By Choo Zheng Xi, Editor-at-Large
Why are Singaporeans unhappy, the PAP wonders.
It is said that Singaporeans are a migrant stock. Coming and
going, it’s in our blood. My own mother was born and raised in Hong
Kong. She met my Singaporean father while he was helping out at my
paternal grandmother’s restaurant in Kowloon in the early 80s. And
then I was born.
My parents brought me to Singapore in 1988, when I was three
years old.
Back then, there were only about 300,000 non-citizen residents
in Singapore, out of 3 million people.
All my mother’s blood relatives are still in Hong Kong, but we
are Singaporean citizens now. We will always call Singapore our
first home.
I still speak only Cantonese with my mother. She came here
speaking very little English, but she now speaks decent English and
Mandarin (though with a strong Cantonese accent), and some pasar
Hokkien that she picked up along the way.
My mother recently retired from her sales position at a
3-for-$10 stall near Raffles City where she happily worked for more
than five years. She was tired of competing with the Mainlander
that her boss had hired last year, who was willing to work longer
for less money.
Mum was hoping to quit after receiving the annual one-month
Chinese New Year bonus. The bonus, which her boss usually pays
along with her January wages, never came this year. Over the phone,
she told me how relieved she was that I’d be starting work at a law
firm later this year.
Singapore now has more than 1.7 million foreigners out of 4.99
million people.
My mother grew to love Singapore at a time when Singapore had
more space to grow to love her.
It scares me how little space Singaporeans have been left to
integrate foreigners, and how visceral the xenophobic reactions
are.
Why are Singaporeans angry, the PAP wonders.
Then there is my paternal granduncle. He was a bookish bachelor,
and spoke a crisp Victorian English common among the
English-educated of his time. He used to trundle down every weekend
to the old National Library at Stamford Road, where he enjoyed
reading everything from American thriller novels to Singaporean
history books. He was such a loyal library member that the library
used to send him commemorative coffee table books on their more
significant anniversaries.
He died a few years before they turned the Stamford Library into
a tunnel. I guess in a way it was better he never found out, he
would never have forgiven them.
Why are Singaporeans angry, the PAP wonders.
If our Ministers took crowded MRTs and buses, ate at
neighborhood coffee shops, or worked as front line service staff,
they might better understand Singaporeans’ anger.
If they lived like us, ate like us — if they looked at us — they
might know.
Singaporeans aren’t inherently xenophobic or hateful, my family
will be the first to attest. I trust that Singaporeans can remember
a common humanity even as we condemn dehumanizing policies.
But our country is changing so quickly that we now feel
overwhelmed and displaced, angry, in a country which is becoming
harder and harder to recognize.
It is hard to believe the PAP doesn’t know why Singaporeans are
angry, but what does our anger mean to them?
Singapore is increasingly losing our physical and emotional
space for love, and soon the only thing we will be able to call
ours will be our Anger.
http://theonlinecitizen.com/2010/02/the-anger-of-displacement/
ONE GOOD ARTICLE.
