A Recount from Mr Wong Kan Seng’s Journey in MINDEF and My Afterthoughts

During the MINDEF Manpower Division 50th Anniversary Dinner , Former Deputy Prime Minister Mr Wong Kan Seng was invited to share some of his experiences he had in the ten years while in MINDEF. Little would most know that before his illustrious career in political office, Mr Wong took up important positions in MINDEF as the Director Manpower and later Deputy Secretary in 1981.

Mr Wong’s speech resounded strongly with me and reaffirmed my belief in the value of Public Service as a career of choice. As a young officer, I do not often hear convincing first hand accounts of the early challenges Singapore faced other than through TV documentaries. Reading through LKY’s biographies shed high level insights which again was insufficient to gratify my appreciation of the challenges. Mr Wong Kan Seng, however, articulated very clearly on the difficult environment in his tenure with MINDEF and shared from a policy perspective on the actions taken to overcome these challenges.

I saw the value in his sharing and felt that all Singaporeans out there should hear (or read) about them as well. I subsequently asked Mr Wong Kan Seng for his permission to share his message. (And he said yes!) Below is a collection of the notes taken during his sharing as well as some of my reflections on them.

On the early challenges of instituting National Service (NS) …

Youth reporting for national service on Aug 30, 1967 (Picture from Straits Times)

Things were not as rosy as now back then in the early days of Singapore achieving independence. One of the early challenges in 1966 was structuring National Service and convincing Singaporeans of the need for NS. Mr Wong shared the Chinese phrase , “好鐵不打釘, 好男不當兵”, meaning one would not use good metal to fashion nails just as you would not send a good son to be a soldier. It was difficult in convincing citizens of the importance of defence, when parents would not want their sons to become soldiers. Another difficulty faced was developing publicly defensible NS policies which would exhibit consistency and fairness, when it comes to deferment and exemption for NS-liable men.

(My Afterthoughts: One can easily imagine the policy tensions back then in the days before the term Committment to Defence (C2D) was even coined. The public sentiments of NS was poor and people perhaps would want to seek ways of to escape NS. The policy environment is also tough because National Service was something so new that the public service had no experience with. It is also worthy to take a quick pause and reflect about the recent case of nonchalance towards NS, and whether they have lost touch of the basis of NS. )

“Would young boys be liable for NS if their whole family renounce their citizenship and migrate? Or should the only son who was working to support the family be called up for NS? What should be done about Jehovah’s Witness who refused to serve NS?”

On Dr Goh Keng Swee’s concerns of complacency in SAF…

Mr Wong commented on how fortunate he was to have worked under the late Dr Goh Keng Swee. He had the opportunities to observe how Dr Goh made decisions in meetings. Mr Wong also added that Dr Goh was worried about Singapore Armed Forces becoming complacent in the future and one day eventually losing their alertness and fighting spirit.

With that, Mr Wong quoted Goh Keng Swee’s speech in an SAF Promotion Ceremony in 1973.

“The desire to be popular and to be liked by people is a natural human feeling. It is also natural to want to avoid causing to others the pain and suffering which punishment involves. If we bring up the army guided entirely by these decent human feelings, what we will get is what Sun Tze called “a collection of spoilt children utterly useless for war.”

“If we bring up the army guided entirely by these decent human feelings, what we will get is what Sun Tze called “a collection of spoilt children utterly useless for war”- Dr Goh Keng Swee

On the challenges with Vietnamese boat people in 1975 …

A Vietnamese refugee boat overloaded with passengers. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, an exodus of refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia took place all over South East Asia

Mr Wong recounted his involvement in the 1975 Vietnamese boat people operation, code-named Operation Thunderstorm. The mass exodus of Vietnamese refugees was a difficult issue to handle for a resource and land scarce Singapore. Over 5,100 refugees arrived in Singapore in a short span of days from the evening of 2 May 1975. As the Director of Operation, Mr Wong coordinated among the three services as well as MINDEF to deal with the tough situation on hand. Given the chaotic and desperate nature of the refugees, the navy and maritime police did their best in meeting their needs while confining them on their boats. Mr Wong recalled the instructions handed down from Dr Goh — since the final destination of the refugees was not Singapore, I was to organise the resources and coordinate the efforts to supply food, water, fuel , fix their boat engines if necessary, and not to allow them to land in Singapore except for medical emergency, so that they could move to their next destination. The Air Force was deployed to spot refugee boats heading for Singapore while the Navy directed these vessels to anchor at the Eastern Anchorages (South of East Coast Park). The engineers and technicians helped to check that the ships were sea worthy for onward journey. Commandos were stationed on boats with trouble makers. Mr Wong also shared special cases how the officers had to deal with grenade explosion caused by a refugee during the boarding by officers. In the end, 60 plus refugee boats with more than 8,300 refugees left Singapore waters by 13 May 1975.

(My Afterthoughts: I believe that Operation Thunderstorm is not a particular part of history that young Singaporeans will appreciate or even know much about (Our Social Studies textbook didnt put much emphasis on it, i remember). Through the details articulated by Mr Wong, it was clear enough for me to visualise the chaos and mayhem in containing 8,300 refugess for 11 days out at sea. Lets remember that these are the days when handphones, Whatsapp and Telegram were not invented. This made coordination of such a massive operation extremely complex when it straddles across so many government agencies.

From a policy perspective, Singapore has managed to find a tough balance between the humanitarian rights of the refugees and its constraints of a land-scarce country. I feel very heartened that Singapore did not leave them to the lurch but instead, supplied them with the necessary food and water and even to the extent of repairing the boats! Many years ago, I had a chat with a fellow grassroots leader in the National Community Leadership Institute (NACLI) who happens to be one of the crews onboard to have dealt with the Vietnamese refugees. He shared with me how debilitating the conditions of the boats were with overloaded refugees, and how he aided by throwing over Maggi Mee and mineral water over to them. Both Mr Wong’s recount from a policy perspective and the volunteer’s operational recount really helped me appreciate the gravity of the situation then.

If you can recall, this case was very similar to what happened in 5 December 2012, where a Vietnamese cargo ship was refused entry to Singapore as they were carrying Rohingya refugees from the Rakhine state. Again, Singapore articulated the same principles as we doe not have the resources in managing an exodus of refugees. Singapore does not have the luxury of space like how Europe is managing the Syrian refugees that had entered the borders. And even so, Europe is showing signs of struggling with keeping the refugees and it will not be long before the country’s infrastructure/ social spending become strained. )

On the way ahead…

In conclusion, Mr Wong highlighted the future challenges that MINDEF and SAF will face which includes low birth rates and greying population. Terrorism has also made the global security landscape more complex then before. However, with confidence in the future, Mr Wong believed that there lies opportunities for policy innovation and how technology can be leveraged in public engagement and service delivery.

“Amidst these challenges lie opportunities for policy innovation”

Please do share if you feel that this note has given you another perspective of the challenges that we had faced and overcome. I know we are past SG50 celebrations but given Total Defence Day is near the corner, perhaps it is just the right time to share some Singapore stories. Hope you have enjoyed reading :)