistic” Singapore, I’m doing well. There’s a property to my name (I avoid using the word own as there is a mortgage to my name), and property prices in Singapore are generally higher than in most places (logic of small land area and many people living in the area) and therefore my paper worth is comfortable. Singapore also has a relatively high Gross Domestic Product (“GDP”) for a small island with a limited number of people and if you look at the GDP per capita, the only nations with a higher GDP per capita are Luxemburg (Tax Haven for wealthy Germans), Macao (Gambling Haven) and Qatar (gas station). So, as part of “Statistic” Singapore, my share of the national wealth is US$103,181 a year. This makes me better off than my friends in Western Europe or the USA. Measures of our GDP success cab be found in the following links:

https://tradingeconomics.com/singapore/gdp#:~:text=GDP%20in%20Singapore%20is%20expected,according%20to%20our%20econometric%20models.

https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/economic-data/richest-countries-in-the-world

It goes without saying that my reality in Singapore is less rosy than what it appears to be in “Statistic Singapore.” Yet, despite this fact, the government has spent countless times talking about our economic statistics and leaving aside the economic devastation brought about by Covid-19, our government inevitably goes back to our GDP statistics.

In fairness to our government, it’s not the only government to fall back onto various economic indicators as how well they are doing. Donald Trump for example cannot stop talking about stock market highs whenever someone talks about his government’s record.

You could say that it’s only natural for everyone to want to show themselves in a good light and economic statistics are probably the best way to do it. So much of our lives are based on economics and I guess you could say that when governments talk about the economy, it’s a way of showing that there’s money to give us goodies.

However, as the differences between Statistic Singapore and Actual Singapore have shown, GDP is a flawed measure of how well a country is doing as it only looks at one aspect of life in a nation. So, could there be another way of measuring how well a country is doing?

I think one of the best ideas comes from the small Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, which came up with the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH). To a certain extent, there are aspects of this measure of happiness which one could say are unique to the Bhutanese situation. We also need to remember that Bhutan is not the idealistic Shangri La that is portrayed to be and looks to India as a centre of economic assistance. There is also the problematic issue of having to conduct surveys on a yearly basis.

Having said that, the basic idea of GNH is right. The Bhutanese has qualified happiness into several aspects, which include things like the environment, health, cultural diversity and community vitality in addition to the usual economic measurements. A graph of what GNH comprises of can be found below:

Now, admittedly its harder to measure GNH with its various aspects than GDP. However, as argue, GDP is a flawed measurement as it only acknowledges the fact that life more than just economics. If you look at the situation in Singapore, you’ll find that our government is obsessed with GDP. All you need to do is to ensure that enough people are employed and nobody actually starves to think that you’ve done a good job. There is, for example, no need to look at the type of jobs that people are getting and whether things like whether I’m worrying on whether I might be able to afford to send my kid to school or whether I get sick or not.

Let’s go back to my personal example. As GDP indicates, I’m doing well. I have a job and a property in my name. The government can claim that it’s technically done well. People like me are producing USD100,000 plus a year and so on and so on.

However, GNH forces those in power to see that people are not just economic digits. Under the GDP measure, you’d be successful if you see that your people have a job even if that job pays $500 a month. However, under the GNH measurement, you have to ensure that people not only have jobs, but they can afford to send their kids to school, live in normal conditions and don’t have to breath toxic air as part of daily life.

Our traditional method of measuring things is too narrow and doesn’t portray things accurately. Isn’t it time we look at trying to measure things more accurately so that we can build a more livable society for the greater number of us?