[Beerinkol]

The Charade Of Meritocracy

By Michael D. Barr

The legitimacy of the Singaporean government is predicated on the idea of a meritocratic technocracy. A tiny number of career civil servants play a leading role in setting policy within their ministries and other government-linked bureaucracies, leading both an elite corps of senior bureaucrats, and a much larger group of ordinary civil servants. Virtually all of the elite members of this hierarchy are �scholars,� which in Singapore parlance means they won competitive, bonded government scholarships�the established route into the country�s elite.

Scholars not only lead the Administrative Service, but also the military�s officer corps, as well as the executive ranks of statutory boards and government-linked companies (GLCs). Movement between these four groups is fluid, with even the military officers routinely doing stints in the civilian civil service. Together with their political masters, most of whom are also scholars, they make up the software for the entity commonly known as �Singapore Inc.��a labyrinth of GLCs, statutory boards and ministries that own or manage around 60% of Singapore�s economy.

The basis of the scholars� mandate to govern is not merely their performance on the job, but also the integrity of the process that selected them. The educational system is designed to cultivate competition, requiring top students to prove themselves every step of the way. Singapore�s schools first stream students into elite classes after Primary 3 and 4. They then compete for entry into special secondary schools and junior colleges, before vying for government and government-linked scholarships to attend the most prestigious universities around the world.

These scholarships typically require several years of government service after graduation, and the scholars are drafted into the Administrative Service, the officer corps of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), or the career track of a statutory board or GLC. The government insists that all Singaporeans have equal opportunities to excel in the system, and that everyone who has made it to the top did so purely by academic talent and hard work. Other factors such as gender, socioeconomic background and race supposedly play no more than a marginal role, if they are acknowledged as factors at all.

On the point of race, the Singapore government has long prided itself on having instituted a system of multiracialism that fosters cultural diversity under an umbrella of national unity. This is explicitly supposed to protect the 23% of the population who belong to minority races (mainly ethnic Malays and Indians) from discrimination by the Chinese majority.

But this system conceals several unacknowledged agendas. In our forthcoming book, Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation-Building Project, Zlatko Skrbi� and I present evidence that the playing field is hardly level. In fact, Singapore�s system of promotion disguises and even facilitates tremendous biases against women, the poor and non-Chinese. Singapore�s administrative and its political elites�especially the younger ones who have come through school in the last 20 or so years�are not the cream of Singapore�s talent as they claim, but are merely a dominant social class, resting on systemic biases to perpetuate regime regeneration based on gender, class and race.

At the peak of the system is the network of prestigious government scholarships. Since independence in 1965, the technique of using government scholarships to recruit cohorts of scholars into the administrative and ruling elite has moved from the periphery of Singaporean society to center stage. Even before independence, a makeshift system of government and Colombo Plan scholarships sent a few outstanding scholars overseas before putting them into government service, including most notably former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong. Yet as late as 1975 this system had contributed only two out of 14 members of Singapore�s cabinet. Even by 1985, only four out of 12 cabinet ministers were former government scholars.

By 1994, however, the situation had changed beyond recognition, with eight out of 14 cabinet ministers being ex-scholars, including Prime Minister Goh. By 2005 there were 12 ex-scholars in a Cabinet of 19. Of these, five had been SAF scholars, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. A perusal of the upper echelons of the ruling elite taken more broadly tells a similar story. In 1994, 12 of the 17 permanent secretaries were scholars, as were 137 of the 210 in the administrative-officer class of the Administrative Service.

[LottiFurmann]

The government scholarship system claims to act as a meritocratic sieve�the just reward for young adults with talent and academic dedication. If there is a racial or other bias in the outcomes, then this can only be the result of the uneven distribution of talent and academic application in the community. As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong put it when he spoke on national television in May 2005, �We are a multiracial society. We must have tolerance, harmony. � And you must have meritocracy � so everybody feels it is fair�.� His father, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, was making the same point when, in 1989, he told Singapore�s Malay community that they �must learn to compete with everyone else� in the education system.

Yet if Singapore�s meritocracy is truly a level playing field, as the Lees assert, then the Chinese must be much smarter and harder working than the minority Indians and Malays. Consider the distribution of the top jobs in various arms of the Singapore government service in the 1990s (based on research conducted by Ross Worthington in the early 2000s):

• Of the top 30 GLCs only two (6.7%) were chaired by non-Chinese in 1991 (and neither of the non-Chinese was a Malay).

� Of the 38 people who were represented on the most GLC boards in 1998, only two (5.3%) were non-Chinese (and neither of the non-Chinese was a Malay).

� Of the 78 �core people� on statutory boards and GLCs in 1998, seven (9%) were non-Chinese (and one of the non-Chinese was a Malay).

A similar outcome is revealed in the pattern of government scholarships awarded after matriculation from school. Of the 200 winners of Singapore�s most prestigious scholarship, the President�s Scholarship, from 1966-2005 only 14 (6.4%) were not Chinese. But this was not a consistent proportion throughout the period. If we take 1980 as the divider, we find that there were 10 non-Chinese President�s Scholars out of 114 from 1966-80, or 8%, but in the period from 1981-2005 this figure had dropped to four out of 106, or 3.8%. Since independence, the President�s Scholarship has been awarded to only one Malay, in 1968. There has been only one non-Chinese President�s Scholar in the 18 years from 1987 to 2005 (a boy called Mikail Kalimuddin) and he is actually half Chinese, studied in Chinese schools (Chinese High School and Hwa Chong Junior College), and took the Higher Chinese course as his mother tongue. If we broaden our focus to encompass broader constructions of ethnicity, we find that since independence, the President�s Scholarship has been won by only two Muslims (1968 and 2005).

If we consider Singapore�s second-ranked scholarship�the Ministry of Defence�s Singapore Armed Forces Overseas Scholarship (SAFOS)�we find a comparable pattern. The Ministry of Defence did not respond to my request for a list of recipients of SAF scholarships, but using newspaper accounts and information provided by the Ministry of Defence Scholarship Centre and Public Service Commission Scholarship Centre Web sites, I was able to identify 140 (56%) of the 250 SAFOS winners up to 2005.

Although only indicative, this table clearly suggests the Chinese dominance in SAFOS stakes: 98% of SAFOS winners in this sample were Chinese, and about 2% were non-Chinese (counting Mikail Kalimuddin in 2005 as non-Chinese). Furthermore I found not a single Malay recipient and only one Muslim winner (Mikail Kalimuddin). A similar picture emerges in the lower status Singapore Armed Forces Merit Scholarship winners: 71 (25.6%) of 277 (as of late 2005) scholars identified, with 69 (97%) Chinese winners to only two non-Chinese�though there was a Malay recipient in 2004, and one reliable scholar maintains that there have been others.

The position of the non-Chinese in the educational stakes has clearly deteriorated since the beginning of the 1980s. According to the logic of meritocracy, that means the Chinese have been getting smarter, at least compared to the non-Chinese.

Yet the selection of scholars does not depend purely on objective results like exam scores. In the internal processes of awarding scholarships after matriculation results are released, there are plenty of opportunities to exercise subtle forms of discrimination. Extracurricular activities (as recorded in one�s school record), �character� and performance in an interview are also considered. This makes the selection process much more subjective than one would expect in a system that claims to be a meritocracy, and it creates ample opportunity for racial and other prejudices to operate with relative freedom.

[Lillie_Steins]

Is there evidence that such biases operate at this level? Unsurprisingly, the answer to this question is �yes.� Take for instance a 2004 promotional supplement in the country�s main newspaper used to recruit applicants for scholarships. The advertorial articles accompanying the paid advertisements featured only one non-Chinese scholar (a Malay on a lowly �local� scholarship) amongst 28 Chinese on prestigious overseas scholarships. Even more disturbing for what they reveal about the prejudices of those offering the scholarships were the paid advertisements placed by government ministries, statutory boards and GLCs. Of the 30 scholars who were both prominent and can be racially identified by their photographs or their names without any doubt as to accuracy, every one of them was Chinese. This leaves not a shadow of a doubt that those people granting government and government-linked scholarships presume that the vast majority of high-level winners will be Chinese.

The absence of Malays from the SAFOS scholarships and their near-absence from the SAF Merit Scholarships deserves special mention because this is an extension of discrimination against the admission of Malays into senior and sensitive positions in the SAF that is officially sanctioned. The discrimination against Malays has been discussed in parliament and the media, and is justified by the assertion that the loyalty of Malays cannot be assumed, both because they are Muslim and because they have a racial and ethnic affinity with the Malays in Malaysia and Indonesia. Current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has historically been a vocal defender of this policy.

This discrimination hits Malay men hard, first because it deprives many of promising careers in the army, and second�and more pertinent for our study of the elite�it all but completely excludes potentially high-flying Malays of a chance of entering the scholar class through the SAF. A Chinese woman has a much better chance of winning an SAF scholarship than a Malay man.

Yet even before the scholarship stage, the education system has stacked the deck in favor of Chinese, starting in preschool. Here is the heart of Singapore�s systemic discrimination against non-Chinese. Since the end of the 1970s, the principles of �meritocracy� and �multiracialism� have been subverted by a form of government-driven Chinese chauvinism that has marginalized the minorities. It was not known to the public at the time, but as early as 1978, then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had begun referring to Singapore as a �Confucian society� in his dealings with foreign dignitaries. This proved to be the beginning of a shift from his record as a defender of a communally neutral form of multiracialism toward a policy of actively promoting a Chinese-dominated Singapore.

The early outward signs of the Sinicization program were the privileging of Chinese education, Chinese language and selectively chosen �Chinese values� in an overt and successful effort to create a Mandarin- and English-speaking elite who would dominate public life. Two of the most important planks of this campaign were decided in 1979: the annual �Speak Mandarin Campaign� and the decision to preserve and foster a collection of elite Chinese-medium schools, known as Special Assistance Plan (SAP) schools.

The SAP schools are explicitly designed to have a Chinese ambience, right down to Chinese gardens, windows shaped like plum blossoms, Chinese orchestra and drama, and exchange programs with mainland China and Taiwan. Over the years the children in SAP schools have been given multiple advantages over those in ordinary schools, including exclusive preschool programs and special consideration for preuniversity scholarships.

For instance, in the early 1980s, when there was a serious shortage of graduate English teachers in schools, the Ministry of Education ensured there were enough allocated to SAP schools �to help improve standards of English among the Chinese-medium students, in the hope that they will be able to make it to university��a target brought closer by the granting of two O-level bonus points exclusively to SAP school students when they applied to enter junior college. By contrast, neither Indians nor Malays received any special help, let alone schools of their own to address their special needs. They were not only left to fend for themselves, but were sometimes subjected to wanton neglect: inadequately trained teachers, substandard facilities and resources and the �knowledge� that they are not as good as the Chinese.

[Beerinkol]

This account of discrimination against non-Chinese might lead the reader to assume that the quarter of Singaporeans who are not Chinese must form a festering and perhaps even revolutionary mass of resentment. Such an assumption would, however, be a long way from the mark. Non-Chinese might be largely excluded from the highest levels of the administrative elite, but just below these rarefied heights there plenty of positions open to intelligent and hardworking non-Chinese�certainly enough to ensure that non-Chinese communities have much to gain by enthusiastically buying into the system, even after the glass ceilings and racial barriers are taken into account. There are many grievances and resentments in these levels of society but the grievances are muted and balanced by an appreciation of the relative comforts and prosperity they enjoy. For most, any tendency to complain is subdued also by knowledge that it could be worse, and the widespread assumption among members of minority communities that it will be if they seriously pursue their grievances. As long as the Singapore system continues to deal such people a satisfactory hand, if not a fair one, it should be able to cope with some quiet rumblings in the ranks.

While this discrimination is not sparking a reaction that threatens the regime in the short term, the resulting injustices are certainly undermining the myth that the regime operates on meritocratic principles. This is worrying in the longer term because this myth, along with the capacity to deliver peace and prosperity, is one of the primary rationales by which Singaporeans reluctantly accept the many unpopular aspects of the regime, such as the lack of freedom and democracy, the intrusion of government into most aspects of private life, the pressure-cooker lifestyle and the high cost of living.

The rhetoric of meritocracy has given Singaporeans the consolation of believing that their ruling elite are the best of the best and can therefore be trusted almost blindly on important matters, even if they are highhanded and lack the common touch. As this illusion gradually falls away�and today it is already heavily undermined�the trust that Singaporeans have for their government is becoming increasingly qualified. It remains to be seen how long the regime can avert the logical consequences of the contradictions between the myth and the reality.

Mr. Barr is a lecturer at the University of Queensland and author of Lee Kuan Yew: The Beliefs Behind the Man (Routledge, 2000) and Cultural Politics and Asian Values: The Tepid War (Routledge, 2002).


http://www.feer.com/articles1/2006/0610/free/p018.html

[softy54534]

One has to wonder why academics from Queensland and South Australia have become experts about Singapore and seem to know more about the country than even some cabinet ministers. Ex-Singaporeans who migrated over 50 years and many who went into academia and the literary space which journalism do not seem to comment or even raise issue about their place of birth.

I recall these guys even knew about the lady from Jurong Workers Centre who influenced 2 young men when they went there to help. She eventually married one and his name was Tan Wah Piow and the other was Vincent Cheng. How many of us knew about the Carmelite Nun who ran Bt Ho Swee centre and earned the wrath of a cabinet minister.

Then we have Janadas Devan despite having his father royally screwed doing his best to prop the regime.

[radikal]

Tharman, Shanmugam, Viv Bala, Iswaran and Yaacob, the 5 clowns in the cabinet need to go for statistics class or even a simple arithmetic class. Then they need to go visit the graves of Ishak and Raja before writing a response to the allegations.

And it took couple of white men and not men in white to tell them they have been made a fool of us.

[PhillipHer]

I don't think they will be responding anytime in a hurry. The book published in 2008 by the same title is available in the NLB and I actually have read it a year or less back from the loans. The story is nothing new, perhaps the juxtapositioning of facts and the timelines gives, as Barr intended, a lasting impression that there is a grand design and unmistakably you know whose hands were at it.

The early streaming, the creation of a scholar class that flows into a mandarinate, from which the power center will derive, although I think that the early streaming from GKS big systems engineers project (involving the budding Ho Ching) was probably a genuine attack at the problem of dropout rates at the time, but which evolved to nicely doevtail into Old Man's plans.

The upshot of this Grand Design has always been to ensure that the govt, in the sinister mind of that Old Man, will always be in the firm hands of the ethnic group(s) that can provide continual vitality and momentum to this place. The collateral damage will be the Malays of course. Always for the greater good, the Old Man would tell you. Looked at from that perspective, the scheme of things seem morally irreprehensible and infact even laudable.

The downside is that to do all this, the Old Man had been bending the rules and politically engineering the system so as to ensure that he has an uninterrupted reign to put it all in place, and to do this, he blocked out competition in the political sphere. Of cos, needless to say, recent events like the GE2011 and the loss of a GRC continue to buck the plan and pose the hard question whether in spite of this grand design, the PAP indeed has monopoly of the talent pool.

What we need to do is to fix this entrenched system so that true meritocracy and talents even from the opposing sides can come through. And we cant do it with the likes of those gentlemen you have mentioned. We first need to fix that parliamentary disadvantage.

Barr also co-authored with Carl Tocki the other book Paths Not Taken which is another good read.

Thank you Television for starting this thread. It provides a good canvas to paint our diverse thoughts.

Tharman, Shanmugam, Viv Bala, Iswaran and Yaacob, the 5 clowns in the cabinet need to go for statistics class or even a simple arithmetic class. Then they need to go visit the graves of Ishak and Raja before writing a response to the allegations.

And it took couple of white men and not men in white to tell them they have been made a fool of us.

[Raj_Copi_Jin]

One has to wonder why academics from Queensland and South Australia have become experts about Singapore and seem to know more about the country than even some cabinet ministers. Ex-Singaporeans who migrated over 50 years and many who went into academia and the literary space which journalism do not seem to comment or even raise issue about their place of birth.

I guess it would take someone on the outside/exterior to know and analyse matters from another perspective.

[Ifroham4]

Hmm...don't think there can ever be true meritocracy... in any society. Or for that matter, a "level playing field". Every year, some are born to become priests, some become politicians,some become prostitutes and the vast majority just pick up a job, slog, grow old and die.

I always wondered why so many mamasans in KTV lounges are pretty women themselves but are heartless enough to bully other women to prostitute themselves.

Its a dog eat dog world we live in, I suppose.

[PhillipHer]

I don't think they will be responding anytime in a hurry. The book published in 2008 by the same title is available in the NLB and I actually have read it a year or less back from the loans. The story is nothing new, perhaps the juxtapositioning of facts and the timelines gives, as Barr intended, a lasting impression that there is a grand design and unmistakably you know whose hands were at it.....

How much of SGP assets is in LKY's hands? Li Kashing seems to know. Does the self esteemed guru here or yourself care to elucidate? This is one issue that is never spoken about here. From what I know, the typical Singaporean would be outraged if they knew. I wonder why the self proclaimed guru with so many insider stories talking about other people in the regime does not speak about. LHL knows very well and it is also giving him issues for sure. I do not think the grandchildren know yet.

[Paul Bunyan]

Great stuff bro. Very impressed with Path not Taken and it was inspired by Prof Chua Beng Huat. Long time critic of the govt.

I don't think they will be responding anytime in a hurry. The book published in 2008 by the same title is available in the NLB and I actually have read it a year or less back from the loans. The story is nothing new, perhaps the juxtapositioning of facts and the timelines gives, as Barr intended, a lasting impression that there is a grand design and unmistakably you know whose hands were at it.


Barr also co-authored with Carl Tocki the other book Paths Not Taken which is another good read.

Thank you Television for starting this thread. It provides a good canvas to paint our diverse thoughts.

[S.T.D.]

Meritocracy and transparency go hand in hand. We all know that transparency is not in the old man's vocab. His son's father-in-law is trying to break open that safe lately before departing this land.

Hmm...don't think there can ever be true meritocracy... in any society. Or for that matter, a "level playing field". Every year, some are born to become priests, some become politicians,some become prostitutes and the vast majority just pick up a job, slog, grow old and die.

I always wondered why so many mamasans in KTV lounges are pretty women themselves but are heartless enough to bully other women to prostitute themselves.

Its a dog eat dog world we live in, I suppose.

[MannoFr]

Tharman, Shanmugam, Viv Bala, Iswaran and Yaacob, the 5 clowns in the cabinet need to go for statistics class or even a simple arithmetic class.