Chitchat The Enigma that is Nathan

[Sammyboy RSS Feed]

An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

I am not sure how best to put this out but this one senior civil servant and public figure that I can never figure out. I don't think anyone understood the man except maybe the old man. He never did strike me as someone that was intelligent or smart, yet he headed SID, became a Perm Sec and went on to be diplomat holding key appointments.

Those who knew him better, please chip in.

Here are some anecdotes to describe the man

1) When he was Ex-Chairman of SPH, he was invited to give a talk to course participants to the SAF Command and Staff College. It catered for the senior staff of SAF as well some foreign invited officers. He turned up and gave a talk about how newspapers are printed including the night run. Everyone was embarrassed including the foreign participants.The topic was on the role of the press or something similar and they expected something along the lines of challenges, censorship, role of the govt vs the press, strategic and sensitive issues. And he was a Perm Sec.

2) The Board Directors of SPH realised that this man, their Chairman was out of his depth and began to have prior discussions and reached decisions prior to the actual board meetings. We are talking about the likes of Wee Cho Yaw of UOB and Lien Ying Chow of OUB.

3) Despite his past of heading SID, when he was Ambassador to Malaysia, SID operations in Malaysia was compromised which led to a number of operatives been banned from entry to Malaysia. The Malaysian Govt also asked for his removal and he was then reassigned to the Embassy in the US.

4) When he took over from Tommy Koh as Singapore's US Ambassador to the US, the embassy went close to a meltdown as Tommy ran an intellectual and very liberal embassy where staff including drivers and embassy of various nationalities were treated as equals. Nathan ran it as a total bureaucracy. It became a mini MFA. Nathan does not drink and the concept of alcohol was very uncomfortable for and it naturally it became an irritant for others.

5) His son moved from one GLC to another courtesy of the father and then eventually got a job as a lobbyist for American and German interest on "Asean" trade matters. Note the association with the father's roles. Very mysterious figure.

6) In his memoirs he talks about his time with the Japanese Police and how they sent him down to Singapore from Malaysia and accommodated him at Adelphi Hotel while he was in Singapore. He obviously had not clue on the implications of what he wrote.

7) Laju incident is another mystery. Which head of an Intelligence Unit offers himself to a bunch of terrorist? Who then controls the situation. It struck me as poor planning and complete lack of foresight.

8) When he got his daughter the posting that she wanted with the predecessor of ACRA, the daughter's husband also jumped on the bandwagon and joined the Legal Service. Unfortunately people in power were not prepared to do favours for the son-in-law, he left the Legal service shortly thereafter.

Anyone can think anything this famous individual did that merits some recognition.


Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com.