The author obviously has an axe to grind. It is stated that he worked "briefly" for the ST. He obviously got fired for incompetence hence the animosity towards the country that he voluntarily lived in for many years.
If Singapore was as bad as he makes it out to be, why did he move from OZ to SG in the first place?
Well the only problem with aussies is their pro islam madness. An entire toen has become islamic. No need for concern of caourse
Well the only problem with aussies is their pro islam madness. An entire toen has become islamic. No need for concern of caourse
Sure let's listen to what a white trash has to say.... Did he even look at his own country? Lol
Well, Scrooball, nothing like a racist taunt to get the discussion going. “White trash” is sort of in the same category as chink, wog, nigger, slope etc. isn’t it?
Your esteemed founder-leader LKY coined the white trash term to describe us Aussies back in 1979. Anyway, the prick was called upon to apologise for that term when addressing the Canberra Press Gallery in Australia in 1995. He did apologise and said he didn’t mean to cause offence etc. Not that he had much choice. Singapore than as now has too many defence and business links with Australia to protect and he would have realised this. But it was just a diplomatic apology really. Knowing Lee’s arrogance he would still have thought the same about Australians.
But you ask did I look at my own country. Yes I do Scrooball, quite a lot and the things I see happening in Oz that piss me off in many ways. But then we have a much freer press in Oz and our leaders are regularly roasted and mocked and made to account for themselves. We had a Royal commission recently into the banking and insurance sector which ruthlessly exposed it's malpractices. Banking and insurance company CEOs were savagely questioned and many have resigned.
Would that similar searching inquiries be held into the CPF, the HBD, Temasek and the GIC. No way that would ever happen under the PAP regime. The political fall-out would be immense.
The Big Difference
But also, you see, the big difference between PAP Singapore and Oz is that Australia doesn’t bang on about how great it is all the time like Singapore does, that it’s a model for developing countries to follow and developed countries to draw inspiration from. This is why PAP Singapore attracts so much critical attention from Western writers, especially ones like me who’ve lived in Singapore for about ten years over a 15-year period.
The endless accolades Singapore elicits from assorted ratings agencies and think-tanks in the West, the smug arrogance of the PAP elite about the excellence of “the Singapore Brand” gets a bit tedious after a while . It just goes on and on …. and on. And when you are constantly exposed to the fact that Singapore is not that efficient or cutting edge most of the time; that the average Singaporean is not very well off etc as I describe in some detail in my book
The Singapore Miracle, Myth and Reality. The gap between reality of life in Singapore and the PAP bullshit about the place becomes nauseating.
Anyway, so many Singaporeans believe all this crap about their country and get quite nasty towards foreigners like me, particularly if they’re Aussies. For many Singaporeans their country is the best and an example for the world to follow. This is perhaps understandable when they have had someone like LKY espousing and legitimising such attitudes.
LKY-Inspired Arrogance
Singaporeans’ sense of superiority was embodied in Lee who felt free to condemn, criticise and offer unsolicited advice to other countries and peoples he felt weren’t up to the mark.
Besides insulting Australians with his white trash comments, Lee, since the 1960s, had repeatedly insulted and belittled the Malaysians, Thais, Filipinos and Indians. He has mocked their intelligence and capacity for hard work and “discipline” (a major Lee obsession) and their inefficiencies.
Unfortunately, many Singaporeans have acquired Lee’s attitudes towards their neighbours, ensuring that Singapore has few real friends in Asia. As
Straits Times columnist Koh Buck Song lamented, “the Republic’s uninviting reputation for arrogance and self-righteousness“ which some Singaporeans fear “is already entrenched in the minds of too many outsiders”
Ratings-driven Hubris
But besides the Lee factor many Singaporeans sense of superiority has been bolstered by the endless international praise for its nation-building achievements, real and mythical, for decades especially since the 1990s. When the world keeps telling you how great you and your country are it’s not surprising if you think you’re the best.
My book
The Singapore Miracle, Myth and Reality describes and critically assesses the torrents of praise Singapore has been getting from a long list of international ratings agencies and think-tanks for the last couple of decades.
Singapore’s successes, real and mythical, are lauded by such ratings bodies who represent the neo-liberal globalisation fraternity whose agendas Singapore eagerly serves. Chief among such bodies are the Institute for Management Development (IMD) and the World Economic Forum (WEF). Both give Singapore top rankings for economic competitiveness while the Business Environment Risk Intelligence (BERI) lauds the quality of Singapore’s workforce with its rankings. Such ratings’ successes create the impression that the city-state is a super-efficient powerhouse economy with a first-class workforce.
Besides rankings relating to Singapore’s supposed efficiency and cutting-edge excellence the city-state has also scored top marks for transparency by Transparency International (TI) while such conservative US think-tanks as the Heritage Foundation (HF) and the Cato Institute (CI) give the city-state similar rankings for economic freedom.
Mention must also be made of the global accolades bestowed on Singapore’s education system. Singapore regularly scores top rankings in the student achievements tests conducted by PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Trends in the International Mathematics and Science) as my latest book
Singapore’s Education System, Myth and Reality describes in some detail.
Moreover, the country’s schooling methods have evoked choruses of praise from assorted Western think-tanks, educators, and educationists along with presidents, prime ministers and ministers of education.
Not What It Seems
While Singapore may be depicted as a brilliant nation-building success, an oasis of First World cutting-edge efficiency by numerous ratings bodies, the truth is somewhat different.
The Singapore Miracle identifies Singapore’s many systemic inefficiencies at both macro-economic and micro-economic levels. These are reflected in low capital and labour productivity levels. The book identifies significant inefficiencies in such economic sectors as construction, the banking and investment industries and the service sector. It also critically assesses the exalted global reputation of such Singaporean icons as Singapore Airlines. SIA constantly wins international awards for the world’s best airline etc despite its service, safety and other deficiencies.
Moreover, the book examines the workforce and managerial inefficiencies. It shows that Singaporean workplaces abound with mediocre managers and demoralised employees.
Singaporean bosses were deemed “uncommunicative, unappreciative and bureaucratic” by their workers, according to one
Straits Times poll. Meanwhile, Singaporean employees display minimal job commitment, readiness to job-hop, lack of initiative and education and job-skill deficiencies, according to many local and international surveys. But all this is hidden by sky-high BERI-type rankings for Singapore’s workforce.
Again the top scores that TI awards Singapore for transparency are absurd.
The Singapore Miracle reveals the Singapore state as deeply opaque, like all authoritarian regimes. Accessing official data the Government doesn’t want released is very difficult as shown in Garry Rodan’s
Transparency and Authoritarian Rule in Southeast Asia.
Also, the high rankings that the HF and the CI award Singapore for economic freedom are ludicrous when one considers that large state-owned of controlled (government-linked companies) dominate the domestic economy to the detriment of the local private sector. The former enjoy enormous state-bestowed advantages, including access to easy credit and the local market, which cramp the freedom of small and medium business especially. Also, the freedom of labour to fight for better pay and conditions is very restricted.
Moreover, Singapore’s high PISA/TIMSS rankings for its education system are questionable. They cover up the severe flaws of a pressure-cooker, exam-driven education system which kills creativity, the desire to learn and intellectual curiosity, as
Singapore’s Education System, Myth and Reality reveals. While foreign fans of this education system believe it’s one the world should follow the opposite would be more true. Singapore-style schooling is something other countries should avoid if they want to foster the innovative mindsets so important to the post-industrial 21st century economy.
Why So Inaccurate and Misleading?
This question must be asked about Singapore’s numerous and dubiously high rankings which a horde of rating bodies have been awarding Singapore for virtually every nation-building achievement and attribute since the 1990s. (But conspicuously excluding measures for freedom of the press and respect for human rights etc). There are two main reasons for this:
A. Flawed Methodologies: The defective procedures ratings bodies are exposed when conducting their surveys become most apparent when assessing their rankings for such countries as Singapore.
A central problem international ranking bodies face is ensuring the integrity of the information collected. They must rely on local authorities and agencies to do this for them to keep down surveys costs. In many countries ratings bodies must rely on state or state-aligned organisations to gather and collate the data for their rankings. And this has certainly been so in Singapore. The IMD has relied on such government organisations as the Ministry of Trade while the WEF has used the Economic Development Board.
However, as American political scientist Christopher Lingle noted when commenting on the high growth rates of East Asian economies, “the supporting data are often supplied on a tightly controlled and selective basis by the governments themselves”. And because such data cannot be corroborated by independent agencies it “should be treated with healthy scepticism,” he said.
Moreover, with authoritarian states like Singapore the state’s political agendas always take precedence over the release of any information that could discredit its policies or rule. This has been demonstrated by the Peoples’Action Party (PAP) government’s ruthless control of official data for political ends, as
The Singapore Miracle shows.
B. Serving MNC and Neo-liberal Agendas:
Singapore has always been a poster girl for foreign capital and the globalisation agendas of the neo-liberal movement. Singapore’s open-door policies towards foreign enterprises and the international banking community has made it a darling of the neo-liberal movement. Such PAP government policies as tight control of unions, pro-business hire and fire laws, low corporate taxes and other concessions, especially for MNCs, fits the neo-liberal requirements of foreign capital. Policies like these have ensured that Singapore gets top rankings from the IMD, WEF, the HF, the CI and TI (among others) who
are all driven by neo-liberal agendas. Their rankings are based on criteria which mostly reflect such agendas. Thus countries like Singapore who would most fully serve these agendas will invariably score much higher than countries that don’t.
The Selling of Singapore
Behind Singapore’s high rankings is a very determined authoritarian state obsessed with selling Singapore to the world. Singapore’s PAP rulers decided long ago that they must endlessly promote their city-state to the world as a hospitable haven for foreign capital, especially after separation from Malaysia in 1965, if Singapore was to survive and prosper as an independent country. And they have succeeded brilliantly with the help of compliant ratings agencies and shoals of gullible foreign journalists and academics. They have readily believed PAP nation-building claims and were too lazy or inept to examine how much truth there was to them.
The real Singapore miracle has been to comprehensively con the world into believing that Singapore is a far greater success than it really is.
His crime was to write about how some " regimes in East Asia are able to thwart criticism by relying on a compliant judiciary"
