Ngiam Tong
Dow's interview with Susan Long
from The Straits Times.
Q. What is
your biggest worry about the civil service?
A. The
greatest danger is we are flying on auto-pilot. What was once a
great policy, we just carry on with more of the same, until reality
intervenes.
Take our industrial policy. At the beginning, it was the right
thing for us to attract multinationals to Singapore. For some years
now, I’ve been trying to tell everybody: ‘Look, for God’s sake,
grow our own timber.’
If we really want knowledge to be rooted in Singaporeans and based
in Singapore, we have to support our SMEs. I’m not a supporter of
SMEs just for the sake of more SMEs, but we must grow our own
roots.
Creative Technology’s Sim Wong Hoo is one and Hyflux’s Olivia Lum
is another but that’s too few. We have been flying on auto-pilot
for too long. The MNCs have contributed a lot to Singapore but they
are totally unsentimental people. The moment you’re uncompetitive,
they just relocate.
Q. Why has
this come about?
A. I suspect we have started to believe our own propaganda.
There is also a particular brand of Singapore
elite arrogance creeping in. Some civil servants behave like they
have a mandate from the emperor. We think we are little Lee Kuan
Yews.
SM Lee hasearned his spurs, with his
fine intellect and international standing. But even Lee Kuan Yew
sometimes doesn’t behave like Lee Kuan Yew.
There is also a trend of intellectualisation for
its own sake, which loses a sense of the pragmatic concerns of the
larger world.
The Chinese, for example, keep good
archives of the Imperial examinations which used to be held at the
Temple of Heaven. At the beginning, the scholars were tested on
very practical subjects, such as how to control floods in their
province. But over time, they were examined on the Confucian
Analects and Chinese poetry composition. Hence, they became
emasculated by the system, a worrying fate which could befall
Singapore.
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