Avoiding a potential class divide

Clivebenss SG

Apr 13, 2012 - ST Forum

I WAS privileged to have been invited to attend Professor Lim Chong Yah's lecture, Economic Restructuring II, as a guest ('Time to restructure Singapore for the future'; Tuesday).

During the lecture, Prof Lim also noted that Singapore's multiracial and multi-religious society makes us more susceptible to social tensions that stem from income inequality. Larger countries with homogeneous populations, like China and Japan, tend to be more resistant to social tensions because of their homogeneity.

By contrast, in Singapore, a class divide between the haves and have-nots can easily turn into friction between different social groups. The perception of unfair income distribution may cause a 'politics of envy' to take root in Singapore's heterogeneous population.

If the side effects of social tension are not properly addressed, this will spell trouble for Singapore's social compact, and its attractiveness as an investment haven.

Prof Lim's wage proposal does not only treat the side effects, but it also aims to treat the root of the problem, by doing away with cheap foreign labour and accelerating the rate of change for the local labour force to become more productive, to justify its wage increase.

I support Prof Lim's proposals. But to insist on dispensing a right but bitter medicine is not easy. It requires will, courage and trust.

Tay Xiong Sheng

winsomeea SG

Someone who is useless said will do something to the widening incoming gap before election. During election campaign cried and cried to win votes (from Ang Mo Kio GRC, the sissy one ). After winning election, what heshe said is nothing but mere words.

You out there who are the 60 percent Sickaporeans are damn sick and selfish to allow him and party the mandate to do as they want to us. Damn you the Sickaporeans!

Medicated Oil SG

He already did.

Now, the rich and super-rich gal are wider.

Dalforce 1941 SG

There has been a class divide in Singapore from the second that PAP took power in 1959.

The divide is between the british privileged elites like peranakans, eurasians and the non privilege like chinese, malays and indians.

That English is a `neutral' language is, of course, an ideological illusion. Since

Singapore was a British colony for 150 years, English was already a common language

among the privileged local population who worked for the colonial administration

and whose children had access to the limited opportunities of learning the language.

This included the first generation of political leaders who, as English speakers, had

access to British university education immediately after the second world war. The

ideological promotion of English as a `neutral' language to all ethnic Asian children

has suppressed this class dimension. The political utility of this illusory `neutrality' is

that it enables the state to articulate, in English, its own interests distinctly, apart from

the interests of all racial groups. It also effects a separation of state/national interests

from those of the racial majority, and prevents state/national interests from being

captured by the racial majority.

The position of monolingual Chinese speakers

illustrates this.

http://lukdomen.narod.ru/questia-geopol.pdf

Tang found himself not merely participating in politics, but running for election. His reasons for this decision were very much based on his concerns over what was happening to the Chinese community and other minority communities, in Singapore.

Non-English speaking Singaporeans, including Chinese, Malays and Indians have, he says, been discriminated against unnecessarily under the PAP policies, particularly, for example the Chinese-educated, the Buddhists, the Taoists, the Hindus and the Muslims.

The discrimination, he says, takes various forms: Nanyang University was restructured; there is no Chinese-language business paper; there is discrimination in the intake of university students, in the engagement of university lecturers and school teachers, in the manning of positions in the army and police forces, and an absence of representation of the non-English-speaking Singaporeans in the decision-making process and in many top government posts. These are just a few examples.

"It is obvious that Lee and his family have already amassed vast amount of wealth. But nobody dared to speak up.

They are very powerful in Singapore. To maintain their high positions and wealth, they must have a monopoly of power. LKY has his relatives and cronies in the army, in the police force and everywhere. They have their fingers everywhere.

http://singaporeelection.blogspot.com/2006/05/feature-on-tang-liang-hong.html

Endangered species?

For goodness sake, Lee Kuan Yew practically filled the entire cabinet with inbred Peranakans.

For the last few decades in Singapore, the top positions in civil service, statutory boards, armed forces, GLCs have all along been going disproportionately to the Peranakans.

That is one reason why Singapore has been run to the ground.

Lee Kuan Yew worked with the Japanese Kempeitai and later the British colonizers to suppress the non-Peranakan Chinese.

That's why he has always been wary of non-Peranakan Chinese and could only entrust power to his own family members and his other Peranakan cronies.

http://tomorrow.sg/archives/2009/02/17/peranakans__going_the_way_of_the.html

Larger countries with homogeneous populations, like China and Japan, tend to be more resistant to social tensions because of their homogeneity.

Singapore is also quite homogeneous, 75% chinese. China and Japan resistance to social tensions I think is actually bullshit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_issues_in_Japan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_issues_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

Summer hill SG