From The Straits Times
By Chua Mui Hoong
Published 30 Aug 2010IT'S nice not to have the Prime Minister of the country spend the most important political speech of the year to hector you to work harder or smarter, have more babies, or - the latest hot topic - get along better with foreigners.
It's nice not to be reminded how Singapore has such a small labour force, it needs to throw its doors wide open to foreign workers, permanent residents and new citizens.
Most of all, it's nice not to be put on a guilt trip for having that mix of grudging appreciation and mingled resentment, fear and envy at the large foreign population here - you know, the feeling of 'it's very good you are doing jobs we don't want to do or can't do, but we also fear you may steal our jobs, school places, prizes and our husbands/wives.'
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong shrewdly focused the bulk of his National Day Rally speech last night on the Hot Issue of 2010: how to cope with the large influx of foreigners that has swamped Singapore since 2000 - from 755,000 to 1.25 million last year.
What stood out this year was the way PM Lee went out of his way to empathise with the worldview of Singaporeans.
He didn't drive home the need for foreigners; that is a message well-hammered home. Instead, he stressed just how severe was the system of controls to moderate the inflow of foreign workers, so much so that an Asean journalist grilled him on why Singapore was open to capital but not labour.
He eschewed macroeconomic big arguments and focused on the small (individual) person. Instead of preaching the merits of a free economy or acceptance, he just gave examples of immigrants who worked their way into Singaporean hearts: bus driver Zhao Xiaodong on SBS service 109 whose commuters missed her when she went on leave, and medical technologist Dahlia Ho, who feared she could not chew gum or drink Coke when she first came from Hong Kong but is now a citizen, married to a local-born citizen.
In his Mandarin speech, he cited broadcaster Choo Liang Liang who wrote of her family's four-generation sojourn from Chaozhou, China, to Singapore. He reminded Singaporeans - your children too benefit from interacting with the foreign students.
He wasn't didactic, clearly relishing the stories for their sheer human verve and warmth. These stories, I thought, did a far better job than the most sophisticated lecture to drive home the not-so-subliminal message - Singaporeans too are children of immigrants, and today's immigrants are like our forefathers, and they are doing their best to integrate.
And in one paradigm shift of the mind, instead of being 'Them', those immigrants who, after all, if they are Chinese or Indian, also look so much like local-born Singaporeans, become one of 'Us'.
Listening to him, I was reminded of my own family. My niece and nephew both had best friends from China in their neighbourhood schools. They had someone to hang out with during and after school - and their Mandarin improved.
In the last week alone, I enjoyed air-flown fresh peaches from China and excellent homecooked food because my boyfriend is close friends with an award-winning chef from China who has become a Singaporean.
My favourite jiao zi (dumpling) is from a coffee shop stall run by a Chinese immigrant family with a daughter who reminds me of myself when I was young, when I used to help out at my Chinese immigrant parents' char kway teow hawker stall after school.
It's nice to have a Rally speech where the political leader of the country tries to soothe the feelings of Singaporeans ruffled by the influx of foreigners, rather than nag locals about the need to accept foreigners.
It's like a child feeling insecure at the arrival of a new baby girl in the family: telling him he has to love Mei Mei (little sister) is bound to make him resent her more. But if the parents show him more love and remind him he will always be No. 1 (in birth order), he may start to feel kindly towards Mei Mei.
PM Lee's speech thus hit a sweet spot when he emphasised several times that the Government took Singaporeans' concerns seriously, and the issue was 'how to keep the door open while protecting the interests of Singaporeans'.
It certainly helps that the Government is putting its considerable money ($65 billion, to be precise) where its mouth is on protecting Singaporeans' interests by making this a more comfortable home: $60 billion to expand the train network, and another $5 billion or so for universities, polytechnics and Workfare payouts.
PM Lee also promised new measures to cool the housing market, saying these will be announced today.
Having assured Singaporeans that their grouses over basic needs are being met (housing, transport, education), PM Lee then went on to higher-order needs of national belonging. In this respect, he paid tribute to one of Singapore's sterling founding fathers, Dr Goh Keng Swee, who died in May, announcing that the armed forces command and staff college and a new education training centre would be named after the former deputy prime minister.
In one of many slideshows of the evening, he took Singaporeans on a tour of iconic moments of the recently concluded Youth Olympic Games and declared to applause from the 1,500 people at the University Cultural Centre, that Singapore had indeed cleared the bar and done very well in hosting the inaugural Games.
Despite his best efforts, though, this will not sway detractors who criticise the organisers of the Games for exceeding the budget four times over, and for complaints about the food.
Those still smarting from recent municipal issues such as higher bus fares and damage and inconvenience caused by the recent spate of floods will also not feel mollified, as these did not merit a mention. Perhaps Mr Lee felt enough had been said about these or he didn't want to strike a discordant note - but sometimes omitting what is on people's minds leaves them feeling unheard. But this year, the grouses on the large influx of foreigners have been heard and are being addressed - not by shutting the doors, but by dealing with the population boom. The trains might still be as crowded, but at least there is a sense that something is being done about it.
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