My Father Will…….

 My weekend indulgence was binge watching the Netflix series, “Inventing Anna.” The series tells the story of Ms. Anna Sorokin, who conned the New York elite and top hotels out of nearly US$300,000 worth of hotel stays. She did so by adopting the name of Anna Delvey and told everyone she was a German Heiress with some serious trust fund money behind her.

As you watch the series, you will notice that whenever “Anna” got into trouble, she will inevitably use the line “My father will……” Since everyone was hopping to get the money from “her father,” the line usually worked. Even at the end, when she was yelling at her lawyer to conduct the trial in the manner that she wanted, she yells “My father will replace you,” even though it was clear to everyone that at this stage of the game the lawyer had spoken to her father and realized that he wasn’t the all-powerful person she had made him out to be and more importantly, her father made it clear that he wasn’t going to bail her out of the mess that she had created.

What makes this segment particularly attention grabbing is the fact that it underlined one of the sad truths of modern life – namely the fact that who you are often counts more than what you are. It is, funnily true in societies that are ruled by republics as much as its true in monarchies. Both Qusay and Uday, the sons of Saddam Hussein got away with pretty much what they wanted in Iraq because nobody in their right mind wanted to cross their “Daddy.”

Qusay and Uday are probably the most extreme examples of people who have used “Daddy” to get away with murder (in this case quite literally). There are less-extreme examples of how the term “Daddy” is used by people to get away with things. There is the example of a former US president who got an exemption from military service during the Vietnam War because the pediatrist wanted to gain favour from his landlord. Much more subtle than Saddam Hussein’s boys but it was still a case of “Daddy’s” name being used to get special favour.

Here in Singapore, we have a special twist on this whole obsession with Daddy. We’ve actually institutionalized it. How does this happen in a society that is officially obsessed with being a “meritocracy” where people are officially promoted based on merit and merit alone?

Well, unlike Saddam’s Iraq or even modern-day USA, there is an amount of subtlety and magic that goes on in this Singapore system. Look at the “White Horse” system in the military. A former Minister of State for Defense said that we have a “White Horse” system in the military where sons of prominent people are marked out so that we ensure that nobody gives them special treatment. I suspect the poor man understood the term “equal treatment” in the same way as the pigs in Animal Farm understood it – “All Animals are Equal – Some are more Equal than others.” I remember being told by a former army colleague that he served in a scholar platoon during his basic military training and somehow finished three months of basic military training without having to do a push up as punishment.

As with everything in Singapore, the root out our “Daddy” issues goes back to our “Founding Father,” the late Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, who in many ways, was a great man. If you look at what Mr. Lee did, it’s quite obvious that he was right on so many of the big issues of the day. As the writer Robert Elegant said, “He alone of his contemporaries ruled wisely,” and Singapore has much to thankful for.

So, whatever you think of Mr. Lee, his “brand” image as the father of modern Singapore is not misplaced. However, whilst Mr. Lee was in many ways a good father, there was flaw in his parenting. He a little overprotective of his family and to an extent that rubbed off onto the people who were in power alongside him.

 

 Was he an Overprotective Father? – New York Times

In fairness to Mr. Lee, he was a strict father and his children had to earn their keep so to speak. Both our Prime Minister and his brother, went through national service and had to earn their degree. Lee Hsien Loong had to get elected as a member of parliament and Lee Hsien Yang had to do work in places like SingTel. This was unlike the case of the Suharto children who got the best parts of the Indonesian Economy merely because they were Suharto’s kids.

However, while there is no record of Mr. Lee ordering people to give his kids special privileges, he allowed a culture where certain things merely happened just because the “underlings” knew who the guy’s father was. If you look meet a few “White Horses,” you’ll notice that most of them are actually nice people who have been well brought up. They generally don’t pull the “My father will…..” trick. While part of that may be due to their upbringing, there is actually no need for them to do so because people assume that their “father” will want this and that for their children.

Take the ever-sensitive issue of national service postings. There was the case of our former president. His son was mysteriously given a 12-year deferment to study and when he came back to to serve his time, he was sent to that most prominent of security threats – studying soil. This happened when the father was minister of defense. There is no evidence that the father wanted it so and there is no evidence that the son insisted on making it so. It merely happened that way.

The government needs to understand that being a “meritocracy” means just that and whilst individual ministers and their families may not want their kids to be marked out for special privileges, they also need to ensure that there is a culture in the civil service where people are genuinely willing to do things whether the other chap is related to someone important. It’s only when the culture allows underlings to be objective that we can honestly call ourselves a meritocracy.