Graciousness by examples

We have been talking about being a gracious people for many years with campaigns and leaders teaching and guiding the people on how to be gracious. I think being gracious must be something good and desirable. It speaks a lot about what a person is when the person is being complimented as a gracious person. Straits Times Senior Correspondent, Lim Siew Hua, wrote an article about how gracious McCain was in his concession speech after losing the Presidential Election to Obama. Or was it American graciousness rather than the graciousness of a single man? Al Gore was equally gracious when he lost to George Bush. And that incident was particularly disturbing and veered towards the element of fraud or misdeeds. It would be disastrous if it happens here. So were the other losing Presidential candidates. They all had kind words to say about the victors. But graciousness is not only from the losers. The victors were equally gracious and magnanimous to their defeated opponents. They only have praises for them and could have hugged and kissed them once the election is out of the way. Obama talked about what a wonderful man and hero McCain was. And after the election it begins a healing process when both parties come together as one people. There will be post mortems, but not to find out what wrongs were committed by the other party and to settle scores. No one is going for the butcher knife. That is the graciousness of a people of a great country. But America has more than 200 years of history to learn how to be gracious. It takes time to learn the nice things about life. Learning to be an expert in expletives, in being bad, is easy. In fact it is so natural that no learning is required. To be gracious is a difficult thing to learn, and to be.

The people are ready for minority PM

Not only are the people ready for a minority PM, the political system is also ready for it. We have the GRC to ensure the presence of minority MPs. And we have a system whereby the PM is elected by the cabinet or core leaders which can be counted by a pair of hands or maybe add a pair of legs. These are the wise men and women that decide who is the PM, not the people. The people are not ready? Who says so? Is there a poll being conducted? From the discussion in the media and cyberspace, the majority are all very happy to have a minority as a PM. They all believe in meritocracy and the best man or woman wins. And this feeling for a minority PM is especially more pronounce among the majority as many have already been colour blind after 45 years of being a Singaporeans. Look at the inter racial marriages taking place and you will know that the majority loves the other races more than their own kind, and have no inkling of racial differences. Malay, Indian, European, all are happily married to the majority. And many from the majority have spoken up in favour of a minority PM. And we have tested this with the elected Presidency. The current elected President is a minority and happily accepted by the majority. He is also very popular across the races. In short, Singaporeans are already colour blind. I am not too sure of the new citizens who are still very conscious of their own ethnic identity.

Union should stand up to face more retrenchment

With Singapore's number one bank firing 900 staff, other banks and companies could take the cue and go into full drive to shed the unnecessary fat that they have accumulated during the hazy days of good profits. Time to start trimming the excesses and grow lean. What will the union do in the face of more workers facing the chopping block? Lim Swee Say has made the harshest comment so far on DBS. But what's next? We have more than 10 years in converting our rigid pay structure to a flexible one with built in flexi wage and bonuses just for a day like this. Apparently this has been forgotten and everyone is happily wielding the axe as the cure all of the ills of years of irrational exuberance. There are many other measures that can be implemented other than just axing staff, plus the flexi wage system. There is still a last cut from the CPF. But this is still a long way off. For companies that believe in equal misery and every employee is a member of the big family, that they are caring employers, the first thing to do is to cut bonuses and later wage reduction, early retirement etc. Given the present crisis, some jobs will not be there anymore and this is a unique problem of its own. The unions must have a list of criteria to look at before giving the nod for companies to cut jobs. Are the companies still profitable? What is the bottom line before union will agree to such a drastic measure? Have other alternatives been explored and adopted that are less painful? Would the retrenchment mean that those who stay will enjoy no loss in pay or benefits? And like it has happened before, after a few months, companies that retrenched staff start to hire again and paying huge bonuses that they benefited from the retrenchment. Companies also have a responsibility as a corporate citizen. If everyone is so trigger happy to cut staff, we will have a big unemployment problem in hand and many families are going to have a hard time. It is time that companies, especially those that are 'protected' in some ways be it monopoly or special privileges, connections etc be made to absord some of the pains of the recession and stop thinking that making profit is a guaranteed right of being. It is time that they accept that in bad times, they must absord some losses and look after their employees. The investors were told to take their losses for bad decisions in investing in wrong notes. The union should pass this message through and wave the red flag and cry foul.

The lesser beings are trembling

The lesser beans in Japan and Australia are trembling in fear of short sellings in their stockmarkets. Australia yesterday announced that they would continue to restrict shortsellings in their market. The higher beans in paradise are still so confident that they can manage short selling in the market and are not doing anything about it. Or they are oblivious to the damage that it is causing to the investors here and the viability of the stock market in the long run. We are simply brilliant!

A matter of ethics

How ethical are we? The word ethics becomes popular over the last few weeks. Even the minibond fiasco becomes a case of ethics to some. But that was pushing it a bit far. The minibond issue is a simple commercial issue, a contractual issue, with legal documents. Once you sign on the dotted line accepting what were written in the document, and if it says you will die after reading it, just too bad. Go to courts, they will interpret it legally. There are contractual terms and obligations. Tough huh? Ethics became an issue in the case of donors of human eggs for scientific experiments. These donors can donate but cannot reap monetary benefits from it. Next came the issue of organ donors. They too should not benefit from donating their organs. But the committe back off a little by saying that some compensation can be made as long as they are not worst off or better off. So the pedicab drivers cannot take more for donating their organs. It will be seen as organ trading. But the specialists operating for these organs can charge for the sky and be paid handsomely for it. Both are saving lives. To stretch the argument a little further, can hospitals whose mission is to save lives be allowed to charge as much as they want as long as the patient can afford to pay for it? Is this a matter of ethics or a matter of business? Is it ethical to keep raising prices of everything because it is convenient to do so and the people cannot object to it? It is quite strange to be discussing about ethics and not being ethical to make money when everyone lives by that principle. Make profits, legally or illegally, is an admirable trait. It is called talent here.