Tommy [Koh] also reminded everyone that we did not start from a poor fishing village or have nothing, no assets, no talents to begin with. He said, ‘we do have three assets: a strategic location, a natural harbour and an intelligent and hard working people.’ Now is he saying that we should not be telling the world that our people are daft and lazy? Our success is a like a miracle and only can come about not with lazy and daft citizens. Then where have the hard working and intelligent Singaporeans gone? Why are we praising and welcoming jokers who cannot make their countries like ours and praising them sky high as super talents to help us to be better? Won’t these jokers be bringing us to the levels of their home countries? Tommy then turned to say the not so nice thing that is very uncharacteristic of a diplomat. How can he be quoted to be saying, ‘Singapore is, however, not perfect. There are areas in which we can and should do better. (Anyone listening?) I am disturbed by the inequality in Singapore. We have one of the highest Gini coefficients in the world. I am unhappy that many of our children are growing up in poverty. About a third of our students go to school with no pocket money to buy lunch.’ What a revelation! While he was speaking frankly, he added, ‘I am worried about the growing number of the elderly poor. Many of them are in poor health and have inadequate savings,… living in loneliness,… or abandoned by family and relatives.’ And his other hopes, ‘A politically mature society…which the vanquished are gracious in their defeat and the victors are magnanimous in their victory.’ How more frank can one ask from a diplomat? And he also hoped that Singaporeans would not be too money minded and materialistic. He warned that Singapore ‘is in grave danger of becoming a market society.’ Tommy would not have said these if he is not worried about the trends of development today. Things can be real bad if these concerns are not addressed. But who would listen to the messenger of bad news, even if he is a polite diplomat that no longer could ‘tahan’ being reticent and had to let it off his chest? The only misgiving is that the believers would not see anything wrong in their beliefs and the shepherd would be plodding along happily leading them on the ‘right’ path to paradise, diplomatically speaking. A few wise men are speaking up. Would they be whipped for being incorrect or undiplomatic? Read more: mysingaporenews.blogspot.sg/2015/01/tommy-koh-diplomatically-speaking.html
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 06:41:49 +0000
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