I work in a multinational company. 

In the course of work I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with many foreign nationals, sometimes while I’m travelling on business, and most other times, when they are in Singapore on an expatriate basis or for short business visits.  With the exception of one who asked if Singapore was a dictatorship (I told him we were going to have elections this year) though not in a condescending way, foreign nationals have always been full of praise for how clean (in both the physical and governmental sense), organised, efficient and prosperous Singapore is.

In the course of work I’ve also had the fortune (or my friends sometimes say, "misfortune") of travelling to parts of the region which would not rank high of my list of vacation destinations.  Some of the governments in these countries are corrupt, inefficient or indecisive, and usually a combination of the foregoing.  Many of the laws in these countries are outdated, resulting in inefficiency, uncertainty, or in local bureaucrats with broad discretionary powers and therefore abundant opportunities to act corruptly.  Some of the laws are "progressive", but poorly implemented, or so skewed in favour of certain interests that the country is unattractive to long term foreign investment.

In one country, I have colleagues who take about three hours to commute to work every day, and three hours back.  In that same country the price of a basic food commodity (which even the poorest have to buy) surged by 70% in one week in late 2010.

In another country, the labour laws are so restrictive that companies often do not hire full time employees.  This is because the laws guarantee lifetime employment, and a generous redundancy payment if an employee is terminated.  Companies therefore engage temporary staff through manpower agencies.  These temporary staff do not enjoy the same benefits as full time employees would, and can still be "hired" and "fired" at will.

In yet another country, the local currency was repeatedly devalued against foreign currencies in the past few years, wiping out a substantial part of the savings of the local population.

In many of these countries, local and poorly-paid bureaucrats use their enforcement powers to harass businesses (eg. conduct of audits and inspections), possibly in the hope that the business will offer them a benefit to go away.

My point of narrating the above is this — that we don’t have it so bad in Singapore; through a combination of fortuitous circumstances, diligence, honesty, and wise governance, we have a country that functions reasonably well, and a formula for government that has worked reasonably well in the past 40 odd years (the "Formula").

Admittedly, the clean, organised, efficient and prosperous Singapore which foreign nationals see, represents only a part of Singapore.  How much I cannot say, but I think it should be a fair snapshot of above 50% of what Singapore is like.  The question which confronts us today — the voters who will determine the composition of the next Government, and the soon-to-be elected MPs who will form the next Parliament, is what to do with the part of Singapore that is less well known, which is not as prosperous, and which is in danger of being forgotten or left behind.

One option is to do nothing differently, allow the income gap to expand, and allow ourselves over the next 100 years to turn into another one of those countries which have a very rich minority, and a very poor majority.  However, voters in the past week have indicated the doing nothing differently, or pretending that nothing needs to be done, is not what they want.

A second option is to do something radically different.  There have been calls for that : generous welfare, free healthcare, cheap public transport and housing, abolishment of GST, and the like.  Maybe that is what the country needs, and there appears to be some attraction to such policies because the effects of such policies will be immediately felt — they would immediately improve the circumstances of those voters who struggle to cope with these challenges daily.  However, I would urge voters, and the next Government and Parliament — whatever its composition — to carefully study other countries which have implemented similar policies, consider how they have succeeded or failed, taking into account the fact that Singapore has nothing to fall back on if the radical change in policy fails.  We cannot even turn to farming to feed ourselves, if the economy fails. 

A third option is to tweak the Formula, to address the part of Singapore that is less well known, which is not as prosperous.  While I cannot say with absolute certainty that this is the best of the three options, I am personally in favour of this.  However, I recognise that the third option may also be the most difficult option to implement, because :

• it would only be natural for the incumbent, which drew up the Formula, to stick to what it knows well, and refuse to concede that parts of the Formula are wrong or can be improved
• it is easier for opponents of the incumbent to gain the attention and maybe win the favour of voters, by proposing something radically different with immediate effects, instead of adopting the Formula and making small changes and improvements over the longer term.

With the above thoughts, I hope that voters tomorrow will vote wisely, and that the elected MPs and Government thereafter will govern wisely.

Trawling blogs and reports on the Singapore General Elections today, I was somewhat surprised to hear this from Prime Minister Lee Hsieng Loong of the incumbent political party, in respect of several policy mistakes made by the Government during its watch.

"No Government is perfect.  We can have our best intentions, make our best efforts, but from time to time, mistakes will happen.  We will make mistakes.  We made a mistake when we let Mas Selamat run away.  We made a mistake when Orchard Road got flooded.  And there are other mistakes which we have made from time to time …"

So much so that the ballad "Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word" immediately played in my shallow wannabe teenaged mind.

The lyrics "what have I got to make you love me" seem almost too apt, given the very vocal expression of voter dissatisfaction with the incumbent political party, and apparent outpouring of support for opposition parties, in the past week.  I can almost imagine several political candidates dressed in all-white and prancing in the MTV video.

I don’t mean to trivialise the elections by my comments above, but it is gratifying to hear the word "sorry" (and many commentators have said, finally) coming from PM Lee.  Perhaps the signals sent by voters have come through, and there is a realisation that while economic success is one (and I would add a very sound) measure of good government, good government also means humility in the sense of a willingness to listen to and accommodate other views, to debate policies constructively, to explain hard decisions graciously, and to admit that no one gets it right all the time.

A Government may derive formal authority to govern through the ballot box.  However, the moral authority to govern is derived from continuous engagement with the electorate in a constructive way, to obtain their consent for proposed government policies.  This can admittedly be a tedious, time-consuming and humbling process — I don’t envy people whom I know who have dedicated their lives to this — but it is the heart of service to the people, which all political parties and candidates claim they wish to engage in.

Hopefully this change in the tone of the campaign is not just rhetoric, but a real and sustained change is the style of governance.

Hopefully this change does not come too late.  Not that I have found none of the incumbent political party speeches were unimpressive (or that all were impressive), but several of the opposition campaign speeches have also left me unimpressed with their repeated charges that GST, ERP, COE, etc. are oppressive (to clapping and whistling from the audience), without offering any concrete solutions.  So I can’t say that I find the alternative which they proffer, terribly attractive.