Lim Siong Guan is now 71 years old, and painfully aware of his mortality.

(Get a quick rundown on him in this first interview we did with him two years ago, by the way:)

He volunteers this sentiment in a recent chat we had with him, back on the 37th floor of Capital Tower, where the GIC offices are located.

"So how many years do I have?" he asks.

And with his future in mind, Lim, who used to head the civil service and Economic Development Board, now Advisor to the Group Executive Committee of GIC (previously the sovereign wealth fund's Group President), preoccupies himself with thinking about Singapore's, and Singaporeans', future.

"I’m always oriented about the future. The past is the past and I mean, you may celebrate but at the end of the day, what really comes to my mind is what’s the future like? And what you can do to help people have the best possible future?"

His answer to that is in equal parts perfectly sensible and painfully abstract: to create conditions that help people build up their self-confidence and resilience, so they will be able to pick themselves up and move forward even if they suffer a setback.

But that's how one might find Lim to be in his speeches, smaller-scale talks and even writing.

As the Institute of Policy Studies-S R Nathan fellow last year, Lim in his three lectures dwelled on the massive question of "Can Singapore Fall?"

Depending on our leaders

His thesis response can be summarised as this: if we can build a gracious society with a new generation of pioneer innovators that slows down our decline in economic growth, we can put that (the "fall" of Singapore) off for a number of years more.

And our ability to pull this off is dependent on us as a people, not just our leaders.

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But we of course had to ask anyway: do our next generation of leaders possess these values that the future will need?

Here's Lim's sagely response: the government is what the people choose. 

"You need to recognise there’s no government that’s perfect. But you choose. You choose between your alternatives, and you choose which do you think is the best alternative. And that’s that, right?

But all governments have to live wanting to feel that they are helpful for people. At the end of the day, you have to recognise that governments can only do what the people support them on."

That being said, though, Lim stresses that the government cannot simply work to please the people of today. It needs to take policy steps that take into account the future.

"If the government were to think only about the next general election, it will only do things which will keep it popular or acceptable to the public, good enough for the public to vote them back in.

But if the government is really thinking long-term, it will have to do things like working on (building a) gracious society, whatever things are necessary for the future... (you then have to) convince the current generation (and) say 'we are doing this because it is terribly important for the generation — not your children you know, for your grandchildren, and for your great grandchildren.'"

Lim acknowledges that planning for one's great-grandchildren is something many Singaporeans may find a little too far-fetched — after all, how many of us will be alive long enough to meet them, right? — but he says the government needs to find a way to help people see that it's important.

Difficult for the government to deliver "heart"

How was it that our first-generation leaders were able to see and plan long-term, and also get the people's support for it, though?

Lim said while they did take a long-term view, the problems they worried about solving were, quite happily, problems the people were worrying about.

In the 1960s, people were worrying about job security, housing, education, basic healthcare. These were things our leaders back then could provide.

Lim referred to a list of things that Singaporeans aspired to have from a recently-concluded survey, noting that three out of the top five were intangible —

1. Affordable housing
2. Care for the elderly
3. Compassion
4. Care for the disadvantaged
5. Effective healthcare

"You know, when I say care for the elderly, care for the disadvantaged, one thing may not be fully recognised, which is that it is very difficult for the government to deliver heart.

Why? Because the fundamental job of the government is to deliver justice and to be seen as fair, and to be seen as consistent, so the way you treat me must be the way you treat everybody else."

Here, Lim raises the example of the Ben Davis case, where in addressing it in Parliament, Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen stressed the need for National Service deferment cases to be considered on the basis of the person's contribution to Singapore.

In particular, he observed, rightly or not, that Ng seemed to be striving to prove that the government has "been fair all around".

"At the end of the day, he says very explicitly, you have to do something which is centred on the country. You cannot do something that’s centred on the individual. Although he talks in terms of football and sports. I mean, you can make just the same thing about the pianist, the violinist, you can talk about the artist, and everybody has a very special skill, and everybody will have their own case. It’s the job of the government to act in a way which is fair, and that fairness is best manifested in a way of consistency, therefore you have rules.

Therefore if you make exceptions, there are also rules for exceptions, and you cannot break those rules. This is why people say civil servants are so bureaucratic, they can’t help it!"

It's simply, Lim argues, more difficult for the government to make exceptions. Because when an exception is made for one person or group of people, the exception must be allowed for anyone who fits that category — of course.

And then there must be rules to ensure nobody fitting in that category of exceptions exploits the exception. And you see where we're going with this — it goes on and on.

The case Lim makes, therefore, is that since the government delivers on fairness and not heart, the "heart" has to be delivered by us — citizens, and civil society.

"People create their own charities, so if you look at it for example — care for the elderly, compassion, care for the disadvantaged — who do you think has to do all that? At the end of the day, it’s the citizens themselves. The government cannot fundamentally do that."

At the end of the day, Lim believes life will be much easier if Singaporeans can learn to see and understand the spirit of the law, rather than fear the consequences of breaking it.

"Punctuality is a matter of discipline. I say punctuality is a matter of honour, because you come late, you hold up everyone else in that meeting, you have not honoured other people’s time. So can we become a society where we begin to think about that.

It’s just like, you go to the MRT, onto the escalator, if you stand on the left because that’s the rule, then all you do is follow the rules. (But if you do that because it’s considerate to do so) that’s an act of honour.

It’s just like the environment right. If you say you don’t litter because the rule says you get fined. But if you don’t litter because you say it’s good for everybody. They have a more pleasant work or recreational area. That’s an act of honour. You think about other people. That’s a challenge for us all."

Lim's endeavour for Singaporeans to live with honour is the basis for his now four-year-old Honour initiative.

Talking to him, we come away with a sense that he's worried about the trajectory we might be heading in, but also that he's a man who is doing all he can — with the years he has left.

Here's our first interview with Lim two years ago:

And here's one of the lectures he gave as IPS-Nathan fellow last year:

Top photo by Kayla Wong