By Elena Torrijos |
SingaporeScene – Tue, Mar 29, 2011 6:06 PM
SGT
By Seah Chiang Nee
For the first time in years, Singapore's opposition is seeing a
little light in a dark tunnel, at least in recruiting the
highly-educated.
An impressive number of top scholars and professionals,
including a dozen with Masters and Doctorates (PhD), will likely
emerge to challenge the People's Action Party (PAP) in the
elections expected in May.
It is something Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew had long predicted
would happen after his political retirement.
He is, of course, still around, but not in the best of health.
His prediction of better-quality opposition representatives is
slowly coming true.
The PAP has begun to introduce its 24 new candidates who as
usual would likely come with high academic or professional
records.
This has stood the party in good stead so far, but the
opposition may be narrowing the gap.
Not all agree. One opposition politician admitted the going
would be tough, "like fighting a tank with bows and arrows".
In the previous election as quoted in the Straits Times, the
opposition said 70 percent of its candidates were professionals and
graduates.
This time the percentage would almost certainly increase, it
said.
A sprinkling of these opposition academic high-fliers
comparative to the ruling party's, will be fielded in the coming
election.
They are leaders of two parties: Dr Chee Soon Juan (Singapore
Democratic Party) who has a PhD in neuro-psychology and Kenneth
Jeyaretnam (Reform Party) with a double first in Economics from
Cambridge University.
Among other candidates who will stand in the elections are:
* Dr Vincent Wijeysingha (Reform Party), the
son of the respected long-standing principal of Raffles
Institution, who has a PhD in Sociological Studies from University
of Sheffield, England.
* Dr John Yam (Workers Party) who holds a PhD
(Australia) and Masters in Business Administration (Scotland) and
Electrical Engineering degree (Singapore).
* Husband-and-wife team of government scholars
and civil service high-flyers Tony Tan (engineering) and Hazel Poa
(maths), who obtained first-class honours from Cambridge
University.
* Wong Wee Nam, 63 with a PhD from Imperial
College who last stood as a Workers Party candidate in 2006.
Singaporeans are now waiting anxiously to see whether another
prominent scholar, Chen Show Mao, will stand as a Workers Party
candidate.
Chen, an ex-Rhodes Scholar, has a doctorate in law from
America's Stanford University.
Likewise, the ruling party still has tons of achievers joining
its ranks, which will take a book to fill.
Is a candidate's degree still important to the 21st Century
voter?
The answer is yes probably more so than in most countries. This
sacred cow may be around for quite awhile even after MM Lee's
departure.
Forty years ago, when I first started reporting elections, the
profile of candidates often ranged from bicycle shop owners to
factory supervisors — not very highly educated -- like the
electorate.
As time passed by, academic levels of both steadily rose to a
level when voters would shun candidates without a degree.
For many elderly citizens, the higher the degree the better!
Less enamoured are younger citizens who are blaming their
country's ills in the past five years on scholars who planned and
carried out policies.
The whole thing was introduced by Lee in the early days. His
views on this have not changed.
His government created a scholarship system to not only feed
talent to run the political and civil service leaderships but also
as recruitment feeder for the PAP.
Its success lies in its ability to reward scholars who join it
by offering top jobs with the best pay, with the result that few
found it attractive to join the opposition.
Lee had shaped the scholarship system along China's imperial
exams for the Emperor to select the best scholars who would be sent
far and wide to serve as magistrates and administrators to
represent him in governing the large country.
In his latest book, Lee said he believed that, in future,
China's leaders would have PhDs and MBAs from American
universities.
Several years ago, Lee explained that one reason he had chosen
Suzhou to site a joint industrial park was because of its
talents.
"Look at China. The bright ones came from everywhere. You can be
the son of a farmer or worker.
"If you pass the Imperial Examinations ... you're a xiu cai
(county scholar) or a jun shi (military strategist), or a zhuang
yuan (top imperial scholar).
"If you are the highest scorer in the examination, chances are
the Emperor will want you to marry his daughter.
"When these scholars retire, they go to a place with a milder
climate along the Yangtze river." said Lee.
"That was Suzhou, which became a popular place for ex-Imperials
to live with their multiple wives and children.
"That's why we chose Suzhou. It succeeded. We were dealing with
extremely smart and bright people, brighter than the people we
sent.
"Our people have the knowledge; they didn't but they had a fine
IQ." Lee added.
That was a tacit admission that Singapore's breed of scholars
may not fare well in a changing world against natural
intelligence.
Two months ago in a moment of candour, Lee predicted that the
PAP's rule in Singapore would one day come to an end.
"There will come a time when the public would eventually say:
'Look, let's try the other side either because the PAP has declined
in quality or the opposition has put up a team which is equal to
the PAP's and they'll say, let's try the other side'," Lee
wrote.
A former Reuters correspondent and newspaper editor,
the writer is now a freelance columnist writing on general
trends in Singapore. This post first appeared on his
blog, www.littlespeck.com on 26 March 2011.
-Yahoo! News Sg
