Ong Teng Cheong: Extended interview
ASIAWEEK March 10, 2000.
Reference:
http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/magazine/2000/0310/nat.singapore.ongiv.html
Initially, he did not want to do that?
It's not that he did not want to do that, but it had been dragging
for a long time. They produced a White Paper eventually, tabled it
in parliament last July, and that made the future president's job
easier. We have already tested out many of the procedures during my
term, except for asking the
president to approve a draw on the past reserves during a deep
economic crisis. That was never done. It's that part of
procedure that was not tested. How to do it?
...
Why did they not want to tell you?
I do not know. Don't ask me, because I don't have the answer. I've
been asking them. In fact, in 1996, exactly halfway through my
term, I wrote prime minister Goh a letter. At that time, everybody
was expecting a general election in December or January. After the
election, a new government would be sworn in. When that happens,
all the reserves, whether past or current, become past reserves and
are locked up on the changeover date. As president, I have to
safeguard them and they can only be drawn upon with my permission.
So I said to Mr Goh: It's already halfway through my term,
but until today I still don't
know all these figures about the reserves.
So the government had been stonewalling you, the president,
for three years?
Yes. What happened actually was, as you know, in accounting, when
you talk about reserves, it's either cash reserves or assets
reserves. The cash side is straightforward: investment, how many
million dollars here and there, how much comes from the investment
boards and so on. That was straightforward -- but still we had to
ask for it. For the assets, like properties and so on, normally you
say it's worth $30 million or $100 million or whatever. But they
said it would take 56-man years to produce a dollar-and-cents value
of the immovable assets. So I discussed this with the
accountant-general and the auditor-general and we came to a
compromise. The government would not need to give me the
dollar-and-cents value, just give me a listing of all the
properties that the government owns.
...
When they eventually gave you the list -- the incomplete
list, did you have enough staff to do the checking and other
work?
No, I did not. I only had one administrative staffer and two
part-timers from the auditor-general's office. For things like
approving the budget of statutory boards, the auditor-general's
office would normally go through that for me. They are very good.
They check on everything. And they query and ask for
information.
...
Eventually then, with the list of properties and the
executive summaries, you were kept informed?
I wouldn't be able to say that. Even in my last year as president, I was
still not being informed about some ministerial procedures.
For example, in April last year, the government said it would allow
the sale of the Post Office Savings Bank POSB to DBS Bank. In the
past, when there was no elected president, they could just proceed
with this kind of thing. But when there is an elected president you
cannot, because the POSB is a statutory board whose reserves are to
be protected by the president. You cannot just announce this
without informing him. But I came to know of it from the newspaper.
That is not quite right. Not only that, but they were even going to
submit a bill to parliament for this sale and to dissolve the POSB
without first informing me.
What did you do?
My office went to tell them that this was the wrong procedure.
You've got to do this first, do that first, before you can do this.
It was question of principle and procedure. We had to bring all
this to their attention. That they cannot forget us. It's not that
we are busybodies, but under the Constitution we have a role to
play and a responsibility. Sometimes in the newspaper I came to know of
things that I am responsible for, but if it had not been reported
in the newspaper I would not know about it.
In view of the above article and in the interest of
transparency, there are a couple of candidate interview questions
that we should ask President Nathan:
