I think, these New Citizens THEY are granting in large numbers..
well, the more the merrier.
Coz in my opinion, these are the people who WILL NOT simply
grumble online - they will take to the streets & when hauled to
jail their Mainland will come knocking on THEIR doors.
Once the novelty of being a New Citizen wears off, and reality
sinks in.. good luck... they aren't docile.
In The Singapore Story, Lee Kuan Yew pointedly explains that
the
three and a half years of Japanese occupation were the most
important of my life. They gave me vivid insights into the
behaviour of human beings and human societies, their motivations
and impulses. My appreciation of governments, my understanding of
power as the vehicle for revolutionary change, would not have been
gained without this experience.
First of all, he observed "a whole social system "built upon
assumptions of British military and cultural
superiority" crumble suddenly before an occupying army
that was absolutely merciless. The Japanese . . . were hated by
almost everyone but
everyone knew their power to do harm and so everyone
adjusted." People who accepted the Japanese as their new
masters prospered, whereas those who did not lost money and
status.
Second, he learned that fear of brutal punishment can deter
crime:
The Japanese Military Administration governed by spreading
fear. It put up no pretence of civilised behaviour. Punishment was
so severe that crime was very rare. In the midst of deprivation
after the second half of 1944, when the people half-starved, it was
amazing how low the crime rate remained. . . . As a result I have
never believed those who advocate a soft approach to crime and
punishment, claiming that punishment does not reduce crime. That
was not my experience in Singapore before the war, during the
Japanese occupation or subsequently.
"I learnt more from the three and a half years of Japanese
occupation," he states again a few pages later, "than any
university could have taught me". A third lesson, in particular,
remmained with him his entire life -- that power can make people change
their ways of thinking and acting:
I had not yet read Mao's
dictum that "power grows out of the barrel of a gun", but I knew
that Japanese brutality, Japanese guns, Japanese bayonets and swords,
and Japanese terror and torture . . . could make people change
their behaviour, even their loyalties. The Japanese not only
demanded and got their obedience; they forced them to adjust to a
long-term prospect of Japanese rule, so that they had their
children educated to fit the new system, its language, its habits
and its values, in order to be useful and make a
living.
http://www.postcolonialweb.org/singapore/government/leekuanyew/lky12.html
