Thoughts on Li Hongyi’s email and the “Chain of Command”

Was surfing the net just now when I came across this on tomorrow.sg.This 2LT Li Hongyi apparently emailed a letter of complaint to some some people who had no business knowing it, and the recipients included some big shots like the Defence Minister, Chief of Defence and Chief of Army. Then I realised that this was on the news yesterday. Well, jumping the chain of command is something we do hear of now and then during our time in NS, so it’s nothing earth-shattering. We’re frequently reminded not to do it, so it must take something extra to send the email to the people in the top echelon of SAF. Either you’ve got extra guts, or you’re extra stupid, or you’re extra equal. As it turns out, Li Hongyi is PM Lee Hsien Loong’s second son. That complicates matters somewhat.

He did the right thing
The letter, with important names and details blanked out out, are reproduced on The States Times and Simply Jean , among other blogs. My first thought is, he did the right thing. He saw the injustice in his unit and he took action to correct it. Even if he did it because he was aggrieved, there is no doubt what LTA X did, or that his superiors trying to cover up for LTA X, were wrong. I think a lot of us have witnessed unjust acts during our NS stints, but were impeded by powerlessness or fear of retribution, so we did not report it.

While some have offered the view that Li Hongyi might have breached the Official Secrets Act (OSA), but I’m not sure about that. It is grossly inappropriate to email the Defence Minister or Chief of Defence Force, but they belong to the same branch in the hierarchy, hence it is not outside of their authority. Jumping the chain of command, but there’s nothing else there. On the other hand, he did email to a whole lot of other people as well. Who they are, I can’t tell, but with this kind of letter, you’ll suppose he’ll be wiser not to mass-mail loads of people about it. But the leaking of this email to the public definitely amounts to a breach of the OSA. I’m sure SAF is conducting an internal investigation about this leak right now.

Chain of command suppresses the reporting of problems
The whole idea of this chain of command thing reinforces the perception that you’ll have to work your way up the chain to air your grievance, and if somewhere along the chain some superior judges that your case is frivolous or something, you’ll meet with some undesirable consequences. Given that there is little information about what proper channels are available (especially for the those not in leadership positions), and that there is a lot of hearsay about the ineffectiveness of things like the SAF hotline and being blacklisted for reporting certain stuff, it’s no surprise that a lot of servicemen face a lot of problems but don’t voice out, due to ignorance and fear.

An important issue is the attitude of the commanders in leading their men. Can they command the trust of the men? How serious do they view the problems reported to them? From a typical , corporal-and-below point-of-view the whole channel of redressing grievances fail when one or two commanders in the chain belittle or mishandle your problem. If your commander fails you, are you confident that your problem will be given different treatment from another commander whom you always see him hanging around with in the officer mess or at the canteen?

Check your recipient list and think twice before hitting the SEND button
It’s very easy to just add people to the recipient list and send the emails out to them, but it’s very easy to come back and haunt you as well. Some of my camp-mates sent out emails complaining about some other people just before they ORD, and some of these emails were circulated like crazy. We do bitch a lot among ourselves about people who slack or don’t do their area cleaning or some problem with our superiors, but it’s a different matter to put it down in writing. And once it’s written, digitally or otherwise, you’ll want it to reach the hands of the right people, not people who treat it as something to talk about over canteen break.