Feeble recovery leaves economies confused

Sep 29, 2009

Over the past week, our correspondents looked at the seeds of revival in key Asian economies. Today, to wrap up the series, our Europe correspondent Jonathan Eyal looks at the prospects for the continent.

LONDON: A gentle sigh of relief can be heard from all European capitals. A year after the worst financial crisis in living memory, manufacturing output is rising, house prices are reviving and stock markets roaring again.

Yet the recovery is feeble - a mere 0.2 per cent overall growth. And the downturn has left deep scars. The economies of the 'old continent' are emerging from the storm battered and confused about their future.

After initially dismissing the crisis as just an American 'disease', European governments quickly made up for lost time: While the United States Congress was still debating its options, Europe bailed out its failing banks and was the first to unveil massive economic stimulus packages.

In doing so, the continent enjoyed two distinct advantages. It has a European Central Bank which runs the euro, the currency of its biggest economies. Despite its reputation for prudence, the bank flooded Europe with cash. Even the small east European countries, outside the euro zone and vulnerable, were helped by this largesse.

Europe's second trump card was its social security net, the world's most extensive and lavish. It swung into action as people became unemployed or fell below the poverty line.

So, the mixture of extra government spending and social benefits ensured that the continent retained its genteel ways of life.

Mr Alfred Butt, a German factory worker, went ahead with his traditional family holiday on a sunny Mediterranean island, despite losing his job: 'We still have enough income, and it was good to get away,' he said.

Perversely, one key European sector actually benefited from the crisis: the car industry. Car manufacturers enjoyed an unprecedented boom, as customers took advantage of state subsidies to swop old models for new ones.

In Germany, at least two million people grabbed the $5,000 individual payout to ditch their old vehicles; new car sales shot up by 28 per cent last month alone.

The carnival atmosphere was so great that one German woman wondered if governments would introduce a scheme to swop old husbands for new. 'I'm in the market for that as well,' she said.

But the day of reckoning is approaching, because the measures to stimulate the economy have resulted in the fastest rise in government debt since World War II. In effect, Europe avoided an economic disaster, only to be saddled with a lingering problem for generations.

If no belt-tightening measures are taken, government debt will exceed Europe's entire annual wealth by the middle of the next decade.

And, if this was not enough, the economic recovery remains uneven. Germany and France may be out of the recession but Britain - hitherto the continent's best performer - is stuck: its economy will contract by a whopping 4 per cent this year.

In London, expatriates who flocked to work in Europe's financial capital are now deserting it in droves.

Mr Andrew Wesbecher, a young American who specialised in selling software to investment funds, left Britain this summer. 'When the performance bonuses go away, the value of being in this country goes away,' he concluded.

Over the past year, 45,000 jobs were lost in London's banking sector alone.

For many Europeans tired of being lectured about the virtues of unregulated capitalism, Britain's predicament is a source of wry satisfaction. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon claimed recently that 'the crisis has modified Europe's ideological landscape'.

From now on, the people of the continent will expect more state intervention, precisely what France argued for all along.

Perhaps, but the snag remains that no European government is in a position to borrow more, without risking massive inflation. Europe will have to cut expenditure and raise taxes at the same time. Governments will need to reprivatise their nationalised banks as fast as possible.

So, far from commanding the economy, economic realities will command policy.

The period of adjustment will be prolonged and painful. Unemployment is already rising fast: it averages 10 per cent of the labour force across western Europe, and stands at a horrible 18 per cent in Spain.

Mr David Gross, who directs the Centre for European Policy Studies think-tank, articulated the continent's frustration. 'This crisis may have started in the US, but even more combustible material had accumulated in Europe, so it is likely that the cost will be higher here.'

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is moving on while the Europeans continue to lag behind.

Perhaps that is why French President Nicolas Sarkozy now advocates a radical new approach to measuring economic performance.

Instead of the old, boring national statistics, Mr Sarkozy is suggesting that other factors - such as long holidays, leisure activities or health care - should be included in a 'new index of happiness'.

Based on such yardsticks, Europe may still score well. But being a pleasant place to live is not the same as remaining a relevant actor on the world stage.

jonathan.eyal@gmail.com

Former Aware president Josie Lau leaves DBS

SINGAPORE: The former president of the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware), Ms Josie Lau, has left DBS Bank and joined hospitality group Overseas Union Enterprise (OUE).

She is now vice-president for centre management at Mandarin Gallery, where she oversees operations and marketing for the new premier shopping mall, Weekend TODAY has learnt.

The 48-year-old was thrust into the limelight in March, when she became embroiled in a leadership tussle at Aware. Her decision to take on the role of president of the women's advocacy group earned her a public rebuke from DBS for ignoring its code of conduct.

At the time, she was DBS' head of marketing, cards and unsecured loans, becoming its vice-president for network planning and deployment in May prior to her resignation.

Ms Lau, who started her new job on Thursday, said she took it because it "allows me to leverage on all my past work experience and my love for fashion retail and marketing".

OUE chief executive Thio Gim Hock said Ms Lau had "expressed her desire to look for new pastures", and he felt she might be suitable for the post. "I asked her to send in her CV and forwarded (it) to the senior vice-president (of) leasing, who interviewed her."

Mr Thio is married to lawyer Thio Su Mien, who had encouraged Ms Lau to get involved in Aware. They attend the same church, but Ms Lau stressed her hiring was "based on my merit".

Likewise Mr Thio - who has known Ms Lau, "though not very well", for over 10 years - said: "It's easier and more desirable to employ people you already know ... Her getting the job was entirely due to her experience, qualification and personality."

Mr Thio also noted Ms Lau's "traumatic experience" during the Aware saga which included "having her employer threatening to sack her".

When contacted, a DBS spokesman said: "Ms Lau decided to leave DBS to pursue other opportunities. It was a personal decision, and we wish her the best in her new endeavours."

[I guess this will be another evidence that the newspapers are out to get Josie. But it is news of interest. And lends support to the idea that the ingroup will protect each other. Stilll, she needs to make a living and I can only imagine how the environment at DBS was for her.]

Program to curb malpractice lawsuits

Sep 24, 2009

WASHINGTON - ADMITTING fault and saying sorry can be hard for anyone, but for an American doctor whose medical error has killed a patient it can mean a lawsuit that ends his or her career.

Doug Wojcieszak recalled the way doctors literally ran away from his mother in the hallway of the hospital after their fatal misdiagnosis of his brother Jim in 1998.

'It's a cultural thing in medicine, that initial instinct to pull back and to sever the relationship with the patient or the family and clam up as a way to mitigate or reduce the chance of a lawsuit,' he told AFP.

His brother had walked into hospital complaining of chest, shoulder, neck and stomach pains - classic signs of a possible heart attack.

Because he was only 39, and 'a big, strong guy", the doctors automatically assumed he was having some kind of stomach problem.

When his parents brought him back the next day in excruciating pain, they had a closer look but critically mixed up his X-rays with those of his father, who had undergone tests in the same hospital months before.

'His blood test is showing heart distress, but they are looking at my dad's charts showing no blockage, so they misdiagnose my brother with a bacterial infection to the heart,' explained Mr Wojcieszak.

Doctors plied Jim full of antibiotics for the next two days and by the time they realized their error it was too late - he died during emergency open heart surgery as they tried desperately to unblock four major arteries.

The tragedy was hard for the family to take, but their grief was compounded by an ensuing cover-up that meant they had no choice but to sue. Eventually, struggling to find any kind of closure, a settlement was reached in 2000.

'My parents had to relive the death of their first-born son for two years,' said Mr Wojcieszak.

Five years later he founded The Sorry Works! Coalition to unite fledgling projects that encouraged doctors to disclose mistakes, apologise and offer compensation. -- AFP

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His coalition argues that solving the malpractice crisis is not a legal problem, involving complex reform of America's tort laws, but simply a customer service one.

President Barack Obama might agree as he has instructed Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to examine such projects as part of a US$25 million (S$35 million) program to curb medical malpractice lawsuits.

'We're thrilled that it's part of the national debate,' said Mr Wojcieszak, who dismissed the existing system as a 'never-ending fight between lawyers and doctors, pointing fingers and yelling and screaming'.

Malpractice reform has stalled in the United States for decades, even as studies indicate more than 100,000 people die each year as a result of an estimated 15 million preventable medical errors.

In high-risk specialities such as neuro-surgery and obstetrics, doctors also fork out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on insurance premiums to offset the risk of professional error.

Mr Obama surprised many when he promised a new look at the complex issue as part of his ambitious health care overhaul, defying the conventional wisdom that malpractice reform is only a Republican cause.

Republicans, backed by the doctors, argue that caps should be imposed on the amount of damages patients can receive, but Mr Obama told the American Medical Association in June such measures would be unfair to those wrongfully harmed.

He is leaning more towards special courts and programs like Sorry Works, and Sebelius has been instructed to award grants from early 2010 to states and hospitals that find innovative ways to address the malpractice mess.

Tim McDonald, chief safety officer at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago, finds himself at the vanguard of this movement.

His doctors maintain communication with families when things go wrong, conduct full investigations of any errors and then apologise, when appropriate, before fast-tracking cases for possible settlement.

Since the program launched in 2006, the culture of admission has helped doctors introduce new monitoring procedures for sedation, develop a better system to prevent blood clots, and even find equipment left inside patients.

'We had a case where we left a sponge behind and totally changed our process for how we prevent those,' Mr McDonald told AFP.

'There are certain patients at risk for leaving things behind and we actually get X-rays on them even when we think we've accounted for everything in the operating room. We've found several objects in those patients by having changed that process.'

Susan Steinman, director of policy at the American Association for Justice, the leading organisation for trial lawyers in the United States, is also on board.

'I think that 'Sorry Works' in particular has a lot of merit and has been used successfully by several large university hospitals,' she told AFP.

'It's a good program because not only does it look at ways to reduce litigation costs, it looks at ways to reduce medical errors.' Insurers were very skeptical at first as they thought disclosure would increase the number of lawsuits.

'That hasn't happened,' said Mr McDonald. 'Instead, we've been able to show we've prevented certain kinds of events from happening again.' For Wojcieszak, the Sorry Works revolution can't come soon enough.

'Patients and families can live with screw-ups, even fatal screw-ups so long as someone's got the integrity to stand up and say: 'I made a mistake, let's talk about how I can try and make this right by you.' 'This is simply just taking care of people and reaping the benefits.' -- AFP

Dust storm covers Sydney in orange haze

Sep 24, 2009

SYDNEY: The worst dust storm in decades swept across eastern Australia yesterday, blanketing Sydney and snarling transport as freak conditions also brought earthquakes and giant hailstones.

Gale-force winds dumped thousands of tonnes of red desert dust on Australia's biggest city, shrouding it in an eerie orange haze and coating the iconic Sydney Opera House in a fine layer of powder.

Sydney residents told local radio that they woke up to scenes from an apocalyptic Hollywood movie, while many contacted emergency services fearing a big bushfire in the city.

One woman said she woke up to find that red dust had covered her floors, and birds had been blown out of their nests.

'It did feel like Armageddon because when I was in the kitchen looking out the skylight, there was this red, red glow coming through,' the resident, identified only as Karen, told Australian radio.

The storm, reportedly the most serious since the 1940s, then spread 600km up the coast to Queensland and could even hit New Zealand, some 4,000km away, experts said.

Dust covered most of New South Wales, Australia's most populous state, pushing air pollution to record levels and depositing about 75,000 tonnes of powder in the Tasman Sea every hour.

Dust storm disrupts air traffic

'Dust storms like this occur quite regularly but they rarely travel this far east and come through Sydney,' said Mr John Leys, principal research scientist with New South Wales' Department of Climate Change and Water.

Sydney residents wore face masks and covered their mouths with scarves as they travelled to work under hazy skies. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper on major highways.

Air transport was severely disrupted, with passengers facing long delays at Sydney airport and many international flights diverted to Melbourne and Brisbane.

Though the dust over Sydney had largely cleared by mid-afternoon, flag-carrier Qantas urged passengers to cancel any non-urgent travel, while budget offshoot Jetstar offered free flight rescheduling and refunds.

Singapore Airlines, responding to queries from The Straits Times, said that only one flight, which left Singapore on Tuesday, had to be diverted.

SQ221, which was diverted to Melbourne, has since arrived in Sydney, it said. All other operations to and from Sydney were proceeding as normal, it added.

Sydney Ferries suspended harbour services and police warned drivers to take extra care in poor visibility. Ambulance workers reported a sudden spike in respiratory problems.

Australia, in the grip of a decade-long drought, is emerging from an abnormally hot southern hemisphere winter, including the hottest August on record.

Elsewhere in New South Wales, hail stones 'the size of cricket balls' smashed windows, as thunderstorms and gale-force winds lashed the state late on Tuesday.

'We've had reports of cars with both their front and rear windscreens smashed,' an official from the State Emergency Service said.

Further north, Queensland imposed a ban on lighting fires across large parts of the state a day after a dozen bush blazes sprang up following a hot, dry spell.

Tough water restrictions there are to be set aside temporarily to allow people to wash dust from their cars, homes and business premises, the Australian AAP news agency reported.

Victoria state was on alert for flash floods as heavy rains fell, following a pair of minor earthquakes on Tuesday. The 3.0- and 2.6-magnitude tremors did not cause any damage, officials said.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS

[Dust, wind, bush fires, hail, earthquake - yep. End of the world.]

Lest we become strangers in our own land

Sep 24, 2009

By Ngiam Tong Dow

A CASE could be made that Singapore's transition from a British colony to an independent state was shaped by the Cold War. After all, Singapore achieved independence by first merging with Malaya because of fears it might succumb to communism if it were left alone.

The end of the Cold War brought about seismic geopolitical changes. For Singapore and other Asian countries, the most critical was China's decision to stop exporting revolution. Instead, Deng Xiaoping, in the words of Chinese President Hu Jintao, adopted the strategy of the 'peaceful rise of China'.

China opened its centrally planned economy to international trade in 1978. China today is well on its way to becoming one of the world's three largest economies.

Singapore's economic relations with China are growing by the day. Yet barely 40 years ago, states like Singapore with sizeable ethnic Chinese populations were wary if not fearful of trading with China lest cheap Chinese products were used to seduce our people politically.

Singapore's national trading arm, Intraco, was instructed by the Finance Ministry to diversify the country's sources of rice imports. In the late 1960s, China was the most competitive supplier of rice. But the Singapore authorities were afraid that Chinese rice could be used to subsidise revolution.

Singapore and China were mutually suspicious of each other then, as the following story indicates:

In the late 1970s, China placed an order with a shipbuilder here for two oil drilling rigs. Six Chinese engineers led by a political commissar were dispatched to Singapore to supervise the building of the rigs. As standard operating procedure, the Chinese were placed under surveillance. Singapore's intelligence officers followed them everywhere they went. One day, the leader of the Chinese team, in exasperation, told our liaison officer that there was no need to tail his people. He was in fact more worried that his people would defect to Singapore.

In the 1960s, the world was divided into political blocs. National economies produced behind tariff walls. The term 'global economy' was not yet coined. But by necessity, the 'little red dot', Singapore, had to be open.

Though the world has changed since then, the fundamentals of Singapore's economic and trade policies remain the same. Singapore has to be useful to its trading partners, as it has been since the 15th century, in order to survive.

So long as we add to our knowledge and remain nimble, we can earn a living. Our fundamental challenge is political. How do we become one people despite our diversity?

As we are unlikely to ever restore our natural birth rates to replacement levels, we have no choice but to add to our population through immigration. But how do we assimilate the newcomers? With a small population, will we ever be in a position to assimilate anyone? Or will we instead be absorbed by them as they come from stronger cultures? At what pace should we bring in new immigrants?

I do not want to sound alarmist but a recurring nightmare of mine is that someday we will find ourselves strangers in our own land.

The East India Company, and later the British colonial office, essentially followed a policy of laissez-faire: they let people come and go. Our forefathers who migrated to Malaya and Singapore in the late 1800s and early 1900s fended for themselves. They built their own businesses and social organisations; they established schools.

Some of them went back to their ancestral homelands to die. Most stayed in their adopted country. We are their children and grandchildren.

Today, migration is economics driven. The best and the brightest move around the world searching for higher paying jobs. We risk having them use us as a stepping stone. Foreign fathers may advise their sons born in Singapore to leave when they reach the national service age of 18.

Singapore will be left with the second tier of average people. Educationally, they would hardly measure up to the Singapore average. When they are given citizenship and the right to vote, they will use their new-found electoral power to demand equal access to social services as other Singaporeans. The difference is existing citizens would have paid for those social services over a lifetime of tax payments; the new citizens would not.

The population planners need to remember that international economic competitiveness is now knowledge-based. It is no longer a numbers game. Why the haste in adding to the population? Do we have the absorptive capacity to accommodate a million new people within a decade?

I believe we should make haste slowly. We should avoid repeating the 1960s mistake of 'stopping at two' - but this time in reverse.

The writer, a former senior civil servant, is currently an adjunct professor at Nanyang Technological University. The above is an excerpt from a 'fireside chat' he delivered to the Singapore chapter of the World Presidents' Organisation.

Is Hokkien my 'mother tongue'?

Sep 23, 2009

By Alfian Sa'at

A LONG time ago, a Chinese man saw some Malays eating a fruit. It had a spiky shell, but its insides were filled with large seeds covered by yellow, buttery flesh. He had never seen (nor smelt!) a fruit like it in his native village in Fujian. What was the fruit called, he asked the Malays.

'Durian,' they replied - from the Malay word duri, meaning 'thorn'. And so the Chinese man went back and told his friends about this new fruit. As the word spread, it became incorporated into Hokkien as loo lian.

Then one day, a new fruit made its appearance, native to South America. It was also green, with a spiky exterior. It was known as 'soursop' in English.

The Malays had a tendency to append the word belanda (meaning 'Dutch') to anything foreign that they had never seen before. Examples include kambing belanda (sheep), ayam belanda (turkey), kucing belanda (rabbit). So they called soursop durian belanda.

The Hokkiens, on the other hand, called it ang mo loo lian. Ang mo - roughly 'Western' - was also used for other edibles, like ang mo kio (tomato) and ang mo chai thou (carrot). The word ang mo loo lian carries traces of Hokkien's contact with both Malay and the West.

The study of loan words has always fascinated me, for they give clues to the kinds of social interactions that occurred in the past. I sketched a scenario above of how a single word from one language entered another. But the process is much more complex than that, probably involving long-term, sustained contact. The chain of transmission might even involve an intermediary, such as the Straits Chinese (or Peranakans), whose Baba patois contains both Malay and Hokkien words.

Here are some words that were borrowed from Hokkien into Malay: beca (trishaw), bihun (vermicelli), cat (paint), cincai (any old how), gua (I/me), guli (marbles), kentang (potato), kamceng (close), kuih (cake), kongsi (share), kuaci (melon seeds), teko (teapot), taugeh (bean sprout), tahu (beancurd) and tauke (boss). (Note that 'c' in Malay has the 'ch' sound.)

This linguistic exchange was a two-way process. Here are some Malay words that penetrated Hokkien: agak (guess or moderate), botak (bald), champur (mix), gadoh (fight), gaji (wages), jamban (toilet), kachiau (disturb), otang (owe/ debt), pakat (conspire), pasar (market), pitchia (break), salah (wrong), senget (crooked), sukak (like), tiam (quiet) and torlong (help).

There are even some Cantonese words that are now part of Malay parlance, such as pokai (broke or penniless) and samseng (gangster). Interestingly, it has been postulated that the word sam seng (three stars) was derived from the fact that recruits in the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army wore caps emblazoned with three stars, each representing one of the main races in Malaya: Malays, Chinese and Indians.

In the Singapore Armed Forces, one of the things all NSmen were told by their sergeants was that 'over here, Hokkien is your mother tongue'. This was based on the stereotypes that Hokkien was a gendered, macho language, with the most pungent swear words.

But considering how Hokkien words have entered the Malay language, I have realised that there is a larger truth to that statement. It is like tracing a family tree and then discovering that I had a Hokkien great-great-great-greatgrandmother. As a matter of fact, since almost two-thirds of the Malay lexicon consist of borrowings, I definitely had Arabic and Indian (linguistic) ancestors too.

Malays have a saying: bahasa jiwa bangsa, 'language is the soul of a race'. But there is a tension in the phrase. We tend to think of 'race' as something bounded and rigid. But 'language' does not have such impermeable borders. Words of various origins pass through open checkpoints, undergo shifts in meaning, and become naturalised over time.

Thus, as much as we may like to be essentialist about our race, we cannot escape from the hybridities already extant in our language. There is humility in the idea that no language is perfect on its own, and will borrow words to make up for its lack.

My Hokkien friends who travel overseas would often relate to me the sense of dislocation they feel when speaking to other Hokkien speakers. A friend who went to Taiwan, for example, was surprised to note that they did not understand what loti meant. Another friend shared a story about the nuances of pokai in Hong Kong.

At the end of the month, he moaned out loud at the office kam chi pokai le ('I'm broke this time') and all eyes turned on him. Pokai means 'broke' in Singapore. But in Hong Kong, pokai (literally, 'cast out on the streets') suggests something worse, like being destitute on the streets or being beaten up.

It is easy to interpret these instances as evidence that the Chinese in this part of the world have been 'contaminated' by other cultures. I happen to take the opposite view: The Nanyang Chinese have evolved an identity of their own, incorporating elements of other cultures. That this has been possible is a testament to their openness and curiosity.

Much ink (and tears) has been spilled on how the promotion of Mandarin here has resulted in what some have called the 'cultural lobotomy' of the Chinese community. In many ways, I sympathise with the late Kuo Pao Kun's observation that Chinese Singaporeans are 'cultural orphans', snatched as they were from their biological southern Chinese bosoms and placed in the laps of Mandarin-speaking foster mothers.

A familiar lament is that the declining use of the southern Chinese languages has resulted in the estrangement between generations of Chinese Singaporeans. I would argue that it has also led to some estrangement among the various languages. I do not know if I should worry about the fact that the traffic of loan words has almost ceased between Malay and Mandarin.

It is premature to theorise that this is a symptom of less interaction among the races. After all, there is English to mediate our communications with one another. But the fact remains that I do not know of a single Malay word that has Mandarin origins.

Somehow, our forefathers, of various races, knew how to pakat against common enemies, were able to kongsi their resources, and in the process of all that champur, became kamcheng with one another. The product of their alliances, friendships and inter-marriages is reflected in the languages we have inherited.

To lose this legacy is to sever a vital connection not only to the historical origins of the Nanyang Chinese, but also to Singapore's dynamic multicultural past.

The writer is a poet and playwright. He thanks Lai Chee Kien for his inputs. A longer version of this essay first appeared in The Online Citizen.

Rajaratnam, keeper of the faith

Sep 20, 2009

The Pledge is the enduring legacy of the late minister, to whom Singapore was worth fighting and dying for
By Irene Ng

As any writer knows, first drafts are subject to revision. Good writers hone, sculpt and polish their drafts to make sure that their final versions sparkle. Mr S. Rajaratnam, who drafted Singapore's national Pledge, was a very good writer. Before he joined politics in 1959, he had distinguished himself as an influential newspaper columnist and a short-story writer.

He understood the power of language and of ideas. And the idea he loved most was: A Singaporean Singapore where its citizens transcend their boundaries of race, religion and language, and unite to become one people.

The Pledge and its origins have been much discussed recently. The subject is of particular interest to me as I am writing Mr Rajaratnam's biography for the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. In the course of my research over the last five years, I have gained a deeper appreciation of how the Pledge came about and why it stands as Mr Rajaratnam's enduring legacy to Singapore.

Before the then Foreign Minister put his mind to the wording of the Pledge in 1966, the initial idea, as envisaged by the then Education Minister Ong Pang Boon, was that the Pledge would be recited by students in classrooms and during flag-raising ceremonies.

The original idea arose, in fact, as a sort of administrative compromise, given the constraints of schools. It can be traced back to October 1965, shortly after Singapore's separation from Malaysia. The Education Ministry wanted to inculcate national consciousness and patriotism among students in schools by assembling them for a flag-raising ceremony to the strains of the National Anthem. However, the mass singing of the anthem, to be accompanied by a brass band, required a large field or assembly hall. Many schools lacked such facilities. Even those with the facilities could not carry out the flag-raising ceremony daily because of the tight curriculum.

In a letter dated Oct 20, 1965, Mr Willie Cheng, the Ministry of Education's principal assistant secretary (administration), proposed that the flag-raising ceremonies be carried out in the classroom instead, where students would salute the flag. In a response dated Oct 22, 1965, Mr Kwan Sai Kheong, acting permanent secretary and director of education, wrote that Mr Ong had suggested, as a compromise, a pledge of two to three lines to be recited in the classroom, in place of singing the national anthem.

On that basis, two earlier versions of the Pledge were produced.

The first, dated Dec 17, 1965, was by Mr Philip Liau, adviser on textbooks and syllabuses. He used the American Students' Pledge as a reference: 'I pledge (reaffirm) my allegiance (loyalty) to the Flag of Singapore, and to the country for which it stands; one sovereign nation of many freedom-loving people of one heart, one mind and one spirit, dedicated to a just and equal society.'

The second version, dated Dec 30, 1965, by Mr George Thomson, director of the Political Study Centre, read: 'I proudly and wholeheartedly pledge my loyalty to our flag of Singapore and to the honour and independence of our Republic whose banner it is. We come from different races, religions and cultures, but we are now united in mind and heart as one nation, and one people, dedicated to build by democratic means a more just and equal society.'

Both versions were submitted to Mr Ong on Jan 26, 1966. His senior staff preferred the first version, considering it shorter and less abstract.

It was no surprise that Mr Ong then turned to Mr Rajaratnam, a master stylist known for his strong convictions on building a common national identity. In a letter to Mr Rajaratnam dated Feb 2, 1966, Mr Ong asked him for comments on the two versions and for 'whatever amendments you wish to suggest'.

By the time Mr Rajaratnam reverted with his earliest draft dated Feb 18, 1966, the Pledge was completely transformed. While the first two versions were all about pledging loyalty to the flag and country, Mr Rajaratnam's was about pledging to shared ideals, to a vision of Singapore that was, to his mind, worth fighting and dying for.

And while the first two versions used the personal pronoun 'I', Mr Rajaratnam opted for the collective 'We, as citizens of Singapore'. Defying the evidence before his eyes, he imagined a nation pulsating as one people. Only he would have the boldness to envision a people giving voice to such ideals in unison, declaring their identity as 'citizens of Singapore', as opposed to 'the Malays', 'the Chinese', 'the Indians' and so on.

More profoundly, he changed the entire premise for the Pledge as originally conceived by the Education Ministry. It was not just a few lines to be recited to the flag. It was a promise made to oneself, to each other and to future generations.

Mr Rajaratnam's earliest draft which we have on record went: 'We, as citizens of Singapore, pledge to forget differences of race, language and religion and become one united people; to build a democratic society where justice and equality will prevail, and where we will seek happiness and progress by helping one another.'

When he wrote 'to forget differences of race, language and religion', it was not a call for collective amnesia. He was not enjoining the people to deny their differences. He was calling on them to disregard these differences in their quest for a Singaporean Singapore. As his speeches during that period show, he was not blind to the fact that these differences were deeply rooted. On the contrary, he was all too conscious of their potency after the trauma of the racial riots in 1964 and the Separation in 1965.

He was subjected to repeated reminders of the emotive power of appeals to these differences. During the years of merger, he was the strongest advocate for a Malaysian Malaysia, as opposed to a Malay Malaysia. Indeed, it was he who coined the slogan 'Malaysian Malaysia'.

What he did not foresee was that Singapore would be expelled. The Separation in 1965 was, as he put it, 'the crushing of my dreams'. 'I believed in one nation, regardless of race and religion. My dreams were shattered,' he said. In the wake of that agonising moment came another test.

Shortly after the Separation, a group of Chinese chauvinists, aware that their community now constituted 75 per cent, wanted Chinese language and culture to be the dominant consideration in government policy. Mr Rajaratnam recounted: 'They charged the PAP government with betraying Chinese language and culture. They believed that, in a predominantly Chinese Singapore, where the Chinese had overwhelming strength, the Government could be panicked into opting for Chinese chauvinism.'

The minorities, particularly the Malays, were fearful of what Singapore would be like.

When Mr Rajaratnam wrote his first draft of the Pledge, asking people to 'forget their differences', it was in the context of such anxious times. Disregard these differences of race, language and religion; do not let them stand in the way of becoming a united people, to the dream of creating a Singaporean Singapore, where justice and equality will prevail. Help one another to seek happiness and progress. Do this regardless of race, language or religion, we are implicitly urged.

This ideal permeates many of his speeches on the topic at the time. Indeed, he was the first minister to use the phrase 'unity in diversity' in the 1960s, enjoining people to come together while celebrating the diversity among them.

From available records, we can ascertain that the Pledge - as is used today - was finalised in July 1966. There is unfortunately a gap in the historical records on the revisions between Mr Rajaratnam's first draft, dated Feb 18, 1966, and the final one. But knowing how he worked and liked to work, in his days as a journalist as well as a politician, he would have refined it along the way, taking into account various views. As part of this process, he consulted the then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

According to Mr Lee's recollection, as related in an interview with me, he had pointed out to Mr Rajaratnam that some words sounded too idealistic. Mr Lee also tightened the draft.

Unlike the Singapore flag which was discussed in the Cabinet in 1959, there is no record of any discussion in Cabinet on the Pledge. A search of the Cabinet minutes of meetings and papers in 1965 and 1966 revealed nothing on it. From this and available records, one can conclude that the final version was firmed up between individual ministers with input from Ministry of Education officials.

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that the final words, spirit and sentiments of the Pledge owed much to Mr Rajaratnam. Mr Lee rightly described him as 'a great idealist'. He was also a great visionary. Without such qualities, the Pledge would not have been the imaginative leap that it was. He had great faith in the power of the human will to overcome the differences of race, language, and religion, and to transform the separate communities into a nation.

After Mr Rajaratnam left the Cabinet in 1988, he became concerned with policies which appeared to encourage Singaporeans to assert their communal identities. In 1990, he spoke up against what he perceived as a dangerous form of Chinese self-assertion in the Speak Mandarin campaign.

While making clear that he supported the campaign just as he would for others encouraging people to speak 'Malay, Tamil, French, Japanese, or even better English', he took issue with the campaign's slogan 'if you are Chinese, make a statement - in Mandarin'.

This, for the nervous minorities, would carry the subliminal message that the Chinese are different, he warned. Had he been asked, he would have suggested this slogan instead: 'Make a Singaporean statement in Mandarin.'

Such episodes underscored the importance of Mr Rajaratnam's role as the keeper of the faith, a role which few others could play with equal conviction. He became an institution as a protector of the vision in the national Pledge - his enduring legacy to Singapore.

The writer is a Member of Parliament and writer-in-residence at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Iseas). The first volume of Mr S. Rajaratnam's two-part biography will be published by Iseas by early next year.