MAY 29

MAY 29, 2003
Contradiction at the heart of S'pore system

WHAT does culling cats have to do with breeding entrepreneurs? More than meets the eye, when you think about it.

To begin with, the two national drives hogging the limelight this week both stem from paranoia: one from the Sars scare and the other from the most depressing economic crisis here in recent memory.

The hunt is officially on for stray cats padding around hawker centres; and for would-be entrepreneurs to help revive the faltering economy. The first, a witch-hunt for felines, has incited a fierce Save The Cats civic uprising of a magnitude seldom seen here.

Every day, The Straits Times Forum page receives a litter of letters which hiss, mew and decry this latest cat-culling effort as part of a larger cleanliness campaign.

In an unprecedented show of indignation, initiative and ingenuity, animal-rights activists from the Cat Welfare Society to Animal Lovers League are staging what appears to be the most organised public protest since Chek Jawa.

They are purring like engines of industry, raising capital, running themselves ragged rescuing strays from the streets, taking them home one by one, or mustering logistics to transport them en masse to the safety of animal shelters in Malaysia.

A fur-flying cat fight appears to be unfurling.

The second, a man-hunt for entrepreneurs, evoked much less of a whimper when it launched an Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) on Monday.

Though pitched as a 'community movement', the group which culled together over 20 business luminaries from diverse industries, will be headed by Singapore's new 'entrepreneurship minister' Raymond Lim, whose formal designation is Minister of State for Trade and Industry.

The announcement led many, including BBC correspondent David Bottomley, to point out the incongruity of trying to foster entrepreneurial spirit through yet another government-led initiative, backed no less by a high-level multi-agency public sector secretariat.

In an interview with Mr Lim on Tuesday, the British journalist asked point-blank: 'But the fact that you are a member of ACE, that you are leading it, resonates with this sense of official control and bureaucracy, and surely that has been one of the barriers in the past to creating entrepreneurial spirit in Singapore.'

Mr Lim's defence was that he was the only one in ACE who is a member of the Government and all the others hark from the private sector. 'Any time when they are ready, they feel comfortable they can go on their own, I'll be more than happy to step down,' he said.

Yet, many wonder why, at its debut, ACE has to be helmed by a minister, instead of being the people-led movement that many had hoped for. After all, as Mr Lim told BBC, what the group is trying to change is a culture that emphasises conformity rather than challenge and what it hopes to imbue in people is a get-up-and-go philosophy.

So why not devolve the business of inspiring to the entrepreneurs themselves?

After all, the 22 members are eminently qualified and indisputably some of Singapore's shiniest success stories.

And isn't ACE pitched as a peer support group for budding businessmen, rather than a legislative body?

Spring Singapore is already the designated one-stop 'champion agency' to grow small and medium enterprises and slash red tape. There is also an Angel Matching Network scheme and Loan Insurance Scheme to help out with funding, and International Enterprise Singapore to assist with franchising and branding projects.

So why not pave the way for ACE to be an Asme (Association of Small and Medium Enterprises) but with government funding and higher profile? After all, ACE's avowed mission is to bring about societal change, encourage risk-taking, soft-sell the 'social legitimacy' of entrepreneurs and nurture a higher comfort level with failure.

What seems to be at stake is creating an entrepreneurial society, not just creating more entrepreneurs. In such an attitudinal remaking exercise, what will no doubt neuter risk-taking and innovation is top-down direction.

As such, many entrepreneurs hope the Government will practise what it preaches, lead by example and take some risks itself, by gradually - if not now - loosening control and freeing ACEs to go places on their own.

So what does culling of kittens have to do with breeding entrepreneurs? What perhaps is most instructive from the momentum of the first Save The Cats movement is that it stems from a self-driven, self-motivated groundswell of public opinion - even though its pet project right now flies in the face of the official line.

Most of all, however, it highlights the contradiction that lies at the heart of the Singapore system: On one hand is the expectation that we can have a tightly-controlled society that frowns on messiness and mows down strays at will, while on the other is the aspiration to spawn free-spirited innovation, unbridled individuality and entrepreneurial verve.

Can the two co-exist? ACE will show us in due course.