What Went Wrong?

 

One of the most interesting things about watching politics in Singapore is trying to decipher cryptic messages. This was first brought to my attention sometime in 2005 when the then President SR Nathan was contemplating his second run for office. He started out by announcing that he was old, in ill health and wanted to live out his days without the stress of being in the Istana. A few weeks later, he was asked the same question and he gave a cryptic reply of “Ask God,” and God promptly sent him back to the Istana for another six years. It was a former editor-in-chief of the Today newspaper, who recounted this incident to me and he said, “In Singapore, there’s only one God.”

Tonight, I was reminded that we’ve had another great cryptic line, which came from our law and home affairs minister (in Singapore there is no conflict of interest between the law maker and law enforcer) at the end of the Parti Liyani trial. Mr. K. Shanmugam said, “something has gone wrong.” The report can be read at:

 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/parti-liyani-changi-airport-group-chairman-maid-shanmugam-13091378

While most of us (politicians being in the minority) saw that something was clearly wrong, the question was put to me – “Would he have said something has gone wrong if the appeal had failed and the maid went to jail?”

I’d like to think better of the minister, but I’d probably be wrong. Had Ms. Liyani been convicted, nobody would have made a sound. Sure, the internet would have been ablaze with tales of how screwed up life is for poor domestic workers but eventually things would have died down and people would have shrugged and moved on with their lives. Liew Mun Leong would still be contributing greatly to the country by collecting an outsized pay cheque and the majority of middle-class Singaporeans would probably the relived by the fact that the foreign domestic worker population understood their place in the scheme of things.

That didn’t happen. Liew Mun Leong’s friends have been busy rushing to remind us that he’s done a lot (without mentioning that he was paid a lot) for the country and the man in charge of the justice system (both upholding and enforcing it) has become very busy trying to find out what went wrong.

The question for many of us is what does the man in charge of making and enforcing laws believe what went wrong. My cynical friend said that the main thing that went wrong was the fact that a maid earning $600 a month refused to be brow beaten into knowing her place in the system and a judge found that she had facts as opposed to the multimillionaire former CEO who had reported her to the authorities.

I’d like to be more optimistic and believe that our minister in charge of the police and the courts is very keen as to how the police felt that it was OK for them not to take evidence into custody and allowed the Liew’s to use materials in the boxes where the “stolen” goods were supposed to be kept. I would like to think our minister running our justice system would be interested in how a district judge felt that an unreliable witness was as credible as a rock.

So, the question remains – what went wrong and what is that wrong that the Minister is keen to discover. I’d be grateful if someone would tell me that I’m right and my friend is wrong about the Minister’s focus on what went wrong.    

What is the problem exactly?

The Singapore Government, which was praised as the gold standard in managing the coronavirus has been struggling to show that it has grip on things. The dramatic spike in cases of coronavirus has come from the one area that was simply ignored – in the areas that were housing Singapore’s vast number of foreign workers.

In fairness to the Singapore Government, it has scrambled to take care of this sudden nightmare, offering to house and feed the workers. Unfortunately, this has placed the government in the cross hairs of two conflicting groups. The first group is the group that thinks the government is doing too much for the foreign workers and pampering them. The other thinks that the government is making a royal hash of things. This conflict is best exemplified by the recent outcry over the provision of meals to the workers, which can be found at:

http://theindependent.sg/photos-of-govt-provided-meals-for-foreign-workers-thrown-in-trash-explained/

The outcry over meals provided to the foreign workers has gotten the Minister of State for National Development and Manpower, Mr. Zaqy Mohammad (as a matter of full disclosure, I know Mr. Zaqy on a personal basis and once organized a training session for his grassroots leaders), trying to explain the logistical issues in providing food for over 200,000 workers. The story can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/dorm-meals-are-getting-better-zaqy

Reading these stories makes me ask, “What exactly is the problem that we have when it comes to dealing with dark skinned people from poor countries?” Singapore is a wonderfully efficient and comfortable society in so many ways. I remember a young Englishman who is married to one of my favourite reporters from the BBC Asian Business report, telling me that his life is actually pretty good. He pointed out that Singapore, while small, is in the centre of so many things and unlike England, you actually start dealing with things at a national and international level as opposed to having to go through counties and so on.

Unfortunately, its very different when you it comes to dealing with the guys working at the bottom of the proverbial heap. This isn’t the first time when our society has had problems coping with the idea that people from third world countries doing menial jobs are entitled to the same things like food and rest like the rest of us.

Think of the time when the government had to step and mandate that domestic workers get one day a week off all the way back in 2012:

https://www.mom.gov.sg/passes-and-permits/work-permit-for-foreign-domestic-worker/employers-guide/rest-days-and-well-being

Apparently, giving a maid a day off was a challenge for some people, who reasoned that if they allowed their maids to have a day off, they would end up in “bad company:”

http://twc2.org.sg/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Madetowork-Dayoff-Report-2011.pdf

Now that the maids have a day off, the visible sight of maids and dare I say, construction workers “chilling out” in public places like parks offends the sensibilities of our local population:

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/2155193/singapore-domestic-helpers-day-park-rankles-some-residents-who-complain

The most prominent example of how the sight of poor people having a good time offending our local population came from my favorite young pork guzzling on a Ramdan day Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC, who once exclaimed, “The workers are terrible, they have sex with maids.” I had to explain to him that workers and maids had urges too and just as nobody complained about his sex life, there was no reason why he should complain about the sex lives of workers and maids. I’m glad to report that a spell at university in Australia has helped him understand the human perspective and the fact that idea that workers in menial jobs are also humans is not a leftist conspiracy.

Seriously, why is it so difficult for us to understand that construction workers and maids are human beings too and worthy of basics like having a day out to chill and being fed a decent meal after a hard day of work? It’s that simple. I cannot stress enough times that nobody is asking for “special treatment.” Let’s note that with the exception of the 201s strike by bus drivers from China (which was a justified protest against race based pay), none of our foreign workers have actively protested and demanded higher wages (though they have protested not being paid for work done, which, contrary to what a few members of our local population may think – is not a strange thing to protest.)

If we can get around the idea that people from third world countries are as human as we are, we may solve a lot more issues. If for example, we understood that cramming a group of grown men into a small room, after working 12 to 15 hours a day in the hot sun paying $10 per person per day for the bed space was not an acceptable way of housing people, we wouldn’t to quarantine them and have the logistical issue of feeding them.

Again, nobody is asking to be pampered. Nobody is asking for extra comforts. They are just asking for some basic rest and nourishing meal after a hard day of work. Letting them have these simple things in our self-interest as it allows them to work more energetically and productively for us.