BEYOND SG

Happy New Year

Dear Readers,

May I wish you a Happy New Year! 2009 has been a roller coaster ride for many of us. Let's hope we can all sail thru the stormy waters and have a better year in 2010.

Harold Fock

Lunch with the Webb family

I had the pleasure of hosting Sen Jim Webb of Virgina, his wife and two daughters last Saturday. I brought them to the Changi Chapel Museum down the road from where I live for a short visit before lunch at Changi Point. He has a deep knowledge of WW2. He had written a book about Yamashita, Hirohito and MacArthur, "The Emperor and His General", after reflecting for years on the events that took place. Sen Webb saw action in Vietnam in 1969 and lost many men who served under him. Senator Webb was intense and impressive. He covered the Lebanese War in 1983 and was an embedded journalist with US forces in Afghanistan for a month.

When we discussed China, he told me how the Chinese had refused him a journalist visa in 2004 because of the articles he had written about or against China. He had never been to China before which I thought was not right. I hope this would soon be rectified.

George Yeo

 

 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Youtube Link:

TRANSCIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE BY MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS GEORGE YEO AND PRESIDENT OF WORLD BANK ROBERT ZOELLICK AFTER THE SIGNING OF THE SINGAPORE-WORLD BANK MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING AT THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 18 DECEMBER 2008

 

Minister Yeo: It is a special pleasure for me this afternoon to sign this memorandum of understanding with my old friend Bob Zoellick whom I have known for close to 20 years. Just a few years ago we negotiated the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement which both sides, I believe, are very satisfied with, and which indeed set a template of very high standards for free trade agreements in the world. Singapore and the World Bank have a long history of cooperation going back to 1996. I believe in 1999, the World Bank established an office here in Singapore. Just slightly more than two years ago, we hosted the World Bank-IMF meetings in Singapore. We are absolutely delighted that under Bob Zoellick’s leadership, our bilateral cooperation would be taken to a new level and we would be establishing an urban hub. This is something which meets the needs of the times. Asia is urbanising on a scale and at a speed unseen before in human history, and it is not just cities growing by accretion. It is the only way by which sustainable development can be achieved in the 21st Century. In all aspects, in terms of the salubriousness of human habitats; the efficiency of energy used; protecting the global environment; controlling emissions and so on. Many of you will be aware that in China, they are thinking in terms of megacities. Each may be in populations of tens of millions, connected by high-speed intercity rail. Almost a system like what we see in Japan, but on a continental scale. Then, within the cities, instead of each just growing haphazardly causing traffic jams and bottlenecks, cities are planned for such a scale of human habitation so that they are comfortable, efficient in energy use and producers of goods and knowledge. Over the years, we in Singapore have had to manage an urban environment very dense on a very small land area because we have no choice. And necessity, as always, is the mother of invention, because we have no choice. So therefore we have to plan very intensively. Bob knows that when the British were here, we were a garrison town for the RAF, the Royal Navy and the British Army. Every five to seven kilometres, there are runways, which mean not only constraints on two dimensions, but constraints in three dimensions. When I was head of Air Force plans, at that time the defence ministry was here, and I occupied the wooden shack on this side of the building. Every tall building in Singapore had to be approved by the Air Force to make sure it did not intrude into the approach path of an airport or an air force base. When we embarked on all this, we were not thinking about larger lessons, we were just being practical, having to squeeze a lot onto a small space, feeling our way to the future by practice, by responding to the pressures of necessity. But the last few years, we found to our surprise, that all over the world, there has been a great interest in what Singapore has done. A view held by many people is that what we have done here might be of larger application. Now we know that what we have done here is what we could do for a city-state and that for sure, what we do here cannot be applicable to larger nations, as larger countries. But for municipal management, urban planning design, traffic control, pollution control, greenery, there are some things which we do here which we are happy to share with others. And the Singapore Foreign Ministry has a cooperation programme, which up to last year, has trained some 50,000 officials from over a hundred countries, but there is a limit to what we can do by ourselves. So when this proposal for a partnership with the World Bank was mooted by Bob, we were very happy to latch onto it because it was a way by which we could leverage on the strength and the resources of the World Bank to, as it were, enable us to do what we wanted to do in a more systematic way on a larger scale. And this is really what the MOU which is signed today, is intended to do, and why we in Singapore are so happy to have this new relationship with the World Bank. Thank you Bob for your leadership and may I now hand over the microphone to you.

 

Robert Zoellick: It is always a pleasure for me to be back in Singapore, where I have many friends and many fond memories. But of all those, I cannot think of whom I would have enjoyed the warmth, the friendship of signing this agreement with, more than Minister Yeo. We first met in 1989 when Singapore and the United States were supporting Australia’s efforts to launch APEC and working through some of the sensitive issues for the countries of ASEAN and I then had the chance to visit Singapore in 1990, when it hosted the 2nd APEC meeting and also as I recall, celebrated its 25th anniversary. Since then, I have had the chance to return many times. But through the generosity of the people of Singapore,  in 1993, I returned as an international

visitor and that enabled me to see many parts of Singapore that you do not see when you are here on official business. So I saw a number of housing projects, I went to Bukit Timah, I saw some of the places of history, I saw some of the aspects of Singapore’s development strategy. In the years since, I have always appreciated the opportunity to see the ongoing progress that the leadership, the people of Singapore have achieved. And obviously to work with them on issues at the international level, because Singapore has established something quite significant while it is a small country, it has been able to play a role on the international stage, in ASEAN, APEC, WTO, and many walks of life. And so, when I received the appointment as President of the World Bank, I wanted to approach my friends in Singapore to see how we could develop a closer partnership, and try to draw on some of that experience. As all of you probably know, the leadership of Singapore is very proud of what they have achieved and justifiably so, for the people and as a model. But they also went their own course, they sometimes did not follow the traditional development advice, they did not see it so much as a question of development, they saw it as a sound policy and growth. One of the lessons that we have learnt at the World Bank is that we need to keep our eyes open and our ears open to the diverse experience to see what has worked and to learn some lessons from some of our own mistakes in the past. And so this gave us a wonderful opportunity to try to create a stronger partnership between Singapore and the World Bank on this critical issue of urban life and its role within the larger global and regional structures. This year, the World Development Report produced by the World Bank focussed on the issue of economic geography, a topic that was not important in the past, sometimes slipped through various other theoretical formulations but as this signing ceremony demonstrates, will be increasingly important in the years to come. The work that study draws on points to some of the changes to communication and transportation, but also some of the basic frameworks that are important to any country large or small to create opportunities for people. Minister Yeo just mentioned China, I just returned from four or five days in China, Sichuan and Beijing and many of the issues that we hope we can draw from Singapore’s experience are directly applicable to the challenges of China or India or others in the region, around the world in Africa where you are having cities with larger regional development aspects in the surrounding neighbourhood. So I'm very pleased that this will give us a chance to expand the concept of learning, we are trying at the World Bank to develop a global development network that draws on experiences of developed and developing countries. We are trying to increase the opportunities for self learning, and so whether the issue be it public administration, or whether be it water policies or transportation or green areas and the ecological dimensions, there is a tremendous amount that we can draw from in the Singapore experience. This Memorandum is predictably helpful because we'll not only learn from the past, but we hope we can leverage some of the talent in Singapore to be of help to others around the world. So while this is just an opening chapter, it is one that I hope would lead to a very full and interesting story to follow and I want to thank all of our partners from Singapore who helped us reach this point and my colleagues at the World Bank group who not only laid the foundation for this but will have to carry it out. Thank you.

 

Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen of the media, both his Excellencies Mr Zoellick and Minister George Yeo will both take a few questions but I would ask you to be brief because they both are running late. Thank you.

 

Moderator: Yes, Alex.

 

Question: Alex from Associated Press. Mr Zoellick, I was wondering if you might share with us on how you see the economic situation here in Asia. Do you think the fourth quarter that we are in right now, that we have seen the worst of the impact of the global slowdown here in Asia? And also, what do you think were the biggest economic challenges that this region faces right now?

 

Zoellick: I'm afraid that the first 6 months of 2009 are going to be a problem worldwide, including in Asia and including in Southeast Asia. I mentioned that I was just in China and I think while the leadership expected to see the decline in their growth because of the slowdown in the world economy, even they were struck by the sharpness and the depth of the fall offs and exports. This is the region that has gained enormously from international trade and it will feel some of the dangers from the slowdown and actual decline that we are now forecasting in the international trade for next year. I think in the discussions that I had with the people around the world; no one has a very good prediction for the length and depth of this crisis. I think Prime Minister Rudd of Australia used the phrase that I thought captured the next phase very well which he said we have gone from a financial crisis to an economic crisis and early 2009, we will see an unemployment crisis. So I think that the policy actions that the governments take in monetary policy, in fiscal policy, maintaining open trade system would be the determinant of whether the first half of 2009 continues, or whether there is an upturn later in 2009. There is positive news and that you have actions by countries in a cooperative fashion, recognising that this is a global crisis and it will take global solutions. At the World Bank we are focussed on those that are most vulnerable and so we have announced that we will increase the lending of our International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) for the upper-lower income and the middle income countries to about $100 billion dollars over the next three years. We are trying to expand the more rapid use of the International Development Association (IDA) which is for the 70 poorest countries, that's about $42 billion dollars. And our colleagues that International Finance Corporation (IFC) have come up with innovative facilities to deal with support for trade finance, viable infrastructure projects that have lost their financing and to help recapitalise some of the private banks in poor countries that otherwise could not afford it. And in doing so, we are trying to mobilise resources of others. In a way, just like this Memorandum, we are trying to learn from recent experience, including the experience of '97, '98 and that has suggested to us the criticality of supporting safety net programmes so that the contraction doesn't further weaken those that are most vulnerable but also keeping an eye on fiscal programmes that can lay the basis for future growth. And here, people look at the experience of China in '98 where there was an active infrastructure programme; that was able to move quickly but also set the foundation for future growth. So one of the reasons I want to come to Singapore because I always gain good value from talking to people here to get their perspective. It is obviously a very international city and one that has very good perspective of what is going on in the international economy. But just to give you an example of something that I'm pleased we are able to do that is in direct interest to Singapore, our colleagues in Indonesia have had pretty good fiscal policy but because of the amount of government guaranteed debt from developed countries, the Indonesians were finding it difficult to be able access international markets to finance a rather modest budget deficit of say two percent of GDP. So we have been working with Australia, Japan and the Asian Development Bank to assure financing for a modestly expansionary budget of Indonesia and we look like we are well on our way to be able to put that package together. So these are some of the challenges that we are trying to respond to but the biggest concern that I have at this point is that some of the second order ripple effects from various policy actions could lead to other actions by governments that might pull away from cooperation. And here particularly I'm concerned about the rising danger of protectionism. Minister Yeo and I, in addition to working on the Singapore-US Free Trade Agreement, we are very committed to the WTO process and the Doha round and I think the difficulty that round has run into is particularly unfortunate because international system needs to stay on the offence in trade because protection forces will raise their head.

 

Moderator: Suryana.

 

Question: I'm Suryanarayana from The Hindu from India based in Singapore. This is a question addressed to the World Bank President.  Sir, you have often credited with the idea that China should take up a state code of the international system. And right now, China, Japan and South Korea have come together in the present financial crisis and formed a new partnership and of economic dimensions with potential political dimensions. Do you see this as a purely localised phenomenon or do you think this will act as a prelude to reorganising of the world economic power? And if so, where does India stand and do you think once again India is missing the bus? And if Minister George Yeo wishes to give an ASEAN perspective on this, you are welcome Sir.

 

Zoellick: I think it represents a deepening network of ties that you see at the regional but also I hope; global level. A number of those countries have also been part of swap lines as in Singapore with US Federal Reserves which is an innovation designed to try to stay ahead of some of the risk of trouble in the international currency markets. Those countries are also members of APEC. And I think I wouldn't see this as a negative for India or other countries. And indeed, I think India has itself been very active in deepening its ties throughout the Southeast Asia region. One of the strengths of Singapore as a hub is that it is a point of interconnection with India as well as China. You see that in the programme at the Lee Kuan Yew School where I will be participating a little bit later this afternoon, and you see it in the population of Singapore and so it emphasizes its role as a node in the network. I think each country faces different challenges in this economic crisis. China has the advantage of a particularly strong reserves and budgetary position. India has come an awful long way in the past 17or 18 years in terms of growth but it also has challenges that we at the bank, are trying to help address so we expanding our lending, considerably to India. We are trying to support not only those most vulnerable, in need but continue the effort to build the infrastructure, which will be important for India's growth so I would not see the steps as zero sum or competitive, I would see them as of deepening a network of ties and we, at the World Bank, are also part of that network.

Minister: I associate myself completely with the views just expressed by Bob. In the past, the leaders of the Plus 3, China, Korea and Japan, did not have their own meetings. They met on the sidelines of ASEAN Summits. Usually, they would have their own breakfast and for the first time they decided that they should meet separately before the ASEAN Summit. Unfortunately, the ASEAN Summit was cancelled; the one scheduled to be held now in Chiangmai; but they carried on with their pre-Summit Summit, nonetheless, and that is the meeting we are talking about. It is very important for ASEAN to reconvene the ASEAN Summit, the ASEAN + 3 Summit and the East Asia Summit as early as possible and I am glad that the new Thai Prime Minister Abhisit made this a point of special mention in his inaugural speech. We are not big enough to lift the whole world but if East Asian countries were to work together, keep doors open to trade, stimulate their own domestic economies according to the means they have available to them in a sensible way, then just by us not slowing down too much, it will help the global economy and that is what we should strive to do within China, within India, within ASEAN and then the wider region of ASEAN + 3 and ASEAN + 6. If we can, in the middle of this crisis, show renewed political determination to keep trade lines open, to help each other, to increase swap lines under the Chiangmai Initiative then we would have done our bit to improve the global economy.

 

Moderator: Siew Ying.

 

Question: Siew Ying from Channel News Asia. Two questions. The first one is for Mr Zoellick. Is there a budget or funding set aside for programmes under MOU and are the programmes likely to be targeted in the ASEAN region or do they have a more global reach? In the light of this financial downturn, do you expect financing for some of these projects or lending to increase by how far are they going to reach? And some questions for Minister Yeo. How does Singapore going to play up this role and what are some of the challenges ahead given the tough times?

 

Zoellick: For your first set of questions, we have a few million dollars allocated to start it. There will also be some secondments of people and then based on some joint efforts, we hope to be able to expand it over time. I would see a range of activities more in the dimension of knowledge and sharing experience that I would, as part of a direct learning programme. We, at the World Bank, have very large volumes of that we invest in countries from the private sector side by IFC to the IBRD which is for the countries in the middle to the lowest income and we can adapt those programmes; the knowledge and learning is part of that based on some of this experience. When I tried to explain what the World Bank does, I often point out that in some ways, people were misled because we are call “Bank” and so they think our major role is putting money out the door. In reality, we work most effectively when we combine knowledge, learning and experience and constantly upgrade and improve it. With projects that have value beyond the individual investments, so it might be to help develop micro finance markets, carbon trading markets or local currency bond markets or lessons in terms of additional cash transfer programmes for most vulnerable people. But then, we do have capital to be able to deploy. So this is an element of improving the knowledge and learning and the capacity building experience. Your second part was the location. I think it would be natural that we would probably start some of this applied experience most in an Asian region. I think there are some possibilities in Southeast Asia, maybe some possibilities as well in China but I hope we could extend it beyond. The issues of urban development and question of urban development within a larger national plan is something as I mentioned that was at the heart of our world development report and it applies to all of Africa. Many people are unaware that you have a very large percentage of the population of Africa in the urban areas and so we hope that these lessons and experiences can be applied more broadly. Then I think the third element to answer your first question was about driving their lending programmes. Just to give you some context, the World Bank group has a private sector side of IFC, the IBRD and MIGA, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee. We will be expanding all of these activities to try and fill some of the needs of countries in the developing world because of this crisis. Just to give you one range, last year the IBRD side did about $13.5 billion of lending, we expect this year would be in the mid 30s. As I mentioned, the IDA amount is $42 billion over three years, we hope to do more on the front end, and the IFC – we are always trying to figure how we can try to use our private capital investments. Last year, we had about $11b as I recall, with another $3 billion or $4 billion mobilised from outside sources. We are trying to be innovative and mobilising other resources so for example, this fund that we created to recapitalise banks in poorer countries, IFC has committed $1 billion and Japan has very generously agreed to commit $2 billion to that. So given the nature of the uncertainties in this crisis, what we are trying to do is see ourselves as the catalyst whether the problem be for food, mobility or energy or infrastructure and safety net programmes, and what this project relates to is the critical role that whether today or tomorrow we know that the challenges of having safe liveable healthy cities are going to be with us.

 

Minister: Over the years, the World Bank has built up enormous knowledge about development experiences in different parts of the world and all continents. In fact, no other organisation in the world has as much knowledge about development as the World Bank and it therefore behoves all developing countries to draw from the knowledge and the expertise that is in the organisation. And I am very happy that under Bob's leadership, there is a very deliberate outreach effort to make this knowledge available to countries that need it. In the middle of a crisis like this, all countries are under pressure to spend money. All governments are under pressure to spend money. If that money is not well spent, we will store up more problems for the future.  Every day when we flip through the newspapers we read of a new stimulus package - tens of billions, hundreds of billions, enormous numbers being bandied around. As if just by spending money, we will save ourselves and we will save the world. But all of us know that development is hard work. It is not so simple. It is not just interest rates, money supply and fiscal stimulation. It is infrastructure. It is education. It is organisation. It is governance. It is discipline. It is savings. It is all the things we learn in basic economics. And there might have been a time when we thought that there were short-cuts to making money. Now we have all been brought back to the reality that "Look, there is no substitute for hard work, thrift, planning, foresight and positioning." So precisely at a time like this, the knowledge that is available in the World Bank is invaluable to countries which have now decided to spend money. That money should be wisely spent. Yes, some of it has got to ameliorate the hardships that are bound to increase at a time of economic downturn. I will always remember what a physician once told me that every sickness is a progression. You can treat symptoms but always have an eye towards the long-term health of the patient. Do no harm. If you can, do good. And if you must spend money, spend in such a way that when the crisis is over, our people are more productive and our economies will be in a much stronger state. And one obvious area, I think for all of us, is investing in better urban infrastructure. Both hard infrastructure like trains and roads and power stations, but also soft infrastructure like systems, education, healthcare, pollution control and so on.

 

Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry there is no time. Both Their Excellencies are running very late so I would like to thank all of you for coming. Your Excellencies thank you very much.

Yahoo Video Link:

 

Singapore-World Bank Cooperation

I had the pleasure of signing the MOU of cooperation between Singapore and the World Bank with its President, Robert Zoellick today. Bob is an old friend whom I've known almost twenty years. We negotiated the Singapore-US FTA when he was the US Trade Representative. We also spent what seemed like endless hours together in the trenches of the WTO.

Singapore joined the World Bank and its agencies soon after we became independent in 1965. In 1996, we became a partner to the World Bank in providing training courses to third countries. In 1999, the World Bank opened an office in Singapore. In 2006, we hosted the World Bank/IMF meeting which was a big affair. With this new MOU, Singapore and the World Bank will establish an Urban Hub, concentrating on urban management, education and public administration projects. Over the years Singapore has trained some 50,000 officials from over 100 countries in different fields. Leveraging on the resources and network of the World Bank, we can make a greater contribution to other developing countries. This helps us win friends. We must never forget that we ourselves benefited immensely from the generosity of other countries especially in the earlier years of our development.

George Yeo

Welcoming Mr Zoellick

   

Exchanging MOU

Press conference

Democracy Forum in Bali

SPEECH BY GEORGE YEO, MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

AT THE BALI DEMOCRACY FORUM ON 10 DEC 2008 IN BALI

Democracy as a Means towards Good Governance

1 We need good governance at all levels.  To overcome the current global financial crisis which is threatening to become a global economic crisis, we need good global governance.  The institutions established at Bretton Woods after the end of the Second World War are not well suited to the realities of a 21st century multi-polar reality.   At the national level, many governments in the world are not working properly.  Large numbers of their citizens are forced by economic hardship to migrate to other countries in search of a better livelihood.  In countless villages around the world, far away from the influence of central authorities, there is oppression and injustice.

2 In a sense, the struggle for good governance is the story of mankind.  Unlike animals like apes and chimpanzees, our social structures are only partly hard-wired in our DNA.  We are a species that can organise ourselves in almost limitless ways depending on our history and the challenges we face.  We do this through culture and institutions.  The human beings living today are not much different genetically from the human beings living, let us say, two thousand years ago.  But our social organisations have become much more complex.  In two thousand years time, provided we have not destroyed ourselves, we would have developed very different social systems to colonize space.

3 Against the sweep of history, democracy represented a major advance in human organisation.  It has never been the only way to organise human society.  In fact, even in Greece where it first flowered, it was a fragile innovation which did not last.  Conditions only became ripe many centuries later in Western Europe for democracy to strike deep root and spread.  In some ways, we can see the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War as contests between the democratic idea and autocracy of one kind or another.  It was principally a struggle within Western society but its effects quickly influenced the rest of the world leading to the end of empires and the establishment of new nation-states.

4 Democracy is therefore a broad current in human history.  It takes different forms, often in competition with one another.  It is a means to achieve better governance, never an end in itself.  What is important is to put human beings living in communities at the heart of everything we try to do.  The word 'demos' referring to people has as its specific context people living in a community.  We associate counting votes with democracy but there are so many ways to structure a voting system which can lead to very different outcomes.  The key is good governance.  Democracy should always be structured to facilitate good governance, not make it harder.  Here, I am making a case for a pragmatic view of democracy instead of an ideological view.

Democracy with Singapore Characteristics

5 Singapore's democracy is a work in progress.  We inherited laws and institutions from the British which we have adapted to our own circumstances.  Being a small city-state with no natural resources except  people and a good geographical location, we have to be pragmatic.  We can only make a decent living if we provide a service to others and if the neighbourhood where we live is in peace.  Everything we do is subordinated to the twin challenges of economic survival and security.   We are not dealing with abstractions.  Broadly speaking, Singapore democracy serves three objectives.

6 First, the rule of law.  Good governance requires the rule of law.  Without proper laws defining the limits of freedom, there can be no freedom.  Without good laws protecting property rights, investments will not be made and long term development will be affected.  Having good laws on the statute books is not enough. Laws must be implemented and enforced fairly and consistently in a transparent way or they risk become dead letters or, worse, instruments of oppression. There must therefore be some separation of powers and an independent judiciary.  Corruption is always a problem that has to be combated.  In this regard, it is crucial for public officials who are responsible for the implementation and enforcement of laws and regulations to be adequately paid.  They should be properly rewarded for serving the public and not seek to benefit improperly from members of the public abusing the authority they wield.

7 Second, a balance must be struck between the short term and the long term, and between the interest of the individual and the interest of the community as a whole.  Electoral politics put pressure on governments to respond quickly to the needs of voters.  Nobel laureate Dr Amartya Sen pointed out that famines in India have become a phenomenon of the colonial past because Indian politicians know they would be thrown out if they did not respond quickly to food shortages.  All this is good but the problem with electoral politics is that the time horizon of political leaders shortens and pandering to the demands of special interest groups may be unavoidable.  Larger and longer term considerations are often set aside as politicians concentrate on winning the next elections.  It is worth remembering that the word 'demagoguery' has the same root word as 'democracy'.  There is always a strong temptation to be populist, to borrow from the future instead of investing in it.   The mass media can either moderate or accentuate this dynamic.  Without clear rules, newspapers and TV stations can be forced by competitive pressure to outdo each other in sensationalism.  The result is more heat than light.  In Singapore, we require newspapers and TV stations to report accurately.  As opinion multipliers, it is important that what they multiply is accurate and not distorted.  There is no danger of Singaporans not knowing the truth because, as an information hub, thousands of newspapers and magazines distribute freely in Singapore.  We lay down  one condition which is that they must allow the government the right of reply.  There is also the New Media which became a major factor in the election of Barack Obama.  All over the world, countries are grappling with how this New Media should be managed as it is two-edged.  At the end of the day, democratic systems which create a good balance between the short term and the long term, and between the individual and the community, will be better able to deliver economic growth and security.

8 Third, we must protect the rights of minority groups.  No country is homogeneous.  Unless special provisions are made, majority rule can lead to the systematic marginalisation of ethnic, religious and other groups.  Without well-constructed rules, one-man-one-vote can be oppressive to them.  Singapore being a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, we are very sensitive to the protection of minority groups.  For example, Muslim Singaporeans can resort to Shariah laws for family matters.  Although the Constitution guarantees freedom of religious practice, we put curbs on proselytization.  It is an endless balancing act - Punjabi Sikhs riding motorcycles are allowed to wear turbans instead of crash helmets but Muslim girls in secular schools are not allowed to wear headscarves which are not part of the school uniform.  In order to ensure full representation of ethnic minorities in our Parliament, multi-member consitutuencies have been created which require political parties contesting them to field slates of candidates with minimum number of minority candidates.

9 By taking a pragmatic approach, Singapore's democratic system tries to meet these three objectives of ensuring the rule of law; striking a balance between the short term and the long term, and between the individual and the community; and protecting the rights of minority groups.  However, as the global environment changes, our system has to evolve in tandem.  For example, with the growing number of Singaporeans living overseas, we have had to find ways to enfranchise some of them.  Maintaining a sense of belonging to a larger Singapore community is essential.  Without voters feeling a sense of commitment to one another, a democratic system cannot work well.  Democracy breaks down when rights are not balanced by obligations.

Global Democracy

10 In the community of nations, we subscribe to the general principle of democracy but with important variations.  Nations are considered equal even though we know they are not.  In the United Nations and the WTO, every member has one vote, and small countries with populations of less than ten million are in the majority.  But size and power do matter.  The five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council were the victorious powers after the Second World War and the proposal to increase the number of Permanent Members is the subject of endless dispute.  When President Bush recently called a meeting to discuss a new global financial architecture, only leaders of the G20 countries were invited.  That is the reality of the world.

11 As with democracy within each country, it is better that we take a practical approach to democracy among the community of nations.  We cannot act on the basis of abstract principles.  Imagine the whole world voting for the UN Secretary General on the basis of one-man-one-vote.  Even if it could be practically done, such a procedure would never be accepted by many countries.

12 We are more likely to improve global governance by making adjustments which are realistic and incremental.  Reforming the UN is doable if we don't try to be too ambitious.  Creating a new global financial architecture is best done by renovating existing institutions in a way which acknowledges the new multi-polar reality.  Making progress on the Doha Development Agenda is possible if the key protagonists make compromises which respect each other's political needs.  Putting together a post-Kyoto agreement on climate change requires the US, China, India and others to buy in, but not at too high a political price.  None of this is easily accomplished but the alternative of failing will have disastrous consequences for all of us. 

ASEAN's Role

13 Here in Southeast Asia, we should do all we can to stabilize our own environment regardless of what we are able or not able to achieve globally.  After 40 years, ASEAN has done remarkably well perserving the peace and creating a common economic space despite the diversity of cultures, political systems and per capita incomes.  We are improving regional governance through the adoption of the ASEAN Charter which will begin its implementation next week when the Foreign Ministers meet in Jakarta.  Although there is still no agreement on details, we have agreed that ASEAN should establish a human rights body.  Precedures for dispute settlement are being progressed, with those for trade disputes already in place.  We are systematically enlarging our circle of friends to include countries around both the Pacific and Indian Oceans.  We work with them to create a larger architecture of peace in the Asia-Pacific.  Whether the agenda is UN reform, international finance, WTO or climate change, we in ASEAN will play our part.

14 Indonesia's leadership is indispensable in ASEAN.  By respecting the equality of nations in Southeast Asia, President Soeharto greatly enhanced our regional resilience. At critical moments, Indonesia's leadership has proved decisive in advancing the ASEAN agenda.  When I visited Pak Ali Alatas in hospital last week, we recalled how President Soeharto's decision made possible the launch of APEC in 1989.  It was under his leadership that  APEC established the Bogor Goals in 1994.  In October 2003, the goal of an ASEAN Community was agreed to under Indonesia's chairmanship here in Bali.   It is right and fitting that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has convened this international forum on democracy in Bali which is a subject of abiding interest to all of us in ASEAN.  Ten years ago, no objective observer of Indonesia could reasonably expect the country to make so much progress in establishing democratic constitutional rule with a high degree of devolution, giving independence to Timor Leste and negotiating a peace accord with the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).  

15 We are realistic enough in ASEAN to know that we cannot do much to change the world.  But we can play a positive role in improving global governance by improving global governance in our own region.  To do this, we have to draw on the democratic idea, always putting human beings at the centre of our concerns.

 

 

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GLOBAL GOVERNANCE CONFERENCE

TRANSCRIPT OF SPEECH BY MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS GEORGE YEO AT THE OPENING GALA DINNER OF THE INAUGURAL S.T.LEE PROJECT ON GLOBAL GOVERNANCE CONFERENCE AT THE FOUR SEASONS HOTEL, SINGAPORE ON 5 DECEMBER 2008

First let me thank Kishore for inviting me here this evening to join you for a discussion on global governance.  I feel very honoured to be paired with Strobe Talbott, whose speech I enjoyed very much.  A few weeks ago, Ann Florini sent me his book – The Great Experiment - which I dipped into with pleasure.  He had a section on gypsies which I really enjoyed reading.  It reminded me of a conversation I had with a Roman Cardinal some years ago when I was in Rome attending the canonisation of the Opus Dei founder  Josemaría Escrivá.  The cardinal said that John Paul II had not too long before, canonised a gypsy saint; and St Peters square was flooded with gypsies.  But this time in a role which most Italians were not used to seeing. The Roman Cardinal said to the gypsy leader: “Now that you have your own saint you have got to behave better.” The manner in which he narrated this story to me showed first, recognition of the problem, then a challenge to better behaviour but, most importantly, love, profound love. Reading Strobe Talbott’s account of the gypsies in his book, how he sought them out in order to understand better, I thought that this is a man with a heart. I had not met Strobe before and am very proud to be joining him this evening for this discussion on global governance, which must always put human beings at the heart of what we are trying to do. 

There are almost infinite ways in which human beings can be organised.  That is the study of history, and gypsies who are unrooted in geography are an example.  For the first time, more than any other time in history on this planet, we are all bound together.  Yet at the same time, each community, it could be a nation or tribe, has centuries if not thousands of years of legacy transmitted through its cultural DNA, which is very difficult to change.  There was a time in Australia when they thought that they could pole-vault the aborigines into the 20th Century by taking the young away from their parents and then educating them in a modern environment.  The result was an absolute tragedy.  We do not quite know how the cultural DNA is transmitted from mother to child.  We know it takes a village to raise a human being.  In ways, we do not fully understand, the cultural transmission is tenacious.  When we talk about globalisation, we are talking about the way in which we bring different complex operating systems together.  It is like the internet. The internet was an ARPA discovery. That by each operating system accepting a certain protocol, TCP/IP, different systems could interconnect even though they have different legacies and different deep programmes. Built upon this, through hyperlinks, we could communicate as if we belonged to a common system. In some ways, this is what globalisation is.  Through common rules, such as those of the UN, rules of warfare, rules of human conduct, rules of trade in WTO, rules of financial management in BIS, and so on, different countries and different systems are able to come together resulting in a greater division of labour and greater productivity for humanity as a whole. 

The recent financial crisis is a crisis of that hyperlink, or an aspect of that hyperlink. The global imbalance - so much has been written about it, this is not the subject which I am going to talk about tonight.  Except that the financial crisis is a problem of the higher system which links us all together.  Strobe talked about President Bush convening the G-20 meeting to address the problem, of this hyperlink or the hyper net.  But if you look deeper into it, stripped of all the extraneous aspects, the core relationship in the 21st Century is the relationship between the US as the world’s sole superpower today and China as an emergent superpower.  I am not discounting the importance of Europe, Russia, Japan, Brazil or India – after all we are talking about the multi-polar reality this century - but the core is the Sino-US relationship.  If we get that right, I believe the other poles can be fitted in and the global system can run reasonably effectively.  But if that nexus between the US and China is broken, there is no way we can put the global system together.  Whether it is a problem of proliferation or climate change or financial stability, without the US-China nexus, it cannot work. 

This evening, I would like to talk about this critical relationship in global governance - the Sino-US relationship.  These two countries, China and US constitute very different operating systems.  Singapore is a point, a city state and we take the world as it is.  We do not try to change the world because we cannot change the world. But, we got to adapt to it and live by arbitraging differences in systems, cultures and so on.  We are three-quarters Chinese, so we have a certain familiarity with the Chinese system but we were established by the British East India Company. We use English as our common language for communication.  Our legal system, our administrative systems, are all Anglo-Saxon in origin.  There is a lot of the Anglo-Saxon world in us. When we deal with the Chinese, we switch to our Chinese channel, when we deal with the Americans; we switch to our American channel. We do this almost instinctively because we are taught at a young age to adjust to different groups and different combinations of groups.  This is really what defines Singapore - our multi-channel characteristic.

But going back to China, to what it is, and why it is so different from the US.  China is China. China is a highly evolved civilisation which is almost impossible for any individual or group of individuals to change rapidly.  Mao Zedong in his final days said he achieved very little.  This was by his own admission.  China has a tradition, what Fairbanks called the Great Tradition, which is persistent and enduring.  Some years ago, when I was Minister for Heritage and Information on a visit to China, I asked to see Mao Zedong's hometown Shaoshan in Hunan. I visited the museum which had the usual political presentation. But next to the museum was the Mao ancestral temple which to me was far more interesting. In front of me, on the high altar, tablets of the most important forebears, an urn with incense burning, and Mao was on that altar. Recently when I had dinner with a cousin from my ancestral village in southern China, we were talking about the Hakkas, you know Lee Kuan Yew is a Hakka, and an important town in Guangdong is Meixian where Ye Jianying, came from.  Ye Jianying was the man who protected Deng Xiaoping from the Gang of Four so that after Mao died, he could be resurrected, and his leadership changed China. He told me that if you visit Ye’s ancestral temple, you would find many great men in that family tree.  It is a glorious ancestral temple.

A few years ago I went back to my ancestral temple.  They were re-opening one branch and I had to do the ceremonies. I could not say no because it would look very bad if I were to deny them that honour, if I were to decline their invitation. After the ceremony I asked to record the names of my children in the ancestral book. When I said “My daughter's name is . . . “, they said "Oh, girls do not have to be recorded, only your sons". My sister who was with me grumbled "You see, when they want money, they contact you, when it comes to recording who you are, they ignore the girls". But the daughters-in-law are a separate matter. I have a nephew whose daughter-in-law is British, and they wanted her name. They said "What's her name?" “Jane Goodall.” “How do you write it?” "J,a, ". They wrote it down letter by letter. Sons and the wombs bearing sons are recorded. Throughout Southern China, despite all the official talk about Communism and so on, an ancient tradition is coming back with amazing force. Every Chinese Minister, every State Councillor, every Vice-Premier, every member of the Standing Committee is being claimed by his ancestral temple because it brings honour to the ancestors, it brings honour to the progeny. Listening to Hu Jintao in recent years, he talks about a harmonious society and you notice they downplay the dictatorship of the proletariat and the class struggle. They have gone back to Confucius now. This Confucian aspect of Chinese society is deep in the cultural DNA and not something which can be willed away. Yes, when you're trying to overthrow the emperor or government, you debunk Confucius but when they re-establish power, they bring it back.

China is a country, indeed it is a civilisation, with a deep sense of itself. Every dynasty considers it a duty to record the history of the previous dynasty, and over the centuries, 24 official histories had been written, astonishing in its accuracy with respect to names, events and geography but always exaggerating triumphs and failures. Today, the history of Southeast Asia, the history of many parts of the world including India and Central Asia, would not be a fraction of what it is without reference to the Chinese records. The last Chinese dynasty was the Qing dynasty which ended in 1911. It is only a few years ago that the PRC decided to write the official history of the Qing dynasty. After close to a hundred years! Li Lanqing, the Vice-Premier, spoke to the scholars and the historians before they embarked on this exercise: “Collect the material - local sources, provincial sources, foreign sources - but do not be too quick to draw conclusions”. This is an instinct or a worldview which no other civilisation has. The Chinese have no desire to convert a non-Chinese into Chinese. They are like the Jews, if you not born one, that is okay, there is no requirement for you to become one. But for precisely this reason the Chinese have a view of the world which sees globalisation in terms of China at the centre, and China's relationships with other countries individually. The idea of a melange, a complex network with multiple nodes, is something not comfortable to the Chinese. This is in stark contrast to the American view of the world.

The first time I was in China to visit my grandparents, I went with my parents.  My experience was a deeply emotional one. It was the only time in my life when I kept a daily diary. When last year I read Obama's book Dreams from my Father, going through his last chapter on his visit to Kenya, I felt a strong resonance.  Obama felt he had to go back to find out where he came from, the way I felt I had to go back to find out where I came from. It is emotionally entangling because you have all these relatives and obligations, elders who make claims on you which you resented but which you felt you have to oblige to a degree because it is expected of you. Then when you left, you felt a certain relief but also feeling a compulsion to come back from time to time. And a few years later, I brought my wife, after I got married, to see my grandparents. Obama brought his wife back to see his roots in Kenya. For that reason, he is a very unusual person because of his background. He said when he went back to the US, he felt a certain liberation. And indeed Asians visiting the US breathe fresh air because it is a country which downplays tradition. You can be who you are, you can express your views freely, and you are under not too many obligations. Every time I visit the US, I try to visit heritage sites in New England, Monticello, Mount Vernon and Philadelphia, reading the speeches of the founding fathers, the deliberations that led to the founding of the republic and the writing of the Constitution. They are deeply inspiring, because here were a group of men, people who left Europe, who were persecuted in Europe, arriving on a new continent determined to create human society afresh. In Obama's speeches, you hear echoes of the founding fathers. Because the US was conceived in that manner, it has a different culture; it has a missionary spirit, wanting others to be like them. So unlike the Chinese who do not seek to convert you and make you Chinese, Americans want you to become American because it is such a good thing.

If we look at globalisation today, it is really an American construct, the hyperlink - the HTML language, the XML language - is basically an American language. It is expressed in accounting rules, financial rules, the way armies are organised, industrial standards, financial standards and so on. The problem is when the US becomes excessive in this missionary zeal. Political scientists like Kissinger talk about the dual strain in American foreign policy. There is the national interest which defines the foreign policy of all countries, but there is in American foreign policy always an additional strain, a call to an American ideal, a desire to spread the word, to democratise the world. To a point, that is very attractive and to an extent it enables the world to be globalised. But beyond a point, when you start intruding into the deep operating system of particular countries or tribes, it creates problems.

When America goes into Iraq and tries to democratise Iraqi society as if it has no legacy, you have a problem. When it goes into Afghanistan, and tries to overwrite deep tribal instincts, it runs into problems. I was in Iran a few years ago, in 2004 the year after the US moved into Iraq.  It was a very interesting visit; I went to Persepolis and had a sense of how the Iranian saw themselves as being an ancient people with a long history. Someone in my delegation on the last day decided to ask the protocol officer who accompanied me a provocative question. He asked him. “If the Americans were to invade Iran, would you fight the Americans?” His reply shocked me. In a loud voice he said, “Fight them? I would lead them in and show them the way.” I was worried for him. He spoke at such a high volume I thought that they would immediately arrest him and throw him into some dark dungeon. In fact if you meet ordinary Iranians, there is a great affection for American culture. Of course, in the establishment, among the elite, there is a strong nationalism that would not buckle to American pressure. American culture can be very attractive, propagated through Hollywood, through its products and services, its brands or the ideas of its founding fathers. But when the US seeks to go beyond that, it finds resistance and limits.

When we talk about global governance and America leading the way, there is no substitute for American leadership because the software linking the world is fundamentally American. The Chinese cannot do that. The Indians cannot do that. The Europeans cannot do that. The Japanese cannot do that. Look at it another way, if one day planet earth were in danger and the only way to preserve the species was to colonise another planet and we draw people from all over the world for that journey. How will human society be organised in that new world? I believe that society is more likely to be like America rather than China, India or Japan. Recently the Chinese had a man walk in space, and being ethnic Chinese, many of us in Singapore felt proud of the achievement. When you watched the people in the Chinese control room cheering, they were all Chinese faces. But when you watch a space launch in the US and observe the people in the control room, they are individuals drawn from all of humanity. If one day there is a Spaceship Enterprise, the Captain can be white, brown, yellow or black and we would not be surprised.

Coming back to the issue of global governance - America has to lead, but America has to lead in a way which acknowledges the diversity of the human family. Whether you are a gypsy or an Australian aborigine or a Chinese or Indian – in fact there are many kinds of Indians - or Arab or Jew, each is profoundly different. Yes, there are similarities which enable us to intercourse like we do this evening. But when it is time to marry off our young, when it is time to conduct funeral rituals, we are different and we have no wish to be the same. Please do not get me wrong when I talk mostly about Sino-US relations.  It is not because I am downplaying the importance of Russia, Europe, Japan, India or Brazil or other countries but because I believe in this century that is the single most important relationship to be concerned with.

I would also like to make a brief comment about Islam because I believe Islam is a big challenge to all of us in this century for a variety of reasons. We need more than a seminar or a speech to talk about why Islam is a challenge in this century. Just yesterday, I had a very interesting discussion with the Aga Khan. I was charmed by him. I was so impressed by his sense of humanity and he is the Imam of the Ismaili Shia community! There are 15 million of them in the world. I thought, this is a very different perspective of Islam which we are not used to seeing. For many of us, in many parts of the world, Islam is associated with terrorism, blood and violence, with men wearing turbans and beards. Yes, there is an aspect of Islam which is Salafi, which enabled Muhammed in the 7th Century to unite the tribes of the deserts and steppelands, which many centuries later, also enabled Abdul Aziz Saud to reunite the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. But that is only one aspect of Islam.  There is also the Islam of Samarkand, Bokhara, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo and Cordoba which represented a great civilization. We are in the middle of a financial crisis. There is so much written about it. I was reflecting on the Muslim proscription against insurance and interest payment. We used to laugh at these strange proscriptions but there is wisdom in them. The underlying concern is about moral hazards when the interests of claimants diverge. When we look at the problem of the financial world today and what led to the crisis, it is because the interests of claimants are opposed. So there is something in Islamic finance which makes a lot of sense. It is important, even as we fight terrorism, to see the achievements of Islam - to celebrate a civilisation which is so well presented in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, which you can see today in Doha in the new Islamic Centre designed by I M Pei, in the Aga Khan.  They enable us to view Islam in perspective and sow greater respect between Muslims and non Muslims. This is very important because, without respect, we cannot deal and, if we do not deal, we suboptimise on the solutions we find.

An Indonesian Minister told me this a few months ago. It was a story that I could not recount earlier because it would be interfering in American domestic politics. He said that at a reception in Washington, he saw Obama whom he knew from before across the room. Obama shouted at him “Assalamu Alaikum” and he replied “Alaikum As-Salam.” I was afraid that if I were to repeat the story during the campaign, it would give credence to internet reports that Obama was a closet Muslim. He is not a Muslim. He expressed that greeting not because he is a Muslim but because he understood the words, may the peace of God be with you. There cannot be a better greeting than that.

When we talk about global governance, when all is said and done, it has to be built around the human being – respect for human beings, respect for the diversity of human beings. I can never forget what the Roman Cardinal told me. He served the Pope as the secretary of the Synod of Bishops.  He has passed away now.  He told me how he drafted a speech for Pope John Paul II to bishops from around the world,  saying the “even though we are different we are one”. The pope said no, it is because we are different that we are one. In other words, before we can love, before we can respect, we must respect the uniqueness of every individual. If we are all the same, something is very wrong. Countries are different, tribes are different, cultures are different, and in global governance, the basic building block must acknowledge that diversity and that difference. But that which binds us all together, that hyperlink, that for a long time will be American in its essence.

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Aga Khan

I learnt much from my meeting with the Aga Khan yesterday. The present Aga Khan is the 49th Imam of the 15 million Nizari Ismaili Shias living in different parts of the world. Through his foundation, the Aga Khan Development Network, he funds all kinds of philanthropic activities in many countries serving Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Once discriminated against in Iran where the Aga Khan's family was from, the Ismaili community there now lives in harmony with the other Shias.

While in Singapore, he met President Nathan and SM Goh Chok Tong. I discussed with the Aga Khan how Singapore and his foundation could work together in Asia and Africa. I also explained what we try to achieve through the Singapore Cooperation Programme which celebrated the enrolment of the 50,000th trainee last year.

The Aga Khan has a deep sense of humanity. He talked about the importance of 'cosmopolitan ethics', based not on religious beliefs but on the common brotherhood of man which all religions subscribe to. If we concentrate on the well-being of the child, all of us can find common cause. If our starting point is a religious abstraction, the differences can never be bridged.

We also reflected on the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai. In India, his foundation supports many activities in many states to help Muslims so that they do not become a marginalised community.

George Yeo

With Aga Khan