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The rich are different to us…..they have more money

Apr 19

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Yesterday I talked about the importance of democracy and inclusive political institutions to ensure inclusive economic institutions and prevent the adoption of policies that only benefit a narrow elite. These days one cannot pick up a government-owned newspaper or turn on the TV without  being told that PAP’s goal is to build an inclusive society.  However we will find it difficult to build an inclusive society whilst we continue to have non-democratic and non-inclusive political institutions.

The last few weeks we have been treated to tantalizing revelations about how important dynasties and family relationships are in China. In today’s FT there is an article about the downfall of Bo Xilai (Bo’s Downfall Sheds Light on Nepotism, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6be8993e-8962-11e1-bed0-00144feab49a.html#axzz1sUTm09iB). Both Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai are children of revolutionary generals and Bo’s father, Bo Yibo, was one of the “eight immortals” who ruled China behind the scenes in the 1980s and 1990s. Their other siblings all hold important posts in state-owned companies or have control companies that do business with the Chinese government. While Bo Xilai was the General Secretary of Chongqing his wife was a lawyer who set up and benefited from a number of business ventures both inside and outside China. In fact it was the threat that her financial dealings were to be exposed that allegedly led Gu Kailai to kill the British businessman Neil Hayward.

It is ironic that the Chinese Communist Party, which like the Soviet Communist Party, seized power with the tacit consent of the majority by promising to raise the masses out of poverty and eliminate inequality should be captured by a group of elite family dynasties.  Recently Bloomberg reported that the 70 richest delegates to China’s National People’s Congress were worth an aggregate of $89.8 billion, or more than a billion dollars each.

“In other countries children of politicians often get opportunities that others don’t but the problem in China is there is absolutely no transparency and there is also a strong sense of entitlement, that this money is their birthright,”   said one person with close ties to top political families in China.

“The problem for the Party is that exposing the Bo family businesses makes people realize that this is how it works for everyone.” (FT)

The importance in business of having family ties to or friendships with politicians is of course not a phenomenon that is confined to China. In Africa, Uhuru Kenyatta is reported by Forbes to be owner of Kenya’s biggest dairy company and one of Africa’s 40 richest residents. He served as deputy prime minister of Kenya and is the son of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta. In the Mideast, the Bin Laden family made its riches through construction contracts for the Saudi government derived from the close relationship of Mohammed bin Laden and his sons with the Saudi royal family.* The former President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak’s family are reported to have accumulated a fortune of US$80 billion.  The family of the deposed Tunisian strongman are estimated by Al-Jazeera to have taken US$17 billion with them when they left the country while the Gadhafi family wealth is estimated at a seemingly implausible $200 billion by the new regime.

However one should not be surprised at this. After all non-democratic political institutions tend to be extractive and frequently serve just to maintain the power and privileges of an elite, whether a group of families as in China or a hereditary aristocracy as in Europe. A vicious circle develops in which dominance of  political power helps the elite to increase their economic power which in turn reinforces their political power. They have some interest in economic growth as long as it raises their wealth and they have to keep living standards for the masses either rising or not deteriorating enough to pose a threat to their rule. In this North Korea appears to be an exception, as the Kim dynasty is now into its third generation despite having reduced the bulk of the people to starvation and absolute destitution.

Here in Singapore “Inclusivity” will remain just another buzzword without  full democratic institutions to back it up.  As a former colony there was already a history of extractive political institutions.  The struggle to build new democratic ones was not helped by one party walking out and handing a walkover to the other so early in our post-independence history.

Our new buzzword should be transparency. While we have a Code of Conduct for Ministers that requires them to disclose their income, assets and liabilities to the PM upon taking up office – this does not go far enough. I propose that we need to  move to full annual public disclosure including the property and incomes of spouses and dependents. The same rules should be extended to senior civil servants, judges and senior management and directors of GLCs. This would only bring us in line with what public servants are required to do in democratic countries. For instance in the US, the Ethics Act requires annual disclosure of financial information by the president, vice president, members of  Congress, federal judges, presidential appointees, and other officials and employees earning at or above a specified pay-scale or with policymaking responsibilities. There are similar laws in Canada and many European countries while the UK has announced plans to make public ministers’ tax returns.

* http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/to-do-deals-nothing-helps-like-friends-in-high-places/

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Immigration is the Elephant in the Room

Dec 17

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Raging Elephant

Elephant in the Room

Yesterday the ST gave us a centre-page spread by two vice-presidents of the Economics Society discussing the rise in inequality in Singapore. The fact that one of them is the Chief Economist at GIC and the other is Director of Planning at Resorts World Sentosa might be a clue that we are not going to hear much that is radical from them. You might want to question what insight they will be able to give you into why your ricebowl doesn’t look like your neighbour’s rice bowl. After all someone from GIC is effectively a civil servant, while Resorts World Sentosa presumably wouldn’t like attention called to the fact that the euphemistically named ‘Integrated’ Resorts probably contribute in a small way to rising inequality.

The writers state that the government’s attempt to minimise the cost of social welfare by focusing only on those in the direst need has exacerbated inequality and led to a more divisive society. I use the word “focusing” somewhat  ironically as many Singaporeans would say that the aim of government welfare policy is to ensure the eligibility criteria are so tough that everyone is excluded.  In fact this is the crux of the PAP theory of your ricebowl  that I like to examine in these pages. However, while the authors argue that an inclusive society is better from everyone’s viewpoint and that this is best achieved by universal social programmes, they make the mistake of assuming that the government is actually interested in inclusivity and fostering social cohesion. There are many who hold by outmoded theories of Darwinian competition (though strangely this belief vanishes when it comes to politics or areas of the economy that the government dominates). MM Lee’s famous words, about Singaporeans needing a spur in their side from new immigrants if they are not to become lazy and complacent, spring to mind.

This brings me on to the most surprising – or perhaps not so surprising if you consider the government connections – aspect of their article.  They discuss the near stagnation in real median incomes of those in full time employment and absolute stagnation for those in the bottom 20th percentile, even on the government’s own highly selective and possibly biased figures.  The use of the base year of 2001 probably flatters what little growth there has been, as incomes declined from a high in 1998 and reached a low in 2001 after the Asian crisis and the end of the dot-com boom. The government’s figures also do not allow for changes in hours worked, which probably rose over this period. For a fuller discussion, please see my article, The Stagnant Society (http://sonofadud.com/2011/10/13/singapore-the-stagnant-society/) for a longer discussion.

However they fail to mention the elephant in the room, which is immigration policy or the lack thereof. Undoubtedly the government’s determination to allow our wages to be determined by those in the poorest economies in Asia has played a major part in depressing real wages, particularly for the lower-skilled workers. Not only was there very little restriction on foreign labour, and no restriction at all for those earning more than $2,500 a month, but there appears to have been lax enforcement of what rules there were and ample loopholes. This has been demonstrated by a recent case where an employer was jailed for putting phantom Singaporean workers on his payroll to allow him to bring in more foreign Work Permit holders.

In his book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/29/ha-joon-chang-23-things), the Cambridge development economist, Ha-Joon Chang, uses a comparison between the wages of a bus driver in Sweden and one in India. The Swedish bus driver earns around fifty times as much as the Indian bus driver yet it would be hard to say that he was fifty times as productive or skilful. In fact the Indian bus driver probably has the more stressful job or requires more skill, given the state of Indian roads and the density of traffic. The differential between the Swedish bus driver’s wage and the Indian’s is almost wholly attributable to immigration controls. Of course Swedish wages are high to start with because of their much higher productivity in the traded goods sector which is subject to competition. Employers in the non-tradeables sector then have to pay higher wages to compete for scarce labour. Without being able to bring in foreign labour they have little choice.

What we have in Singapore is  a situation where the wages of those who can be replaced by cheap foreign labour have been held back or in many cases cut.  Even those with higher-level skills have undoubtedly been held back by competition from third-world graduates from India, China and the Philippines, even Eastern Europe.  Worryingly there are clear indications that advances in software and machine intelligence are starting to make redundant even highly-paid white-collar jobs in areas such as law and financial services that were hitherto relatively protected from foreign competition. But this government’s open door policy to foreign labour has been the main cause of rising inequality in Singapore.

Whether we have a minimum wage, or a cap on foreign labour (which amounts to the same thing), this is the Elephant in Room whose emissions are causing the inequality. Unfortunately, we risk the Elephant turning into a Raging Bull if the xenophobic ranting in cyberspace is anything to go by. What we need now, and urgently, is some serious and open and reasoned debate on the future of Singapore.

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Dear Santa, I don’t like the cadre and secret cabal I got last year. Next year I’d like some openness, competition and democracy instead.

Dec 12

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Recently the PAP held their first Party convention post election allowing us to scrutinise the cadre system and the iron grip on power that it provides for.  AlexAuwrote about it in his blog (http://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/four-barriers-to-remaking-the-pap/) where he highlighted his opinion that the cadre system is one of four main reasons why the PAP would fail to learn any lessons from their setback in GE 2011. The rest of his reasons would be worthy of discussion in a separate article in their own right.  However as we look back at 2011 I will concern myself with a closer look at the cadre system and how it affects your ricebowl.

It is of course not only the PAP who employs the cadre system. For the benefit of those who may be unfamiliar with the term, a cadre system is one in which the leadership of the Party selects certain members to be cadres. The cadres are then the only members who have voting rights   and they elect the leadership. It is of course a completely closed system in which the leadership ensures its position by only selecting as cadres people who will be loyal to them. The cadre vote the leaders who select the cadre who vote the leaders who select ………………..and so on.

In her 1971 political science thesis, “Singapore’s People’s Action Party: Its History, Organisation and Leadership (Oxford University Press)”, Ms Pang Cheng Lian, who sits on the board of Temasek Cares, describes elections to the CEC by the cadres as a “closed system”, in which “the cardinals appoint the pope and the pope appoints the cardinals”.  Most of us Singaporeans know this system is employed by the men in white.  Sadly, as far as I am aware, every other political party in Singapore employs a variant of the cadre system. This includes the Workers Party, the SDP, the NSP and the SPP.  I have no information about the other new parties, the Justice Party the USD (does anyone remember them? ) and the new parties still to come  in 2012 but I believe it is safe to assume they all employ or will employ the same system.

Just as Alex believes the cadre system may explain why the PAP is incapable of learning new lessons so I believe that adherence to the cadre system may be partly responsible for the agonisingly slow progress of the Opposition parties and the dearth of new ideas or renewal.  It is certainly the culprit behind the endemic Party hopping which discredits all Opposition equally and has nothing to do with renewal of ideas. Party hopping is the same old faces, with the same old ideas but with new titles.   It would take a visionary to develop a party with a radically different structure. Or maybe a democracy veteran with no time left to lose who, looking back on his life’s work, realised that closed organisations can’t give birth to Open Societies. Yes, The Reform Party is the only political party in Singapore which is a democracy since it alone does not have a cadre system to protect the leadership and all members have voting rights.

The cadre system has its origins in the Marxist concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the “vanguard”. This meant that only a small elite group of individuals were fit to lead the Communist Party and the nation. The masses were not ready for democracy and it was better that they be led by those who knew best. The Communist ideal was one of eventual full democracy once the masses had been educated enough. Leninargued (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism) the ideal vanguard party would be one where membership was completely open and its workings transparent, the “entire political arena is as open to the public view as is a theatre stage to the audience” (from What is to be Done?).  He seems to be acknowledging the benefits of competition though cannot speak its name when he goes on to say that a party that supposedly implemented democracy to such an extent that “the general control (in the literal sense of the term) exercised over every act of a party man in the political field brings into existence an automatically operating mechanism which produces what in biology is called the “survival of the fittest”.” This party would be completely open to the public eye as it conducted its business which would mainly consist of educating the proletariat to remove the false consciousness that had been instilled in them.

The cadre system went on to be adopted by both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party and by many other Maoist revolutionary parties throughout the world.  Lenin originally intended it to deal with the problems of controlling and maintaining the secrecy of the Bolshevik party which was seeking to overthrow the Czarist regime in Russia, in the face of infiltration by the Okhrana, the Czar’s secret police.  Ironically the goal of preventing infiltration, this time by Communist agents, is the oft-cited justification given by the PAP leadership as to why the cadre system was introduced. If so it does not justify its retention today when there is no longer a Communist threat. Even if there were the ideal way of combating it would surely be through more democracy not less.

Of course the Communist roots of the PAP are not a secret.  This is why the arbitrary arrest and detention of certain individuals on the grounds that they were Marxists and that they represented a secretive organisation is particularly ironic.

The fact that the PAP continue to maintain a cadre system shows how out-of-step they are with modern democratic parties and how little understanding they have of the benefits of competition and transparency and accountability. While they maintain a closed system which ensures that only people, who hold the leadership’s views, whether out of principle or self-interest, get to vote, it is difficult to see how any renewal can take place. Perhaps it is too much to expect the ordinary people of Singapore to understand the need for multi-million dollar salaries for ministers. They are afflicted with the false consciousness of a belief in democratic values and the equality of individuals. You need elite (the cadres) who are sufficiently intelligent not to fall prey to false consciousness to understand why servant leaders need millions of dollars as remuneration.  Hopefully the review board will be able to explain it to us shortly.

However the other parties inSingaporeclearly feel the same way as the PAP that democracy is a dangerous idea and power should not be entrusted to the ordinary members.  Or they merely aspire to be the PAP and adhere slavishly to their ideas and methods-PAP LITE, if you will.  Whatever the motivation, all of them maintain some sort of cadre system. The argument often given for the necessity of this is that it leads to “stability”. This is just another facet of the argument that democracy leads to gridlock and that the people are too short-sighted or stupid to exercise power responsibly. Even if a so-called extreme faction managed to be elected to the leadership, like the AWARE situation, ultimately democracy ensures competition. If the new leadership fails to reflect the will of its members or is unsuccessful at winning electoral office then it can be replaced.

It is genuinely worrying that so much of the Opposition shares the same mindset as the PAP. This begs the question as to whether their leadership are genuinely interested in change or representation or whether it is merely power that they seek.

To recap on what I said earlier, the only party that does not have a cadre system is the Reform Party.  The RP is thus the only genuinely democratic party. Instead of a closed system, the RP CEC is elected by the Party Conference which is made up of delegates.  Everyone, provided they fulfil basic criterion, gets a vote.  As a result the Party is the purest expression of the will of its members. The Party Conference promotes a free market in ideas as any member can put forward a motion. As it forces anyone running for office to be responsive to the views of the members, it represents the implementation at the Party level of the principles we are fighting for at the national level.  We refer to this as Conference being Sovereign. It is clear that when JBJ set up the RP he wanted to have nothing to do with secretive cabals and backroom deals and start a party that would exemplify the virtues of democracy. He learnt from bitter experience, when he was ousted as SG of the WP, how dangerous an unrepresentative clique is.  In a way a genuinely democratic party was his legacy to the nation and serves as a model of what we need to see at the national level.

Many are scared away from joining the RP because of the lack of a cadre system which they feel makes it inherently unstable.  Certainly its first three years have not been an easy ride.  But if democracy itself is something we seek and value then a truly democratic Party is a necessity.  As the RP is not a good long term bet for ironclad  power, it is less attractive as an option to those who are power hungry or egotists.  Why go to all that trouble to infiltrate a party to make it less radical, less viable as an agent of change, when you may be voted out in 2 years time and the Party may simply revert to its former state?  This is what we saw happen with Aware.  A group of women cleverly saw that getting like minded members in the organisation in sufficient numbers was key to changing its identity.  But ultimately Aware was strong enough and its original ideology and had been in existence long enough to shake off that challenge.

No doubt many initially joined RP in error not clearly realising the ramifications of the democratic nature of the constitution.   What a shock it must have been to them to realise that Conference is Sovereign and yes, they would actually need to get a majority vote from ordinary members to change the constitution and bring in a cadre system.  How much easier it was to simply do a deal for power and leadership elsewhere  in exchange for sabotage.  And how much more effective to do it in collaboration with the State media, ever hungry as they are for dirt.

But here is the surprising thing. RP as an organisation , as Aware did before them, similarly survived with its democratic nature intact and went on to field 11 candidates in GE 2011.  So maybe democracy is not the greatest weakness of a   political party but its greatest strength in the long term.  Certainly many commentators like Alex are now seeing the cadre system as responsible for hampering progress within the PAP and its greatest obstacle going forward.

What next in 2012?  Well the PAP cadres have concluded their convention and business goes on as usual within their closed circles.  There has been a lot of talk of Opposition parties joining forces in a grand coalition as well as of new parties being set up. However the important question for voters should be whether any of the parties are genuinely democratic. I would not wish the RP to merge with another party for example, unless that party were also to adopt a democratic constitution and abandon the cadre system.   My fervent wish for 2012 is that any new party set up will be Democratic and that through openness and with competition fostering progress we will go forwards as a Nation and not backwards. We need to change the old Singapore/PAP influenced Model so that we can have a better future.  As always I am daring to imagine a new rice bowl for an advanced Asian nation.

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Comfort and City Cab. Two more pies with fingers in them.

The nature of our small metropolis, the costs of private vehicle ownership and other factors such as convenience for elderly and physically challenged users, means that Taxis must be viewed as part of our public transport network.  It is therefore not surprising that most of us have been unhappy at the recent fare hikes and increases in surcharges announced by the largest taxi operator, Comfort and CityCab, which is owned by ComfortDelGro Corporation.    The National Taxi Association (NTA)’s call for the other taxi companies to swiftly follow suit has furthermore appeared, to many, to smack of price-fixing.  There have even been calls for the Competition Commission of Singapore to take action for anti-competitive behaviour.

However this is naive given the industry’s structure. Furthermore it plays into the government’s deliberate lack of transparency when it comes to admitting to the degree of ownership and control it exercises over the Singapore economy.  The problem is the dominance and nature of the government linked entities. This is the elephant in the room and would be activists should complain about this rather than cry “price fixing”,  before they pen letters to the Competition Commission.

Firstly, Comfort and CityCab between them have over 60% of the market for taxis. SMRT, a Temasek-controlled entity, has another 10-15% of the market. While ComfortDelgro is publicly listed with no single majority shareholder, the largest shareholder is the Singapore Labour Foundation, which is the investment arm of NTUC.  Its board and management are a splendid example of the Japanese practice of “amakudai” or “descent from heaven”.  Most of the board are ex-civil servants, former government scholars, or present or ex-MPs who have graduated here after careers with Temasek or one of its stable of companies.  To quote Wikipedia, “The practice is increasingly viewed as corrupt and a drag on unfastening the ties between private sector and state which prevent economic and political reforms.”

With that combined level of market share the taxi market can be viewed as highly concentrated. Economists would call this monopolistic competition. SMRT and ComfortDelGro’s control of the taxi market is reinforced by and reinforces their monopoly of all other forms of public transport in Singapore. I have pointed this out numerous times, most recently on 23rd November in “Another Round of Monopoly Anyone?” (http://sonofadud.com/2011/11/23/another-round-of-monopoly-anyone/). While there may be a high elasticity of substitution between different forms of public transport the elasticity between public transport as a whole and other forms of transport is considerably less.  Commuters would face considerable “sunk costs” in switching to private transport and this is not available to any but the highest income groups. The monopolists are able to maximise profits across public transport as a whole and given that demand will be fairly inelastic have a fair ability to raise prices. The only constraint is the Public Transport Council which in the same way as the NTA is filled with government and company-friendly appointees and thus unlikely to be as tough in defence of consumers’ interests as it should be.

In this environment, it would not make any sense for the marginal operators, i.e. Transcab, Premier, SMART and the remaining Yellow Top taxis, to undercut them. If they do so, they would not gain much extra business and risk the dominant operators reducing their prices to drive them out of business. By setting their prices at the same level as the market leader, the industry as a whole maximises revenue and the revenue is shared out according to market share.  In economic terms SMRT and Comfort and CityCab are price-makers and the others are price-takers. Without doing anything to break up the dominance of the two government-linked entities, it becomes irrelevant whether there is any overt price-fixing agreement or other evidence of collusion. The prices of taxi services will still end up at or close to the level a profit-maximising monopolist would set.

The problem therefore is the dominance of the two government linked entities. The monopoly rents are unlikely to accrue to the drivers who have to deal with a monopsonistic market (a limited number of buyers) for their services. Over time the taxi operators are likely to raise their rents and ensure that much of the revenues from higher fares are clawed back from the drivers who constitute an atomistic group without much bargaining power and a fairly elastic supply of new drivers. The industry body which is supposed to represent their interests, the NTA, cannot be said to be independent of the government or its companies since many are MPs or ex-MPs.

While consumers may complain about the fare increases, the fact remains that Singapore taxis are cheaper than in many other cities in the developed world, where often artificial barriers to entry are created. This will be less true after the latest fare hikes. In addition the system of surcharges, which are increased with the latest measures, is badly designed and only succeeds in creating shortages of cabs before and after the surcharge period and long queues of empty taxis during the peak periods.

I have already called for a far greater degree of competition in other areas of public transport, particularly in the provision of bus services. Where more competition is not possible, there should be stronger and more effective regulation, particularly of non-price areas such as frequency of service. With regard to taxis, the decision to phase out independent operators should be reversed provided they meet minimum safety and quality standards. We need to bring back Yellow Taxis and give them freedom to set their own fares and negotiate with their customers. This might eliminate the current demand-supply mismatch at different periods of the day.

Apart from the obvious high rates of return on investment from leasing taxis, perhaps the government was influenced by its desire to see that Singaporeans keep their noses to the grindstone (MM Lee’s “spur in their sides” philosophy or, “You have been given a precious porcelain rice bowl don’t break it!”). The government has always striven to ensure it captures most sources of economic rent.

The underlying monopoly is undoubtedly a more formidable challenge which can only be addressed at the ballot box but it needs to be addressed.  Any call for a CCS investigation of possible “price-fixing” while the underlying monopoly goes unchallenged, is a charade and merely a self promotion exercise for those involved.

What Lessons does the Olympus Saga hold for Singapore and our SWFs?

Nov 3

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Olympus has been much in the news recently. Originally a camera company, these days much of its business comes from medical technology such as endoscopes and microscopes.  It also gained the distinction of being one of the few Japanese companies, including Sony and Nissan to appoint a foreign CEO. Namely, Michael Woodford, a Briton.

On October 14th Olympus sacked Mr. Woodford after he raised questions about what he saw as unjustifiably large payments totaling US$1.3 billion in relation to certain corporate transactions. Olympus blamed the sacking on major differences between Michael C. Woodford and the rest of the management team.

As soon as I read the news I couldn’t help thinking of Charles ‘Chip’ Goodyear. The sentiments expressed in the official statements sounded so similar.  Then again I am always wary of monoliths, whether non-democratic governments or multi-national companies, which wheel out Culture as an excuse for carrying on doing what they do without accountability.

Indeed Olympus issued a statement which in addition to the major differences cited  goes on to say that the company will establish a Japanese style management in which “all our employees will head for the same direction” (sic). Here in Singapore they like the phrase ‘Asian values’ and in fact Temasek Holdings and PAP government statements can sound very similar to the Olympus board when they call for “cohesion” and “constructive” politics.  Simply asking awkward questions and refusing to keep quiet is out of step with Japanese style management values/Asian values.

What were the details of the transactions about which Woodford sought answers? In 2008 Olympus acquired Gyrus Group, a British company, for over US$2 billion. In connection with this transaction it ended up paying US$687 million to a pair of obscure corporate advisory firms headed by two Japanese bankers.  This payment represented nearly one-third of the value of the acquisition. Usually the fees in this type of transaction are around 1% of the value of an acquisition. Once they had got the money, the two bankers behind the advisory firms wound them up. They have since refused to comment.  After the news broke, the FBI have also announced that they are conducting an investigation to see if any US laws were broken.

Olympus also paid US$773 million in 2008 to acquire three small loss-making firms in businesses unrelated to its own. In making the acquisitions it was advised by a company called Global Company which owned stakes in the three companies.  The relationship with Global Company was overseen by Mr. Kikukawa, the company chairman. This is the same Kikukawa who dismissed Woodford. After buying the companies, Olympus within a year wrote off two-thirds of the acquisition cost.

After Mr. Woodford’s sacking and the subsequent revelations about questionable payments, Olympus’s share price collapsed, falling by 50%.  In typical Japanese fashion Mr. Kikukawa was forced to commit the metaphorical seppuku and resign.  In Japan this falling on the sword is usually seen as the end of the matter and business goes on as usual with a new name at the helm.  In fact the company has promised a third-party inquiry but this clashes with statements by the new Chairman who is still insisting that there were no improprieties.

Today there were more revelations. Robert Mundell, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and the only foreign director on Olympus’s board when these transactions took place, made three trips to Japan prior to joining the board which were paid for by Axes Japan, a company owned by the same people who owned the advisory firm, Axes America, that was paid the outsize fee. However it is not known whether Mundell attended any of the meetings which approved the transactions or whether he recused himself.

In Olympus’s case the company has been punished by the markets for what appear to have been shareholder-value destroying transactions. Previously bullish analysts have swiftly revised their ratings and the company will be forced to pay lip service to the values of transparency and accountability by commissioning a third party inquiry. However much management might wish to escape scrutiny of their activities by appealing to strictly Japanese values this is impossible when their company is listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and has or had a significant international shareholding. The scandal has prompted even the Japanese PM to weigh in. This is highly unusual for a Japanese leader but he feels the controversy will harm his country’s image.

To quote his words, “it will be a problem if people take the events at this one Japanese company and generalize from that to say that Japan is a country that does not follow the rules of capitalism.” He is worried about the damage this could do to Japan’s reputation as a place to invest.

As I said above, the Olympus affair would appear to have uncanny parallels with the resignation of Chip Goodyear as CEO-designate of Temasek,  a few months after being appointed. In this case there was no public sacking. Instead the resignation was supposedly by mutual agreement citing “unresolved strategic differences”.   The lack of explanation failed to satisfy Singaporeans. It is notable that when pressed in Parliament to elaborate on the reasons for the resignation Finance Minister Tharman said that it would not be in the public interest to do so.

If Temasek had been a publicly listed company, then the lack of disclosure might have been a strong signal to investors that perhaps corporate governance was not all it should be and that they should head for the exit. After all asymmetric information between corporate “insiders” and “outsiders” is a key reason why there is a share price discount for poor corporate governance.

However Temasek (and GIC) are not publicly listed. Thus Singaporeans are locked in to their “investment”, with no ability to sell and get their money out. They cannot sack the management if it is deemed to have performed poorly. And they can’t even ask for a third Party enquiry.  That is why I have consistently advocated the privatization and listing of Temasek and GIC and the distribution of shares to Singaporeans so that we become actual stake-holders rather than fantasy ones.

Too often the words “Asian values” are used in a self-serving manner designed to prevent questioning and accountability.  The British president of Olympus was sacked for being” un-Japanese”.  But they knew he was not Japanese when they appointed him.   They seemed taken aback that he was demanding answers to questions that the company’s board did not want asked. In truth his sacking had little to do with being Japanese or not. They just did not want the extent of their destruction of shareholder value exposed.

In Singapore unfortunately our government and most of our Parliamentary Opposition seem to have the same mindset.  Sadly our Opposition, with one or two exceptions, has so far been prepared to play the same role as the tame external directors on Olympus’s board and not hold the government to account. What we need in Parliament is more Mr. Woodfords and less Mr. Kikukawas.

Our government is always keen to slavishly import ideas and so-called expertise from Britain and other democratic countries when it suits them.  The state controlled media are quick to report slavish adulation of our government by foreigners that were it critical would be swiftly condemned as interfering in domestic politics. We should not be gulled into thinking that the right to ask questions and demand accountability and transparency are a Western import we should do without.  Just as shareholders have the right to demand accountability from the managers of the companies they own, so we as citizens have the right and indeed the duty to subject government policies to scrutiny and hold ministers accountable. Indeed it is key to our ability to be taken seriously as a First World nation.

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