The voices of “the people” may just be wrong

His high-fives may have been awkward, but it would be wrong to suggest that they lost Mr Tan Kin Lian the election.

Disclaimer: While I did not vote for Mr Tan Kin Lian, I respected the way he qualified for and conducted his presidential campaign. As with articles on my blog, these are personal opinions and I do not in any way assert that they are concrete truth. 

The way he ended his Nomination Day speech was nothing short of awkward – he shouted “High five!” as he gave the gesture to every person in the supporters beside him on the rostrum – but to suggest that Mr Tan Kin Lian’s extremely poor showing in the recent Presidential Election was due to the high-fives that he gave to his supporters cannot be further from the truth. But this reason, as well as his “excessive blinking” while he was giving his speeches during the elections, were the main reasons that were given out of approximately a thousand responses on his blog on his defeat.

Throughout the hustings, Mr Tan repeatedly trumpeted the use of “the wisdom of crowds” – a term coined from James Surowiecki’s book of the same name – and even suggested that every idea he had come up with for his campaign had been derived, in one form or another, by the “people”. In an attempt to define who those “people” are, Mr Tan said they were just “ordinary people” on the street.

But the ordinary person is, well, ordinary. The ordinary Singaporean cared little about politics until, perhaps, in April 2011, when the General Elections came knocking. These are people who may not necessarily be equipped with sufficient information and knowledge to provide a proper review of the Mr Tan’s presidential campaign; in my humble opinion, the answers that were provided were certainly were not just shallow, but certainly incorrect.

If anything, it is the entire concept of the “voice of the people” that tripped Mr Tan’s campaign over. In a campaign where his rivals Dr Tony Tan, Dr Tan Cheng Bock and Mr Tan Jee Say had more or less definite positions as conservative, moderate, and liberal respectively, Mr Tan Kin Lian found himself wanting in trying to encompass the people’s moods and preferences. The problem with this idea, even though it sounds entirely noble and perhaps intuitively workable on paper is that the electorate needs to have a basic idea what he is getting into should the candidate get into office. Without a defined position on the political spectrum, this basic idea would not even be available for the electorate to consider; it would have been extremely difficult for any voter to want to choose him.

Mr Tan also said in the Face to Face debate organised by The Online Citizen that the five values that he adopted for the campaign – honesty, fairness, a positive attitude, courage, and public service – were selected from yet another survey. These were the values, he said, that were selected out of a “list” of values. One is left scratching his head by now: what exactly, then, does Mr Tan actually have a stand on?

The interesting point he then made is that he feels that his personal values were not important towards the presidential role, a point that perhaps alienated him from the rest of the population. It may well be fine to the populace that you have a confrontational character, or even a government-leaning character; at least the individual, depending on his leanings, will know who to give his support. But it is a lot more difficult to support a president whose character appears rather ambiguous – this lack of clarity on his character will surely have lost Mr Tan some votes.

Mr Tan, like a heartbroken man after a break-up, was searching for answers after his poor election showing. But the opinions that the people have provided him is only a surface interpretation of what truly went wrong in his campaign; it must surely be, literally, more than meets the eye: not mere high-fives and excessive blinking.

The feedback that Mr Tan received – he said he received almost a thousand responses in eight hours – only serves to demonstrate that the wisdom of the crowd can only be tapped on in a particular manner. An informal, open-ended survey like the one employed by Mr Tan already has two crucial flaws: first, it is open to influence by other comments (“Yes, I agree with John Tan who said…”); second, the sample of respondents were self-selected and prone to bias. The voices, then, that he is trying to aggregate might not merely be misrepresenting what the rest of the population thinks, but it could simply be incorrect.

Crowdsourcing, a concept based on the wisdom of crowds, employs the use of technology to tap on the crowd to make decisions. But successful crowdsourcing ideas have not depended on the crowd to make complicated, open-ended, and qualitative answers to questions; the key is to ask the crowd a simple, yes/no question, or just a quantitative question. “The people”, in short, are not able to handle complexity and ambiguity.

Mr Tan campaigned on the premise that he would a voice of “the people”; but judging from the results of his election, he might well have been better suited listening to a group of experts rather than attempting to make use of a rather flawed method in aggregating the opinions of a rather misinformed lay people.

Why I’m voting for Tan Cheng Bock

Note: This is an opinion. Which means, I don’t claim that the methodology adopted in the choice of my President should in any way be construed as the most accurate. But it’s good enough for me.

I started off the elections with the thought of spoiling my vote. I had initially felt that the role of the President was almost completely ceremonial, and that none of the candidates looked particularly inspiring enough for me to choose them as a figurehead. Eventually, however, I decided to give one of them a chance – Dr Tan Cheng Bock.

Initially I adopted the Principle of Elimination to arrive at my decision, but there are several things that especially strengthen Dr Cheng Bock’s case, at least in my opinion, and distinguish him from the rest of the candidates; these factors make me even more comfortable at my decision to vote for him.

I go through below how I arrived at the decision. The scoring system works as in golf: The higher the score, the less I’ll choose to vote for you.

a) The understanding of, and respect for the Constitution

This is one of the key factors that I believe the President needs to have at least a decent understanding of. What can the President do, or not? It is a point, obviously, that was repeated ad nauseam by Dr Tony Tan: “The Constitution is very clear.” The fact is that the candidates are running for a job that is largely ceremonial except in the five key areas that encompass the access to past reserves, key appointments, and certain veto powers must be understood.

Meaning, you don’t get appointed as a director of the board and then say you want to conduct things like a CEO. Tan Jee Say continues to suggest that the Constitution can be “interpreted” in a different manner from how the rest of the Cabinet can interpret it. But the Constitution is not a subjective document; Janadas Devan highlighted this specifically to Jee Say when he spoke about the “moral power” that the President has in commenting to the public anything that he feels is being done wrong in Parliament. There is only one way of reading the Constitution – and to me I feel that he is either (1) choosing to ignore the Constitution, (2) did not read the Constitution, both of which are errors no Presidential candidate should commit.

Tan Kin Lian, at least, shows that he respects the Constitution. But the worrisome fact is that he has suggested several “changes to the Constitution” that he would like made when he is elected: for instance, he would like the death penalty authorisation to be signed by the Prime Minister, if he is unable to get veto power. These are not issues that the President – in his role – should consider, and is almost as if he is suggesting that he would want legislative power to accompany his Presidential role.

So the score so far – Tony Tan, Tan Cheng Bock: 0; Tan Jee Say, Tan Kin Lian: 1

b) Death penalty and clemency powers

Dr Tan Cheng Bock appears to be for the death penalty, which is disappointing: in fact, this is one of the things that disappoints me the most about him. Apart from Tony Tan, the rest of the candidates seem to be against the death penalty. So this one works against him. His saving grace, though, is the fact that he says he is willing to “examine” what the impact of clemency is.

Score so far: All tied at 1

c) Informing the public on policy

Only Tan Cheng Bock and Tan Jee Say will inform the public on decisions – for Jee Say, he will inform the public on possibly any issue, as long as he has already spoken to Parliament in private beforehand about his opinion. For Tan Cheng Bock, the public will be informed on any profligate behaviour of the government. I am not particularly inclined to see a confrontational President, although I feel that the President should act as a whistleblower in times of wrongdoing by government – hence in this circumstance I think Cheng Bock and Jee Say are right.

Score so far – Tan Cheng Bock, Tan Jee Say: 1; Tony Tan, Tan Kin Lian: 2

d) Homosexuality

Only Dr Tony Tan does not express anything against discrimination of homosexuals, so this is where I feel he loses out.

Score so far – Tan Cheng Bock, Tan Jee Say: 1, Tan Kin Lian: 2, Tony Tan: 3

e) Stand on economic policies and the reserves

This is where Tan Cheng Bock and Tan Jee Say again pull ahead from the rest of the pack. Tony Tan continues to trumpet the fact that he is a steady hand to guide the ship in the upcoming financial crisis – but you have to ask, why as the President? Like what one of the audience mentioned in The Online Citizen’s Face to Face talk, “Are you the second key (to the reserves) or the same key?”. It appears that Tony Tan seems to want to plan policies together with Parliament, which is again what I feel is a conflict of interest.

Both Cheng Bock and Jee Say seem to understand the custodial role well enough not to suggest any interventionist role in planning policies, it seems.

Tan Kin Lian then says he would like to “aggregate” the opinions of the citizens to decide what policies need to be planned. But I am unsure how (and how many of?) the citizens would be consulted. It is much preferable if he has a sound mind of his own on these issues, which he has thus far not reflected to me in what he said about the economy.

Score so far – Tan Cheng Bock, Tan Jee Say: 1; Tan Kin Lian: 3; Tony Tan: 4

So, after the preliminary elimination round, I find myself stuck with Dr Tan Cheng Bock and Tan Jee Say.

Let’s take a good hard look at their CVs now.

Tan Cheng Bock

In terms of his public service record, I’m pretty much convinced. True, Dr Tan may not be trained as a public policy planner, but he seems to have hit it right in where it mattered: free parking on Sundays and public holidays, voting against the Nominated MP scheme despite the Party Whip not being lifted, and enabling CPF to be used to pay for tertiary education.

As a non-executive chairman of Chuan Hup – a publicly listed company worth approximately $200m today in assets – he saw the company through ups and downs, including several financial crises. The company returned to profitability in 2010 after dramatic losses in 2009. He also sold the company’s marine operations for $486m in 2005.

A non-executive chairman has custodial duties, according to Wikipedia:

Non-executive directors are the custodians of the governance process. They are not involved in the day-to-day running of business but monitor the executive activity and contribute to the development of strategy.

Sounds almost as though the Presidential role was written with a non-executive directorial role in mind.

Tan Jee Say

Full disclosure: I am Hainanese and I will never be able to shake off the fact that I would love to see a Hainanese man in the top office on Singapore land. The rally speech (which I read in the papers) spoke about how his mother came to Singapore from Hainan Island as a washerwoman, and yet Jee Say managed to emerge from poverty as a scholar, a top civil servant, and then an investment advisor. I loved that story. It’s the type of inspirational story that I wished he spoke more about.

But once you pull away the starry looking curtains – Jee Say’s CV looks increasingly limited: Note that I will highlight his career as regional managing director of AIB Govett, which is the position that got him the Certificate of Eligibility in the first place.

AIB Govett suffered serious losses in the 1997 financial crisis – so huge and unprecedented, it seems, that when it was finally sold in 2003 for 21 million pounds (in those days, probably less than 5% of the assets it was managing in a 2001 report, since AIB Govett claimed to manage S$1.4 billion worth in assets). Govett’s sale to Gartmore (another investment group) in 2003 meant that it had to close down its Singapore operations. Not scale down, but close down.

You can call it the halo effect, but for me the CV matters. And when the crowning achievement is being the director of an investment group that eventually goes under, I have serious concerns indeed of his management ability.

And so my vote goes to Tan Cheng Bock. I don’t perfectly agree with him or align myself with him, but he looks credible, talks credible, and has a CV to match.