Was the Hong Lim Park protest xenophobic?

I have had a very interesting chat with a dear friend in Singapore who has informed me of the fall out from Gilbert Goh's highly controversial article on his website which has been hastily removed - but there are cached copies of this unfortunate article which have been circulating on the internet. I read it and of course, it was ill conceived and I wasn't quite sure what Gilbert Goh was trying to achieve with that article - in any case, it had clearly misfired, big time. The timing of the article couldn't have been more unfortunate as it went viral one day before the 16th February event at Hong Lim Park. Goodness me. Aiyoh. Some people were so enraged by his article they accused Gilbert Goh of being xenophobic and hence the event was accused of being a xenophobic, anti-foreigner event by some.

I've been aware of Gilbert Goh's work with Transitioning.org for a while and I have mixed feelings about his work. Now I know his heart is in the right place and this is a man trying to help others - that's a great start and dear readers, let's not ever forget that. I think that his motivations are truly noble and I salute anyone with that kind of charitable spirit, to want to do something constructive to help those who are running out of hope and options. However, once we get past that, good grief, I can start to find loads of problems in his approach and ethos.

He has given a lot of rather bad advice and this is something which irks me - after all, this is a self-appointed position, where Gilbert Goh has effectively nominated himself to be in a position to give advice to others who are dealing with problems seeking employment. We don't know what his qualifications are in the recruitment or HR industry and he doesn't divulge that information on his website. I don't dispute the fact that his intentions are noble - but if you are trying to help others when you simply don't have the relevant skills, qualifications and training, then how are you supposed to be a part of the solution? I certainly see the value for those who need a listening ear (or a shoulder to cry on) to have someone to turn to, but after seeing the kind of (sometimes really bad) advice Gilbert Goh has been giving out publicly (and one can only guess what he says in private), I am left wondering if this man has bitten off way more than he can chew? Is it a case of the blind leading the blind?

The blind leading the blind?

Let's look at this ill conceived article he wrote - it was shocking. It wasn't just xenophobic, if you employ sweeping generalisations on that scale, you are engaging in out-and-out racism. I suppose he thought it was funny or at least tongue in cheek - he didn't realize how badly it would have gone down. Do I think Gilbert Goh is xenophobic? Yes I do. Do I think that he is racist? Yes, he probably is - but then again, so are many Singaporeans. Good grief, the amount of racism I've seen directed against PRCs, Filipinos and Indonesians on social media on the part of Singaporeans - it is unreal. Singaporeans are incredibly racist and it's not just in private, they are racist in social media and do not think twice about making extremely racist remarks online. I was so enraged by this that I had to name and shame many racist Singaporeans over the Rohingya refugee scandal last year. 

By that token, yes Gilbert Goh is guilty of racism and xenophobia - but then again, he's pretty typical. Would he have written such an article if he knew that people were going to react so negatively against it? Of course not, he only went down that road because he thought he was writing something that people would agree with and enjoy reading. Was I offended? I suppose I was somewhat offended, but after having seen Gilbert Goh's writing before, I simply rolled by eyes and said, "here we go again, this guy has foot in mouth syndrome. When will he get someone to read his awful writing before publishing crap like that? Does he realize just how bad his English is? Can he write in Chinese instead? Does he realize what an awful writer he is? Someone please tell him to stop writing crap like that please."

Gilbert Goh doesn't speak on behalf of everyone who was there. 

Gilbert Goh has a pretty poor command of English - it's pretty appalling. Here's the kind of sentence he would come up with (taken from their website) : "This event is also not targetting against foreigners but more on the policy of the population boost." Okay, I can understand what he is trying to say but it is hardly proper English. I would write, "The organizers of the event have nothing against foreigners, rather we want to challenge the logic of increasing the population to 6.9 million." Goh uses pretty typical Singlish - which is perfectly fine amongst friends or in social media, but is hardly the kind of English employers would expect from their employees (oh the irony). If Goh wanted to go down the Singlish route on his website, then fine - let's see the lahs, lohs, alamaks, tolongs and aiyohs please: but no, none of these typical Singlish words are present on his website. It does seem that he does want to use standard English but has clearly refused to use the grammar check function on his computer to iron out the problems with his rather bad English. Is that simply laziness? Or is he oblivious to the fact that his grammar is sibeh salah? Aiyoh, talk about blind spot, Limpeh tell you hah, ini maciam bochup anyhow write Engrish one lagi malu lah alamak. See? When Limpeh wants to go into Singlish mode, I make it very clear to the reader that I'm switching to Singlish.

Okay, so Gilbert Goh's English sucks big time, he gives out bad advice at times but should we tell him to "shut up and sit down" just because he doesn't live up to our expectations of a worthy community leader? I think that's going a bit too far. I studied the work of Indian philosopher Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak at university and one of her most interesting work was on the voices of the subaltern in history. Basically, Spivak noted that in history, we know plenty about the lives of kings and emperors, great men in history from Alexander The Great to Julius Caesar to Genghis Khan to Qin Shi Huang have had their lives well documented - but little is known about the lives of ordinary people like farmers, peasants and servants. Spivak noted that the female subaltern (eg. the wife of a peasant) had no voice, she was probably illiterate then so she would have lived and died and left little record of her life. This was because those who were recording history then were not interested in the lives of such people - so we have little information about the kind of lives these female subalterns led centuries ago.

Should we care what these people think about the situation?

By that token, one could argue that the voices people like Gilbert Goh (poor English skills notwithstanding) are a vital part in sociology, we need to record the attitudes and experiences of the Singaporean subaltern (including older uncles who can't speak proper English, cannot articulate themselves eloquently but still have something to say) - we should not silence or censor the sublatern. And sure, there are plenty of xenophobic and racist people in Singapore - that's the ugly truth and we shouldn't pretend that such bigotry doesn't exist in our society. Rather, we should record it, acknowledge its presence, so we can start to deal with it. After all, surely poor language skills should not be any excuse to impede one's freedom of expression or indeed as Gilbert Goh has done, provide a record of a certain kind of bigotry that is prevalent in our society. No one should tell Gilbert Goh to shut up, if you don't like what he says - by all means, criticize him, engage him, tell him what you think, argue with him, quarrel with him, insult him if you must but do not silence or censor him.

There are those who criticized Gilbert Goh's article to be xenophobic and offensive and they went a step further - one day before the 16th February Hong Lim Park protest, Goh's ill-judged article went viral and suddenly, Goh became a xenophobe, his organisation became xenophobic and by association, his cause became xenophobic and anyone associated with that event risked being labelled xenophobic. Oh dear. This puts me in a very difficult situation because my regular readers will know how strongly I feel about xenophobia and how much I hate Singaporeans who are xenophobic! On the other hand, I do feel very strongly that the PAP is making a terrible mistake with this 6.9 million plan and I wanted to support any effort by any organisation to send a message to the PAP about this mistake. This puts someone like me in a very difficult position - can we someone find a way to be anti-PAP without being xenophobic?

Can we talk about the figures without being xenophobic?

The answer is yes, we can. Let's be very specific about why we reject the PAP's 6.9 million plan - the solution is simple. Singaporeans should not say no to immigration or foreign talents - but the bar needs to be set very, very high so you only accept quality migrants who have something to contribute to local economy, such as Eduardo Saverin. However, we do not need more cheap labour from places like the Philippines and China to suppress wages for those already doing the jobs at the bottom of the food chain - these jobs can be filled by locals. These are the people at the bottom of the food chain who do not have the luxury of migrating to another country if they find themselves squeezed by this influx of cheap foreign labour - they deserve some element of protection by the government.

The issue here isn't xenophobia per se, it's more a question of opening the flood gates to anyone from China who wishes to come to Singapore and what the long term consequences are of such a big increase in population over a short space in time. Furthermore, this is a model to follow - just look at countries like Australia, the UK and Canada who implement a points-based immigration system which makes sure that unskilled, uneducated immigrants are turned away and only well educated, highly skilled migrants are allowed in. It is not rocket science, it is a system that has been used by many countries and it is bewildering why Singapore doesn't adopt a similar approach to immigration.

Some have suggested that the PAP are desperately topping up the numbers of Chinese people in Singapore, so the ratio of Malays to Chinese to Indians stays roughly the same. With birth rates falling drastically for Singaporean-Chinese, it is only a matter of time before the percentage of Chinese people fall in Singapore in this ratio - but I ask you, is that such a bad thing? Surely the alternative, to inject so many PRCs into Singapore to somehow maintain this status quo hook or by crook, surely the alternative is far worse than allowing the percentage of Chinese Singaporeans to fall to 60% or 50%? Why must this status quo be maintained? Would something terrible happen to Singapore if the percentage of Chinese-Singaporeans be allowed to fall any further? Can one have enough faith in the concept of a national identity to bring all Singaporeans together regardless of ethnicity? Or is this policy a blatant admission that we've totally failed in trying to foster a sense of national identity?

Well, we'll never find out, but something terrible is already happening already - the population has increased and is going to keep on going up. This is something Singaporeans need to contend with and deal with urgently - I'm afraid Gilbert Goh's stupid article has only sabotaged his own cause. Groan. Look, I am not xenophobic - I have lived and worked in various countries around the world as a foreign talent (hence the name of my blog!) and I have always been welcomed in all the countries I have worked in. I don't want any of you to think I am xenophobic because you think I am 'defending' Gilbert Goh per se - I'm not. Oh no. He has to pay the price for this mistake. I'm instead defending the concept of democracy and the freedom of speech. Heck, I've attacked him more than defended him in this piece. I've barely stopped short of calling him plain stupid - I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he's probably like my father, an older Singaporean who's probably more comfortable and eloquent in Mandarin than English.

The fact is, democracy is messy. Kindly accept that fact if you wish to engage with it - Gilbert Goh may have been a poor choice for any kind of spokesman on the issue (given how poor his English is, how he writes so badly and constantly puts his foot in his mouth) - but you still have to respect the fact that he is having the balls to stand up for something he believes him. In any case, he's not some kind of democratically elected representative of the people - he speaks for himself and no one else, he certainly does NOT speak on behalf of the others who turned up at the event at Hong Lim Park. Please, these people have a voice too and let's not associate them with Gilbert Goh's terrible article just because they happened to be at the same event as Gilbert Goh.

Personally, I don't like the guy much but I still feel obliged to respect him - such is the nature of democracy. It is messy and doesn't give you a convenient solution or answer to the problem at hand. Of course, Gilbert Goh has given the pro-PAP supporters a convenient excuse to discredit him just before the event - but Goh needs to concede that he shouldn't have published that stupid article in the first place. It was a terrible, stupid mistake on his part. However, we need to also divorce Gilbert Goh from the event - there were over 3000 protesters at the event, Goh was but one of those people, let's remember the voices and sentiments of the others who were there too. Let's remember what they said and why they took part in the event, rather than get caught up in this Gilbert Goh bashing frenzy. This is just a distraction from the real purpose of why we're engaging in this issue: democracy.

Finally, I hope Gilbert Goh has learnt his lesson from this episode and will refrain from writing such inflammatory articles in the future. It was a painful lesson for him to learn but such is the messy nature of democracy. Gilbert, if you're ever in doubt, at least get someone else to read your article before you publish it and cause another shit storm like that. Heck, I'll even be glad to proof read your articles for you (and correct your bad English) before you publish them. And I'm offering this because I believe what you're doing is ultimately good for democracy and people should never be told to "shut up and sit down" even if they have made a terrible mistake like you have.

What do you think about the issue? Feel free to leave a comment below, thanks.