A Letter To Mr Tan Jee Say

Dear Sir:

 I will vote for you in the upcoming presidential election. I will vote for you not because I agree with the stances you espouse – I do not. I will vote for you not because I identify with your background and political affiliations – I do not. I will vote for you not because my mother worked under you while you were with the civil service – I couldn’t care less.

 I will vote for you because I believe that we do not need the office of president in Singapore. Over the past years, the presidential office has been of such low profile that no one has paid particular attention to it. Over the past months, the question has been raised of why a low-profile office draws such a high salary. Over the past weeks, the debate over the role of the president has exposed the contradictions inherent in the presence, the purpose and the relevance of the office.

 I respect that the presidential office-holders past and present have been worthy people of calibre, who have performed their duties as they felt befitted their constitutional authority. But this is no longer 1960 or 1980 or even 2000. We, the citizens of Singapore, want to see what we are paying for. The president, the elected president, is a holder of public office. He must be accountable in the performance of his duties. And the government that upholds the constitution that dictates those duties must be accountable for the scope and nature of those duties.

 In the debate over the role of the president, two sharply opposing sides have appeared. Either the president has the power to take a stance independently of the government and on matters of substance, or he does not. If the president has this power, then what are our Members of Parliament – our elected Members of Parliament – doing? If they are doing their job in the interest of the public, why do we need a president?

 If the president does not have this power – if he is dumb, as Mr Tan Kin Lian so concisely put it – then what is the purpose of having a president? Is the office merely a ceremonial rubber stamp? Certainly, other democracies have a ceremonial head of state. It is known as the incumbent monarch. Where there is no monarch, the elected prime minister – or the executive president – assumes the role of head of state. Why must the head of state be separated out from the executive function, especially in a politically and economically stable environment?

 No matter what side of the debate one chooses to stand on, the role of president emerges as redundant. Therefore, I will not vote for Dr Tony Tan, because he represents the status quo and the retention of a redundant role. I will not vote for Dr Tan Cheng Bock, because he, too, is close to the status quo. I will not vote for Mr Tan Kin Lian, because – my apologies, but I think this is true – he will not be able to capture enough of the popular vote.

 Therefore, Mr Tan Jee Say: I will vote for you because in my eyes, your entry into the presidential office is the most likely to lead to its eventual abolishment. Not just because you may or may not move to have it abolished, but because your presence has a high likelihood of goading the PAP into a serious relook of the office’s purpose and the necessity of having it. We have all seen that lobbying the PAP for change usually has no more than minimal and cosmetic effect. Put it this way: a fire lit under the seat of someone’s chair is more likely to make them stand up than a roomful of people cajoling them.

 I’ll vote for you. Now go light that fire.

The Things That Matter

Between Internet skills and humble manual skills, which ones matter more? Is there a difference? You go figure.

Last month, I dropped by one of the shops at People’s Park (the food court) to pick up a silver jacket zip. That particular shop has a huge selection of zips: metal and plastic, concealed and in-your-face, just about any color you might want – an entire cabinet of them. The proprietress was sorting through her stock when I went in, and paid me no attention as I hunted for a zip of the right length. Then, without warning, she suddenly launched into a vehement denunciation of young people these days.

Her complaint came down to this: young people nowadays don’t know how to do anything useful with their hands. She had a long string of criticisms for them (us? I’m not that old yet), beginning with how young people seem to spend all their time glued to this electronic gadget or the other, tapping away and doing what? Certainly nothing useful, was her opinion. They asked ridiculous questions like how to sew a cushion cover for their sofa, when they should have already worked that out for themselves before coming here to buy the material; they asked what color and style would be good, and how would she know that when she’d never set eyes on their sofa before?

On top of that, she said, young people these days were so busy with their electronics that they couldn’t even read signs. They came into her shop and asked her if she did alterations, when the only sewing paraphernalia on display was obviously for sale and not her own use; they asked which other shops did alterations, when a quick look up and down the corridor would reveal at least three in plain sight. And why couldn’t they learn to do these simple sewing tasks themselves, anyway?

I stood and nodded blankly, wondering why she’d chosen me to vent on. If anything, I’m one of those screen-tapping, stitch-illiterate young punks she was so irritated with. Heck, I didn’t even know a jacket zip from a regular zip – the difference is in the separable ends, it seems. Eventually I found the zip I wanted (which turned out to be the wrong length, and another whole drama of its own) and skipped on out of there, thinking rather hard about what she’d said and what it implied.

I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs and startups in the course of my work. And this is not a non sequitur. At an estimate, 80 to 90 percent of the startups I meet are Internet companies. More of the stereotypical screen-tapping crowd who get so engrossed in their smartphones, they forget to look up before crossing the road, I suppose. And as I headed back to the MRT station, I wondered to myself how many of these entrepreneurs, especially the ones in their mid-twenties or younger, have basic domestic skills like unblocking the toilet or fixing a wire the pet chewed in half or hemming up a pair of slacks that’s too long.

OK, maybe that’s not too fair. I probably couldn’t fix a wire if Nicky bit it in two – electricals just don’t like me. But I think I could get a toilet unclogged, albeit with a lot of extraneous bad words, and I definitely know how to take up a hem, although not very well. But – BUT. If I spent less time thumping on a keyboard and more time just messing around the house, would I be better at these humble domestic skills?

I think so. On the other hand, I might not be able to Photoshop a digital image convincingly, or hand-code a webpage, or type at 80 wpm and operate Microsoft Word without once touching the mouse.

Weighing it back and forth, which is the greater loss? I’m inclined to come down on the side of manual skills. In our collective obsession with technology and funky things, we’re starting to lose skills which should be so basic. My mother used to make almost all her own clothes, until arthritis got to her fingers, and once you discount changing fashions, the home-made part of her wardrobe is indistinguishable from the store-bought. My father builds furniture (mostly bookshelves thanks to the family habit of constantly acquiring books) and while his efforts aren’t quite as photogenic as the Ikea items, they’re definitely a lot sturdier.

As for me, I tried to take in the hem of a shirt and spent three hours just trying to tack it in place. I still haven’t quite figured out how to operate a metal saw, and I think my father is afraid I’ll cut a finger off if I try to practise.

Some people might say, so what? Get someone else to do all that while you have fun with the cool things like cloud computing. But I’m not sure outsourcing is a good idea, you know. DBS outsourced its IT systems, after all, and look what happened. Besides, Singapore is becoming increasingly expensive to live in. I’m not sure the average household budget can stretch to cover calling in a handyman to fix every leak or blockage or frayed wire, or a tailor to do every alteration. And NO, A MAID IS NOT THE ANSWER.

Blame parents spoiling their children, or the education system’s stupefyingly stupid emphasis on intangible grades, or the government’s inexplicable insistence on pursuing the latest economic fads in the most short-sighted way possible, or even our idiotic work culture of presenteeism that places more importance on the time you spend at your desk than the quality of the work you generate. I think the lady at People’s Park had a point. Somehow, people are losing the quality of self-sufficiency, overlooking “unglam” manual skills, bypassing the ability to do things for yourself.

Just today – or yesterday, given that it’s past midnight – I filed an article in which I wrote that a young entrepreneur praised the university’s business incubator for removing distractions like maintaining the office facilities. I didn’t write this in the article, but this young person said to me that in the incubator, one didn’t need to worry about things like changing a busted light bulb…

Did that mean, I wonder, that the young people using the incubator facilities just ignored a light that wasn’t working and expected someone else to take care of it? If so, perhaps they were justified, being students paying fees to use the university premises. But it’s not the best attitude to absorb and possibly carry on to the next phase of life…

Still, I think it’s not all that bad. The lady at People’s Park complained that ignorant young people came and asked her all manner of brainless questions. But at least they came to ask these questions.