Singapore: A Lion at Heart

What defines a country? Or more accurately who is a country? Who lives and works in the country? Analyzing this is key to finding the soul of a country and what makes one tick. There is one country that stands out from the rest: Singapore. It is one of the greatest successes of any of the Asian Tiger economies, a country that is incredibly rich today. It is also a true democracy in the middle of a continent that has been wracked by coups. Yet it has its fair share of critics, stating that the city is too strict or authoritarian. Or others state that the small nature of the city state makes it impossible to recreate. But when seeing the city for oneself, one will find a unique country full of a variety of people and activities. Singapore, through its unique governance style of strict social controls and ambitious projects has created a unique culture and unprecedented economic success.

The Singapore of today is unrecognizable when looking at the Singapore of the 1950’s and 60’s. Since Singapore gained independence from Malaysia in 1965, the city has completed a stunning turnaround. In 1965 Singapore’s per capita GDP was around 500 USD per capita, on par with Mexico and South Africa. However, today the per capita GDP is around 87,000 USD per capita, fifth highest in the world and higher than the United States. (World Bank) All this for a small island nation with few natural resources and, in 1965, little education or infrastructure. In the intervening years Singapore has been ruled by a Single party: the People’s Action Party, better known as the PAP. Over that time, much has changed, and the city has improved the standard of living substantially. To understand the background of Singapore one must look at the past.

              Many of the problems that Singapore found itself with started with WWII. Before the war Singapore was one of Britain's most prized and valuable colonies. It was home to the eastern British fleet which responded to any threats in the Indo-Pacific region. As it was the largest shipyard in the region, it provided enormous amounts of jobs. This also created massive trade opportunities as the British presence in Singapore attracted trading ships regularly.

During WWII, the city experienced its darkest days. On December 9, 1941, Japan launched a campaign on British Malaysia and Singapore, sinking multiple large British surface ships, the surrender of 130,000 soldiers and capturing Singapore on February 15, 1942. Churchill called this defeat the worst military disaster in British history.  The period that followed under Japanese occupation was one of the worst that Singapore ever experienced. Tens of thousands of POW’s and civilian were killed under occupation. Many were subjected to torture or experimentation. The location of the latter, old Changi hospital, still exists as multiple attempts to use the land have failed as anything new on the spot would be haunted.

              Following the war, the British reentered Singapore and established Singapore as a crown colony. However, much of the city’s infrastructure and industry had been destroyed in the war.  Unemployment was rampant and most of the population lived in slums. In addition, trust in the British had dropped as the population no longer saw the British as being the same guardians they were before the occupation. Thus, nationalist parties started to rise. The first outpouring of revolution occurred in Malysia with the Malay Emergency. There leftist nationalist parties associated with China started to revolt against the British rulers. Guerilla warfare erupted across Malaysia, which was met with massive retaliation from the British. During this period nationalistic fervor started to grow in Singapore, which was quickly suppressed by the British. Throughout this time various political parties started to rise in Singapore, and in 1959, the People’s Action Party took power of the general assembly in the first ever election.

The first president of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, strongly believed joining with Malaysia was the best path for Singapore. As part of Malaysia, Singapore would be part of a bigger country and would not have to worry about its lack of natural resources or finding a natural trading partner where it could get food from in exchange for its higher level manufacturing and trading based industries. However, this turned out not to be as great as it initially seemed. Malaysia and Singapore have highly different demographic groups with vastly different needs. And their relative size difference meant that Malaysian parties had a supermajority in parliament. This lead to resentment and challenges. In 1965, the city was forcefully kicked out of Malysia, due to differing political interests from Singapore’s prominently Chinese population and Malaysia’s mainly Malay population. This was meant with sadness in Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew’s was in tears during his public TV address on this topic. At this point the quality of life was also dismal. Over 70 percent of the population lived in the slums and mass unemployment plagued the city due to the collapse of the British empire in the 1950’s. for as the sun set on the empire the was starved of jobs that had mainly come from the royal navy base or the colonial government.

After the hard 1950s, the PAP came back in the 1960s and 1970s and turned the small backwater port of Singapore into one of the biggest success stories of any of the tiger economies. Massive industrial estates turn the town that a previously, relied on low-wage jobs into a modern city. With manufacturing and high-tech industries, such as oil refining and electronics manufacturing, throughout the 1960s and 70s, the economy grew quicky While all this happened, the city placed a massive emphasis on education. School was made free and mandatory. One of the world’s premier school systems was created incredibly quickly. Today the education system is one of the most highly rated in the world and its universities are sought the world round. All this lead to a much more educated population. In 2020 for those who are 55 and older around half have below a secondary level of education, and only 11.1 percent have a university education. However of those who are 25 to 34 over 55 percent have a degree and only three percent have below a secondary education. (SG Census) This massive education drive couple with the stability of the government led to even more growth as the 2000s dawned. The PAP had been in power for so long that few ever believed that it would ever lose its power. So, companies felt confident investing in the new city. Long-term stable industries such as banking, finance, and investment flowed into the city state. Today, that's what the economy is dominated by. In addition, the city moved to make itself a presence on the world stage. Massive construction projects, including colossal vanity projects that are recognized the world round grew out of land reclaimed from the sea. The Mariana Bay Sands and the Gardens by the Bay are places that most of the world has seen. All these raised the presence of Singapore and instilled pride, rightfully so, in its many residents. (Turnball)

Singapore’s government is incredibly unique in its mix of democracy and authoritariasm. On one hand elections are widely considered free and fair and the country is the fifth least corrupt country in the world. (Transparency International) On the other hand, the same party the People’s Action Party has been in power for over 50 years without a real challenge for almost their entire tenure. To understand such a government, one must first look at the elections. Singapore is a parliamentary system where representatives are elected from various districts. Some of these districts are one member districts while others are multi-candidate districts where voters vote for a ticket consisting of multiple voters from the same party. It uses a first past the poll system where the candidate who gets the most votes wins. These policies in general seem quite normal for a democracy, but the execution of them keeps the PAP in power.

              The first in which this system is unfairly biased is the way in which it instills massive power in the Prime Minister, who has, since 1963, been a member of the PAP, instead of an independent election board. Firstly, the PM can choose when to call and election and often does so only a few weeks before a potential election. In addition, when an election is called a timeline is given for when candidates can campaign. In the last few elections this period has been 11 days, meaning that opposition candidates could know that they have only 11 days to rally voters against powerful incumbent lawmakers on only a week or two’s notice. And if this was not enough power, the prime minister can change districts based on “population changes,” redrawing borders to unofficially gerrymander districts or changing the number of the members of parliament (MPs). Due to manipulation of the laws, districts can sometimes have almost twice as many voters as other districts.  Every election cycle (4 years) the boundaries of areas change, districts are broken up and new districts are formed. These borders change so drastically that offices managing the various districts are notorious for having to shut down and move around regularly. (ELD Singapore)

              Whenever these massive advantages fail the PAP turns towards more nefarious methods. Numerous political leaders have been jailed or disappeared over the last half century. In the 1960’s Chia Thye Poh was jailed for protesting against the government and “having led a call for the revival of armed struggle.” (Porter) As he was arrested under the Internal Security Act, a law made by the British to head off revolution, he was held in house arrest for over thirty years without trial. Or in the 1980’s Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, one of only two members of parliament not in the PAP was removed from Parliament and fined over charges that he defamed the prime minister by insinuating that there was a conflict of interest over Lee’s wife and brother being on boards of major banks. (Lydgate)

              Over time the PAP has cemented its control even more with various laws. Before 1989 all districts were single constituency districts, where each district voted one member into government. However, in order to help allow for less experienced political figures or ethnic groups that are not traditionally represented in the predominately Chinese city, group constituencies were introduced, where multiple single member districts would be combined to from three to six member districts. For small parties that do not have multiple public figures or figures willing to take the risk of being jailed, this makes it much harder to win. The larger districts allowed for more gerrymandering too so that an opposition politician would have to convince many more voters. (Tung) But sometimes impacts on the daily life of voters are the way to go for the PAP. Lee Kuan Yew, while Prime Minister, warned in one campaign for an area that had a tight race that “You must expect the PAP to look after PAP constituencies first.” For the 90% of the population in government housing, various members have warned that “opposition-held constituencies would be placed at the back of the “queue” when it came to upgrading works.” This type of threat works as residents do not want to disturb the status quo or try to put in a protest vote for an election that is almost certainly going to go the way of the PAP.

All together these various restrictions have assured that the PAP has been solidly in control since the 1960s. In the last election the PAP received 61.2% of the vote, a mild disappointment, but controlled 83 out of the 93 seats in Parliament. Despite these gerrymandered votes, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was right in saying that the people have “given us a clear mandate.” (Lee) No other free and fair democracy manages to get 60+% support time after time.

Despite these undemocratic attitudes, Singapore has been improving. In 2011 Singapore mandated that at least 9 seats out of 87 must be held by opposition parties. If not enough people were elected through normal races, then extra seats would be given to opposition parties based the percentage of the vote that they received over the entire island. In addition, the PAP does not try to protect but instead accepts election losses. For instance in 2011 when the deeply unpopular George Yeo, the foreign minister, and his five member group lost, the PAP accepted the loss and did not challenge it. Thus, the will of the people came through. (Sim)

             

The long time rule of the PAP comes with numerous benefits though: ambitious and sometimes unpopular policy can be passed in order to ensure the long-term success of the island. In the United States increased polarization causes heavy gridlock in government. Recently the US’s credit rating has been lowered, (Fitch) reflecting a decrease in the belief in the government. Yet in Singapore the PAP ensures that the country has perfect credit. There are not messy political fights. Instead, attention can continue its transformation from a backwater port to a city of the future. The social contract is different: the government encourage economic growth and prosperity, the children of laborer’s living in slums have grown up in a city that has some of the best education and public facilities in the world.

One example of Lee Kuan Yew’s take on the role of the government came in a speech to American Newspapers in 1988 after Singapore kicked the Asian Wall Street Journal out for refusing to publish a government reply to one of its articles. In response to the initial US state department response of calling the action “deplorable,” Lee argues that the US press model is not necessarily the best for the entire world. He attacked press freedom in India after independence, stating that the press promoted “divergent and incompatible policies, mobilized sectional constituencies and aroused emotions” in a “heterogeneous multiracial society”. Thus, he argued, similar press freedom in Singapore, a melting pot city needs to be curtailed as the most important step is to “create enough shared values and a single national identity.” This argument makes sense and Singapore’s amazing ability to create a national identity is something to applaud. It has allowed the country to perform exceptionally well, reaching heights unimaginably when it was kicked out of Malaysia. Without a unified population, the country well could continue to experience the race riots of the 1960. Many efforts have helped with that.

Over the past five decades Singapore has taken its goal to be more unified very seriously. For instance take the pledge of allegiance:

We, the citizens of Singapore,

pledge ourselves as one united people,

regardless of race, language or religion,

to build a democratic society

based on justice and equality

so as to achieve happiness, prosperity

and progress for our nation. (NHB)

This pledge recited by schoolchildren all over the city is different from other countries. For instance, take the United States's pledge of allegiance. This pledge is mostly about patriotism and standing up for your country It is not necessarily about unity. But Singapore's pledge is different for many practical reasons. Firstly, the city state is small, as there are under 200 square miles of land to build on so there is no room to spread out, everyone is together. In addition, strong, and somewhat antagonistic neighbors require the city to stay stroing int the face of a potential conflict. The ideas in this pledge have been turned into real action. And even though there are hiccups sometimes, there has been been massive progress. One of the biggest impacts on racial unity comes from the development program in Singapore for housing and industrial estates. Estates are planned communities constructed and owned by the government. Through policies that surround these, racial unity has improved. In the 1960’s there were race riots regularly. Since then, there has only been one riot, in 2013. If you go to Singapore, there are not certain citizens (keep that distinction in mind) that are considered lower. Instead, everyone is equal. All have equal opportunities. And there are not Chinese neighborhoods, or Indian neighborhoods, the city has integrated its population.

The government is the primary landowner in Singapore. Much of the planned development proceeds on land that is leased for 99 years. Thus, if it does not have the blessing of the PAP, something will not happen. Today over 90% of the land in Singapore is owned by the government who plans out massive housing and industrial estates, all positioned to improve job opportunities and provide affordable housing for the many residents of the city. Over 80% of Singaporean residents live in HDB (Housing Development Board) flats.

The first government-built flats were built under the British in the 1920s to reduce the size of slums throughout the city. With this program, the colonial government paved over slums with housing. Yet, these programs did not benefit most living there, due to a steep reduction in the density of housing. One Straits Times (government owned paper) article from 1926 describes one new redevelopment replacing “2000 squatters” with “140 [two bedroom] houses of a semi-detached type…the idea being....to give each house a small back and front garden.” The article continues to describe all the amenities from “electric lighting” to “playground facilities…[which] enable children to play in complete safety.” (Straits Times) However, these houses can house probably 600 people per house, thus displacing 1400 people, just moves the slums further away from the center. And any residents who wanted to stay could probably not afford the rent. In 1929 the daily wages in Singapore laborers for male and female workers was about 65 cents and 50 cents respectively. (Seng) And in the estates “rent should be somewhere between $30 and $40 a month, and the purchase price between $4,000 and $5,000 .“ Thus, to afford the rent for a house two laborers would have to work for an entire month with no days off just to afford the rent. This is obviously unrealistic and the purchase price is even more so as the purchase price is nearly 20 years of salary, before any interest or other costs of living. However, it did cement the city as a more important post in the British Empire as it started to attract new industries.

When Singapore gained independence the government perpetuated these construction projects, designing the entire city around its goals. Singapore's housing development throughout the 1960s and 1970s is quite interesting. Almost all the housing in Singapore (most exceptions are mansions and estates owned by private British families) is owned by the state. Even if you buy an apartment in Singapore, it's actually a 99 year lease from the government. What happens at the end of these 99 years lease is not clear as the state has not been around long enough to reach this point. When you want a house in Singapore you must apply for it from the government. And there's a variety of different ways to apply depending on if you are applying as a single person or if you are applying as a married couple. If you're applying as a family, that's another category. From these, the government will hold a lottery and pick which house you'll be given and will assign you to move in years in the future. And for almost all people the only way to get a house in Singapore is through the government. Housing prices in private developments can be double or triple the price due to steep subsidies for the HDB houses. By doing this, the government is plan out the city. Apartments that are being allocated are not built so new areas can be built  to reflect the needs of new buyers. Also it ensures that there is not wasted space. While in the US, many buyers look for an extra bedroom, Singapore allocated the exact number of bedrooms needed. Or subsidies are offered for certain neighborhoods. For instance a house in the same neighborhood as a couple’s parents can be 10-20% cheaper. This reduces the cost for the overall state as the children will be closer to their parents and more able to care for them. This in turn reduces the demand on the single payer healthcare system. And this planning helps to reduce bottlenecks. For example a new housing plan in the northwest of the city lead to the construction of a new metro line. The exact number of people moving in is known, their needs and known so everything can be planned to that. Everything is so planned that a popular joke is that getting a HDB allocation is more important than getting married as it is almost impossible to find new housing once a couple moves in together.

Societal inequalities can be remedied through Singapore's housing program. Firstly. allocations and assistance are made available partly based on income. As such, someone who is making a substantially lower income than someone else can afford to live in the exact same building as the government subsidizes those lower incomes. So, this city is not divided into poor or rich neighborhoods with the service workers having to drive in from far away. A white-collar banker might live next to a hawker. This substantially increases the amount of communication that different social classes are able to have within the city. In addition, the 99 year leases ensure the retirees do not end up homeless. As the buildings are leases the government maintains them with taxes (which decrease with less income) and there is no rent to pay. So nobody is likely to get evicted.

Another quality that can be fixed is racial. All apartment buildings in Singapore, have racial quotas. When a building is built, the units are divided up based on the current ratio of racial groups: Malay, Chinese, Indian, and other. Then when trying to sell an apartment, a potential seller cannot sell it to anyone. Instead they must sell it to someone with the same racial group, so the building remains diverse. There are no only Chinese or only Indian enclaves. Instead it's entirely integrated. It's impossible to gentrify a racial group out of a neighborhood. It also allows for greater income equality between races. For instance, if one race starts making more money than another, the race that is making less will have cheaper apartments. This creates some wild dynamics. Mixed race couples are able to buy houses from both of their races. This provides quite the power to these couples. Or if someone can prove ancestry from multiple races, their options are more open.

Today Singapore is a multicultural city. While the majority of the population, 74.3%, is of Chinese descent, one quarter of the population is a variety of minorities mainly being Malay and Indian. However, this does not show off the true diversity of the city, for this only includes the Citizens and Permanent Residents. Singapore relies on a multitude of migrant workers. In today’s city of five and a half million residents almost one third, 1.64 million are non-residents, or people who have limited rights and a much increased risk to be kicked out of the city. (Singapore Census)  

Most of these temporary workers are not treated particularly well and are viewed incredibly negatively. Almost all of the workers live in dormitories on the outskirts of the city, away from neighborhoods. Imigrant workers are called all kinds of cruel names:

Young Chinese females: husband-snatchers.

Manual laborers: potential criminals. (Tan)

Middle-management expats: second-rate workers who can't cut it back home.

Yet, many of these workers are here for the higher wages that are paid in Singapore. They are fleeing poor wages and trying to support their families back in countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh. Yet at times tensions boil over here. On the Singaporean side. Many singaporeans, do not want to work as living near them. Recently, 1600 Singaporeans signed a petition protesting the government's placement of dorms near their housing. They could not integrate with them and viewed them as dangerous to their community. On the other side, workers often times get upset at these poor conditions and the lack of treatment from Singapore. In many ways, though, they are the backbone of the economy. Many of these people work on construction sites, building the massive projects that dominate the Singapore skyline or work as maids and janitors, cleaning up after the average citizen. Overall, though, they're not treated well and they can be deported for almost anything. In December 2013, the first race riots since 1960 occurred in little India. A bus accidentally ran over a migrant worker. This caused tensions to boil over as there was an expectation that the citizen bus driver would receive little to no punishment for hitting a non-citizen (which happened). A crowd formed and when the police tried to disperse them many threw rocks at the police and property. While nobody was severely injured, other than the person who was hit by the bus, many emergency vehicles were damaged. It was one of the worst incidents in recent history. Several workers were deported, and they were blamed for all the issues. The issues are still around. In 2021 during the national day message (similar to the US state of the union address), Prime minister Lee had a long discussion about how there are a lot of work pass holders. Almost a third of Singapore is not a citizen. He understands the issue as a two sided one. On one hand Singaporeans want these projects and the menial tasks to be taken care of. At the same time, they blame problems on the people who do the services. Singapore is at a crossroads and Lee is managing it quite well, for he states “Turning inwards is against our fundamental interests,” which is true. It is impossible to run a city with only skilled labor. But at the same time as the head of a very popular government he does not try to deflect all the blame instead laying some of it on the workers themselves stating: “there are also social frictions, because some work pass holders and their families have not fully adapted to our social norms, nor fully integrated into our society.” They are different and for all of Singapore’s ability to integrate citizens, there is still a long way to go to fully integrate all the migrant workers.

Singapore is an amazing city. Known the world around for its beautiful architecture and somewhat draconian laws, the city has developed into a unique place. It has found unique policies that work only for itself and have had trouble being replicated elsewhere. As Singapore rises to the future pushing through new challenges and reaching new heights, the future only looks brighter for the small city state.

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