The Rat Finds his Groove

It’s easy to feel sorry for Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority. Ever since he was elected to succeed the charismatic Yasser Arafat in 2004, Mr Abbas has been living like a rat that is caught in between an angry gorilla and a drunken elephant on one hand and a swarm of very irate hornets on the other. As far as Israel and the US are concerned, Mr Abbas has been totally ineffectual in keeping violent Islamic extremist under control and so he’s failed to guarantee Israeli security. As far the Islamist in Hamas are concerned, Mr Abbas has sold the people out to Israel and the West. Both sides have made it a point to place Mr Abbas at the sticky point between the fire and the frying pan. When he allowed Hamas to stand for an election, they had the audacity to win it in a fair electoral contest. As such, Israel and America decided to punish him by withholding taxes which the Palestinian Authority rises on Palestinians but is collected by Israel. When he tried to pacify the Israelis and Americans by sacking Hamas from the unity government that the Saudi’s helped him negotiate, they promptly took over the Gaza Strip by force and despite Israeli sanctions and invasion in 2008, they’ve actually succeeded in running something resembling a viable state. To be fair to Mr Abbas, the job of running the Palestinian Authority was never an easy one. Compared to his predecessor, Mr Abbas is dull and uninspiring. Say what you like about Mr Arafat but when he spoke he could get the people up in arms or to lay down his arms. By contrast Mr Abbas only seems able to get people to mock him. It also hasn’t helped that his Israeli and American counterparts have shown him less than zero respect. Israeli Prime Ministers, Ehud Olmert and Binyamin Nethanyahu have made it a point to humiliate Mr Abbas whenever they have had the chance. Mr Abbas says he’ll negotiate for peace in return for land – the Israeli’s promptly move more settlers into the West Bank as they sit down to negotiate. Not everything that Mr Abbas does can be blamed on someone else. Let’s face it, Hamas have gained a foothold with the Palestinian people because they have been everything that Mr Abbas has been unable to be. Hamas, as most neutral observers have pointed out, won elections in January 2006 because they ran honest and competent administrations in the Palestinian territories. By contrast, the areas run by Mr Abbas’s Fattah party were rife with corruption. The Western world may condemn Hamas for refusing to acknowledge the “right of Israel to exist,” but as far as a good many Palestinians are concerned, Hamas fights for Palestinian interest rather than Israeli and American interest. Sure, Israel did bomb the living daylights out of the Gaza strip in 2008 but as far as most Palestinians are concerned, that’s no worse than what happens in the West Bank – Israel merely takes the land that everyone else regards as Palestinian. Mr Abbas has nobody to blame except himself in this respect. Had his party been a bit more honest and a bit more inclined to the welfare of the Palestinian people, the threat he faces from Hamas would be a lot less severe. You would think that Mr Abbas would have merely slunk away into a hole to escape these pressures. Nobody would blame him if he did. However, he’s recently seems to have found his groove much to the annoyance of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Nethanyahu and the Islamist in Hamas. Mr Abbas’s decision to go straight to the UN to make the case for Palestinian Statehood is a brilliant strategic move. It’s clear that he’s going to lose in Security Council. The Americans have already announced that they’ll veto such a move. However, that is precisely the point. Mr Abbas will lose in the Security Council but he has the votes or at least enough votes to scare Israel and the USA in the General Assembly. At the time of writing, the Economist has argued that at the very least, Mr Abbas will see an upgrade from being a mere ‘entity.’ This won’t translate into much change on the ground but Mr Abbas will ensure that his existence is more than just an amusing fact for Israeli and American right wing politicians. The Palestinians will have to be treated as a nation – even if it is one without viable land. More importantly, Mr Abbas will be justified in having an armed force. More importantly, this is the first time that Mr Abbas has been able to project himself as “fighting” for the people. Any defeat in the Security Council through the expected American veto will prove that it is not Mr Abbas that has been a stumbling block to peace but Israel and America. If Mr Abbas gets the votes in the General Assembly as he is expected to – it will become very clear to the world that American and Israeli insistence for negotiations without preconditions is the insistence of a school yard bully rather than someone interested in making peace. Mr Abbas will also be able to show the Palestinians that he’s found a way of fighting for them without incurring violent retaliation from Israel. Suddenly Mr Abbas can portray himself as a clever fighter as opposed to the guys from Hamas. Now, the international community needs to act to support Mr Abbas’s move. There is no moral or logical reason for the Palestinian people not to have “statehood.” Both Palestinians and Israeli’s agree that they need a “two-state” solution. However, this won’t happen as long as only one side is regarded as a state. The main onus is on Israel. The Israeli nation has argued that it wants to be left alone by its ‘hostile’ Arab neighbours. Perhaps this was true in the 1960s, however, this increasingly less so. In 2002 and 2006, Saudi Abdullah proposed that Israel withdraw to its 1967 borders in return for diplomatic recognition by all 22 members of the Arab league. Israel has refused to even consider this – this is despite calls by US President Obama to use 1967 borders as the basis of negotiations. The settlements are illegal and building them on territories recognised as Palestinian as effectively an invasion. If Israel wants to stop terrorism against its citizens, she should stop building settlements and bring new Jewish Immigrants into Israel’s 1967 borders. The Sharm El-Sheikh report chaired by former US Senator George Mitchell found that there was a direct correlation between settlements building and suicide bombings. Stop settlement building and you stop the suicide bombers. As one Jewish currency trader I met said, “Of course the Palestinians are throwing rockets at us – we’ve locked them up in cages – what do you expect them to do.” If Israel were willing to stop settlement buildings and move back to its 1967 borders, it would make it easier for Mr Abbas and other Palestinian leaders to sell the idea that the Palestinian people have to give up their right to return to the homes they were turned out off and more importantly to accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish State. Even Hamas has agreed to recognise the “Reality of Israel,” so there is hope if Israel shows a willingness to give back land it has taken. On the other hand, the Palestinians need leadership that takes responsibility for its own actions. Arafat had charisma but as an Algerian friend of mine pointed out – “That Bastard, stole everything.” Palestinians need to find a way of making what little they have work for them. They have the mercy of the Muslim world to provide them with the money and trade routes. Palestinians speak Arabic, the universal language of more than 100 million people. They have education and they are ironically near enough Israel to take advantage of a working economy that is well plugged into the Western world. The West also needs to help Palestine turn into something like Turkey – a strong democratic state where the majority of people happen to be Muslim. Mr Abbas has found his groove – let’s hope he stays on a roll – it could lead to something spectacular and unprecedented – peace and prosperity in a region known for violence.

How powerful is the Pen?

Monday, September 19, 2011 will be a very special day for me. It was the day I had the first hand experience of the changing media landscape. At around 1500 on that day I was described by someone as a “Useless blogger with no credibility and not read by anyone.” Half an hour later, I received a sms telling me that I was “Quick to sell people off.” I replied that I would only do so if the price was right or if I was doing a public service at about 1700. Two hours later, the same person sent me a note saying, “I beg off you…” and that was followed by a phone call, imploring me to edit one of my postings because it had just come up on a Google search and he feared his misdeeds would become easily available. I edited the post in return for undertaking that the person in question promised to be become a nice person to his family. However, that really got me thinking about the new communications world that we live in today. Thanks to the internet, information has become readily available. For better or worse, information is so easy to get hold off that professional censors have been on the retreating end of the battle. This has been especially visible in the politics of totalitarian regimes that had a heavy hand in censoring the media. The internet and “smart phones,” have made it easy for people to organise demonstrations efficiently and effectively. One has to look at the General and Presidential Elections of 2011 in Singapore to get an idea of how the internet has been changing politics. Singapore politics is traditionally boring. There are usually so many uncontested seats in a General Election that the ruling party is returned to power before the first vote is cast. Presidential elections are even more predictable – the person that the government praises somehow ends up walking into the Istana without any contest. This time things were different. There was a contest in all but one constituency and the presidential election was won by the ruling party’s preferred candidate but only by the skin of his teeth. A few members of the ruling party, including an independent political analyst have argued that the talk about the internet changing things was pure hype. After all the ruling party did win 81 out of a possible 87 seats in parliament and the preferred candidate did win the Presidential Election. Their argument runs like this – the internet postings gives an impression that Singapore is highly polarised and people are going to vote out the ruling party in a landslide causing a revolution similar to the Arab Spring that ousted long time rulers like Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. That didn’t happen and so the argument runs – this proved that the internet chatter is purely hot air for a disgruntled minority. As appealing as this argument might be, it is misleading and dare I say delusional. This argument assumes that the internet is a magic wand that you can wave to make things happen. This attitude is similar to the idea that advertising invents product advantages and the right lawyer can convince judges and juries about things that don’t exist. Bill Burnbach, the legendary founder of DDB once made the point that, “Advertising cannot invent a product advantage that doesn’t exist.” Advertising is a method of communication and not a product advantage. The same is true for the internet. It is a forum for communications and not a magic wand. Singapore’s 2011 elections were like all other elections before it – they were about issues. Votes were won and lost based on how the public viewed certain issues. Generally speaking, life in Singapore remains fairly liveable and a large part is due to good governance. Then, there was the issue of the opposition. While the opposition fielded more attractive candidates than they had before, they remained fragmented and fought for the sake of fighting rather than on forming the next government. These were old fashioned reasons for voting. You have to consider the fact that Singaporeans may not be happy about certain issues and let off steam on the internet – but on the overall scheme of things they want the PAP government – it’s done a fabulous job. I know, I am one of them – I’ve been a critic of certain policies and of the presentation of policies but I believe that this is a government that has generally done what I want it to do. I also voted for Tony Tan because I thought he was the best person for this primarily ceremonial role. I simply didn’t feel angry enough to try to kick the party in the gonads… Effective communications can make the difference between success and failure. It cannot alter ground realities. Like many voters, I know whether my buses run on time and whether my bus ride is going to bankrupt me, regardless of what is being said in the main stream or on the net. What the internet did do in the election was to allow alternative view points and it gives us a different way of communicating. Things were easy in the day when the mainstream media was the only way of getting messages out there. The person who controlled the media could simply pump messages out to the masses who would passively accept them. As the governing party, the PAP has the levers of control of the media, which they used to their advantage. What the internet does is that it allows more voices to have their say. To all intents and purposes, this is the only forum available for opposition politics. Thanks to the internet, the PAP is not the ONLY voice around. Think of Tin Pei Ling who was caught stomping her foot online like a petulant child and posing like a naïve girl with her Kate Spade Handbags. In the mainstream media such videos would have been edited out by an editor. Now, people merely upload pictures and videos onto sites like Youtube and hey presto, your worst party pictures are known to the world. On a more serious note, there was the issue of Dr Tony Tan’s son’s lack of national service. This story broke on the internet and the main stream media had to react by giving more coverage to the issue. Simply put, control of the agenda was no longer in the ruling party’s hands. If there was only mainstream media they could talk about all their good deeds and expose the follies of their opponents. Thanks to the internet, they found that their follies being exposed. So how did the internet change things? It gave the opposition a chance to fight back. As a consumer of messages, I heard both arguments and I could make up my mind, which one I liked better. Like it or not, the PAP won because the opposition was merely a better prepared opposition rather than a credible alternative government. The margin of victory is by most standards very respectable and the number of seats held remains commanding. However, much of this has to do with the system of electoral boundaries. If one analyses the results, the PAP is in danger of losing its dominance thanks to the internet. The reason is simple; the PAP is so accustomed to fighting as if it was a gorilla with a baseball bat going into a boxing ring against a Yorkshire terrier that has had three of its hind legs broken and its teeth removed and its been given a lobotomy the night before and being cheered on by the crowd. If you follow this analogy the internet is a magic tool for the Yorkshire terrier. No, it doesn’t give him super strength to take on the gorilla. However, this is the magic tool that allows the terrier to heal his legs so he can run around rather than wait to get beaten up. It is also the tool that puts his teeth back in so that he can nip the gorilla (which won’t hurt initially but if done enough times….) and more importantly it allows the Yorkshire terrier to even the odds by inviting a untold number of Yorkshire terriers into the fray (think of bees – one is small and insignificant – if the swarm comes after you – run). In this round, the gorilla wins because it’s still the biggest animal and the army of Yorkshire terriers hasn’t learnt to fight as a single unit. However, the little nip from the Yorkshire terrier has shocked the living day lights out of the gorilla. Suddenly the gorilla is crying that life is unfair because the Yorkshire terrier isn’t sitting around to clobbered on the head and finds a way of nipping back at the gorilla – which if you listen to the comments about how Singapore cannot afford a ‘two-party’ system is precisely what’s happening. In five years time, the Yorkshire terrier and his very large family will learn to work together. Furthermore, this magic tool, which healed the Yorkshire terrier’s wounds, might be able to give the gorilla food poisoning on the day of the fight. Suddenly the odds have shifted in favour of the Yorkshire terrier. The good news for the gorilla is that the same magic tool that has helped the Yorkshire terrier can also help the gorilla. How? This has to do with the fact that the internet is an active form of communication. It is two parties talking to each other and not one party giving dictation to another. This was precisely where the PAP failed. Look at the way the Prime Minister was left apologising for mistakes a few days before polling day. Look at the way the Prime Minister devoted one day of an election campaign to address concerns of the people on the net only a few days before. He looked miserable – in short, he was the gorilla with a club getting the shock of his life because the Yorkshire terrier didn’t wait to get clobbered and actually nipped back and the crowd cheered for the Yorkshire terrier instead. The internet is not going to magic away certain ground realities which have thus far been in favour of the ruling party or if you like, the gorilla with a club. However, the rules are changing to neutralise the advantages of the gorilla. The Yorkshire terriers suddenly realise they can hurt the gorilla and the idea that they can take down the gorilla has entered their heads. It’s up to the gorilla to realise that the rules have changed and his game plan must follow suite.

Harry's Legacy..............

Singapore’s Founding Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew turned 88 a few days ago. The man who once dominated (and in many ways still dominates) Singapore by his mere presences has become noticeably more frail in his old age but as his performance in a dialogue hosted by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy showed, his mind is still sharp.

One of the most prominent moments in this dialogue was the final question. Someone asked him what his vision was and he replied that it was not important what his vision was but what the questioners was. He was, as he said, “walking off into the sunset – he may even stumble.” That reply was vintage Mr Lee. In that statement, he showed that he was already thinking about the one question that nobody else seemed to want to talk about – what happens after he leaves the stage. Let’s face it, Mr Lee is 88, an age where everyday you have is something of a bonus. Like it or not, Singapore has to accept the reality that Mr Lee can drop dead anytime soon and life has to continue.

Say what you like about Mr Lee but he’s been a driving force in making modern Singapore what it is today – the thriving, clean, green and very efficient international metropolis. When Singapore was ejected from the Malayan Federation back in 1965, Mr Lee had the foresight to provide a vision and to surround himself with brilliant people like Dr Goh Keng Swee and S Rajaratnam. He was wise enough to allow these brilliant men to get on with the task at hand.

If you look at his obsessions, you’d realise that Mr Lee was for the most part right in what he wanted for Singapore. How can anyone argue against things like honesty in public service or equality of all before the law? In his years as Prime Minister, Mr Lee was obsessive in not only creating prosperity for Singapore but in making life in Singapore pleasant. The Singapore today compares very well to countries in the developed world of the USA and Europe – I was reminded of this by a young US navy boy in Geylang who said, “If this is your worst area, come to the US and I’ll show you a bad area.”

Mr Lee’s achievements are internationally recognised. I remember Sanjiv Misra, former head of Citigroup’s Asia-Pacific Commercial Banking saying, “It’s not just Singaporeans who are enthralled by him.”

I don’t believe I’d be exaggerating to say that everything in Singapore today is as a result of Mr Lee’s vision. Two Prime Ministers later, we are still living in Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s era and despite holding no official position today, Mr Lee’s presence within Singapore is commanding enough for him to need to mention that he is “no longer in charge.”

So, it’s all the more important for us to ask what life is going to be like without Mr Lee. His presence in our lives has been so prominent for so long that its departure might cause a shock to the system.

In one sense, there is a case for optimism. Singaporeans are used to having a decent lifestyle and are not about to give it up. Simply put, we take things like drinking from a tap as a given and so any government that changes any of these things will face a public revolt.

Even if you look at the ‘hot button’ issues in this election, you’ll see that they have their roots in Mr Lee’s policies. Mr Lee argued that it was necessary to pay top dollar to get top talent and to keep it honest. When the government slipped up – most noticeably in the case of Mas Selamat’s stroll out of Whitley Detention Centre, we got upset because this was not top talent in action. Thanks to Mr Lee, we expect a certain standard from government that is higher than in other countries. To Indians, Italians and the French may shrug if their ministers are less than competent – Singaporeans cannot accept it. If you look at the PAP’s loss in the recent election – much of it has to do with a perceived moving away from Mr Lee’s original vision.

Alcon had it right – “Today’s innovation is tomorrow’s expectation.” In the 60s an honest and competent public service was a new thing – today this is the least we expect from the public service.

However, there is a case for pessimism and in this case its best summed up by the person of the Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC who feasts during Ramadan aka Thambi Pundek. In short, the good life that Mr Lee has provided Singaporeans has produced a young generation who have become spoilt and are unable to deal with a world outside of Singapore or in a world where the need to exercise brain power is a given.

On one level, the case for pessimism is harmless. Take the question of what is India’s national language. If you have read a little bit, the answer is obviously Hindi. Ask someone like the Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC who feast during Ramadan and the answer is Tamil. The reason is simple; Singaporeans have been preconditioned into thinking that an Indian is automatically someone descended from Tamil Nadu. The conditioning is so strong that the richness and variety of what India is has been lost on the likes of this young man. If you are not from Tamil Nadu – how can you be Indian? The lack of knowledge goes beyond basic geography – you’d think a 21-year old with a normal sex drive would know one of the woman’s sweet spots – the clitoris. Unfortunately for him – he never heard of that part of the female anatomy. I repeat, it’s not that he couldn’t find it – he didn’t know this part of the female anatomy existed and this is in a country that prides itself in teaching basic biology.

He is unfortunately not alone in this level of ignorance. When Saudi Aramco had a cultural display up in Marina Square in 2006, members of the public would ask the Saudi delegates, “Which part of Dubai are you from?’ I know Dubai has been much better at publicising itself than the other parts of the Gulf but surely anyone who has looked at a map will know that Saudi Arabia is way bigger than Dubai.

Is Singapore’s education system lacking so badly? Well, I wouldn’t want to say it is but somehow the students who come out of the system lack basic curiosity or at least the desire to find out about the world beyond their HDB block. As long as the facts are told to them by a single trusted source – why question? I remember Andy Mukherjee, the former Bloomberg Columnist describing a group of NTU journalist he had just given a lecture to as being ‘Curiously uncurious.”

Basic alack of curiosity is amusing when it’s the Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC who feasts during Ramdan aka Thambi Pundek tries to show off his loyalty to the system through his ignorance about general affairs. It’s downright worrying when this ignorance is translated into the national level. Ironically, one of the biggest culprits of this is Mr Lee himself. In the early 1990s he arrogantly flew up to Beijing to lecture the Chinese on how to get things done. The result was the Shuzhou Industrial Park – which was a White Elephant for Singapore until the Chinese became majority shareholders. Several billion dollars later, Mr Lee decided to trample round the Middle East trying to lecture the Gulf Arabs on the virtues of George Bush II’s Middle East policies that were obviously failing the Middle East and more worryingly he started writing articles in Forbes to berate Lebanese for not helping Israel to bomb them back to the Stone Age.

Unfortunately all of Mr Lee’s comments are treated as revered wisdom and because of that Singaporeans swallow what he says as gospel and they to view the world in the same way that Mr Lee does. How do you do business with someone when all you know about their country is based on an old man’s prejudices.

Let’s look at Mr Lee’s other big achievement – multi-racialism. Up until recently, Singapore was a proud multi-racial society. However, thanks to Mr Lee’s comments about Muslims, its questionable if Singapore’s racial harmony can be taken for granted. As far as he was concerned, Singapore’s Muslim’s need to be less strict about integrating with the rest of the public. What exactly did he mean by that? Singapore’s Muslims are amongst the most liberal in their outlook? A good portion of them drink and dare I say gamble. How much more do you want them to abandon a faith that is the centre of their culture and how much more do you want them to get trampled by your views when you’ve already trampled them of their birthright in land that was technically theirs?

Most worryingly for Singapore is that there is a lack of honesty amongst certain people. I remember the Young Muslim Politician from Paris Ris GRC who feasts during Ramadan aka Thambi Pundek, proudly telling a former editor that he was told by his seniors that if he told the Minister the feelings on the ground, he would be told off for not selling government policies. It was only the shock of the last election that the Minister has insisted that he’s told the truth.

In not so many words – we have a culture where everyone is only concerned about sucking up to the top and sugar coats things to avoid trouble. Sucking up becomes one of the key characteristics to advance in life or at least save you from being told off. Yes, I agree that it is necessary to know how to manage superiors. However, it is another story when sucking up to the top hides them from the truth of what’s going on. As I remember my Dad telling me when I delayed bad news “You don’t want to tell me because you don’t want to upset me, but do you know how much time you delayed from me finding a solution.”

This is probably Singapore’s biggest failing. Mr Lee has to bear responsibility for playing a key role in creating this culture. After his initial cabinet stepped down in the early eighties, Mr Lee stopped being “Primus Inter Pares,” the leader who listened, set a vision and allowed people to get on with it. He became “God” or should I say “Minister Mentor,” a character with no official designation other than to teach people what to do. He had the wisdom to step aside when he left the Premiership in 1991 but ironically consolidated more power and people became afraid to engage him in an honest manner.

By doing this, Mr Lee created the very notion that power should last forever. Mr Lee has a done a brilliant job in ensuring that there is no money corruption in the public service. However, his consolidation of power and removal from the ground has helped to accentuate a culture of “power corruption.” I take the Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC who feasts during Ramadan aka Thambi Pundek as a prime example. He cannot help bragging to you about how close he is to certain members of the government.

What does he gain from this? He’s not in it for the money. He just gets the thrill that people who served the nation might respect his worm like mind for having power. Unfortunately this isn’t limited to him.

In the trial of Zim Integrated Shipping versus Igal Dafni in 2009, you had the example of a former CEO of Port of Authority of Singapore telling the former Area President of Zim Integrated Shipping how he could get round loopholes in getting Singapore Citizenship. Her intentions were admittedly good in that she wanted Zim to come to Singapore. However, telling rich people who to get round the laws sounds fishy when you have relatives in the immigration department.

Then again, let’s look at the various Dr Susan Lim versus the Singapore Medical Council. You had the Director of Medical Services at the Ministry of Health who was also the Secretary of the Singapore of the Medical Council acting as complainant and judge at the same time. As expected, the judge couldn’t rule against this and questioning this could be contempt of court. However, any rational mind will tell you that something is grossly wrong with the system.

The biggest example is the “White Horse” system in the Ministry of Defence. Contrary to what the former Minister of State for Defence might tell you – the sons of prominent people somehow get “different treatment” from the rest. Just think of Dr Patrick Tan’s 12-year deferment when his father was Minister of Defence.

The beauty of this system is that the people top remain honest to a fault. It’s just that somehow, somewhere along the line; the minions felt that they’d get into trouble if they didn’t create privileges for their masters. The masters never objected to this and so they have to have some responsibility for this.

Mr Lee in his early days was a wonderful example of this. Both his sons went through National Service and served in combat units. He’s made it such that being his son is more difficult than not being his son. Our Prime Minister, who is his son, has earned his success.

Has this happened down the line? The Prime Minister has done it. He made sure that when his son broke MINDEF protocol, his reprimand was public. However, what happens at the pinnacle doesn’t filter down.

Mr Lee was right in insisting that we have no money corruption. He has however; allowed power corruption to foster and this will be the undoing of Singapore if it is not kept in check.

It’s easy to fight money corruption. If immigration demands a bribe at the Causeway, you pay and then lodge a complaint. You can be rest assured; the offender will pray to be at the gallows. In this aspect, we the public will never allow this to happen because it affects our lives in an immediate sense.

Power corruption is tricky in that it’s often legal and it’s virtually impossible to prove. As former Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr Mohammed Mahathir said, “You say everything in Malaysia is under the table, well in Singapore it is just over the table.”

However, it doesn’t make any better than the type done for money. Basically what happens in power corruption is the bottom and top lose the connection. As anyone stroke patient can tell you when the brain and legs lose the connection you get a situation where you simply can’t move – the brain can send out the signals and the leg muscles can be strong but when there’s no connection, nothing happens.

With a country, the rot doesn’t set in so immediately. It takes a bit of time to set in but eventually the rot takes effect.

So far, Singaporeans have shown the ability to stop some of the rot through the ballot box. The question is, would the opposition politicians prove to be made of sterner stuff when it comes to holding power. The case for pessimism is there. As one former writer says, “The Government types are actually fairly decent – it’s the liberals who can be really vicious.” Let’s just pray that the public’s tolerance is lower than the likes of the Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC who feasts during Ramadan aka Thambi Pundek when it comes to tolerating nonsense of those in power.

If Only Osama had listened to Vito Corleone

Now that the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the USA has gone by, it is time to make the politically incorrect point that Osama Bin Ladin one fatal error – he forgot to watch the Godfather. If he had, he may have come across the advice that the Godfather, Don Vito Corleone (played by Marlon Brando) gave to his godson, Tom (played by Robert Duval) – “A lawyer with a briefcase steals more than a gangster with a gun.” The Old Don knew what he was talking about. The last decade has been marked by two traumatic man-made events. The first is the September 11 attacks, which left a powerful psychological impression on the world. The second event is the Sub-Prime crisis. While the attacks of September 11 were by far the more physically dramatic of the two-events, the sub-prime crisis is in many ways more insidious and more damaging. Let’s make no mistake – damage was done during the September 11 attacks. Nearly three thousand innocent people lost their lives, the Twin Towers were destroyed and the Pentagon was damaged. Then you have to take into account the fact that September 11 was the springboard for military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have cost several thousand lives more. However, while the effects of the attacks were dramatic, they can’t exactly be called strategic victories. Instead of weakening the US National Fabric, the attacks proved to be a focal point for the nation. In terms of international diplomacy, the US gained tremendous amounts of sympathy and goodwill from around the world. The French went as far as to invoke a NATO resolution declaring that an attack on one NATO member was an attack on the entire alliance. Osama became the most convenient “villain” for the US government to focus on. Prior to going into Iraq, the US government was in a position of strength. It was only the Bush Administration’s blatant disregard for international law and mishandling of international opinion that cost it goodwill. The Sub-Prime crisis of 2008 has been far less dramatic than the attacks of September 2011. There was no crashing building and there have been no reports of death caused directly by the Sub-Prime crisis. However, this does not mean that the Sub-Prime crisis has been victimless. An untold number of small businesses have been forced into bankruptcy and an even greater number of people have lost their homes. In the case of Iceland, an entire nation has gone bankrupt, ruining thousands of people through no fault of their own. What makes the Sub-Prime crisis so much more difficult to deal with is that unlike September 11, there’s no particular villain to focus on. American Foreign and Cultural Policy could be defined by being everything the Soviet Union was not. Then, when the Soviet Union collapsed there was Saddam Hussein. After Saddam there was Osama bin Ladin. These characters provided Western policy makers with an easy narrative. All they had to do was to deal with the “Bad Guys.” Reacting to September 11 was easy – all that was to needed was to “Hunt down Osama and the terrorist.” In the case of the Sub-Prime Crisis, there was no Osama. Yes, bankers were blamed for being a little greedy. However, the bankers could not be blamed for everything and more importantly the bankers were not doing anything illegal. While many people complained that bankers like Stan O’Neal of Merill Lynch and Chuck Prince of Citigroup were paid hundreds of millions of dollars after being sacked for running up losses in the billions, the fact is the severance payment they received was perfectly legal. It is not an exaggeration to say that the bankers who played a key role in the Sub-Prime Crisis did more damage to the economy of America and the Western World than Osama did when he decided to order the crashing of the planes into the Twin Towers. The image of the crashing planes and the collapsing towers was dramatic. However, the American nation regrouped and there was no economic melt down. No big names had to file for bankruptcy. By contrast the Sub-Prime has lead to trillions of dollars being lost in the effort to recover bad debts created by reckless lending. Even more money has gone into prop up institutions like AIG and Citigroup, which played a leading role in creating the crisis but cleverly positioned themselves as being “Too Big to fall.” Institutions like Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers have gone bankrupt, throwing thousands of people out of work and leaving thousands of investors in financial ruin. Ordinary people have been kicked out of their homes. You can buy decent houses in places like St Louis for US 7,000 dollars. Both the US Dollar and the British Pound have collapsed against their major competitors. It was big news when the Australian Dollar was parity with the US Dollar. Nobody batted and eye lid when the Australian Unit became stronger. The Hindustan Times recently reported a story on how the Indian Table Tennis Federation failed to hire a Swedish coach because they were going to pay him in US Dollars instead of Indian Rupees. The collapse of the British Pound has been equally dramatic. In the “Sterling Crisis” of 1992, when Sterling was rejected from the ERM, it took two and a half Singapore dollars to buy one pound. That was an all time low. Today the rate hovers slightly above two Singapore dollars to a pound. The economic damage is not just American and British. The Euro Zone is also in crisis. Countries like Greece are deeply in debt and holding onto the hope of bailout from larger nations. A generation of people in Spain have never held a steady job in their lives for the simple fact – there are no steady jobs. The Sub-Prime crisis has done more damage to the economies of the Western World than September 11 ever did. Unlike the September 11, 2001, nobody has called for the ‘hunting down’ of the perpetrators. How many ‘prominent’ names have gone to jail for doing so much damage to the economy? Not only has nobody gone to jail but many of the big banks CEOs have retired on very high severance packages. Don Vito Corleone had a point and Osama should have taken his advice. Instead of trying to bring down the Western World’s economic system through death and destruction, he should have worked with a team of bankers and lawyers to perpetrate the culture of greed. The lynchpins of the systems he sought to destroy have done a far better job of it than he did.

I’m On the Way

I am, as my mother once said, “On the wrong side of my thirties” and if you look at things carefully, the life I’ve been living is pretty miserable. I’ve never held a job in a decent organisation for more than a year (so much so that when I left my last job, PN Balji advised me, “Be an income man – you’ll never explain why you’ve never worked in an organisation for long – it will be tough if not impossible to get hired”) and I’ve spent the last six-years living in a hovel. As for my personal life, the less said the better (unless you’re writing drama scripts). However, it looks like there may be hope, even for the likes of me. I can’t quite say that I have arrived but at least I can say that I am on the way. The message was delivered by the most unusual and unlikely of all messengers – “The Young Politician from Pasir Ris GRC aka Thambi Pundek.” (He’s just informed me that he would rather be referred to as Thambi Pundek than the Young Politician from Pasir Ris GRC). It all started out with an SMS. I told him that it was time to stop spreading fear and panic about the losing candidate in Saturday’s Presidential Election (Dr Tan Cheng Bok – former MP for Ayer Rajah GRC) and to start concentrating on healing the party (PAP). He decided that I was seeing things the wrong way and he needed to meet with me to “rebut” my beliefs and offered to buy me a decent lunch. Well, I’m not one to argue with someone who is offering to buy me lunch and so I met up with him to listen to his intellectual analysis of politics in Singapore. He had fun telling me that the Presidential Election was a grand endorsement of PAP policies – “Over 70 percent of the electorate voted for PAP men,” he said. His argument was simple – both Dr Tony Tan and Dr Tan Cheng Bok were PAP men and so a vote for both of them was a vote for the PAP. Not sure how he worked that one out – if you follow the logic the PAP won 100 percent of all the votes cast since every one of them was a former government/PAP man – Dr Tony Tan is former Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Tan Cheng Bok is a former MP, Mr Tan Jee Say is a former senior civil servant and Mr Tan Kin Lian ran NTUC Income Cooperative (A government controlled organisation). Anyway, half way through his monologue, YPPRGRCTP (Young Politician from Pasir Ris GRC Thambi Pundek) said, “Hey, your blog is being monitored by ISD – you know they can call you up anytime – just like that.” He then went onto announce to me that “I know the person monitoring your blog and I’m one of the point people.” This was the news that made my day. If I haven’t arrived, this was the sign to say that I am at the very least on the way to somewhere. Seriously, how many of my former school, army, university and work mates can possibly claim to be important enough to be monitored by the State? Singapore is small state. However, we’re a small state that takes pride in being exceedingly stable in a region known for instability. Our politics, until recently was a fairly predictable affair. Elections were never a question of who would win but a question of the winning margin. Law suites are also predictable – you simply had to follow whose interest was at stake. If you were a foreign publication in a libel suite against a senior member of the government, you’d know the outcome – the only unpredictable element would be the amount awarded in favour of your opponent. To keep this happy situation going, Singapore has a very strong security service. Like our former Colonial Masters, the British, we have an “official secrets act,” and while we may have gotten rid of colonial rule, we’ve maintained some of the laws of colonial administration – namely the right of the government to hold you for a period of 60-days without trial. Thanks to Osama and his gang, these laws have been tightened. Our little Red Dot of a nation has an extensive spy network. OK, it’s not the CIA or Mosad or dare I say the KGB – but our Internal Security Department (ISD) is well funded and its network is extensive. OK, I’ve been aware that I’ve been monitored or at least my published writings have been. Anyone is consistently published in the media is monitored. The Ministry of Information and the Arts (MICA) not only has an efficient system of distributing information; it has an equally extensive system of monitoring information. The chaps, who do this, don’t just monitor mainstream publications. Cyberspace, particularly blogs are monitored. So, it’s not a surprise to me that ISD has glanced at my blog as well as the various publications I’ve written for in the past. However, I have to admit that I was especially pleased with the way the YPPRGRCTP great pride in telling me that I was being monitored and he knew the people doing it. Obviously, he thinks I’ve become important enough for the powers that be to monitor me closely and he is happily trying to find ways for me to admit to doing something awfully salacious so that he can score some brownie points by denouncing me to the powers that be. So, now that I’m officially being marked out as being important enough for the powers that be to place me under surveillance and to let me know – I need to think of ways to help the YPPRGRCTP get ahead in his career as a worm and find something that will remove any shadow of doubt that I have officially arrived. Wait for the next instalment of what I have to say next – it could be a grovelling apology and promise to remove myself from cyberspace – in which case you know why – I’ve arrived and will be joining the likes of Alan Shadrake in the list of millionaire authors created by the Singapore government – wish me luck and do find ways of contributing to my welfare.

Where do you move to when you have no limbs?

Election season ended with one of the most memorable elections in history. As expected, former Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Tony Tan Keng Yam, won the election to be Singapore’s next president. For once, there was no need to qualify political adjectives with the phrase, “By Singapore Standards.” The winning margin of 0.34 percent or some 8,000 votes out of over two-million cast was as narrow as its gets nearly everywhere else. How did this happen in a place where elections usually means life carries on as usual and results are more predictable than weather in the Sahara? What does this mean for politics in Singapore?

Well, let’s start with the obvious. The vast majority of voters are still with the establishment and good old fashioned things like a reputation for reliability and political smarts as well as help from the main stream media help.

For most of us, Dr Tony Tan was the “preferred” candidate of the government. Both Prime Minister and Emeritus Senior Minister had said nice things about him and suddenly the mainstream media started giving his views on things as minor as toilet paper quality an unexplainable amount of attention. However, that didn’t deter us from liking him. Enough voters remembered Dr Tan as a minister and he was remembered for being likeable enough. The man only retired from the cabinet in 2005. Our last memory of his cabinet performance was taking a different stance from the cabinet during the debate on building casinos – hence the image of him being a senior member of government who dared disagree with the main stream remained.

Even his weaknesses were explainable. As Executive Director of the Government Investment Corporation (GIC), he was subordinate to the Chairman, who happened to be Lee Kuan Yew, our founding Prime Minister and former Minister Mentor. Hence it was possible to argue that he wasn’t the main decision maker when GIC decided to invest heavily in the then loss making Citigroup and UBS. His most serious weakness, namely the question of his sons rather cushy National Service career was accepted by the silent majority – yes, we know there’s a White Horse system and Tony’s boy wasn’t doing anything worse than what other White Horses did and do.

Then there was his performance during the campaign. He spoke intelligently enough and displayed enough gravitas for people to accept that he was “Tried and Tested” enough to have as the symbolic helm. On a personal basis, I liked the fact that he made the point that it is important to “Run for the office that exist rather than what you’d like it to be.”

Say what you like about the man but he is aware of the realities of being a public figure. There are more than enough forums outlining how he’s shifted position of various policies and that he’s not as independent as he’s making himself out to be. Could he be, as one blogger put it – “A double headed snake?” Well, perhaps he is – but then again, is he merely doing what needs to be done in politics to get the job done?

Much as the post of President in Singapore is ceremonial and the President should be above the petty squabbles of politics – having a President who knows how the game is played is useful and in many cases acceptable. Idealism is admired in politics – naivety is a dangerous trait in a national leader – even if that leader is primarily symbolic.

I take all of these factors into account and despite my misgivings about the way he’s handled the question of his son’s National Service record – he was and is the most qualified of all the four candidates. In that respect, I believe that the best man did win on the night.

However, while Singaporeans were willing to give Dr Tony Tan a chance at the polls, we have to look at his margin of victory. By all accounts, Dr Tony Tan has to consider himself a very lucky man. He is President by virtue of the “First-Past-The-Post” system we inherited from the UK.

This system means the person who gets the job is simply the person who gets the most votes rather than the person who receives the largest share of the votes. If you look at the UK as an example, even the most prominent leaders like Mrs Thatcher or her Labour Predecessors of the 1970s never won a lot more than forty percent of total votes cast. They merely won more votes than their contenders. Is this system necessarily fair? No, it isn’t.

However, the British system has produced relatively stable governments than many nations on the continent using “proportional representation” systems which are better at reflecting the national share of the vote. Britain’s current coalition is the first of its kind in living memory or at least amongst people my age.

Dr Tony Tan is President because he won the most votes on the night. He is not President because the majority voted for him. If you look at the numbers – nearly two thirds of the electorate didn’t. Luckily for Dr Tony Tan, this is a competition of individuals and not parties – if it were, the other three candidates could easily have kept him in the cold by forming a coalition against him.

What does this mean? Well, I’d say that the message is similar to the one delivered at the General Election. Singaporeans generally like the establishment as it is – it’s done a fairly good job on the macro-level. However, we think the establishment needs to listen to us and show a bit more concern about us. To make sure the powers that be get the message – hit them where it hurts most – placing a few more opposition leaders in parliament.

We all saw Dr Tan as the establishment candidate but he was more than that. He was a qualified candidate for a post that in many ways is a waste of his qualifications. We’re willing to give him a chance.

However, we want Dr Tan to remember that he works for us – “The Electorate.” The margin of victory is so narrow that Dr Tan cannot escape the fact that he’s only president by luck. Face it, he had all the advantages, yet he had a wafer thin majority. The message to him is clear – “you’ve got to make us happy.”

This will be a test for Dr Tan. On one hand he has to face his former colleagues in cabinet who will undoubtedly remind him that his scope to do anything is limited. If you read the constitution, the President only has powers to say “no” to the government on certain occasions. He is legally obliged to do whatever he’s told to by the government. However, he also faces a growing number of young voters and netizens who want him to be “independent” in his thoughts. There’s also the fact that the older voters who supported him could easily defect to his nearest rival – Dr Tan Cheng Bok, former Member of Parliament for Ayer Rajah.

The other Dr Tan had a powerful and very appealing message – “Singaporeans first – Unifying Singaporeans.” Like Dr Tony Tan, Dr Tan Cheng Bok has been in politics for a long time. He is familiar with the workings of the ruling party and while he may not have had Dr Tony Tan’s experiences of dealing with the cabinet and in policy formation – he was far closer to the ground and his record of putting nation before party is unquestionable. This man stood up and voted against the “NCMP and NMP” (Non-Constituency Member of Parliament and Nominated Member of Parliament) schemes despite the fact that the party whip was in place (Whips in the Westminster tradition are legalised party thugs – they “persuade” MPs to vote along with party decisions rather than with their individual conscience).

The man showed an incredible grasp of what the ground wanted. Simply put – we, the people feel like second class citizens in our own land and we can’t help feeling that there’s a Singapore for some and a Singapore for others. Dr Tan Cheng Bok’s offer to put us first is appealing. Then, as my favourite Young Politician from Pasir Ris GRC says, “Lots of people in the PAP support him and he had plenty of supporters in the Workers Party.” If you chat to enough voters, you’ll find that the main difference between the Dr Tan’s is the fact that Dr Tony had a higher national profile. Should he mess up, we would happily vote for Dr Tan Cheng Bok instead.

If Dr Tony Tan is smart, he’ll offer Dr Tan Cheng Bok a seat of Council of Presidential Advisors. This is the body that the President has to listen to when he doesn’t have to listen to the government. The principle is simple – “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” By doing this, Dr Tony Tan will bring Dr Tan Cheng Bok and his supporters into his camp. This is a move that the Prime Minister will have to support. Dr Tan Cheng Bok may not have been his preferred choice – but the election results are such that he cannot afford to alienate Dr Tan Cheng Bok, either on the national level or even within party lines (Dr Tan was once elected into his seat with some 88 percent of votes cast in his constituency.)

Of the two candidates who were not former members of the party, the most interesting one is Tan Jee Say. Mr Tan was a high flying scholar, who moved into the private sector and later into politics.

He ran on a campaign of making the President an office that provides “Checks and Balances” on a very powerful government. While the constitution as it stands does not allow the President much room for manoeuvre, Mr Tan has rightfully suggested that the government will have to think twice before challenging a President who has a democratic mandate. Let’s face it, the President is elected by every member of the electorate – the Prime Minister is only voted in by his constituents. Mr Tan is also right to point out that part of the reason for making the Presidency an elected post was to put a check on potentially spendthrift government.

The message is appealing. Mr Tan is not. Let’s face it, what exactly is Mr Tan’s record of public service? He gained some attention during the General Election and then, when he didn’t get his seat, he happily resigned from the party (Singapore Democratic) to run for the Presidency. If he was that interested in “serving the people” or acting as a “Check and Balance” surely he would focused on building his party into a force credible enough to take on the ruling party in parliament rather than going for the Presidency, which is primarily ceremonial?”

Power in Singapore comes from control of parliament. If you want to limit the powers of the current government, you need to start with a seat in parliament. Winning one seat as an opposition is tough but it isn’t impossible. Mr Low Thia Khiang, leader of the Workers Party understood this well enough. He held onto Hougang for nearly two-decades, building up a track record as a person who could look after the electorate. He waited and took his time and when the ruling party was vulnerable, he struck. We cannot rule out the possibility that Mr Low has the potential to be a potential Prime Minister, should the ruling party ever fail. People will trust him because he’s built up from the ground.

The more perceptive will realise that Mr Tan is hopping to parachute himself into high office. First he joins a political party – then when it doesn’t win, he rushes into another election where he thinks he can use their ideas. This smacks of political opportunism. In the investment banking scene, you could argue that opportunism is a good thing. However, you are talking about politics what is usually a conservative country. Jumping from here to there smacks of political opportunism rather than genuine interest in the public.

Furthermore, while Mr Tan was never a member of the ruling party, he was a senior member of the civil service. Sure, the ruling party will think twice about blackmailing him (he knows where the proverbial bodies are buried) but the converse is also true. He cannot claim to be “guilt-free” of the “sins” of the government.

The image of Mr Tan’s blatant sense of political opportunism was most clearly visible when he started complaining about how the campaign period was too short for him to correct his image of being confrontational. May be he is right. However, his complaint makes him sound like a spoilt child. Sorry, politics is a rough game. The guys in power have the advantage of choosing when elections take place. You either enter the game on their side or you learn to fight by the rules they set. Mr Tan new full well that the Presidential Election would come after the General One. He should started building his brand equity much earlier. Say what you like about media bias but the man is also at fault.

Having said all of that, Mr Tan is highly intelligent. His ideas are worth listening to and despite being a relative novice; Mr Tan did win the votes of one in four Singaporeans. He cannot be underestimated.

What can Dr Tan do? Well, the answer is simple – take his better ideas, repackage them and sell them as your own. Ideas in politics are not copyright and as long as you are in power, you have the means of putting them into action.

Look at Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Both came from parties known as being closer to the socialist left than the business right. However, both the New Democrats and New Labour took ideas shamelessly from their right wing opponents and made them their own. Both Clinton and Blair spoke of “economic growth” with a kinder face. George Bush II who was an awful President but a first rate Governor of Texas was also good at this – think of his “Compassionate Conservatism.”

Dr Tan with the backing of the Prime Minister should look at how he can “borrow” some of Mr Tan’s ideas and make them their own.

Finally, there was Mr Tan Kin Lian, former CEO of NTUC Income, our largest insurance cooperative. Mr Tan noticed the way things were going and quickly conceded defeat. As he predicted – he lost his deposit.

In way, one is tempted to feel sorry for this Mr Tan. However, he deserved it. Mr Tan made much of his experience running the insurance cooperative. Halfway through the campaign, he lost the plot. He made wild promises about donating half his salary to the public and how he would raise the wages of pensioners and National Servicemen. – Nice gesture – but the President simply has no authority to do this. Purse strings are controlled by the Ministry of Finance and the President is merely a gatekeeper on past reserves – he does not allocate revenue. Hard to trust someone who has no idea which office he’s running for.

Dr Tony Tan has won a tight fought race for an office with very limited scope. He has, however, cards he can play. He needs to read the public mood correctly and play his cards accordingly if he wants to make this Presidency the shinning star of his brilliant career.

The Question of Service

Singapore’s liberals are going to be very upset with me, but of all the Presidential candidates running for Singapore’s highest office, Dr Tony Tan is easily the most qualified. The man has that distinguished, dignified (though he admittedly looks better in the media than in the flesh) look that makes him perfect for the largely ceremonial post.

His experiences as the head of Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), Deputy Prime Minister and most recently Chairman of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) have given him the experience of dealing with large sums of money and the bureaucratic machinery that the President is expected to be able to handle.

As a Minister, Dr Tan was regarded as one of the “good guys.” He was close enough to the top but also had a reputation for having an independent mind. Even passionate “anti-PAP” voters like my mother who advised us “Vote for anyone EXCEPT the PAP,” take the position of “Vote for TONY.”

So, when you add up all these factors, the Presidential Race is Dr Tan’s to lose. His performance is almost flawless – when the other candidates blab on about how independent minded they’ll be, Dr Tan has rightly pointed out that he’s running for an office that exist rather than an office that he wishes he had. What could sound more reasonable than that?

Well, unfortunately for Dr Tan, he may well lose an election that was his for the taking. The reason boils down to a “Question of Service.” Nobody is questioning Dr Tan’s unquestionable service to the nation – instead the world is questioning the service of his son, Dr Patrick Tan.

The story is simple. When Dr Tan Senior was Defence Minister in the middle 1990s, his son Patrick enlisted for National Service. He disrupted his service to go abroad for studies (which is acceptable and done). When he returned from his studies, he mysteriously ended up being posted into some obscure unit to study – soil (How did he get that posting?). Somehow, the younger Dr Tan not only found a way to get a cushy job during his full time service – there’s even the question of how much reservist time he actually served.

This doesn’t bode well for Dr Tony Tan. Suddenly his record for decent service is looking less decent. As far as most of us are concerned, it can’t be a coincidence that Dr Patrick Tan’s National Service ended up in “cushy” land when his father was Defence Minister. How is it that none of his sons served a day of their National Service in a combat unit? What does this mean? Simply put – in a theoretical war situation, none of the Tan boys will be on the front line.

To be fair to Dr Tony Tan and his son’s, this is part of the system – it’s called the “White Horse” system. Children of prominent figures in society are marked out before they enter National Service. The official reasoning given by a former Minister of State for Defence was, “So that people will NOT give them special treatment.” Poor old Cedric Foo was dubbed “Cedric Fool.”

Sorry, anyone who has been through National Service (Most MEN) knows that is blatantly not true. You notice it in small things like – how some people never do push-ups for the same thing you do or how is it that some companies mysteriously get certain privileges that the rest of the battalion don’t. One of the biggest areas where you notice the “White Horses” comes from postings. How do some people end up in some jobs while others do not?

This is a systematic issue rather than a personal issue. By and large, the majority of “White Horses” are very nice people and they’ve been brought up to be embarrassed by the treatment that the system accords them. I take my former Deputy Manpower Officer (Dy S1), who is the son of a former Member of Parliament – you couldn’t find a nicer person than him. He remains a humble and gentle person. The “real” White Horses are humble and find themselves in an embarrassing position every time they’re signalled for special treatment.

So, in many ways, you can’t blame Dr Patrick Tan for getting a “cushy” National Service posting. Chances are, he never asked for it – it was handed to him on a plate and he took it. Simply put, who wouldn’t take something decent if it was offered to them? There are good chances that Dr Tony Tan never ordered anyone or even suggested to anyone that he wanted his sons to get cushy jobs.

Having said that, the incident reflects very poorly on Dr Tan and if he loses the election, this will be the very things that will rightfully does it. It has shown that Dr Tan is either very naïve or at worst, his integrity is questionable.

Let’s start with the obvious. When you want to climb the political ladder in a country that prides itself in having no corruption – its not enough to non-corrupt – you have to be seen to be non-corrupt. As Defence Minister, Dr Tan had to be aware that his son’s posting might be a controversial topic. Dr Tan has to this date made not one effort to show how he distanced himself from his son’s posting.

It’s not that difficult to do. Look at the way Mr Lee Kuan Yew got our current Prime Minister, Mr Lee Hsien Loong into politics. He got his deputies, S.Rajaratnam and Goh Keng Swee to bring him into the party. Then, when he handed over power, he handed it to Goh Chok Tong, who was Prime Minister for 14-years. The cynics will still point out that there had to be some political manoeuvrings there – but you can’t actually pin-point anything on the Lees.

The Elder Mr Lee has also made it clear that he didn’t want his children to be “spoilt.” The Lee Family in Singapore is a tightly run ship and other than the Lees in politics – the others stay out of the limelight in the way that the Suhartos in Indonesia were never able to. Mr Lee has somehow ensured that there are enough urban myths floating around of how he doesn’t tolerate certain kinds of behaviour. One of them comes from an old school teacher who attended my grandmother’s wake. She tells a story of how she threatened to cane Lee Hsien Yang, younger brother of Prime Minister Lee. The Young Boy had threatened the school with “You know how my father is?” The story goes that the Prime Minister came down from the Istana, ordered the Principal to summon the school and promptly canned the boy in front of everyone. Message – just because he’s my son, I won’t allow you to give him perks.

Dr Tan could easily have done something similar. All he had to do was to point out how removed he was from the selection process. Cynics may not have been appeased but at least it would be a better answer than what’s been given now – “It’s all a pack of lies.”

This then leads to the next nail in Dr Tan’s proverbial coffin. He has shown that he simply doesn’t get communication. Thanks to the internet and social media platforms like Facebook – communications is a two-way street.

Dr Tan has had the advantage over the other candidates in terms of main stream media coverage. I saw the Presidential Debate on TV and he actually did better than the rest. That was the easy part – he had the machine to control the messaging in the main stream. Unfortunately, the game is quite different in cyberspace. This was something that the PAP machinery failed to realise until it was too late in the last election.

Dr Tan’s team has done a poor job of communicating in cyberspace. When the story of the younger Dr Tan’s posting was broken online – the reaction time in responding to the story was pretty slow. Instead of responding calmly, rationally and persistently, Dr Tan’s team went as far as to take down his Facebook page. Yes, people on the next can be nasty, crude and unreasonable. However, you still need to face them and as long as you keep your cool and stay objective – you can win them over. Taking down your Facebook page on the other hand is tantamount to admitting defeat – it’s like burning down the walls of a conquered city. – This isn’t exactly the reaction of a man you would expect of a man who is touting the value of a steady hand.

Then there’s the final response of Dr Tan and his sons – namely to accuse people online of deliberately trying to malign them and the institution of National Service. Sorry, it’s not going to work.

They are reacting to a story that broke online. As such, everyone is more inclined to believe the online story than to blame them. The facts are such – all the boys got cushy national service jobs when the father was Minister of Defence. The questions remain. Did Dr Tan exercise undue influence to get his sons cushy jobs? How did things happen? Dr Tan has dismissed this as a pack of lies as have his sons. Erm, sorry that’s not good enough. It’s not good enough to say – “I’m great – believe me.” You need to show why your version is the believable one. Dr Tan hasn’t done this and it should be no surprise why he was booed when he gave his acceptance speech.

Politics in Singapore is getting rougher and the ruling party cannot expect its mandate to be taken for granted. It seemed that the Prime Minister understood the message after the General Election. Unfortunately, the lessons seem lost on his preferred Presidential Candidate.

Dr Tan may yet win this election. He should pray that the older generations and those who are not active online come out and vote for the virtues he once represented. However, even if he wins the Presidential Election, as most suspect he will, he needs to answer some questions and he needs to be convincing – otherwise he can expect some dark clouds to hang over any presidency he may have

The Vote for What?

After a lifetime of not having to vote, Singaporeans are currently in a happy vote fest. Three-months after voting in a General Election, we are about to vote for a new President. At the time of writing, Singapore only has two more days of actual campaigning before polling day on August 27, 2011.

While the Presidential Election hasn’t generated the same excitement as the General one, there has been quite a bit of discussion in the chat-rooms and in the coffee shops on which of the four Tans running for the highest office in the land is best suited for the job. On the surface of things, the talk about who is going to be President is interesting. If you look at the office of the President, it’s basically a ceremonial one or if you want to be unkind – a redundant one.

Despite all the chatter about the various powers that the President holds, real power, as in most Commonwealth Countries, lies in the hands of the Prime Minister as the leader of the largest party in parliament. Like the British Monarch, the only perk that Singapore’s President actually has over the Prime Minister is at ceremonial occasions (Actually, its less fun – the sovereign can keep a Prime Minister standing as he or she delivers her report, the President by contrast only has a bigger chair on National Day).

The Singapore Constitution has been written in such a way that the President can do lots of things – ON THE ADVICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER. What does that mean in plain speak? Simply put, the President can only do what he’s told to by the Prime Minister.

However, sometime in the 1990s, the constitution was changed to make the Presidency an elected one (the President is the only individual elected by EVERY Singaporean – the Prime Minister is only elected by his constituents) and to give the President some areas where he’s allowed to act on his own discretion – namely in the two key areas of vetoing the drawing down on past reserves and on the appointment on certain key civil service appointments. While the President may not have to “ACT ON ADVICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER” in these areas – he needs to ‘CONSULT THE COUNCIL OF PRESIDENTIAL ADVISORS.’ What exactly is that? A council of the great and good who help the President know what he’s doing. One doesn’t exactly need to point out that Parliament has a say in influencing who gets on this council of great and the good.

The lack of actual powers of the President is so well known that incumbent was known to make cryptic remarks like “Ask God” when he was asked if he was going to run for a second term, a few weeks after he said he wouldn’t. One of his predecessors even went as far as to call the Prime Minister of the day – “Boss” whenever they were in private. In return for knowing who’s boss, the President is well rewarded – like the British Monarch, the President is looked after by a Civil List – this means a small salary of S$4 million plus.

So, why does anyone really care about who becomes the President? I mean, as long as the President looks reasonably dignified and waves on National Day, why should anyone care who becomes President?

I suspect the reason is simple. This is the only other chance we’re ever going to get to slap the government for the next five-years. As I have often said and many would probably agree with me – the Singapore government has done about 70 – 80 percent of things right. So, most Singaporeans are in no rush to kick out the government.

Where most of us get ‘cheesed off’ with the powers that be, comes in the form of style. As a visiting school friend of mine was said, “Singapore is run like Churchers – it’s a giant school.” Listen to enough government official communications and you’ll get the feeling that you’re reading a school report. “We the teachers are smart – you the kiddies don’t know what is good for you so listen to us.”

That was tolerable when they were getting things right. However, in the last few years, they’ve been less right than usual. One only has to think about Mas Selamat, the limping man who waltzed out of a secure facility and only caught a year later by …..Malaysians. The government was simply out of tune with the ground. What was more frightening than the actual gaff was the arrogance of officialdom. Instead of apologising – we, the public were consistently reprimanded for expecting ministers to resign instead of being satisfied with the sacking of two Ghurkhas.

So, when it came to the last General Election, we put the ruling party back into power with a heavy mandate (60 percent) but we gave the opposition more seats. For the ruling party, this was a slap in the face. Suddenly, the Prime Minister got rid of the ministers we wanted him to get rid off and started looking into the issues that we wanted him to address. – A good chunk of the electorate now gets it – slap the government at the polls and they listen.

Unfortunately for the powers that be, this feeling may actually move to the Presidential election. Yes, the President can’t do much but we, the electorate can send the sharp reminder to the government that we can hurt them by not voting in their preferred candidate – or at least giving the preferred candidate such a nasty scare that he remembers who’s boss when he’s in the Istana. Poor Dr Tony Tan is currently suffering from this reaction. This former Deputy Prime Minister was once regarded as one of the “good guys,” – he was thought of as an “Independent Thinker.” However, once the Prime Minister and “Senior Minister Emeritus,” started saying nice things about how great he was as a potential President – the internet crowd started digging up dirt on the man. Now, the interesting thing about Dr Tan is how is how his son managed to get posted to cushy job as a Defence Scientist when he was Defence Minister.

Is it fair for Dr Tan? Well, it may not be but then again, the government hasn’t exactly been fair when it comes to the presidency either.

Let’s start with the obvious – the criterion of who can be President isn’t exactly fair to begin with. One of the key requirements to run for President is that you must have either been a minister or a CEO of a company with a paid-up capital and turn-over of S$100 million. That instantly disqualifies quite a few people. Then, when you look at that criteria, you’ll understand that the people who can run either won’t or they’re going to be exceedingly conservative – you don’t get to those positions by rocking the boat. Let’s face it; of the two candidates who are not former members of the ruling party, one of them was a former civil servant and the other the CEO of the Insurance Cooperative – which is to all intents and purposes an arm of the government.

No matter how much the candidates talk about being “independent” of the government, it’s hard to believe them. It’s easy to dismiss this as “saying anything to get the job.”

However, to be fair to the candidates – there is at the very least some semblance of competition. During the last election for President, the candidate was unopposed. Everyone else who made the grade decided not to run. The one person, who tried to run, didn’t make the grade – he was a CFO rather than a CEO. The fact that he didn’t make the grade would have given the government the result it wanted. However, that wasn’t enough – they had to dig into his past and publish his dirt – which included things like disputes he had with his condominium management committee a decade ago.

We the public simply don’t want elections being ‘fixed.’ Other countries have survived with different centres of power and as far as most of us are concerned, there is no reason for one group to have unquestioned power.

We also remember the treatment of the last President who did what he was supposed to do. The late President Ong was a former Deputy Prime Minister who believed that he had a job to do, no matter what the government thought or felt. He gave a public press conference about the teething problems he had with the government. Didn’t actually make any allegations but he provided an independent view on what was going on. Somehow that was a bit too much for the powers that be – somehow, when the man died of cancer, there was a “committee” that decided he would not be accorded a State Funeral – surely this is something that would be considered an automatic given for a former Head of State.

In many ways, who wins the election is not important. The candidates are generally accepted as decent people who would do justice to the job. What is important, however, is whether this Presidential election is the beginning of a new way of doing things? Will the government accept that it is no longer the unquestioned authority on all matters in the country? Could this be the beginning of government being about a conversation of equals rather than between the great and good with the dull and obedient?

When Boy’s can’t Get Laid

It’s a little tempting to be smug about being ethnic Chinese these days. America is in deep financial trouble and so the world is looking to the cash-rich Chinese for a bail out. Britain has gone through the shock of riots that are better associated with the Middle East and one is tempted to gloat at the fact that we’ve not seen an ethnic Chinese amongst the rioters. The Western is losing its shine and the Chinese world is glowing.

As tempting as it is to gloat, it’s probably best to hold the celebrations for a while yet. While China is currently and increasingly being viewed as an alternative bedrock for the rest of the world, it’s quite possible that the Middle Kingdom is going to be the source of a host of geo-political problems in time to come.

The reason is simple – China is going to be filled with boys who can’t get laid. In a report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in January 2011, some 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without a wife. Thanks to a combination of a “One-Child” policy that has been in effect since 1978 and cultural preferences for boys coupled with growing economic development (which usually takes away people’s interest in making babies), China is going to be awash with lots testosterone. The statistics are fairly simple – there are 119 boys for every 100 girls born and in some parts of the area, the imbalance goes up 130 boys per 100 girls.

What does this all mean? Well, for a start, it’s clear that women born in China can expect to have a lot more fun while men are going to have a problem. Men are going to outnumber women by quite a large margin. Culturally, women tend to marry older and more established men. So, in a family of more than one boy, the younger brother is going to be competing with his older brother from the same pool of women when it comes to looking for a bride.

For women, this situation can be fun. I remember being at Churcher’s College when girls were first welcomed into the junior classes (there were a handful in the 6th form.) The 13 girls who entered the first year had the undivided attention of 400 boys. They were to put the centre of much wanted attention. The gender imbalance at school got a little more balanced within two-years when girls could enter in the third year. However, by the time I left, things had cooled down a bit but the lads still outnumbered the girls.

It wasn’t all bad for us as the lads. For those of us who didn’t get a girl in school, the solution was simple – look outside the school grounds. There were, for example, enough desirable chicks in the local comprehensive and right at the other end of town, there was Bedales, my sister’s school, where the girls were known for being good looking (much better than at Churchers) and for being wide open to having a bit of fun.

Unfortunately for the boys born in rural China, they’re not going to have this alternative since this gender imbalance is going to be nation wide. Look at it this way, if you’re a peasant from rural China, what are your choices? Move to the city and you compete with the better off and more sophisticated city boys as well as sophisticated foreigners. Move abroad and chances are you’re still at the bottom of the social ladder when it comes to looking for a bride.

It’s cool to talk about the Chinese surplus of cash. It’s not polite to talk about it at the moment but will probably become vital to discuss, is the surplus of Chinese testosterone. China is going to have 24 million young men who are going to have a problem getting laid. Just to put things into perspective, that 24 million is larger than the entire population of Australia and New Zealand combined. There will be more Chinese men looking for brides than people in the Nordic world (Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark).

Testosterone can be tricky because it’s the very thing that makes men aggressive. This is the thing that drives men to want sex. Napoleon Hill, the author of “Think and Grow Rich,” makes the point that a high sex drive can be highly beneficial for a man – he just needs to know how to control it. You’ll find that men tend to blossom in later years (late 30s to early 40s) because it takes a while to learn how to divert the energies that you’d use into getting laid into productive work.

It’s not unreasonable to assume that married men or men in steady relationships are going to be a lot more focused on economic productivity than on getting laid. Simply put, if you are getting laid at home – you don’t need to keep looking elsewhere for it.

When you look at these assumptions, it’s not hard to see that the possibility of 24 million men who can’t laid, running round the place is going to be problematic.

The solution is simple – you either find them a bride or you keep them so busy and channel their energies into other things that they forget about their lack of opportunities. The third alternative is you export them out of the place.

Finding a bride is the toughest option of the lot. The gender imbalance is the result of 30-years of upholding a “one-child” policy in a culture that promotes men over women. To reverse it, you’re going to have to get people to start making girl babies and those girl babies won’t be any use for reproduction for at least 16-years.

This becomes even more complicated by the fact that China has been on the express rout to getting rich. As the developed world has discovered – when you get rich, you find people being less interested in having kids.

There is the possibility that you have to import women from elsewhere. Short of promoting human trafficking, you have the problem of making the men attractive enough for the women to want to be imported from elsewhere.

This leaves us looking at the possibility of keeping them busy. At the most peaceful stage, the solution is to keep this number of men in jobs that are going to occupy so much of their time and take so much of their energy that getting laid and the lack of opportunities to get laid will be the last thing on their mind.

Somehow, the domestic economy needs to be grown at such a rapid rate that these numbers of young men who can’t get laid coming into the market are absorbed in jobs. The London riots have shown what can happen when you don’t keep young men busy and if you have 24 million young men who have a problem getting laid and getting work, you have the perfect recipe for disaster.

Alternatively, one can look at sending these men into institutions like the army. However, armies are expensive for the state and China already has the largest army in the world by population (something which the Chinese government is trying to reduce). Getting them into the army means you may have to do things like give them a purpose – which means pick fights with people – bored men with the skill to kill are an especially lethal combination.

So, we look at exporting them. However, you have to ask yourself, where exactly are you going to export them to? The Western World as well as Japan are struggling to give their own citizens jobs, so they’re not likely to give yours any jobs. One possibility has been in the countries you invest in. One of the chief complaints about Chinese investment in Africa is the fact that China has also exported its labour to do the jobs – which means the African nations don’t the get the number of jobs they were hopping to get. However, things between China and Africa seem to be working out in some way.

This is a problem that requires imagination, which isn’t exactly a quality China’s central planners are known for. You can’t expect a world currently preoccupied with an economic crisis to look at 24 million horny men in 2020. However, this is going to be a major problem and unless China and the world focus on it now, we can expect 2020 to be a very interesting year

Is the Wrong Generation Dying Out?

Watching the London riots play out, reminds me of a conversation I had with one of my best friends when I first met him. He said, “I can’t stand English people [he is incidentally English] except for the old ones. Unfortunately for England, the wrong generation is dying out.”

Perhaps I’m being coloured by my own perceptions here but I always thought my friend had a point. With the greatest love and affection to the guys I went to school with, I don’t have the best images of the English of my generation. I think of the tramps who lined up on Dean Street. All of them were young, white and English.

However, whenever I think of “Old” English people, I have nicer images. I think of the Westons – the family that took me to the airport from school whenever I went overseas. In many ways, Old Mr Weston represents the best of England. His handlebar moustache and cheerful smile whenever he saw me stays in memory till this day. Mr Weston fought in World War II. When he came back home, he became an entrepreneur. As well as running the local taxi service, he had a chip shop and a B&B. He was protective of his family and the community that he served.

I’ve noticed something similar in Singapore too. When I married Gina, I noticed a difference between her and her parents. I think of the egg seller who worked hard, refused to let his wife go to work and somehow put two kids through university. He gave money to charity and was active in his community. He told his kids – “Do good deeds.” By contrast, Gina simply couldn’t get round to caring for people in different circumstances. Let’s not go into charity – she couldn’t walk past a Malay wedding without passing uncalled for remarks. My Aunt couldn’t help but tell me “What a load of fucking racist crap have you got yourself into?”

When you look at how the UK has gone from Mr Weston to the tramps on Dean Street and how Singapore has gone from Gina’s dad to Gina – you cannot help but ask – “What the hell happened?”

I guess you could say that life became too good for the young. In a way there is a truism in this and the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. After World War II, successive Labour Governments implemented the Welfare State. In Singapore, my father’s generation struggled as independent businessmen to build up enough money to ensure people like me could go to university and good comfortable jobs. There would always be enough money around to ensure we could focus on studying instead of worrying about having enough to eat.

Let’s not knock this. As much as we might want to talk about the “Good Old Days,” they weren’t really that good. The intention behind the Welfare State was correct – it was to give the poorest in society a helping hand. The intention of getting your kids into university is correct – parents are supposed to want their kids to be better than they were.

However, when good intentions are taking into excess, they can have side effects. If I look at my generation of Singaporeans, we simply don’t have the hunger to succeed and build something better for our succeeding generations. We don’t need to. Somehow, life has always been mapped out for us. All we’ve had to do is to follow.

In the case of the UK and countries with a welfare system – the system has moved away from being about giving the poorest of the poor a helping hand to being about keeping political lobbies looked after. For the welfare recipients, there is no reason to do anything for yourself – why work for money when you get it for free.

I am also reminded by the Old Rogue that, “Welfare is not for the poor. It’s for the people who administer it.” Across the Western world, vast numbers of people have been employed to administer the welfare system – it’s not in their interest to see things change. Powerful political constituencies with vested interest in the status quo have been created. As a result of this, you get a generation of people that sees state benefits as a right rather than a privilege.

When people have an entitlement mentality, they lose the ability to think for themselves or to develop decent social networks of self-support. When they fight for something, it’s not to better society but to protect entitlements.

As awful as Mrs Thatcher sounded, she had a point. Something had to be done to get people to solve their own problems. Thanks to Mrs Thatcher, the UK did become a more dynamic place. My uncle Nick, who is English, pointed out that, “Thatcherism has made people in England willing to work harder.”

Personally, I don’t think the issue is much of a case of things being “too good,” but a case of social structures and values changing.

If you look at the Singapore case, you cannot argue with parents wanting children to have education or a good life. Singapore has benefited from having a more educated population. We’re in the position to look for better, higher paying industries than our neighbours because our population has the skills.

Despite my rhetoric, I actually don’t have a problem with governments and multinationals. Singapore has done well because it has had competent civil servants. The multinationals do hire Singaporeans because we can do the jobs they provide.

What I disagree with in Singapore in many ways is the way a generation has been brought up with a sense of entitlement. If I go to university, I am entitled to a good, secure civil service job. If I buy a house, I am entitled to make pots of money from it – hence I no longer talk about my home or my house but my property.

When you think of everything as an entitlement, you find it hard to change. Listen to how Singapore Government Linked companies talk and you’ll understand why they can ONLY operate in Singapore. The media industry was particularly rife with entitlement mentality. “The Market is TOO SMALL for competition.” – Read – “We are entitled to make money regardless of what you think.” Sure, you’re entitled to make money as long as you provide the consumers with what they are willing to pay for. You are not entitled to make money because of who you are.

I think the UK has a somewhat similar but more subtle problem. I agree with my former guardian who said, “The Brits lost it when they lost sense of duty.” Nothing exemplifies this better than the Royal Family. You have the Queen who has a very strong sense of duty. She believes that it is her duty to sit on that throne and do all the things a Head of State (incidentally she’s Head of State of Australia, New Zealand and Canada as well as the UK) does until she drops dead. She’s stuck with Prince Phillip despite the fact that the man can’t help but put his foot in his mouth (slitty eyed Japanese) and is womanizer.

By contrast, you have her kids who can’t hold their marriages together and more worryingly are more than happy to feed their linen to the public. I think Prince Charles is a wonderfully kind and decent person but did I really need to know about his desire to be a tampon to some old bag?

I have no problems with the so called English “class system” as it used to be. The working class, as represented by Mr Weston – worked and they worked hard. By contrast, the tramps have realised its easier to get by doing nothing and rioting when they don’t get their next fix of nicotine. People like Mr Weston had an obligation to family and the wider community.

If you look at the traditional British aristocracy, you’ll find that they’re trained with a sense of duty to look after the people. As elitist as the Public School system is, you are, as one Old codger pointed out, “trained to get along with people from all walks of life.” In the days when the British had an empire, the elite took hardship better than the working class – they were trained to by elite Public Schools.

The Public School system has become more academic. Has it become better at training people who understand that leadership is about caring for people under you? That’s debateable. Progress is inevitable – when Britain no longer had colonies, the elite schools had to reinvent themselves as bastions of academic excellence rather than training grounds for colonial administration. If you look at exam results tables, they’ve done a pretty good job. The question, have they produced an elite that understands that it has a role in producing people with a decent set of values?

Funnily enough, the British institution that seems to have done the best job in keeping up to date with modernity but maintaining decent values systems is the military. Nobody questions the ability of British officers trained at Sandhurst to lead. Nobody doubts the British “squadies” ability to work. Somehow the army prison has the lowest rates of re-offenders of all prisons in the UK. I think part of the success of the British military as compared with the civil institutions is that the military has understood that it needs to keep young people (especially men) busy and the structure of the military provides young men with the security that they are cared for as long as they do their part.

Funnily enough, one country that has held relatively well is the USA. This is despite the debts and financial crisis. The USA has a terrible inequality problem. Yet we’ve not had a noticeable riot since Rodney King in the 1990s.

Part of the reason is because you have an elite that understands the principle of giving back. Bill Gates has made more money than anyone else in history. He is currently on course to give more away too. Simple – the system allows you to make as much as you can but you also understand that you need to give something back.

It is true that the problems in America are in a large part due to “crony capitalism,” or at least an implicit collusion between banks and government. However, you also have genuine elite that is not selfish. You have people Warren Buffet, the most successful investor of all time, writing op-ed pieces in the New York Times telling the US government to stop coddling the super rich. Mr Buffet rightly argues that you don’t need to look after the people who don’t need to be looked after. He is for the record, not a softy liberal.

Something has to be done and we need a system that generates ideas and also allows a certain value system to be maintained. How do you ensure and encourage people to get rich through their talents but at the same time understand that they have an obligation to give back. How do you give a helping hand to the poor without robbing them of their pride and incentive to move ahead? These are questions that need to be answered – so isn’t it time we start debating them?

Let the Apes Run the Show!

One of the hot movies of this year is called “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” This movie is supposed to be the prequel of the 1968 and 2001 and one version of “Planet of the Apes.” The premise of all these movies is simple. One day, the apes will achieve human like intelligence and become the dominant life form. Human beings will end up either as slaves or game for the apes to hunt for the fun of it.

These movies have all been success. Science fiction is always fun and there’s something innate in human nature to be terrified of anything that is remotely different. What’s more terrifying than something different is the idea that you may one day be in an inferior position to something that you once dominated.

I look at the way the American establishment got very upset with the Japanese in the 1980s and have since transferred that angst to the Chinese when the little Yellow people started doing things like buying American icons like the Rockefeller Centre. The pundits couldn’t help but draw pictures of America being bombarded by Yen Signs and although tried not to do it, they ended up blabbering about the “Yellow Peril.” The reality was quite different. While the Japanese and the Chinese today have made some headline grabbing purchases but the fact remains that the biggest investors in the USA are British – the Anglo-Saxon cousins.

Why didn’t anyone make a peep when you had the likes of Hanson and James Goldsmith’s buying up US assets and throwing people out of work? There was no “British Peril” there. If anything, the Americans started portraying the English corporate raiders as ruthless but very charming and sexy – just think of Terrence Stamp’s character in Wall Street.

Let’s not put to fine a point on it – the American establishment is simply terrified of little Yellow People, who don’t speak the same language and follow a somewhat different set of beliefs beating them at their own game (let alone being superior to them). If the ruthless billionaire who is about to throw you out of work is the same colour and speaks the same language (which is why there’s been less paranoia about Indians running multinationals – the Indians speak excellent English), it’s not as scary as someone who looks different and more importantly doesn’t exactly want to be you (Americans usually assume the world wants to be like them and they can’t handle it when the rest of the world say ….no).

This isn’t limited to the USA. If you surf the internet in Singapore, you cannot escape people complaining about arrogant Indians from India who expect Singaporeans to have a “slave mentality” towards them. It’s not that the Indian Nationals and to an extent the PRC Chinese are arrogant. We, the Singaporeans have been so used to thinking ourselves as the most advanced beings in Asia (as close to the West as you get), we simply cannot take other Asians being our bosses.

So, if we get this way about our fellow human beings, this is sense of paranoia must be magnified a million times over when the former slave becoming our master happens to be from another species. Hey, we don’t like the idea of being locked up in a cage but we’re quite happy to see other species locked up. We think it’s a violation of rights when the likes of Singapore’s former Minister Mentor, Lee Kuan Yew talks about making graduates breed with other graduates to get smarter babies. We have no problem breeding faster horses (a multi-billion dollar industry) or smaller, bigger, fleshier dogs. As far as human beings are concerned, we are the only species on the planet with “rights.” Everything else is meant to serve us and if it can’t – we eat it. It is incidentally perfectly OK to be a meat eating human but totally unacceptable to be a man-eating tiger.

Well, I don’t want to be locked up in a cage or anyone’s sport. However, if that day happens, would it really be a bad thing? If you look objectively enough, having one of the “other” species take over the planet may not be such a bad thing. Let’s face it; the human being is an exceedingly destructive creature. We happily destroy everyone else’s home in the name of progress.

I don’t need Al Gore to tell me that cutting down rainforest is bad. I live in tinny Singapore, which gets covered in smog whenever the large neighbour, Indonesia, starts burning down trees. You might get pissed off with the Indonesians for doing it because you’re breathing crap – but you sympathise because you, as a human being would happily burn the trees too if someone told you that this was a way to progress. We are the only species on the planet that acquires stuff for the sake of it. Every other species simply takes what it needs. A pride of lions can survive on a single kill for a week or two. One human beings needs this and that every day.

So, when you look at things like that, letting apes take over may not be such a bad thing. For a start, they’re going to cut down hell of a lot less trees. Most ape species climb them and a civilisation of apes may end up finding a way of building cities that work in rain forest rather than cutting down the rain forest to do it.

Then there’s the fact that apes are simply less warlike than human beings. In our system, we have people like the neoCONS who think that it’s perfectly acceptable to march their troops all over the place to be slaughtered. Yes, gorillas, chimpanzees and orang-utans do get into violent displays or temper with each other but they rarely kill each other and when they do, there’s usually a purpose to it (usually a case of one has to die for the other to survive).

Let’s face it, a silverback gorilla, the leader of his troop will do the fighting himself rather than get others to do it for him. When you have to do the fighting, you understand pretty darn quickly that you can get hurt as well as do the hurting. This realisation makes you less likely to get violent and start conflicts. Humans on the other hand are quite capable of getting others to do the fighting for them – so they’re more than happy to get into large scale conflicts – hey war is fun as long as I’m not the guy risking my neck. I don’t get fights on a personal basis because I don’t want to risk getting hurt.

When you look at the other ape species and the societies that they form, you’ll find that they seem to have a system that’s more in harmony with nature. They use only what they need. They only use violence to survive in their own personal space and they don’t pillage and burn things down. In short, the other ape species are living a life that is far better for the planet than the one we’ve imposed on society. As is said in the 2001 version of Planet of the Apes “The Strength of an Ape is nothing when compared to the cunning and deviousness of the human.”

So, go and watch the “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” Have fun doing it but don’t pander to the fear mongering. Instead, welcome the prospect of another species taking over. They may actually have something worth looking forward to.