SINGAPORE — After leaving his job as an assistant director at ActiveSG in 2014, Simon Tan spent over two years chasing his dream of opening a multi-sport complex in Singapore that would appeal to the entire family.

Having met several freelance sports instructors and vendors during his time at ActiveSG, the 38-year-old wanted to open a facility that would serve as a one-stop venue for these practitioners to provide their services.

But his journey towards achieving his dream was no easy ride. He faced countless rejections and setbacks along the way, and battled constantly with self-doubt and uncertainty.

During that period, Tan, who is married with no children, was unemployed. He had to cut back on his expenses while relying on his savings to tide him through.

But on Saturday (April 8), Tan’s hard work and sacrifices finally paid off as his dream came to fruition with the official opening of The Arena.

Describing itself as a ‘football-thematic lifestyle destination’, The Arena not only boasts one 11-a-side, two seven-a-side and three five-a-side pitches on its 1.86-hectare premises, but also various fitness studios, a rock-climbing wall and a boxing gym.

It also features the first-ever Cafe Football in Asia. The football-themed restaurant franchise is a business venture between real-estate firm Rowsley Limited and former Manchester United stars Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville, who were both present at the opening of The Arena.

But while Tan may be enjoying the fruits of his labour now, he still remembers the struggles he went through to turn The Arena from a dream into reality.

“To have a facility with football fields, fitness studios and a restaurant, it meant we had to find a venue of a certain size,” Tan, who is a trained commercial pilot, told TODAY.

“But land is scarce here and for almost two years, we just couldn’t find a suitable location despite searching almost all over the country.

“It was very tough, and there were times when I was unsure if my dream could be achieved. In addition, I wasn’t gainfully employed because I was so tied up with this venture.

“So sometime in February last year, I almost threw in the towel because I felt I was being unfair to my wife and had to be a responsible husband.”

But Tan’s wife, an account director with an events company, told him not to give up.

“With that extra push from her and assurance, I decided to persevere,” he said.

“My friends – Derrick Goh and Russell Goh – who are now my partners, were also there for me throughout. Their continuous support was another key factor in helping make my dream of The Arena come true.”

BREAKTHROUGH

In April 2016, Tan had a breakthrough of sorts when he learnt that the Public Utilities Board (PUB) Recreation Club had opened up its premises for tender.

While recognising the venue as ideal for his envisioned multi-sport facility, Tan knew he would face an uphill task convincing the PUB to select his bid as he was going up against “the big players” in the property and facilities industries.

Against the odds, Tan, who roped in local footballing icon Fandi Ahmad to help him out in the conceptualisation of The Arena, won the tender.

With the venue secured, Tan and hisr partners pumped in around S$2 million in total to transform the place.

He conceded though he had not intended for The Arena to have such a heavy emphasis on football.

It was only after a meeting with Giggs and Neville  – who he counts as friends after getting to know them while working in Abu Dhabi in 2010 – that he decided to make The Arena a football-themed facility.

“We decided this would be a football-themed place only last October,” revealed the former national youth and Balestier Khalsa goalkeeper.

“It was Giggs who questioned my plans to make this a fitness hub.

“He told me to just make the place about football. After all, I’m a former footballer and the sport runs in my blood. Neville agreed, and given they’re both famous footballers and successful businessmen, I decided to follow their advice.”

Neville came here to look at the facility and was suitably impressed. The ex-England international decided then that The Arena was where he wanted to open the region’s first Cafe Football franchise.

The final piece of the puzzle complete, The Arena finally opened its doors on Jan 2 this year.

GIVING BACK

According to Tan, business has steadily increased over the past four months. Their bottom line has also been helped by securing two football schools – the JSSL Singapore academy and the Real Madrid Foundation – as their long-term clients.

One of Tan’s key aims for The Arena however, is to use the facility to give back to local football and in particular, to Singapore’s ex-internationals.

Former Lions enjoy discounts when they dine at Cafe Football, and also get free use of the football pitches at selected timings.

“There is a lack of recognition for these players who fought for the country on the pitch and gave us fans so many good times in the past,” explained Tan.

“So one of my goals wasd for these players to use and enjoy the facililty. Eventually, I want this place to be the home of the ex-Singapore internationals.

“I also try to use The Arena as a platform to give back to them in other ways. For example, one of the first people I asked to join me was (former national captain) Razali Saad, who is now our general manager.

“I’ve given business to Malek Awab (who works for a sports goods company) by buying Molten footballs (from his company) for The Arena.

“I’ve also asked Jeremy Chiang, who owns Churros Factory, to sell his products here.

“I try to help them out however I can using The Arena as a medium.”

Razali said Tan’s passion for football was a key reason for his decision to leave the shipping industry, which he has worked in for 30 years, and join The Arena.

“Simon’s dedication to the sport, and how he managed to get The Arena going, really impressed me,” said the 52-year-old.

“It wasn’t easy to leave the shipping industry after so long, but I was won over by his sincerity in wanting me to join him.”

Now that The Arena has been launched, Tan’s next goal is to ensure that the facility’s operations are well-run over the next year.

And while it may still be early days yet, he is already toying with the idea of bringing The Arena concept overseas.

“For now, I want to concentrate on perfecting the operations of this place,” said Tan.

“I want to get it up and running and eventually let it run on auto-pilot.

“Then I want to expand this to an alternative location.

“To be honest, I don’t think I can find another place like this in Singapore, so perhaps I will bring it to another country in the region.”

SINGAPORE: Singaporean Erasmus Ang will make his SEA Games debut in open water swimming this August. However, his journey was anything but straightforward and it involved the use of technology.  

In January 2016, the swimmer was recovering from a shoulder injury. The 16-year-old told Channel NewsAsia that the biennial competition had been the furthest thing from his mind. 

Little did he know that in just a year, his sporting dreams would be catalysed with the support of National Youth Sports Institute performance analyst, Ivan Ee, who stepped in to assist his coaches.

Ee taps on various types of technology to analyse Singapore’s swimmers on a daily basis. He then helps coaches come up with strategic performance plans. 

“Even now I still can’t believe I made it. I was targeting more of the Youth Olympic Games and the 2019 SEA Games,” said Ang. 

USING TECHNOLOGY TO BOOST SWMMERS 

One example of the technology is the customised “Swim Analysis Trolley,” which Ee’s team co-developed with aquatic centre specialists Spectrum Imaging. The device, which has two cameras to capture footage of the swimmers both above and underwater, allows a more in-depth look at their form.

Performance analyst Ivan Ee using the “Swim Analysis Trolley”. (Photo: Nadia Jansen Hassan) 

“Sometimes when the swimmers are swimming, they don’t know where their hands are, or the position of their strokes. So with this equipment, it allows them to see for themselves, where they are positioning their strokes, and it also allows the coaches to quickly correct their technique,” said Ee. 

With the trolley, the performance analyst deduced that Ang was expending too much energy, by using too many arm strokes and not kicking enough. 

“He helped me kick properly,” said Ang. “He taught me the techniques, showed me videos of world class swimmers like Michael Phelps and his underwater fly kicks, which made me do pretty well in my fly kicks and off the turns, especially when I’m a long-distance swimmer,” he added. 

A two-box photo of swimmer Erasmus Ang in the water. (Photo: National Youth Sports Institute)

Such technology is what the Government hopes to invest in, after it announced in March that S$50 million will be pumped into high performance sports over the next five years.

PREPARING FOR THE SEA GAMES

Looking ahead to the SEA Games, Ee’s goal will be to zoom in on Ang’s technique for open water. “In normal pool situations, where there are no waves, you can actually use the gliding method and you can still get away with it,” said the performance analyst. 

“But in open water conditions, where the water is choppy, it’s sometimes very difficult to use that kind of technique,” he added. “So we want to work with him on a high elbow catch, to really get a firm grip of the water, so he can catch the water fast enough and rip through, and propel himself forward.”  

But according to the analyst, even the most advanced devices may not fully help one factor: The force of nature. Most young athletes experience growth spurts, which affect their coordination and cause them to be more prone to injuries. 

“Advice we give coaches is to reduce their training loads, by reducing their intensity and their repetition, because the idea here is not to focus on them in the short-term, but more on their long-term development,” said Ee. 

“For me, what’s more important is for them to stay injuries free, for them to be able to train and develop, and not just for these short-term goals, because we want them to continue to swim and win medals for us in the future to come.”  

The SEA Games will take place in Kuala Lumpur from Aug 19 to 31. 

SINGAPORE: Veteran playwright and Cultural Medallion recipient Haresh Sharma’s name will take centrestage in the arts scene this year as The Necessary Stage (TNS) celebrates its 30th Anniversary.

As TNS’s resident playwright, he and founder and artistic director Alvin Tan have made their mark with socially-conscious theatre. This year, many of his past plays will be re-staged and even re-interpreted.  

Sharma went On the Record with Bharati Jagdish about the need for critical thinking in Singapore society, state funding and censorship.  

She first asked him what being Haresh Sharma is really like.  

Haresh Sharma: The act of “being” is very much in the present. If you ask me what it was like to be me when TNS started in 1987, it was a very different being than the being I am today. Of course now, I am more mellow and I am more confident. I see the fruits of my labour: the work that Alvin and I, and a bunch of other people have put into TNS over all these years; and now we have people who are very supportive. We have received awards.

This year especially is such a precious year for us being our 30th anniversary. The Esplanade curated a whole series of plays called Margins, and this is a series of plays of mine, and TNS’s from the past, and they are being re-examined with new eyes, from other artists and theatre companies.  

Bharati: You said that who you were when you started out, was of course quite different from who you are today. How much less mellow were you and less confident were you before?  

Sharma: Because when I was younger, we used to work long hours so it’s easy to get impatient with people. You can get very judgmental that they are not pulling their weight or they are not working as hard as you. When I first started with TNS, I was still at NUS so I was doing theatre and I was still doing school. 

When I graduated, I was the first full-time staff. Here I was, working alone, day in and day out. I was writing the plays, I was writing the press releases. I was faxing out the press releases. That was in the early 1990s.

I was going to the design place and looking at paper, colours and all kinds of things. I would photocopy the scripts and go to Telok Ayer Performing Arts Centre. We would rehearse there and then go for supper and go home and continue to rewrite because there are things that need to be changed, and in the morning I would start the administrative process again, looking at the printing of tickets.

I was younger so I didn’t have to sleep as many hours and I had coffee all the time. Because of that sometimes, you can get into a situation when you feel you are not quite positive, and then you excuse it by saying: because I am an artist, because I am doing theatre. Sometimes, looking back, I think I should have had more moments when I could just step back and let things settle before getting angry or having conflicts.  

LACKING CONFIDENCE AND FEELING FEAR  

Bharati: How would you describe the lack of confidence at that point?  

Sharma: It was that sense of always needing to be affirmed when you are doing something and you are not quite sure whether it’s good. Writing a play at that time was a way of trying to be liked. So for example, if somebody likes your play, you translate it as they like you.

If they don’t like your play, you translate it as they don’t like you. It’s subconscious in a way, and I guess it just stems from normal everyday kind of insecurities.  

Bharati: So if you got a bad review, it would be quite catastrophic?  

Sharma: Yes, yes, or even when somebody in the audience came and talk to you, or wrote on the feedback form. It wasn’t just about the play. It became like: What’s wrong, what did I do wrong? And it could easily escalate into: why does everyone hate me?  

Bharati: What made you change the way you thought about such things and the way you processed it?  

Sharma: Really it’s time and experience because when you were writing your first play and your second play, you keep thinking maybe that’s it. You might not write anymore. Maybe my parents would say to me, “go and get a proper job”.

Maybe I’ll suck at it after the third or fourth play. So you think, this is it. I may not get any other opportunity and I’ve got to make sure this works. I’m more confident now, but I still have some fear, before I begin writing, because that’s a good thing, I don’t want to be complacent.  

Bharati: What are you afraid of?  

Sharma: That I can’t write anymore, that I am done and that this is it. But you get over it and the fear is healthy in the sense that it motivates me.  

Bharati: Have you ever suffered from writers’ block?  

Sharma: I don’t believe in writers’ block, because you must be able to write even if you are writing something ridiculous, or if you are writing something that is not going to be used eventually.  

Writing is a process and if you are going to only write if you think what you are writing is of value, then you would get writers’ block, because you refuse to type anything that you think is not of value. Just write, even if it’s a ridiculous conversation between two monkeys. Let that conversation take place and then in the middle of that, you may get inspired by something that leads you somewhere else.  

MAKING THE ARTS A LIFE-LONG CAREER  

Bharati: Why did you want to do this long-term?  

Sharma: I really really, reaaaaally liked it.  

Bharati: What did you like about it?  

Sharma: It’s a whole mix. I liked writing. I just liked writing in primary school and secondary school – short stories, poetry, compositions.  

I knew I was going to work in a job where writing is going to be involved. I thought maybe magazines, broadcast, PR, or something that involved that. But when I wrote my first play in 1989, it felt like it was the right kind of writing. I started getting more involved in the backstage of theater, the writing in university.

We were all untrained. At that time there was no theatre studies in university or anywhere else. The only kind of theatre we did was with ourselves and nobody had any training. Nobody was an expert. So we just collectively worked, creating improvisations.  

If we needed to do some research, we would research it together. That was a part of theatre-making that I enjoyed very much. I discovered that I enjoyed the group activity and the socialising part of theatre as much as I enjoy the solitude of writing the plays on my own, at home, late at night. Other forms of creative writing don’t have that duality.  

Bharati: To what extent do you think societal and familial pressures have prevented people in this country from entering the arts?  

Sharma: I think there are many more people than we think, and I also I feel that those people are from a generation before mine. My generation started doing theatre in the 80s. It was a moment of change. The National Arts Council started in 1991. Many schemes started like the arts housing schemes. You know how it is.

Once government starts to put things into place, people can take another step forward, into being full- time artists and freelance and all that. But the generation before mine, those that did theatre in the 70s and the early 80s would have been more stifled because there was no arts ecology or arts environment.

Bharati: Now that there is one, how much would you say Singaporeans have improved in terms of our openness to making the arts a career?  

Sharma: I would say quite a bit. It’s good because there is more. There is more theatre. There is more audience. There is more arts. Quality of course matters but the quantity would begin the conversation to branch out in more diverse ways as well.  

BEYOND BLACK AND WHITE  

Bharati: In 2015, in the speech you made when you received your Cultural Medallion, you mentioned your play Off Centre. The play was originally commissioned by the Ministry of Health. You said when you submitted your script to the ministry, they had problems with it. You said you wanted a quiet parting of ways and relinquish the S$30,000 in sponsorship. This was indeed what you ended up doing.

A ministry spokesperson said the play “presented a prejudiced view of mental disorder, its treatability and the therapists, besides ridiculing God, religion and national service”.  

Did you at any point think that they might actually have a point?  

Sharma: No. Never.  

Bharati: How is it that they saw it this way? How is it that your interpretations were so different?

Sharma: Maybe I had written plays in the past where I purposely intended to ridicule certain things, satirise certain things, but Off Centre was a play all of us took seriously.  

Bharati: You may not have had the intention, but could it have come across that way?  

Sharma: No. And I will talk about that in a little bit. But why Off Centre was very, very important was because we were asked to create a work that highlighted the difficulties of mentally ill people especially in terms of trying to reintegrate into society. Because it was commissioned, we were given access to, at that point, Woodbridge hospital, patients in halfway houses.  

We talked to psychiatrists, social workers, and so on. We talked to different people, then we would go into the rehearsal room and we would improvise characters, create scenarios. There was such a richness to the process and I felt that it was a very heavy responsibility of mine to write something that was very truthful, that was very real to the research, to the reality of what was going on.  

Therefore I created these two characters: Vinod and Saloma and both were very different, in a lot of ways, in terms of gender, class, education etc, but they both were connected, because they both had breakdowns and mental illness. In the beginning of the play, Vinod is a very confident person. He is constantly supporting Saloma.

At the end of the play, Saloma is the one that is recovering well, and is getting confident, and Vinod has committed suicide. The people who saw this play as anti-educational and all those other things that were mentioned in the quote, never saw the intention. They just saw what was on the written page. It wasn’t the first time that somebody had misinterpreted because of something they just see on the page.  

Bharati: But members of the audience could have interpreted it in any way possible too, including in the way that the ministry did.  

Sharma: Yes but very unlikely, because when you are watching it, you are watching the actors perform the play, whereas when you are reading it, you are reading and certain things would stand out. For me that’s the problem when you don’t have enough critical thinking in Singapore, or when you don’t promote literature and analysis of characters and themes. Then people think: “Got suicide, this is bad.”  

Bharati: It’s black and white for them.  

Sharma: It’s very black and white. It’s like saying Romeo and Juliet should not be studied because got suicide. The other problem they had with it was that Vinod had a breakdown in the army. Again, what do the authorities do? They straightaway start standing up and screaming and saying, “you are saying army is bad”.  

But my question is: You mean (you) can’t have a breakdown in the army? Why don’t you stand up and say: He had a breakdown. Period. Let’s help him. Why must you say he had a breakdown in the army, and therefore, we should not support this play because this breakdown happened in the army and it makes the army look bad? Do you see what I mean? The logic and the way of thinking is so myopic.

A QUESTION OF TRUST  

Bharati: To what extent do you see this a failure of certain government agencies to see that audiences can think multi-dimensionally, and can process grey areas? Or do you think that even an audience of Singaporeans could have largely failed to process the play beyond the black and white?  

Sharma: I think I’ll be kind and say that maybe they don’t know how to read a script. An audience who had watched it would see it differently and they did when we staged it. So you just see something on paper. Then you can’t visualise it. But the second part of it then is: why don’t you trust us? We know what we are doing. Why don’t you trust that we want the same outcomes as you?  

Today, as my new mellow, confident self, I can say I have done this kind of play many times and had very good responses from all these different kinds of organisations that have commissioned us in the past. Back then, as a 20-something year old, you are full of passion and anger. You are confused because you spent months on this and then suddenly you get slapped because they say this is anti-everything, and there is nothing that you can show as a track record.  

Bharati: There you go. You had no track record then, so you can’t blame them for not trusting you. Why should they have trusted you?  

Sharma: Because they commissioned us and we had a track record in performing assembly plays that were about specific issues and health issues and so on.  

Bharati: I would like to talk about what you said earlier – the inability to appreciate that there are grey areas. You attributed it to a lack of emphasis on literature in schools. How bad you think this problem is in Singapore?  

Sharma: I mentioned it generally because it’s not like a thing that people are afflicted with. For me, at this stage, it’s anecdotal. I see people at the theatre foyer after they’ve watched a play and the kinds of questions that they ask. That’s how I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to empower ourselves and society in general with a keener sense of critical thinking, ability to evaluate, analyse works of fiction, and not take things too black and white, or too literally.  

So if you watch something, it is text, subtext. That’s life. When you are watching stuff on TV, when you are dealing with people, sometimes people say things but they mean something else. Don’t you want to have that ability to have empathy, or have understanding on how people are feeling, rather than just take everything at face value and not be able to go deeper? This is not just a theatre or arts thing. It’s really a life thing.  

Bharati: Going back to “Off Centre”, while the MOH pulled funding, you managed to stage it anyway and without censorship, I understand.  

Sharma: Eventually, NAC didn’t censor. If I am not mistaken, we had a rating because there was a nude scene, back, not frontal.  

Bharati: In addition to that, in 2006, the play was selected by the Ministry of Education as the first Singapore play to be included in the Literature ‘O’ level syllabus. It appears the only entity that had a problem with it was MOH. Or would you say it’s a case of the general climate in Singapore changing over the years?  

Sharma: I am not sure. The more I deal with these institutions, the more I realise I don’t want to say the MOH had a problem with it. I would say that maybe 1-2 people within that ministry had a problem with it and they had the power to make the decision. It just seems that way to me.  

Haresh Sharma and Alvin Tan. (Photo: TNS)

CENSORSHIP AND AN INABILITY TO DEAL WITH DIFFICULT ISSUES 

Bharati: In the speech I alluded to earlier, you said that forum theatre was once banned but it was then reinstated. Performance arts were once banned but this too was reinstated, and you said: “Let’s not be judged by decisions made in the past.” Do you think things are genuinely changing in Singapore, that the authorities and people are more liberal and able to interpret and understand better, even though you feel some problems still exist?  

Sharma: I think that things have changed but there are several different things that need change and can change more. One of my peeves is that I see things getting censored on national TV – things related to sexuality for example. This goes back to the critical thinking issue. There are many different types of people living in our midst, not just in terms of sexuality, but in terms of disability, in terms of mental illness.

If we don’t want to talk about it, if we don’t want to portray images of these people in positive ways, then how would the conversation even begin? For me that’s at least just one step. Can we allow these things to be aired and to be heard, without thinking that society is going to collapse if they are aired?

Bharati: It sounds like you think the government agencies are getting it wrong when they say “Singaporeans are not ready for this”, or when they say a particular work would impact society adversely?  

Sharma: If you say Singaporeans are not ready. Fine. Then how do you get Singaporeans to be ready, or do you not want Singaporeans to be ready? I think what they are implying that they don’t want Singaporeans to be ready.  

Bharati: Or that they’d rather wait for Singaporeans to be ready before they themselves ease up.  

Sharma: But Singaporeans cannot be ready if you continue to withhold things like that on national TV or on other types of broadcast. The only place we can talk about issues in a deep way is the theatre. That’s why we do that. Theatre censorship is very different from TV censorship. A lot of times people come to watch a play and they say, “whoa, you can do that, ah? You get permission to do that?”  

We have ratings though. Sometimes, it’s not even a rating. It’s just an advisory. It’s like “strong language advisory” or “sexual content advisory” or “race” or whatever.  

Bharati: Of course, this is probably because theatre isn’t mass media. To what extent are you really reaching out through theatre though? Are you just preaching to the converted?  

Sharma: No. I think we are reaching larger audiences, because there are more companies now doing more performances who are reaching out to different types of people. But yes, the mass media is where there is potential for the most change to happen at all levels.  

Bharati: While it’s more liberal in theatre, to what extent do you feel there are still restrictions you have to work within that you are uncomfortable with? On other fronts as well, we have seen NAC funding being pulled from certain projects and films being banned.  

Sharma: There are restrictions because there is always that “not suitable for all rating”.  

You know … can we just call it a ban? Something like Tan Pin Pin’s “To Singapore with Love” which is a documentary, why can’t that be shown in Singapore? Why must that be banned? Once in a while you go, “sigh, what is this place?” You can’t you even show a documentary. It goes back to you don’t want your country’s people to be ready.  

FEELING LIKE A CRIMINAL

Bharati: Or the authorities just don’t want to deal with possible fallout.  

Sharma: Yes.

Bharati: Or public complaints.  

Sharma: That’s another thing, right?  

Bharati: You have said before: “Let us not dismiss artists, art work, or films because of fear of uncertainty, because of a lack of imagination or anxiety that people might complain. If someone does complain and write in, then side the artist.” Why should the authorities side the artist? 

Sharma: If you go to a restaurant and you don’t like the fish and you complain about it, then that’s fine. It’s between you and the restaurant. The thing is with the arts, when you watch a play, you don’t like it and you complain about it, somehow the government gets involved. These government bodies start to get involved.  

Bharati: Because people complain to the government.  

Sharma: Yes, so it always feel as if the artists are the ones who are the troublemakers, because the complaints invariably lead to some kind of examination of what we did wrong. We have to justify certain things. So if the complaints say: too much strong language, then we have to write a long thing to say why we put all these strong language.

If the complaint says there’s some nudity, we have to explain why we put nudity. Sometimes it gets very frustrating because it makes me feel as if I am some kind of criminal. I have to keep justifying what I am doing.  

Artists are not criminals. Again, if you can watch something and see the context of why certain decisions were made, then you won’t be in the position of making this complaint. This again goes back to: think a bit, have some kind of critical view.

If a character uses strong language, it doesn’t mean that I like strong language and it doesn’t mean that I use strong language. It just means that the character uses strong language. And let’s see why the character strong language, what kind of background he or she has.  

There’s also this sense that if there is a character who swears a lot, or a character who commits suicide, it means the playwright is kind of “promoting” it in some ways.

Bharati: And your point is that just because we talk about it or discuss it, it does not mean we are promoting it.  

Sharma: Exactly. When you create a work and somebody has a problem with it, somebody complains, the government agencies always try to placate them, and always come to us and say “you better explain why you did this”. For every one person who may have a problem with something that is presented, there are 99 that may not. But the response is always not matching that statistic.  

If somebody says that an exhibition has some pornographic material, the authorities would definitely stop that exhibition. Shut it down. Why? Why can’t you tell that one person: “Don’t go to this exhibition if you don’t want to see that Playboy magazine? Just go. Walk away. Go to the café. Sit down and read a book”.  

There is always accusation. Why can’t the authorities instead tell the complainants to take a chill pill? Once I would like to hear that being said, or just say: “If you don’t like it, tough. Deal with it. Go back home. There are other people who want to see this work and engage with it.” Sometimes, the authorities also need to take a step back and say, like in the restaurant example: “If you don’t like the fish, complain to the cook. Settle it yourselves.”  

Bharati: Where would you yourself draw the line – what type of content do you think the authorities would be justified in censoring? What scale and types of complaints would they be justified in responding to with censorship 

Sharma: I don’t think censorship solves anything. If at all, it silences everything. When an artwork is highly provocative or uncomfortable, censoring it will only shut down any opportunity for dialogue. Let the artwork be presented, but make sure the public is aware of the ratings and advisories so that they can make an informed choice.

Invite the artist and those who have objections to the artwork to a panel discussion. Let it be open to the public. Share and discuss the different and opposing points of views.

Why is this course of action never an option? Artworks, however contentious they may be, are springboards for discourse on important issues of the day. My statement refers only to censorship of theatre and other artworks. Of course I do not support hate speech of any kind.  

WHO THE STATE FUNDS OR DOESN’T FUND  

Bharati: You’ve also urged people before to “support our artists unconditionally”. When it comes to state funding though, isn’t it reasonable to expect conditions?  

Sharma: But the conditions are between me and the state that gives me the funding. If I had fulfilled the criteria, I had signed the dotted line, that’s fine. Why then do we have this other group of people, the complainants, coming in and interfering with this process?

The NAC has the right to give funding to whomever they want. They have the right to not give funding, or give however much or however little they want to give. That’s fine. We have to deal with it. If you do works that are very safe, maybe you get more funds, or if you do works of high quality, you might have more funds. So that’s the negotiation and that kind of constant battle between artists and NAC.  

Bharati: Do you resent the fact that safe works attract more state funding?  

Sharma: I do not resent the fact, because it is public money and they can interpret it any way they want. Again, sometimes time has a way of looking back and saying: “Ha, you made a mistake with that one.”

For example, with “Off Centre”, the Ministry withheld the money but eventually it became a literature text. But I feel if the NAC doesn’t want to give TNS money or cut our funding, which they have done, we just have to deal with it.  

Bharati: You said it’s public money and they can decide who they want to give it to. But precisely because it’s public money and because the public is diverse, shouldn’t they give it to groups who are presenting diverse works about diverse issues and not just safe ones?  

Sharma: I really don’t care what they do, who they support, who they don’t support. I have a right as a member of the arts community to voice my disagreements if they pull funding on anyone. But again at the end of the day it’s their money. They can do what they want to do with it, and they have to be accountable to whoever.  

Some of my plays may not be the most easy, or safe, and we ask difficult questions, and we can be quite provocative at times. We still get funding. We feel that NAC is already quite enlightened to a certain extent. But as you know, these government agencies don’t function totally on their own.

They are interconnected. So when they react adversely, it might be because of other reasons that we do not know about, because like I said, sometimes it might be just a couple of people within that organisation who object. Probably they get different pressures from different quarters to act and pull funding.  

I think it’s something we have to live with. And yes, you do work, you get a license, you get funding and it’s a good day. Everything is great, then suddenly you wake up and a children’s book gets banned, or some film gets banned, or Sonny Liew’s book funding gets pulled and then goes on to win prestigious prizes and all that.  

So, it is all a daily thing – high moments, low moments. You can get angry and then after that, because you are older and more mellow, you can just chill.  

At the end of the day, if they want the vibrancy of the arts to slide, die a slow death, they can continue to do that. It’s really up to them. I can only be the playwright. I can only write what I want. If nobody is going to give my company any money, we will find ways to do it ourselves.

We have done it with no money, with very little money, as with “Off Centre”. For me the most important thing is getting a license. Don’t stop us from doing the plays we want to do.  

Bharati: Have you ever exercised self-censorship in order to get a license?  

Sharma: No, not consciously. If it’s subconscious, I wouldn’t know. But I’ve had to explain or tone down certain things a few times in the past. Nowadays it’s different because if you want to have certain things, then the advisory and ratings would change accordingly. Last year, TNS collaborated with Drama Box, and we did a play called Manifesto looking at artists and politics in Singapore in the past 60, 70 years.

We had an R18 rating, even though there is nothing to do with sexuality, and race religion and stuff like that, but it’s because of political issues that they put an R rating.  If I wanted to like reach out to those who are below 18, I could have said: “What is it that you need me to change? I will change.” Then that would be self-censorship.  

This year we did the M1 Fringe Festival and two art works were told to be changed. If not they would not give us a license. As a producing organisation, we decided instead of asking the artists to change their artworks, we would rather not show the works at all. The Singapore Film Festival takes that stance as well. That if you tell us to cut anything, we will just not show it.  

THE ARTS DOESN’T HAVE TO BE ABOUT JUST ONE THING  

Bharati: Kathy Lai, who is the former chief executive of NAC said: “We would have difficulty funding arts with public funds if such works merely feed a desire for self-expression without any consideration of the impact on the public, and whether they truly enrich their lives.” How do you feel about this statement?  

Sharma: I think art serves many purposes. One of it is to celebrate life in a very positive flag-waving kind of a way. I have written plays that bring attention to dementia, post-natal depression, where I really sat down to interview people and write a play to highlight these issues.

That’s another purpose of art. I have written plays like that and I get a lot of fulfillment in writing because I feel that I am using it as a source of education for audiences so that if they go through something like that, they know what to expect, the kind of help that they can receive.

But there is also art that brings up uncomfortable questions that you might not be willing to hear and talk about, or you might see conflicts that you are not totally at ease with. That is also very important in terms of getting a deeper understanding of humanity, of human complexities, of the contradictions that we are in ourselves, individually in society. Sometimes I feel that those people who are trying to do the latter type of art tend to get a slap-down because that is the difficult art.  

They are always told to do something positive. “Why can’t you highlight happy things that make us happy?” It’s very naïve to think about art just in that way, because art is in its complexity, able to embrace all these different elements. It’s not as if art needs to be about one thing. It doesn’t always have to be about an issue. It doesn’t always have to be about something that is for the betterment of society.  

Bharati: Also, perceptions of what contributes to the betterment of society would vary from person-to-person.  

Sharma: Yeah.  

THE ARTS NEEDS MORE ALLIES  

Bharati: Earlier you said if the authorities pull funding, you would just do it on your own and you have done it before. But a lot of artists tell me that getting private patrons and a paying audience to step up with funding, with financing, has been challenging. What is your perspective on that?  

Sharma: Yes, it is difficult because it takes a lot to give to the arts because you are competing with other types of charities, like children’s charities, medical charities, so I really take my hat off to the institutions and corporates that do support the arts financially.  

Bharati: What do you think the problem is? Why aren’t more people doing it more enthusiastically?  

Sharma: I am not really sure. It’s not that we have the deepest appreciation for the arts as a society to begin with. There are people I’ve met from other countries who say “my city has six theaters and they have full-houses every night. We started watching operas and plays and going to concerts from as young as six years old.”  

Bharati: To be fair, we do have a much more vibrant arts scene here and it’s more accessible as well.  

Sharma: Yes, but not in that way that reaches out to like as many people as possible. I feel that people who are watching that kind of theatre are still kind of limited. Heartland arts is not challenging. It doesn’t fall into critical thinking. We don’t have any kind of strong promotion of Singaporean artists in primary school.

If you ask primary school students if they know a Singapore painter, they might have no idea, Singapore novelist? And so, it has to be a deep kind of appreciation for the arts that comes from very, very young as opposed to as an adult who likes to watch one musical a year. That’s not the same as having that kind of ingrained appreciation that you get as young as six, when you are nurtured and told about arts.  

Bharati: Make a case for a greater focus on the arts in school and in society in general.

Sharma: Sometimes you wish that other people can also be allies of artists, who would implement these things. We will need to put things into place like immersion programmes in schools and I wish sometimes, non-artists would also come forward. Certain people in power already have a certain skewed perspective on artists. They think: these artists, troublemakers. Then they would stop listening, and they would see us as noisy people.  

Bharati: How do you think you can get more allies?  

Sharma: Doing more theatre and putting good theatre on mainstream media so that more people would get to engage in complex issues of diversity, rather than just looking at life in a very sugarcoated way.  

With every new play, you want to reach out to people, you want them to start thinking about human life, you want them to start thinking about people around them, about having a different way of thinking, a different way of approaching life’s difficult questions.

To not just be accepting about everything that is happening, to not just be whining about things that are happening around us, but to be active, to see our lives together as meaningful as different as we are from one another. 

SINGAPORE: I first gained an insight into the crucial role the human spirit plays in a person’s well-being when I first met a patient, Mdm C. Then, I had only worked for less than a year as a doctor at Hua Mei mobile clinic, a team-managed home-based primary care programme by Tsao Foundation. The clinic supports the well-being of home-bound elders and their family caregivers.

Mdm C was in her late eighties. She had multiple chronic medical conditions, including dementia resulting from stroke, and was bed- and chair-bound for the most part. Her daughter-in-law was her main caregiver.

Mdm C was easily agitated and constantly asked to be moved about. She would request to be moved from the bed to the chair, only to demand a few minutes later to be brought back to the bed. The cycle repeated itself day and night. There were no indicators of pain, other physical discomfort or acute illness. Her daughter-in-law could not understand why she had become so attention-seeking in recent years; Mdm C had been reduced to a pale shadow of the kind and understanding woman the family knew her to be. 

A patient having his blood pressure checked at Tsao Foundation’s Community for a Successful Ageing clinic in Whampoa. (Photo: TODAY)

Raised in Penang, Mdm C was an adopted child. She used to lament that her sister was more beautiful and deeply loved by her parents. Her mother would frequently compare them. She seemed to have an unhappy childhood. Could it be that her past memories were taking a bigger toll on her, now that her physical and cognitive faculties were disabled? 

HOW DO YOU HEAL A BROKEN SPIRIT?

Over the years, I have seen many elderly patients with similar life stories. They had been mild-mannered and kind in their younger days, but became restless and easily agitated, resisting care and accusing people around them without reason, after they develop dementia. As a doctor whose prime responsibility is enhance the well-being pf patients, I cannot help but wonder how to heal their broken spirit. 

On the other hand, there are other stories that stand in stark contrast.

Another patient I see, Mdm L lives with her daughter and a foreign domestic helper. I first visited her after she was discharged from the hospital following a prolonged stay in the Intensive Care Unit. While she was in the hospital, the family was briefed and emotionally prepared themselves for the worst – Mdm L had suffered a massive stroke caused by internal bleeding in the brain.

With much love and great attention to the smallest details paid to the care given to Mdm C, the family and the clinic team managed to wean her off a feeding tube and urine catheter. Over the years, with careful management of her hypertension and nutrition, supervised nursing care at home, as well as expert rehabilitation care from a visiting physiotherapist, Mdm L regained her abilities to walk, with the help of a walking frame, and converse coherently. She has improved so much that she no longer requires home-based primary care but only needs to see me regularly at our ambulatory clinic.

It has been over five years now. Mdm L has lost some linguistic abilities and developed cognitive impairment with the early onset of dementia, yet she is easily one of the happiest people I know.

Senior citizens in a mass qigong event at Singapore Botanic Gardens. (Photo: CNA)

These two cases have convinced me that happiness in old age is not entirely a function of physical and cognitive health. 

PREPARING FOR OLD AGE IS A LIFE-LONG UNDERTAKING

If one’s way of coping with emotional pain in one’s youth was through acts of excitement, material possession, immersion in work or other forms of escapist distractions, there can be no eschewing mental distress when one becomes disabled, poor, isolated or cognitively impaired.

Even if one can exercise self-control and maintain composure in the face of adversity, will patience, faith and courage alone be sufficient to help us cope when we are physically frail or disabled, and succumb to dementia?

What does someone who is severely disabled and cognitively impaired think of each day? Do they ask, “why me?” or what the point of all this was for? Are they subject to random recollections of events and faces that bring about a flood of more extreme emotions?

CAN YOU TREAT DEMENTIA?

Two authors come to the mind when considering the issue of dementia and the best ways to go about managing the challenges of ageing.

Professor Tom Kitwood (1937 – 1998), a psycho-gerontologist widely regarded as the father of person-centred care in dementia, famously defined dementia as the manifestation of dementia behavior:

• Dementia behavior = P + B + H + NI + SP

The P represents personality; B represents a person’s biography; H is the state of their health; NI is the extent of their neurological impairment; and SP represents their social psychology.

While a person’s personality and life histories are largely fixed, caregivers such as family members and healthcare professionals who interact with a dementia patient can shape their pathology and social psychology, and reduce the manifestation of challenging behaviour by the patient. This is somewhat logical; if you think about it, the actions of dementia patients are really ways through which they express their inner emotions.

In my line of work, I have also learnt that interactions that regard the dementia patient as a person, and make connections based on respect, trust, love and compassion have always been helpful in treating dementia patients.

What does it take to age successfully? The answers might not be what you expect. (Photo: AFP)

A second author Viktor Frankl (1905 – 1997), a Holocaust survivor and famous psychiatrist, had a provocative definition of despair:

Where despair equals suffering (S) without meaning (M).

In this context, what does “meaning” entail? I believe that meaning is an individual’s ability to find a satisfactory answer to the question of why he or she does things. A man can suffer and work hard but still stay sane, so long as he believes his labour is purposeful. And each person has to find their own meaning. 

I once asked a lady in her late eighties what she defined as successful ageing. “To do many new things and learn many things even as I grow older,” was her reply. This was a highly educated American lady.

Yet, many elderly Singaporeans are less expressive. I routinely ask my patients if they had things they wanted to do or needed help with.

“What else do I need? My children are grown up and filial. They are very kind. I have nothing to ask for. As long as I am not a burden I will be happy,” is a typical reply.

Sometimes, I get darker responses like “I hope I don’t have to live for too long.”

Elderly men chat at their void deck in Tiong Bahru. (Photo: CNA)

HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS MUST ESTABLISH A HUMAN CONNECTION WITH THEIR ELDERLY PATIENTS

After so many years, over the course of our work, my team and I have been inspired by many seniors. Our experience teaches us that if healthcare professionals make an effort to establish a human connection, healing and health will follow. If healthcare practitioners only target the physical aspects of health, we might not help our patients achieve better total well-being.

Why? Because it is the social and psychological impact of physical illnesses that weighs down the person’s spirit – and healing the spirit is what really matters in enhancing people’s well-being.

This is especially true for the elderly who face the relentless challenge of physiological decline. Every loss of function and painful incident reinforces existential loneliness and helplessness, unless the patient can somehow see meaning in all these. 

Since 1948, the World health Organization recognised that health is not merely the absence of disease but the presence of complete physical, psychological and social well-being. If health is so comprehensively defined, then surely the providers of healthcare services must have the determination, focus and savvy to look into all bio-psychosocial aspects of our patients’ needs.

They should be sufficiently resourced and supported with a strong care infrastructure that can alleviate their patients’ suffering and meet their care needs.

With or without dementia, such needs are human and universal.

Really, once we get to know the person behind their frailty, there is no real difference between us. 

Dr Ng Wai Chong is chief of Clinical Affairs at Tsao Foundation, a Singapore-based non-profit organization that works towards a positive transformation of the ageing experience through innovation in community-based eldercare, training and education, policy-relevant research, collaboration and advocacy.

SINGAPORE: Siglap, with its hip cafes, indie ice-cream joints and restaurants, hides a past with many spooky secrets – from purported pontianak sightings which inspired made-in-Singapore horror movies, to its massacre sites where civilians were machine-gunned down during the Japanese Occupation.

On the returning That’s My Backyard series, On The Red Dot explores more of Singapore’s neighbourhoods, their people, and stories. The first episode relived some little-known nuggets of Siglap’s rich history. (Link: Watch the full episode here.)

Here are 10 things to know about this yuppie haunt, which is home to some 40,000 people today.

1.    A solar eclipse and a Sumatran prince inspired the Siglap name

You may have walked past this nondescript grave marked in yellow (which denotes royalty) at Jalan Sempadan, but do you know that in it lies a Sumatran prince who is believed to have founded Siglap?

Tok Lassam came to Singapore in the early 1800s and built this village by the sea. He later nicknamed the area ‘Si Gelap’, the Malay word for ‘the dark one’, after the sky turned dark one day in 1821 and spooked many villagers in the area.

Curious about the stories, amateur history researcher Sarafian Salleh wrote to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to confirm the occurrence of a solar eclipse. (A mechanical engineer by training, he had discovered his great-grandfather’s grave in Kubur Kassim cemetery nearby, and decided to delve into the history of the estate.)

“I looked at (NASA’s) website and did some interpolation in dates and discovered there was actually a total eclipse on March 4, 1821. NASA gave me a copy of the report. And just like that, Siglap got its name!” he said.

Mr Sarafian also managed to track down Tok Lassam’s descendants through his Facebook page Bugis Temasek and his various blogs about Singapore history. He met nearly 20 of his descendants at the old Kampong Siglap Mosque recently.

WATCH: Hear about old kampong life from Tok Lassam’s descendents (1:35)

2.    Spot the grave plots dedicated to supernatural beings in this cemetery

It’s hard to miss this cemetery along Siglap Road, with its distinctive bright yellow gates, overhanging trees and spacious grounds – a sharp contrast to the spanking new Flamingo Valley condominium next door and trendy cafes down the hill.

The Kubur Kassim cemetery is over 90 years old, and is believed to have served as a burial ground for Muslims in Siglap. Many of its graves belonged to prominent members of the Muslim community, including Dr Hafeezudin Sirajuddin Moonshi who opened the first Muslim clinic in Singapore in 1916. He was also a former Singapore Municipal Commissioner.

And if you wander in and look close enough, you may be able to spot some grave plots here dedicated to the Orang Bunian, supernatural human-like beings from Malay folklore.

Today, the cemetery also houses a surau (prayer house in Malay) where religious classes are conducted, and a meeting place for a tariqa (an Arabic term for a Sufi Muslim order).

3.    Civilians were machine-gunned around Siglap Hill

One of Siglap’s darkest secrets was the wartime atrocities committed in that area, where Japanese soldiers killed and buried civilians during the Japanese Occupation.

Retiree Edwin Thompson recalls witnessing dozens of male Chinese being brought by Japanese soldiers to a hill in Siglap in several lorries during the early 1940s.

“I saw that all their hands were tied behind their back and they were ushered to walk to the top of the hill. They (the Japanese soldiers) pushed them down and machine-gunned them,” he said.

Five mass war graves were later found in an area dubbed the “Valley of Tears” or “Valley of Death” in Siglap. Later, 40 more mass war graves were found in the Siglap area off Evergreen Avenue, according to the National Library Board’s infopedia website.

WATCH: Residents share their stories (2:45)

4.    Pontianak hauntings here inspired a film

If you were living in a kampong here some 50 years ago, you might think twice about venturing out at night.

Villagers then believed that they were being terrorised by the pontianak – a female vampire which, according to Malay myth, is the ghost of a woman who died during childbirth. It was thought that a whiff of frangipani heralded its presence.

Their fears inspired the Singapore-made cult classic Pontianak (1957) film, which was so successful it led to two sequels. Some of the scenes were shot in Kampong Siglap.

The Malay film, produced by Cathay-Keris, became so popular that it was dubbed into Cantonese for Hong Kong audiences, and into English for American television as an entry for the Asian Film Festival.

5.    It was the Hollywood of Singapore 

Siglap once possessed the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, when Cathay-Keris Studio – one of two major film studios during Singapore’s golden era of filmmaking – set up home at Jalan Keris in 1953, next to where Ocean Park condominium is today.

(Source: Cathay-Keris Films Pte Ltd)

The studio produced dozens of Malay-language comedies, dramas and horror films from its East Coast Road base and the area was a wonderland for celebrity-spotting and autograph-hunting, where you could witness the likes of comedian Mat Sentol performing stunts on the streets.

The nearby terrace houses, streets and the sea were often used for location shooting, and the studio churned out some 125 films till 1973 when it bowed out due to competition from television.

Karen Chan, executive director of the Asian Film Archive, was glad that the different legends and folklores during that period were translated into film. 

“In that 20-year period, (the films) really captured the spirit of that community and what it was like to be living in the different kampongs then.

“We look at these films almost like storybooks that remind us about our past,” she said.

(Source: Cathay-Keris Films Pte Ltd)

6.    It is home to one of Singapore’s oldest barber shops

This traditional Indian barber shop is one of the longest-surviving businesses in Siglap, having been around since 1955.

New Star hairdressing salon owner Pakari Kothandapani said their clientele includes Siglap’s young and old residents, and well-known personalities over the years such as the late former President S R Nathan.

The shop moved from its former location to across the street in Upper East Coast Road after a long-standing eviction battle in 2008. However, it still preserves its vintage 50s look and style.

But there are spaces which did not survive.

(Source:  Siglap South Community Centre)

A thriving private wet market built in the 1940s to cater to villagers once occupied the space where Siglap Centre is today. The market was popular for its nasi lemak, fried carrot cake and Teochew mee pok.

Unfortunately, it was shuttered to make room for redevelopment in 1989.

7.    These are the only HDB flats in Siglap – and they will be gone soon

These four distinctive HDB blocks, the only public housing in that area, are a juxtaposition to the posh, well-heeled neighbours in Siglap. 

They were once the tallest buildings in the area, hugging the coastline with picturesque views of the sea until the East Coast Reclamation Scheme created Marine Parade estate several years later.

The flats were built in 1964 to house the affected residents of a nearby kampong that had been razed by a fire sparked off by firecrackers during the Chinese New Year celebrations in 1962. The fire had engulfed more than 50 attap houses.

This cluster of five-storey two-room flats is set to be demolished in the near future.  

8.    The shoreline used to be 1km inland from where it is today

The beachfront restaurants and bungalows that once lined the edge of the sea along Upper East Coast Road lost their million-dollar frontage when one of Singapore’s biggest land reclamation projects came along in 1966.

 (Source:  Siglap South Community Centre)

To cater to a growing population, the massive East Coast Reclamation Scheme sought to increase land area to accommodate more houses, schools, parks and other community facilities.

By 1985, more than 3,600 acres of land had been reclaimed. Its first phase spanned Bedok to Tanjong Rhu, which included Siglap in between.

The shoreline was extended by about a kilometre, paving the way for East Coast Park and the Marine Parade housing estate development. The last of Siglap’s fishing villages disappeared in 1986.

Kelongs off Siglap (Source: Dzulkifli Kintan)

9.    Frankel estate was named after a Jewish businessman who hosted Albert Einstein here

Frankel estate was once known for its expansive coconut and nutmeg plantations in the 1800s, before it was sold to wealthy Jewish entrepreneur Abraham Frankel in 1912.

Mr Frankel had become successful after riding on the success of the rubber boom, his bakery and the Frankel Brothers Furniture Store on Victoria Street. At one time, he owned more than 400 acres of land in Siglap and was also known for his philanthropy.

(Source: Lisa Ginsburg)

Mary Annetta Clumeck, the great grand-daughter of Mr Frankel, recalled: “I remember the beautiful estate Siglap which was right by the sea. It had over 200 acres of coconut and rubber plantations.

“Of course, the rubber became extremely valuable during the wars and the Frankels became even wealthier. Every Sunday, we would go to Siglap for tiffin (a British colonial term for a lunch or light meal).”

One of the world’s greatest minds, scientist Albert Einstein, visited Siglap on November 2, 1922, to raise funds for the creation of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

The Nobel Prize winner was given a grand tour of Siglap by the Frankel family, and was said to be fascinated by the beautiful coconut palms in Frankel Estate.

Albert Einstein – bottom, third from left (Source: Lisa Ginsburg)

10.  The estate with opera roots

If you know your Verdi from your Bizet, then wandering the maze of Opera Estate could bring a special thrill because of its road names like Aida, Carmen and Tosca.

Several of the street names here drew its inspiration from Western operas while those located closer to New Upper Changi Road were named after Malay operas such as Jalan Terang Bulan and Terang Bulan Avenue.

You can also have fun identifying the streets that aren’t named after operas. For instance, Metropole Drive is believed to be named after the New York-based Metropolitan opera house, while Swan Lake is a ballet,

And if you stroll down Fidelio Street, you might pass by a house that gladly welcomes strangers.

This house is not only home to Ms Terry Chia and her extended family, it’s also a showroom for a colourful range of Peranakan wares for sale. Ms Chia, who left her corporate IT job in 2005 to start the shop, said every piece is handmade by a special craftsman in China.

Her clientele are mainly from overseas, as well as those from the Peranakan community in the estate.

Catch That’s My Backyard – On The Red Dot on Fridays at 9.30pm on Mediacorp Channel 5. Watch the full episode on Siglap here.

SINGAPORE: They were found guilty of misappropriating S$50 million of church funds – a record amount in Singapore’s legal history – but six City Harvest Church leaders saw their sentences reduced on Friday (Apr 7), in a twist to a long-running case that first went before the courts way back in mid-2013.

So why did the three-judge panel rule as it did?

In 2015, the six members – Kong Hee, Tan Ye Peng, Chew Eng Han, John Lam, Serina Wee and Sharon Tan – were convicted of the most aggravated form of Criminal Breach of Trust (CBT) under the Penal Code: CBT by public servant, or by banker, merchant, or agent.

Section 409 of the Penal Code states that:

Whoever, being in any manner entrusted with property, or with any dominion over property, in his capacity of a public servant, or in the way of his business as a banker, a merchant, a factor, a broker, an attorney or an agent, commits criminal breach of trust in respect of that property, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 20 years, and shall also be liable to fine.

However the High Court, in a split decision, convicted Kong and his five accomplices of a reduced charge – the least aggravated form of CBT for which the punishment is up to seven years’ jail.

For a conviction under the aggravated CBT charge under section 409 of the Penal Code to stand, the elements of the offence must be made out:

1. The accused (namely, Kong Hee, Tan Ye Peng and John Lam) were entrusted with control over CHC’s funds.

2. This entrustment was in the way of Kong, Ye Peng and Lam’s business as agents.

3. Money from CHC’s funds were misappropriated for various unauthorised purposes as part of a conspiracy to misuse CHC’s funds.

4. The accused abetted each other by engaging in the above conspiracy to misuse CHC’s funds; and

5. The accused acted dishonestly in doing so. 

Majority of the panel – Judge of Appeal Chao Hick Tin and Justice Woo Bih Li – decided the prosecution had not proved the second element of the offence.

Their decision largely came down to the wording of section 409, hinging on the definition of the word “agent” and whether Kong and the co-conspirators could be said to be “in the business” of agents.

The decision was also influenced by the judges’ interpretation of the law. They said an agent under section 409 must refer to “professional agents” as opposed to “casual agents”.

The wording of the law “(cannot) conceivably encompass a person (a casual agent) who has been appointed the treasurer of a society and by virtue of that appointment is holding onto the funds of the society”, the judges said.

Section 409 must refer to a “professional agent”, “one who professes to offer his agency services to the community at large and from which he makes his living”, they said. “It refers to a commercial activity done for profit.”

In coming to their decision, JA Chao and Justice Woo abandoned a precedent which has been applied in Singapore for the past 40 years, to draw this distinction: To fall under the scope of section 409, the agent must be “external” to the company or organisation that is entrusting the property to him.

Kong, Tan Ye Peng and Lam were directors of the CHC board, which were “internal” roles, the judges deemed.

“While a director undoubtedly holds an important position in a company or organisation, it cannot be said that a person by becoming a director has offered his services as an agent to the community at large and makes his living as an agent.”

JA Chao and Justice Woo acknowledged their decision would upset the state of affairs, but said: “This does not, however, mean that we can ignore the wording of the section.”

Between the most aggravated form of CBT (section 409) and least aggravated (section 406), there are another two sections covering other aggravated forms of CBT – sections 407 and 408 – for which the punishment is up to 15 years’ jail.

“We agree that it is intuitively unsatisfactory”, the judges said, that “(under sections 407 and 408), a clerk, servant, carrier or warehouse keeper would be liable for an aggravated offence. This does not, however, mean that we can ignore the wording of the section”. “If an interpretation of a statutory provision is erroneous … it must be corrected notwithstanding how entrenched it may have become.”

Justice Chan Seng Onn disagreed with the other judges.

The convictions of Chew, Ye Peng, Serina and Sharon for falsification of accounts were upheld.