In Defence of the Establishment

This morning, I was at the ST Youthink launch at the SPH News Centre. Youthink is a forthcoming weekly section in The Straits Times featuring articles written by and for the youth of Singapore (yadda yadda). It's easy enough to sneer with cynicism at this initiative, so I'll offer a positive spin and say that the broadsheet is going out on a limb by recruiting the Youthink team from local universities and polytechnics. It's a great opportunity for the student writers to finally get behind the news that they read every day, and it's a leap of faith on the part of the paper because these students have no journalistic training.

The GOH at this event was one of our cabinet ministers. This is probably the third or fourth time I've seen him speak and field questions from a young audience, and each time, my respect and pity for him grows. Pity because less enlightened Singaporeans tend to mistake politicians for oracles. They pose spastic questions and expect detailed responses dripping with enough wisdom to live by for the rest of their lives. But really, even the most capable ministers are humans who can be caught on a blindside when prodded for an immediate answer. In such situations, the best they can do is to say nothing while giving the impression they are saying something. And this, the minister did admirably today--no mean feat in itself, hence the respect. At the end of the day, politics is as much about managing expectations as it is about actually getting things done.

The subsequent tour of the newsroom was rather poignant, given the recent termination of channel i. As we walked past the newly-disused television studio, our guide noted "this is history in the dismantling, not the making".