Singaporeans just want a team that delivers results: Swee Say
By Lynn Lee
A SPARKLING economy and jobs for almost everyone saw Singapore come out tops in a study on how 56 countries fared last year.
‘There was this little red star - not little red dot - Singapore,’ Minister (Prime Minister’s Office) Lim Swee Say said yesterday, citing a survey reported in The Economist, which included economic powerhouses such as China, India and the United States.
It showed that last year, Singapore was the only country to have achieved both high economic growth and full employment.
The economy expanded by 7.5 per cent and the unemployment rate was 2.1 per cent - a 10-year low.
Explaining what these numbers meant for workers, Mr Lim, the secretary-general of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), said retrenchments hit a 14-year- low, while unionised firms paid out the fattest bonuses in 18 years.
Mr Lim, who said this at a discussion wrapping up the day-long Institute of Policy Studies conference, was not just delivering another report card on Singapore.
Rather, he was making this point: that these results matter to Singaporeans and they want a high-performing government that can continue to deliver them.
For that matter, they are not fussy about whether there is a one-party or multi-party system. ‘If the single party turns out to be the best government…then so be it.’
‘But if this one party turns out to be a bad government, obviously as NTUC chief, I will mobilise my workers to vote for a better government,’ he said, as the audience chuckled and applauded.
Mr Lim’s comments were in response to a question on whether there was a cost to continuing one-party dominance in politics.
The discussion’s moderator, Professor Kishore Mahbubhani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, posed it as it had come up in an earlier session on what Singapore politics would be like in 2030.
There, Straits Times Associate Editor Zuraidah Ibrahim and political correspondent Peh Shing Huei envisaged a variety of possibilities for Singapore’s political system in an era without Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.
One scenario: Values like the primacy of economic development over political freedom could change.
This could be a result of new ideas and mindsets that the waves of immigrants bring in, they said in a presentation.
But going by current trends, both were doubtful that a two-party state would emerge in the next 20 years.
At most, it would be a ‘1.5 party system’, said Mr Peh.
‘This is simply because… the opposition is not strong enough, and Singaporeans have a high comfort level with the PAP. Also, the PAP has shown that it is determined to maintain an overwhelming majority in Parliament,’ he added.
Source : Straits Times - 02 Feb 2008
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