Potential People’s Action Party (PAP) candidate Ong Ye Kung, who has been making the rounds in Sembawang GRC, addressed the issue of Singapore identity and the contentious CMIO (Chinese-Malay-Indian-Others) model in a commentary in Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao today.

The current Director of Group Strategy and Development at Keppel Corporation observed the somber SG50 mood, following the passing of founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, and noted that many Singaporeans have become more reflective, asking what defines us as a people.

Below are four key points that the 44-year-old made in his Chinese commentary:

1. A limit to the CMIO blunt categorization: Ong said that CMIO does not capture the numerous heterogenous sub communities in Singapore and the diversity that resulted from immigration and inter-community marriages.

2. NRIC provides broad strokes on one's identity but is inadequate to describe who a Singaporean is as a person:

In this part, Ong introduced himself as "a family man"; one who enjoys "team sports, music and painting"; a "half Teochew"; a former civil servant; and a mummy's boy.

He said that his late mother, "a teacher, with her traditional and strict upbringing shaped and defined my life values".

3. But CMIO category should not be abolished yet: Ong said that while CMIO cannot be an adequate description for a stronger national identity, that does not mean it should be de-emphasized or discarded.

4. CMIO as "ice-capped peaks": Ong used the analogy of several major C-M-I-O "ice capped peaks" to describe Singapore's national identity. He said that "the ice melts and flows into numerous streams and tributaries of sub communities, sects, clans, before converging back into rivers of shared experiences and national identity".

He said that each part of the system are "interdependent, reinforcing, and although different, never mutually exclusive".

You can read his full Facebook note below: