Whenever I watched video clips of Leon Perera or Nicole Seah over the years, I would think to myself: “The Worker’s Party is really climbing the ladder.” The WP’s candidates were becoming increasingly background-diverse, and credentialled.

Fast forward to 2023, and I’m feeling my heart sinking from the announcement of their resignations over revelations about their affair during 2020. It hit much harder than the announcement of resignations from the PAP’s Tan Chuan Jin and Cheng Li Hui (also over an affair).

In a fast-paced world, we're often jumping to the next saucy thing served up by the news cycle. This time, I would rather take a moment to reflect on the lessons to be learned from this episode.

Fuddy-Duddy, Old-Timey Wisdom Still Matters – On the Mentoring between Perera and Seah

“A man and a woman shouldn’t be in a one-to-one mentoring relationship. It could lead to trouble.”

Offer such an ancient opinion at an office lunch, and you’ll tickle your colleagues. “That’s just excuses!”, or “Ah yes, what the man says after things have gone wrong!”, they’d reply, laughing. Tell it to a feminist, and your logic will get questioned. Isn’t cheating about one’s character and not one’s gender? And what’s wrong with the old boy’s club finally opening up to empower women leaders, instead of excluding them? 

Traditional sentiments like this tend to get smothered by modern attitudes. But what if they shouldn’t be? News reports identified the fact that Leon Perera had been selected as Nicole’s mentor in the Worker’s Party. Hindsight is 20/20. Only now is it clearer that this arrangement came with risks.

When a man at the highest point in his career and reputation is mentoring an idealistic and bright-eyed female mentee (or vice versa, gender-wise), cracks in good judgment can start to form.

When that mentee is at her lowest point emotionally, after losing by a slim margin despite giving it her all in the 2020 election, a compassionate mentor would be deeply moved by her pain. You may want to console her, and not notice it as  cracks in your judgment become breaks and one thing leads to another… This last paragraph is hypothetical nonsense, only meant to illustrate that there are endless scenarios that could disable one’s unconscious mental safeguards against a serious mistake.

Traditional, and oftentimes religious, views would argue that it’s not about how moral you are – the wrong situations can entrap anyone and we should not create vulnerabilities for ourselves. In future mentoring arrangements for its precious few stars, the WP may have to heed traditional wisdoms more closely to avoid a repeat of this situation.

WP's Risk Management Needs to Improve

My sympathies lay with the WP during the AHTC saga, and with the Raeesah Khan saga. But I found it harder to muster the same sympathy this time round.

The Party has had past experience with this exact scenario during former member Yaw Shin Leong’s expulsion in 2012 after rumours of an extramarital affair emerged. With the ongoing high-risk issues it is currently managing (AHTC, RK), it really ought to have taken a more proactive approach to identifying and plugging risks, even it came in the form of uncorroborated allegations of an affair from a private driver. 

I don’t take for granted the efforts and sacrifices made by the WP, but I truly believe their leadership may need to spend a little less time going from house to house, and more time sorting out its crisis management approach.

A Lack of Two Types of Critical Talent

Joining an opposition political party can hardly be described as a stable or trouble-free pursuit. This presents a structural problem for the WP. It needs to attract more people with procurement or risk management expertise that could help it better deal with risk situations. But these are the last people who will be rushing forward to volunteer. The Party will need to fill this gap somehow, perhaps through external consultancy.

A Grotesque Reminder that the Two-Party System Matters

Whether it was Tan Chuan Jin, Cheng Li Hui, Nicole Seah, or Leon Perera, all these individuals hurt their families with their actions. The ensuing political spectacle, and the mysterious, clandestine release of a Seah-Perera video hours before the resignation announcement of TCJ and CLH, could only have multiplied this suffering.

If any good came out of these grim circumstances, it would only be a creepy reminder of the value of having competing political parties. The PAP and WP both clearly felt the pressure to hold their members accountable, manage public expectations, deal with real or potential information leaks, and take punitive measures where necessary.
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Many have celebrated the hard-fought political developments in General Election 2020. Rightly so. But as Singaporeans, we are also known for our realism, and we shouldn’t put off counting our losses.
 
Singapore’s only resource is its people. Out of those people, the rarest gems are those (1 in 10,000? 100,000?) with leadership potential and the ruling party’s proclaimed search for these prospective national leaders is on, 24/7. Discovering and nurturing exceptional human resources is Singapore’s precept for ensuring survival.
 
What leadership potential did our Parliament lose, or come close to losing, this GE2020? Two examples:

• Sengkang Group Representation Constituency (GRC): 1 Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, 1 Senior Minister of State for Health and Transport, 1 Senior Parliamentary Secretary; we also almost lost out on one “rising star” opposition candidate with credentials similar to the ‘ideal’ PAP candidate
  
  
• East Coast GRC: 1 prominent opposition candidate with the ability to inspire numerous younger Singaporeans to be more passionate in politics; we also almost lost one prominent candidate for future Prime Minister

 
The People’s Action Party (PAP) does not have a monopoly on potential leadership talent, and the GRC system in its current state will only drain Singapore’s already limited talent pool. Shifting the maximum GRC size down from 6 persons to the original 3 person limit would help address this, because:
 
1. The current approach risks ministerial/leadership assets
 
In GE 2020, 16 out of 17 GRCs had at least 1 minister contesting, whereas there were 11 out of 14 Single Member Constituencies (SMCs) without a minister or minister of state. This approach is said by some to be an election strategy of placing a well-known anchor minister in large constituencies to garner more votes. Also, the large size of each GRC is a contributing factor to having at least one minister in 16 of them.
 
However, from the election results of 2011 and 2020, it is now clearer on hindsight that this approach has dangers. Every time the electorate identifies a potential high-value opposition lawyer, economics professor, or policy researcher who could enrich Parliament, a head of ministry is put at risk.
 
While a potential ministerial loss does not paralyze the government’s function (public servants such as pre-politics Tharman will still execute and plan ministry tasks), it does mean the loss of a data bank and a certain good/bad style of intellectual-cultural-organizational leadership. It is no small matter and risking a minister losing in every GRC no longer makes sense.
 
2. The current system inhibits Singapore’s pursuit of potential talents identified by the 30-40%
 
As long as ministerial assets continue to be pit into all-or-nothing clashes with opposition candidates, efforts to acquire leadership talent will continue to suffer because of the fear of losing anchor ministers.
 
In terms of household names alone: Our country almost chose not to explore the potential of Jamus Lim and Raeesah Khan in Sengkang. We will also not be tapping on the potential of Tan Cheng Bock, Paul Tambyah or Nicole Seah, all credible candidates who have displayed significant ability to motivate Singaporeans and younger generations to become more politically knowledgeable and passionate for Singapore’s future.

How long more can we continue to overlook 30-40% of our potential leadership talent pool? Would you support a company that has a policy where you can hire a prospective new talent, but only if you kick out one of the directors each time?
 
Smaller GRCs would reduce the high frequency of lose-lose situations, and provide more opportunity for both stability (ministerial strongholds) and exploration of new possibilities.
 
3. “We have a Tharman”
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​Minister Tharman’s name is tossed about perhaps too freely these days as shorthand for "I have standards too, you know."
 
One argument for the GRC system is that, although it allows for politically untested new PAP candidates to enter under the wing of a minister, this system also brought us a minister Tharman. In other words: we should think of it as a beautiful mystery box and not just a Pandora’s box.
 
Fair enough. But by this logic, we should have smaller GRCs or none at all. That way, more opposition candidates will no longer be cast aside due to the minister-vs-opposition candidate dilemma, and we will have a bigger mystery box and stand to win even more 5-star Tharman playing cards.
 
4. Max 3-person GRCs would maintain the stated benefits of the system
 
With smaller GRCs, you can still retain the advantages of the system, such as:

• The incumbent’s stated goal of ensuring well-integrated minority representation
• Larger economies of scale compared to having purely SMCs
• Pairing politically and election-savvy candidates with technocrats who, while having great technical abilities, may have trouble getting into Parliament on their own due to lack of charisma

 
Conclusion
 
When Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong made statements about systems like GRCs and NCMP, they gave justifications as to why these systems were not wrong. Back then, these arguments came together with some situational hard truths. But there is a difference between something that is not wrong (something justifiable), and something that is right. As it stands now, the 6 person-max GRC system is a lose-lose system wiping out high potential candidates identified by citizens.
 
Electoral voting is a critical talent selection process for Singapore's future, and ministerial incumbency and over-sized GRCs distort it to Singapore’s detriment. Also, honestly it's rather weird that an incumbent deputy prime minister was deployed to duel a second-time campaigning, 33-year-old full-time working professional and mom.  Is this "HR policy" the right policy for a country whose only resource is people? The answer is “No”.