They’ve Eaten Our Lunch and, in an Hour, or So, they’ll be Hungry Again

 Be Careful of Who You Underestimate

I’ll be the first to admit that I am by no accounts a winner of the open free market system. Despite what some of my fans on Tremeritus would think, I am not making millions as a “General” in the ruling party’s brigade (If I really had millions, I’d like to know where it all went to) and in 20-odd years of being in the work force, I’ve only had a single steady job (defined as full employment for more than a year) and that’s for my current employer, which is a small accounting practice. As I approach fiftieth birthday, I’m resigned to the reality that I’ll probably never make much (Resigned to die without the millions that the Tremeritus crowd imagine me making).

Yet, despite my lack of material success, I’ve made sure that I’ve never given to the attitude that my plight was due to people from elsewhere, particularly from poorer parts of the Asian continent. A few people I know have questioned why I’ve never taken a more aggressive stance towards “open door” immigration and my answer has always been two-fold.

Firstly, assigning the blame for my plight to people from elsewhere is an act of giving power to those said people. I d appreciate that there are times when there are circumstances beyond ones control This pandemic is an example. In my personal life, it’s not my fault that restaurants cannot take dine in customers and therefore do not need waiters. Hence, I have no waiter side gigs.

However, with notable exceptions, I believe that we have more power over careers than we may think and I don’t see why I should assign blame and therefor power over my own destiny to someone else. If certain things aren’t working out the way I expect them to, I like to think that it’s my responsibility to change my situation. Sure, I might have been denied the corner office in some bank because they hired a load of Indian nationals, but instead of complaining that the job was “stolen” (I really understand how jobs are ‘stolen’ in as much as I never knew one could own a job) I turned what little experience I had and sold services to the Indian national community. Didn’t make me rich but it gave me a decent enough profile and paid my bills. I will never stop repeating the fact that the one time I pitched for a government related job as an individual, it was the Indian-born member of the board who fought for my right to be get heard. The local born chairman of the board tried to snub me for lacking either government or multinational experience.

The second point on why I’ve resisted going down the road of assigning blame for my plight is that it makes us fall into the trap of complacency when it comes to dealing with people from the “developing” world. If you read enough online complaints about people from India and China, you’ll find that there’s a common thread – namely the fact that these people are hired because they’re cheap and the “greedy” corporations and government would rather hire cheap but shoddy Indian and Chinese labour over hard working but slightly more expensive Singaporeans. Stories over “bad behavior” then compound matters. The stories are not limited to Singapore. They are also there in Hong Kong and Taiwan about our “ethnic cousins” from the mainland.

Nobody is denying that there are plenty of awfully behaved PRC nationals running around the place. Nobody is denying that China built its initial boom on cheap and polluting manufacturing and India is well renown for “cheap” programmers and call centres.

However, to write-off people from less developed nations as being merely “cheap” labour gives one a sense of false security. The “false sense of security” that Singaporeans, Hong Kongers and Taiwanese feel towards their Mainland cousins’ discounts one of the most crucial factors in any development scenario – namely the value of “hunger.”

Sure, people in Singapore and Hong Kong speak better English (international language of trade) and are familiar working with the West (not to mention more trusted – nobody worries Singapore will steal secrets, everyone assumes China will). However, these advantages will not last forever and hungry people will find ways to catch up and negate whatever advantages we have.

I noticed this in an article on Bloomberg, which mentioned that Old School Hong Kong Tycoons were being left behind by their mainland Chinese counterparts. What’s particularly interesting about this article is the fact that it pointed out that Hong Kong’s original tycoons made their money from cahoots with the Hong Kong Government to control the scarcest commodity – land. The Mainland Chinese counterparts by contrast did it in far more innovative industries like e-commerce. The article can be found at:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/old-school-tycoons-made-hong-210000897.html

Hong Kong’s richest remain property developers. Of the Hong Kong rich, only the 92-year-old Li Ka Shing made an attempt to diversify beyond Hong Kong real estate (a good portion of his increase in fortune came from being a backer of “Zoom”). A list of Hong Kong’s richest can be found at:

https://www.forbes.com/hong-kong-billionaires/list/#tab:overall

 

What is true of Hong Kong is also true of Singapore. However, there’s a particular Singaporean twist to the wealth list. It’s based on the fact that our government has worked on the premise that the “super rich,” are wealth and job creators. So, if you look at the top four wealthiest, you’ll notice that they came from elsewhere and in the case of Eduardo Saverin, one of the founders of Facebook, he made his money elsewhere and has merely settled in Singapore. The richest “local” fortunes are primarily old school property developers who made their money from working with the government over the control of land.

https://www.forbes.com/singapore-billionaires/list/#tab:overall

 

In the case of both Hong Kong and Singapore, the path to wealth was very simple – ensure you’re well connected and get in on juicy real estate deals. Both city-states are undoubtedly very prosperous but the question remains – how much of that prosperity has actually benefited normal people.

Taiwan, or the “other China” seems to have grown its wealth beyond the “crony” sectors of real estate. They’ve done in the “hardware” industries and if you look at the rise of China as a manufacturing hub, you’ll find that a good portion of that investment came from Taiwan. Foxconn, which makes iPhones in China is controlled by Terry Gou, a Taiwanese businessman.

https://www.forbes.com/taiwan-billionaires/list/#tab:overall

 

However, while Taiwan has done things beyond the “crony” sectors of real estate, the hard industries that they specialize in have been primarily in making things cheaper than what the West and Japan can do.

China by contrast, does seem to have room to grow wealth in innovative sectors, even if the current government has felt the need to take its tech tycoons down a peg or two as witnessed by the cancellation of the IPO of Ant Financial as this list of China’s richest indicates:

https://www.forbes.com/china-billionaires/list/#tab:overall

 

Sure, China’s tech tycoons have been helped by the fact that China banned many of the Western tech companies from entering the market and so they’ve had a certain amount of protection. China also has a huge domestic market and is less reliant on exports than the other three. A Singapore business needs to look beyond Singapore’s less than ten million market. A local Chinese business merely needs a fraction of the Shanghai Market to do well.

However, this is not to say that home made Chinese technology is to be sniffed at. Despite being a Communist state, China made platforms like Tick Tock have done something that International (read – Western or specifically American) platforms like Facebook have not done – namely provided an avenue for content creators to make money. As the following article suggests – the “evil” communist dictatorship does get the need to encourage creativity and innovation if it is to compete on the global scale. More can be found at the following article:

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/why-china-embraced-the-creator-economy-before-the-west-did

All this is not to say that China is saintly. Leaving aside the geopolitical risk of conflict with the Western world, there are risk from the business point of view. The Communist Party’s recent crackdown on the tech sector is one of them. Who wants to invest in a place where the state can one day arbitrarily take things away from you?

However, while all these things are true, it would be a danger to underestimate people from China and other “developing” nations are “cheap” fodder for capitalist system. Firstly, as many of us in Singapore and Hong Kong are realizing, our systems that made us rich are in many ways “crony” and don’t add any real value to the scheme of things. Then there’s the fact that our Mainland Cousins and other people from developing world are hungry and they’re willing to use their wits to create a world that works for them. As Bill Maher says, “They’ve eaten our lunch and they’ll be hungry in about an hour or so.” The sooner we learn to work with it, the better it is for the rest of us.  

Limits of the Heavy Hand?

 There’s a joke in Singapore, which has become something of a bade of National Pride. We call ourselves as “Fine City,” because you can get finned for a host of infringements. As well as fines, we famously hang drug traffickers and we cane vandals. Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Independent Singapore took great pride in having strict rules. As far as he was concerned, he needed to be harsh because it made Singapore the clean, green and rich place that the world admires.

Being harsh is a great political cover too. What better way to show the people that our government is not a Western stooge than caning a Western kid for vandalism or hanging one or two for drug trafficking? The respective Western government will make some noises about being concerned about their citizens, our government will then make even more noise about our Asian Values prioritizing social order and stability over the rights of a few hooligans and our ambassador in the country in question will be busy selling the Singapore side of things so as to ensure the Western leaders understand that a portion of their voters’ clap for us. I’m old enough to remember Americans supporting the canning of Michael Faye for vandalism.

As a people, we’ve grown used to the heavy hand of the state and it’s almost as if most of us agree with the official position that the heavy hand of the state is necessary for Singapore to be the “celestial kingdom” that it has sold itself to be.

However, is that really the case? Is the heavy hand of the state necessary in ensuring prosperity and a decent living environment? I got to admit, I do like the fact that we’re a litter-free place and my estate gets cleaned.

Well, to an extent, harsh penalties work up to a certain level.  You don’t litter because, well, it’s simply not worth the fine. No high from any drug is worth the prospect of the gallows. However, is it really necessary to have a heavy hand?

I noticed our great comfort with the “heavy hand” back in 2006 and 2008. In 2006, the Gaza had one of its exploding moments, particularly as Hamas won the Palestinian elections. In 2008 there was the Beijing Olympics, which was marred in the “democratic” countries where Tibetan protestors made noises as the Olympic Torch was making its way to Beijing. A few friends actually commented to me that they could not understand why the Palestinians and Tibetans were doing what they did because it was pretty obvious, they were not going to win against an opponent who was that much stronger.  People were even critical of the Dalai Lama for “Trying to make China look bad.”

These moments have remained with me because it gets me questioning whether we’ve become so used to the heavy hand that we’re totally unable to sympathise with people who have been on the wrong end of the heavy stick.

I will admit that the comparison is in some ways a hard one to make in as much as they heavy hand they’re under is a “foreign power” displacing them from their home land. However, the examples do make the point that there are limits to the “heavy hand.”

Take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an example. A “militant” group like Hamas will fire a few rockets at Israel, who will in turn use advanced weaponry on the Gaza strip. Israeli civilians will be scared. A few may die. On the other side thousands will die and the infrastructure of the Gaza strip be set back a few decades. The Western press will trumpet the line that Israel has the right to defend itself. The “liberal” press will talk about the Palestinians being oppressed.

I’ll leave the broader discussion to more informed people to continue. However, I will ask the simple question of whether the “heavy hand” of the Israeli military has worked? Hamas was elected in 2006. There have been clashes between the two in 2008, 2010, 2011. 2014, 2018, 2019 and 2021. You would have imagined that after the first few beatings, the Palestinians would have gotten the message that they were not going to win and turned-on Hamas. That clearly hasn’t happened. Israel has a lot of firepower and the residents of the Gaza strip are well aware of that. Yet, they have not become more sympathetic or fearful of Israel or at least fearful enough to get the “militants” to stop provoking Israel. 

If anything, the only real beneficiary of the bombardment of Palestinian areas are Israeli politicians needing an election boost and the recruitment arm of Hamas and other militant groups as stated in paragraph 75 of the May 2007 end of mission report of Alvaro De Soto, former United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. A copy of the De Soto report can be found at:

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2007/06/12/DeSotoReport.pdf

 

The Most Effective Way to Recruit Terrorist – Copyright South China Morning Post

Let’s make take another military example close to home. The Vietnam War of the 1970s. The Americans dropped more bombs on Vietnam than they did World War II. Yet, the only thing that the world remembers about the Vietnam War is the American’s running away from the top of their embassy. How did this situation happen? The Americans were clearly the superior force (even if the “other side” was aided by North Vietnam, China and Russia – in the same way that militant groups in the Middle East are always aided by Iran) and should solved the problem in a matter of months. Well, you could argue that they got a little over reliant on the single word that General Westmoreland used to sum up his strategy – Firepower (in fairness to the US, there were a few attempts to have “hearts and minds” campaigns but that inevitably played second fiddle to the shock and awe).

These military examples have shown that overwhelming force isn’t as effective as effective as we’d might imagine, especially if you’re talking about a side that believes it has nothing to lose by going up against you.

The heavy hand only works if it’s combined with something else – namely the buy in from people. There’s the example of the Malayan Conflict of the 1960s. The British did use some harsh techniques. However, they didn’t approach it as a conventional conflict from the beginning and implemented effective intelligence strategies and waged an effective “hearts and minds” campaign.

 

This wins wars as much as heavy firepower -copyright weaponsandwarefare.com

I don’t disagree with the heavy hand of the state. Sometimes the situation warrants it. In the current pandemic for example, you do need rules enforced and rule breakers shouldn’t get let off because the rules are there to protect us.

However, the harsh heavy hand of the state isn’t going to be enough to make a society safe, clean, green or even viable. Yes, harsh penalties against littering make Singapore clean but they don’t necessarily make Singapore a clean people (back in the day, all you needed to do was to visit Johor where you’d find Singaporeans littering with glee in a place where slipping 50RM – or 15 bucks to the cops fixed things). In the military context, our harsh penalties against littering are like heavy fire power.

For better results, we should look at the Bhutanese, who pick up their own litter because they’ve been taught to appreciate their environment. The Bhutanese government works on a “hearts and minds” campaign to get its objectives. Takes longer but in the end its probably more sustainable.

The heavy hand of the sate may have uses. However, you cannot rely on that alone to ensure that society functions.

Relatives You Keep in the Closet

You could call it my good fortune to be in a semi-lockdown situation when the Israelis and Palestinians have been involved in the latest of their multiple conflicts. The news events and my increased amount got me surfing the web for all sorts of stuff on the world’s oldest real estate dispute.

The gem came from a video on Youtube produced by Vice on an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect known as the Neturei Karta. This is a sect of Judaism that considers the Modern State of Israel to be an abomination against the will of God as it is a “man-made” creation and the only “homeland” for the Jewish people that can be accepted is when the Messiah appears. It goes without saying that they are not liked by the rest of the Jewish community. One lady in the video goes as far as to call them “Jewish ISIS,” and people do hurl abuse at them when they walk around London. Having their synagogues vandalized is apparently quite common.

The reason for this is simple. The Neturei Karta are what many other Jews would call traitors. Their position on the State of Israel is such that they are on the side the Palestinians whenever there are the usual Palestinian protest outside the Israeli embassy and they burn the Israeli flag as part of their sacred rituals. It was the Neturei Karta that supported former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmendinejad’s now infamous 2006 Holocaust Conference. The video of the Neturei Karta’s activities can be seen at:

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

 

It’s tempting to think of the Neturei Karta as the crazy relatives who insist on spilling your trash to the public of the Israeli state. They are quite open in their denunciation of the Israeli state’s obvious theft of Palestinian land (As an extent of how far they go – in 2006, then Saudi King Abdullah offered Israel full diplomatic recognition by all 22 members of the Arab League if they returned to 1967 borders. By contrast, the Neturei Karta argue that Israel should return the entire state to Palestinians) and they’re also quite open in their beliefs that what the State of Israel is doing amounts to ethnic cleansing. Unlike any other critic of the Israeli state, you cannot accuse the Neturei Karta of being “Anti-Semitic,” (how much more Jewish can you get?).

In a way these “extremist” Jews do the world a favour by moving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the usual “Holy Land – Good Judeo-Christian versus Evil Terrorist Muslims” that is stuck in the minds of the Western World.

So, how does the Israeli state handle this group of Jews who denounce it and go as far as to be seen on friendly terms with its enemies?

Interestingly enough, the Neturei Karta are allowed to set foot on Israeli soil and they have the freedom to stroll into Gaza to celebrate the Sabbath in the Palestinian territories to show solidarity with Hamas.

The unspoken fact remains the real division in Israeli society is not its conflict with the wider Arab world but between secular Israelis and its Orthodox community. The two key sticking points being that until recently, the Orthodox Community did not engage in “commercial work” nor did they serve in the Israeli Defense Force (“IDF”), which is mandatory for everyone else. For “secular” Israel it’s a case of subsidizing a community with your taxes and your life. For the Orthodox community, the rest of society has simply lost its way. An outline of the conflict between the Orthodox and secular communities can be found at:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/01/israel-conscription-taxes-netanyahu-resentments-behind-crisis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGjCUZ5ya8Y

 

 Copyright - Times of Israel

Copyright - Jewish Telegraphic Agency 

With the exception of of fringe groups like the Neturei Karta, most Orthodox groups have softened their stance against the state and their political parties have become king makers.

As someone from a country with national service (based on the Israeli model), I do get where many secular Israelis come from. With the exception of friends who served as regulars, I can’t think of anyone who was “keen” to be in the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF). However, having been through the experience it’s become embedded into our minds as being part and parcel of what makes a Singaporean guy. Hence, whenever you want to distinguish between “true-blue” Singaporeans and new migrants, the question of national service inevitably arises. Now, this is in Singapore which never really fought a conflict. Transfer that to Israel which has been in a constant state of conflict and one can only imagine how much stronger feelings towards army service must be.

Yet, the Israeli system still allows Neturei Karta to enter Israel, despite their obvious hostility to the state of Israel. This is really allowing diversity at its best. I think of how America got so worked up over a football player not standing for the national anthem. I think of how Singaporeans get upset whenever an Asian from elsewhere says something which is not fawning about Singapore. Then, there’s Israel, that actually allows a sect that thinks its very existence is an abomination on its soil. Allowing this “diversity” in society is truly amazing.

It Wasn’t Me

 Leadership Lessons from the Red Dot

I’ve noticed that whenever something is critical about the top three champions of Covid-Mismanagement (Donald Trump of the USA, Narendra Modi of India and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil), there will always be someone who will retort that the macho man brought great prosperity to the nation and is not responsible for the obvious failure of Covid mismanagement. Of the three, Trump was the most vocal. Reporter would say something about the USA having the greatest number of daily infections and instead of talking about what he was even imagine about the situation, he’d say it was all China’s fault. – Yes, we know the virus is supposed to have started in a lab in Wuhan but the point is the pandemics are on your soil and its your job to solve the problem that is screwing up your country.

What’s even more disturbing is when the followers of such impotent leaders proceed to make these excuses for their “leader,” and its particularly disturbing when the said follower making the excuse is someone highly intelligent and in a high-level leadership position. For Americans it was “Trump led us to the best prosperity ever and it’s the fault of the Covid explosion is the fault of the state governors. Trump is not responsible for the mess.” Now that Covid Central has moved to India, you hear the things that were once said about Trump being said about Modi. The only thing one is tempted to say to these people is “What is the point of having a President or Prime Minster if all they’re going to do is to outsource national problems but take credit when things are going well?”

It’s not like places like America and India don’t know what leadership looks like. India invented non-violent protest under Gandhi and kicked out the British without firing shots. America had Abraham Lincoln, the Roosevelt cousins and there was Harry Truman who succeeded Franklin Roosevelt just before the end of the Second World War. Truman famously kept a sign “The Buck Stops Here” on his desk.

 

How did leadership go from this to?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOcY3XlzPzs

 

This?

As a Singaporean, it pains me to say that, the painful decline in leadership standards in the significant powers could have started here in little Singapore. Our Prime Minister might have set a horrible example for future leaders beyond Singapore’s shores. Narendra Modi is known for his admiration of Lee Kuan Yew and was one of the main foreign dignitaries at his funeral.

Ever since Lee Kuan Yew stepped aside in 1990, he created a lucrative side-gig as a consultant, going round the world telling people how to run their countries. Given that that the late Mr. Lee had left Singapore in a very prosperous state, leaders of developing nations thought it was worth imitating Mr. Lee.

Unfortunately, while Mr. Lee’s model had its moments, there were flaws, namely the fact that Mr. Lee started creating a culture of elitism or a culture where the top genuinely believed that it was entitled to be there and therefore entitled to claim all the glory and outsource the problems.

For me, nothing illustrated this as clearly as the 2007 escape of Mas Selamat, our “Osama-type” terrorist. How did the government react to an “Osama-Type” terrorist waltzing out of a highly-secured facility? Well, Wong Kan Seng, the Minister of Home Affairs proceeded grin like an ape for the cameras and apologized that “This had to happen.”

 

How not to react when an “Osama-Like” terrorist waltzes out of a Highly Secured Facility

The grand result of an inquiry that revealed massive incompetence in the Ministry of Home Affairs was the fact that two Gurkhas got deported but both the Minister of Home Affairs and the Head of the Internal Security kept their jobs.

The two great highlights of the whole incident came from our most famous export on management – Lee Kuan Yew, who proceeded to berate the electorate for being complacent (yes, its our fault that we expect you to do the job that we pay you for) and funnily enough from our Prime Minister, who was very present in the moment of winning the hosting of the inaugural Youth Olympics but notably absent when the news of Mr. Salamat’s leisure stroll broke out. Our Prime Minister proved that he could, when pushed to, be an exceedingly good and impassioned orator. Was he making a case of national unity and trying to gather the nation together to catch an evil terrorist? His passion oratory started to flower in the defense of a minister who had failed a “moment of truth” test.

He was there to celebrate our moment of global triumph. Where did he go to when a terrorist went for a stroll from highly secured facility? 

How did the Prime Minister get so impassioned about this particular minister who failed so spectacularly at the moment of truth? We, the general public, thought the minister should have been sacked as can be seen from this clip of reaction to his nomination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX48D2KsIHA

 

Things seemed to get better for Singapore after 2007 and it seems that everybody took the “leadership lessons” from Singapore to heart. Follow Singapore’s example – grab the glory and keep telling people that you are the direct cause of prosperity. However, whenever a problem arises, always find someone else to blame, especially if it’s the people who are paying you to solve problems.

Apparently, this is how nations are supposed to leap frog into prosperity. Unfortunately for Americans, Indians and Brazilians, this model of Singapore leadership has been taken quite literally and executed (forgive the pun) on a massive scale.

The Problem with a Singing Fat Lady

 

Let’s not Forget She Was Once a Business Icon

Singapore has suddenly tightening Covid-19 restrictions. It went from limiting gatherings from eight to five and then to two within the space of two weeks. Restaurants and other food outlets have been prohibited from taking in “dine-in” customers and before long, most of us expect to be confined to our homes. The answer is simple, after seeming to get the situation under control, Covid-19 cases are now on the rise.

This situation has reminded me of a conversation I had with a client, who once said, “Whatever you do, please do not put up for ‘Entrepreneur of the Year,’ it’s a cursed award and I don’t want to go bankrupt.” He had a point. Award winners at one point had a way of crashing not soon after winning. 

I think of this conversation because it seems that team running the nation’s covid response has been a little like the winner’s of “entrepreneur of the year.” Everything seemed to be going fine until the glory of winning came.

It’s as simple as this. Singapore entered its initial “Circuit Breaker” in April 2020, not soon after the international press was lauding the government for setting the “gold standard” in managing the pandemic. Everyone was talking about how Singapore was doing brilliant job without going into a lockdown. Unfortunately, while the government seemed to have planned everything nicely for the population at large, it forgot that it had allowed the construction industry to house its workers in conditions that were ripe for breading the virus.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the second tightening has come not soon after the international community hailed Singapore as the best place to live in during the pandemic. Unfortunately, the government was a little too keen in starting travel baubles with all sorts of places and letting people rush back to the office.

Perhaps our Covid Managers need the same lessons from the “Entrepreneurs of the Year.” While I don’t want to cast any aspersions as to why businesses failed, it seems that winning the award was like a means unto itself. Somehow, once they award was given, the focus was on the award rather than the business itself.

Could the same be true of the way we’re managing Covid. Has it just been about being lauded by the global press rather than trying to see things through? We need to remember that Covid-19 is a long term struggle that has human cost and managing the disease is more important that whatever accolades we could ever get.

Why Do You Need to Look After Yourself When There Are Other People to Do It for You?

 One of the least talked about things that came out of the now infamous “umbrage” press conference was the fact that people in the PR business suddenly had a material on how not to conduct a press conference.

One of my former juniors who went onto start his own boutique agency posted a list of things that went wrong in that press conference. His list can be found at:

 

 

Another bit of PR advice came from a Tick Tock video, talking about the five things that one should not do when communicating with an audience.

The best possible explanation for Mr. Ng’s PR disaster came from the fact that Mr. Ng probably has a very poor understanding of the role of the media in society.

 

Whilst I agree with my former colleague, I cannot blame Mr. Ng for reacting the way he did in as much as he’s not doing anything that a lot of our local CEOs would not have done. Mr. Ng’s attitude towards the press reminds of a time when a friend of mine was suggesting I play off two suitors against each other. I said something about “I can barely look after myself,” and the friend’s reply was “Why do you need to take care of yourself when there are other people dying to do it for you?”

Speaking as someone who has been on the PR team for both a statutory board and a former GLC (the company in question had been divested by a government linked company), I will say that there is a sense of “why do we need to take care of ourselves” attitude when it comes to the media. The reason is simple, there is an expectation that the media is there to take care of them.

I was slapped into this realization when it came to results time and dealing with financial journalist. I quickly arranged for the CEO of this company that had just been divested and left to fend for themselves on the stock exchange, with CNBC Asia. I was under the impression that I was scoring points with the client because I thought the CEO would want the opportunity to brag about his vision the global community of investors. This was, after all, what had happened when I put the last CEO of a listed company onto CNBC (Arun Jain, CEO of what was then Polaris Software Labs Limited, which is listed on both the BSE and NSE).

Instead of being happy, ended up spending an unhealthy amount of time trying to explain the benefits of an interview with CNBC would have for the image of a CEO of a listed company. His retort was “I don’t see why we have to speak to the foreign media.” Well, yes CNBC Asia may not be primarily based in Singapore but they do reach the investors and analyst that all listed company CEO’s need to appeal to. I had to get a colleague of mine to vet my emails before sending them to this particular CEO because in her words “You’re making him sound really stupid.”

Why was there a reluctance of our home-grown CEO (who incidentally started his career in MINDEF) to speak to “foreign” media? I guess it had something to do with the fact that the team at places like Bloomberg and CNBC actually did things like their own research and didn’t take facts from the PR people verbatim. Having said that, it was not like they could surprise you – the general rule of thumb is that senior executives of listed companies cannot go for interviews without clearance for the stock exchange – hence the corp comms have to know the gist of what will be asked – hence Mr. Ng cannot claim he was unprepared, unless the corporate communications at SPH and SGX was criminally negligent.

The second experience in dealing with the attitude of the media needs to be on our side came from trying to arrange an interview with someone from the statutory board. My instructions were “Drop the interview – the journalist has a history of negativity towards the statutory board in question.

This is the background of how certain large organizations have grown up dealing with the media and when you consider the fact that Mr. Ng comes from this background, the question is – did you expect him to react otherwise? In the local media scene, it’s not a question of publicity and appearing credible but working with the “right” media partner. Talk to enough senior executives and you’ll find that they would rather appear in a newspaper with declining readership than with a website with increasing readership because there is a perception that the powers that be prefer the print and traditional media and its better to get your publicity from there rather than with the guys the government does not like.

It’s a shame that our business leaders expect the media to be on the same side. Hostile media or “journalist with a history of negativity” are, in fact one of the best tools to build credibility. Just take a look at this 2013 interview on Fox news given by Reza Aslan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7UU6FQoU_g

 

The interviewer was clearly hostile and Professor Aslan stuck to his guns. End result was the interviewer looked stupid and Professor Aslan ended up selling a lot of books. Professor Aslan would later admit that he knew that the interview would be hostile.

Another candidate who deliberately went out of his way to look for hostile media is Pete Buttigieg who went to conduct a town hall organised by Fox News (which does not have a history of having sympathy to openly gay men).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p97xg-keEKg

 

Being able to deal with a “hostile” newsperson makes on credible and I believe that senior executives need to learn how to be able to cope with intense questioning.

I think back to my former client’s Polaris Software Labs. Their COO, Mr. Arup Gupta came into town and I placed him in front of Bloomberg. Told him to avoid getting into a discussion on the share price and he stuck to his guns and talked about strategy and growth plans while the interviewers were trying to press him on the stock price and showing graphs of how the shares of every Australian bank was bleeding (Polaris’s target market being banks). The man came out of the interview sweating profusely but the share price jumped 20 percent right after that interview.

Our leaders need to understand the value of being able to face “tough” questions. A media that does not do its job and ask awkward questions actually ends up hurting those in power.

 

How did Singapore Grow?

Call it a series of coincidences but my maternal granduncle passed away. While the timing was not something he planned, his death took place a day or two after Singapore Press Holding’s (SPH) CEO, Mr. Ng Yat Chung gave his now infamous “Umbrage” press conference when he was asked about editorial integrity in the newly restructured company.

I never had the chance to know my maternal granduncle. We met for all of five minutes when he showed up at my grandmother’s wake in 2006 and my mother pointed out that had her father lived, he would have looked like his younger brother, my granduncle. As such, I will leave the personal tribute to my granduncle’s granddaughter; which can be found at:

https://www.kirstenhan.com/blog/2021/5/8/goodbye-kong-kong

While I may not have known granduncle on a personal level, I did know of the family legend. I also got to know him through his son and his granddaughter. My granduncle was by all accounts a highly intelligent and energetic man. Like his brother, my grandfather, he entered the civil service and climbed the ranks based on his intelligence. However, he probably didn’t get as a far as he could have, due to a rebellious streak. The man was exceedingly energetic and had a very curious mind that didn’t slow with age. His old age hobby was building violins and taking apart and fixing up computers.

This energy was passed onto my uncle, who in his own words, had the “meanest mouth in the Singapore Armed Forces.” My uncle had no fear of rank. He takes pride in telling us of his disagreements with superiors, who would always point out “I am your superior,” to which the classic reply was inevitably, “But you’re still wrong.” My cousin also has something of the old man’s flair. She’s written countless articles and has incurred the wrath of non-other than the “Fawning Follower” aka the Critical Spectator (angering someone who thinks keeping people in cages is a social service).

I like to think that it was civil servants like my granduncle who made Singapore great. He belonged to an era where there was a genuine belief in meritocracy. Intelligent people were allowed to make their views known and people at the ground level were respected. People were allowed to point out mistakes made by superiors. The key to success was about getting the job done rather than keeping up a myth.

I look back to the eulogy that the late Mr. Lee Kuan Yew delivered at the funeral of Mr. S. Rajaratnam. The most shocking moment came when Mr. Lee talked about the “furious” debates that they used to have in cabinet. This is evidence that Mr. Lee’s real genius was in allowing intelligent people to get on with the job. He took care of the politics and allowed the likes of Goh Keng Swee to get on with the work.

 

Back when the Singapore was run by a group of intelligent people. – Copyright Straits Times

It’s in this environment that my granduncle and grandfather would succeed in the civil service. Neither was known for being an easy character but they were recognised for their brains and the value that they could bring. It seems that there was a genuine respect for talent in the public service and talent was managed.

I can’t tell when things changed. A generation later there was my uncle who would always need to be reminded that the other fellow was his superior. How did a public service which allowed people to have “furious” debates reach a stage where a “superior” would need to use “I am your superior,” in a disagreement. Surely, one would imagine that in a society that is as “educated” as ours, that the system would recognize the fact that the only way to be superior is to have demonstrably better ideas rather than having to state that you are superior.

We have reached a stage where the boss of a news organization “takes umbrage” at a question in a press conference. What does it say about our system when a basic question is treated like a personal insult and the response to the said insult only confirms negative perceptions that people have about the organization that you lead? One should be terrified that someone like Mr. Ng Yat Chung was put in charge of troops, whom he was expected to lead into life-or-death situations. The inability to listen to the guy on the ground in such situations is a disaster.  

 

It Takes Brains to Mess it Up

 Before Donald Trump came to power and made America the world standard of comedy, the British used to make some of the funniest shows around. In the 70s there was Monty Python and these days, it’s the various characters like Ali-G, Borat and Bruno who send us all into stitches. Like his 1970s predecessors, Mr. Sacha Baron Cohen (the man who is Ali-G, Borat and Bruno) has become a global icon by being very silly.

What’s striking about Britain’s “Silly” exports, is the fact that all of them have great degrees from world class universities. The Python’s and Mr. Sasha Baron Cohen are from the University of Cambridge. Mr. Rowan Atkinson (Black Adder and Mr. Bean) is an engineering student from the University of Oxford. As one of my dearest friends from the UK said, “It takes brains to be very silly.

 

You’d Never Guess these guys came from:

 

These established universities.

My friend’s point wasn’t limited to comedy. It also existed in journalism. British Tabloids like the Sun were designed to the lowest common denominator (or the type of reader who doesn’t care what news is being reported on as long as the paper has a picture of a girl with nice tits on page 3. They were world masters at producing the most sensationalized headlines that were designed to stir up passions. The Sun is one of those papers where you’d probably not want to be caught buying.

Leaving aside my personal feelings towards the Sun, it’s actually a work of art. It takes brains to come up with those headlines. Whilst people like me would turn our noses up at the Sun and take pride in reading things like The Times, Guardian, Telegraph or Financial Times, the truth of the matter is that the top graduates from journalism school ended up working for the Sun. It takes far more brains to write for the less discerning.

When I came back and started working in Singapore, I realized that this wasn’t a particularly British thing.  Singapore has the phenomena of “It takes brains to be stupid.”

Unfortunately, our local version of this, isn’t intentionally funny. This becomes especially true when you look at how the Government Linked Corporations (GLCs) have done. All these firms are nominally part of the private sector. More often than not, they are listed on the stock exchange and management is accountable to shareholders. They all have very health balance sheets and are either in a monopoly or duopoly in the home market. The uniting factor is that the largest shareholder is Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd, which is in turn owned by the Ministry of Finance. Whilst the government states that it merely owns shares, its perhaps no coincidence that the guys running these companies are more often than not, former civil servants (usually generals) who went to the best universities in the world at the government’s expense.

To say that the performance of these companies has been lackluster is charitable. The only notable exceptions are SIA, which competes in an industry where government protection is of no use (Singapore’s air space is only so big) and to a certain extent SingTel, the former Telco monopoly which had the good sense to use its cash pile to buy companies overseas (biggest cash spinners being Optus in Australia and Bharti in India) and DBS Bank, which has been run by people from elsewhere since 1998, when John Olds, an American who had never run a bank before, was appointed as CEO.

When you consider the advantages that all these companies have, the question remains – how could they not make money? To use a sporting analogy, it would be like cloning Cristiano Ronaldo into 11 players and putting them onto a soccer pitch to play against 11 bedridden one-legged grandfathers, with the referee under pressure to ensure the team of Cristiano Ronaldo’s would have a super serum to make them play even more magically whilst the bedridden grandfathers would have more limbs tied up and yet, despite this, the team of Cristiano Ronaldo clones would lose.

The example I personally dealt with is Ez Link Pte Ltd, which somehow lost $17 million in 2003. This is a company that was wholly owned by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) had a monopoly on a product that just about everyone in the country had to use every day (think of the number of rides on the public transport system every day). The company collected one percent of the value of every transaction (think of 1 cent per person times two million and the only real cost being the few staff members and rent of the office). The best part to this system is that money was collected upfront (they don’t get paid when you tap – they get paid when you top up your card). You would think that this was a business that would print money even if you staffed it with zoo animals.

On a larger scale, we had the SMRT system, which is run by a former Chief of Defense Force (CDF), who took over the CEO job from his predecessor as CDF. The first former General became a hero to his shareholders when he made money for them by selling the entire operation back to them. His tenure as CEO was marked with consistent train breakdowns, which were all due to the fact that there was, apparently a lack of funds for basic maintenance. This is despite the fact that the SMRT sells a service that nearly everyone in the country uses and in addition to that, they are sitting on some of the most valuable rental properties in the country. Yet, somehow there was no money for maintenance and the only way to make money for the shareholders was by selling the business to the shareholders.

Another former CDF (to be a top general in Singapore you need to be very clever – an Oxbridge degree is the minimal qualification) showing us how to make a mess of things is Ng Yat Chung who has famously failed to make money in not one but two businesses. In the five years of being CEO of Neptune Orient Line (NOL), Mr. Ng failed to make a profit and left his shareholders with no choice but to sell NOL to CMA-CGM, who promptly turned it around in a matter of months.

His reward was to be moved to the helm of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), the owner of every newspaper in Singapore bar one and collector of more than half of every dollar spent on media space in Singapore. In his tenure as CEO of SPH, Mr. Ng has seen SPH kicked off the Straits Times Industrial Index (an irony given that the Straits Times is SPH’s main product) and on 6 May 2021, Mr. Ng had to call a press conference to announce that the loss-making newspapers would be spun off into a “non-profit” company. Fortunately for Mr. Ng, he proceeded to turn himself into a laughing stock by raising his voice at a reporter who had the audacity to ask him about editorial integrity.  I say fortunately because the attention was focused incident and his use of the word “umbrage” and how he bragged about not being a gentleman than on the main issue of how he managed to turn a profitable quasi-monopoly into a begging bowl from the tax payer. The report on Mr. Ng’s press conference can be found at:

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/sph-ceo-ng-yat-chung-question-editorial-integrity-122702142.html

 

Again, Mr. Ng is very clever. His academic credentials put him the global elite. Yet, somehow, he’s managed to turn powerful market leading businesses into loss making ones.

We always tell ourselves that we only have our human resources and that our “reserves” are to be guarded because you never know when you need the money for a rainy day. Yet, somehow, we seem determined to take our best and brightest to turn businesses with business models that zoo animals could print money from into loss making ventures. I’m not getting it…perhaps smarter readers could explain this to me.   

Leadership Lessons from a Tiny Kingdom.

 

One of great privileges before the Covid-19 outbreak was going to Bhutan to celebrate my mother’s 70^th birthday.  I had first been to Bhutan when I was 10 and loved it and fell in love with the place.  At the age of 10, I valued serenity and Bhutan provided me with just that. It also helped that this was in a time when the only way to get into Bhutan was via Calcutta, which was anything but serene. After that trip, Bhutan was only a magical memory until my mother decided she would celebrate her 70^th with a trip to Bhutan.

The 35-year gap between my first and second trip was no less magical. I guess you could say that I was struggling emotionally as I was on a high-profile international case dealing with a criminal amount of money and spending an unhealthy amount of time being part of an effort to protect people who, while “legally clean,” were evil (considering the amount they were worth, the industry they were in and the country where they made their money).

Getting out and going to Bhutan was very necessary spiritual cleansing and in the week that I had, I started questioning many of the “facts” of life that most of us, particularly in a place like Singapore, have drilled into us as being natural.

The other thing that I started questioning was our model of development. Singapore is always held up as the poster boy on how one should develop a nation and in his later life, Lee Kuan Yew famously got himself exceedingly lucrative gigs telling the developing world how to develop.  We are, as I’ve often said, what a city should be – rich, clean and green. I guess the ultimate compliment to Singapore’s “poster boy” status came during the Brexit referendum when the pro-Brexit crowd kept talking about how London would be “Singapore on the Thames.”

While I go agree that Singapore has done many things right, I’ve come to question our status as the poster boy of development and I do think that the Bhutanese have a point when they measure success through “Gross National Happiness” (GNH) instead of the standard Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Bhutan’s model got some flack from what I’d call the Managing Partners of “Singapore Develops Nations LLC.” Our then Minister for National Development, Khaw Boon Wan famously rubbished the Bhutanese model in Parliament in 2011 and argued that based on what he saw the people were miserable because they were toiling in the fields and worried about the price of their crops. Mr. Khaw’s speech was reported in the following article:

https://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20111020-306096.html

A young Bhutanese famously rebutted Mr. Khaw by telling him that the Bhutanese may not have had the same amount of money as the Singaporeans but they had peace of mind, decent family lives and didn’t get stressed out by student and health care loans because they have families where people look after each other. The Bhutanese answer to Mr. Khaw can be found at:

https://www.passudiary.com/2011/10/to-mr-khaw-boon-wan-what-did-you-expect.html

Let’s make one thing clear, nobody is suggesting that Bhutan is a “perfect” society and the “nasty” parts of any society can be found in Bhutan. However, the Bhutanese have actually come up with ideas that many far more “successful” societies like Singapore need to consider and perhaps adapt.

Take the concept of GNH, which was the brainchild of Bhutan’s fourth king.  This isn’t an airy-fairy concept that a group of bureaucrats invented. What it is, is an attempt to measure development by giving weightage to a host of environmental factors other than money. The Bhutanese are as interested in having money as the rest of us but they also measure success in other ways.

The biggest factor that struck me was that under the GNH system, a great deal of emphasis was placed on preserving the environment and the government of Bhutan is willing to spend money to preserve the environment.

Sure, Singapore has great nature reserves. However, we tend to focus on concern for the environment as being part of our privilege of having made money. As such, our region follows our lead and our giant neighbour which has a palm oil industry, has a development model that involves in burning large forest on an annual basis. It’s part of their development and efforts to build wealth and you can’t argue against that. However, the entire region gets covered in smog. It’s a case of you will have money but you can’t breathe. We persist in selling this model without even considering why economic development and environmental preservation have to be mutually exclusive.

In Bhutan, they are not rich but nobody starves. They can breathe all year round. Interestingly enough that is a sellable asset as Chinese and Indian tourist try to get in so that they can escape poisonous air quality in places like Shanghai and Delhi.

The second area where Bhutan can teach the world a thing or two is in developing its leadership system. Bhutan is the only country that I can think of where an absolute monarch-imposed democracy on his people instead of having it forced upon him. The story of how the Bhutanese king forced people to take power for themselves can be found at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svf95f4kjDQ

Bhutanese history offers some interesting lessons for aspiring leaders. Let’s start with the fact that the current royal family is only 100-years old and they were not actually the original founders of Bhutan as a nation.

That honour goes to someone called Nawang Namgyal or Zhabdrung Rinpoche, Tibetan monk who unified Bhutan into a nation sometime in 1637. By all accounts he was a brilliant leader who built the nation and wisely separated the religious and secular elements of government.

However, the Zhabdrung was a little too reliant on the Buddhist philosophy and thought he’d succeed himself through reincarnation and somehow always be there for his people. Didn’t work. When he died, the local governors had to come up with the story that he was on a long retreat and they did this for more than half a century.

Things eventually fell apart until the Penlops (Governors) of Trongsa became the kings of modern Bhutan. The House of Wangchuk has thus far proven to be effective at keeping the nation together. Bhutan’s third king (current King’s grandfather) famously instituted land reform and ensured that nobody, including himself, would be allowed to own more than 25 acres of land. Social reforms continued under the fourth king who imposed democracy and gave parliament the power to sack him and his successors.  

This is interesting because the Bhutanese kings are acting like how you’d expect an elected politician to function. They go to the ground, listen and act. They give up power and enact limitations on themselves so that they don’t become a liability to the people they are supposed to rule over.

 

He forced the people to choose their rulers and insisted on giving them the right to sack him and his successors.

Contrast that the other world leaders, who have been democratically elected and yet choose to find ways to consolidate power and disenfranchise certain segments of the electorate. Instead of having a mandatory retirement age, they find ways to hang on.

Interestingly enough, Bhutan, a poor and insignificant nation trapped between two giants has managed to get by with a mere 1,144 Covid-19 cases and a single death. This is considering the fact that the one group of people who can waltz into Bhutan are Indian citizens (currently the world’s highest risk). Bhutan’s leadership must be doing something right……

 

The Problem with Macho Men

 Now that the USA has elected a president who takes the threat of Covid-19 seriously, the new bad boy of Covid-Mismanagement is India. India, which until recently was bragging about being the world’s largest manufacturer of Covid-19 vaccines, has now been hit by daily surges of cases. Officially, only the USA has more cases and unofficially, it’s likely that India as the world leader in the number of Covid-19 cases.

 

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that India has a high number of infections. The good number of India’s population lives in what can only be described as cramped squalor and public hygiene is for the most part bad.

However, as with the case of the USA and Brazil, being large and poor is no excuse for the current tragedy. While the majority of Indians are poor, India has resources to deal with this. Not only does India have more than its fair share of material wealth, one only has to watch the Bollywood flick “3 Idiots” to see that India has a wealth of development innovation. Let us not forget that “The Serum Institute of India, the world's largest producer of vaccines by volume, is producing the Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford at its facility in the city of Pune in western India.” So, while the majority of Indians might live in conditions ripe for the virus, other countries with less than India have done better.

So, how is it such that the world’s largest power and two of the most prominent emerging ones (both India and Brazil are part of BRICS) have done so badly in terms of managing the pandemic? The one thing that all three had in common was the fact that they were led by “Macho” men. Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Narendra Modi have come to power all came to power by playing to nationalist (the chest thumping variety) sentiment and more dangerously religious sentiments.  

All three of them campaigned on the premise of being outsiders coming into save the nation from a corrupt system selling out the country to evil foreign powers. Trump’s phrase was “Make America Great Again,” implying that America had become a shithole and he would rescue it. In Brazil it is Jair Bolsonaro campaigned on the slogan “Brazil above everything, God above everyone.” In India, Mr. Modi made the most of his “Chai-Wallah” roots

All three were helped by weak opponents. For Mr. Trump it was Hillary Clinton, who despite a brand name, had a few too many skeletons she could not shake. In India, Rahul Gandhi made it such that Mr. Modi’s 2014 landslide became as much about Rahul Gandhi running an uninterested and incompetent campaign as much as it was about Mr. Modi running an effective one.  In Brazil, Mr. Bolsonaro had to contend with Fernando Haddad who had at the time of the election had 30 accusations of corruption against him while Mr. Bolsonaro had none.

In fairness, they did in the Pre-Covid era deliver an amount of economic reform and growth. Mr. Trump’s tax cut was a steroid boost to the expansion he inherited. The stock market was soaring and unemployment hit a low. In Brazil, Mr. Bolsonaro did get pension reform through, which everyone agrees was a time bomb for Brazil. As chaotic as the roll out was, everyone agrees that having a nation-wide GST system for India was necessary, or as Girija Pande, former Asia-Pacific Chairman of Tata Consultancy Services said in an interview “India is signing an FTA with itself.”

Unfortunately for all three, Covid-19 hit during their watch. Fortunately for discerning citizens, Covid-19 showed that “Macho” was more bluster than real in serval areas.

The most crucial aspect was the inability to sell the idea that voters would need to face harsh choices. Countries like New Zealand, Vietnam and Taiwan quickly imposed things like mask mandates, social distancing and lock downs. All of them suffered economic pain but the same time got the virus under control.  When given the chance to unite the nation at the time of crisis, the Trump and Bolsonaro did the opposite and they proceeded to undermine state governors who trying to impose life saving measures in their states. Life saving mask mandates became a political issue of “freedom.”

You cannot argue that the macho men were merely trying to save their nations from economic collapse for the simple fact that every other nation on the planet also faced economic hardship but took the necessary life saving medicine. Yes, being broke is no fun but getting a nasty disease that brings about a lonely and painful death is worse. Contrary to what the likes of Jim Jordan would tell you, Dr. Anthony Fauci was not failing America but merely recommending America do what everyone else was doing and getting under control. Let’s remember, Macao, which entirely dependent on casinos, shut down the casinos. Saudi Arabia which draws its very political legitimacy from the Haj, shut down the haj. If these guys could take the economic pain, why couldn’t the macho men?

The second area in which “Macho” proved damaging was in the inability to listen to advice or even more damaging, actively undermining the advice of medical professionals. Donald Trump famously did his best to undermine everything that Dr. Anthony Fauci was trying to recommend. Mr. Bolsonaro went one better, he actually sacked Luiz Henrique Mandetta, the health minister trying to manage the crisis by supporting things like social distancing. As the second wave hits India, scientist out of India are saying that they were trying to warn the Indian government that there was a potential for an outbreak.

The third most damaging aspect of the Macho Men’s handling of Covid-19 was in the refusal to take ownership of the crisis. Mr. Trump’s supporters defended his labeling it “Kung-Flu,” or “The Chinese Virus.” Whilst technically correct in as much as the virus started in Wuhan, China has done more to harm Asian Americans (or the ones that go to work, send their kids to school and pay taxes) than it has China. Mr. Trump delegated responsibility of handing a national crisis to State Governors and famously told the world “I am not responsible.” His Brazilian and Indian counterparts have also been significantly absent in leading the charge to do anything useful.

On 15 April 2020, I wrote THE MEN DON’T GET IT, which was about how the countries that had managed Covid-19 best were run by women. How was it such that the women proved so much more competent than the “macho-men” at getting their people through the pandemic. The answer is simple, instead of blaming others, they actually took ownership of the issue, communicated clearly and got their people to make the hard but necessary trade off and got things under control. They did everything the Macho Men did not.

If there is a moral to the story, it should be that one should stay away from chest thumping nationalist telling you that they will restore your pride and glory by kicking everyone else when their down. These are the last people who will actually do anything to solve your problems.