SINGAPORE: Singapore should seek to maintain a system where the
interests of the majority of the people are to support a good
government, which will develop policies that help most
Singaporeans, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Mr Lee made this point at the
opening dinner for the SG50+ conference on Thursday evening (Jul
2), organised by the Institute of Policy Studies and Lee Kuan Yew
School of Public Policy. He had been asked by CNN host Dr Fareed
Zakaria who was moderator for the Q&A session, why Singapore
has not transitioned like several other advanced countries
politically.
"In most other countries, the
governments do not develop policies which are meant to help
everybody equally. If you're Republicans, it's quite clear whom
your policies are meant to help. Mitt Romney said 'Well it's 55 per
cent, and the other 45 should take care of themselves'. If you're a
democrat, you also know what your constituency is and you take care
of that constituency. If you're the senator of Montana, you know
you're supposed to bring the bacon back to Montana.
“But in Singapore, the
Government's job is to look after as large a proportion of the
population as possible, while still giving people incentive to vote
for this Government so that they will get some benefit from it. And
if we take the view that if you voted against me, I shall help you
first, because that shows my largeness of spirit, then I think we
will go extinct as a Government."
MAINTAINING PROGRESS
FOR THE FUTURE
At the conference, meant to
examine Singapore's past and explore how it can thrive in the next
half a century, Mr Lee said there has been strong conviction to
build the country. Good leadership and regional stability also
contributed to Singapore's progress. And the challenge would be to
maintain this progress for the future.
"We worry all the time. People
say we're paranoid, which I suppose we are and we need to be
because at a higher level, you expect to be at a higher level, you
don't expect to go back to where you were in the 1960s and yet it's
not natural that you stay at this place.
“Is it to be expected that a
population of three-and-a-half million citizens and maybe a million
foreign workers will have the best airline in the world? The best
airport in the world? One of the busiest ports in the world? A
financial centre, which is one of three or four key financial
centres in the world and an education and healthcare and housing
system which gives us a per capita GDP, which is - at least by
World Bank calculations if you look at PPP (purchasing power
parity) - higher than America, Australia or Japan.
“It's an entirely unnatural
state of affairs and one which we should count our blessings for,
if not every day, at least every election."
RACIAL AND RELIGIOUS
HARMONY
On the issue of racial and
religious harmony, Mr Lee said maintaining this will be a
challenge. This is the case, especially with the advent of social
media and the threat of terrorism.
“There has to be a lot of give
and take because you need strict rules, but at the same time, this
is an area where if you insist on going by the rules, everybody is
going to be a loser. It is not possible for us to codify in a set
of statutes exactly what is permissible (and) what is not
permissible conduct.
“You know that the French had
this murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist in Paris earlier this
year. Freedom of speech, 'I am Charlie Hebdo'. We have freedom of
speech too, but we also acknowledge restraints when it comes to
denigrating somebody else's faith, when it comes to proselytising
and trying to persuade somebody else to come over to your faith. Or
even when it comes to how you express your own beliefs so as not to
cause offence to others and some of these are written down and in
extremist, we have to take a person to court.
“It's happened with this young
man Amos Yee recently. But most of the time really, you need some
way to tap the person on the shoulder or tap his religious leader
on the shoulder and say do you really want to do this, is it wise.
And fortunately we have religious leaders who have been wise and so
we've avoided having to use the law very often.
“But with social media, it
becomes a harder problem because the restraints are less, the
possibility of giving offence and the ease of taking umbrage is so
much greater. Overnight you can wake up, you can find that somebody
has been unwise and everybody has become upset and we have to run
around putting out fires. It's happened more than once and I'm sure
it'll happen again.”
ACCOMMODATING YOUNGER
SINGAPOREANS
Mr Lee was also asked how the
country can accommodate younger Singaporeans who have grown up with
an open media culture, are more autonomous and have a stronger
sense of identity, and live in an age of peace and
prosperity.
"I think the politics will
change. It's a new generation. They have different aspirations,
different interests. You look at the causes which they have adopted
- some are religious, some are green causes, some are social
causes, all sorts of things.
"So they have passions, they
are pursuing them and we have to find, they have to find leaders
who will be able to marshal enough of them to form a core to lead
the country, and a majority of them to support the system which
will work.”
At the end of the Q&A
session, Dr Zakaria thanked Mr Lee for soldiering on despite being
under the weather. The conference was attended by business leaders,
policymakers and students.
- CNA/ms