The Enquire
He may need aid to hear you clearly, but the leader of
The Workers’ Party needs no help in speaking up--Photo: Sam Kang
Li
For someone who is critical of the government for being deaf to
its citizen’s opinions, especially in the past, the leader of
Singapore’s largest opposition political party, The Workers’ Party
(WP), is ironically half-deaf himself.
As Mr Low Thia Khiang puts on his hearing aids at the start of
the interview, the 52-year-old said he lost 50 per cent of high
frequency hearing in both ears probably from not wearing earplugs
at the shooting range during his National Service when he served as
an instructor.
The severity of the problem did not hit Mr Low until he realised
he could not hear during Parliament. He was seeking clarification
but then-Speaker Tan Soo Khoon told him to sit down and wait for
the others to finish. “But I carried on, and he thought this guy
was trying to be funny,” he said.
At first Mr Low wondered why the Speaker was so angry and it was
only after the session that he realised what had gone wrong.
As if being hard of hearing is not bad enough, Mr Low has
problems with his English too. At the last general election,
Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew had questioned if an apology letter
written in English for Mr Low’s party candidate, Mr James Gomez,
was really written by him.
“Of course, my English is not as good as
MM Lee’s. But, his Chinese is definitely not better than
mine.”While MM Lee was accurate in his observation – Mr
Gomez had written the letter while Mr Low only edited it — the
latter found it nothing to be ashamed of. He even told the press,
“Of course, my English is not as good as MM Lee’s.
But, his Chinese is definitely not better than mine.”
And Mr Low readily confesses that he got an F9 for English in
both his A-Levels and O-Levels. As the last batch of students from
the former Nanyang University (Nantah), he belongs to a dying
community of Singaporeans educated in the Chinese medium at a time
when the country was switching to English as its medium of
instruction in schools.
Then Prime Minister Lee had made a speech at Nantah where he
labelled it a third-class university as compared to Cambridge,
Oxford and then University of Singapore (SU), Mr Low recalls. This
was why in 1980, during Mr Low’s final examinations, it was
announced that the National University of Singapore would form by
merging Nantah with SU.
“They call it a merger, but to me it’s a closing down of
Nantah,” he is quick to correct.
The young Mr Low was outraged with the decision, and so were
many of the other students. Together with some friends, they put up
protest posters around the island, wrote letters to the press and
even snagged an interview with a journalist from a Chinese
paper.
“I asked myself as a citizen of
Singapore, if there is something which I feel that is unjust,
something that is not right, probably people will not know because
if press don’t report, who knows?”“Amazingly, nothing came
out… the whole public opinion was so one-sided,” he boomed. For the
first time, Mr Low saw how public opinion in Singapore could be
engineered to favour those in power, “I asked myself
as a citizen of Singapore, if there is something which I feel that
is unjust, something that is not right, probably people will not
know because if press don’t report, who knows?”
Mr Low grew up in a family of five and his sisters brought him
up after their parents passed away when he was only in secondary
school. As a student in Chung Cheng (Main) he almost got expelled
for disciplinary problems.
Fortunately, his principal was merciful and Mr Low eventually
enrolled in Nantah, majoring in both Chinese Language and
Literature and Government and Political Administration.
It was his interest in the latter and the desire to read Western
political thinkers like Plato and Max Weber that spurred Mr Low to
brush up his English in university. But by the time he was to
pursue honours in the newly opened NUS, he was still not confident
enough in his English.
Thus, the political science department’s warning that theses
would be marked down for poor English coupled with the
discrimination he felt from the department towards the
Chinese-educated pushed him to do his honours in Chinese Studies
instead.
After graduation, he became a Chinese-language teacher at Pei
Dao Secondary where he encountered the final straw that led him
into politics. “To face a student everyday, knowing they are not
slow learners but they will not make it because of the system, I
can’t tell the student that,” he said.
Seeing his normal stream students demoralised by the system
frustrated the young teacher. “Are they slow learners? Today, after
so many years, I am proven right because many of them are very
successful.” he said.
But Mr Low could not wait to be vindicated and quit teaching
after only two years. By then, the contracting business he started
while teaching had taken off and he was already a member of the WP
led by the late Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam. One of the earliest
things he did was to push the party to make streaming an issue in
the 1984 elections.
“Of course, the ruling government will
never admit that this is from pressure from the ground, from the
opposition… you can’t claim credit, but it’s ok, at least you can
see some changes.”Today, that education system that finally
drove Mr Low to join the WP in 1982 has changed for the better.
“Of course, the ruling government will never admit
that this is from pressure from the ground, from the opposition…
you can’t claim credit, but it’s ok, at least you can see some
changes.”
And it is seeing his efforts improve the lives for Singaporeans
that keeps him going after over 20 years in politics.
While he has not thought of his retirement plans, party renewal
is not far away from the party chief’s mind, “I will have to give
up one day, will there be people who will move the party forward or
that’s the end?”
Mr Low’s biggest concern is that the party still does not have
enough people — quantity and quality — to form an alternative
government today and he admits that to join opposition politics
takes a certain breed of people who are willing to toil away.
“Not true what, my life has never been
difficult, whether in business or in life. People use it as an
excuse.”But he is quick to rubbish the myth that it is
dangerous to be associated with opposition politics, “Not true what, my life has never been difficult, whether in
business or in life. People use it as an excuse.”
He recalls that he joined WP while still a teacher and his
vice-principal used to keep newspaper cuttings of him and his
colleagues speculated when he would be sacked. “To me, I deliver, I
do my job… what is there reason for you to sack me?” he said.
The apathy of the youth towards politics does not worry the
father of three either. He keeps an open mind on the issue as he
thinks the youth have diverse interests and it may simply not be
the right time for them to be interested anyway. For those who want
to take up politics, his advice is to join a party with “eyes
open”, understand the party and its objectives and be prepared for
any possible outcome.
Mr Low himself had much to deliberate before he joined the WP.
His children were young and many like him would have waited a
little longer. Moreover, it was a time of uncertainty for
opposition politicians as people were arrested under the Internal
Security Act.
But for Mr Low, it was a case of now or never, and he candidly
told his wife before joining the party, “One day I might have to go
to jail.”
But he never did.
After losing his maiden elections in Tiong Bahru GRC in 1988,
Low won the single-seat ward in Hougang in 1991 and has not looked
back. In the last elections in 2006, he even won with his biggest
margin ever.
A big factor of his success lies in Mr Low’s style of politics
that has earned him praise even from the ruling People’s Action
Party as the kind of opposition acceptable to them.
Perhaps, one of the three calligraphy piece that adorns his
office wall best describes the Buddhist’s approach to politics.
Inspired by the Chan Zong teaching, it loosely translates to read
that no matter what happens in the surroundings, one should not be
distracted and stay calm inside.
Such a Zen-like approach differs sharply from his predecessor,
Jeyaretnam’s fiery-brand of politics. Mr Low is terse when speaking
about the man whom he took over as WP’s Secretary-General in 2001
in less than amicable terms.
Mr Jeyaretnam had then accused the WP and Mr Low for not helping
him out with his debts incurred from the defamation suits he had to
face from the PAP leaders.
What Mr Jeyaretnam went through showed Mr Low the political
traps that he had to avoid to survive. And as if to distance
himself from the man, he adds, “Being a leader to me is about
responsibility, when the party entangles, you demoralise everybody,
you also discourage people who may be interested.”
For critics who say the WP is not aggressive enough and too
similar to the PAP, he assures them that the party is confident of
its approach and why they are doing it.
The WP acts as a check on the government to
make it accountable and provides Singaporeans with a choice to make
sure the democracy here work, says Mr Low.
This is especially important when the government here often
makes decisions with little consultation, and this was the biggest
problem he saw when he entered politics.
“There is no compromise, even though people feel it is not in
interest of the nation, but you can’t say anything, who is going to
hear you? Not even the news. So best way is to get into politics,
so that when I ask question in Parliament, you have to answer, and
you better answer!” he said.
Since his days at Nantah, he remains sceptical of the local
press and is selective to the journalists he speaks to. When Mr Low
first got elected he told the press an important reason why he won
was because he was never interviewed by them. He thinks that
journalists need to have a sense of mission and has met only a few
who dare to push the boundaries.
Mr Low sees himself as the voice of the voiceless and despite
his plain, and at times broken English, one hears a man who wants
to speak up against the injustices in the Singapore system. “I was
born here, this is my country. If I think there is wrong, I will
fight,” he said, thumping the table to bring the point home.