TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Lessons from Singapore
Singapore has won praises the world over as a success story: the city-state has good administrators, world-class education, well planned industrial policy and a well-oiled efficiency that few can match
S
ingapore has won praises the world over as a success story: the city-state has good administrators, world-class education, well planned industrial policy and a well-oiled efficiency that few can match. Even the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was so impressed that he openly told former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew that China would take lessons from Singapore to enhance the progress of the country.
When former Chinese President Hu Jintao opened the China Executive Leadership Academy in 2005, he declared that China would become a modern and prosperous society and would provide leadership training under special programmes to improve the quality of Chinese leaders.
The Academy was a clear sign that the Chinese were committed to producing the best administrators, which was an attitude similar to the fascination that Deng had with Lee's government.
But the best administrators can totally miss something important in nation-building if they are too busy just focusing on economic data, system analysis and tidying up the bureaucratic process.
They might lose the ability to sense the pulse of the people and this, I believe, has already happened in Singapore, which is still a fascinating island but it is hardly the pleasant city of old.
Except for some friends of mine and the odd hawker stall operators, they appear to be alien and unfriendly. Singapore has become expensive and beyond reach for most of us. Orchard Road, for example, has become an alien place with so many Lamborghinis clogging the thoroughfare.
In this sense, the Singaporean government has been successful in its effort to draw more wealthy individuals to the republic ' but the price of that success is a lesson for everyone to learn.
Today, many Singaporeans have to pay more for everything ' so much so that they are willing to endure hours of traffic jams to drive to Johor Baru just to buy home appliances and food.
The sense of alienation amongst the old ('real') Singaporeans is patent: many feel left out of the system because they do not have several million Singapore dollars in their bank accounts, and as a result the opposition parties are getting more attention than ever before.
I wish Singaporeans all the best in how they tackle this burgeoning problem, but it's Malaysia that I'm worried about because we seem to be making the same mistake with few of the supposed benefits.
We have become so fascinated with preparing the country for the rich that we provide everything that we think is necessary for their lifestyle; and to lure foreigners to visit us and spend their money here.
We have the 'best' airports, private schools, private hospitals, highways, hotels and so forth but we seem to have forgotten the simple Newtonian principle that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
For every ringgit we spend to please the elites and the rich, we have a ringgit less to spend on ordinary Malaysians.
Our 'best' private facilities have resulted in lower-quality services for the not-so-wealthy: the increasing number of private hospitals (which need the best doctors) leaves fewer top-grade consultants in government service.
Our top private schools are drawing many good teachers out of the public system simply because pay is better, resulting in government school teachers being overworked, unmotivated, underpaid and in some cases, resentful.
Also, property development caters increasingly to the top socio-economic bracket ' planning for high-end offices and residencies always seem to be approved but rarely do we hear of housing schemes for lower-income earners in cities and towns.
Is Malaysia a country just for the rich? Are the poor simply lazy? These are generalisations that are neither true nor helpful.
At best, ordinary Malaysians feel as if they do not matter in the larger scheme of things. At worst, they are disenchanted, disengaged and increasingly desperate. Nothing good will come of that.
What we need is a simple reorientation of our priorities: we should spend less on highways, airports, five-star hotels and more on rural drainage and roads, public services, healthcare and education.
We've had enough of expensive developments in the cities. What we should have is an increased focus on smaller towns, but will private developers go to these smaller towns if their profit margins are lower?
I think the answer is 'yes' if their development plans in the Klang Valley and other urban centres are not approved, and this isn't merely a question of dispersing development or keeping prices affordable: it's about sustainability. But how can we get the message across?
To take the recent tragedy in the Cameron Highlands as an example, will the government spend more on rural infrastructure to rehabilitate the area's structural and environmental integrity?
'Yes' if they know that the price of doing nothing means not just more lives lost but also more votes lost at the next general election (this seems to be the only language politicians speak these days).
It's time our leaders led by example. They must send out the message that there is nothing shameful for Malaysia to be a country that lives on its own terms, within its own means, and is proud of such modest living.
It's better for us to have, say, good medical expertise backed by decent facilities that we can maintain indefinitely than the biggest hospital in Asia. It's better that we have good teachers and working computers for the next 20 years rather than a multi-million ringgit school complex that has nothing in it.
Let's learn to live modestly once again because if we do not, we will incur debts that not even our children will be able to pay off. (***)
