The Tommy Koh observer: Notes from a dialogue

Reproduced from NUS News Hub

By Salima Nadira

Prof Koh engaging students at a session titled “In Conversation with Tommy Koh” (Photo: Gerald Paul Tan)

If Professor Tommy Koh were a genie in a bottle, calling upon him might not quite grant a person three wishes—but he might oblige with his signature three points. And as the winner of the Program on Negotiation’s 2014 Great Negotiator Award and the Ambassador-at-Large at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, one could reasonably expect his points to be well-balanced and compelling.

At a dialogue session held at NUS’ Tembusu College on 20 January 2014, Prof Koh, the College’s Rector, spoke on his new book, The Tommy Koh Reader: Favourite Essays and Lectures. He responded mostly to questions from two Tembusu students, 2nd-year economics student Rachel Wong Jin Hui and 3rd-year political science student Vinod Ashvin Ravi, whilst College Master Associate Professor Gregory Clancey moderated the session. He also fielded questions from an audience of about 40 people.

Placed in the hot seat, Prof Koh responded to the questions with ease. He was candid and personable, tempering his frankness with humour. At times, he felt compelled to defend a point of view that he did not share, simply for the sake of providing a balanced viewpoint. Yet this never made him seem unclear of his own stance.   

On the topic of freedom of expression in Singapore, he acknowledged the virtually complete freedom offered by the Internet, but noted that Singapore would not want the total freedom enjoyed by some societies in the contemporary West. He said that for one, Singaporeans are “culturally sensitive to the need to respect each other’s faith”, and they also do not indulge in hate speech. In response to another question on the lack of a minimum wage in Singapore, he raised the examples of Denmark and Switzerland, both of which do not have a minimum wage; yet they are egalitarian societies, and their cleaners, gardeners, security guards and bus drivers earn much more than their counterparts in Singapore.

He said that the low wages in Singapore were due to Singapore’s employment policies, rather than the lack of a minimum wage per se. By importing many low-skilled and semi-skilled workers from the region, we have kept the wages low in many sectors of our economy. Though Prof Koh emphasised that he did not agree with the government’s view on the minimum wage, he said that the government recognised that we live in an increasingly unequal society, where people at the bottom third of our social pyramid have a very hard time living in dignity. Unlike the olive that former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew once said was his vision of Singapore’s society, he noted that the society currently looks more like a pear, with a very large number of people in the bottom half.

His own stance on the matter, though, was this: “Every Singaporean worker, no matter what his or her job, has a right to earn a living wage, so as to be able to live in dignity and material sufficiency.” He noted that Singapore had decided not to join the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) group of countries, and did not wish to follow the OECD practice of recognising households which earn below the median income of households as poor. He acknowledged that the local government heavily subsidised education, housing, healthcare and transport, which benefit the majority of Singaporeans. “The government is allergic to the term minimum wage … which is fine, we should respect people’s allergies,” he quipped. “As long as we get the job done,” he added – that is, help low-income workers earn a living wage.

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Assoc Prof Clancey (2nd from right) moderating the dialogue session (Photo: Gerald Paul Tan)

Drawing from his wealth of experience negotiating with various trade partners and government officials, Prof Koh chose one lesson to share: Negotiation is easiest when there is trust between the parties. The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiation with the US took two years, and as the leader of the Singapore team, he had emphasised to his colleagues the need to create goodwill, as well as to understand the American way of thinking, their worldview, and how their government works. Personality was also a large factor, he said, citing two examples dealing with the Malaysian government where one Malaysian counterpart was friendly and the other hostile.

He strongly encouraged young people to stay in Singapore. Responding to the first question posed to him by Ms Wong—regarding how globally-mobile Singaporeans can maintain their rootedness in Singapore—he noted that Singapore’s challenges today are less economical and more political and sociological. For example, he raised the question of whether we can remain a united and harmonious society, given the growing inequality in Singapore. He praised young Singaporeans who travel overseas to study or work, but urged them to always come back to Singapore, assuring them that Singapore does have a bright future, and encouraging them to be optimistic that Singapore will always remain competitive and prosperous, as long as it continually reinvents itself. Even during the book signing session at the end of the event, he was encouraging young people to come back to Singapore. As for the economy, however, he mentioned that part of “the ASEAN dream” was for all 10 countries of Southeast Asia to become one economy, like the European Union, by 31 December 2015 – a dream which he says is very much within reach.

It was fitting that as a negotiator himself, Prof Koh wrapped up the session with a tribute to Nelson Mandela, at the request of Mr Ravi. He recalled the question he posed to Nelson Mandela at the end of his Singapore lecture in 1997, namely why he chose forgiveness after 27 years of imprisonment. President Mandela had humbly replied that he had no choice. His forgiveness was a gesture to the white community that they had a place in post-apartheid South Africa. He cited an incident from the recent movie Invictus, which showed Nelson Mandela supporting the mostly-white rugby team as a politically brilliant move to show the whites they could trust him. His only lament was that Nelson Mandela only served one term as president – too brief a period for someone who was, in Prof Koh’s words, “a miracle”.

Prof Koh is usually found playing the role of negotiator, moderator, or director, but while he is comfortable presiding over large conferences and leading sizeable delegations, he becomes less enthusiastic when the spotlight is turned on him. In fact, he had to be persuaded by his publisher to allow his articles to be published in the anthology that is now on sale. Yet his bashfulness was outshone by his enthusiasm and conviction reflected in the responses he gave at the dialogue session, which is also strongly evident in the essays in his book.

Ambassador Marut Jitpatima visits Tembusu College

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On 3rd February 2014, Professor Tommy Koh — Rector of Tembusu College — invited His Excellency Marut Jitpatima, Royal Thai Ambassador to Singapore, for a dinner with the Student Ambassadors of the college. Ambassador Jitpatima — who has visited the College before and whose previous postings include Canada, Indonesia and Pakistan — brought students up to speed with the latest developments surrounding Thailand’s much-publicised recent elections.

Together with his two First Secretaries, the Ambassador later joined Professor Koh, College Master Associate Professor Gregory Clancey, and the students in an engaging and varied dialogue. Frank and lively, the discussion was peppered not only with serious issues of politics including current challenges facing, and opportunities in and for, the Thai state, but also lighter topics such as recommended Thai eateries in Singapore. Ambassador Jitpatima and his staff also graciously brought along Phad Thai and Thai Green Curry prepared in the Thai Embassy’s kitchens, perfectly complementing the food-for-thought that they provided to Professor Koh, Professor Clancey, and the students over dinner.

Fellow’s Tea with Ms Aileen Ong

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Tembusu College Fellow’s Tea

Ms Aileen Ong

Chairperson of Solutions to End Poverty (STEP)

6.00pm, Tuesday

11th Feb 2014

Master’s Common Lounge,

Level 3, Residential Block

Refreshments will be served.

Only 30 seats available!

Please register at dev-tembusu-nus.pantheonsite.io

There will be an optional workshop for solution generation after the session that might span from 7 to 9 p.m.

Aileen fundraised for charity works for 6 years for various charity organizations but she found that fundraising alone is not enough to truly care for the people. She decided to start by volunteering to feed the malnourinshed children in the Philippines, for the Gawad Kalinga (“Give Care”), a movement in poverty eradication and community development. There, she met Tony Meloto, founder of GK who showed her the face of dire poverty in Philippines in 2007. Through her experience with the poor in the Philippines, she felt that this was her calling. In 14 February 2007, former President S.R.Nathan launched her Mission 4 Nutrition.

Upon realising that the solution to eradicate poverty is relationship building and investing in the poor as partners, she began to share these values and awareness to students through service immersion and Overseas Community Involvement Programmes (OCIPs). Seeing its success, she co-founded GK Hope initiative to share this awareness to Asia. GK eventually pills out of the effort in order to focus its efforts on their home country, Philippines. This led to the birth of Solutions to End Poverty (STEP).

STEP adapts and develops solutions in community development with partners in Asia while at the same time sharing the successful approaches in Philippines to transform slums. The pilot project that is currently underway is the SMILE Village in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for over 300 people in partnership with Pour un Sourire d’Enfant(PSE) which currently educates more than 7000 children.

Fellow’s Tea with Mdm Catherine Chua

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Tembusu College Fellow’s Tea

Mdm Catherine Chua

6.30pm, Thursday

10th Feb 2014

Master’s Common Lounge,

Level 3, Residential Block

Refreshments will be served.

Only 30 seats available!

Please register at dev-tembusu-nus.pantheonsite.io

Mdm Catherine Chua has been in the mental health arena from more than forty years and was the assistant nursing director of institute of Mental Heath (IMH) from 1993-2010. She has won numerous awards including the PS21 Excellence Award- Outstanding Activist 2010 and National Day Commendation Award 2009 and has been a trainer for community clubs and voluntary welfare organizations. With her wealth of experience, she frequently conducts talks on mental health issues for volunteer organization and was invited as a speaker for several conventions. Catherine is currently the volunteer program director of IMH and has spearheaded several successful projects such as the mobile canteen, which aimed at improving the quality of life for the residents. Her enthusiasm and passion for volunteerism has also fueled her desire to spend her own free time volunteering for many other healthcare related causes at other organizations.

Fellow’s Tea with Ms Bertha Henson

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Tembusu College Fellow’s Tea

Bertha Henson

2.30pm, Friday

7th Feb 2014

Master’s Common Lounge,

Level 3, Residential Block

Refreshments will be served.

Only 30 seats available!

Please register at dev-tembusu-nus.pantheonsite.io

Bertha Henson was a journalist with the Singapore Press Holdings stable of newspapers for 26 years until she quit in 2012 to join Tembusu College and to indulge in her favourite hobbies, reading and writing. She has reported on every Singapore election since 1988 and covered major events such as the Marxist conspiracy, the SilkAir crash, the National Kidney Foundation Trials, the Mas Selamat escape as well as the outbreak of Sars in 2003. She led the reporting team on the Sars outbreak, tracking it from the time it was an unknown virus till when it was finally stamped out in Singapore. In the process, she anchored most of the Page 1 stories and produced a number of commentaries on the subject.

Darwin Day

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Flies and Fish from Mother Nature’s Toolkit

Prof. Mark Featherstone

School of Biological Sciences, NTU

Zoological Explorations in Singapore

N.Sivasothi

Department of Biological Sciences, NUS

DARWIN DAY 2014 CELEBRATING THE SCIENCE OF LIFE

Thurs 13 Feb 2014 7.00 to 9.30pm

Darwin and Wallace. How to Tell Fact from Fantasy

Dr. John van Wyhe

Department of Biological Sciences, NUS

From Errant Naturalists to Modern Taxonomists

By Yuchen Ang

Department of Biological Sciences, NUS

Venue: The Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium, University Town 8 College Avenue West Singapore 138608

Tickets are S$10 for student/HSS members and S$15 for the public student of Tembusu College. our co-sponsor enter for free. Refreshments will be served.

RSVP through Facebook or email events@humanist.org.sg

Presented by:

Humanist Society (Singapore)

Free Entry for Tembusu College Students!

Please RSVP early to secure your place for this event, either through Facebook or Email.
For group RSVPs, drop a message to events@humanist.org.sg with your name and group size.

Proudly brought to you by the Humanist Society (Singapore). Members are invited to renew their membership, which expires end 2013.

To learn more about the speakers, read online.

Poster by Fouridine Ang.

Fellow’s Tea with Dr. Gerald Koh

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Tembusu College Fellow’s Tea

Dr. Gerald Koh

4.30pm, Monday

17th Feb 2014

Master’s Common Lounge,

Level 3, Residential Block

Refreshments will be served.

Only 30 seats available!

Please register at dev-tembusu-nus.pantheonsite.io

Dr. Gerald Koh is currently an Associate Professor and Director of Medical Undergraduate Education at Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, and

Joint Associate Professor at Dean’s Office, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, National University Health System. A medical doctor, he obtained his Master in Family Medicine in 2000 and Fellowship in Family Medicine in 2003 . He developed an interest in community geriatrics and geriatrics rehabilitation, and obtained a Graduate Diploma in Geriatric Medicine from NUS in 2002, a Masters in Gerontology and Geriatrics from the European Institute of Western University, Canada in 2012.

His current research interest include stroke and geriatric rehabilitation, and medical education. To date, he has published 55 original research articles and 32 shorter articles in journals, including Journal of American Medical Association, Canadian Medical Association Journal, BMJ Open, Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation and Journal of Intellectual Disability Research. He also has obtained research grants amounting to over S$2 million as Principal Investigator and S$5.3 million as Co-Investigator.

Film Workshop/Seminar By Prof. Marille Hahne

 

Authenticity in Films

How to create authentic scenes for documentary films?

What technic can be used for documentary film shooting?

How to divide the technical tasks of directing, photography, lighting and sound recording among the film crew members?

How to make people comfortable about being filmed?

How to form the raw material into a dramaturgy?

How to add other layers to enhance the meaning of your story?

Film excerpts from student films of the Zurich University of the Arts will be shown to demonstrate cinematographic techniques and approaches.

(2 hours)

Preparation for all participants:

Please think out a documentary film, that you would like to make.

If you never have made or thought of making a documentary film, imagine yourself making one in the future.

Please write down:

Your name on top of the page

the title of your film

only 1 sentence, what this film will show or tell.

only 1 sentence, why you are the person, that should make this film?

Print your answers twice, one for yourself, one for me in preparation of our workshop.

Thank you!

Prof Marille Hahne grew up in Munich, Germany. An independent filmmaker since 1983, she taught filmmaking at the University for Applied Sciences in Dortmund, Germany from 1984 –1993, relocating to Switzerland after accepting a position as Professor of Filmmaking at the Zürich University of the Arts (ZHdK) in Zürich, Switzerland in 1993. http://www.zhdk.ch/?id=962

From 2006 to 2012 Prof Hahne developed and chaired the ZHdK’s Master of Arts in Film degree. She is currently responsible for the Department of Performing Arts and Film International Projects.

Prof Hahne’s teaching and research focus on film theory and documentary film production as well as the effects of modern digital workflows on cinema aesthetics. She is the editor of Digitales Kino – Filmemachen in Highdefinition mit Fallstudie (Digital Cinema – Filmmaking in High Definition with Case Studies), a book that details a research project funded by the Swiss Government (Commission of Technology and Innovation, KTI).

Prof Hahne’s personal research also examines various interfaces between art and science. She has produced numerous documentary videos with the Swiss Artists-in-Labs project (http://artistsinlabs.ch/), which she documented since its inception. Most recently Prof Hahne directed a series of videos for the Museum Kulturama’s exhibit Neuromedia (Zurich, August 2012 – March 2013, currently Winchester, UK). She also serves as a jury member of the Swiss Alexis Thalberg documentary film prize.

 

Master’s Tea with Mr. Malminder Singh

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Tembusu College Master’s Tea

Mr Malminder Singh

3pm, Wednesday

19th Feb 2014

Master’s Common Lounge,

Level 3, Residential Block

Refreshments will be served.

Only 30 seats available!

Please sign up at dev-tembusu-nus.pantheonsite.io

Mr Malminderjit Singh is a Correspondent with the Business Times newspaper where he writes on a wide range of topics including economics, international affairs, public policy, shipping & marine, entrepreneurship and on SMEs. Prior to this, he was an Assistant Director (Trade Division) at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, where he worked on Singapore’s economic and trade relations within ASEAN and with its dialogue partners. He has also worked at the Institute of South Asian Studies where, as a Research Associate, he developed expertise in India’s foreign and economic policies.

Malminderjit dedicates a significant portion of his time to public service. He serves on the Fourth PAP Policy Forum Council as its Chairman, and is currently the President of the Youth Sikh Association (Singapore) and the Secretary of the Sikh Advisory Board. Further, he is actively involved in the wider Indian community and serves on the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA) Youth Club’s Executive Committee as its Vice Chairman and on the Singapore Indian Education Trust’s Youth Committee (Connexus), where he has led a project team on the development of their eMentoring Programme. Malminderjit is also involved as a working group member to two government steering committees – Strengthening National Service and Racial and Religious Harmony.

Malminderjit has contributed a chapter on comparative youth activism in a book published by the Association of Muslim Professionals. He was also the Lead Writer for the Action Community for Entrepreneurship’s (ACE) recommendations on Entrepreneurship to the Economic Strategies Committee in 2009. He has been recognized for his achievements by a fdew organizations and most recently by the BMW Foundation, which invited him to join their prestigious international community of young leaders as a Fellow with the BMW Foundation Asia-Europe Young Leaders.