Q and A: From the Prime Minister downwards, nearly every government leader has only harsh words for the discourse on the Net. Why does the government still keep harping on the negative aspects of the Internet? Academic Cherian George answers this and other questions on the government-Internet showdown posed by P N Balji, editor, The Independent Singapore.
Q. It has been about 15 years since Singaporeans have taken to the Internet seriously. How do you see the growth of this medium as a platform of expression?
A. In Singapore, it has clearly made communication more democratic. It has lowered the regulatory and economic barriers that used to prevent publishers, writers, filmmakers and artists from reaching the public. Of course, if you want to make money from your content, that is still not easy. But if you are happy to share your work for free, at least you have the option to do it now. Pre-internet, even if you wanted to give content away, you couldn’t, because the regulations and the costs kept you out of the public sphere.
The other big thing that has happened is of course social media. Pre-internet, we used to have these sorts of conversations in the coffeeshop, or with a taxi driver, or after work, sharing information and opinions within our circles. ‘This government is damn one kind, and by the way the laksa I had was damn shiok.’ The urge to share is nothing new, but social media have grown the frequency, intensity and scale of our talk-cock sessions exponentially.
Q. What role did the social media play in the results of the GE 2011?
A. We can safely say that the contest between Tin Pei Ling and Nicole Seah in Marine Parade GRC would have played out very differently if not for social media. Although she won, Tin was probably the biggest casualty of the new online politics in 2011; and Seah was the biggest winner, even though she lost.
Beyond that, the impact of social media was probably over-hyped. Let me put it very simply. If the technology was stuck at 2006 levels, or even 2001 levels, would the PAP’s vote share still have slipped by several points in 2011, and would the Workers’ Party still have won Aljunied GRC and retained Hougang? I think so.
The PAP was punished because it dropped the ball on too many policies that matter to Singaporeans. I don’t think Singaporeans needed Facebook, YouTube or Twitter to tell them that public transport was overcrowded or public housing overpriced, that the country was overflowing with too many foreigners, or that public officials were overpaid. Sure, social media helped people vocalise their unhappiness, and this may have had some effect at the margins; but social media didn’t invent the public unhappiness.
I think the real effects are more long-term. Singapore’s political culture has been transformed by the internet. Pre-internet, the government used to demand respect based on rank, by invoking Confucianism or Asian Values. But the internet allowed Singaporeans to talk to and about their officials as equals. And it has allowed other Singaporeans to observe this and to see for themselves that roof hasn’t fallen down – we can speak about our officials frankly, and investors don’t flee and we don’t revert to fishing village status. Gradually, over more than 15 years of this, we now basically have a new political culture, one which I think is far more resilient and healthy because it is openly skeptical of power.
Q. The government has yet to come to grips with how to deal with this medium. Why so?
A. Intellectually, I don’t think there is anything the government doesn’t grasp. They have done enough studies, they have scenario planners, in-house experts and consultants. No group in Singapore has invested as much quality brainpower into this as the government has.
The problem is application. I think it is genuinely difficult for the PAP’s heart to act according to what its head tells it. One of the pillars of PAP dominance was its ability to set the agenda by getting the cooperation of a small number of gatekeepers in the establishment media, and by forcefully keeping everyone else out of the game. Suddenly, there are many more new players and the old legal, political and economic carrots and sticks don’t work. The government has had to find new ways to shape the agenda. It has been moving in the right direction, but on the spur of the moment, or when it feels provoked, the old instincts are triggered, like a reflex action that it can’t help.
External factors also influence the government’s choices. In the mid-1990s, all the tech gurus and industry leaders were saying that the internet was about freedom. Singapore had to go along or risk putting off high-tech investors; hence its “light touch” promise, which it actually lived up to it for several years. But then 9/11 came along and the West began prizing order more than freedom. So, you were less of a pariah now if you started introducing internet controls.
Fast-forward to 2013, and we see the US, the supposed champion of internet freedom, engaging in mass surveillance and going after whistleblowers. I don’t think it’s pure coincidence that other governments are now much less shy about showing their true feelings about online dissent. China and Vietnam, for example, have been talking tough and trying to introduce some pretty outrageous controls. Singapore hasn’t gone to their extent, but I think you will see the government hide its impatience less than it used to. So, partly because of this global mood, the government’s adaptation to the internet era may be slowed.
Q. What should the government do?
A. I assume that it wants to remain in power and fairly dominant. This is a realistic target, but it must moderate its expectations. It cannot dominate to the extent it used to, and if it tries to be domineering, it will slide faster.
First, it must have confidence in itself that it can win debates fair and square, without recourse to unnecessary force. Second, it must have confidence that democracy works, and that the majority of Singaporeans would support a government that does the right thing in the right way. Third, arising from this confidence, it must relax its grip on the mainstream media and allow professional journalists to do their job of fearlessly serving the public interest. And fourth, stop using laws like defamation or contempt against critics when you could persuade more people by simply engaging the debate. Basically, never pull rank online. Win respect by being right, repeatedly.
Like I said, none of this is new. I have heard the same ideas from individuals in the establishment, who believe such reforms would be very good for the PAP. The problem is that, to some in the PAP, these steps sound like a softening, or even a surrender. To them, the hard line seems more reassuring in the short term, even though it is self-destructive in the long term.
Q. What is it about the Singapore’s Internet community that you don’t like?
A. Well, to a large extent, the Internet community reflects the good, bad and ugly of the offline world, so any comment about the online world is usually true offline as well. Except that when it’s online – whether it’s racism or obscenity or any extreme behaviour – it is more visible and shareable, so there is a higher tendency for people to fly into a moral panic and then blame the Internet for what they don’t like.
So, personally, when I encounter anything upsetting or troubling online, I’m inclined to discount it and not assume that it spells the end of civilisation. Having said that, I think it is accurate to say that there are certain aspects of online interaction that are worse than their offline analogues.
People in online discussions sometimes behave worse than they would offline. Please note that I am not passing judgment based on my own standards. I am saying that some people don’t live up to their own offline standards when they go online. They show a mean-spiritedness, a hatefulness, towards others who express ideas or comments they don’t like, in a way they wouldn’t in face to face settings.
Look at the personal attacks that go on, and not even anonymously. Some are people I know, and I know they wouldn’t talk that way in, say, a real-world discussion. Singaporeans even behave better in a football stadium, where it is socially acceptable to be act more tribally. At Jalan Besar, we may curse the referee, jeer the opposing players – but we don’t abuse the visiting fans, not even Malaysians, to the point of xenophobic hatred, until away fans just stop coming. But that’s what we are doing online: creating enclaves where the environment is so hostile to those who think differently, that they just shut up or stay away. I’ve yet to find an offline equivalent.
I’m looking at this from the perspective of deliberative democracy, which prizes inclusive and open debate. Make no mistake, the number one obstacle to that is still the PAP system’s intolerance of opposing political views. But I don’t think the answer is to counter intolerance with intolerance, at the opposite end of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, that is what’s happening.
Why doesn't the govt get it?
Digital newbies and the elephant in the room
By Abhijit Nag
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Genesis 1, 1)
First Witch: When shall we meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain? (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 1)
The success of major policies that Singapore is undertaking hinges on one key factor: the trust citizens have in the Government, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said yesterday. (The Straits Times, October 1).
What does the King James Bible have in common with Shakespeare’s Macbeth and The Straits Times?
They are all available in print and you have to borrow or buy them.
Not even the word of God was free in Shakespeare’s time. The King James Bible was originally sold leaf-leaf for 10 shillings or bound for 12 shillings, according to Wikipedia. If you are too young to remember when people bought and sold and were paid in £sd (pound, shilling, pence) in Britain, 12 pence made a shilling — and 20 shillings, a pound. Costing 10 or 12 shillings in Shakespeare’s time, the Bible was expensive. Actors were paid a shilling a day by an Elizabethan theatre company, Philip Henslowe’s The Admiral’s Men, according to the Internet Shakespeare.
Singapore today, of course, has free newspapers. But do you remember how they came about? Today was launched in November 2000. By then we could read almost every online newspaper — The Times, the New York Times, the Guardian — for free. Even printed newspapers were available for free in many cities. The freesheets, as they were called, and the free websites all hoped to make money from advertisers.
You could not only read but blog for free. Blogger was launched in 1999. “People are making lots of money charging nothing,” wrote Chris Anderson in his book, Free, published in 2009. He discussed not only Google and Facebook but also their impact on newspapers and added: “In 2007, the New York Times went free online…”
How times have changed. The New York Times is no longer free. Even bloggers are trying to “monetize”. Andrew Sullivan, one of the most popular bloggers in America, has become like the Straits Times. You have to pay to read his full posts. Across the Causeway is the subscription-only Malaysiakini.
I love free websites as much as anyone else, but are they sustainable? Ultimately someone has to pay for the content: either the readers or the advertisers or the site owners themselves.
Four years ago, in 2009, the New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr compared the print media to the Titanic and the digital media to airplanes. If so, websites are like the early flying machines when you didn’t know how long they could stay in the air.
Still, intrepid flyers went up and took their chances then. And so is The Independent Singapore today along with a raft of other websites on this little island. Pardon the mixed metaphor. I am trying to look into the future, but the view is obscured by the elephant in the room.
I dare say whoever comes up with a website just goes ahead, elephants be damned. That may seem reckless but has acquired a different nomenclature. When a serious publication or website is launched, it’s called philanthropically funded journalism or philanthro-journalism. The category includes winners like the online ProPublica, which has won Pulitzer prizes. But the best example perhaps is the Guardian, whose late owner, John Scott, put all his shares into a trust to keep the newspaper running.The Guardian has not only survived but remains one of the leading British newspapers. As a left-of-centre quality daily, it has certainly provided diversity.
That’s what websites here hope to provide: variety. Here’s to tomorrow.
Which way GDP?
By Thusitha de Silva
The Singapore government’s economic focus is likely to remain on continuing to grow the gross domestic product.
When Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi recently said that Singapore should learn from the more relaxed way of life in her country, it affirmed what many in the city-state were thinking. While optimistic about the future, the majority of Singaporeans want a slower-paced life, for which they are willing to compromise on economic growth.
This is one of the findings of a survey of 4,000 citizens conducted in January as part of the Our Singapore Conversation exercise.
That Singaporeans now generally want a slower place of life is not particularly surprising. Things have been hectic in recent years. While Singapore’s economic development since the 1960s has been remarkable, things really started to accelerate from early in the new millennium. Between 2002 and 2012, Singapore’s population expanded from 4.18 million to 5.31 million, according to government data. Over the same period, the gross domestic product (GDP) more than doubled from S$162.3 billion to S$345.6 billion. That is some pace of growth but it has come at a price, including a high cost of living, lofty property prices and a wide income gap.
Three basic areas of Singapore’s economy, namely healthcare, education and transport, are all facing the strain of this phenomenal run. This, in turn, puts strain on many Singaporeans who are struggling to get by.
New challenges
Going forward, Singapore faces new long-term challenges as the global economic environment changes. In the past, the city-state could perhaps rely on at least one of the world’s biggest economies, the US, Europe and China, to take up some slack, but now all three are working out their own problems.
A sustainable recovery doesn’t appear to be on the cards for any of them in the medium term, though in China’s case, it’s more about a downgrade in growth expectations. As such, Singapore will likely have to look closer to home to enhance its growth prospects in coming years.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong alluded to some of these growth drivers within the city-state in his National Day Rally Speech in August. This includes plans to shift one of the world’s busiest ports to Tuas, freeing up land for property development in the Keppel area. More property development means more GDP.
Another obvious source of growth opportunities for Singapore is South-east Asia. Singapore has actively sought to improve ties with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), and bilateral relationships with the likes of Malaysia and Indonesia have been ok, even with a few hiccups along the way. Further, despite Ms Suu Kyi’s gentle reservations about the path that Singapore has taken, Myanmar remains a strong economic ally.
In a speech at the opening of the inaugural Network Asean Forum in Singapore in August, Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam articulated something of a rallying cry to the region in his concluding remarks. “We are at a good starting point. We are also in the right part of the world where there are significant growth opportunities not just domestically but also to be achieved through greater regional integration. While our external environment has gotten tougher, it is a useful reminder that our domestic and regional fundamentals have to be enhanced if we wish to offset negative spill-over effects, and in fact improve our growth performance,” he said.
The Network Asean forum got business leaders from the region to brainstorm solutions to some issues that are holding back the creation of an integrated Asean Economic Community (AEC). The roadblocks are understandable considering different countries in the region are at different stages of their economic development.
Also, not all countries are likely as focused on growing GDP as Singapore is, even though their respective governments may harbour such views. So, it’s only natural that there have been delays.
In the meantime, lessons have also been learnt from the mess that is the Eurozone, where countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal are on different economic gears compared to the likes of Germany and France.
Mr Shanmugaratnam’s comments at the forum were directed at business leaders from the region, and he would likely not have heard any dissenting voices. Business leaders tend to have gone to the same schools and all are trained to think in a similar way. But how is the Singapore government going to cope with the growing view that people’s lives should not be compromised by GDP growth?
Singaporeans are not blind to the negative effects of the unbridled growth in the last decade that is evident in Singapore. Things are getting a bit more edgy in the city-state and because of the internet, people have a place now to vent their frustrations. The internet also enables them to closely scrutinise every policy that the government comes up with, much to the latter’s chagrin.
What Robert F Kennedy said
This trend of growing awareness is only likely to gain traction and the next general election in Singapore, which has to be held by 2016, could become a sort of a referendum about whether Singaporeans think that the government is navigating a sustainable path for the country. Will its focus on GDP be too much to bear by then? Perhaps we should remind ourselves of what then US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy said about the gross national product (the market value of all the products and services produced in one year by labour and property supplied by residents of a country) at the University of Kansas in March, 1968.
“The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
Mr Kennedy was assassinated three months later, and never became US President. We’ll never know if his thoughts on the economy would have been put into practice. Things could have been different if it did, because the US was the global thought leader in those days. Still, the likes of Ms Suu Kyi may have been inspired by Mr Kennedy’s words.
However, there are few other global leaders these days who would publicly say the same–the corporates behind the scenes will have none of that type of nonsense. Nonetheless, one gets the feeling that Mr Kennedy’s words are likely to resonate even more today as the gap between the rich and the poor widens across the world, including in Singapore.
Thusitha de Silva has been working in financial media for the last 20 years.
The wind beneath my wings
By Ravi Shankar
In a nice way, the shoe was on the other foot.
As journalists, we are the ones asking the questions, seeking the answers, looking for that exclusive photo or interview.
So when some of the media spotlight, albeit briefly, turned on me for winning this year’s China Friendship Award — the highest prize for foreign experts who have made outstanding contributions to China’s economic and social progress — I felt some initial discomfiture.
But that soon disappeared when I realized that this was my own little Oscar moment.
How do you feel about the award, was the first question in an online interview even before I had received it.
The right noises: Thrilled, of course. An honour and a privilege to be counted as one among many greats. But I didn’t wail in joy; nor did I thank everyone from my kindergarten teacher to my golf coach. (Cleverly, of course, I acknowledged my bosses in full sincerity.)
Of course, I was thrilled. But the simple truth is this award was for no eureka moment or for apples falling on the head.
The story wasn’t me. It was China Daily. And the recognition of the global operations spawned by a newspaper from humble — though pathbreaking — times in 1981.
A little historical perspective: Very few newspapers around the world are feted at their birth like China Daily was. Almost every major global news agency and newspaper (in many languages) reported on its birth like they would today about a panda birth in Edinburgh Zoo (and yes, there was a panda story on the front page of the first edition even though it was about a lack of procreation).
In those days, China Daily was China for the typical foreigner who did not speak the language. It was their only window into an unfathomable and unfamiliar world emerging from isolation.
Of course, as China opened up, there were many more avenues of information but China Daily continues to lead the pack. It no longer was a newspaper for foreigners in China who could not read Chinese.
We took it to the rest of the world. In just the past few years, we have launched dedicated editions in the US, Europe, ASEAN and the wider Asia-Pacific, as well as Africa. And our multimedia platforms are your first “hits” on search engines.
The response has been more than gratifying because there is such a thirst for China knowledge around the world. Readers are not interested in coverage only through a narrow prism of set agendas.
They want to know the Real China. The China Story. And the Chinese Dream. People I meet in Europe, the US or Asia want to know how in the Kingdom of Bicycles the car is the King of the Road. They want to know about those incredibly fast trains. They want to know about migrant workers and how they will fit into the new urbanization plans. They want to know about social trends and social media. They want to know of marriages and divorces; and, indeed, if concubines have made a comeback!
This is exactly what we are trying to answer.
To come back to why (I think) I won the award: Yes, I have been closely involved in conceptualizing, coordinating and executing many of the major projects we have undertaken in the past decade. They include the continual expansion and revamps of the paper; special editions like The Olympian for the 2008 Beijing Games; for the 60th anniversary of the founding of New China; and the launch of several overseas editions.
Longevity helps. I am the longest-serving expat on the paper and so have a “historical perspective”. The good thing is that there are many who are thinking long-term and they bring a wide array of talent.
In the euphoria of the moment, I give myself a pat on the back. But the truth is I’ve been carried on the back of a great China Daily team, increasingly being made of expats like me.
Here I feel it is incumbent on me to mention Zhu Ling, our publisher and editor-in-chief. During our first encounter in China Daily Hong Kong Edition more than 11 years ago, I got a thinly disguised verbal lashing for not correcting “Chinglish” on my first night at work. I didn’t know what Chinglish was, having just come from Singapore’s “Singlish” which I was comfortable with. He has been more than kind since. I greatly appreciate the opportunities he has given me, and I hope I have learned.
Ravi Shankar is executive editor of China Daily’s overseas editions. A journalist from India, he formerly worked for The New Paper.
How good are Singapore-Malaysia ties?
Q and A: Dr Ooi Kee Beng, the deputy director of the Institute of South-east Asian Studies, talks to P N Balji about why Malaysia-Singapore relations is on a high, how attitudes on both sides have changed and whether the abang-adek relationship is still a simmering factor.
Q. Malaysia-Singapore relations are at a high. Why so? What can upset this cordiality?
A. One should perhaps start by asking why relations between the two should not be cordial. There are several answers to that, but what should be borne in mind at the same time is that the need each has of the other in various ways is too strong for mutual enmity to be a permanent feature of their relationship.
While one is a city-state that is also a tiny island, the other is a conglomerate of 13 states, nine of which perceive themselves as sultanates. Of the remaining four, Sabah and Sarawak were regions at par with the Federation of Malaya when they came together along with Singapore to form Malaysia in 1963; while Penang and Malacca both have a long unique history of their own. Singapore was created by the British to be the centre of power, and so, in 1963, its people had reason to see the city as the metropolis for the British Nusantara. It had to play a central role in the building of Malaysia, which in practical terms meant that a common market was necessary. Once that failed, Singapore’s economic and cultural future within the federation did not look bright.
While the non-Malay population in West Malaysia envisaged a simple and smooth transition from colonialism to multicultural nationalism, the Malay community at large continued to have a strong sense of apartness from the global economy that the colonialists represented. Their political consciousness was still sultanate-based, and their ethnic identity was religion-based, which did not relate easily to the metropolitan, secular, multicultural political economy of a modern state. This difference in group consciousness spelled out different routes and different speeds in developmental strategies. In that sense, although one may talk about how the two countries had a joint history, the differences have been more compelling and relevant than the similarities have been.
As long as the differences were denied, relations between the two tended to be antagonistic. The supposed deep similarities raised a lot of false hopes and a lot of unreasonable expectations.
Over time, the differences have become more and more obvious—a process that was very much delayed by the fact that the antagonism between early leaders was prolonged by their extended time in power.
With new leaders, and with the growing importance of the complex regional context in which national politics and economics exist, there is a greater tolerance of the differences between the two countries, and a greater realisation of how much synergic advantage can be gained from working together.
Q, How does the Malaysian establishment view Singapore these days?
A. A complex of anger, incomprehension, irritation and envy does remain in how Singapore is viewed by its neighbor up north. But there is now a clearer acceptance that there is nothing much Malaysia can do to Singapore without hurting herself. The obvious advantage of having a wealthy and dynamic island at one’s doorstep is now being accepted. What Singapore does not have, Malaysia can offer her, be this lack of land; investment opportunities at medium cost; unskilled, semi-skilled or skilled labour; or landed properties.
Q. Do you think the abang-adek relationship, as seen by Malaysia, is not a factor anymore?
A. This is not much of a factor today. Such an attitude is rare among young Malay leaders, and would in fact be very unbecoming if found in new leaders.
Q. Has Singapore become more careful, more nuanced, in its relationship with Malaysia?
A. Yes, it has. Malaysian politics is often street politics in the sense that statements are made spontaneously for whatever immediate effect it might have. Reacting quickly to such statements forces things to a head, with no side wishing to back down for matters of pride—personal and national.
Singapore is less reactive on that front nowadays.
Q. The relationship soured when Dr Mahathir and Lee Kuan Yew were the prime ministers. What was their problem?
A. They both reflected the viewpoints stated in my answer to the first question. What is sometimes forgotten is that Mahathir fought with every one of Malaysia’s PMs and DPMs excepting Tun Abdul Razak, who died early. So, for him to be antagonistic towards a small neighbor like Singapore, whose leader had dared imagine becoming a major leader in Malaysia, should not be considered strange.
Dr Ooi Kee Beng is a Swedish citizen who was born and raised in Penang. He is also editor of the Penang Monthly published by the Penang Institute.
Serve the people, serve the government
All hands on deck! Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong yesterday clearly spelt out the role of the public service in keeping the people happy with the government.
The government is also shopping for an integrated system to detect, monitor and tackle public grievances and complaints.
New rules were announced yesterday to keep the public service free from corruption.
From today, all public officers will need to declare within seven days whenever they visit the local casinos more than four times a month or buy an annual pass.
Officers who have to deal with the casinos won’t be allowed to visit them at all except on business.
The actions follow recent scandals involving public servants, the plunge in the ruling party vote in the May 2011 general election and the two consecutive by-election defeats .
PM Lee said it was important that people trust the government and the public service. Only then can government policies succeed – if the people trust the government to understand their needs.
One way the public service can strengthen this trust is to act together as one and maintain the highest standards of integrity.
The Prime Minister was speaking at a seminar of public service leaders.
The public service must work as an integrated whole and keep up the changing aspirations of the people, he said. People would be frustrated if they had to deal with multiple agencies and conflicting policies.
The government must be customer-oriented, he added. Keeping the customer satisfied is a mammoth task. In the second quarter of this year, the government received 1.6 million phone calls, emails and letters – that’s one in every five seconds.
But service has its rewards. Public servants will continue to be paid according to their quality and the value of their contributions, said PM Lee, adding this had kept the system clean.
New technology will be used to handle complaints and feedback from the public more efficiently.
The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore has called a tender for an “Integrated Case Management System”. This will provide a digital platform to resolve “complex issues” involving multiple agencies. It follows earlier efforts to solve the problem of complaints being bounced from one agency to another.
The government is harnessing new rules and new technology to improve the standards and the image of the public service. That will be a win-win for the people and the government alike if the public servants play along.
PM's speech, Ngiam's interview
Maybe the TODAY paper did not realise it. The day it published the PM’s speech on how the civil service should be a more responsive organisation, it used an interview former top civil servant Ngiam Tong Dow gave to the Singapore Medical Association where he spoke about how unresponsive the Ministry of Finance has been to his suggestions/comments.
Suggestion: That the $60 billion set aside for improving productivity be used instead to pay for the salaries of new graduates that employers hire and train for the first year. This is aimed at employers who don’t want to hire these young people “because they say while the graduates may have the theories, they may have not be able to do the job,”
“I have not received a response (from the Ministry of Finance) yet,” says Ngiam.
Comment: His favourite topic, he says, is F1. “We are paying the Englishmen to stage the F1 night race. Why should we use taxpayers’ money to pay for the races. I have asked this question publicly, but the Ministry of Finance has never addressed it.”
If a man who was once permanent secretary faces this kind of treatment, what chance do lesser souls have?
New arts chief Kathy who?
By Tan Bah Bah
There is a new arts head honcho in town. Kathy Lai Sou Tien has taken the place of Benson Puah as the National Arts Council Chief Executive Officer. Kathy who? That would be the natural reaction of the arts community.
If you Google “Kathy Lai”, you would learn that she was IE Singapore Assistant CEO. And if you search further – on Google anyway – for public pronouncements she has made on any subject recently, you would come across just this speech made at a conference held in Sentosa in 2012. Subject: Developing Singapore as a Coal Trading Hub in Asia. That is as unartistic a topic as you can get.
From pitching for trade investment to overseeing the continuing development of the arts of a global city is an interesting change of pace. In the press conference to announce her appointment, Lai said her first order of action was to get to know the arts scene better and that she was also keen to build up patronage of artists in Singapore: “I don’t think I can champion a community that I don’t know. So the first thing is to connect with the community.”
That is going to be her biggest challenge – winning over the support of the community, as their most passionate and involved advocate. Can she, as an outsider, deliver?
Many people may not remember. Benson Puah was also not part of the practising arts industry when he was asked to head The Esplanade.
He said in an interview: “I was 41 when I joined The Esplanade in 2002 and my appointment was a surprise to everyone. It surprised me, too, when I was asked by the government to do the job. I have worked in several different industries, mainly to start up companies or to re-engineer them. So I guess I built for myself a reputation as a builder of organisations and a developer of people.”
Because of his successful stint at the Durians, he grew so much within the community that his subsequent appointment as NAC CEO in 2009 was readily accepted. It was not as if he had been a well-known playwright, sculptor, musician, dancer, writer or art gallery owner. But he was not an integral part of the community.
Puah also came in with a fresh mind.
His successes have been acknowledged by the overseeing Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth which cited its debt to the ex-CEO: “He has played a significant role in facilitating the development of the arts in Singapore”. Among other things, he “championed closer engagement with the arts community, personally hosting a series of dialogues and consultations in relation to major policy reviews”.
Kathy Lai and Chan Heng Chee, as the NAC Chairman, seem like an excellent partnership to orientate our arts industry to be more international in their outlook, to be less parochial in their artistic instinct.
Chan was ambassador to the United States from 1996 to this year. Lai should also be familiar with the arts scene in Washington DC when she was with IE Singapore. The US is one of our biggest investors and trading partners and a major cultural influence too.
Both have experienced the high standards of arts and the community’s passion for the arts in major American cities such as New York, Washington and Boston. They must have much to take away from the exposure from a personal point of view.
But Chan has quickly reassured the arts community that Lai “will bring in good energy to build on what has been done by Benson”. Meaning, it is business as usual.
Let’s hope so.
We already have in place the theatres, museums, venues and organisational ability to host quality shows and exhibits. We have a growing ecosystem. Attendance of arts and cultural events has grown from 971,600 in 2003 to 2.14 million in 2011. The total number of arts companies – various fields including dance, theatres, music and museums – has jumped from 302 in 2003 to 856 in 2011.
Do not let this momentum lose its way as we seek to globalise ourselves even in the arts.
Keep the focus on nurturing our homegrown talents and a burgeoning local interest in local arts. The more Ivan Hengs, Anthony Chens, Dick Lees, Royston Tans, Stephanie Suns, Mavis Hees and Siow Lee Chins we have, the better.
They are part of our core, our artistic identity. They celebrate the Singaporean’s uniqueness in the world, even as the world is becoming our cultural oyster. The urge to carve out Singapore’s place in the global art scene is irrepressible and has only just begun.
The new NAC CEO will quickly realise much has to do with providing creative leadership and giving everyone the right support and space to grow. May the Force be with Kathy Lai.
Tan Bah Bah is a retired journalist. He was a senior leader/columnist with The Straits Times and managing editor of a local magazine company.
Tragedy in Pakistan, dream home in Sentosa
By Abhijit Nag
Her father was shot dead by his own bodyguard. Her brother was abducted by armed gumen. Sara Taseer, daughter of the former governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, Salmaan Taseer, however, feels happy and secure in her idyllic hideaway on a tiny island shaded by rainforests, visited by tourists and home to millionaires.
It is the only corner of Singapore where foreigners are allowed to buy land, albeit on 99-year leases. That is how she and her husband are now happy owners of a piece of the island, enough to build a dream home. After life in three cities in three continents, they have made their home in Sentosa Cove – and have every intention of staying on.
It’s a comeback for her. A Singapore returnee, the 43-year-old willowy, elegant banker-turned-jeweller was a student at the United World College here as a teenager. She went to the London School of Economics for further studies and then back to Pakistan to help her father run his businesses. In 1997, she married Pakistani financier Salman Shoaib, 46, a Brown University graduate. They lived in London, Hong Kong and New York, where she founded her own jewellery line, Sara Taseer Fine Jewellery. A trained economist who had been with Citibank in London and Rothschild in Hong Kong, she gave up banking when she became pregnant.
The couple, who also own property in New York and Pakistan, chose to raise their three children in Singapore because this is one place in Asia where English is widely spoken.
The land was still undeveloped when they bought the plot – just over 8,000 square feet – for $8 million in 2007. They commissioned local architects K2Ld to build their home when they moved in to Singapore three years later. The whimsical, slant-roofed three-storey house with a gleaming glass-and-wood façade and a swimming pool cost $4.3 million to build.
Tragedy struck during construction. Ms Taseer’s father was assassinated by his bodyguard in Islamabad in January 2011 because he opposed Pakistan’s blasphemy law.
A few months later, in August 2011, her brother, Shahbaz Taseer, was abducted by armed gunmen who surrounded his car and whisked him away in Lahore. His whereabouts remain unknown.
Last month, his wife, Maheen Taseer, a psychologist, wrote in Newsweek Pakistan a poignant account of her life since his abduction two years ago.
Her half-brother, Aatish Taseer, who alternates between Delhi and London, also did not hide his bitterness. The son of the Indian journalist Tavleen Singh, he wrote about his estrangement from his father in his book, Stranger to History (2009), and – after his father’s death – about religious intolerance in Pakistan.
I often wonder if the youth of #Pakistan will ever know the safe and peaceful Pakistan I grew up in.
— Sara Taseer (@sarataseer) September 30, 2013
Ms Taseer, too, worries about Pakistan. “I wonder if the youth of Pakistan will ever know the safe and peaceful Pakistan I grew up in,” she wrote on her Tweeter account recently.
But she can relax by her poolside at the back of her house in Sentosa Cove. Only a hedge separates it from a lush green golf course. “We feel extra safe here, so there was no need to build a house that keeps everyone out,” she told the Wall Street Journal.
“When you wake up in the morning, it’s like heaven,” she added in a rhapsody about the gorgeous view from the master bedroom on the second storey.
A portrait of John Lennon looks over the open-plan living room with a Greek marble floor. “There are few people whose faces you can live with, but Lennon is gentle and his song Imagine reminds me of why we are in Singapore, for the peace and quiet,” she said.
Feeling safe and secure, the family wanted to bring “the outdoors in” to their airy, ultramodern home. So there’s a passageway with a walk-in closet leading from the master bedroom to an indoor garden. It boasts a single tree, hoisted to the second storey by a crane. A parrot sometimes perches on the tree and squawks away.
The couple’s 10-year-old son has his room on the ground floor while they and their daughters occupy three of the four bedrooms on the second storey, leaving one aside as an extra sitting room. One floor up is a study with a slanted ceiling and a family sitting room with a stand-alone bar facing an outdoor deck with a ping-pong table. Further improvements are planned.
“One way to put roots down is to build your own house, which we never did elsewhere,” Mr Shoaib told the Journal. “But we moved to Singapore to settle down and we fully intend to grow old here.”