Author: Dr Wong Wee
Nam
13 September
2010
“It is important to guarantee the people’s democratic rights
and legitimate rights and interests. We must resolve the problem of
excessive concentration of power, create conditions that allow
people to criticise and supervise the government….”
– Wen Jiabao Prime Minister of China in 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.
Source: http://www.sgpolitics.net
