One of the prevailing impressions generated by the latest flurry of activity in the ongoing saga of the “Senior Minister and the Pilots” (prop. R. Lee – no relation) has been that of the Senior Minister’s infallibility when forecasting the future and the corollary absolute correctness of any policy formulated, following his deliberations. Now, whilst most of us, on the odd occasion, enjoy the conviction of our own correctness and would like to proceed along the appropriate (to us) lines, we are usually confronted by the checks and balances that life throws in the path of mortals and we find that subsequent events enforce reflection and usually fortuitous modification to our perceptions, proposals and actions.
Not so, however, for the Senior Minister, who solely runs the show in Singapore (despite the sometimes tiresome ritual of having a Prime Minister and a Cabinet) and who, incidentally, was a little disingenuous in his explanation, as reported by R. Lee, that he had interceded in the Pilots’ dispute with SIA as the Government was the major shareholder of the airline (which it is) – his real motive, of course, was to personally head off any form of industrial action by Alpa-S (and he couldn’t trust anyone else to do the job properly) which would have set a precedent and an encouragement for other Singapore “unions” and hence would have struck at the very heart of the monolithic regime he has created and is intent on passing intact to his son in the next couple of months.
The Senior Minister’s view of the future and in particular that of the global air transport industry, must, hence, in the absence of any effective check or balance provided by anyone in Singapore, be viewed on these pages in the context of earlier far reaching and expensive mistakes made by the Senior Minister, not as criticism of, or slight to him, but as a reminder that he is also of mortal flesh and so subject to the errors of perception and judgment that plague the rest of us. For in so doing, we realize that despite his many triumphs and the extraordinary “Singapore Miracle” of which he is the architect, he has been wrong and fallible in a number of key decisions he has made in the past – one of which as a notable example was his supposedly far seeing, eugenically motivated “Stop at Two” policy for population control, now summarily dumped and replaced by a strident and desperate contemporary drive to get Singaporeans breeding to fill the (government created) demographic black hole that looms in the foreseeable future.
The foregoing is meant to suggest that the Senior Minister’s prognosis for the air transport industry, as reported by an ever-obliging R. Lee and published by a slavish Straits Times is not necessarily the future of that industry and that SIA will not necessarily drown in a sea of low cost airlines, either regionally or globally – if so why not just cancel the A380 and other orders and put the capital into the likes of “Tiger” airlines? Again there is a sense of disingenuity apparent when he fails to mention the vast (presumably private) capital required for these LCA undertakings and the corollary enabling political frameworks in the form of open sky agreements (which, he airily informs us, will be sweeping the globe “shortly”) that are required to bring these concepts to fruition, stability and long term survival in a highly competitive commercial environment. Meanwhile, to meet this perceived gargantuan threat, costs at SIA must be slashed and salaries made more “variable” – that is risk traditionally shouldered by shareholders must be removed and placed firmly with the employees! – who said Singaporeans were not innovative?.
As pilots will have recently noticed, The Senior Minister has not been accurately advised in detail, of the facts of the Alpa-S matter in hand. How can we therefore assume that he has been correctly and accurately advised on other, wider, strategic matters and on which he is making decisions and implementing policy, perhaps in error?
Similarly, in respect of cost cutting, can the Senior Minister have been advised that his former CEO of SIA has been responsible for the largest (multi billion dollar) hemorrhage in the airline’s history, with the ill fated and abortive forays into Air New Zealand and Ansett Airlines (which all the Oz pilots could have told him to avoid like the plague) but that his reward for such precipitate and arrogant action was the cap removal (by himself and cronies) of annual directors’ bonus payments and then retirement to a well paid board sinecure in DBS Bank. Needless to say these gigantic (covered up) losses make any perception of “fat” in the employee payroll pail into nigh on invisibility.
To the future, however, and the Senior Minister’s decision on how SIA employees will be treated and paid (for it is he and he alone, who will make any decision). I feel certain that readers will have sniffed the international air, just as most assuredly the Senior Minister has and the scent that I’m getting indicates just the hint of a turn away from the corporatist arrogance and excess of the past decade and a consideration of the merits of NTUC chief, Lim Boon Heng’s words that, “a company ultimately must exist to benefit the community, not its shareholders”. Whilst I wouldn’t suggest that the Senior Minister subscribes to this sentiment, I most certainly would subscribe to the idea that he is very closely watching the lead-up to the November 2004 US Presidential election and will have noted that Democratic candidate Kerry has scored the first of what could be many below water-line hits on the Republican Party, on the very issue of corporate treatment of employees. This item could even surpass the economy and the handling of Iraq as a voting issue and ultimately see a President Kerry in the White House. Subsequent speedy delivery of pre-election promises to redress the balance of power between capital and labor (a concept currently finding surprising bi-partisan support throughout political USA) would be vital to Administration credibility in the “first 100 days”.
Would Singapore feel it wise to be out of step with a both a new Democratic Administration and a trend which if not currently global is similarly entering the collective consciousness of the Economic Union?
Time will show if the Senior Minister judges correctly on this one.