To­day, I’m just a mes­sen­ger. I give you an al­most ex­act tran­script of an in­ter­view with a man whose name may be un­fa­mil­iar but whose words are price­less, es­pe­cial­ly as we strive to build a coun­try we can all be proud of.

He is Kishore Mah­bubani, a Sin­ga­pore­an civ­il ser­vant of In­di­an de­scent, a ca­reer diplo­mat and an aca­d­e­m­ic. Dur­ing his stint at the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs from 1971 to 2004, he served as Sin­ga­pore’s Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Unit­ed Na­tions and was Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil be­tween Jan­u­ary 2001 and May 2002.

To give you a sneak pre­view, I sug­gest we cre­ate new na­tion­al watch­words—Mer­i­toc­ra­cy, Prag­ma­tism and Hon­esty.

But let the man speak.

Kishore Mah­bubani: “I’ve lived in Sin­ga­pore for al­most 70 years now. When I grew up, Sin­ga­pore was still a poor de­vel­op­ing coun­try, per capi­ta in­come when we be­came in­de­pen­dent was 500 dol­lars, the same as Ghana in Africa. Ei­ther you can say the mis­for­tune or the good for­tune of be­ing born in a very poor fam­i­ly in a poor Sin­ga­pore.

When I was six years old, when I went to school for the first day, we were weighed at school. They want­ed to see how heavy we were. And I was de­clared un­der-nour­ished. So I was put in a spe­cial feed­ing pro­gram. The prin­ci­pal had a big pail of milk and all the chil­dren who were un­der­weight were asked to take one scoop from the pail.

Our house in Sin­ga­pore had no flush toi­let. There was crime and ri­ot, gang­ster fights in my neigh­bour­hood. In a sense, I grew up in what you call the typ­i­cal third-world en­vi­ron­ment. And it’s quite re­mark­able that in my life­time, Sin­ga­pore has gone from be­ing a Third World coun­try to a First World coun­try, and I have lived through this re­mark­able trans­for­ma­tion.

I was Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy for 13 years from 2004 to 2017. And I would give every stu­dent who came to Lee Kuan School the same lec­ture. I’m go­ing to share with you the se­cret of Sin­ga­pore’s suc­cess, free of charge. And I tell the stu­dents that if you im­ple­ment this se­cret for­mu­la, your coun­try will suc­ceed. And I cap­ture the se­cret for­mu­la with the acronym in Eng­lish, MPH.

The M stands for Mer­i­toc­ra­cy. Mer­i­toc­ra­cy means that you se­lect the best peo­ple to run the coun­try. And what brings many coun­tries down, es­pe­cial­ly in the Third World, is that when it comes to se­lect­ing the Fi­nance Min­is­ter or the Eco­nom­ics Min­is­ter, they will give their jobs to their broth­ers, their cousins, their un­cles, their rel­a­tives, and not to the best peo­ple. Sin­ga­pore did the ex­act op­po­site.

In Sin­ga­pore, their jobs were giv­en to the best peo­ple. In the case of the Prime Min­is­ter, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, Mr. Lee Hsien Loong, when he went to study in Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, he was the top stu­dent in the class if not in the uni­ver­si­ty. In fact, his pro­fes­sors were so im­pressed they said you should be­come a math­e­mati­cian be­cause you will be­come a world-class math­e­mati­cian. And he went to study in an­oth­er great uni­ver­si­ty, the Har­vard Kennedy School. And in that uni­ver­si­ty, he was one of the few stu­dents to get an ar­ti­cle pub­lished in a tier one eco­nom­ics jour­nal. Very few stu­dents get ar­ti­cles pub­lished in a tier one eco­nom­ics jour­nal. So he’s in­cred­i­bly bril­liant.

So if the best man for the job is Mr. Lee Kuan Yew’s son, then he should be se­lect­ed, not on the ba­sis of the fact that he’s a rel­a­tive, but from the ba­sis that he’s the best per­son for the job. So mer­i­toc­ra­cy is the first pil­lar of Sin­ga­pore’s se­cret for­mu­la.

The sec­ond pil­lar is P, and P stands for Prag­ma­tism. Prag­ma­tism is an Eng­lish word, it’s an Eng­lish con­cept. But the best de­f­i­n­i­tion of prag­ma­tism was giv­en by Chi­na’s leader, Mr. Deng Xi­aop­ing, when he said it doesn’t mat­ter whether a cat is black, or a cat is white, if the cat catch­es mice, it is a good cat.

In the same way, it doesn’t mat­ter what your ide­ol­o­gy is, if it works, you use it. So Sin­ga­pore was very prag­mat­ic. It would take some poli­cies that are cap­i­tal­ist and some that are so­cial­ist, and even mix them up. You’re not bound by any ide­ol­o­gy.

But the third pil­lar, the H, is the hard­est to achieve be­cause H stands for Hon­esty. And in­deed, what has brought most Third World coun­tries down and what has led to their fail­ures in de­vel­op­ment has been cor­rup­tion. And so, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, af­ter he be­came Prime Min­is­ter, made it a point to pun­ish, not the ju­nior peo­ple, but the very se­nior peo­ple. So when a deputy min­is­ter went on hol­i­day with his friend, a busi­ness­man, when he came back, he was ar­rest­ed.

He said why am I be­ing ar­rest­ed? They said you went on a hol­i­day with a busi­ness­man. He paid all your ex­pens­es. That’s cor­rup­tion. You go to jail. So when a deputy min­is­ter is sent to jail, then every­body says, “Oops, I got to be care­ful. I can al­so go to jail.” So that hon­esty fac­tor is one crit­i­cal rea­son why Sin­ga­pore has been ex­cep­tion­al­ly suc­cess­ful. So it’s a com­bi­na­tion of mer­i­toc­ra­cy, prag­ma­tism and hon­esty. That’s the for­mu­la for Sin­ga­pore’s suc­cess.”

Need I say more? Do we have the moral strength and the for­ti­tude to do what is right to take our beloved coun­try for­ward? I be­lieve we do but we all must play our part, hon­est­ly.

Noel Kalicha­ran

Via email