God The Politician

 I’ve often stated that when it comes to religion, I am a Buddhist student of Christian theology who has been blessed by Muslims, Jains and Hindus. Someone on Tremertitus described my situation as messed up and a few people have suggested to me that my I’m destined for hell and that my lack of material success is down to my inability to devote myself exclusively to a single God.

I think of this as a blessing. My experiences with people of different creeds has made me understand that there is yet to be a single faith with a monopoly on virtuous people and no religion has a monopoly of arseholes. I’ve often said that the best and worst paymasters I’ve had were both Tamil and Catholic. I’ve noticed that the Almighty tends to come to us in different forms. For me, while I will bow to Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist statues as much as I cross myself every time, I pass a church, I tend to see the presence of the almighty as a guidance rather than an active player. Prayer is an act to assurance.

It’s not the same for everyone else. For the entrepreneur I married, prayer is the seeking of blessings in business. For others, God is a doctor and a banker. I’ve heard that people experience cures from things that the doctors had described as incurable. The Old Rogue used to say, “We are more than just a collection of atoms,” and you can’t write off everything as mumbo-jumbo.

Having said that, I do believe that there are professions where God should not enter. I’ve stated previously and I’ll never tire of saying it, God should not be in real estate. Just look at the insolvable issue between Israel and Palestine. Two groups of people which share so many similarities have been unable to settle a land dispute for nearly a century because they were under the impression that God was a real estate broker for certain parts of the desert.

The second profession where God should not enter is of course, politics. If you look at human history, you will notice that God does not exactly have the best of records when it comes to politics. OK, I’m saying that I think that politician should be without faith. I do believe that faith can help make a person better and as having good people in politics is imperative.

What I do object do is you have people coming into office on the grounds that they are God’s exclusive agents on earth. The problem with that is that the people who usually come in on the ground of being “God’s Exclusive,” have a way of ensuring that they do everything else except what you’d imagine God would want them to do.

Take the world’s most prominent theocracy as an example. Iran has a dual system of government where there is an elected president and parliament. However, the elected portion of government is subordinate to the guys who are nominally chosen by God. Iran’s presidents are all limited by term limits. The Supreme Leader stays for life and pretty much nothing gets done in Iran without the permission of the Supreme leader. So, despite being filled with highly educated and rational people, Iran remains unable to interact with the wider world because, well God’s agents don’t see the need to.

Once again, arseholes are not limited to a single religion. Buddhist Burma has been involved one of the worst human rights abuses of all times with massacre of the Rohingya population. In Israel, the Sha’s party of extreme Orthodox Jews prevents any form of intelligent settlement with the Palestinians.

One of my favourite examples of why we need to keep God of politics is in America, where the current President has chosen to have a rather interesting spiritual advisor. This is woman is called Paula White..

To be fair to Paula White, she has a nice rag to riches story. She is in her own words “trailer-park trash” and somehow, she found God, wealth and the ear of the most powerful man in the world. The other thing that you can say about Paula White is that she’s pretty in a “trashy” sort of way (eye-candy might be the politically correct term) and looks presentable in a dress:

However, that’s probably as far as it should go. If you listen to this woman with a rational mind and consider the fact that the world’s most powerful man takes spiritual guidance from her, you’d end up rushing to cave and hiding in the hope that the end of the world will happen soon and swiftly.

This woman tells people that the ground she steps on makes things Holy. She, has, apparently been given the authority by God himself to make the grounds she walks on Holy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5hWPfJTz38

When the election results were called against the Donald, Ms. White proceeded to launch a sermon accusing demonic forces of rigging the election and summoned angels from Africa and South America to sort things out (theologically wrong – summoning angels is God’s job not an individuals and angels live in heaven not in Africa or South America – though an African pastor in another video did suggest that she needed African angels because the American ones ate too many hamburgers and were too sluggish to do anything).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4daeEacIVI 

I’m not against people having faith or a relationship with God and politicians can choose who they pray to. However, when you’re talking about someone who has the ear of the most powerful man on the planet, it’s a different story, particularly when the world is in the midst of a pandemic and the country in question has by far and away the world’s worst number of cases. It’s a situation that requires rational and scientific solutions rather than someone’s conversation with angels and demons.

It’s like the Malaysian Bomoh (witch doctor) who went on TV to declare that elves and demonic spirits made MH370 vanish. Sure, what this guy is saying is funny in a dark humour sort of way but it was totally unhelpful and it doesn’t help that there are people who listen and believe this stuff. The only benefit that the world had at the time was that the aviation authorities did not hire him to be a consultant.

I’m all for politicians being believers. However, we need to remember that we live on the material plane where things like facts matter. Ironically enough, it was another so called “theocracy” that understood this. When Covid-19 struck, Saudi Arabia took steps to suspend Umrah and Haj Pilgrimages despite the economic benefits to Saudi Arabia (second largest revenue after oil) and political implications for the ruling family. Can you imagine how much worse the situation would have been if the millions who normally attend the Haj had been allowed to mingle and spread the virus because they thought God would protect them from the virus?

In the middle of a pandemic, you do not need a snake oil version of God trying to convince people that they have magic powers. This is how you undo God’s work of making life on earth better for all mankind.  

Buddy Capitalism Continues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fawning Follower.

One of the most prominent moments in Barak Obama’s Presidency was when he suggested that people who felt that people living on low wages didn’t have it that bad was “Try it.” I often think of this phrase whenever I read comments about workers dormitories and how foreign workers should be grateful for their lot in life because it's  apparently much worse elsewhere.

The most recent character who should try it is a character called “Michael Petraeus,” a Polish national who has reinvented himself as a blogger called “Critical Spectator.” Mr. Petraeus like all good foreigners at the “expat” end of the scale is a devoted fan of the Singapore Government and while he is a spectator, he is not critical of the situation in Singapore.

To be fair, Singapore stacks up pretty well in most aspects of life. We remain for the most part a 

rich, clean and green city. The government machinery for the most part remains pretty good. Our Prime Minister, for example, gets the world’s most generous political salary but unlike his previous counter part across the causeway, nobody has found a criminal and unaccountable sum of money in his bank account. In this era of Covid 19, we’ve also done a reasonable job. If you look at the statistics, we’ve not done as well as we could have when compared to say Taiwan or New Zealand but it's not the disaster of say, the USA, where there’s a national leader undermining safety measures.  

Mr. Petraeus is also a foreigner, who is getting a good deal from Singapore. It might be natural that he takes the view that he should “educate” the locals and show them that Singapore is not as bad as they think it is and as a “guest,” he might feel that its not his place to be critical.

Having said that, Singapore is not perfect. As PN Balji, former editor of the Today Newspaper used to say, “They’ve got about 75 to 80 percent right but you need to harp on the 20 to 25 percent that isn’t right because it’s the only way they’ll stay on their toes.”

Unfortunately, the one area that most glaring errors in the Singapore system is in the area of dealing with the poor and neglected. Our so called “Asian-Values” society that respects elders, for example,  sees nothing wrong with old folks going through the trash so that they can pick out drinks cans to sell for a few pennies because they need the money.

We are also a society that doesn’t seem to have a problem with “slave labour,” and “race-based” pay scales, particularly when it comes to dealing with people who happen to be darker than a shade of pink. Only the blind would argue otherwise.

Unfortunately, Mr. Petraeus is blind spot to the obvious and this causes him to be anything but a “Critical” spectator. His most recent post was to rush the defense of the workers dormitories after the outbreak of Covid-19 cases. His post can be found at:

https://www.facebook.com/CriticalSpectator/posts/2788391291268580?__tn__=K-R

Mr. Petraeus argues that far from being a failure that the NGO crowd have made them out to be, the dorms are a sign of success. His arguments can be summed up as follows:

 1. Singapore has built cheap and good infrastructure by using cheap labour from elsewhere;
       2. The foreign workers are not complaining because what they get here is better than what they get at home;
       3. Singapore is short of land and the dormitories are the most cost-effective way of housing them; and
       4. This is not exploitation because everyone benefits.

     Mr. Petraeus is correct. The dorms are a sign of success. If you are an owner of a dormitory for example, you are bound to be very successful

Take a look at the Centurion Corporation, which owns and runs the Westlite Toh Guan, the dormitory that has become one of the main covid-19 clusters. In the year ending 31 December 2019, Centurion Corporation had revenue of SG$ 133,353,000 and after-tax profits of SG$103,788,000. The joint non-executive chairmen of the board, Mr. Han Seng Juan and Mr. David Loh Kim Kang from Potong Pasir CCC are appreciated by their shareholders.

Mr. Petraeus is also right in as much as the workers generally don’t complain about their lot because they are earning more than what they could earn back home and from what I could see of Westlite Toh Guan from the outside, it does not look unpleasant.

As to how much we’ve benefited in terms of cheap and affordable infrastructure, it’s a question of debate. What is certain is that the trade in labourers has built a few fortunes. In addition to helping the construction companies earn good money from cheaper labour, there is an industry called labour supply. In July 2019, one of the largest labour suppliers in Singapore sold his company for 40 odd million Singapore dollars.

Mr. Petraeus also uses another defense of the system, which is – migrant labourers are always at the bottom of the social heap wherever you go.  

https://www.facebook.com/CriticalSpectator/posts/2792915094149533?__tn__=K-R

However, what Mr. Petraeus seems to forget is that just because a situation exists everywhere in the world or the fact that people don’t complain about it doesn’t make it right.

Everyone knows that the foreign workers are where they are because they want to earn money to help families get out of poverty. They’re willing to work longer hours and for less money than the locals. Nothing wrong with that. However, the real beneficiaries of this business are not the workers themselves but a host of intermediaries like labour suppliers, agents and incidentally, in the case of Singapore, the government, which collects a levy on every foreign worker (which ranges from $600 to $900 per person per month).

While Mr. Petraeus’s point that Singapore benefits from cheap labour might be up for debate, the government definitely benefits from it in the form of the levy. If you take the low-end figure of $600 per person and the fact that there are 284,300 construction workers as at June 2019, that amounts to some S$170,580,000 a month in revenue from the workers levy alone.

While the intention of the levy is supposed to be to reduce the cost differential between the foreign labourer and a local Singaporean, the result is that its encouraged employers to look for further cost savings elsewhere, particularly from the workers.

Some locals have complained that the Singapore government is “wasting” resources on the labourers and that we’re doing more for them than their own governments. However, let’s look at the other side of the equation. The mere presence of the labourers is contributing to the government’s coffers in return for no benefit at all. Call what the government is doing for the labourers a form of investment to ensure the system can sustain itself rather than benevolence. Whatever benefits the government gets from contractors using cheap labour, the one that is clearly measurable is the returns from the levy.

Mr. Petraeus also forgets that the government has admitted that standards for worker accommodation are also not what they should be. Minister for Manpower, Ms. Josephine Teo has said that standards need to be raised and it is clear that current conditions of accommodation are not healthy. While the recent outbreaks of covid-19 have attracted media attention because of their sheer number, this is not the first-time workers have died in Singapore because of an outbreak of disease in their accommodation.

It must be nice for Mr. Petraeus has so much faith in the Singapore government. However, blind faith is not healthy for any organization including the Singapore government. It’s the likes of Mr. Petraeus’s efforts to defend glaring flaws that leads to complacency, which leads to something like the case that we currently have

Perhaps the solution for Mr. Petraeus to celebrate the success that our dorm represent, would be for him to try living in one of them. Perhaps he really would be a “Critical Spectator” rather than a “Fawning Follower.”

The People That You Mentor?

In a move that surprised everyone, Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew decided that he would retire for the cabinet. Mr Lee has been positioned as modern Singapore’s “Founding Father,” and even Mr Lee’s harshest critics have found it hard to think of Singapore without Mr Lee’s presence in the cabinet.

As well as being Singapore’s “Founding Father,” Mr Lee has also been something of a “Rock Star.” He is the one political leader that Singapore has produced that seems to be recognised by everyone else. Both West and East laud him for taking the sleepy crime-infested tropical swamp and turning it into a modern metropolis within a generation. Let’s face it, Singapore is a young nation that actually compares quite well with many developed countries in terms of its physical and dare I say, legal infrastructure.

So, Mr Lee is rightfully lauded for his achievements. If you look at his record, he’s proven right on more than one occasion and on more than one issue. You could say that he’s the right person to have as a mentor.

This was the argument that Singapore’s Prime Minister, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, had used when he retained his father in the cabinet some seven years ago. Mr Lee Kuan Yew was given the title of “Minister Mentor,” and as the title implied, he was supposed to “Mentor” the cabinet with his years of experience as a leader and international statesman.

However, how much of a “Mentor” was Mr Lee? Well, in the end, it turned out that Mr Lee wasn’t much of a mentor but a senile uncle who left the Ministers he was supposed to mentor, scrambling to cover for him. It started with his comments about Muslims needing to “integrate” better by being less serious about their religion. This was compounded by his prediction that the Group Representation Constituency the PAP was about to lose would have five years to “Repent,” for voting in the opposition. His comments left the Prime Minister in the unique position of having to call a press conference to distance himself from his father.

So how did this wise man that did so much to make the PAP and Singapore, end up looking like a fool of the highest order?

I think part of the problem lay in the fact that Mr Lee forgot that his title was to “Mentor,” rather than to take charge. As mentor, ones role is to provide advice but to accept that ultimately the responsibility for any action lies with the person who receives your advice. At best, mentors work in different organisations and their advice comes from a private capacity. This was never the case with Mr Lee. Apart from announcement that he was “No longer in charge,” Mr Lee took a very active role in running things. When he felt Members of Parliament needed a dressing down, he would do it personally. When foreign dignitaries wanted to visit someone, he would make sure he was an important port of call. Mr Lee travelled extensively, brining Ministers on his trips so that he could “open” up markets. Mr Lee even went as far as to make his importance visible on a symbolic level. At the last National Day, Mr Lee got himself driven into the arena, a privilege previously held by the Head of Government and Head of State.

Then there’s the question of experience. What exactly are the experiences that Mr Lee brings to the cabinet? Well, I suppose it’s always good to have someone else to give you “experience” or the “benefit of their wisdom.” Both experience and wisdom usually come with age – a case of learning through hard knocks, which comes with time. In this aspect, Mr Lee was a font of wisdom for those who consulted him.

However, most mentors are known for certain strengths and most of us have forgotten where Mr Lee’s strengths lay. Generations of Singaporeans have grown up believing Mr Lee’s strengths lay in governance. In fairness to this assumption, Mr Lee led a team of brilliant ministers. Mr Lee had the foresight and security of character to allow the likes to Dr Goh Keng Swee and S.Rajartnam to do certain jobs. Once they convinced him of a certain course of action, he supported them all the way and ensured that they had what they needed to get the job done.

However, Mr Lee, himself was not an administrator himself. His real strengths lay in political street fights. He was the campaign orator, the man who knew how to mobilise union leaders and he knew when to lock them up. He was the one who shrewdly read political sentiments in the UK and Malaysia and how to use them to the advantage of Singapore. Mr Lee has always been a pragmatist who knew how to sell ideals to idealist. He was the English Educated lawyer who learnt Mandarin and Hokkien in the span of six-months so that he could make the masses move.

If you read his biography, his genius was not in being an all wise and all knowing statesman, even though he’s been known as one. His real genius came when he was the underdog – the leader of the minority English educated taking over a party dominated by Chinese educated populist, the leader of an untried and untested party against colonial administration and so on.

Ironically, the person who seems to have best understood this aspect of Mr Lee appears to be Mr Low Thia Khiang, Secretary-General of the opposition Worker’s Party. Like Mr Lee in his younger days, Mr Low is fully aware that he’s fighting against massive odds and he relishes it.

Mr Low, like Mr Lee understands the value of getting the people’s support. While the ruling has often chided Mr Low for not doing much in proposing alternative policy, Mr Low has realised that his success lies in ensuring his constituents are looked after. Like Mr Lee in his younger days, Mr Low works hard to ensure that the people remember him – he attends every birth, wake and funeral in his constituency. The PAP has spent 19-years trying to unseat him and each time they’ve tried, he’s been returned to office with a stronger majority.

Like Mr Lee, Mr Low is not afraid of having highly intelligent people by his side. In his early days, Mr Lee had the likes of Goh Keng Swee and Rajaratnam. Today, Mr Low has Sylvia Lim (Polytechnic Lecturer), Chen Mao Mao (Lawyer with international regard) and Pritam Singh (Academic). Mr Low may not speak the Queen’s English but he’s smart enough to surround himself with the people who can work it.

So, the irony of Mr Lee’s spell as a “Minister MENTOR,” is that he actually may have mentored someone, even if it was the last person he would have wanted to tell the world he had mentored.