Tommy Koh’s To Singapore with Love is fun reading

Saturday’s article by Tommy Koh on his book, with the cheeky title ‘To Singapore With Love’, bears no relations to Tan Pin Pin’s film of the same name should be read like what Tommy said, like ‘loving critics and critical lovers’. The article can be divided into three sections, the past, the present and the future. 90 percent of the article was about the past, 9 percent about the present and 1 percent about the future.

Tommy’s article was culled from the comments of past diplomats who had served in Singapore and their impressions of what this island and govt were all about during their tours of duties. He started with the Mexican Ambassador Eduardo Ramos Gomez who came out genuinely as someone who was in love with Singapore and believed that this was a good place to live and raise a family. His children were educated in ACS and done their national service. And he is back working here in his law firm.

The next ambassador was Joergen Moeller from Denmark, and I quote what he was impressed with, ‘the Singaporean elite focused upon doing something for Singapore, thinking of the future for the country, and being fully aware that their prime duty was to look after the interest of the nation – not their own interest’. As I said, these were viewed formed from the past. I have no comments on the phrase, ‘not their own interest’.

Patrick Van Haute of Belgium said this, ‘Keeping its economy open, joining the fight against protectionism, building a world class education system, investing in the skills of its workforce, in knowledge based assets…’ Today, anyone in the know and knowing the dearth of talents and skills among the daft citizens and how many foreigners were imported to replace them even in low skills jobs, and knowing how screw up these foreigners are, with questionable educations, I think this Patrick Van Haute may want to change his opinion on our world class education system and the investment on the skills of our workforce. We are a bankrupt country as far as local skills and talents are concerned. We depended on 3rd world half bakes to do all the works for us. When 3rd world half bakes are better than us, we do have a problem. And the trend is gaining steam. Our only skills are taxi driving and be security guards. Please feel free to disagree with me.

Mohamed Abdel Rehim El Zorkany of Egypt said Singapore’s success drew on ‘tolerance, respect, justice, the rule of law, a fair share and sense of ownership, for each and every one’. I agree he is correct, almost fully correct in what he said. He should add, ‘for each and every one coming here to work but not necessarily the citizens’. The Singaporeans are really, truly tolerance of foreigners, respect foreigners, justice and rule of law were practised to the last letter to protect the foreigners, to give the foreigners a fair share of the country and a sense of ownership. This is how magnanimous and generous Singaporeans are to foreigners. If only the foreigners who are benefiting from the Singaporeans generosity are reciprocating in kind. Singaporeans should be very grateful if they are not insulted, beaten by foreigners or replaced by foreigners in their jobs.

And Alan Hunt of England had all praised for LKY. ‘Much of the credit for Singapore’s remarkable success was attributed to the foundations laid by Lee Kuan Yew. I have to agree to this when the past is concerned, and I know many would not agree with me. That is fair.

Another American had this motherhood statement to say. ‘Living in Singapore reinforced my conviction that the quality of leadership is the most decisive factor in human affairs.’ How to disagree with him? I think living any where, the quality of leadership matters most. When you got good leaders, it shows. When you got asses as leaders, it also shows.

Education seemed to impress the ambassadors. Juan Martabit of Chile wrote, ‘The education of Singapore is the key to its rapid success, generating the human resources necessary to compete with the best in the world.’ His comment is obsolete. The truth is that our education system has degenerated our human resources to a point that they are unable to compete with the worst from the rest of the world. Not true?

Now for a bit of the present. Frank Lavin noted the eight rules of the Singapore school of diplomacy and Takaaki Kojima of Japan identified two. That is all the good things these two ambassadors could think of, and of course Tommy Koh took the queue by not saying anything more. The South Korean Ambasssador ‘Ryu Kwan Sok cited three cases in which Singapore had not given in to pressure by the great powers and said that Korea should emulate Singapore’s example’….I may add, by not becoming a semi colony of any great powers.

And here comes Tommy’s punchline. ‘It is natural that several of our European and American friends should find our political system to be sub optimal. What, what, sub optimal? So kind and polite of Tommy as usual. Diplomatically he added, ‘When such criticisms come from our Asian friends, however, we should reflect deeply.’ And Tommy quoted Dr Park Sang Seek of South Korea about Singapore’s three Achilles’ heels: ‘democratic deficit, economic inequality and a pseudo non aligned foreign policy.’ The Korean was equally diplomatic.

China’s Yang Wenchang told Tommy that LKY had told him of transforming ‘the country into an olive shaped society, the middle class was the majority at the centre’ with the rich and poor at both sides and smaller. Tommy added that Yang would be disappointed as the society today is like a pear instead of an olive.

What about the future of Singapore. Tommy only volunteered one comment from Yoichi Suzuki of Japan. ‘Singapore faces a bigger challenge than others being the only one without a hinterland…I wish Singapore will play the game as smartly as it has done until now.’ You can sense the tons of reservation by the Japanese.

The article actually told the Singapore Story in an indirect way. A lot of past glory to crow about, not much of the present to talk about, and the future is still out there.

I am waiting for someone to offer me a million bucks to write a glowing tribute of Singapore for the SG50 celebration. Serious, I can write really good stuff and in great style.

Kopi Level - Red