Society
Harder to control
Global Singapore is becoming less boring, more unpredictable - and
steadily being pried loose from PAP influence.
By Seah Chiang Nee, littlespeck.com
Dec 27, 2008
ONCE tearfully boring, Singapore is fast becoming a vibrant world
city, but I am not sure whether the excitement is the sort that the
people truly want.
By nature, Singaporeans are largely predictable, compliant and
un-enterprising, preferring to follow set rules rather than
initiate new things.
They like things safe and tested. They are not called kiasu (afraid
to lose) for nothing.
The new Singapore is exciting and progressive, of course.
But some are finding the vibrancy – which has helped to make it the
richest state in South-East Asia – a bit too fast for their social
good.
Like the hawker who saw her teenage daughter’s semi-nude photos on
the Internet, but chose to ignore it rather than confront her. “I
didn’t want her to run away from home again,” she explained to a
reporter.
Or the employer, whose foreign maid gave birth to a baby after a
medical test had failed to detect pregnancy. She had to pay
S$67,000 for the Caesarean birth, a sum that could buy a sizeable
house in many countries.
And the 24-year-old woman, who was beaten up in a dark area by five
men; they just wanted her hand-phone.
All these were newspaper stories in the last few days, small
potatoes for some cities elsewhere, maybe.
But not so for staid and regulated Singapore, where in the past,
headlines often happened on official decisions.
Other unscheduled news in recent days included:
Bank demonstration
A woman cancer patient, hobbling on crutches and wearing a large
cardboard sign around her neck, staged a lone demonstration in the
central banking district.
The non-English speaking woman was persuaded to invest, and then
lost, S$50,000 (RM122,000) in allegedly safe DBS structured notes
and other investment products, and wanted compensation.
It was shocking news. Such demonstrations are rare and always
resulted in the hapless protestors being charged. The fact that she
was not arrested is unprecedented.
Victimised foreigners
A total of 179 workers, mostly Bangladeshis, were found abandoned
by their employer – moneyless, hungry and facing the prospect of
being homeless when they lost their jobs.
A tearful victim said: “I don’t know what will happen. I have not
eaten for a day.” Caring Singaporeans contributed food and
essentials before the government intervened with the employer to
make sure they get their back pay. Such victimisation is bound to
worsen as the recession gets worse.
Tourism icon breakdown
Some 170 people were stuck in mid-air while riding in The Singapore
Flyer, the world’s largest observation wheel, when it failed for
six hours because of a major fault, requiring a commando-type
rescue operation.
They were trapped in their capsules high above the island.
Three hours later, the first passengers – five Malaysian tourists –
were lowered to the ground using rope harnesses from their
suspended capsules.
Banking woes
Singapore’s DBS, South-East Asia’s biggest bank, announced one of
the largest rights issues in the city to raise S$4bil (RM10bil) –
within only 10 days.
It is symptomatic of how badly Singapore, including the banks, has
been affected by the US financial meltdown. DBS had earlier
retrenched 900 staff.
It is a part of a worsening financial and economic picture for
Singapore, a mega decline of an ambition gone sour.
Political controversy
A controversial comment by Transport Minister Raymond Lim raised a
storm of criticisms. He had been trying to explain why bus fares
had not dropped along with oil price (from US$147 to US$35 a
barrel),
He had said: “This is because the public transport fare is not
directly linked to oil prices. We link it to national factors, like
the inflation and wage levels in the whole of Singapore.”
It contradicted past government – and bus operators’ – explanations
that raising fares were justified because of higher fuel
costs.
It has again raised questions about whether, collectively, the
younger political leadership is capable of rallying the people to
face an uncertain world.
For the older citizens, Singapore is no longer the city they had
been raised in, and there are too many things that they don’t
understand.
The republic, which retains a strong economic edge over the region,
is anything but boring.
The fundamental change is this: Today the government does not
control what happens in Singapore the way that it did 25 years
ago.
Many of the news I have mentioned all happened outside the scope of
government schedules. In other words, few were planned.
That is what globalisation in an Internet era – and having 1.6
million foreigners living in our midst – has done. As well as our
vastly changing citizenry!
Nothing compares the differences of a quarter of a century in
Singapore better than what transpires in an editorial planning
session in a newspaper office.
Twenty-six years ago, when I was editor of the now defunct
Singapore Monitor, we did what every newspaper in the world did –
holding two editors’ meetings each day.
The morning meeting – a planning session – would discuss the day’s
assignments and the scheduled events, and a final meeting in the
evening decided the next day’s paper.
In the 80s, when the government had a stronger hold, we were able
to, by the morning meeting, get a broad picture of what the next
day’s paper would actually be.
There were few unscheduled or spontaneous stories, whether a
strike, a demonstration or a crime.
The pages were full of diary events – a minister’s statement, a
market report or bus reorganisation.
These days, there is a better balance between the two.
yeah, the govt should take note that we're not the same
timid and ignorant singaporeans of the 1960s.
