The passing of a Founding Father - Reaching the Common People

May 23, 2010
Simply sincere
Dr Goh's simple yet eloquent writing style showed desire to reach out to ordinary people
By Janadas Devan, Review Editor

Dr Goh Keng Swee has been described as the founder of the Singapore Armed Forces, the architect of Singapore's economy, the master builder of independent Singapore. He was also, as I have said on many occasions in this space, a remarkably gifted writer - indeed, the most distinguished writer of English prose this country has had.

Was there a connection between the writer and the statesman? Might we trace in the qualities of the writing the nature of the genius that made so profound an impression on our history? Was he so effective a public servant in large part because he was so precise, so translucent, so gracious a writer?

We know not all distinguished statesmen are good writers - Singapore certainly has had many able public servants who were poor communicators. And we know precious few good writers become passable, let alone distinguished, public servants. But Dr Goh was both, and in his case at least, the writing shaped in profound ways his statesmanship.

To begin with, he was possessed by the desire to write - to communicate, to explain policy, to clarify, to argue, to convince. As Dr Goh himself noted, not without some pride, he and his Old Guard colleagues 'may be the few remaining members of a vanishing breed of political leaders: We write our own speeches. We have our ideas as to how societies should be structured and how governments should be managed. We prefer to express these ideas our way'.

As a result, as Dr Goh went on to observe in the preface to his first collection of essays, The Economics Of Modernisation, he and his Old Guard colleagues ended up addressing 'their citizens on matters of public policy more often than is usual in most countries'.

And in Dr Goh's case, at least, speaking about public policy really meant speaking about public policy. He was never condescending to his audience, no matter how humble they were; he never acted or behaved as though public policy, no matter how complex, could not be understood by the public.

I will, if I may, cite a personal memory here as evidence: The first time I heard Dr Goh deliver a speech was at the NTUC's historic Modernisation Seminar in 1969, which my father, Devan Nair, organised and chaired. Only 14 years old then, I had been dragged to the seminar because I was a nuisance at home, and was dreading listening to Dr Goh speak.

To my utter surprise, I not only understood what he said, but also found it most interesting. And if I, a 14-year-old, could understand him, so could the unionists.

There were no scholars in the NTUC in those days. The best-educated unionists then would have come from the teachers' union, and possibly the journalists' union, but even then, few among the teachers or journalists would have been university graduates. And yet, Dr Goh spoke to the unionists as equals, without a hint of condescension, and explained to them in great detail the economics of cooperatives, with his English being translated simultaneously into Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.

'I suggest that the financial base could be built upon a life insurance cooperative,' he urged, arguing against the proposal to start with a bank, as the NTUC had been advised to do by some European trade unions. 'The insurance cooperative should not, at any rate in the initial stages, move into other fields of insurance such as fire, marine, motor and general insurance,' he continued. 'There is no advantage that a cooperative enterprise enjoys in these fields over private enterprise. It is otherwise in respect of life insurance.'

And so on - very serious but plain talk. And thus was NTUC Income born - not as a result of scholar-officials shuffling papers in a hermetically sealed committee room, but as a result of a world-class economist speaking directly to the representatives of port workers, postmen, petroleum workers, road sweepers, seamen, bus drivers, bank clerks and factory hands. Speaking directly to them, moreover, of complex issues in so accessible a fashion that even a 14-year-old could understand; and speaking of these weighty matters without in any way misrepresenting their complexity or talking down to his audience.

Even now, more than 40 years later, I doubt if any academic - or journalist or civil servant, for that matter - would be able to produce a more exact, thorough and accessible account of the principles of cooperatives as Dr Goh produced that day for unionists. I was too young to realise it then, but it appears clear to me in retrospect that what Dr Goh did that day was profoundly democratic.

And here I think is a hint of how his linguistic gifts contributed to his statesmanship. He was a graceful, even stylish writer, to be sure. His ear - in part because he listened to a good deal of music, especially Baroque - was unerring. His diction and his tone had a classical purity. I don't think he ever wrote a sentence that didn't sound good. But all this was incidental.

What made Dr Goh so important a writer was the same thing that made him so important a statesman: a deep ethical sense. His writing - the way he worked at it to arrive at the precise formulation, the way he always used the simple word in favour of the difficult, the way he strove for clarity - all this was a technique in sincerity, in honesty. He wanted to explain; he desperately wanted to communicate; he felt writing was a way of speaking clearly, honestly and sincerely to his fellow men.

As I look back 40 years to that speech in 1969, I am struck by how unlikely it all was. In how many countries would a finance minister, as Dr Goh was then, even attempt to seriously engage unionists on the principles of cooperatives? How many world-class economists, as Dr Goh was also, would go out of their way to eschew technical language as he did? How many people in his position - at least a foot smarter than anybody else in almost every room he found himself in - would take this much care to talk to perfectly ordinary people about complex issues?

'The vicissitudes of fortune which we experienced in our quest for a decent living in a none too hospitable environment bears resemblance to the biblical journeys of the children of Israel in their search for the promised land,' he wrote once. 'And like Moses, we had to explain, exhort, encourage, inform, educate, advise - and to denounce false prophets.'

The prophet is dead. May his soul rest in peace. We have only his prophecies left. They still bear reading.

janadas@sph.com.sg

(With thanks to Sunday Times www.straitstimes.com )
http://www.straitstimes.com/Think/Story/STIStory_530159.html


Prof Tommy Koh on 10 lessons from Dr Goh's Life >>

Sloppy writing, sloppy thinking >>

The passing of a Founding Father

A Sunday morning. A busy morning at the Chinatown market and food centre. Today the state funeral for its former MP of Kreta Ayer, Dr Goh Keng Swee. One of our founding fathers. Without him, our country wouldn't have been what it is today. Thank you, Dr Goh, from the bottom of our hearts.

The State Funeral on Sunday 23 May 2010 - http://blogs.straitstimes.com/2010/5/23/goodbye-dr-goh

The Corporate Observer : Dr Goh Keng Swee: A S'pore giant

The Corporate Observer : Dr Goh Keng Swee: A S'pore giant


Dr Goh Keng Swee: A S'pore giant
by admin , May 14, 2010, 1000hrs

By Loh Chee Kong
cheekong@corporateobserver.com.sg

SINGAPORE (May 14, 2010) - The man behind Singapore's stellar economic growth- masterminding its economic and industrial policies, among his endless list of contributions, as the republic came into its own following independence - died today at the age of 91 after a long battle with illness.




Dr Goh Keng Swee (1918 - 2010)
Born in Malacca, Dr Goh Keng Swee - dubbed as the "economics wizard" and an alumni of the London School of Economics - was Singapore's former Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) who also helmed the finance, defence and education ministries in his 25-year political career.

One of the founding fathers of Singapore and widely seen as its economic architect, Dr Goh retired from politics in 1984 and had shied away from the public eye. From the country's early days, Dr Goh saw the economic imperative of the Singapore society - a central tenet of governance until today.

Dr Goh's trenchant thinking on Singapore's economy continues to influence present-day policymakers.





He once noted: "For us in Singapore, the road to greater wealth is through thrift, enterprise and hard work. The road to stability lies in prudence and foresight in prosperity, and patience and fortitude in adversity. In the swinging age of the new economies, all this sounds old fashioned and Victorian. No doubt it is, but I think it is unrealistic to expect that doctrines worked out for developed economies, when foreign trade forms a relatively small part of the GNP, would apply in their entirety to the exceptional situation that is ours."

He was responsible for setting up many of Singapore's key government agencies, including the Economic Development Board and the Defence Science Organisation, and oversaw the creation of the Singapore Armed Forces and the Jurong Industrial Estate. His legacy also includes policies such as compulsory conscription for male Singaporeans above 18 years old; the Gifted Education Programme; and streaming and religious education in schools.

The 1979 "Goh Report" greatly influenced the development of Singapore's education system - Dr Goh's idea of streaming, in particular, was conceptualized to provide different curriculum and rate of teaching to children of different abilities but the implementation on the ground, especially in the later years, had strayed from the vision.

When Dr Goh was appointed chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Board of Commissioner of Currency in 1980, he took measures to promote Singapore as an international financial centre - making amendments to three major financial regulations: the Banking Act, the MAS Act and the Finance Companies Act. During the 1985 recession, he acted to stop the downward slide of the Singapore dollar.

Another former DPM, Dr Tony Tan, paid tribute to Dr Goh in an issued statement. Dr Tan is the executive director of Government Investment Corporation of Singapore (GIC) - which was set up with Dr Goh's "pivotal" inputs and based on his "resolute belief in the need to protect and grow the hard-earned wealth of Singaporeans continues to influence the GIC community", said Dr Tan.

Dr Tan added: "Today, the idea of the Sovereign Wealth Fund seems natural, but Dr Goh's focus on reserve management was rare among countries in his time. Dr Goh's farsightedness and fortitude laid the foundation for the development of GIC as stewards of Singapore's foreign reserves."

Apart from having a keen mind for numbers, Dr Goh also appreciated the value of music and leisure - he set up the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and the Jurong Bird Park. Inspired by a free-flight aviary he visited in Rio de Janeiro during a World Bank Meeting, Dr Goh wanted to build the bird park in Jurong - he saw the place as more than an industrial zone - as an outlet for Singapore families to escape from the urban life.

Dr Goh's prudence in maximising Singapore's limited resources was reflected in his personal life in which his legendary parsimony is well-documented.

His wife had previously recounted to this writer how Dr Goh would bring soap flakes and wash his own clothes on official visits overseas. Once, when Dr Goh was hospitalised, he even chided his wife for being "wasteful" when she took a piece of tissue paper from the box. Dr Goh, his wife said, would carefully tear a piece of tissue into half - keeping the other half in his pocket for later use.


A BELIEVER

A rabid saver himself, Dr Goh was behind the setting up of POSB Bank - which had waived the minimum sum required by other banks - to help lower income Singaporeans build up their savings.

For all his penchant for hard-nosed economics, Dr Goh could never reconcile the idea of paying high salaries for public officers, including ministers. When it was announced that the British forces would withdraw from the Suez Canal in the late 1960s, Dr Goh knew it would impact the thousands of workers working in the British military bases in Singapore. He called the Accountant General into his room and told him, "We have to cut civil service pay, go and work it out, starting with me."

When he was offered the post of deputy chairman of MAS following his retirement from politics, Dr Goh was offered the same pay that he was drawing as DPM. He asked to be paid half the amount.

A firm believer in meritocracy, one of Dr Goh's greatest fears for Singapore is that it could become an "old boys' club".

He once said: "In advanced societies, it is not so much open nepotism which is to be feared but the insidious 'old boy' type whereby no legalities are committed but in which the pinnacles of power, influence and wealth are the reserve of those born into the right families."

Dr Goh added: "A system may arise in which the dominant minority... arrogate to itself not only the openings to the seats of power, but also the avenues by which individuals can fit themselves out for such positions of power. The dominant minority is thus able to point out those outside of the charmed circle just do not have the necessary qualifications to be admitted to the elite group."

Following his retirement, Dr Goh would find it hard to read the newspapers or watch the news on television - knowing that he no longer had an influence on the nation's affairs.

While some may see it a pity that Dr Goh had voluntarily cut short his political career and retreated from the public eye prematurely - so much so that many younger Singaporeans have not heard of him - his wife reiterated that Dr Goh never sought "money, power or glory or even to be honoured".

In a book she published in 2008 in tribute of her husband, after she had set up the Goh Keng Swee Foundation, Mrs Goh wrote that Dr Goh "made all the contributions... for the nation and for Singaporeans".

She added: "The fact that today's political leaders can go round the world to sell the Singapore success story is in itself satisfaction for him. Dr Goh himself mentioned that God has given him a reward for what he has done for Singapore. His pastor, Reverend Macolm Tan has said that his reward is in heaven."

Rest in peace, Dr Goh, and thank you.

joining the global stage

At this time, between the National Day and the PM's National Day Rally, it is an opportune time to reflect on our beginnings as a global citizen and the struggles that faced our first foreign minister.

Our first Minister for Foreign Affairs was the late Mr S Rajaratnam who

"set out to make friends for Singapore

and to avoid making enemies.

His integrity and polite idsposition won the respect

of many leaders he worked with."

He "accepted Singapore's vulnerabilities as a geopolitical fact.

But he maximised Singapore's assets

as a small but resolute and principled member of the UN."

- Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, Nov 06,

in a foreword in A Tribute as part of the fundraising

for the Endowment Fund for the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies

in NTU