KTVs, Eid, FTAs and CECA, My Reflections After A Conversation With The Health Minister
It was fun, but I got burned by Min. Ong. Twice.
2020 and 2021 have been very eventful years, with major stories and developments flooding our social media feeds and headlines every other week. Two issues have been recurring for the longest time in recent memory – CECA and Covid – and Min. Ong has been in the unenviable position of tackling both recently. We sat down for an interview with him to talk about these difficult topics, expecting a very serious and heavy discussion, but instead got sharp, clear, yet engaging responses on some of these issues that have weighed heaviest on our minds.
It was fun, but I got burned by Min. Ong. Twice.
While the news feed has been heavily focused on the KTV clusters because that’s funnier and more memeable, the market clusters have been quietly exploding in the background, possibly because of fishermen and the trading from our open waters and nearby neighbours. The delta variant, which is now the dominant strain around the world, has been overwhelming our region here in Southeast Asia as well. The biggest game changer that this variant brings is that, as Min. Ong puts it, hiding and home no longer guarantees that you will be safe from it. It will find you instead, no matter how hard you try to avoid it. As one of the most infectious variants the world is facing so far, the only and most effective way to tackle it is to get vaccinated.
The KTVs memes were funny. This one isn’t. Picture credits: Al Jazeera
Still, I personally know some people who are still falsely clinging on to the idea that they can afford to wait and see, or that as long as they don’t engage in high-exposure risk activities, everything will be fine. That kind of slow vaccination pickup is what enables the restriction ping pong game, and unfortunately the Muslim community has yet again had another Eid period coincide with the ping and pong. Hopefully, enough people do the responsible thing soon and no more Eids and holiday periods come to be dampened by them again.
Not our fault hor.
What does the Minister for Health have to do with CECA, though? As the self-titled ‘FTA geek’ himself puts it, he was himself a trade negotiator before his current portfolio, and knows quite well what goes in those rooms. So, he said, he kena arrowed to take on the parliamentary debate on CECA, which is one of the many FTAs that Singapore has with many countries around the world.
The tables have turned, Ong. Picture credits: Reddit
He shared with us his experience negotiating with the USA, the icebreaking process, and the difficulties that negotiators face in balancing the demands of the other party against the interests of his own people and nation. We got an exclusive peek into how the ban on chewing gum in Singapore got partially tweaked to allow for medicinal chewing gums due to one such negotiation that Min. Ong was in back in the day. As many Singaporeans might remember (somewhat frustratingly), chewing gum was banned in Singapore due to public hygiene concerns. In one such FTA negotiation with the USA, the chewing gum lobby pressured and demanded for our side to cave in on our stance on chewing gum – not because of our tiny market share, but because of the signal we send to the rest of the world. Eventually, we settled on a partial compromise that saw a very particular class of chewing gums allowed that each side could be happy with. Even something that to me sounds so trivial was apparently a difficult agreement to reach. Surely CECA was going to be even more of a mindfield?
Such is life.
Actually, like Rahman pointed out in the interview, not really, because one of the more controversial chapters of the agreement (Chapter 9: Movement of Natural Persons) does not compel Singapore to go beyond the pale and is a lot more facilitative in nature. Min. Ong confirmed this, but the fact of the matter is that it is quite clear there are huge issues on the ground, with companies employing discriminatory hiring practices resulting in companies with workforces over represented by particular nationalities, resulting in certain sectors and estates that feel unintegrated from the rest of the country. Sadly, this has also sparked a racist and xenophobic backlash that has sometimes even victimized locals in the outcry.
This is not okay. Picture credits (both): The Straits Times
Do you change your car’s battery when the tyre has gone flat? Min. Ong likened the excessive focus on CECA to a haphazard misdiagnosis of the situation. Singapore’s economy requires FTAs to blossom, and so unsurprisingly we have FTAs with countries from almost all continents around the world. If discriminatory hiring practices are the issue, why insist on changing something that isn’t contributing to the problem? The car tyre needs to be changed and repaired, but it still needs a battery to run properly. At the same time, I think there also needs to be more urgency in dealing with the companies that commit such discrimination. The fact is that the topic has become incredibly politicized and sensitive, and as long as the situation on the ground does not improve, people’s frustrations and unhappiness will not go away. I personally hope that these offending companies and HR departments receive strict penalties and that the issue gets resolved quickly. I feel for my friends who have gotten nasty stares and xenophobic remarks, all because of the toxicity that has sprouted around this issue over years of slow progress in stemming the issue.
Can we please solve this soon? Pretty please?
It was an enlightening discussion with Min. Ong over several key issues affecting our society, and I am grateful to learn some interesting things that are outside of my usual fields of interest. However, even if I leave the studio with a clearer picture of what the problems actually are, I think that does not rest the case. There are still valid concerns over why locals don’t get or qualify for some of these jobs, how many irresponsible companies are still operating in ways they should not, and whether there are enough efforts to integrate the many expat communities that Singapore has. But with a clearer picture of what the problems are and what they are not, maybe we can have a better and more responsible public discourse on the topic.
Click on the links below to listen to the 3-part podcast on Plan B on Spotify.
Episode 1: The Negotiator, Part 1
Episode 2: The Negotiator, Part 2
Episode 3: The Negotiator, Part 3
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