On Pulau Tekong

Credit should be given where credit is due. On 12 January 2006, Lionel de Souza wrote about how Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had evidently instructed that no special treatment be accorded to him and his wife when they accompanied their son to National Service enlistment.

Lee reasoning must have been this: he was there in his private capacity. The ceremonies and courtesies of his office belong to occasions when he is performing that office.

As de Souza said, the humility displayed was exemplary.

Four days later, the Straits Times published another letter with a very different tale. In 1999, Lawrence Loh's son was enlisted along with a minister's son. In his letter, he reported witnessing how "a few instructors asked frantically who the minister's son was" and how "the minister introduced his son to the commander." The minister, his wife, and their enlistee son, were whisked away in a special vehicle.

Well, that calls for a reply from the Ministry of Defence, and on 20 January, it appeared. That reply admitted that "BMTC does normally facilitate the entry and exit from Tekong of persons holding national office to ensure their security and also as a basic courtesy and respect for their appointment."

This raises the question: should persons holding political office be accorded special treatment even when they are not there in their official capacities? PM Lee thought not, but reading between the lines, the underlings would routinely offer special treatment unless the big shot instructs otherwise. Clearly, in the 1999 case witnessed by Lawrence Loh, there was no instruction otherwise.

More troubling was how the Defence Ministry's letter failed to address one specific point made by Lawrence Loh, which was that not only were the minister and his wife whisked away in a special vehicle, so was the son.

* * * * *

Corruption is not an either/or thing. There is a whole spectrum of behaviour towards rank and power, of increasing supplication and expectation of favour. At what point do we start calling it corruption?

We all know that if Rajoo passed an envelope stuffed full of $100 bills under the table to Minister Quek, in return for the flyover construction contract, that is clearly corruption.

Most of us would even agree that even if there was no immediate quid pro quo, so long as both parties understand that an IOU came with the favour, we can call it corruption too.

But there is also the category of unsolicited favours and special treatment. Since these are unsolicited, there is unlikely to be any kind of "deal" involved. But if these favours are large enough, or frequent enough, the recipient may well understand, in an unspoken way, that if he wants these favours to continue, he should dance to a certain tune.

So the spectrum starts with tiny favours, say, extra courtesies when coming into my restaurant or my army camp, to bigger, but still unsolicited favours, e.g. a big discount when you buy a bungalow from me, or perhaps more regular ones, e.g. an annual golfing holiday with free stays at my lodge.

And then, one day, on the green out of earshot from anyone else, the matter of the import permit is raised.

Yet we cannot all the time be as puritanical and ascetic as PM Lee was on Tekong, anymore than we can always drink distilled water. The water we drink must have some minerals and impurities, otherwise it will taste unbearably flat. Similarly society and community needs a bit of horse-trading, perhaps a dose of patronage, to get things moving.

Two perfectly intelligent and reasonable persons may well disagree whether the standard set by Lee on Pulau Tekong should be the norm, or whether the relatively minor courtesies extended to the minister in 1999 are understandable and acceptable.

In short, we are faced with the question: what is the tolerable level?

More importantly, how do we keep it at or below the tolerable level? Humans love luxury and convenience. We get addicted to favours and will tend to be interested in more. It's a slippery path down to full-blown corruption.

I will come back to this question later.

* * * * * 

 
Judging from de Souza's and Loh's letters, two cabinet ministers seem to have quite different responses to exaggerated courtesies offered to them. PM Lee probably anticipated them and said they should be out of the question. The other minister probably thought nothing of it. Not even when his own son was invited to ride along in a special vehicle on the day that he was supposed to be "treated in the same way regardless of [his] background" -- words from the Ministry of Defence letter.

This reminds me of something a friend said to me recently when the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) scandal was at its most fulminant. He said, "This only shows how few really incorruptible people the government can rely on."

So even as we salute Lee for setting such a fine example, we can question whether the People's Action Party's argument that it is less a matter of checks and balances, but more the need to vote "good men" into office, that ensures Singapore's future. This argument presupposes that there is large pool of "good men" to be had, and that we can tell who they are.

The NKF saga shows how rotten apples can stay in office for a long time while regulators fail to ask tough questions, which is not at all surprising when we've spent decades cultivating such a deferential culture. Note too, former NKF CEO, T T Durai, didn't negotiate for favours or stuffed brown envelopes from suppliers and contractors. It wasn't that classic picture of corruption. His was a case of an alleged abuse of his executive powers to enrich, and protect, himself.

A society like ours that accords so much leeway to executive discretion and privilege will always be at heightened risk of this kind of abuse.

The minister's acceptance of extra courtesies on Pulau Tekong  in 1999 shows how easily even the most trusted politicians can slip into a mode of not questioning the favours and mendicity around them. And if he doesn't question that, would he question himself when he starts making requests for a bit more special treatment, or a bit more action by underlings to protect him from criticism? It's merely 2 degrees of difference.

* * * * *

The government is thinking about how we can protect whistle-blowers.

Frankly, we don't need yet another set of arrangements to protect yet another classification. We shouldn't be reinventing the wheel. We just need a culture of free speech. That of course must include the dove-tailing of our laws and judicial practices regarding libel, e.g. even if someone has been found to have libelled, must damages assessed be so punitive? It must also include re-looking at media regulation and media monopoly to enable free speech to blossom.

Power-holders need also to tame their instincts to come down hard on inaccuracies and critical speech. They must hold in check their propensity to nip in the bud any potential controversy, lest it lead to social disturbance. We cannot play it too safe.

Some might add that it also means Singaporeans must acquire the habit of speaking up, though my personal take is that if we give them a bit of time and a few encouraging examples, they will be as outspoken as any other society. I have this belief that humans the world over aren't all that different from each other.

Now I come back to the question I asked earlier: how do we establish what would be a tolerable level of "courtesies"?

I don't think it can be discovered to the satisfaction of a people -- and this is necessary because ultimately it's a moral standard, which means it must be agreeable to the people whom these politicians serve -- without a free debate.

And equally importantly, freedom of speech is necessary to expose transgressions of that agreed standard. Not just freedom of speech in name of course, but a situation where ordinary people (not just the unusually brave) are confident they will not be censored and therefore wasting their time and effort, and confident too that they will not be penalised for speaking out in good faith.

It is more effective to have a vigilant and outspoken media and civil society to maintain standards of propriety, than depend on the (invisible) internal ethics of a few "good men".

In closing, let me come back to the first letter on the right margin. De Souza's opening sentences were, "I am apolitical and I have no ulterior motive in writing this letter. Nevertheless I am certain that my letter will set many a tongue wagging."

There is much scepticism in Singapore that our media is truly free. There is widespread belief that what we see and hear is engineered to serve the powers that be. He had to protest his neutrality, and even then, I'm sure some readers refused to believe him, as he himself foresaw when he spoke of tongues wagging.

The irony is how, with the pervasive climate of unfree speech, even when the Prime Minister did something right, he could not fully reap the benefits of praise.

© Yawning Bread 

Footnotes

None

Addenda

None