Here in Singapore, we are in the tail-end of a surprisingly rough and vocal election season: initially I thought “aiyah, the election period is so short, should be no issues one lah…”

Boy, was I wrong! The past two weeks have been very surprising in terms of the amount of stuff that has come up. If you told me three weeks ago that

a former NTUC group CEO would come out to publicly question the NTUC Secretary General (who is running for election in the Jalan Kayu Single Member Constituency), not once, nor twice, but thrice
said NTUC Secretary General openly apologises, but still gets slammed anyway, with people saying there is no accountability as he suffered no consequences
his opponent in the opposition party gets his Whatsapp DMs leaked, showing him to be dropping f-bombs left and right on all sorts of people including Grab drivers, etc.; this, despite him saying that he wants to campaign on empathy and compassion

I would have said “NO WAY…”

Hence, this meme: GE2025 meme about Kayu Guy or f*** yu guy (Unfortunately I dunno who to credit for this, as this was a meme sent to me on Whatsapp!)

And that is just one of the episodes that have come up this election…!

There have been many things discussed by many people online, but I have also noticed that there are some things which nobody has really spoken about, which I nonetheless believe to be important.

“Singaporeans first” is easy to say, but hard to implement

A couple of parties have insisted in their manifestoes on prioritizing Singaporeans in job positions.

Honestly, I rolled my eyes when I read those. Those are motherhood statements…

In principle, I don’t think anyone (even in the PAP) will disagree with prioritizing Singaporeans for jobs… this is something most public servants also feel strongly about, and something which I have also seen ministers asking questions of public servants about.

As a former public servant, I can tell you that, within the public service, there is a palpable sense of pride when talking about Singaporeans who have either risen to the C-suite level in international MNCs, or when talking about Singaporean businesses that have grown to become international leaders in their industry. I mean, this makes us proud for our country, y’know?

But talk to anybody who is actually involved with business, and you will find that there are clear gaps in the Singapore labour space. We are a superaging society, and a consequence of this is that we have more people turning 55 than turning 21 years old, every year. So every graduating cohort is getting smaller and smaller. This means the talent supply for the workforce is not getting bigger, and it will become harder for companies to find Singaporeans with the right talent, skills and price to fill their positions. I have heard my ex-colleagues in EDB telling me about how their companies are desperate to fill their jobs with Singaporeans but just can’t find the Singaporeans to fill those positions. I have also heard the same from startup owners and SME bosses too.

Yes, I am sure that there are also companies which are gaming the system. Credit where credit is due, most government agencies including MOM have been on the ball in targeting companies which abuse the workpass system. Skillsfuture and Workforce Singapore have also been quite on the ball in trying to address PMET upskilling.

In the unlikely event that an opposition party comes into power, will they take a different approach? I doubt so.

So I don’t think electing a new party will magically solve this issue.

“Singaporeans first” is probably the wrong problem framing

More importantly, I think that the real issue is that the framing of the problem is wrong. The problem isn’t about Singaporeans not getting jobs: imo the real problem is about Singaporeans losing economic status in their home ground, and concerns about sufficiency.

If you compare Singapore with Dubai, you can see that Dubai has wayyyy more foreigners than Singapore has: Emiratis make up 15% of the local population vs. Singapore’s 25% local born.But why do you NOT see Emiratis behaving the same way as Singaporeans? Because in Dubai, the lowliest Emirati is still much higher status than the highest foreign-born CEO, who can never automatically become an Emirati citizen.

Also, every Emirati is taken care of: there is no concern that they will starve or become homeless. For most Singaporeans, it is quite a different kettle of fish… if you have no job (as I don’t now), basically, it is a very real possibility of starving or your family suffering.

So I actually think the real problem that we are talking about is the loss of economic status for most Singaporeans.

Singapore’s economic competitiveness is a wicked problem, with no easy solutions

The current tariffs craziness is but the latest craziness that Singapore has had to deal with over the years. I am old enough to recall a time when people questioned whether the Electronics industry can ever be competitive in Singapore, and yet, here we are, with fab investments raining down.

But overall, our economic competitiveness is a wicked problem that has no easy solutions. Again, this isn’t something which I think any political party has any easy solutions for.

Take for example, the idea of promoting Singaporean businesses. My friends in Enterprise Singapore (previously Spring and IE Singapore) will tell you just HOW much work has gone into supporting and promoting Singaporean businesses.

Yet, just ask any Singaporean graduate this question: which job would you choose, if both jobs are equally high-paying: one with an MNC like Google vs. a local company like ST Engineering? I’m willing to bet that most Singaporean graduates would opt for the MNC job!

So, how can Singaporean businesses excel if the top talent are not going to them?

So just putting a manifesto statement like “we would prioritize Singaporean businesses and Singaporean jobs first” is stating the end result, like saying “we want a beautiful garden”. Nobody disagrees with the end result.

The real problem is how to get the end result. The current garden’s soil AND plants are all in need of repair (imo)… and they impact each other negatively, and it’s hard to figure out where exactly to start, because to loop into each other.

Hence, “wicked problem”.

Analogy from open-source software: the real question of this election should be “how and where are the tradeoffs between Singaporeans are being made?”

Right now, many of the legislative and policy tradeoffs faced by Singapore are made outside of Parliament. Policy recommendations are often made by civil servants, with the respective ministers and political office holders making the ultimate decisions (based on the approving authority matrices that exist across the service). Much of the data underpinning those decisions is also internal to government and within the service.

So you have a situation where decision makers are kinda separated from the ones facing the consequences of their actions.

Yes, the decision-makers still attend Meet The People sessions, and yes, they sometimes do override the civil servants based on input they get from the grassroots. But nonetheless, the reality is that the ones most affected by these decisions often don’t have a channel to communicate to the decision-makers.

Most Singaporeans think “ok, I got a problem, let me raise this to my MP”, but chances are, your MP has ZERO idea what or how the policy decision affecting you was made, and might also not know how to impact that policy.

As Singapore becomes more complex and diverse, I do wonder whether it makes sense to continue the existing model, or whether Parliament should demand to have the information to have meaningful discussions on the tradeoffs in Parliament itself, rather than behind closed-doors in the Treasury building.

An analogy from software (which does make sense: legislation and policy can be considered to be the source code of a country).

The existing decision making model for Singapore’s policy and legislative tradeoffs is akin to proprietary software from Microsoft: you buy and use it, but if something goes wrong, you have to trust that Microsoft will fix it, IF Microsoft knows and wants to fix it.

The alternative model is open source software, where the source code is openly shared, so everybody can scrutinize the code. This leads to a generally better codebase, including better security, because the larger community can scrutinize the code and catch vulnerabilities and bugs earlier. (Interestingly, a Singaporean ex-defence industry engineer told me that most of the hardware he worked with was run on Linux, which is an open source OS: they had tried using Windows and it didn’t work as well.)

Maybe Singapore’s tradeoffs need to move from a ‘closed-source’ model, to a more ‘open source’ model, regardless of the party.

(Sidenote) … and can we have more law enforcement in the small streets rather than the expressways, please?

I live in Eunos, and the situation with Personal Mobility Devices (PMDs) is getting WAY out of hand… and I heard from a friend in Nee Soon who commented the same!

In the last 2 years, I have seen

PMDs speed on pedestrian sidewalks, even though the whole point of licensing them was to get them OFF sidewalks
PMDs with their license plates deliberately skewed so that nobody can see who was the CCB (not “China Construction Bank”) who almost hit the old uncle walking with his helper
PMDs almost cause traffic accidents on the road: they are way more reckless on the road than Malaysian motorcyclists (which is saying a lot!)

Interestingly, I almost never see traffic law enforcement in the small streets like around where I live, but I almost always see them on the expressways.

If you license but don’t enforce regulations, then what is the point?

Let’s all chill, with some gratitude, please

This is the first election where I personally know a few of the candidates, and have actually worked with them in some capacity before: Goh Hanyan, Shawn Loh, Jasmin Lau. And if any of them were in my constituency, I would give them my vote in a heartbeat, no questions asked, because I know from experience where their heart is. (Sadly, none of them are!)

A few weeks back, I was chatting with an ex-boss over coffee, and we both agreed that it was wonderful that some of these very good people we know have taken a bold step into politics “… even though it can be very thankless!”

And it IS a thankless job. Regardless of which party’s candidates we are talking about, every candidate is getting flak. Everyone.

When the truth is, if these folks haven’t put themselves forward, most of us: a. will never do the same, even if we are given the choice to (I shuddered as I wrote these words!) b. wouldn’t get a chance to even vote!

So, the fact that most of us will get to vote on 3rd May is something we should be GRATEFUL for. Grateful to the good people (across ALL parties) who have stepped forward to put themselves in the public eye for us to judge. Grateful that we have a clean system where your secret vote will count, rather than a system which goes to the highest bidder. Grateful that we can actually vote.

So even as you might think everyone who holds a different view from you is stupid and idiotic, stop to consider this fact: the opposite of a good idea can ALSO be a good idea.

And maybe the opposite side has good ideas, and good people too. Maybe all the die-hard partisans should take a moment to actually repeat what “the other” has to say, to themselves, without dismissal or creating exceptions for “your” side.

As the heated election campaigning comes to a close tomorrow, remember: everything is cause and effect.

So, let’s put in some good causes for Singapore, and vote on 3rd May with clear minds that are not tainted by greed, anger, fear or delusion.

Finished on 1 May 25 at 2018hrs.