LKY

To every Singaporean, he was simply known as LKY — although to his last breath, he enjoyed the honorific title of “minister-mentor.”

He was an awesome paternalistic figure in the city-state he founded, a stern but benign presence constantly looking after the values that made Singapore what it is today. He was a beloved despot who believed that a “Chinese society” can only be ruled with firmness.

Lee Kuan Yew openly wept when breaking from the newly formed Malaysian Federation became inevitable 50 years ago. The tears were not for love of the other states that constituted the Federation. The tears were likely brought on by the thought that Singapore was now entirely his responsibility as the city set forth on an uncertain future.

Singapore then was a mess. Race riots broke out with regularity. Criminal syndicates ruled. Smugglers thought this port their haven.

The island state had no water. It had no agriculture to speak of. It had no defense capability. It was, as LKY described it, a predominantly Chinese island amidst a Malay sea, vulnerable to the shifting sands of geopolitics.

LKY did not shirk from the challenge, did not turn from the responsibility. He made himself fully accountable for Singapore’s future.

There was to be no rule by an anonymous committee, no such thing as a chain of command that pushes accountability downwards instead of towards the top. LKY took all responsibility for what would come out of this bold venture into nationhood.

The first tasks, he thought, was to bring order to his chaotic city-state and build a strong civic ethic that would make a modern meritocracy work. He immediately went to war with the criminal gangs, shut the door on smuggling and corruption. If Singapore were to somehow collapse, it will not be because of its own decadence.

LKY set the tone and fashioned the vision. He created a system that rewards the best and the brightest. He produced the first government of its sort: better remunerated than the private companies because governance was always the higher responsibility.

LKY’s vision was really, at bottom, a business plan. It sought to transform Singapore’s weaknesses into its strengths. It defined its competitive advantages and oriented its economic plans to those. It invested in talent, knowing that the emerging global economy was going to be talent-driven.

LKY was a man of few words. He did not quote his mother when in difficult straits nor titillate citizens with rumors of his latest love interest. Here was a man who let his actions speak for themselves. Only achievement impressed him.

In a generation, Singapore rose from a backwater port at the bottom of the pirate-infested Malacca Strait into a First World economy with among the highest per capita incomes.

It is not enough to call LKY, who passed away yesterday, a tough leader. He was a nation-builder. He was a statesman in the finest sense of that word.

Vacant

Meanwhile, in our own backwater, we labor with all the pains of a Third World society, including a government constantly missing and a presidency unwilling to accept accountability.

Today, scores of senior government posts remain vacant, the result of a beleaguered political leadership seemingly incapable of multi-tasking. Among the vacancies are the seats in the Commission on Elections (Comelec), a vital agency that should be in the midst of feverish preparations for the next electoral contest.

Comelec should contract out two things before the next elections to ensure the reliability of automated polls. The first is to rehabilitate and refurbish the 83,000 PCOS machines in the poll body’s warehouses. The second is to purchase about 5,000 PCOS machines to ensure that queues will be short and the voting process more efficient.

The first thing, contracting out the rehab of existing machines, the poll body successfully accomplished. Without much ado, and with haste others might call indecent, the Comelec awarded the contract to Smartmatic before Chairman Sixto Brilliantes and two other commissioners retired last month. Being the original purveyors of the equipment to be rehabilitated, this seemed logical.

Rival firms tried to win a TRO from the Supreme Court to stop this deal. The petition was junked by the tribunal and the deal is probably done.

Bidding for the larger contract for the supply of 25,000 new machines, with the Comelec at only half-strength, ran into some trouble. The two bidders were declared “unresponsive” to the requirements of the bidding exercise.

Smartmatic is appealing its exclusion. The company was disqualified because it put in dashes instead of peso amounts for certain items in the bid document. It turns out, the company was offering to supply these items for free and thus the absence of price quotes in the spaces provided for them (with dashes to indicate “zero”). Consequently, Smartmatic’s bid of P1.72 billion is about a third lower than the P2.5 billion ceiling set by the poll agency.

The other bidder appears to have more serious flaws in its bid offer. It now appears that Indra engaged in misrepresentation to beef up its credentials as a purveyor of automated elections equipment. It claimed to have supplied equipment to other countries that, in fact, had not shifted to automated balloting. It also turns out that Indra is under investigation in Spain for an assortment of issues relating to business practices.

Because the two major bidders for electoral equipment have a demonstrated propensity for opposing bid decisions when they lose, a characteristic particularly true in the case of Indra, it will be best that a full commission decides on this crucial contract. It is funny to say a half-filled commission decides en banc.