June 22 2001

In the island state, many hands make elite work

Eric Ellis Singapore

SINGAPORE officials are at pains to insist there is no conspiracy between the Government and the government-owned companies that comprise as much as 60 per cent of the island state's economy.

The officials' big PR problem is that few people outside highly planned Singapore believe their claims.

Non-Singaporeans such as Australian executives Geoff Dixon and Kerry Stokes see these entreaties as protesting too much at best, and threats to national security at worst.

It's easy to understand the scepticism. The relationship between the Singapore Government and its public companies is so tight as to be symbiotic.

Singapore's cosy system starts with the premier political family. Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew is chairman of the secretive state company the Government Investment Corporation. His son Lee Hsien Loong runs the quasi-central bank and is Deputy Prime Minister.

Hsien Loong's wife, Ho Ching, runs the government-owned Singapore Technologies, which owns the national land bank, makes weapons and controls the nation's second telephone carrier.

The number one carrier is SingTel, 78 per cent owned by Temasek, the other state investment company. Its CEO is Lee Hsien Yang, Lee Kuan Yew's youngest son. SingTel's chairman is Koh Boon Hwee, soon to be chairman of Singapore Airlines.

A former public servant, Koh is also a director of Temasek, one of his 47 boards, and even sits on a government board that makes recommendations on how many boards Singaporeans can sit on.

The boards of Singapore Airlines and SingTel are littered with current or ex-government officials.

The former head of Singapore's secret police, Tjong Yik Min, is a Singapore Airlines director, as well as chairing the Government's aviation regulator. He is also executive director of the government-linked media near-monopoly, where Singapore Airlines boss Cheong Choong Kong is also a director.

The head of Singapore's defence force is a director of SingTel. His predecessor was on the Singapore Airlines board and is now a senior executive of the carrier.

Singapore is south-east Asia's richest state, and like a maturing teenager, it is finding home too limited for its soaring ambition. It wants to take the Singapore model abroad, to Australia, the country Lee Kuan Yew once warned would be the "white trash of Asia".

And it wants to do it with the model intact.

Conflicts of interest? In Australia, almost certainly. But in Singapore, it is the system.