On Leaving the Singapore Democratic Party

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/10155075697340034/
January 27, 2015 at 7:40pm

I have left the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP). I left on Tuesday 27 Jan 2015, after collecting the books I left at the SDP office and formally resigning. I think it makes sense to talk about why I left after committing a lot of time to the party and my various "contributions". Here, I'll round off my three years there with a review of what I did there, why I left and what I see as prospects for the party "going forward".


(All mentions of a character called CSJ refer to Chee Soon Juan, the Secretary General of the SDP.)


(A more well formatted version of this note appears here: http://jeremy-chen.org/blog/201501/l...mocratic-party)


My Time in the SDP


Though some of the stuff I did towards the end of my time at the SDP are more interesting (esp. the strategy brief), allow me to recap some of the things I did there since the beginning:


The usual walkabout stuff
The SDP public housing proposals (http://yoursdp.org/_ld/0/7_Housing_a_Natio.pdf) were mostly my work and I controlled it as best as I could, though I had to accept some of the political polemic and additions/subtractions of content I felt did not make policy sense. In fact, one particular major subtraction dictated by CSJ broke the holistic system. (This article -- http://jeremy-chen.org/article/20141...y-availability -- is representative of what I think to be workable holistically to achieve both affordability and availability in public housing.)
I think I will also claim credit for senior levels of the PAP thinking "cliff effects" (their name for it) important to talk about. I touched on them in Annex B of the SDP public housing proposals (http://yoursdp.org/_ld/0/7_Housing_a_Natio.pdf). Unfortunately, a tool is a double edged sword and "cliff effects" were used sophistically to reject tracking poverty by income thresholds (setting poverty lines) [http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking...ster-20131023].
For the SDP proposals on population and manpower policy (http://yoursdp.org/load/building_a_p...future/1-1-0-8), among other things, I designed the "point system" and developed a relatively modern (with respect to Human Resources/Human Capital Management practice) mechanism to support it. That mechanism would enable the regulation of excess supply and excess demand in the labour market through visibility over the available capabilities of the unemployed/graduating class and the demands of industry, enabling actually effective Labour Market Testing. (See this article -- http://jeremy-chen.org/article/20141...-market-policy -- for more information.)
During the Punggol East By-election, I developed an online system that supported outreach by SDP activists. Unfortunately, it was not widely rolled out due to the SDP pulling out of the election. But here are some of the features I like about the quickly hacked up system. (Nothing fancy, but reasonably useful; Incidentally, I've been to almost every void deck in Punggol East SMC.) Activists would be able to see where each other are (or last were), managers would be able to do "location based message blasts", and a pretty decent survey tool was included

Towards the end of my time there, I prepared a strategy brief that was sent to the planning group after I was "kicked out" of the planning group unilaterally by CSJ (more on that later). (Here it is: http://jeremy-chen.org/sites/default...tegy_2014.pdf; Bad timing: It was prepared before that happened.) I think it makes sensible strategic recommendations (among other things), but I do not expect much from the party (more on that later). If you choose to a look (it's a small download), I'd highlight slides 3, 4, 11, 12, 17 and 23. I particularly liked the stuff in slide 23.


Also, there was a little "position paper" I prepared on CPF Policy, which never saw the light of day. (Here it is -- http://jeremy-chen.org/sites/default...6_jun_2014.pdf -- Note that it was meant for "internal" consumption.) Some party members involved themselves, but CSJ's radio silence led to its abandonment. I asked CSJ to hand it over to someone. I presume it will be discarded. =( Also, there is an outline on labour policy which it not in presentable form (it contains a principled approach to unemployment insurance among other things), and also incomplete stuff on a Town Council Architecture (including organization structure with proposed reporting relationships and cross appointments to prevent silos and such).

Come to think of it, I'm sure that if I made the effort to dig there will be more stuff...


Why I Left


The SDP has many good people. But unfortunately few of them speak up for the party's purported principles. (I know: Can't speak up internally, how to speak truth to power?) This has been an ongoing disappointment to me. Because, seriously: If one can't or won't speak up internally, how can one be expected to speak truth to power? (I view this more as an admonition to action rather than a slur.)


So the thing is, CSJ is stubborn, jealous and egotistical. The first is well established, and the latter two are characteristics that a number of people in the party or who have left will attest are true. It makes working with him a pain, but this is arguably okay since people have their flaws. I will add one more which severely peeves me. He is closed minded, refusing to accept the general principle that good policy proposals are based on overarching public objectives, are as rigorous as possible, and should be shown to be implementable (for instance, with a sketch of a roadmap). Certainly, I believe this is tied to his ego, which makes him a poor leader. (I mean, producing policy proposals that meeting those guidelines will only put the party, and by association him, in a good light. Right?)


Generically speaking, a leader must be personally knowledgeable enough, open-minded enough and energetic enough for an organization to be healthy, and more so for it to thrive. CSJ fails on those counts (except "energy", a criterion which a non-hereditary leader is unlikely to fail on). Additionally, for political parties, it is strongly desirable for the leaders to have integrity. Noting the present tense, that does not mean having lived a spotless life. Rather, it means that one has already dealt with one's "integrity issues" in the past.


To elaborate on those "integrity issues" of CSJ's, see my letter of resignation -- http://jeremy-chen.org/sites/default...nation_sdp.pdf -- pardon the typos.


When I joined the party, I had known about but had set aside the information about CSJ's spotty past, assuming those integrity issues had been worked out. I refer to his taxi fare inflation (which are acts of wilful dishonesty not at all comparable with actions like using the office printer to print examination scripts for one's kids) and big breakfast + "doctor's orders" glucose fuelled hunger strikes (which seem to me to be a dishonest way of running a hunger strike). Note that I view his heckling of then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong as merely ill advised politicking, but not an integrity issue. CSJ's recent actions now connect the past to the present in the sense that they provide strong evidence that CSJ's integrity issues have not yet been worked out.


I had decided to resign a few weeks after the incident mentioned above (around Sep/Oct 2014). However I was too busy to go to the SDP office, get the books I left for people to have a look at. There was life, research, conference presentations to prepare for and various other things. On the books, for those interested, the books I left there were: Legal Consensus by Tey Tsun Hang; The Spirit of Democracy by Larry Diamond; and some textbooks on macroeconomics (so people might get a sense of the prevailing economic common sense for preparation of that so called "economics paper", esp. CSJ).


Note: The fact that CSJ keeps referring to some "upcoming economics paper" should put people on notice that he doesn't know what the hell he is talking about. And furthermore, in so far as snippets of his writing reflect prevailing ideas about the world economy or financial sector in particular, one should suspect "cut and paste" (which is what he likes to allege others do).


Before I even left that the party, communication from me to the party mailing list was swiftly cut off soon after I replied to someone who wrote to the mailing list about "a (party) member" (me) criticising CSJ and asking "What is being done about this?". I said it was me and elaborated on CSJ's behaviour, which, at that point, perhaps only the 20-ish "active" party members would know about. It was an internal mailing list. That was extremely annoying. An act seemingly directed at preventing party members from knowing more about misconduct by a party leader. But no "great firewall of China" the access control list of [email protected] is. If not for that offensive action, it is likely a lot of this would not have been made public.


Finally, the amusing thing is, as I resigned, I had a plus one.


The SDP Going Forward: Some Unsolicited Advice


Here is the unsolicited parting advice promised above.


Stop lying. More precisely, get CSJ to stop the bullshit. On Monday, I came across an article titled Chee confident about candidates as SDP visits Sembawang, Bukit Panjang (http://m.todayonline.com/singapore/c...-bukit-panjang). In that article, he is quoted as saying:




For sure, this is going to be something to watch. We’re going to be able to put up a very good slate of candidates. We’ve got new people coming in, ... People are getting excited about our message and ... they want to be a part of this. We feel very good and very confident at this stage.



My reaction to that article was: Who are the new people coming in? Because in all seriousness, I really don't know. Paul Tambyah will be a new member, but to call him "new" would be a little sketchy. So who? More election hopefuls trying to use political parties as personal launch points? That would be laughable and sad. I am aware that the recent "GE launch" has brought in new "volunteers" (and election hopefuls), but even people who are currently close to the action can't name these "new people" who might be candidates. It would be rather disturbing if people were individually meeting CSJ, and indicating their interest to run rather than joining the party and meeting the larger SDP community. Very disturbing.


More strategically (and I refer to the strategy brief I prepared for them: http://jeremy-chen.org/sites/default...ategy_2014.pdf), the SDP has to abandon all hope of personality politics working. I wrote that the SDP has no (potential) candidates with strong intrinsic appeal to the electorate, ending the slide (slide 3) with a hopeful "(yet?)". I suggested that the party had to build a strong policy framework that would be "the rising tide that lifts all boats", with all SDP candidates being linked to the party's policy alternatives.


To achieve a "strong policy framework", the party would have to "cover" the major concerns of the electorate. In particular, labour policy and retirement adequacy are areas that had to be definitively dealt with. The domain of consumer protection should also be covered as it is an important link between rights and bread & butter concerns. On many occasions, I emphasised to the SDP planning group the need to tell Singaporeans what they gain/lose if SDP policy proposals are implemented, and proposed the "Singaporean lifecycle" motif for presentation, where the policy impact of policy ideas are described at the various points in a person's life. (Structurally, something like that would branch and merge, rather than being a linear sequence from birth to death.)


However regardless of the kind of advice given, the arrogance and uninformed stubbornness of the SDP's leader would be an impediment to progress. The SDP is supposed to stand for rights, democracy and the well-being of Singaporeans. (When I talk about rights, I mean rights and responsibilities, as there cannot be one without the other. There is no principled civil disobedience without taking responsibility for the law one is demonstrating against.) The right thing, I feel, for party members to do is to reflect on the type of party they want. If SDP party members stand up for purported party principles internally, then it would truly be a "historic moment". The party would have demonstrated, that members have the backbone to stand up for what they believe in. (And who better to elect than principled people who are willing to stand up for their principles?) Unfortunately, if things end up "status quo", it would just be sad.


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