Why having Senior Ministers is a bad idea

In 1990, when Lee Kuan Yew stepped down from the position of Prime Minister in the interest of orderly renewal, the position of Senior Minister was created for him. There would be no particular job description, but he would be the second ranked person in protocol after the new Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong.

Through Goh's 14 years as Prime Minister, only the most naive believed Goh truly called the shots in all matters. However, after Catherine Lim got a stern rebuke from the government for violating an unseen OB marker [1] in November 1994 with her essay 'The great affective divide', wherein she suggested that despite Goh being nominally in charge, the government was reverting to old-style authoritarianism, this widespread suspicion could no longer be publicly aired.

In 2004 when Goh was due to step down in favour of Lee Hsien Loong [2], the question of what to do with the elder Lee arose all over again. Nobody seriously believed he would actually leave the cabinet, but the problem was that if he didn't, why should the new ex-PM, Goh Chok Tong, retire from the cabinet either?

A solution was devised. You could either call it highly creative or indulgently baroque. The elder Lee had yet another title created for him -- Minister Mentor (3rd in protocol) -- while Goh would become the new Senior Minister (2nd in protocol).

No other country in the world that pretends to be a democracy has anything similar. The closest that comes to mind would be what happened in (undemocratic) China after Deng Xiaoping retired from the Politburo in 1987 but stayed on as an eminence grise even as Jiang Zemin officially took the reins. Then when it was Jiang's turn to retire, he refused to go quietly in favour of Hu Jintao. Jiang too aspired to becoming an eminence grise.

Singapore's official explanation for such manpower conservatism was that it would be too wasteful for "elder statesmen" [3] to go to pasture. By keeping them in the cabinet, the younger ministers might benefit from their experience. Yet, as we shall see, conservatism cuts both ways.


Ambassador at large, or exile?

What has been striking in the year and a half since Lee Hsien Loong took over has been how Goh has been flying hither and thither as some kind of ambassador at large. One month, he's in the Middle East wooing businessmen from Dubai to Jordan, and the next he's in a travelling circus going around India. Does all this travelling amount to some kind of exile? One wonders how many cabinet meetings he gets to attend, and what kind of attention span he brings to it. Inevitably, one wonders if this situation is precisely what the new PM desired. In fact, it would be perfectly natural for any new leader to want his predecessor out of the way.

True, Lee Kuan Yew travels about too, but it appears to be much less. In any case, he has a far better curriculum vitae to show, and people may still think it worthwhile to receive him -- though once again, we should be careful that we aren't duped by Singapore's propaganda. Maybe ministers in other countries see him only out of reluctant politeness, for the elder Lee has an embarrassing habit of talking down to others, telling people (including foreign governments) what they ought to do.

Goh doesn't have the same international reputation. If even during his term as PM, few Singaporeans believed that he was in charge, why should anyone believe that he has any clout today, despite the grand title of 'Senior Minister'?

For instance, would Jiang Zemin be a credible standard-bearer for China when the friction between him and Hu Jintao is well-known?

Hence, are all Senior Minister Goh's visits and attendant ceremonies an imposition on host countries?

I say this in anticipation of a possible rationalisation of Goh's peripatetic role -- that by spreading his presence far and wide, he is helping to raise tiny Singapore's profile higher than we may otherwise have. Helping us "punch above our weight", in other words. Well, yes, but only if he is credible, and that's the concern I raise here.

Furthermore, it may confuse people, for don't we have a Foreign Minister? Who speaks for Singapore?


From passing folly to a foolish institution

Having Senior Ministers -- and by this, I include the 'Minister Mentor' position, since it is another name for a similar post -- may be a passing folly, a by-product of the impossibility of retiring Lee Kuan Yew while he's still alive. Goh has to be kept around to give cover to the elder Lee's continued presence in government.

Yet, the need to provide cover to a most unusual arrangement (unusual with respect to the conventions of parliamentary government) steers the apologists towards improvising a generalised rationalisation for retaining past prime ministers. That is to say, there is naturally a tendency to justify the case by proclaiming an institutional principle, instead of having to explain an exception.

However, by couching it as an institutional principle, it raises the likelihood of such a practice -- keeping former Prime Ministers around as Senior Ministers -- being really institutionalised in Singapore, especially as there is little likelihood of another party winning elections and taking over.

I will argue here that institutionalising such a practice is bad for Singapore.

All organisations, even a government of a state, need a clean broom every once in a while. The habit of keeping the old prime minister within a new government militates against such benefit.

Should a scandal be uncovered that can be dated to the previous administration, it becomes harder for the new administration to come clean about it and, equally important, appear clean in the eyes of the public, so long as key people, including the head of the previous administration, remain within the inner circle of the new one.


Examples from Canada and Malaysia

For example, soon after Paul Martin took over as Prime Minister of Canada in 2003, the 'Sponsorship scandal' broke. About C$100 million of federal funds had been diverted through advertising agencies to the election budget of the Liberal Party in Quebec. The diversion of funds took place during the previous administration of Liberal Party PM Jean Chretien, and not during Martin's administration, which made no attempt at cover up. Moreover, the personal tension between Martin and Chretien was well known although they both belonged to the same party, so Martin should have no reason to want to cover it up. In fact, an independent commission of enquiry found that Martin was not responsible for the scandal. Yet, Canadian voters lost faith in the Liberal Party and threw them out in the January 2006 general election.

Unlike Singapore, Canada's former PM, Jean Chretien, didn't stay on in the cabinet as "Senior Minister" even though the new government of Paul Martin was from the same party as the previous government. Yet, if the new Martin administration had such a hard time convincing Canadians that it had should be blameless, how much more difficult will it be if Singapore is faced with a scandal?

And let's not believe that Singapore is sui generis. Let's not confuse regular boasts of immaculate integrity on the part of PAP ministers, with a more down-to-earth appreciation of human frailty and our own objective history. The National Kidney Foundation scandal of 2005 should pull the wool from our eyes. Even before that, we've had cases of PAP bigwigs, e.g. Teh Cheang Wan and Phey Yew Kok, behaving no better than common rogues.

By institutionalising the Senior Minister set-up, we tie down the new broom and we give fodder to public scepticism that the broom will be wielded at all.

Even short of scandal, a regular change of administration is good for a healthy body politic. Take the example of Malaysia where, after PM Abdullah Badawi took over, a row broke out over the future of the government-owned car manufacturer Proton. Former PM Mohammed Mahathir had been instrumental in setting it up, and it was long viewed as a national champion in Malaysia's industrialisation policy. But Malaysia is too small a market for automobile manufacturing, and without economies of scale, Proton has never proved competitive in export markets. Hence, Abdullah Badawi has inherited a huge money-losing headache.

It appears that the new administration is open to the idea of selling Proton to one of the global car manufacturers, but Mahathir has thundered against such moves.

This essay is not the place to discuss the merits of various options for Proton's future, but the point that's relevant here is that two prime ministers, even from the same party, can sincerely hold different opinions about important national questions. When Mahathir was PM, it was difficult to air a contrary opinion about Proton's future; it was only after Abdullah Badawi took over that the debate was enabled in the public domain. Most observers can see that if the Badawi administration decides on a change of policy, even if opposed by Mahathir, they will have the freedom to carry it out.

If we faced a similar dilemma in Singapore, given our practice of embedding former prime ministers within new administrations, wouldn't it be more difficult to reverse a decision by a previous administration? Would saving face trump doing the right and necessary thing? Would an overriding desire to maintain cabinet unity create an impulse to keep debate behind closed doors, excluding the public?

One might argue that intra-cabinet debates can be robust too, but there is something in that argument that is antithetical to a genuine democracy. In any case, one cannot help but wonder if facts and reasons supporting one opinion or another aren't filtered or overlooked when channelled through the civil service before reaching the cabinet, especially when ministers with a stake in one position or other is in charge of offering up the facts.

An open debate involving civil and corporate participants, via a free media -- if only we have one -- would probably be more comprehensive, and the resulting consensus more acceptable to the public. There would be much less cynicism than if decisions were made behind closed cabinet doors driven by the need to maintain an image of a cohesive government.


The bigger picture

What about the benefit of experience -– the official reason for having Senior Ministers around? Indeed, this should not be easily dismissed, but there are ways to utilise experience that are still consistent with an open society. For example, if a new PM is on good terms with the previous one, informal consultation can still take place. In any case, in a parliamentary democracy, the retired PM often remains as a backbencher for some years after retirement, so he can continue to speak his mind on matters of policy. Alternatively, Singapore may wish to consider creating a senate, with former prime ministers having a right to a seat for, say, 5 – 10 years after retirement.

The problem with these suggestions is that the former prime minister remains a free man. Not being bound by the cabinet's principle of collective responsibility, there is a risk that a former prime minister may speak out of turn, embarrassing the new prime minister. In Malaysia, Mahathir has been doing that to Badawi, and in the 1990s, our own former President Ong Teng Cheong (who had been a deputy prime minister before his elevation to the presidency) did that to Goh Chok Tong.

Thus, we see in the Senior Minister set-up the priority given to preserving face rather than addressing issues openly. More generally, we see the privileging of continuity over change. How can this bias be good for any country that needs to keep itself clean, and adapt nimbly to global changes?

Some might argue that the casino debate of 2005 was an example of open debate, but this is not a good example. Neither the former nor present PM were champions of one position or another, and so the debate did not become hostage to egos.

The People's Action Party's and the elder Lee's insecurities can be seen in the way Singapore tends to create permanent institutions ad hoc. Decisions are driven by the need to entrench the ruling People's Action Party in power, such as creating Group Representation Constituencies (and then enlarging them from 3 members to 6), inventing the sham that is the Elected Presidency, and having Supreme Court judges who serve at the discretion of the Executive (see box at right). These changes give every impression that they are driven by the PAP's compulsive need to remain in the driver's seat.

The precedent-setting arrangements for Senior Ministers appear to be similarly motivated, except that they appear to serve the compulsions of former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew rather than the party as a whole, but as I have explained above, they are not in the long term interest of Singapore.

No one should be indispensable and our national rhetoric should stop deifying ministers, present and former. We should stop seeing this place as a temple of gods [4] with an obligation to provide a niche ('Senior Minister') for every god who has come by. We should see ourselves as a normal country, expecting that sooner or later, we'll have the normal scandals and arguments, and for that eventuality, we must never let short-term instincts usurp the normal checks and balances of a healthy state.

© Yawning Bread