Category: Singapore
Interview with Michael Ma of Indochine
A Permanent Resident of Singapore and citizen of Australia, Michael was born in Laos of Teochew parentage. His country was then in the midst of a devastating war. Leaving their home that was all but destroyed, his family migrated to Australia. Settling in Sydney, the Ma family developed a successful food import business and through it all, Michael excelled academically and graduated from the University of Wollongong with a double major in Economics and Marketing. His commerce background has indeed served him well as he went on to work as a commodities trader before founding the IndoChine Group. Its inaugural outlet, IndoChine Club Street, was opened in late 1999 and was inspired by the modern Asian lifestyle with colonial influences. Inspired by his passion for food, entertaining and design, Michael Ma saw a potential market for ‘nutraceutical’ cuisine – food that is nutritional, with pharmaceutical benefits – from Indochina, namely Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Even while being his dynamic and adventurous best in keeping up with the constant competition faced in this ever-changing F&B industry, Michael remains an active and fervent environmentalist and conservationist. From the very beginning, Michael personally made it an IndoChine policy not to serve endangered species-related foods, such as sharks’ fin, caviar, bluefin or yellow-fin tuna in all of IndoChine’s kitchens, amongst other things, since inception in 1999.
The Padres – Joni (1994)
Track 1 of the mini album What’s Your Story by Singapore indie band The Padres, originally released in 1994
Last night, I dreamt of Joni In my dreams, I cannot find her, where is she
What can I do, what can I say
Then I realise that I am caught In between that little space
That little face, so full of grace
What can I do What can I say What can I do To rearrange
And we’ll miss her And we’ll miss her And we’ll miss her Like no other
The first time I saw her with my very own eyes I don’t know how she’s gonna be like
Interview with Davinder Singh SC
Lee Kuan Yew – What are the Most Important Values and Attitudes our Youths should have?
TPB Menon and Sat Pal Khattar
VETERAN TRIALS
These days, we are constantly reminded of the need for resilience and fortitude in the face of Covid-19. For veteran lawyers Mr TPB Menon and Mr Sat Pal Khattar, it did not take a global pandemic to turn their lives upside down. At an age when most of their peers were focused on their studies, they had to shoulder the added responsibility of being head of their households while grappling with the demands of law school. Their stories, taken from excerpts of their oral history interviews with SAL, are inspirational in these difficult times.
Mr TPB Menon was studying for his HSC (Higher School Certificate, equivalent to today’s A’ levels) when his father was diagnosed with cancer. “The doctor told me, your father has only got three months to live…I didn’t tell my mum. I think it would have finished her.”
Within six months of his father’s passing, the family had to vacate the staff quarters at the Bukit Timah campus where the elder Mr Menon had been Supervisor of Works at Raffles College. They would live in rented premises for two years before Mr Menon purchased a $19,000 semi-detached house with money left from his father’s university provident fund. “The first day we moved in, we only had a footstool and we all had to sit on the floor.”
At just 19, Mr Menon became head of the household. “My mother was only 37,” and he had three other younger siblings. “I don’t know how I did it. I didn’t fall sick but I was very, very thin.” He would wake up at 5am, drive his siblings to school, do the marketing on his way back before heading home to change and go to university. At 12.30pm, he would pick his siblings from school, go home for lunch and then he was back at university for lectures in the evenings and studies at the library until 10pm.
Above: The first batch of students at the University of Malaya Department of Law. Addressing the moot court is a young TPB Menon who later made his mark in trust litigation. Courtesy: Scales of Gold: 50 Years of Legal Education at the NUS Faculty of Law
The final year of law school was the hardest. “I had a heavy combination of subjects which meant that I had to work doubly hard.” But money was also running out. “My sister and brother were poised to go to university. So being the eldest, I had to worry about money which at that stage shouldn’t be the case… [At] night, I gave tuition and used to earn a little bit of money writing articles for [a friend at] The Straits Times.” Giving up was not an option; after all, Mr Menon recalled that it was his father’s dying wish that all the children complete their university studies.
Unlike Mr Menon, Mr Sat Pal Khattar’s father had no wish for his son to further his education beyond the Senior Cambridge (equivalent to today’s ‘O’ levels). “My father had decided that he needed help in his tiny business. And I had very little say. So I sold sports goods for my father, and travelled to all the smaller towns in Malaya, Sarawak, Brunei and Sabah.”
“When I wanted to do law, I had to discuss with him to say that I would need only about three hours a week off. I managed to persuade the faculty to put all my tutorials after office [hours]. But lectures were not arranged [that way] for me. So quite often I used to rush to a lecture [and] rush back and sell sports goods.” He would also spend his university holidays travelling to different parts of Malaysia for the business. “My obligation to the family business was unaffected by the fact that I was doing law,” said Mr Khattar, who lost his mother as a child. Just before his second-year exams, his father died of a massive heart attack. It was a double whammy for him. “The second-year exams were crucial because if you did not get through, you had to leave the faculty.”
Despite his father’s unexpected passing, Mr Khattar got the best results that year and even nabbed a book prize. Law studies aside, the young man was also saddled with the full responsibility of running his father’s business and looking after an extended family which included his grandmother, his sister, step-mother and her three children.
“Everybody was interested in getting the best [results] but I was more interested in getting a job because, for me, a job was the most important thing,” recalled Mr Menon. The convocation ceremony for this first batch of local law graduates was held in Kuala Lumpur but given their dwindling finances, his family couldn’t afford to attend. “My mother wanted to see her eldest son graduate but we couldn’t afford for all of us to stay in the hotel. So I had to go there all by myself.”
Above: Mr TPB Menon’s graduation photo. He is standing in the last row, fourth from the right. Courtesy: Scales of Gold: 50 Years of Legal Education at the NUS Faculty of Law
THE DRAW OF THE LEGAL SERVICE
The Legal Service offered the best opportunity to get a job straight away after graduation. Unfortunately, Mr Menon recalled the day when he was told that his application was rejected. “It was my birthday… I even remember the shirt I wore. It was a short-sleeved blue shirt with stripes. That was the blackest day, I thought it was a disaster.”
When he broke the news to this mother that he would not have a salary for another year, “I still remember the words my mother said. She told me, ‘Son, when one door closes, there’s always another window that opens.’”
Mr Eric Choa opened that window for Mr Menon when he agreed to take him as a pupil for six months on the condition that there will be no pay and that he would have to leave at the end of the period. However, after just three months, Mr Choa offered Mr Menon a job at his firm. Despite getting offers of higher pay later, Mr Menon chose to remain with Mr Choa who would eventually pass him the firm, making him a sole proprietor at a relatively young age. “I thought to myself and I said, ‘What is more important? Is money more important or my relationship with Eric Choa who has taught me the ropes?’”
CLIMBING THE RANKS
Unlike Mr Menon, Mr Khattar was not eager for a job in the Legal Service. He was earning a comfortable income from his family’s sports goods business and he had no intention of practising law. “I wanted to go back to university to become a graduate assistant.”
At the behest of Dr Bashir Mallal, who chided him for wasting his legal education, Mr Khattar decided to join the Legal Service and was appointed a DPP and State Counsel doing criminal work. “I hated it. I was not made for a career prosecuting criminals and murders and rape and stuff like that.”
Above: Presidential candidate Ong Teng Cheong being greeted by lawyer Sat Pal Khattar at Singapore Conference Hall on nomination day for the first presidential election in 1993. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore
So when a vacancy in the tax department came up, Mr Khattar decided to make the switch; one that would change his entire career. Within seven years, he would rise to the rank of a superscale officer at an early age of 30. “I was the envy of a lot of people in the Legal Service because nobody below 30 ever got a superscale. But after a while, I decided that I didn’t want to remain a civil servant all my life.”
He left the Legal Service to start a one-man practice, Sat Pal Khattar and Company on 1 July 1974. About 15 months later, his classmate Dr David Wong joined him and Khattar-Wong & Partners was born.
Mr Khattar attributes much of his success to what he calls ‘accidents’.” It was accidental that after I started practice… Graham Hill [who] was not only the leading lawyer in the tax field but the leading civil lawyer in Singapore… ran into some problems… and he gave up practice and went back to the UK. So suddenly, I was a tax practitioner with no other person to compete with, and I had a lion’s share of the tax work from the multinationals as well as from the local community.”
A LIFE IN THE LAW
Mr TPB Menon was among the pioneer batch of 22 law students who graduated from Singapore’s first law faculty in 1961. His former classmate Chan Sek Keong describes him as “the most experienced property and trust lawyer in private practice”. Mr Menon was senior partner of Oehlers & Choa before it merged with Wee Swee Teow LLP in 1989. He was senior partner of Wee Swee Teow LLP from 1989 to 2000 and is now a Consultant at the firm. He was President of Law Society from 1980-83 and was awarded the Society’s highest honour – the CC Tan Award in 2004. Listen to his interview here.
Mr Sat Pal Khattar graduated with an Honours degree in Law from the University of Singapore in 1966 and started his career as a Deputy Public Prosecutor and State Counsel at the Attorney General’s Office. This was followed by a shift to the Inland Revenue Office as a Legal Officer. He founded Khattar Wong & Partners, one of the largest law firms in Singapore. After retiring from law practice in 2000, he established Khattar Holding, a private investment firm. Since the early 1990s, Mr Khattar has been investing in India, and this experience has helped him promote and support bilateral trade and investments between Singapore and India. He has served on many civic bodies in Singapore in various capacities and has been honoured at the May Day Awards on several occasions. He was the first resident in Singapore to receive the Padma Shri Award from the Indian government. Listen to his interview here.
The Development of The Singapore Legal System is a joint oral history project by SAL’s Legal Heritage Committee and the Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore.
The Padres – Angel (1993)
Laycock & Ong
by Lee Hsien Loong
17 October 2015
In the early days, my parents and Dennis Lee worked hard to get Lee and Lee off the ground and pay the bills. My father had started off at Laycock & Ong. He spent a lot of his time representing trade unions, working often pro bono – so much time that John Laycock wrote him a letter, expressing his displeasure but in typical British understated style. They were unhappy but they put it in a polite way.
The letter was displayed at the “Remembering Lee Kuan Yew” exhibition held at the National Museum earlier this year. But in case you didn’t make the exhibition or didn’t see the letter, let me read it out to you because when you draft many letters, it is useful to know how to do these things.
“Dear Harry,
Ong and myself have been discussing the question of members of our firm appearing in these lengthy arbitrations or commissions on wages etc. which are now all the vogue. We have been suffering from these heavily during the past few months. Coupled with the absences of so many of our qualified lawyers during March, they have left us with a backlog of purely legal work in the way of our ordinary business which cannot easily be overtaken. We have come to the conclusion that we must not take any more of these wage disputes. They can never be short, we fear, because they are always preceded by long negotiations; and we can see clearly that it is likely there will be more, perhaps many more, in the near future.
If any special case arises, the same might be specially considered by us; in that case, please let us have full information before you accept any work.
Yours Sincerely,
John Laycock”
This is quite a classy letter and probably played a part in the foundation of Lee and Lee!
So my father moved next door – John Laycock was probably at 11 or 12 Malacca Street – set up at 10-B Malacca Street, Lee and Lee, and took on all sorts of cases to make a living. Divorces, chap jee kee runners, routine debt collection, and he continued to be active in the unions and politics.
After he became prime minister in 1959, he tapped Lee and Lee for talent, and persuaded some of the partners to join him in politics. Eddie Barker became minister for law and drafted the Separation documents, including the Proclamation of Independence. Chua Sian Chin, who joined Lee and Lee in 1959, became a partner in 1965. And he would enter politics and become the minister for health at the age of 34, making him the youngest Cabinet minister in independent Singapore’s history.
Then there was S. Ramasamy, who I think was the chief clerk at Lee and Lee, and he became legislative assemblyman for Redhill constituency. Later on after we became independent, and after Separation, he served as Member of Parliament for two terms, also for Redhill constituency. And so 60 years on, Christopher de Souza is continuing the tradition!
As my father became increasingly involved in politics, he left Lee and Lee’s affairs to my mother and Dennis.
My mother regarded her husband and children as her first priority but she did her work. Every day she came home for lunch from the office so as to see her children. She would take a nap and then go back to work. When I had chicken pox – I must have been aged four or five years old – she nursed me at home, with her work files at my bedside.
On days when business was slow, she would wait for new call-in clients at the office, because in those days there were no mobile phones, and she took along her knitting to office because she loved to knit. In the evenings, she would bring home files to do and the files would come as big bundles in the open cane baskets which some of you may remember. She would stack them up and do them one by one, mostly conveyancing documents, and I would be fascinated with the documents – not with what was written inside, but what was pasted inside – because the conveyance documents and title deeds would have revenue stamps for what seemed to me like fabulous denominations; we had $500 stamps, $1,000 stamps, and also old faces because these were transactions from properties which were 30 or 40 years old, from previous reigns.
I used to collect stamps – these were 10-cent stamps, 50-cent stamps – and you would be very lucky to find a $5 postage stamp, and here were $500 stamps.
My mother would look at me and say these are not postage stamps but revenue stamps; you don’t put them on envelopes!
My mother decided to do mostly solicitors’ work. When Kim Li (Mrs Lee’s niece) joined the firm, my mother advised her, and in fact told her “umpteen times”, that “women should not do litigation because that would make them argumentative, and more difficult to find husbands!”
And I understand my mother gave the same advice to other ladies in the firm, including Kim Li’s daughter, Joanna, who entered law school in 2005. I am reporting this to you as hearsay evidence, but on good authority, but of course I would never venture to offer any such advice to anybody.
My mother developed the Conveyancing Practice and the Trust and Probate Practice at Lee and Lee. Many of the clients she acted for became her friends, and remain to this day clients of the firm. She retired from partnership in 1987, nearly 30 years ago, but she stayed on as a consultant for many years after that.
Be wise people, not just smart lawyers: former Attorney-General V. K. Rajah tells NUS law graduates
SINGAPORE – Be yourselves. Embrace competition. Seek a larger purpose.
Former Attorney-General V. K. Rajah dispensed these advice to law graduates from the National University of Singapore (NUS) on Saturday morning (July 8), as he urged them to be not just smart lawyers but more importantly, wise people.
“Try and be lawyers with good heads and good hearts. Be wise lawyers. In Singapore, we have many clever people but not enough wise ones,” said Mr Rajah, who stepped down as the AG this January following a career as a Judge of Appeal, a High Court judge and the managing partner of law firm Rajah & Tann.
Speaking at a commencement ceremony that also marked the NUS Faculty of Law’s 60th anniversary, Mr Rajah noted that many young lawyers would want to emulate apparently successful lawyers and feel the need to assume some of their traits.
“A word of advice. Don’t. Be yourselves. By all means, absorb all the professional lessons but do not blindly absorb all the personal attributes that you witness,” he added.
“There are practising lawyers who have changed their identities and become uncaring in seeking to secure their clients’ ends. They practise ostensibly within the letter of the law without observing its spirit.”
On embracing competition, he said it would be sad “if lawyers still plead for protection from international competition” decades after Singapore started its first law school.
“I do not think that lawyers today have any right to try and deny clients access to the best legal minds available, Singaporean or international,” said Mr Rajah, who said he would be returning shortly to private practice without elaborating.
On seeking a larger purpose, he said law firms and lawyers “should not be defined by just billing targets, profits and compensation”.
“Unlike the hospitality business, the client is not always right. A good lawyer does not slavishly follow the client’s instructions. Instead, he counsels the client to achieve balance,” said Mr Rajah, who was from the 1982 batch that included Senior Counsel Davinder Singh and Judges of Appeal Andrew Phang and Steven Chong.
He also urged the graduates not to stay on longer in the legal profession than they have to if they are uninterested as “only those with passion will excel”.
“Unhappy lawyers are not just unhappy persons but a lack of commitment can have adverse consequences for others. Find your passion by all means. Today, a law degree opens many doors,” he added.
Mr Rajah’s comments come even as the third law school here opened in the SIM University earlier this year, amid an oversupply of young lawyers and declining interest in the law profession among youth.
Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said last year that the number of new entrants to the profession has doubled in the past five years. Last year, 509 new lawyers were admitted to the Bar.
The Straits Times reported on Monday (July 3) of the waning interest in law among university applicants, with 17 per cent fewer applicants at NUS listing law as their first choice compared to last year. For the Singapore Management University, the drop was 22 per cent this year. More students were opting for majors such as computing.
But Mr Rajah assured parents of those who choose to leave the law that their children have not just wasted four years of their lives.
He noted that NUS law graduates have,over the last 60 years, excelled in many different fields beyond the law including diplomacy, high finance, the business world and the arts.
He cited several from the 1961 pioneering class, such as “Mr Chan Sek Keong, the finest legal mind Singapore has known; Professor Tommy Koh, the finest diplomat Singapore has produced; and Mr TPB Menon, Singapore’s finest Chancery lawyer until he left active practice”.
Mr Rajah described the 1961 batch as the “wise class” that trump the clever in making a difference to society and lives and added that that other batches, including his 1982 cohort, should seek to emulate them.
Seven members of the 1961 class including Prof Koh, who were the inaugural batch of students admitted to the Faculty of Law of the then University of Malaya (now NUS) in 1957, attended the commencement ceremony on Saturday to support the 2017 graduating class and celebrate the faculty’s anniversary.
Prof Koh told The Straits Times that he hopes Singapore’s very brightest students continue to see law as their first choice for their future.
“A legal education prepares our students not only for a career in the law but for a whole variety of options, the foreign service, business and even the arts,” he added.
Among the graduating class of 2017 – over 300 of them – is a team of students who emerged as champions against the University of Queensland in a hard-fought grand final of the 18th International Maritime Law Arbitration Moot on July 5.
Student Douglas Lok, 25, was also named “Best Speaker in the General Rounds”. This was NUS Law’s fifth win in this competition, with the previous wins in 2000, 2001, 2010, and 2015.
Said Mr Lok: “I am confident that as long as we are willing to work hard and maintain an open mind, we will have long and fulfilling careers regardless of whether we are in or outside of the legal industry.”
Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s lawyer, Davinder Singh, remembers the man
SINGAPORE – Top litigator Davinder Singh, who represented Mr Lee Kuan Yew in his controversial lawsuits against opposition politicians and foreign media outlets, said on Monday that it was a “wild dream come true” to work for a man who was his parents’ hero.
“When I was growing up, I would hear my parents describe Mr Lee Kuan Yew as the greatest man alive who gave his people, especially the minorities, the ability to live with dignity and in safety,” he wrote.
When Mr Singh was a cadet in the Singapore Armed Forces Training Institute in the 1970s, there was once a parents’ visit where Mr Lee was guest-of-honour.
“My father immediately stood up when it was announced that Mr Lee had arrived, even though he must have known that, standing so far away in the midst of hundreds of parents and cadets, Mr Lee would not have been able to see him. After he stood up, others from all races followed. It was then that I truly realised what this Chinese man meant to my Punjabi father who was not even born in Singapore.”
“I will also not forget the time when my mother was moved and actually applauded when towards the end of one of his National Day Rally speeches, Mr Lee said that that he would get up even as he is lowered into the grave, if something went wrong. And she did that while sitting on the couch at home.”
“It were these spontaneous reactions from migrants, who had seen what life was like in their home countries and now felt protected by a man they completed trusted, that made me pause and think.”
Mr Singh, who is chief executive of law firm Drew & Napier, said that working for Mr Lee was “the greatest, most unforgettable experience of my life.”
Mr Singh won court victories on Mr Lee’s behalf against opponents like opposition politicians Tang Liang Hong, Chee Soon Juan and foreign media outlets like The Economist, Bloomberg and the New York Times.
“I sat with and talked to this genius who, more than anyone, understood human nature and societies, who had the third eye and could see trends and dangers which we mere mortals were blind or oblivious to, and who knew with complete confidence what was best for his people and Singapore.
“It was not possible to leave a meeting with him without being spellbound. Although he had not practised for decades, he remembered the finer points of the law from his days at university.”
“Every discussion was an exhilarating lesson which he taught with conviction and passion. It would invariably begin with the matters on which he needed legal advice, but he would always use the occasion to share his views about the issues of the day and to remind me of the importance of standing up to those who would do us harm and of showing them that we are their equal. He was the consummate teacher, giving his time and attention to every detail, even if it was just to show me how to elegantly sharpen a barb.”
“I do not know why the stars contrived to give Mr Lee Kuan Yew to Singapore or why they bestowed on me the priceless gift of working for him. But they did, and for that, my family and I shall always be grateful.”