~ By Kumaran Pillai ~
In an exclusive interview with TOC, Dr Vincent
Wijeysingha lets his hair down and speaks candidly about himself, his outlook,
his believes and he has a message to his supporters and well-wishers. He was
grinning ear to ear especially while answering questions 2 & 3. And he
looked serious and uncompromising when he talked about the issues and the
message he wanted to convey to his supporters. He spoke about the communitarian
versus the individual model and how sometimes the individual alone cannot cope
with the stresses in life and hence would need the support of the state.
He said
that fiscal prudence was necessary but should not be at the expense of thousands
of people being disenfranchised and left behind to fend for themselves.
His model of economics and social justice
resonates well with what most modern thinkers believe, to implement policies
that are fiscally conservative yet socially liberal. He speaks of citizens as
stakeholders as opposed to thinking of them as economic digits. He sees people,
young and old, male or female, the educated and the less fortunate as assets and
needless to say, he has very good people skills and an infectious smile.
But, these are things that we already know about
him. So I asked him questions that were rather inquisitive and personal.
However, he said he will share his personal journey face to face with anyone who
comes by his office. Below are some of his answers and the values he upholds. I
have a feeling that I have not asked him all the questions yet. At least for
now, that’ll be my excuse for another story another time.
| KP: | An insane schedule, smiling all the time and being recognized – so,
how has life been since May 2011? |
| VW: | It's gratifying to be recognized for what I do and for what I represent. My main experience has been with people contacting me to help them with regards to the bureaucratic brick wall they run into. They call me regarding the everyday issues and challenges that they face. It is sad to see so many people feel disenfranchised that they need a spokesperson. They need someone who can serve them with a smile and that's what been keeping me busy. |
| KP: | You have a PhD, you're eloquent and incredibly smart. What do you say
to people who are intimidated by your presence? |
| VW: | After doing my PhD in 2002, I realized that, what I know is very little compared to the infinite knowledge of the world. It is very nice to be told that I am eloquent; I am not going to pretend that it is not. I like reading and I like literature. I enjoy the written word and I enjoy using it in my speech. It continues to surprise me that anybody would be intimidated by me. I like people and I like talking to people, just chatting away. So when people don't talk to me so openly, I take it that they don't want to share their personal stories with me. But, I guess I need to work on that aspect. |
| KP: | Do you see yourself as a charismatic, motivational or an
organizational leader? |
| VW: | This is a trick question. I have always been inspired by charismatic speakers
and I suppose it also goes back to my love for writing and language. It's always
a pleasure to hear someone speak so well and at times I try to emulate them. I
do a lot of social work by profession and I need to do a lot of motivational
speeches in the course of my work. I need to talk to people, guide them and kinda show them the way out of their problems. As for being an organizational leader, I am becoming a better organizer than I used to be. It all comes down to juggling time; there is so much to do and so little time to do it in. I have learnt how to work smart and learnt all the techniques of organizing a team. So I suppose I have elements of all of those three in my makeup. But, if I have to choose one, then, I would rather choose to be an organizational man cos that is what I need to do to build the party to take it forward. |
| KP: | You are an activist, a politician and a lecturer. Where do you find
the time to chill with your friends? |
| VW: |
The reason why I am an activist and the reason why
I am a politician are because I like life. I want extend the benefits of this
life to everybody, to live life, to be dignified and to enjoy it. I have not
abrogated my own life for this and I still preserve my space to enjoy life.
Sometimes, like what I said earlier, it comes down to time management. I take
time off to refresh and renew myself, otherwise things can become stale. I
sometimes meditate and try to relax so that I can remain focused.
|
| KP: | How many books have you read and what kinda books do you
read? |
| VW: | One reads in different ways, some for work, some for pleasure, and some for
information. Sometimes you skim read, or speed read for particular information,
or hone straight in on a particular topic. So it’s difficult to estimate how
many books one has read.
I grew up reading books. My father has a huge
bookshelf and when I was in kindergarten I used to take book down and pore over
them, looking at the pictures. I remember my first history book, called The
Tides of History. Essentially it was a coffee table book so lots of
pictures which I would look at even before I could read the text.
Another prize possession in the home was an
autographed copy of Jawaharlal Nehru’s autobiography I tried to read that even
when I was very young but of course the prose proved too dense for me.
So essentially I was always reading. Difficult to
count how many books I’ve read over the years but lots I suppose.
I tend to read biographies; theoretical stuff on
economics and the other social sciences; social work, of course since that is my
field. There’s a few novelists I like: Robertson Davies who was Canadian; Iris
Murdoch; Murakami. I have devoured everything that Alfian Sa’at has written: he
has a genius’s take on life. I also read all the Hannibal Lecter ones by Sam
Harris.
I like poetry, well, some poetry. Egveny
Evtushenko is a favourite poet, he’s Russian, so read in translation; Alvin
Pang; Lee Tsu Pheng is very haunting.
I have read lots of books on histories e.g.
Freedom at Midnight, which is about Indian independence; books onb the great
crash of 1929; The Fajar Generation and all the other Singaporean
histories.
On religion; Philosophy of ethics, of being. Currently I’m reading a book on
Sufism (Muslim mysticism) and the autobiography of Christopher Hitchens, the
noted anti-religionist. Variety, as they say…
My cousin, who is Australian but recently posted
by his company to Singapore, gave me some interesting books in the pop
psychology/history genre which I am also browsing through at the
moment.
|
| KP: | You are always quoting someone or some little trivia about politics.
Where do you get all that information from and how do you store this info in
your head? |
| VW: | Well, I suppose it comes back to my interest in history, which was ignited by
my father’s bookshelf. He was a historian, in fact has written a fairly wide
range of history texts: so his bookshelf was filled with history. I also love
language and so I remember great prose.
I am a master of useless information: little bits
of historical and biographical trivia seep into my head and lodge there. It’s
interesting, isn’t it, what we know about the neurological basis of knowledge
acquisition and retention now shows that we grow our knowledge in networks of
patterns rather than in a linear fashion. This means that one’s information,
useless of otherwise, grows exactly like the branches of neural networks in the
brain, propelled by electrical currents which make patterns, links and
frameworks. Perhaps this explains why people suffering dementia have good
long-term but poor short-term memory?
|
| KP: | Between teaching, politics and social activism, what is your first
love, and why? |
| VW: | I seemed to get into politics as a kind of obligation. I don’t believe
politics is something one enjoys but rather a duty that one accepts because of a
kind of inevitability. What our poor, our elderly, our disabled citizens
experience, if fact all those who have a limited contribution to make to
society, is troubling, extremely troubling. The PAP’s philosophy is a Spartan,
almost brutal one that regards such people as a drain on the system, who have no
right to make a claim to live with dignity. It is an appalling philosophy and
one that originated in the mind of Lee Kuan Yew, although thankfully he is
gradually departing the political scene. This is so despite ministers’ recent
attempts to put an acceptable gloss on their utilitarian philosophy, it has
filtered deep into the body politic.
In fact activism too was a kind of obligation. As
a young student in the UK I took part in Anti-War marches across London,
collecting signatures to stop various international excursions against tribal
peoples, supporting public sector workers who were campaigning for better
conditions for their clients. Back in Singapore, the work I did with TWC2
stemmed from a kind of mystified disbelief that people could treat domestic and
other foreign workers in the way they did.
Today I am concentrating principally on my
teaching and political work. Teaching was something I stumbled into. My father,
my aunt and myself, all teachers, at one stage said we would never be teachers
and all ended up in teaching. I enjoy teaching, I like facilitating a class to
pursue its own learning, and I like doing the research that supports
learning.
But they are none of them my ‘first’ love, as it
were. There is a marked attraction in the monastic life, the Himalayan
meditation life – and I love reading and writing – so I suspect were I to settle
down to such an existence, I might be tempted to say that would be my first
love.
|
| KP: | You have a huge fan base, what is your message to
them? |
| VW: | I think if there are people who resonate with what I say, it’s because I have
managed to articulate what lot of us, a whole generation if fact, have been
feeling for some years now, the sense of alienation, the sense of a lack of
control over the future, and a lack of cultural stimulus. Also, a deep-seated
outrage at the kind of values the government has inculcated in our community
which are so anti-humane. So to speak of a fan base may be stretching it but I think people may identify with what I say because we feel it together. My message to them and to all of Singapore is to aim for a far higher standard of human existence rather than one that is directed solely at material gains, important though they are.
And to persevere even though change appears to
take so long. Change is a slow process but it is utterly inevitable. And there
is a kind of inevitability about the struggle too: as the American intellectual,
Noam Chomsky said: If you do not work for change, then you guarantee it will
never come, but if you do, at least you allow for the possibility that it
might.
|
| KP: | This is my last question, what is your key value proposition to
skeptics? |
| VW: | Believe in the existence of worthier human attributes than those that merely
seek after material and status goods. Societies are never built on the material
alone, on the physical superstructure, but in the deep substratum of human
existence. If we ignore that, we ignore the potential for instability in the
nation. In fact history is full of examples of empires whose decline began
precisely at the point where the material came to be prioritised over everything
else. |
It was getting very hot and sticky at the
alfresco café along Bagdad Street and both of us decided to go across the road
to have Nasi Padang for lunch. There were few other little things that I learnt
about him. He is not fussy about what he eats but enjoys a good meal. But then
again, who doesn’t?
He spoke about political marketing and strategy,
about old school politics and what is no longer relevant. He said what is
necessary is to extend the core values from one segment to new segments of the
society. This was a very long discussion and so I’ll leave it at that and shall
not dwell on it any further.
After 2 ½ hours of chatting non-stop, we were
beginning to be consumed by the fear that there was no end to the topic of
politics. So, I decided to return home to pen this down, while Vincent went away
to a bookshop to fill his head with more trivia or to be politically correct
about it, more information.
Vincent turns 42 today and from all of us at TOC,
we wish him a happy birthday!
No comments:
Post a Comment