Singapore: home or hotel?

This straight-to-the-point letter (ST Forum, Feb 6) cuts to the chase all the hot air being released in the current session of Parliament over our immigration policy and especially on the notion of a "Singaporean core" as we grapple with expanding our population size:

---------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately, many Singaporeans lack a strong sense of collective identity simply because we do not know enough of our turbulent modern history. I am glad Assad Latif wrote a recent commentary piece on small states (Singapore and Cambodia) that opened with this glimpse into a certain moment of drama:

There are many other nuggets about Singapore's highly vulnerable beginnings as a city-state with many of its populace lowly educated and lowly paid (unlike today!) and with little natural resources, including water. Some of the anecdotes are humorous, like this one I heard over dinner: Singapore, concerned over its dependence on imported drinking water, sent a delegation to Israel to study its water management methods. The given name of one member of the team was "Moses". Since the Israelis well knew that most Chinese have their family name first followed by their given name, they assumed that "Moses" was this man's family name -- and he was welcomed as a fellow Jew! That must have helped facilitate the assistance that ensued!

Anyway, I sometimes tease people with this poser: Who was Singapore's first very own political chief executive? Since Singapore is overwhelmingly majority ethnic Chinese, the answer is often the wrong man. The answer should be David Marshall -- a "born and bred" Singaporean from an Orthodox Jewish family.

I think we have to find a way to make the modern history of Singapore more visceral and fascinating for our young if they are to come around to regard this Little Red Dot as a home, not a hotel.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I'll wrap up with this other recent thought-provoking ST Forum letter. One can agree or disagree with the writer's views -- and introducing caveats like "Yes, but..." or "No, in fact..." -- but one cannot deny that, materially, we have come a long way from our early post-1965 days: