Are you a Yellow Ribbon Criminal? You have to be Judging by the Way You Speak and the Fact that You’re Working Here.

 One of my more prominent memories of working at Bruno’s came when I had to serve a group of mature ladies who decided that I was worth fliting with. I enjoyed being the centre of attention but the thing that struck me about that entire exchange was when one of the ladies asked “Are you a Yellow Ribbon Criminal?” When I asked what brought that on, her reply was that judging by the way I spoke, there seemed to be something wrong with the fact that I was working as service staff.

I like to think that she was paying me a compliment. However, the sentiments that were expressed, reflect an attitude that makes life a little harder for those of us who have either never made it or have “fallen.” This attitude isn’t particularly unique to Singapore but as I live here, I believe that this is an attitude that scares many people from being able to climb back up again in “face” conscious Asia.

This is something that will need to change on a social level for the simple reason that the old economic order which involved working for one company in one role until one retired in relative comfort is no longer there. Whilst this has been said for the last thirty-years, it’s become even more prominent. The trend of industries and roles dying overnight has only been exaggerated by Covid-19.

As with every period of rapid change, there are bound to plenty of people who fall through and we will need to find a way to help people get through the system. For high earners, particularly those over 45, will have to get used to the fact that they may never get a similarly high paying job should they lose it. What can they do about it? The government has been pushing “life-learning” and getting people to take on “second careers.”

However, this may not be the path for everyone and the current thrust of the government’s plans on life-long learning works on the premise that “careers” are like ladders – the only direction is up or down. Whilst the principle of encouraging “life-long learning” is right, there needs to be an understanding of the psychology of what happens to people when they fall. As I’ve mentioned in previous postings, I’ve known of people who held high end jobs, lost them and were unable to pick themselves up and reached the stage where they needed their bus cards topped up. Ask them to do a bit of “menial” work to put money in their pockets and they won’t do it. As is said – unlike the Western world where the issue is people trying to “game” a system designed to help the less fortunate, the problem in Singapore is that people are not willing to game the system.

So, perhaps the answer might be to change the approach to work and careers itself. A career path need not necessarily be just up and down. I think of a former boss who talked about the need to “widen” the pond instead of making it deeper. Whilst he was referring to a business, why can’t the same be true of an individual’s career.

In my early working life, just about everyone thought I was going to be a great “Public Relations” (PR) person. However, I couldn’t quite make it in the traditional “agency” system – never lasted for any agency more than a year. I did well on the PR projects that I worked on but somehow never lasted in a “working” environment.

So, I took the job in the restaurant to get a regular income. Interestingly enough, the restaurant was good for my PR skills. I actually did things like crisis management, dealing with irate customers (they ones who wanted to walk out without paying actually paid half) and dealt with troublesome staff (enough to the owner to give me the authority to fire the staff in question)

Ironically in my “third” progression, into the insolvency, the skills I have learnt in PR and were honed in the restaurant, would also come in useful, especially when one considers that the insolvency trade involves dealing with lots of irate people.

It took a while to look at my skills in a lateral manner. It also required understanding that I was the same person whether I was washing dishes or trying to get CEOs interviewed by the business press.

 

Believe it or not – the dude washing cups (Me at Bruno’s Serangoon)

 

 Is also the same person as this one (IIMPact 2013)

When I look at the official line on “second careers” and it works on the idea that a top man in one industry should go down to the ground and start a career at the bottom in another industry. It assumes that an engineer should he or she lose an engineer’s job should be willing to go back to school and say, start again as an intern in a bank.

Instead of looking at things that way, perhaps the answer might be to encourage employees to look at careers in a horizontal manner as well as in a vertical manner. As for employers, perhaps they should be encouraged to start looking at how someone who is cross trained can add value. I remember a friend of mine in the oil and gas industry rushed tried to get his HR team to hire my colleague when he found that she was a trained accountant from an engineering background. His point was that he found most normal accountants didn’t understand what was actually going on in the business because, well they only saw the business from spread sheets. That made this colleague of mine particularly interesting.

It is, as they say, time we get serious about reinventing jobs and the way we build careers.

 

Hey Bro – F** You Bro

 Whilst I may not always express it in my postings, I’m actually very blessed. One of my greatest blessings is being a “big-brother” to three amazing siblings. Although I am significantly older than my siblings (age difference being five, 14 and 17 years apart) and we’ve lived in different parts of the world for over two decades (I’m in Asia, two of them live in London and one lives in Chicago), I’m close enough to them to trust them with certain things that I wouldn’t others with. My siblings and I are protective of each other and I've understood my role as the "big brother" has being like the one in the photo below:

 

Being an older brother made me understood that the term “brother” goes beyond normal friendship. Being a "brother" is about sharing experiences and looking out for each other regardless of the inconveniences and material costs.  Outside my blood relatives, it's my army friends who were there for me during shitty times and are still there for me. With few notable exceptions, its not like that with the people I work for. The relationships in business are simple - once I am no longer of value, there will be no reason for them to be there for me when I'm down.

So, with this understanding of what it means to be a brother, I was rather perplexed by what our Minister of Manpower, Mr. Tan See Leng, meant when he talked about our "brother" migrant workers. Mr. Tan is an only child and I wondered if he really understood what it was to be a brother. Did he intend the term to imply he had brotherly concern for the workers? 

Well, there was a worker who didn't believe that Mr. Tan understood what it meant to be a brother and so, he offered to give Mr. Tan a tutorial in what it meant to be a brother. The tutorial is listed below:

https://theindependent.sg/migrant-worker-calls-out-tan-see-leng-for-slave-like-conditions-in-jurong-dorm-says-please-do-not-call-us-your-brothers/

 

Unfortunately, Mr. Zakir's tutorial was wasted on Mr. Tan. Let's just take a look at how Mr. Tan looked like when he decided to visit the workers in the dormitories after the mess that took place in the Westlite Dormitory in Jalan Tukang, some two weeks ago:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/community/beds-set-aside-for-foreign-workers-recovering-from-covid-19-more-than-97-of

 

Seeing the brotherly concern that Mr. Tan and his Senior Minister of State, Dr. Koh Poh Koon showed the workers reminded me what my Dad sad to me at the end of my national service when I told him I had volunteered to go for a live firing exercise after a 155mm gun howitzer exploded and killed a friend of mine. I argued that the exercise would be fine because the colonel was going to fire first and we would be behind an armored vehicle. My Dad replied "If they felt it was that safe to fire the gun, why are they doing it from behind an armored vehicle?"

A version of my Dad's wisdom comes to mind here. Mr. Tan has talked about our "brother" migrant workers. Both Mr. Tan and his senior minister of state, Dr. Koh Poh Koon felt that despite what the dormitory owners were saying, that they would only be safe entering the premises in hazmat suits. How much more telling does it get.

Now, here's the question - what type of "brother" is Mr. Tan? Will he act like a brother to the workers now that he's made it clear that he knows that they live in places where he's only willing to enter if he's wearing a hazmat suit? 

Social Class or the Lack of It

 

When I first took on work as a waiter in 2012, one of the people I hung out with told me that I should ensure that I was not paid CPF because it would reflect badly on my work history. This friend of mine also got upset when I told him that I did do things like use newspaper to clean the class door and he said that it would upset my family that I, as a graduate Chinese, was doing menial task.

I bring up this conversation I had all those years ago because many people assume that because I had no qualms taking on a “menial” job in my late thirties, that I am not class or status conscious. As is often said, I clearly didn’t have the pride not to want to be seen doing “menial” things.

This impression about me is actually wrong. I am exceedingly class and status conscious. I actually believe that there are “high” class, “low” class and “no” class people in. I can’t say that I don’t get impressed by external factors like how someone is dressed (“Cosmetics count” as an uncle and former boss used to say), wealth (who doesn’t like being around the guys who have a “good” life) and education (who doesn’t like being around witty people), the biggest differentiator of class is in one’s behavior, particularly in how they treat those they perceive to be of a “lesser” social status.

I live in fear of being thought of as a “low life pariah.” So, I am extra conscious of being polite to the point of being meek whenever I speak to people like construction workers, street sweepers and maids. I believe that if I ever spoke like an “overlord” people around me would cringe in embarrassment of being in my company.  

 

He said it Best

One of the best impressions I had was of a former colleague. This colleague of mine is one of those chaps who is happily laid back and chilled out. His idea of “formal” dressing is a polo-t-shirt and he has no qualms about being known as “low-life-scum” (which he proudly told me was one of the email addresses he had). Yet, whenever I was around him, he was always polite. When we were served lunch at the client’s location, he made it a point to wash up (or in his words “don’t want them to think we’re animals”). His behavior was such that I understood him to be a high-class, well brought up person.

By comparison, I have met people who have everything that I don’t have like money, brains and hair. Yet, instead of feeling envy, I’ve been so repulsed by them that I’ve been praying for the opportunity to take a baseball bat to them and then to myself because I wouldn’t know how to clean of being contaminated by them. I meet a lot of such people in the liquidations industry. One of the very worst were a group of directors of a former listed construction company (the type that gets government contracts). Everyone in the group was well to do (the least paid was the finance manager on a small salary of $8,000 plus a month). Yet, they were repulsive and I cringed every time I was in their presence. You’re talking about guys who thought were pretty cool to be able to feed the 60 over construction workers they had not paid for several months and left on the construction site with no food, running water and a generator for electricity – which only had fuel for a few days by the time they went into provisional liquidation (and they only paid the said $600 because we advised them that they needed to get the workers off their payroll).

Working a “menial” job in my late thirties helped propel me into the leagues of the “class-sensitive.” I would notice that people who were nice to me but rather less so to my Pinoy or elderly colleagues, who were actually doing the same job as me.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a casual acceptance of what you’d call “pariah” behavior in Asia, especially if the pariah in question has a bit of money to throw around or comes from a prominent enough family. I remember an Italian colleague at the Bistrot getting the shock of her life when one of our customers, who happens to be from a wealthy enough family and a good friend of the Bistrot owner, slammed her class on the table in her direction. This girl’s sister used to think it was a point of generosity to invite the chef out to drink her left over wine. It was, as they say, acceptable behavior because she had money and came from a “good” family.

You could say that this is life. When dealing in business, you want the people with money to spend it with you, so you do what you need to do. However, that doesn’t mean that such pariahs need to be respected as anything more once they are of no use to the people who know how to speak human to each other.

How Much is this Going to Cost?

 Around a month ago, I got hit with a nasty gout attack that sent me to hospital. The pain was so bad that I was bed ridden to two-days and I needed to call an ambulance in order to get me to hospital. As it turned out, the hospital had a wonderful way of getting my mind of the excruciating pain – they told me that I needed to spend the night in hospital and the mind shifted away from the pain to “Oh God, how much is this going to cost me?” The focus went straight to ensuring that whatever ward the hospital placed me in, it would “NOT” be the exclusive one.

The truth is that health care in Singapore is exceedingly expensive. Even with government subsidies, one needs to consider every visit to the doctor carefully because chances the visit will set one back. I take myself as an example. Even when I had a corporate job that covered out patient costs, I made it a point to go to the polyclinics whenever I needed medical attention. The reason was and remains simple – polyclinics come with a government subsidy and although I’m all for supporting SME operations, taking the government subsidy is the only way I’ll be able to afford to get myself treated.

Unfortunately, healthcare is not the only thing that is expensive in Singapore. Houses and cars for example are a racket. I think of the shock that American relatives had when I told them that a million dollars was government subsidized housing. A million in America outside Beverly Hills and downtown Manhattan is a mansion. As for cars, we are probably the only place on the planet where one has to buy a piece of permission to buy a car (excluding import duties and so on), which costs as much as the car itself.

Houses and cars are just the tip of the ice berg. The Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPPL) and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) conducted a study that found that a couple of with a teenager and pre-teen, need a household income of $6,426 a month:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/family-of-four-needs-6426-a-month-for-basic-standard-of-living-in-spore-says

 

A sample of the costs of living in Singapore can be found at:

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Singapore

 

It’s no secret that the costs of living in Singapore are high. According to the 2020 World Economic Forum report, Singapore is the 14^th most expensive city in the world, ahead of famously expensive cities like New York and Osaka.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/world-most-expensive-cities-covid-paris-zurich-singapore/

 

In a way, the high cost of living in Singapore should not come as a surprise. We are a regional financial centre of a growing economic region. We are a small, crowded and prosperous place. So, it does without saying that things are going to be expensive.

However, the real issue is not so much that the city is expensive. The real issue, as stated in the Straits Times article is the fact that 30 percent of working households in Singapore cannot afford it. That’s just the lot that can’t afford it. The study doesn’t mention those who are “just getting by” nor does it go into detail as what people have to do to get by. The problem is not so much that Singapore is not expensive but whether Singapore is too expensive for Singaporeans. Monaco is famously expensive but its residents aren’t struggling to make ends meet.

Given Singapore has reached the stage of being famously expensive, one then has to ask how is it such that the government has been famously resistant to implementing a “minimum wage” and only recently took the position that firms would need to hire Singaporeans on no less than $1,400 a month. If you look at the numero.com report, it states that a single person in Singapore would need $1,338.16 without paying rent just to survive. This turn would mean that a low wage earning, with a minimum salary of $1,400 (before the 20 percent employee deduction) would not be able to meet the minimum cost of survival in Singapore.

So, what can be done? The usual refrain from the government is that it is moving away from its “non-welfarism” roots and subsidizing basic costs for things like housing. However, whilst there are times when subsidies may be necessary, that doesn’t come to the root of the issue. As Chinese medicine practitioners are prone to tell us – we need to treat the cause rather than the symptoms of the problem.

Let’s look at our wage structure. How can lower wage workers keep enough of his or her salary to survive and at the same time prepare for the future? Or, if one cannot earn a certain sum from one employer, what are the other avenues that one can take to earn extra. These are the questions that the authorities need to ask if the authorities want to ensure that Singapore does not become too expensive for Singaporeans.

"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that." – Bill Shankley, Former Member of Liverpool FC

 

Depending on who you support, it was either a brilliant Sunday or a pretty lousy one. Liverpool, one of England’s most famous clubs drubbed their long-time rivals Manchester United by five goals to zero, thanks to a hat trick from Egyptian striker “Mohamed Salah. The only possible description of the result was that it was a total humiliation for Manchester United, which for a long time was the “premium club” in the English Premier League.

One of the most striking outcomes of the match was a headline from the Daily Mirror, which called for the sacking of Mr. Ole Gunnar Solsjaer, the former Norwegian player who had helped the club as manager since the sacking of Jose Mourinho in 2017 but also of removing the influence of Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United’s legendary manager who served from 1886 to 2013 and retains influence as a director of the club. The story can be found at:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/ferguson-solskjaer-man-utd-liverpool-25284965

 

 The article argued that Manchester United need a “revolution” of sorts in order to get back to its glory days. It pointed out that while Mr. Ole Gunnar Solsjaer had been a decent player in his day, he was simply not up to the job of managing one of the world’s greatest football clubs. However, the bigger problem was not so much the current manager not being up to the job but management of the club was still treating the words of the former manager as gospel and his influence had become a hinderance to what needed to be done.

This main thrust of this article seemed eerily familiar. In Singapore, the main thrust of the Daily Mirror article is very prominent in our most visible spectator sport – politics. Ever since our first Prime Minister and official poster boy for “developing nations,” Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, removed himself from public life in 2011, Singapore has been one what you’d call “automatic pilot.”

Like Manchester United, things seem fairly respectable. We remain high up on the list of key international rankings relating to the standard of living and doing business. Once in a while the government doles out cash to keep the citizens happy and as a few of my friends from elsewhere are prone to say to me, “What exactly are you complaining about? It’s worse elsewhere.”

However, whilst things may look good on the surface, all is not well beneath the surface. Take the management of Covid-19 as an example. Despite rising case numbers and deaths, our numbers look relatively good and our vaccination rates are high. Yet, despite this, our we seem to be running on a rather confused mode. One day, one minister will say that we’ve got to live with the virus and open up. The next day there will be a clamping down on movement. Nobody seems clear about what is going on and our reputation of being boringly predictable has been taking something of a beating.

What’s going on? “Official Singapore” takes pride in good governance. However, if you look at the often-contradictory policies around Covid, it would seem that no one is really taking charge when there is the greatest need for someone to be in charge.

The only time that the government has acted in a seemingly decisive manner has been in passing laws that have the potential to silence critics like the “Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act” (POFOMA), which was passed in 2019 and more recently the “Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act,” (FICA). Whilst nobody is denying the necessity of such acts, the way in which both acts were passed do give our magically unconflicted writer and enforcer of laws a lot of say in defining what type of speech is considered bad for national security.

What’s going on? You could argue that Singapore’s leadership has been looking a little like Manchester United’s in the post Ferguson era – directionless. Whilst our current leaders have not exhibited the gross incompetence of other parts of the world, they’ve been more like managers of a plane on auto-pilot, letting things run along and tinkering with it once in a while. There hasn’t been a “vision” or for want of a corporate term a “mission statement” as to where they see Singapore heading to.

Like Manchester United, Singapore seems a little too fixated with a past leader, specifically our late first Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, who served as our first Prime Minister until he stepped aside in 1990 and stuck around on the tax payer’s dime in the cabinets of his successors first as Senior Minister and then as Minister Mentor.

Being critical of Mr. Lee in Singapore is like being critical of Sir Alex at Man United. It’s bloody hard to do in as much as both men built their respective organizations into something exceedingly successful. As they say, both men were not getting something right – they got most of it right.

However, that very success has become the key problem in as much as their successors have been trying to repeat and regurgitate the old rule book and what was successful in a different era isn’t necessarily the right solution for the moment. Furthermore, unlike Sir Alex, Mr. Lee has been dead for six-years and one would imagine that it would be easier to cut ties with his legacy.

Singapore, like Manchester United needs to be go through a period of leadership renewal. Hopefully Singapore will use Covid-19 just as Manchester United will use this drubbing by Liverpool to do the necessary.

Crazily Entertaining Creepy A***holes

 

If you want to do a study of Singapore, you could do no worse than to read the “White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga. This book irritates the hell out of my expat Indian friends because he gives the “shinning India” that former Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee a “good dressing down” in a very sarcastic manner. The novel’s main character talks about India being divided into the “light” and the “darkness” and divides the caste system into “men with bellies” and “men without bellies.”

As much as my Singaporean friends would hate to admit, what the White Tiger describes of India, also applies to Singapore when it comes to the area of foreign worker relations. If you look at the industries involving foreign labour, there is inevitably the “light” and “dark” Singapore. Talking about light and darkness in these industries has racial undertones in as much as the people living in the “light” are inevitably Chinese and thus fair skinned and the people living in the “dark” are usually South Asians, who are inevitably a darker shade of pink.

The differences between the light and dark in these industries is more than skin deep. The people in the light inevitably live comfortable lives, whilst the lives of the people in the dark, is well, pretty dark.

Covid-19 made this very clear. The thing that caused our first major outbreak that led to the initial circuit breaker in April 2020 came from an outbreak in the worker dormitories, which is filled with people who live in the darkness. It shouldn’t have surprised anyone because, foreign workers had died of other diseases due to unsanitary living conditions and a virus that thrives on close human contact found a very fertile breading ground in the worker dormitories. The then Minister for Manpower, Ms. Josephine Teo had the unenviable task of admitting that the worker dormitories were unsatisfactory and a government that made so much about doing the right thing rather than the easy thing was also forced to admit that they had held back on pushing the construction industry to upgrade conditions for workers because the industry would squeal about the rising costs.

At the onset of the outbreak, the government stepped in and agreed to share the costs in helping the dormitory operators get their facilities up to a livable standard. Personally, I thought this was offensive. The “dormitory” business is highly profitable, doesn’t create anything of great value or create high paying jobs for Singaporeans so there’s no logical or moral reason for the tax payer to subsidize them for providing the basics to their customers. Singapore takes great pride in being “non-welfare,” especially when it comes to lower income people asking for a few cents more. I took issue with this and got a letter published in the Straits Times Forum (Singapore’s flagship daily) questioning why companies like Centurion Corporation, which made S$103 million in profit on revenue of $133 million should receive money from the tax payer. My letter can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/forum-let-dormitory-operators-face-the-music-themselves

Mr. Koh Chee Min, the CEO of Centurion Corporation thought I was worthy enough of a reply and set out to set me straight on my “mistaken beliefs” about how dormitory operator’s function. He accepted that standards had to be raised in view of Covid and assured the public in his letter that he was glad that we had discovered concern for migrant workers. His letter can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/forum-worker-dorms-have-recreational-facilities-programmes-for-community-living

You could argue that mistakes were bound to happen in the initial stages of the pandemic. It was unique situation and the government had its reasons for stepping in to help the dormitory operators to bring their buildings up to scratch. You would also have assumed that the government and the operators would have worked some form of contingency planning.

Let’s be clear, the Singapore government is known around the world for being far sighted. Our government is known for planning for every possible scenario.

Yet, more than one year after the tax payer was forced to bail out a highly profitable industry, the issues have clearly not been solved. This was made clear when riot police had to be called in to deal with workers in the Westlite Jalan Tukang Dormitory who had the audacity to be unhappy about their living conditions (contrary to popular belief, people who are forced to live in disease causing conditions are bound to get upset and you cannot argue that the people making others live in such conditions are the victims). The story can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/workers-at-jurong-dorm-allege-neglect-frustrated-with-lack-of-medical-care-for

 

He sleeps here in a pandemic

So, here’s the question – if the tax payer had to step into subsidise the dormitory owners in an extraordinary time, why was it such that this incident happened? The only response that the employer (SembCorp Marine) and the dormitory operator (Westlite, which is owned by Centurion Corporation) have offered an apology of sorts and mentioned something about conducting regular testing.

However, why is there even a need for an apology. The incident should never have happened in the first place. Unlike last year, we know more about Covid and its clear that protocols should have been put into place. They clearly were not and I’ve argued in public that this is not how things should be, as expressed in my letter which was published by the Straits Times:

https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/forum/forum-more-can-still-be-done-to-manage-covid-19-situation-in-foreign-worker-dorms

 

Tax payer money was used to ensure that the dormitories would not be an issue in the fight against Covid. Yet this has not been the case. Hopefully the tax payer did not have to help sustain the lifestyle of Mr. Koh’s boss’s wife:

https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/home-design/party-in-season

 

So, she can continue living here:

It should be noted that Centurion Corporation’s financial figures have remained very healthy. While they have dipped a little (which business hasn’t in these times), the shareholders have no reason to be unhappy with what’s being delivered:

https://centurion.listedcompany.com/financials.html

 

Covid-19 has caused a lot of misery around the world. However, it has caused many of us to relook at social contracts. Why should the highly profitable receive tax payer subsidies to provide the service that they’re selling? Shouldn’t people who take public money be held accountable to the public?  

Cheaply Employed Cheating A***oles

 

I’ve avoided talking about doing business with India and Indians in my blog because it’s a highly emotive topic that can spin out of control. My experiences when dealing with Singapore’s complex communal relations are not the ordinary. If you look at certain segment of Singapore’s cyberspace, you’re bound to get the impression that the Indians from India are a group of devious crooks with fake qualifications, looking to displace Singaporeans and to screw them in the process. This has not been my personal experience with the Indian expat community. This was the community that gave an unknown freelancer with no “big agency” experience chances that would otherwise be unimaginable. It will, forever be stuck in my memory that on the one occasion I, as an individual, was allowed to pitch for a government related job was because of an Indian born member of the board of that particular agency fought for me, while the born, bread and prospered Singaporeans dismissed me as “THAT BLOGGER.”

Never the less, I do work to see it from the side of the guys who have had different experiences with our new migrants from the less developed world. Yes, it cannot be easy to slog for a degree and then get rejected from jobs that you believe to be yours and everyone you meet in the HR department happens to be from a particular community.

So, I avoided getting involved in the discussion on the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement or “CECA” for those reasons. However, a few days back, I got involved with a discussion with a couple of friends about India and in that discussion, someone mentioned words of the effect of how people enjoying a good life in India was due to the fact that Singapore was providing it. That got me thinking – are we really that unaware of our geopolitical reality?

If you look at the basics, there’s a lot to commend about Singapore. We’re rich, clean and green. Singapore is safe. Unless you’re exceedingly unlucky and end up on the receiving end of a random psychopath, nothing bad is likely to happen to you. Our relatively rapid rise up the prosperity ladder gave Lee Kuan Yew a second career as the world’s consultant on nation building.

While Singapore and to be fair, the late Mr. Lee got many things right, we need to remember that we are still a very small dot on the scale of things and when it comes to the negotiating table, we actually have very few cards to play with. We’ve gotten this far by playing the few cards we’ve had quite well but fact remains – things are not necessarily in our favour.

This becomes clear when you talk about CECA and our relationship with India. Could we have negotiated a better deal? Sure, we could have, as they always are in hindsight. However, we need to look at how we negotiated given our position.

I know many will argue that India and Indians across the social spectrum (from Bank CEO to construction worker) earn “good” money in Singapore, which they probably would not have earnt back in India. It is also true that Singapore is India’s largest foreign direct investor, having invested some US$15 billion from April to December 2020 and accounting for nearly a third of foreign direct inflows into India as is outlined by the following report:

https://www.india-briefing.com/news/india-reports-us81-72-billion-in-fdi-in-fy21-top-trends-22366.html/

While this may be true, one should not get the impression that India would collapse if Singapore were to remove its investments in India and to stop all Indians in Singapore from remitting money back to India. Sure, many people in India would be less comfortable or may even starve to death. However, if you were to look the larger picture, Foreign Investment actually plays a negligible in India’s overall economy (in 2019 FDI inflows made up 1.8 percent of GDP). By comparison, foreign investment is an integral part of Singapore’s overall economy making up 32 percent of total GDP.

While India has been “waking up” to the value of attracting foreign investment, the Indian economy has been driven primarily on its large domestic market. Singapore by contrast has no viable domestic market to speak of and needs inflows of foreign investment to keep going.

As the following diagram shows, our largest source of inward investment remains Western, specifically Europe and the USA.

https://www.singstat.gov.sg/find-data/search-by-theme/trade-and-investment/foreign-direct-investment/visualising-data/foreign-direct-investment-in-singapore-dashboard

 

However, as Donald Trump made very clear, one cannot expect the Western World to guarantee our economic or military security. A small nation like Singapore needs all the friends that it can get.

Then, add to the fact that the newest “geopolitical” bully is China, which has become more “assertive” under President Xi. Given that China is a billion-person market and an increasingly prosperous one, its negotiating position at the geopolitical one is strong (though one can argue that they will make mistakes and overreach).

So, given that our “traditional” friends are unlikely to want to cross swords with China over us in any given hypothetical scenario, we do need to cultivate more friends.

Incidentally, the only nation that has the “mass” to match China is India. Former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbot has said as much:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/india-the-sensible-substitute-for-belligerent-beijing/news-story/2d7940c990e38bb4c4574c38c2c45e79

 

The rough patch in China-Western relations has been a boon for India. If we were to ever pull out of India, the major players on the global stage would step in. While Narendra Modi may have attended Lee Kuan Yew’s funeral, he was also becoming best friends with then Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe.

In crudest terms, we actually need India more than India actually needs us. There are undoubtedly massive problems with and within India, which have only been amplified by Covid. The majority of Indians live in dreadful poverty, there are security issues, environmental issues and so on. However, India remains the most viable option to China and, especially in the last two years increasingly a place that businesses have to be in.

So, what exactly can we offer? Like the Virgin Group, our most promising asset is actually our “brand.” I know of an Indian born entrepreneur, who stated that being known as a “Singapore Company” allowed him to charge more than if he was an “Indian” Company.

Singapore may no longer be “cost-competitive” but we do have a reputation for being reliable and for doing good enough work for the international market. This makes us attractive to the world’s brains. If you think about it, it is a good thing that people want to come here.

Ironically, this is probably our only “real” card in negotiations with admittedly less developed but bigger countries like India. We need to show the world that things like rule of law matter. We need to show that we treat entrepreneurs fairly. Singapore may not have many cards to play but we need to continue playing the few that we have well.

Ultimately, It’s About Culture

 Saw a letter in the Straits Times Forum at this start of the month, which came from a school teacher who argued that having smaller class sizes helped to foster “innovative” thinking. The forum letter can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/forum/forum-smaller-class-sizes-foster-independent-thinking

She’s right. It easier to generate and encourage discussion with a smaller group. Universities, for example work on the principle that you have lectures, which is a time to listen to a learned professor drone on about something or other. Then you have your seminars, which are smaller group discussions and supposed to be where you do your real learning (at Goldsmiths in the late 1990s, you had to attend a minimum number of seminars to graduate but nobody cared about your attendance at lectures). Churches work on a similar system – there is the sermon and then the private sessions.

 

You’re more like to be open up here:

 

Than here.  

In Asia, where “face” is an integral part of culture and the message of how the needs and rights of the individual are always secondary to that of a group, you’ll find that people are highly reluctant to stand out and express themselves. Government press conferences in Singapore, are the perfect example of this. Unlike the mad scramble of the White House press briefing room, our press conferences are inevitably quiet. It takes a while for reporters to ask questions and the people conducting the press conference don’t actually like questions.

The one personal example that comes to mind is back in 2006 when, during the visit of the late Saudi Crown Prince Sultan, who was giving the Singapore Lecture. I was asked to brief the Saudi corp-comms team. Told them that in the post 9-11 world, they had to be prepared for “awkward” questions about terrorism and the price of oil, but then I assured them they would have a totally different problem – a lack of questions. Interestingly enough, I was proved right. The Crown Prince delivered his lecture. The Chairman, who was then Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, opened the floor to a single “NON-TIME-WASTING” question.

This incident highlights one of the undiscussed aspects of fostering independent thinking that’s often left out of the discussion – namely culture. The size of the group or the discussion is irrelevant if it happens in a place where the culture does not encourage independent thought.

That particular Singapore lecture was a perfect example. It was actually accepted that a government official could declare the nature of questions asked at a public event where media would be present. As with the word “responsible,” who is to decide on what constituted “time-wasting.”

When you work in a system where the man speaking is the person with power over your livelihood and shown a willingness to use that power – you learn to tread very carefully. Our first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew was clear that the media would serve his agenda rather than the other way round. There were no defined “OB” markers as in places like Saudi Arabia (don’t touch Islam or Royalty) or Malaysia (No Bumiputra Issues) and so editors learnt to er of the side of caution. Rewards for “independence” were not rewarded and “complying” meant a safe and comfortable life. I think of veteran journalist, Clement Mesenas who led the last journalist strike in 1971. He once stated that the success of the strike was in a way the downfall of independent journalism – the government saw to it that journalists were paid well and it was not in their interest to “rock the boat.”

A look back at another press event where I was invited to. Our then Minister of Communications, Dr. Lee Boon Yang (who is interestingly enough Chairman of Singapore Press Holdings) gave a prepared speech. Then, Carl Bildt, former Swedish Prime Minister delivered his speech. Even the Ministry of Communications had to admit that the Swedish Minister simply outshone ours. The reason is simple, our minister operates in an environment where he arrives at events and tells people what to do. The Swedish minister operates in an environment where he is constantly judged and has to answer questions. Carl Bildt is comfortable being open in public with people who question and think differently. Dr. Lee is not.

It’s this simple. If you want to really foster independent thinking, you have to ensure that there is a culture that does not punish people who raise questions. You need a system where those in authority are comfortable with having a dialogue rather than giving dictation. The size of your classes will not matter as long as the culture does not permit discussion and independent thought.

The General Who Knew the Field Officers Were Usually Right.

 

Copyright – Bloomberg

Colin Powell, the first African-American to be Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff died passed away today (18 October 2021). He was 84 and he died of complications from Covid-19. The full story of his passing can be found at:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58957273

I grew up in the UK during the first Gulf War, when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under the first President Bush. The media made much of the fact that he was the first black man to reach the highest ranks of the US military. He was, as they say, a media personality in the making in that he was a black and had climbed the ranks of a conservative institution, when most black people that were talked about in the media were either sports stars, rappers or civil rights activist.

As the obituaries are coming in from the great and the good, I shall try to limit myself to two particular aspects of Colin Powell, since my knowledge comes from reading about him from a different part of the world and never serving in the institution that was most beloved to him – the US Army.

The first thing that one could say about Colin Powell has become particularly pertinent in today’s age of divisive politics. The late General was someone who could function in an environment with people whom he disagreed with.

Powell served with both Republican and Democrat administration. He was National Security Advisor under Regan, Chairman of the Joint-Chiefs under the first Bush and Bill Clinton before rising to the ranks of Secretary of State under the second Bush. If you read his biography “My American Journey,” he managed to find something good to say about all the administrations he worked for and whatever criticisms he had of his political masters were inevitably professional. Although appointed by Brush the first, Powell continued to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and despite the initial fracas over the “Don’t Ask, don’t tell” policy regarding homosexuals, he actually got along with Bill Clinton, the Democrat who had effectively ended the career of his “mentor” (as things would have it, Bill Clinton and George Bush the first would eventually become close).

Then in 2008, when a young Barak Obama was running for president and facing accusations of being a “Muslim,” Powell, a card-carrying member of the Republican Party came out to say “So what if Obama is a Muslim.”

This aspect of General Powell’s story shouldn’t be extraordinary. However, in a world of “With us or Against us,” it is. He understood that it was the objective that was important rather than the ideological differences. Hence, he was able to work with both Democrats and Republicans.

The second aspect of Colin Powell comes from his post public service career as a leadership guru. The man was filled with common sense and ten of his better leadership quotes can be seen in the following link:

https://news.clearancejobs.com/2021/04/27/powerful-words-from-colin-powell-top-10-quotes-from-decades-of-service/

One of the things that struck me came from a book about him that I was browsing in the book shop. He stated that he tended to side with his field officers over his staff officers. An extract of his explanation can be found in the following interview with Forbes Magazine:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2012/05/17/colin-powell-exclusive-advice-for-entrepreneurs/?sh=7e0be5496002

He wisely says, “I have sort of always felt that the guys in the field are closer to the troops, closer to the problem, who are actually executing what’s supposed to be done by the organization, they should have a better understanding of what’s going on, so if they tell me something is wrong, I am going to assume they are right.”

If you look his words, you’ll realise that this is common sense for most situations. The guys in the best position to deal with any given problem are the guys on the ground rather than the guys sitting in offices far away from the problem. The worst people to deal with any particular problem are the guys sitting far away in ivory towers and getting excited over statistics.

Yet, while this is common sense, the system that we live in tends to reward the guy furthest away from the problem rather than the actual problem solver. In Singapore, for example, we get particularly excited about paying our political leaders a lot of money but struggle to pay rank and file workers a few cents more. Our military is run on a system where anything resembling field experience (actually facing bullets) is something of a handicap and the guys who are on the field doing the work get shafted by the paper pushers.

To be fair, this isn’t limited to the military or even to Singapore. One of our media organisations was once known to have a surplus of vice-presidents but a lack of producers. Everybody wants to be a boss and nobody wants to be the guy actually doing things.

If Colin Powell is to leave a legacy, it should be a reminder that it’s the people on the field, in the battle field who actually know what’s going on. We should trust the people doing the work rather than the people sitting behind desk and screens and jacking off over statistics

How Do You Know When You’ve Got it Right?

 

One of the things that we tend to forget in our current “polarized” world, is the fact that “balance” and objectivity are supposed to be the Holy Grail of good journalism. A journalist is not supposed to take sides when reporting the news and even when he or she writes an opinion piece, there is supposed to be a certain amount of objectivity involved (ie, although my opinion is x,y,or z, I’ve only reached this opinion by coming to a,b and c facts).

I grew up in a part of England where your social status was pretty judged by the newspaper you read. Hence, when a business partner’s former employee mentioned that a former supervisor was a white Englishman who read the Daily Mail and talked a lot about the good old days when the White Expats ran the show, I just rolled my eyes and said that he couldn’t be anyone’s superior because, well he was a Daily Mail reader.

To be fair to the Daily Mail, it is what you can call the paper read by the people who are married to the people who run the country. Sure, the Mail wasn’t something that you’d take pride in being known to read. However, it wasn’t something that would make you cringe if your friends saw you with a copy.

That label was reserved for the Sun, which remains the top selling paper in the UK. The process of creating the Sun is masterful. However, it wasn’t a paper that people who took pride in having a year or two of former schooling would want to be seen reading. The old joke says that people read the Sun, don’t care as long as there are tits on page three (back when page-three of the Sun featured a topless girl). To put it crudely, the news that the average Sun reader was focused on was the pair on page three.

What made the difference between the “intelligent” papers like the Times, Telegraph, Financial Time and the Guardian and the “plebs” paper like the Sun, Daily Sport and News of the World? The answer was in headlines. The headline of the first group were inevitably more toned down. Even if there was a different political slant (Telegraph is proudly conservative and the Guardian is intellectually to the left), the political bias reflected by the paper was always subtle.

There is no pretense of objectivity when it comes to writing headlines for the second group. The slant of the paper is inevitably obvious. A sample of the Sun’s headlines can be seen below:

 

Copyright – The Sun.

Leaving aside whatever biases and snobbery that I have, it’s the second group that actually wins elections. The most famous example was in the 1992 General Election which was barely won by John Major, who had spent most of the election trailing in the polls. After the election, the Sun made its role in the Conservative party election quite clear:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It#:~:text=%22It's%20The%20Sun%20Wot%20Won,become%20a%20British%20political%20catchphrase.

 

 

This was something that the opposition became aware of and prior to his landslide victory in 1997, Tony Blair made it a point to court the Sun’s owner, Rupert Murdoch into ensuring that the Sun switched over to Mr. Blair’s “New Labour.”

The role of the Sun in the British election process is merely an example of the role that the media can play in the political process. In his book, “From Third World to First,” Mr. Lee Kuan Yew made it very clear that the media would always be subservient to him. There would never be a version of Rupert Murdoch coming out of Singapore. Mr. Lee’s classic line with the media would always be “Who Elected You?”

Generally speaking, Singapore’s media has given the veneer of being like the British Broadsheets. There’s never been room for sensationalizing headlines in the way that happen in the British Tabloid edition. The New Paper, our original tabloid did cover a few interesting stories like the one I was quoted in below, but nothing came close to the stuff that the Sun comes up with:

https://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20120531-349614.html

However, the problem that many journalists found was that, the “subtle” slant in the Singapore mainstream was never really subtle. Editors in Singapore have been trained to be “responsible,” and news, as Lee Kuan Yew fully intended it to, was designed to serve the national agenda (which if you work on the premise that he was the government ……)

Then, when “online” media came into being, there was the other extreme and government was officially branded as something to be “wacked” as often as possible.  

My own journey as a published writer has been about trying to ride between these two forces. In my early days in public relations (PR) one had to be exceedingly careful about not offending editors and, incidentally, the first paper to publish me was Today, which at the time was considered an “opposition” paper because Singapore Press Holdings didn’t own it. The key to getting published was to be questioning enough to be interesting but not to an extent that the editors would not want you near them.

Then, as more of my writing ended up being my own blog, I had a bit more freedom to express myself (since I am the final arbitrator of what goes onto the blog). Never thought much of the blog until one day I noticed that people were reading and then larger websites like TRemeritus and Independent Singapore started picking up my pieces.

As I wrote more and got published more, I had two surprises. One was branding or at least the type that raises a few eye brows. I remember someone who was trying to start a newspaper saying that his biggest worry about engaging me was the fact that I was known as a “political writer.” That was astounding to me. I didn’t know that I was known at all. Interestingly enough, I would have a similar conversation with a potential client who thought me of as being “anti-establishment.”

Interestingly enough, I developed a peculiar fan base on TRemeritus, which claims to be the opposite of the mainstream. However, this time, I wasn’t known as a “political writer,” but as a troll from the ruling party’s internet brigade. My favourite young Muslim politician who grew up as PAP groupie takes delight in calling me up to tell me about all the funny accusations against me from the online crowd, claiming that my ability to give b***j*** in the ruling party had brought me a substantial fortune (which would be OK as accusations go if I actually had a substantial fortune and didn’t need to ask people for money).

Being “branded” by these parties has been educational. It makes you understand that if you are in “nobody’s camp” in a known way, chances are you are not going to have any friends.

More importantly, you find that basic objectivity is going to be offensive to somebody or other and in a day and age of the internet, they’re bound to let you know.

The third point is that, if you want to have your name in the public, you’re going to have to expect people to take issue with you. If you don’t like people taking issue with you, you have no business being in the public.

Generally speaking, I guess I must have hit the right balance of being pro and anti-establishment when I get branded for belonging to the other party. I take joy in the fact that in same part of cyberspace, I get scolded and praised as I did when TRemeritus picked up my piece on God-Kings.

 

 

 

 

 

What You See is What You Get.

 

The great aftermath of the debate on the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act (“FICA”) cane in the form of a letter from the Ministry of Home Affairs (“MHA”) to nine individuals who had the misfortune of reprinting a quote from Mothership, which turned out to be a misquote.” The full story can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/mha-asks-nine-to-correct-false-statements-apologise-for-misrepresenting-ministers

The quote from Mothership gave the impression that our writer and enforcer of laws didn’t believe in the concept of “Rule of Law,” when in fact the Minister had argued that the concept of the “Rule of Law” had been fundamental to Singapore and countries that did not have rule of law often found the experience to be miserable.

 "The posts in question had completely misstated what Mr Shanmugam had said at the debate on the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act, or Fica, MHA said.

"The minister had said in Parliament that rule of law is fundamental and basic for Singapore and its success, and the Government has always been committed to the rule of law and continues to be committed to it," MHA's statement said.

"He also said that there are countries around the world where the rule of law is a concept for lawyers, but does not operate in the real world, and their societies live in utter misery."

Singapore has always taken pride in the fact that we are a society “ruled by laws.” In layman terms, this means that we’re ruled by a set of laws and you get punished if you break the laws, regardless of who you are.

This is what you’d call our trump card when dealing with foreign investors. I remember IMMPAct 2013, when then Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean was asked about Singapore’s rising cost for foreign investors. His remark was that while costs were going up, in Singapore it was a case of “What you see is what you get.” We tell foreign investors that even if costs in Singapore are high compared to other places, the laws will protect them.

This has been a fairly successful line. I remember Polaris (now hived off into Virtusa and Intellect Design Arena) stating that Singapore was their Asia-Pacific Headquarters and all contracts in the region were signed under Singapore Law. Our legal infrastructure is a selling point.

As with international measures of corruption, we ranking exceedingly well in terms of rule of law. According to the World Justice Project (WJP), we are the 12^th best when it comes to rule of law – the ranking ahead of the United Kingdom (Home of the Common Law) and the United States (World Champion of Rule of Law). Details of how we rank can be seen at:

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

 

https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/country/2020/Singapore/

 

Our ranking in terms of rule of law is very respectable. In terms of rule of law, we rank with the best of the developed world. However, there are some questions that need to be raised.

The key question to our global standing might sound mean spirited. A ranking of 12^th best place for rule of law is exceedingly respectable and it’s clear that we rank with the best of the developed world rather than as an “s**hole” country in one of the most fundamental aspects of what constitutes a “civilized” nation. However, Singapore’s ministers are paid more than their global counterparts on the premise that they are the least corrupt and the most competent that money can buy. Given that our writer and enforcer of laws is paid more than his global counterparts, the very least we should expect to rank is in the top 10. Furthermore, one should note that although our 2020 ranking is highly respectable, our score has dropped.

The answer to why we’re not in the top 10, where we should be, probably lies in the factors eight factors that the WJP took into consideration. If you look at how we compared, we were in the top five in the global rankings (out of 128 nations) for things like absence of corruption, order and security and regulatory enforcement. Our regional comparison (out of 15 was even better). We were number one in absence of corruption, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice and criminal justice.

Where we fall down were in things like constraint of government power (29/128 on the global scale and 6/15 on the regional scale), open government (26/128 on the global scale and 6/15 on the regional scale) and fundamental rights (32/128 on the global scale and 5/15 on the regional scale). A fuller analysis of our ranking can be seen at:

https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/country/2020/Singapore/  

 

What accounts for this disparity in the factors? One could argue that the concept of “rule of law” fails to talk about what laws we’re talking about. If you look at the factors where Singapore is in the top five, you’ll notice that they cover areas that foreign investors look at – i.e. if one puts money into a country, one needs assurance that one won’t be shaken down by the government or that one will be able to get a fair hearing in the local system if one needs to take enforcement action.

Where Singapore is clearly less good at, is in constraints on government power and fundamental rights of the everyday man. The rankings are high enough not to scare people away. This is not some s***hole country where people can be made to disappear at the whim of someone with money or power or both. However, it indicates that certain basic things are not a priority for the people designing the system. If you can rank highly in the top five for five out of a possible eight, why can’t you do the same in the remaining three factors.

Constraints on government power is clearly a weakness in our system of rule of law and yet, this doesn’t seem to bother the man in charge of law writing and enforcement. Just as he was quick to send a nasty letter out to the nine individuals to clarify what he said, he was rather dismissive of the concept of restraining the executive. As was reported in the Straits Times (not a bastion of anti-establishment propaganda) “he agreed that while executive powers must be subject to checks and balances, the questions are in what form and what are the appropriate and best solutions for Singapore's context.” This is executive speak for “not a priority,” (if it was, he would have seen that solution was written into the act).

As per my previous posting on “God-Kings,” Singapore is lucky that the current crop of people in power are relatively benign and not inclined to abuse things. However, there is no guarantee that this will always be the case and both Singaporeans and the foreign investor community will need assurance that all future governments will value “rule of law.” Improving things like constraints on government power and open government are the very things that will ensure we have rule of law and disregarding them will be the very actions that send our WJP rankings down the tube.