Kenneth Tiong condemns racist comments, says Air India concerns were ‘purely commercial’
Workers’ Party MP Kenneth Tiong has condemned racist comments and clarified that his concerns over Singapore Airlines’ investment in Air India were “purely commercial”.
His comments came after Senior Minister and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam addressed racist remarks surrounding SIA’s investment in Air India and Singaporeans missing in the Nepal floods.
In a Facebook post on Sept 5, Tiong said he “wholeheartedly agrees” that racism has no place in society and condemned such remarks “without reservation”.
He also said it was “unfortunate” that his questions about the Air India deal had become entangled with racist comments.
‘I condemn them without reservation’: Tiong on racist comments
Tiong described racist comments about the Singaporeans missing in Nepal as “shameful”.
“I condemn them without reservation,” he wrote.
He said citizenship makes a person part of the Singapore family, and rejected attempts to distinguish between Singaporeans based on whether they were born here or became citizens later.
Tiong added that Singaporeans should be able to discuss issued of national interest openly and without fear or favour.
Speaking to the media on Sept 5, Shanmugam had described racist online comments about the missing Singaporeans and SIA’s investment in Air India as “shameful, nasty, and totally unacceptable”.
Asked whether Tiong’s earlier post had crossed any racial or xenophobic lines, Shanmugam said: “I think you’d best ask him. You’d have to ask him what he intended and what he meant.”
Air India questions were ‘purely commercial’
Tiong had written in an Aug 26 Facebook post that he would neither support nor expect Temasek funds to be used in future to prop up Air India through SIA.
SIA holds a 25.1 per cent minority stake in Air India, which has reportedly sought US$1.5 billion (S$1.9 billion) in fresh equity from its shareholders after posting a record annual loss.
“No one, least of all Singaporeans, owes Air India a living,” Tiong wrote. “If Singapore Airlines wants to continue its bet on Air India, it should do so on its own two feet, and not on Temasek’s.”
Addressing those remarks in his Sept 5 post, Tiong stressed: “My concerns were, and are, purely commercial.”
He then laid out his concerns in two parts.
First, Tiong said Air India had incurred more than S$3.5 billion in losses in the previous financial year, with SIA’s share exceeding S$800 million.
He noted that Air India was seeking another $1.9 billion from its shareholders to fund a turnaround that its chairman said could take up to 10 years.
Tiong also pointed to what he described as SIA’s S$10.5 billion in cash against S$10.7 billion in debt, and noted that Temasek owns about half of the airline.
While SIA could afford to reinvest in Air India for now, he questioned how many times it could continue doing so, and who would bear the cost of future investments and losses if it could no longer afford them.
Secondly, Tiong pointed to SIA's position in 2020, when Temasek backed an $8.8 billion recapitalisation and Parliament approved hundreds of millions of dollars in wage and aviation support.
He noted that then Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat had described SIA as a strategic asset and said the Government would consider further direct support if necessary.
Tiong said supporting SIA at the time was the right decision, “but it meant that the line between SIA’s money and Singaporeans’ money holds only until SIA runs out of it.”
He said Singaporeans could therefore reasonably ask what would happen if the Air India investment went badly and whether Temasek would again step in to support SIA.
‘Zero tolerance for racism, and hard questions about money’
Tiong also questioned what that could mean for taxpayers and their quality of life, and whether using Singapore’s reserves to cover potential losses would effectively amount to “directing an investment”.
He said Parliament’s role was to ask such questions and that he would raise them with the Government on Sept 8.
Tiong concluded by saying Singaporeans are “best served when we can hold two things at once”: “Zero tolerance for racism, and hard questions about money.”
He wrote: “We should not let the two get mixed up. If we do, both causes suffer.”
Explore more on these topics
See something interesting? Contribute your story to us.
