The Naysayer’s Book Club

26 Singaporeans You Need to Know

Simon Vincent

ISBN: 978-981-47-8585-3
First Edition
Text copyright © 2018 by Simon Vincent, photographs copyright © 2018 by Foo Chuan Wei

Photograph on page 79 from Cherian George. Used with permission.
Artwork on pages 152, 155, 158 by Dan Wong. used with permission.
Author photograph by Eng Chun Pang. Used with permission.
All other photographs by Foo Chuan Wei
Book layout by Chee Jia Yi
Published in Singapore by Epigram Books
www.epigrambooks.sg
All rights reserved

Table of Contents

An Invitation

The ‘Maestro of Political Plays’: Tan Tarn How

The ‘Mother of Civil Society’: Constance Singam

The Contrarian Architect: Tay Kheng Soon

The Social Policy Wonk: Yeoh Lam Keong

The Émigré Academic: Cherian George

The Heritage Seeker: Claire Leow

The Rising Lawyer: Remy Choo Zheng Xi

The Resilient Poet: Teo Soh Lung

The Fighter For The Arts: Thirunalan Sasitharan

The Affable Anarchist: Jennifer Teo

The Cheeky Satirist: Dan Wong

The Liberal’s Nightmare: Chua Beng Huat

The Indie Journalist: Kirsten Han

The Doughty Advocate: Filzah Sumartono

The Pioneer Blogger: Alex Au

The Punk Rock Filmmaker: Martyn See

The Storytelling Activist: June Chua

The Rebel Incubator: William Sw Lim

The Cause Lawyer: M. Ravi

The Subversive Reenactor: Loo Zihan

The Community Worker: Vanessa Ho

The Interfaith Champion: Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib

The Fearless Artist: Seelan Palay

The Inconvenient Poster Boy: Sonny Liew

The Indefatigable Feminist: Margaret Thomas

The ‘Blacklisted’ Historian: Thum Ping Tjin

A Guide to Localisms

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgements

About the Author

“Simon captures the other ways of thinking in Singapore with these rich and colourful profiles, revealing to us a Singapore that could have been, or perhaps a Singapore that might someday be. Naysayer’s is a book about those who swim against the flow, but it isn’t about tiredness; it’s about hope.”

—Daniel Yap, publisher of The Middle Ground

“The 26 essays are inspiring accounts of the subjects: who they are, what they are, what they do, their exemplary efforts to speak up and their brushes with the law and the authorities in a society constrained by a matrix of repressive laws. Edifying and a must-read, especially for civil society activists.”

—Peter Low, human rights lawyer and founder of
Peter Low & Choo LLC

“In Singapore there is a fine line between co-option by the establishment and ostracism by society. These delightful vignettes are about the brave men and women who tread it—often at great personal cost—expanding our collective imagination in ways the elite never can. Instead of calling for more naysayers, Singapore would do well to listen to those it already has.”

—Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh, author of
Floating on a Malayan Breeze

“I was not disappointed in the depth and authenticity of the interviews… The chapters on Sonny Liew, the award-winning comic book maestro, and Thum Ping Tjin, the controversial historian who startles with his honest interpretation of history, will be among those I will turn to first.”

—Clement Mesenas, journalist and author of Dissident Voices
and The Last Great Strike

“An inspiring collection of interviews with respected Singapore civil society activists. Not only do we hear how they came to be, why they do what they do, we take a peak into their bookshelves to understand the ideas that galvanised them. A book lover’s book!”

—Tan Pin Pin, director of In Time to Come and
To Singapore, with Love

“Right book, right time; read and be inspired by the naysayers in our midst as they battle against the odds.”

—Ismail Kassim, political journalist and author of
No Hard Feelings

An Invitation

“We need more naysayers…
We need to create new formulas, which you can’t
until you attack and challenge every sacred cow.”

—Kishore Mahbubani, former dean of the
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy

On 24 February 2017, a panel of academics and former civil servants rallied around the call for more “naysayers” in Singapore. The next day, The Straits Times published its report, “Why Singapore needs more naysayers”, and fittingly enough, naysayers entered the fray.

None of them, at least those airing their views online, seemed to take issue with the validity of the need itself. The general point of contention was the glaring absence of discussion about political controls in Singapore. An alternative headline, picking up from where The Straits Times left off, could be “Why Singapore doesn’t have more naysayers” or “Why Singapore needs to listen more to its naysayers”.

By this time, I had been a third of the way through writing this book and had already heard the accounts of two interviewees paying the price for challenging the status quo. I had also heard from those who were unaffected by their dissenting ways. The terms of naysaying vary according to backgrounds and historical references.

It seemed to me that, however modestly, the stories in this book could answer the call of the panellists and the ensuing demand for honest context. There are some clear markers in the politics of naysaying in Singapore: defamation suits by ruling party politicians, detention without trial and curbs on civil liberties. The countervailing force is the country’s ongoing social and political liberalisation, which, however fraught with contradictions, has benefitted from naysayers and establishmentarians alike. Seeming to bridge the two camps, Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh said at the “naysayers” panel: “When we appoint people to boards, we can also appoint challengers who are subversive and who have alternative points of view.”

Elsewhere on the same day, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was voicing his own support for alternative views: “If all you have are people who say ‘three bags full, sir’, then soon you start to believe them and that is disastrous. You need people who have their own views, whose views you respect, whom you can have a productive disagreement with, and work out ideas which you might not have come up with, or who improve on ideas you had.” It is worth pointing out the context of the comment: he was speaking at Camp Sequoia, an annual technology summit organised by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital India.

In his remarks, the prime minister had used many examples—the banking industry, tax collection, telecommunications, privatisation and information technology—that were in keeping with the innovation theme of the event and Singapore’s reputed economic verve and technocratic governance. Only the topic of the elected presidency, with its latest iteration reserved for minorities, seemed to break the mould.

Even the exhortation for naysayers by the panellists could be seen as somewhat conservative, given that civil servants were often the explicitly-stated targets. Professor David Chan, in reference to the civil servants among the 350 audience members, said: “You talk so much to me but when the minister is present, in front of him, you’re absolutely silent.”

This book is aimed at reflecting the spectrum of naysaying and, through the variegated anecdotes, connecting the political, the social, the cultural, the economic and the personal. The naysayers here include architects, academics, journalists, artists and activists. The faces are young and old. And the voices, radical and temperate.

The 26 Singaporeans in this book were chosen because they have made inroads in their respective fields by subverting convention. They have been bold in speaking out and, thus, have pushed new points of discussion into the public sphere. They are rebels with a cause, publicly-engaged thinkers and alternative dreamers. They are naysayers in the productive sense heralded on 24 February.

Incidentally, Prime Minister Lee had revealed at Camp Sequoia that, during interviews for potential officeholders and members of parliament, he asks them “what they read” to “get some sense of what their interests are”. The interviews in this book, though obviously not for any jobs, deal with reading as well. Indexed throughout the 26 profiles are the naysayers’ favourite books, thinkers and writers.

I sought to interview each person against the backdrop of his or her respective bookcase. Where circumstances did not permit the use of this metaphorical device, the interviewee and I opted for another arrangement. The prevailing motif was to put, front and centre, the interviewee’s life of ideas and imagination. After the interview, I asked him or her to send via email a definitive list of ten favourite books.

Sometimes, the reflections on books segued into personal anecdotes. The lawyer Remy Choo Zheng Xi, for instance, spoke of his special copy of Make It Right for Singapore: Speeches in Parliament, 1997–1999, by the late dissident and politician JB Jeyaretnam. Choo’s mother initialled it herself, alongside an autograph by the author, as a way of supporting his interest in politics and, concurrently, looking out for him.

At other times, these reflections offered a glimpse into professional preoccupations and ways of thinking. The architect Tay Kheng Soon, for example, revealed that the books on his shelf are organised according to the Nine-Square Matrix, a theory of knowledge he created to represent different fields of inquiry.

There was always room, though, for plain whim and fancy—the journalist Kirsten Han’s confession as a book hoarder, the academic Cherian George’s childhood collection of World War II books and the video-game art books Dan Wong traced over as a teenager before becoming an illustrator in his own right.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, not all the naysayers agreed with the blueprint of this book. Some did not find it relevant or meaningful to provide a list of ten of their favourite books. The sociologist Chua Beng Huat said that he had no such books and that an academic should read a book “with an appreciation of its abstraction, not of its substance”. A book of naysayers is perhaps best when a little rough around the edges.

For their catalogue of influences, the naysayers would cite not only books but fellow trailblazers. Some of these were people whom I had hoped to interview but could not, such as the poet Alfian Sa’at, the playwright Haresh Sharma and the sociopolitical commentator Andrew Loh. No doubt, there are other names I have missed. It is hoped, though, that through the accounts given by the naysayers within these pages about others, this book reflects the nation’s cultural richness.

Why feature 26 of them?

I had wanted to interview as many naysayers as I could within a year and a half. I passed 25, and with a relatively diverse and representative slate of interviwees, decided a conventional number—a multiple of five or ten—was not necessary in a book of nonconformists.

It was in the later half of 2017, during the final third of writing this book, that naysaying was imbued with a certain urgency.

The prime minister was embroiled in a widely-publicised spat with his two younger siblings, Lee Hsien Yang and Lee Wei Ling. They alleged that the elder Lee had misused his position in public office to circumvent the wishes of their late father, Lee Kuan Yew. The prime minister was also accused of having political ambitions for his son Li Hongyi. After many Facebook projectiles by his siblings and Lee Hsien Loong’s putting himself up for questioning in parliament, the Lees finally agreed to reparate in private.

Professor Kishore Mahbubani, one of the panellists calling for more naysayers, was caught in his own public fracas. The former diplomat’s article in The Straits Times, “Qatar: Big lessons from a small country”, drew the ire of Ambassador-at-Large Bilahari Kausikan. He chastised Mahbubani for arguments he characterised as prescribing grovelling and subordination in Singapore’s international relations. Minister for Home Affairs and Law K. Shanmugam, agreeing with Bilahari, said the late Mr Lee “never advocated cravenness, or thinking small”.

The Straits Times’ Opinion editor Chua Mui Hoong linked these two splits among establishment figures with the ongoing discourse about the post-LKY era. She said his death in 2015 “gave momentum” to the age of contestation, which could be traced to 2011, when the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) suffered a historic drop of votes (though its vote share of 60.1 per cent would improve to 69.86 per cent by the 2015 election). “With the exit of the ‘referee’ of public discourse, so to speak, other members of the Establishment felt freer to offer alternatives to the Singapore way,” she wrote.

If this is truly the age of contestation, with alternative ideas on demand for Singapore’s staying power, the stakes could very well be high. This book can be read as one forum to thrash out such ideas.

In that spirit, I would like to welcome you to The Naysayer’s Book Club.

for additional content, outtakes and photographs, visit www.naysayers.sg.

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