Selling national icons

The Great Singapore Sale is on, but this one will take a longer time span as it involves real big ticket items. The PWD or Public Works Division was sold, power stations were sold, Robinson sold, Tiger Beer/F&N sold and the latest item under the hammer is iconic NOL, the national carrier of international fame and of big losses.

Richard Hartung, a foreign talent, wrote in the Today paper today asking ‘Why Spore should not sell off its iconic firms’. The reasons are obvious, there are things that are more valuable than just in monetary terms and should not be put up for sale using profit and loss rationale. There are national psychic involved, national pride, culture, aspiration and identity. What would Singapore be if they sell away DBS, SIA, the Istana, PSA, SMRT, SBS, HDB, the National Museum, National Arts Gallery, the universities like NUS, NTU etc etc? What the heck spending on foreigners to buy gold medals in sports for?

Richard Hartung also talked about the loss of core skills if a national shipping line would go and how it would affect the business of PSA. Would the new owner bypass PSA and make Malaysian ports their ports of call and head office? What about the core skills of shipping talents? Not important? Yes, not important. We already have lost our core skills in banking and finance and IT and would need 30 years to train our next generation of bankers, finance and IT experts if the govt is serious to pursue this line of thinking and not just paying lip services.

We even compromised our Total Defense Concept by bringing in foreigners in the millions and given important appointments in govt services and GLCs to foreigners called new citizens and some not even new citizens. We are at the verge of cleaning out our local academics in the academia by replacing them with foreigners. Would we be losing any core skills and talents?

And the NOL and SIA do not just play a commercial role for profit and loss. In times of war, they have supporting role to play for our military services as well. Are we really going all out on this Great Singapore Sale just counting dollars and cents? Are there other more important considerations to think about, strategic interests, the big picture, a nation versus a hotel?

All the kpkb in the social media will be of no use. Maybe what this Richard Hartung said may ring a bell, because he is a foreigner and foreigners are the smarter people in this Sin City. And in this case this foreigner also thinks this Great Singapore Sale of iconic assets is not a good idea.

What do you think?