News this week included: Parliament debates Gillman Barracks and Maju Forest, which unsurprisingly, “need” to be developed for housing; easier en bloc sales with proposed lowering of consent thresholds; Lee Hsien Yang’s response to Oxley acquisition; Law Ministry to review legal education and considers guide on workplace norms; arrest warrant issue for opposition politician Lim Tean after he fails to surrender for jail term; Woodlands Hospice opens; man wins forced retirement case; immigration backlash forces SG school operator out of Sapporo; the need for better traffic regulations for a super-aged society; Ivan Heng and MINDEF on paying artists fairly; obituary to Andrew Chow, Zouk DJ; ST commentary on why we need mandatory criminal history checks for those working with kids; trans youth harassed at a mamak stall; autonomous wheelchairs at Changi Airport; CNA investigates whether words like “supermum” and “girl boss” are doing women more harm than good; is it true love, or love bombing?; Massive Attack members barred from re-entering Singapore because of pro-Palestine support; student clubs joining Singapore’s anime, comics and games creator scene; ST “full-time report” on week of feats for SG athletes; the Seniors National Games; SG’s dog gym for canine fitness; and venomous blue-necked keelback snake spotted at MacRitchie.
Below are the issues we explore in depth:
Politics: Return of the wonks
Lawrence Wong, prime minister, unveiled a new cabinet two weeks ago featuring six politicians who’d spent most of their careers in the civil service or the military, and who’d only just been elected last year. This has invited criticism from bits of the establishment. This “shows that the PAP [People’s Action Party] has failed to recruit from the private sector”, said Calvin Cheng, former Nominated MP and vocal party firebrand. “[M]any if not all of them were also scholarship holders. Meaning they have been in the civil service all their lives, from the time they graduated…we have a group of Ministers with very narrow albeit exceptional career experiences.”
In a CNA commentary this week, Han Fook Kwang, a former editor of The Straits Times who’s now at RSIS, said that Wong “inherited the problem which stemmed from the last two GEs, in 2015 and 2020, when the pipeline for minister-calibre material slowed down considerably.” Han believes that Wong “had too few cards to play”, and that these seemingly limited choices point to “a stark reality facing Singapore”, also worrying about the cabinet’s lack of diversity.
The PAP has a long tradition of plumbing the civil service and military for recruits, in keeping with the supposedly unique demands of an “administrative state”. Over the past decade, as traditional politicking has arguably become more important, the PAP has actively tried to search for non-traditional candidates. The infamous Ivan Lim saga of GE2020 suggested that its screening was becoming lax. Wong clearly wasn’t enthused by that 2020 batch, last year pushing out five MPs after just one term—oh, the ignominy—to make room for his own recruits.
Three of those who left are from the private sector and another is a social entrepreneur. Meanwhile, there are several other backbenchers, including Edward Chia, Mariam Jaafar, and Vikram Nair, with distinguished private sector careers. Rather than having limited choices, as Han suggests, perhaps Wong, who was a civil servant for over a decade before entering politics, is deliberately opting to surround himself with his peeps. “And one of the keys to the PAP’s success has been a full focus on renewing our team every election,” he told the FT last year, responding to a question about the hardest part of his job. “So having to look hard at the members of the team, speak to each one of them individually and say, ‘I am sorry, I am not able to allow you to continue. I have to drop you’. That was very painful.”
Han also mocked the relative inexperience of Wong’s charges, saying that nine veterans with over 100 years of experience had been “replaced by four new ministers whose combined years in office can be counted on two hands”, calling it a “major problem that requires urgent action”. Well, we won’t shed any tears for gerontocracy’s end—an injection of youthful “inexperience” is perhaps what the cabinet needs in today’s rapidly-changing world. (The likes of Gan Kim Yong, K Shanmugam, and Lee Hsien Loong are anyhow still maintaining the cabinet’s grey-hair count.)
Perhaps, in the age of ever-sexier AI firms and philanthropic foundations, the PAP will never again be able to recruit top performers from outside government. But surely that’s a good thing for Singapore, to have talent distributed across society, not monopolised by politics. We must also keep broadening the very definition of “top performers” and “talent”. Maybe Wong should, rather than trying vainly to foster some Big Tent cabinet, instead ensure that his wonkish ministers collaborate with leaders, from the private sector to the arts and civil society, on an equal footing, not from an ivory tower. Given the PAP’s elitist history, easier said than done.
Some further listening: “The Neighbourhood Boy”, a four-episode scripted series about Lawrence Wong, and Jom’s first-ever podcast, launched today. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Politics: Predistribution rather than redistribution
While accepting that Singapore as an “exigency” may have had to focus on growth first and redistribution later—for instance through the so-called VCR (voucher, cash, rebate) system—Kenneth Tiong, Workers’ Party MP, said “over the medium and long-term we should be building an economy where a fair distribution is produced by the growth itself, rather than repaired afterwards out of the proceeds.” He argued for “an economic engine driven by dynamic local companies, healthy domestic demand, and Singaporeans and Singaporean capital venturing abroad”.
