“It is important to guarantee the people’s democratic rights
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One of the best, most sensible and definately educated post I have seen in a long while. It is logical and reasonable, without the usual gutter dialouge that plagues so many of our forum pages.
For your reading pleasure
Author: Dr Wong Wee Nam
13 September 2010
Singapore’s Builders
In 1819 Singapore had the good fortune of one man’s foresight. A man by the name of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles decided to acquire this swampy malaria-infested fishing village for the British Crown and began to lay plans to turn the insignificant island into a thriving trading centre. The plans called for the creation of a town, a system of preserving law and order, the development of free trade and the provision of education.
With this vision, Raffles laid down the embryo for the transformation of Singapore from a hiding place for pirates, a stopover for seafarers and a market place for traders into a more permanent society.
This was how Singapore was born and Raffles rightly took his place in history as the founding father of Singapore.
Raffles may have planted the seed but it was our forefathers who had cultivated this seed to grow Singapore into what we are today. In other words, Singapore has become a nation because our forefathers had decided to plant their roots and raise their families here.
Singapore has always been a small place with few natural resources. In the past, it had to depend purely on the drive, determination, enterprise and resourcefulness of its people to turn a fishing village into a trading centre. It was these qualities of our forefathers that soon made Singapore a trading capital of the East. It is we, their descendents, who have carried on the good work and made Singapore what it is today.
The New World
We are now living in a globalised world and Singapore will continue to adapt and evolve. As we change we need to remember that the global economy is a double-edged sword especially for a city-state. It can make us richer and more prosperous but the income gap will be widened and make a lot of us poor. It can create jobs and depress wages at the same time. It can attract people as well as fragment society, destroy our identity as a nation and tear us apart.
To survive as a nation, therefore, not only do we need to be as resourceful and innovative as our forefathers, we need also to be able to live and work together as one people as they did.
The Conditions for Creativity
Like everyone else in the world, there is no doubt that Singapore will need more and more creative people in order to survive. However have we the right environment to nurture more creative people? A classroom with a hectoring teacher cannot produce creative students. Similarly a country of cowed citizens fed by official state opinions and ruled by lecturers who have this habit of talking down to the people cannot be expected to produce a lot of creative people.
When I was a teenager, the song Puff, The Magic Dragon was banned. This song was based on a poem written by Leonard Lipton who was inspired by a poem Custard the Dragon written by Ogden Nash. Yet the authorities at that time deemed that the words “puff” and “dragon” connotes the taking of drugs. Nevertheless, after listening to the song for nearly forty years, I have not even puffed cigarettes, let alone smoked pot.
In those days, the authorities saw metaphors in the ordinary meaning of words.
Nowadays, it is the opposite. The authorities see literal meaning in metaphors.
Recently a young man was hauled up by the police for using a metaphor. The authorities then and now may choose to interpret words literally or figuratively, but the intention to control is the same.
This means that a writer now has to be very careful in using figures of speech. By extension, there is nothing to say that a person may not be charged for criminal defamation for using hyperboles.
Figures of speech are part of good creative writing. Metaphors are expressions that use words imaginatively to enliven an idea. How can we, therefore, encourage creativity if people have to over-censor what they write or do and non-conformists are not tolerated?
Forty years on, things are still the same.
Attracting Talents
There is also no doubt we need to attract talented people from all over the world to supplement and complement our own pool of talents. However if we do not even have the conducive environment to nurture our own talents, this same stifling climate will ultimately stifle any foreign talent that we import.
Foreign talents are not constrained by national borders. They are here precisely because of their nomadic nature. This means they can leave as easily as they come. Furthermore, the migrants of today are different from our forefathers.
Our forefathers came with nothing and had to start life from scratch. They had to stay because there was no hope of them going back to their homeland.
The modern migrants are different. They are here purely for economic interests. Having no deep roots here, and with a globally marketable skill, they will leave as readily as they had come if they can find that a better place for the cultivation of their talent. Many also still have a greater motherland to go back to.
Money attracts talents. However, money will not be able to buy commitment. Neither will it entice foreigners to rush in to apply for citizenship. Nor will money be able to stem the tide of emigration by our own citizens, if they are not happy to live here.
Ultimately whether these people will give their hearts to the country depends on whether there is a conducive social and political climate for them to fulfil themselves as citizens of the country.
Professor Udo Zander from the Stockholm School of Economics said, “Talented women and men will look for societies that to the best of their knowledge promise a way of life that they have been dreaming of.”
In other words, they want a way of life that they dream of and not what politicians think they should have.
Looking After Our Own Citizens
Our parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents had evolved a shared culture and lived through a common history to give a meaning to this country as a nation.
For Singapore to continue being a cohesive nation we need to ensure that our talented citizens who have been born and bred here, or newly acquired, continue to make this their home.
Yet many of these people or their children are migrating and migrants from other countries are replacing them. If this persists, the majority of Singapore’s population will soon be fresh migrants with very little roots to sustain us as a tightly cohesive nation. Singapore will then just become a multi-national office for talented people to work and not a home for our people and our children to stay forever.
Let us not for one moment think that it is possible, by patriotic asseveration, to get Singaporeans who have migrated to a foreign land and brought up their children there to have a heart in Singapore. They may miss their friends and the local food, but in the age of travel and e-mails, these deprivations would not make them feel homesick at all.
Singapore has a very short history as a nation. Singing national day songs will not be enough to provide a strong cultural and historical glue to bind the younger Singaporeans.
They need to feel that this is home. Unfortunately, the PAP’s style of government makes them feel like guests in hotel. Though better educated than their parents, many have felt that they do not have much say in the affairs of their country. They may be physically comfortable but there is little spiritual attachment.
The government wants its citizens to participate but it decides how, what, when and where it should be done. In order for participation to have a meaning, there must be real freedom to generate, test and implement ideas.
It is no use having lots of feedback sessions if these are to be just grumbling sessions against unpopular policies. And the government should not see genuine complaints as grumblings but as pleas for solutions. When people complained against crowded MRTs and high costs of HDB flats, they are meant to highlight problems that the government needs to address. They moan not because they are victims of their own success but because they are sufferers of poor policies. It is really a bad joke to ask them to stop griping and think of the unfortunate in society.
Conclusion
National allegiance grows from a deeply ingrained sense of shared heritage and destiny. And this can only come about through generations of participation in shaping one’s own lives in one’s own country.
If we want Singaporeans to have their hearts in Singapore, then we must give them the mental and psychological space to fulfil themselves as co-owners of this country. People do not just fulfil themselves by being mere owners of upgraded HDB flats.
Thus as long as we do not have a place that we can strongly feel to be a home, we will continue to lose our talents and draw in second rate foreign talents. If our climate is not conducive for enough intellectual inquiry and critical thinking to the extent that many of our own people have chosen not to come back, how can we hope to attract the really top talents from the world to come here and grow roots?
If we want our people to think of home, let us feel at home first.
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Nonsense.
GDP growth is all that matters.
Otherwise how to sustain million dollar salaries?
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i think one of the pre Text of this discussion.
State interest first before Home. or Family first before State interest.
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Confucius theory apply, self, family, country and then the nation, and then the world
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what a dumb article...............
what democratic rights are we talking about when we're in an Absolute Monarchy.......
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this is a dumbest statement,
what absolute monarchy u are talking about when Changi AP is open 24hrs for you to leave as you like..no need immigration, just scan away
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Originally posted by angel7030:
this is a dumbest statement,
what absolute monarchy u are talking about when Changi AP is open 24hrs for you to leave as you like..no need immigration, just scan away
Oh yeah, you can take your parent's passport and still be able to get across the causeway.
Not to mention a limping guy could float all the way to JB undetected.
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demorcracy at its very best, singapore supports democracy but not demostration
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Originally posted by angel7030:
Confucius theory apply, self, family, country and then the nation, and then the world
I like that.care for its pple first.
Ensure pple are happy first.
Ensure pple got jobs first.
Ensure pple has flat to live in first.
Ensure kids study in school first.
and many many others.
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what Kong said is, you yourself need to be straight, honest and good, then you can start a family to nurture the good into your family and when all families do the same, the country will good, and if all countries are good, the world will naturally be a better place to live in peace and harmony, and when the world and the country is good, it will naturally produce a better self, so it goes one big round and roung. But if you yourself is not straight, dishonest with jealousy, cheating and killing mentality, the nation will end up chaotic and alway at war, and this will go on round n round. That is why some countries are alway at war and poor, whereas some are good and peaceful. Both leaders and citizens play a very critical role. However, many do not understand what i, as a 22 yo gal said, most will said I am slut, stupid gal, crazy and a pimp..wow
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Originally posted by angel7030:
what Kong said is, you yourself need to be straight, honest and good, then you can start a family to nurture the good into your family and when all families do the same, the country will good, and if all countries are good, the world will naturally be a better place to live in peace and harmony, and when the world and the country is good, it will naturally produce a better self, so it goes one big round and roung. But if you yourself is not straight, dishonest with jealousy, cheating and killing mentality, the nation will end up chaotic and alway at war, and this will go on round n round. That is why some countries are alway at war and poor, whereas some are good and peaceful. Both leaders and citizens play a very critical role. However, many do not understand what i, as a 22 yo gal said, most will said I am slut, stupid gal, crazy and a pimp..wow
Another example, in the company, if you manger love to bad mouth you and your colleagues, the dept will not prosper to the greater heights. Everything you or your colleagues do wrongly, your manager will start to tell other colleagues about how bad you are.
It is the same as a country too.
By seeing yourself in the company situation is in fact able to see how ones country run.
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who cares, as long as the big boss like me, favour me, related to me, needed me, any managers or ministers can do what they like to down those below them. Working is the same like our singapore politics, you need to have relationship, without it, you can hardly survive in a nation or company built and cutlured on nepotism, favourtism, cronism and sometime gangsterism.
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Originally posted by angel7030:
who cares, as long as the big boss like me, favour me, related to me, needed me, any managers or ministers can do what they like to down those below them. Working is the same like our singapore politics, you need to have relationship, without it, you can hardly survive in a nation or company built and cutlured on nepotism, favourtism, cronism and sometime gangsterism.
Nepotism. -
Another example, in the company, if you manger love to bad mouth you and your colleagues, the dept will not prosper to the greater heights. Everything you or your colleagues do wrongly, your manager will start to tell other colleagues about how bad you are.
in a company, you not happy you can resign and at most be jobless but get your pride back. in singapore, if you are poor, where can you migrate? those who mention that singaporeans who are not happy can leave singapore are either dumb about immigration law or just cklps( mouth talk, brother shiok),
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poor also have intergrity and pride ya, as long as you dun cheat or steal, work a decent poor job, no big deal, you still got your pride and intergrity intact, so what if you are deputy director of SLA. As I said many times, in comparison, singapore poors are consider the rich in many countries, just that here got more richer people than you, you consider yourself poor, but actually you are not. Even the rich also said they are poor, I also I am poor, if not how to make money.
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Originally posted by angel7030:
poor also have intergrity and pride ya, as long as you dun cheat or steal, work a decent poor job, no big deal, you still got your pride and intergrity intact, so what if you are deputy director of SLA. As I said many times, in comparison, singapore poors are consider the rich in many countries, just that here got more richer people than you, you consider yourself poor, but actually you are not. Even the rich also said they are poor, I also I am poor, if not how to make money.
Talk Cock.....!!!
A Thai who lived in a Village may look poor. But his backyard would have grown vegetable and rare chicken to have Eggs.
Singaporean poor stay in HDB....they can Eat Sand and Air.
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Originally posted by Arapahoe:
Talk Cock.....!!!
A Thai who lived in a Village may look poor. But his backyard would have grown vegetable and rare chicken to have Eggs.
Singaporean poor stay in HDB....they can Eat Sand and Air.
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Originally posted by Arapahoe:
Talk Cock.....!!!
A Thai who lived in a Village may look poor. But his backyard would have grown vegetable and rare chicken to have Eggs.
Singaporean poor stay in HDB....they can Eat Sand and Air.
If I may add, they can look at their HDB flats and feel rich.
Worry about having no money to feed your family later.
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Aiya, Democratic can be harmful at times. Look at that poor Pakistan or Thailand, country not stable. So want autocratic BUT prosperity nation or a democratic filled with civil war one? U decide.
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Originally posted by reyes:
in a company, you not happy you can resign and at most be jobless but get your pride back. in singapore, if you are poor, where can you migrate? those who mention that singaporeans who are not happy can leave singapore are either dumb about immigration law or just cklps( mouth talk, brother shiok),
I agreed that if one's want to migrate, you need capital and qualification/paper. And not ones no money, want to leave spore. -
Originally posted by Arapahoe:
Talk Cock.....!!!
A Thai who lived in a Village may look poor. But his backyard would have grown vegetable and rare chicken to have Eggs.
Singaporean poor stay in HDB....they can Eat Sand and Air.
Hello, me gal dun have any cock to talk hor, if your cock can talk, i think you will not be here already. Famous liao. Wondering if you can stand, not to mention talkSingapore is uniquely small, other countries got kampongs and villages, but do you want us to smell chicken shit, shit on the trees and eat with flies and sleep with mosquitoes, hello, this is singapore 2010, not 1955, our society is one of the faster changing environment around this region, if you leave singapore for 10 years, you may not recognise the place again, unlike thai or malaysia or indo etc etc...after 50 years, still same same. In here, a typical HDB, you got aircondition, flush toilet, gas stove, nice living room, study room, kitchen, healthy living, lots of amenties around and full of electricity and electronic like internet stuffs to play with. Free from malaria, free from dengue, free from typhoid, free from food poisoning, snake bites, rabis, skin deterioriation, sunlight radiation and contaminated water.
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Originally posted by likeyou:
I agreed that if one's want to migrate, you need capital and qualification/paper. And not ones no money, want to leave spore.
they can alway downgrade to thailand, vietnam, cambodia or even like our Mas salamat to malaysia. Migration does not mean you need qualification or capital, as long as you can leave this place which you had come to hate it so much, why not, let them go, then see how much they regret about it.