WP Will Hold 3 Rallies In Hougang, Starting Tomorrow

SINGAPORE – The Workers’ Party has announced that it will be holding three rallies in the lead-up to Polling Day, which falls next Saturday.

The first of the rallies will be held tomorrow, while next week will see rallies on Tuesday and Thursday. All three events will be night events beginning at 7pm, with candidate Png Eng Huat saying yesterday that it was “too hot, too humid” to consider a day rally in Singapore.

The Workers’ Party said it would only be able to confirm the location of each rally at about 3pm the day before. The Police said on Wednesday that the allocated sites for the rallies were Hougang Stadium and the open field in front of Blk 837, bounded by Hougang Ave 4 and Hougang Central.

Rallies must end by 10pm, said the Police.

People’s Action Party candidate Desmond Choo has yet to announce his rally dates, if any, though he promised yesterday that “it should be soon”.

Today Online

‘Give Me The Mandate So That I Can Do More’

SINGAPORE – Describing Hougang as his “home”, People’s Action Party (PAP) candidate Desmond Choo, 34, urged the residents to give him the mandate to “create a vibrant and brighter future” for the constituency.

“Residents know that we are sincere and they know we are always here for them … I have done quite a lot but there’s more that I can do and I will need their mandate to do so,” he told reporters yesterday at the Nomination Centre.

Pointing out that he has served Hougang residents over the past 15 months, he added: “I need residents to know that if you want me to do more, beyond just what I can do now … and you want me to represent you in Parliament, then I will need your support.”

The by-election will be a straight fight, despite a late surprise that there could be more than two candidates. Mr Choo stressed that his strategy would have remained the same, straight fight or not.

He said: “I’m still going to be very focused on fighting for every single vote. I’m still going to walk the ground hard, visit the markets, visit the blocks, wherever there are residents.”

Mr Choo said that one of the key issues in the by-election was the matter of who would be the best person to take care of the residents’ interests in the long term as well as deliver results. “We need good MPs to not only air their concerns, hopes and fears, but to also act on them to deliver results that matter to them and I think this is what this contest and what my focus is going to be about.”

National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan, who showed up to support Mr Choo yesterday, said the party stood ready to help but Mr Choo will run his own campaign.

“The last General Election has not daunted him, neither his fighting spirit nor his passion to serve,” Mr Khaw said. “And in a short year, he has initiated several initiatives. Just imagine what more he can do if he got the mandate from the people of Hougang.”

Of his opponent Mr Png Eng Huat, Mr Choo said the two candidates yesterday agreed to meet up for coffee, no matter the result. “We are going to … look back on these nine days and say that ‘hey we fought a good clean fight between gentlemen’,” he said.

Today Online

Poh No-Show, Straight Fight In Hougang

SINGAPORE – Despite his no-show, the spectre of Workers’ Party veteran Poh Lee Guan and his actions a few days ago cast a long shadow on the Nomination Day proceedings yesterday.

Cutting a lonely figure, away from the WP members and supporters in the Serangoon Junior College Nomination Centre, Dr Poh was spotted a few blocks away.

Even then, he was the talking point, as his party comrade Png Eng Huat and People’s Action Party candidate Desmond Choo were officially nominated as the two candidates in the by-election.

National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan, who was at the Nomination Centre to show his support for Mr Choo, questioned the WP’s unity, after Dr Poh had taken the nomination papers for the by-election without the WP leaders’ knowledge or consent.

Asked by reporters for his views on Dr Poh’s run-in with his party leaders – which came days after former WP GE candidate Sanjiv Kamalasanan resigned from the party and publicly criticised its leadership – Mr Khaw said: “I’m not familiar with the issues within the Workers’ Party, it sounds very complicated and it sounds pretty exciting, too, for people looking in. One by one, some resign, some get sacked, whatever the reason, some are unhappy with the leadership.”

Referring to the PAP, Mr Khaw said: “For us, we come to politics to serve. So we have a common cause, you decide what is important for Singaporeans, and as a party we stay united.”

“Of course, if you come in and you don’t share our common goals, then it’s very hard to stay together. Because if within the party you cannot stay united, can you imagine how do you run the country, some ministers are resigning or being sacked. I think that’s very troublesome.”

Mr Khaw also spoke about WP’s former Hougang MP Yaw Shin Leong. “(He) got into trouble, disgraced himself and disappointed all the voters. And the worse thing is to leave just like that, without a word, not a single word of explanation or apology, I find that utterly irresponsible, and in fact arrogant,” he said.

Speaking to reporters after nominations closed, WP chief Low Thia Khiang said the party would address the Yaw episode again during one of the rallies, “if there is a need to”.

Mr Low quelled talk of disunity within the WP ranks. He said: “We operate an open platform for Singaporeans who are inspired to serve the people, (who) want to participate in politics.

“So after some time, if (the party members) leave the party to do something else … I don’t think we should stop them. I don’t think we should take this as a split in the party.”

Dr Poh, who was not carrying any nomination papers, insisted he was the “unofficial spare candidate”, even as Mr Low separately told reporters that the party “had not planned any back-up”.

Even though Dr Poh did not put himself up as an independent candidate – as many had expected him to – political analysts noted that the damage had already been done.

While they reiterated that the episode would have minimal impact on the by-election, it raises broader questions about the WP’s ability to stay united.

Said Singapore Management University law professor and Nominated Member of Parliament Eugene Tan: “The pertinent question is, is the party able to maintain cohesiveness as it moves into the next General Election?”

He added that the incident has provided “ammunition” for the PAP to question if WP is a party that can be “relied on”.

Institute of Policy Studies senior research fellow Gillian Koh said the recent departures of Mr Sajeev and Mr Fazli Talip – who contested last year’s GE under the WP banner – also raised the issue of the Opposition party’s selection process for cadreship and candidacy.

“It is however a party on the move and therefore has to make difficult choices about these issues, its strategy for further development and party branding,” she said. “So such developments are not surprising as the party evolves.”

Asked if the WP’s reputation has been hurt by the kerfuffle over the past few days – and affect the outcome of the polls – Mr Low reiterated that Hougang’s 20 years of confidence in the WP “won’t be shaken so easily”.

Today Online

Singapore ‘Should Nurture Wealth Creators, Not Just Wealth Managers’

SINGAPORE – Singapore has to decide, going forward, whether it aims to be a “Jurong Island” or a “Shenton Way”, said retired top civil servant Ngiam Tong Dow at a forum yesterday.

Pitting the two models against each other and as metaphors of “wealth creators” and “wealth managers”, Mr Ngiam expressed concern that Singapore might be nurturing more of the latter, at the expense of the former.

“I believe that, while many Singaporeans are competent in our jobs, few among us are brilliant,” said Mr Ngiam, the former Ministry of Finance permanent secretary, who is now Pro-Chancellor at the National University of Singapore.

What would differentiate the wealth creator from a wealth manager, he felt, would include attributes such as tremendous reserves of energy, the ability to think out of the box and “seeing possibilities where others can only see rocks”.

Speaking to a group of around 250 engineering students, academics and industry representatives at NUS Engineering Auditorium, Mr Ngiam was asked during the one-hour dialogue why Singapore could not possess both wealth creators and wealth managers. He replied that a job in the technology sector has got more multiplier effects than one in the services sector.

“Even if you take banking and wealth management, there’s no reason why people should come to Singapore to manage their funds. It can be in the middle of the Indian Ocean with a computer. The barriers to entry are very low,” said Mr Ngiam.

Lauding the late Dr Goh Keng Swee’s contribution to the wealth creation of Singapore, Mr Ngiam noted how Dr Goh, who was Defence Minister, had established Sheng-Li Holdings to build up Singapore’s defence technology. Sheng-Li was later renamed Singapore Technologies (ST) Holdings.

Under Dr Goh, Mr Ngiam said that ST engineers refurbished fighter aircraft and built battle tanks, which were comparable to others internationally.

“After Dr Goh retired from the Government in 1986, there is no one to replace him as our wealth creator,” he added. “The Government of Singapore Investment Corporation and Temasek (Holdings) are sovereign wealth managers for our national savings and reserves. They are not wealth creators.”

Temasek in particular, Mr Ngiam felt, is supposed to be a wealth creator, but are just being “fund managers”.

Going forward, Mr Ngiam said the direction Singapore takes will have an impact on its political, economic, educational and labour policies.

Asked what Singapore can do now to nurture wealth creation, Nr Ngiam said: “The engineering faculty should be given more resources.” Later, he suggested that the Government could provide funding for university final year students of any discipline to start their business aspirations.

“At the end of the day, if 10 per cent succeed out of 100, there will be 10 future companies,” said Mr Ngiam.

Today Online

Let’s Ensure They Are Home For Keeps

A young pharmacist recently returned to Singapore after a highly satisfying stint studying and working in Australia. There, she said, doctors she worked with listened to her and valued her input.

When she returned to Singapore, however, she found herself in a workplace where doctors expected orders to be followed, new practices were delivered direct from the top and colleagues stayed until their manager left even if they had finished their work.

It is not just foreigners who may have difficulties integrating into local companies. Singaporeans returning from abroad, like the pharmacist, seem to have similar issues too.

Thousands of Singaporean students spend years studying abroad and gain leading-edge skills. At many universities in Western countries or Australia, they are taught to think critically and their grades often depend on how well they speak up in class.

Some of them then burnish their skills by working overseas for a couple years after graduation, often in a participatory workplace where their input is valued.

When they return to Singapore and join the workforce, however, they are often thrust into a vastly different environment where they are expected to follow directives from above with little comment.

PULLED BACK BY MANAGEMENT

While studies on returnees are few, some researchers have indeed found that returning Singaporeans do face difficulties.

The Central Policy Unit in Hong Kong, for example, conducted research on Singaporean returnees so it could gain insights into how to attract the territory’s own citizens back. In a report released in 2009, it found that Singaporeans who return experience “a work culture that remains unreceptive to returning migrants’ ideas about creativity; an organisational and governmental bureaucracy that is top-down; and a community that treats the returnees with suspicion”.

The result, as several young Singaporean returnees put it, is that while they start their careers full of passion, they are pulled back by management. “At some point,” one said, “most of us just give up and go with the flow”.

The situation has led some Singaporeans to decide that it is simply not worth coming back at all to a corporate environment that is fairly rigid and does not fully value their skills.

While many of the more than 192,000 Singaporeans living overseas are there for study or on short-term work assignments, a significant number have simply decided to stay abroad. For example, a Today report last December noted that about 150 Singaporeans head overseas each year to study medicine. About 20 per cent return to Singapore to practise, according to official figures between 2005 and 2009.

ENGAGE THEM DIFFERENTLY

To benefit fully from the education, enthusiasm and experience that returning Singaporeans have gained abroad – and, indeed, to get more of the Singaporeans living overseas to come back in the first place – companies need to engage them differently.

They can start by having management listen to employees, enabling staff to work creatively in teams, and giving staff more engaging work.

Collaborative networking tools, innovative office layouts and allowing staff to work remotely can be part of the mix.

Along with enabling more innovation and higher productivity, these changes may result in more locally-educated staff liking the environment better too.

Such changes are perhaps similar to what top companies have found they need to do to engage Gen Y workers.

As Intel HR Director R Anish told ZDNet some time ago, Gen Ys expect challenging work assignments, socially responsible workplaces, flexible work environments, freedom, collaboration and innovation. His company and others are structuring to meet these needs.

Yet, returnees interviewed in the Hong Kong study and anecdotes related by others suggest that both the public sector and local private companies in Singapore seem more likely to follow long-established practices.

While some local companies have started to change, the number is still small.

TOP-DOWN POWER STRUCTURE

One difficulty may be the entrenched top-down management structure in Singapore companies.

The Hofstede’s Power Distance Index, for example, shows Singapore’s score of 74 as being far higher than the 36 in Australia or 35 in the United Kingdom, with a higher score pointing to a far stronger top-down power structure here.

A key implication, as Ms Kate Sweetman, director of research and curriculum at the Iclif Centre for Leadership and Governance Centre in Kuala Lumpur, wrote in the Harvard Business Review, is that the structure “stomps flat the multi-level relationships and open communication required for innovation”.

It is easy to say that returnees rather than companies need to change. Yet if companies do not change, the thousands of talented returning Singaporeans are more likely to leave or move to foreign companies – if they come back in the first place.

Moreover, as Ms Sweetman also wrote, companies that fail to address issues of power structures “remain vulnerable to failure”.

Yes, it may take time to improve management practices and put new technology in place. To leverage returning Singaporeans fully, enabling both the company and the staff to achieve their full potential, faster change is essential.

Richard Hartung is a consultant who has lived in Singapore since 1992.

Today Online