PN Balji on Masagos's Lee Hsien Yang slip: Let's have serious fun, and not make fun

Fun is serious business, former minister George Yeo said in 1991.

Sharp, crisp and said in all seriousness and with hardly a smile on his face.

Unfortunately, he said it in the context of making Singapore competitive. Singapore also has discovered that fun is good for business, the Los Angeles Times said when reporting on that speech.

I wished that Yeo had not given that soundbite because fun should be fun. But with one exception — it should not be done at the expense of other people, especially of people one doesn't like.

People's Action Party (PAP) man Masagos Zulkifli's e-rally speech referred to Lee Hsien Yang as "our PM''. It was an unfortunate slip of the tongue; still, people in the public eye should be extremely careful of what they say and how they say it.

I am happy to see him talk about it in a Facebook post. He was responding to his son's WhatsApp message which said: "haha omg ibak, the slip. But I think it was just another laugh-and-forget moment lah."

The father used this message to clarify: "LHY (Lee Hsien Yang) used to be my boss at Singtel."

The video of this slip has been circulating on the internet and WhatsApp messages. I have got a few. But I refused to circulate it because I believe Masagos had made an honest mistake and making a mockery of somebody who has made an honest mistake is just not right.

I have a theory why this is happening.

A huge vacuum has been created during GE2020 because politicians on both sides of the divide are not bringing up issues that Singaporeans will confront in the next couple of years.

Instead, we read and hear of mundane ones, like the 10-million population target, being whipped to death.

The Opposition, maybe without realising it, are falling into PAP's trap by responding to the accusations and defending themselves. And the cycle continues.

We have to ask ourselves what kind of society we want to build. Surely not one that gets a sadistic pleasure in making fun of our citizens and guests.

Academic Donald Low took the words from my mouth when he said: "…most of the debates we are having in this GE are as if the pandemic never occurred."

He gave a new dimension to the population debate saying the pandemic has made the "planning parameter for 2030 irrelevant."

In the post-pandemic world, Singapore's reliance on foreigners will almost certainly shrink.

The problem Singapore is likely to face after the pandemic is how it adapts its economic model, he said.

Now that is one big topic we should be having a conversation about, he added.

But if you want to still have fun, look at this cartoon, titled A Spokesperson Is Behind The Couch. It shows a couple talking about how many cats they should have.

The lady says: "We can't have 10 cats in this house." The man replies: "I never said we are getting 10 cats." And a cat lurking behind chips in: "Have you no integrity?"

This is what I call serious fun. Most of the ones I see are of the cheap variety.

PN Balji is a veteran Singaporean journalist who was formerly chief editor of Today and The New Paper. He is the author of the book Reluctant Editor and is currently a media consultant. The views expressed are his own.

editor@asiaone.com