The Li Hongyi incident which surfaced last week saw many Singaporean netizens expressing their support for Hongyi’s action. I too agree that Li Hongyi did the right thing in blowing the whistle. However, I realised that my ‘support’ for the actions of Li Hongyi might not exactly be approval of his action, but rather, disapproval with the SAF in general. And, I suspect that this might be the case for many people, especially men who have served national service.

For many people, I suspect that one major dissatisfaction is personnel management, as highlighted by Li Hongyi in his now infamous email to the military top brass. Hongyi’s email appears to insinuate some degree of cover-up by the regular soldiers. It seems that fellow officers are willing to, or at least, attempt to turn a blind eye to offenses in order not to jeopardise the career of their colleague. I believe that Hongyi’s experience, as narrated in his email, is not unique and many people would probably have stories of their own to tell.

As others have pointed out, the main (and perhaps only) reason why Hongyi can compose such an email exposing certain practices that is apparently common in the SAF and get away only with a reprimand is because he is the son of the Prime Minister. Most of the time, such practices would have just been merely coffee shop talk or urban legends. Li Hongyi changed the landscape with an email that some netizens have claimed was designed to ensure a leak. In a sense, Li Hongyi is able to garner support because he has briefly opened Pandora’s box and helped many people vent their suppressed frustrations.

Where will this incident lead to is unknown. The spotlight is now on both Li Hongyi and the SAF. For the former, it is a question mark as to whether his current fire of idealism will continue to burn into the future. For the latter, it’s a question mark as to whether there will be more scrutiny into human resource management practices. Whatever the case, despite the conspiracy theories being dreamed up by some netizens, I remain convinced that Li Hongyi did the right thing, and he deserves praise in this incident.