"Toh I miss you, your friend Mark"

This was a drawing done by Mark Malloy, a dear friend of Eddie in his Notre Dame days. Below is a summary of his email to me few months ago, explaining the drawing and photo taken then. Mark, thank you for your email and the potraits. I finally have the courage to post this.

Toh's roommate at Notre Dame from 1987-1990 and his friend forever.

One is the original sketch that I did of Toh many years ago ( we were sitting in our dorm room and he was working on a paper or writing a letter home). The other is a self-portrait photograph that Toh took in 1987. This photo is really great and is well-remembered by his friends from Notre Dame. He gave me the photo as a parting gift when we left college.

While you are getting the originals in the mail, for the blog I have attached the two images below and if you have trouble with the attached files, you (or anyone) may find the images at my website--you can save them to your computer from there :http://www.gis.net/~malloyart/toh.html

To tell you the truth I have not wanted to mail these things to you. As it turns out, mailing them confirms that he is gone and I just do not want that to be true. However, you are the one who should be comforted by them and not me. They have been on our family's mantle since April 1st.

I could not help focusing on the fact that the photo was the work of his hand. He made the print. He mounted it. He signed it: "Liberty, Toh Wei Chee, May 1, 1987"

About the drawing: I drew it in the now-embarrassingly generous time that we had in our room together. He was there in front of me and I could not have known how precious that time would be.

"Toh I miss you, your friend Mark"

Happy Anniversary, Darling....

'Can't Help Falling In Love' by Elvis Presley was played on air.
You chose to sing this very same song to me on our wedding day.


Happy anniversary, darling

Love Always,
Wifey

Till we meet again...

Eddie Toh, the author of this blog, died suddenly on Sunday, March 30, 2008, just two days before what would have been his 41st birthday. His funeral took place on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at Singapore's Mandai crematorium. This is an extract of a tribute read to the service by his beloved wife Linda Goh.

The first time I met Eddie was about 15 years ago. I was 18 and he was 27. He had come to check me out after his colleagues told him to take a look at who his secretary was having lunch with. I must say I was quite disappointed to learn that "this" irritating guy was Nina's boss.

He pretended to be disinterested. You know Eddie, always trying to be cool. Women did not affect him - or not that let he let on. It just as well, because I was seeing someone else at the time. In fact, I could have easily forgotten Eddie. But he would not let me. He would continue to make himself a nuisance by wise-cracking whenever our paths crossed. It would not occur to me until much later that he was actually interested in me.

Yes, first impressions can be misleading. Never could I have imagined that such a forgettable encounter would mark the start of an incredible journey with a man who was able to make me feel I was the most special woman in the world.

Today, as I look back, I smile to myself at how silly he was all those times he tried to get to know me better. I remember vividly how he held my hand the first time. I had challenged him to "ponteng" - steal a day - from work, which he told me he had never done before. He accepted the challenge and took me to a movie.

While I was pretending to watch the show, waiting for him to make his move, he was obviously plotting. First, he manoeuvred his hand around his lap until it was next to my thigh. Then he pressed that hand into my hand. And then he drew both our hands to his side.

Naturally, I gave not the slightest hint that I had noticed anything was going on. But inside, it was the most warm and wonderful feeling. It was the start of a beautiful life together - a life I wish with all my heart had gone on so much longer.

Honey, you meant everything to me. You gave me love, you gave me laughter. You tickled me, you taught me. You brought me joy, you made me cry. But when I cried you would end up crying with me. And with each tear that fell, we grew closer. Because that is what true love is: Accepting each other for the good and the bad, the highs and the lows, the perfect and the imperfect.

Didi, we had great times and some sad times. But before we knew it, we had become each other's second nature. Every day I would see you working at your computer, typing furiously as you made funny faces at me. Yes, you were always there. Supporting me and guiding me. Cuddling me with your arms - and your eyes. No one ever made me feel so comfortable. No one touched me more. No one ever could. I miss you so much….

Your friends tell me I was the best thing that happened to you. I refuse to believe this. Because let me tell you - and everyone - that you are the best thing that ever happened to me. Didi, you are my soul mate.

As I bid you farewell today, let me say again: Darling, this is not goodbye - not for me. I do not pretend to understand why you are continuing your journey alone. But I know you are in good hands, because I saw you coming close to the Lord in the final months of your life. I know He has guided you home. And when my time comes, I pray that I will have done enough to join you in heaven, so we can make up for all the time we did not share on earth. Knowing you, I know you would have made plans for me too.

As surely as love conquers all, you conquered my heart, Didi. I thank you for the past 15 years. I thank you for all you did for my family, for all you did for our friends. But most of all, my love, I thank you for all you did for me.

You did well, Didi. So rest well. You will always be a part of me and I will always love you.

Till we meet again for ‘mee-pok’ and ‘koay-teow-teng’.

Missing you dearly,

Wifey

Did bloggers really create the Malaysian tsunami?

This is a well-written commentary by a former journalist in Singapore's TODAY newspaper today. Cherian George looks at the role of the Internet and blogs during the watershed elections in Malaysia this month.

It's a timely reminder that bloggers only play one part in the big scheme of things. Bloggers on both sides of the causeway will never replace mainstream media, despite general unhappiness with the two governments' mouthpieces on certain key issues.

But ultimately, editors and writers -- whether they are in the mainstream media or blogosphere -- must be credible. Both platforms also need to engage each other more frequently to give a more complete picture to people in Singapore and Malaysia.


Did bloggers really create the tsunami?
Cherian George
March 29, 2008

MALAYSIAN Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's admission this week that his government did not pay enough attention to the Internet is one of the sexiest explanations yet for its shock defeats in the recent elections.

Perhaps bloggers will now replace bomohs as the suspects of choice behind bizarre political phenomena like those witnessed on March 8.

Some of the hype around this admittedly magical technology is justified. By dramatically lowering the barriers to entry for wide communication and collaboration, the Internet is quite simply the most powerful platform for innovation — including political innovation — in the history of civilisation.

However, every sober analysis of its impact since the Internet's mid-1990s "big bang" has come to the same conclusion: The technology is not powerful in isolation; the World Wide Web weaves its wonders only in concert with other old-fashioned forces.

Thus, the vibrancy of Internet politics in Malaysia is very much a reflection of an offline environment of lively opposition politics and civil society activism. Mr Jeff Ooi — Malaysia's mr brown — could transition from blogger to victorious parliamentary candidate because the Democratic Action Party was well placed to harness his popularity.

Similarly, aliran.com was able to churn out influential reports because it is backed by the established Penang-based human rights non-governmental organisation, Aliran. Less savoury attributes of Malaysian cyberspace, such as its poison pen practices, are also rooted in the country's offline traditions.

Internet power should also be seen in the context of the wider media environment. While media companies are often wedded to one medium or another, most users are promiscuous by instinct.

They flit between media, each promising its own uses and gratifications — perhaps a newspaper for comprehensive news, television news for its pictures, a blog for personal insight, an activist's website for biting commentary, SMS for the latest gossip or joke, coffeeshop talk to share their own views, rally attendance for a sense of community, and so on.

If people suddenly gravitate towards one medium, it is often because another has failed to meet their expectations. This is certainly the case in Malaysia, where the crippling of the mainstream media by government control is the main reason why Malaysians have flocked online.

Even the editors of the leading independent site Malaysiakini humbly concede that their success isn't because they are so great — they are still resource-poor by news organisation standards — but because their mainstream rivals are found wanting.

Therefore, the government's fundamental mistake was not that it neglected cyberspace, as claimed by the Prime Minister, but that it failed to address offline problems — which were then exposed and exploited by Internet-empowered opponents.

Officials should have learnt from the Reformasi protests of almost a decade ago, when its mainstream media stranglehold resulted in media coverage out of sync with the public mood, with massive losses in newspaper circulation and a windfall for alternative websites such as Malaysiakini and Harakah Daily.

Now, officials are talking of courting independent bloggers or investing in their own. But this will not fix the real problem of inadequate respect for freedom of expression, resulting in a lack of credibility for all media linked to the state. Comparisons with Singapore — Malaysia's fraternal twin — are irresistible.

If even the Malaysian Prime Minister has acknowledged the political impact of the Internet, does that not make Singapore — with its far greater Internet penetration levels — ripe for its own electoral tsunami? Only if one imagines the Internet to be some kind of magical force, which it isn't.

Distilling more thoughtful analyses of the Malaysian elections, 2008 appears to mark a tipping point at which voters decided that poor governance was no longer tolerable. The ruling alliance — and practically everyone else — had expected racial loyalties and a controlled mass media to compensate for its failures and inefficiencies.

But a threshold appears to have been reached, indicating that ideological advantages are finite, while good governance is all. Like Malaysia, Singapore is run by a dominant political party that believes that the media's role is not to set the political, social and economic agenda. That is to be left to the elected leaders of the day. Instead, the media is seen as a partner in nation building.

The People's Action Party has generally not used its ideological control as a substitute for performance, but rather to give policy-makers a buffer against interference by interest groups and dissenting voices, allowing them to frame the agenda and manage public opinion in the short term.

Long-term legitimacy has been built on the tangible success of its policies. The drift from the controlled mainstream to freer alternative media has therefore been much less evident in Singapore than in Malaysia.

Another major difference is that Singapore's alternative media doesn't have the thick soil that their Malaysian counterparts thrive in. The political environment in Singapore is more predictable and sanitised in a way that Malaysia's never was.

This is reflected in the two societies' alternative media: Malaysia's are more organised, mobilised and committed. Malaysia shows that determined activists can amplify their impact with the Internet. But Singapore shows that the Internet cannot electroshock an otherwise quiescent public into action, no matter how well wired it is.

Cherian George is an Assistant Professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, NTU, and the author of Contentious Journalism and the Internet: Towards Democratic Discourse in Malaysia and Singapore (Singapore University Press, 2006).

Another good commentary: Hope spreads from tsunami, The Star (March 29, 2008)

A good Act?

The latest Raffles Conversation in Singapore's The Business Times profiles the co-author of the controversial Sarbanes-Oxley Act to help contain corporate scandals in the US.

Will we see the end of big corporate scandals in the decadent US? Don't bet on it.

Business Times - 29 Mar 2008
In defence of Sarbanes-Oxley
Paul Sarbanes, co-author of the ground-breaking securities law which bears his name, tells WONG WEI KONG why corporate America is far better off with it

FEW political careers can count the removal of the US President and the passing of one of the most important securities legislations in history as highlights, but Paul Sarbanes is a man for times of impeachment and scandals. In three decades in the US Senate, Mr Sarbanes earned a reputation for working quietly behind the scenes on complex issues before announcing his retirement in 2006. The Democrat was Maryland's longest-serving senator, called by some as 'the man who cannot be removed'.

But what thrust the low-profile Mr Sarbanes into the glare of world scrutiny was the ground-breaking securities law he co-authored as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee with House Representative Michael Oxley in 2002 and which bears his name - the Sarbanes-Oxley Act or SOX.

As the retired senator recounted in a recent interview with BT, President George W Bush called SOX 'the most far-reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin D Roosevelt' when he signed it into law.

Despite its fierce critics, Mr Sarbanes' assessment of SOX is unequivocal: corporate America is far better off with it.

'The system is in place and working. I think it has made a substantial difference for the better,' he says. Mr Sarbanes was in Singapore at the invitation of The Asian Banker to speak to a gathering of business leaders, where he predictably found himself addressing some of the criticism against SOX.

SOX came into being as a response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals in the US, including Enron and WorldCom. The scandals cost investors billions of dollars when the share prices of the affected companies collapsed, and shook public confidence in the nation's securities markets.

The legislation, which does not apply to privately held companies, aimed at creating a strong independent oversight board to oversee the auditors of public companies. It addressed conflicts of interest, ensured auditor independence, required corporate leaders to be personally responsible for the accuracy of their company's financial reports, and established safeguards to protect against conflicts of interests involving investment analysts. The Act also established a new quasi-public agency, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board or PCAOB, which is charged with overseeing, regulating, inspecting, and disciplining accounting firms in their roles as auditors of public companies.

Debate, however, has continued over the perceived benefits and costs of SOX. Supporters contend that the legislation was necessary and has played a useful role in restoring public confidence in the nation's capital markets. Critics charged that it was too burdensome and costly, especially for smaller firms, with US companies spending a total of US$6 billion last year on SOX compliance. It also made US exchanges less attractive to foreign companies.

Internal controls

To Mr Sarbanes, it all comes down to a simple question. 'Every public company should have an acceptable system of internal financial controls. I think that's part of being a public company. For most people, if someone came up to them and wanted them to invest money in a company and they ask, how good is your system of financial controls? - If the person says we don't have a system of financial controls, we don't believe in having such a thing, we think it's a burden, I doubt people would put their money in such a company. You wouldn't put your money in a company like that.'

Asked if a code of best practices - using a 'comply or explain' approach - would be a better way to good corporate governance than an overarching legislation like SOX, Mr Sarbanes says different markets need different approaches. 'I think it depends very much on the circumstances of particular markets and the culture of those markets. I didn't think 'comply and explain' will work in the US because I think you will have 'all explain and no comply'.' He notes, too, that in markets like Singapore, where 'comply and explain' applies to certain aspects of corporate governance, there are other requirements which are law. 'Generally, worldwide, there has been a movement towards the standards of SOX. Regulators around the world either independently through their own analysis or with reference to SOX have put into place many of the provisions regarding best practices.'

Moves by US regulators to extend the deadline for smaller companies to comply with SOX while deciding how the law should apply to these firms do not undermine the legislation in any way, Mr Sarbanes says. 'When we drew up SOX, we left a lot of discretion with the regulators to fine-tune these requirements. That's how the system was supposed to work. You adapt the protocol to make it less burdensome and yet at the same time provide investor protection, and I think that's all to the good.'

In reply to critics who charge that good corporate ethics are better brought about by education than tough laws, Mr Sarbanes says the two are not contradictory. 'The temptation to depart from high standards can be very great because, often, it seems that you can make a lot of money in a very short time. So you need to have a monitoring system to check people from departing from proper practices and you also need to be constantly emphasising to people the importance of following proper practices out of their own decision and their own choice.'

Mr Sarbanes also disagrees with claims that SOX has made US markets less competitive against other exchanges. 'Let me put that into context with two general observations. For decades, countries around the world have been urged to develop the capitals markets and that's what they've been doing. Secondly, you have significant economic growth elsewhere, with Asia as the prime example. So there is capital available and liquidity to underwrite these capital markets. You have significant financial centres in Singapore and elsewhere so in effect, you're getting a globalisation of the financial services industry. You have a more competitive situation so I don't think it squares with current developments that New York would dominate in the way it used to.'

'Having said that, I think it can still compete effectively and it has been doing that. The figures go up and down but studies have shown that foreign issuers who list on the New York capital market get a premium from investors who are prepared to pay more because they are sure that if these firms meet the listing standards there, it says something about the level of corporate governance of the firm.'

Recalling the days after the Enron scandal, Mr Sarbanes says pushing SOX through in the first place was also not as easy as it later seemed. 'In restrospect, you look at it and think it was easy because it was passed with overwhelming margins in both houses of Congress. But getting there wasn't easy. My first task was to get it past the banking committee and we worked on that for many months and made some adjustments and some compromises. In the end, we had a 17-4 vote within the committee. All the Democrats and the majority of the Republicans voted for it and it was truly a bi-partisan judgement.'

'Four days after that, the Worldcom scandal broke. Once that happened, it gave a tremendous momentum to the legislation and that just help pushed it through because the scandal was a very large and stark reminder of the need to have such legislation.' When it went to Congress, SOX was approved by the House of Representatives by a vote of 423-3 and by the Senate by 99-0.

Asked if more could have been included in SOX - such as checks against excesses in top executive pay - given the strong political and public support at the time, Mr Sarbanes says he did not think so. 'I'm not sure we would have succeeded with putting in a lot more. It's like a train leaving the station. If you put too much weight on the train, it wouldn't be able to make it out of the station. So we had to be very careful.'

'And compensation is a very complex issue. It's not clear that it's an issue one deals with legislation. You need to have a clear understanding of the inner workings of the corporation. I don't think you can get government into setting the salaries and the compensation of executives. But we now require the full disclosure of compensation and the expensing of stock options.'

Turning to the present sub-prime crisis, Mr Sarbanes says it is a very different situation from what SOX dealt with. 'SOX dealt with corporate governance, audit requirements and the requirement that companies honestly report their financials. It didn't deal with bad economic or business decisions. That's part of the economic decision process and some people make good judgements and some people make bad judgements.'

'The current crisis comes from obviously bad economic decisions. A number of people operated on the premise that everything would go up, they were highly leveraged and they were developing more and more exotic mortgage products and now they are paying the consequences for it.'

'Overall, the risk management system has been inadequate. I think the supervision by regulatory authorities has fallen short. A lot of what was going on in the sub-prime mortgage market shouldn't have been allowed. They were giving mortgages to people without documentation of income to show that they are able to pay. They had products which gave you a very low teaser interest rates for a couple of years and then the rates would jump up and the mortgage payments jump up substantially and there is nothing to show that these people with such mortgages would be able to hang on to the monthly payments. The consequences of all of this is to create a crisis of confidence. The part of the total market that the sub-prime loans occupy is relatively small but the spill-over from it led to the seize-up in credit.'

Mr Sarbanes says policy-makers now face a dilemma which he and his colleagues did not have to grapple with in the days after Enron. 'We didn't have the same counter-prevailing conditions. The current situation is more complex.'

'On the one hand, the people who made these bad judgements, many of whom had engaged in speculative activity, should bear the consequences of their actions. Unless punished by market forces, the danger is that others would repeat the process in the future. On the other hand, as much as they should bear the consequences, if that ends up throwing the economy into a down-spin and you have a broad negative economic impact, that creates quite a huge problem in your hands. People totally unconnected with these issues will be impacted.'

'I think the Fed and other economic policy-makers are trying to work their way through these competing considerations ... so we just have to see how it develops.'

For Mr Sarbanes, SOX capped a long and distinguished career. Born to Greek immigrants, he grew up in Maryland's Eastern Shore in the city of Salisbury. Mr Sarbanes attended Princeton University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1954. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship that brought him to Balliol College of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, graduating with a First Class degree in 1957. He then returned to the US and attended Harvard Law School.

After graduating in 1960, he clerked for Federal Judge Morris A Soper before entering private practice with two Baltimore, Maryland law firms. In 1966, Sarbanes ran for the Maryland House of Delegates in Baltimore City and won. He was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1970 and was re-elected in 1972 and 1974. In 1976, Mr Sarbanes became a US Senator and was re-elected in 1982, 1988, 1994, and 2000.

It was during his service in the House, in August 1974, that Mr Sarbanes was selected by his Democratic colleagues on the House Watergate Committee to introduce the first Article of Impeachment, for obstruction of justice, against President Richard Nixon. President Nixon later resigned before the impeachment proceedings were brought to bear.

Other weighty issues followed for Mr Sarbanes over the years. He helped lead the successful 22-day debate on the Senate floor to ratify the Panama Canal treaty, earning him the enmity of conservative groups. He served on the committee investigating the Iran-contra scandal, where he criticised President Ronald Reagan for allowing a 'junta in the White House'. He also served as ranking Democrat on the Senate Whitewater Committee which investigated President Bill Clinton's real estate dealings in the Whitewater scandal and the suicide of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W Foster Jr.

'It's interesting that at the beginning of my career in Congress I was involved in the very large issue of impeachment and at the end of my career in the Senate, I had the opportunity to be involved in SOX. There have been other issues in between but those two stand out,' he says.

'In terms of gravity, I think nothing is comparable to impeachment proceedings. After all, you are removing an elected president chosen by the people directly. You are removing the president from office. That was a very big step to take. That was a very momentous issue to be involved in. I was very mindful of that at the time and have remained so.'

'On the other hand, I think SOX will have a lasting impact and a lasting history. I think it would be an impact for the good.'

Still adjusting to life after retirement, Mr Sarbanes, just past his 75th birthday, does 'a little speaking and teaching'. The torch, though, has been passed on. His son, John Sarbanes, won the election for Maryland's Third congressional district in 2006, the district that Mr Sarbanes represented prior to his election as Senator. 'The moment I left Congress, my son entered Congress. That's really very satisfying.'