Singapore: A love hate relationship

 Originally published on Medium. 

For the longest time I have not had a great personal relationship with the way Singapore was run. I felt the government stifled dissent and curtailed freedom of speech, especially when looking at the country from a generic mainstream Canadian perspective. I feel that this perspective was prevalent in most of Western Europe, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, when Lee Kwan Yew and Goh Chok Tong were prime ministers. This was the period dogged by the Singapore Airlines pilot strike, operation spectrum and the canning of Michael Fay.

Over the past couple of months, I have watched this city state in amazement as it managed to tackle COVID-19, relatively head on, after being a little lax in the beginning in comparison to the measures taken by Taiwan and South Korea but far more effective steps in comparison to steps taken in Canada and even Western Europe.

On the socioeconomic front, Singapore is one of the few places in the world where you are able to realize the “American dream”. You can become whatever you wish to be, with caveats in the political arena. Singapore from it’s inception in 1965 has strongly believed in meritocracy and has actively invested large amounts of capital in K-12 education. The students may be assessed on an outdated standardized test model but the syllabus covered is primarily similar to what is covered here and it does not matter where you live.

Singapore is also always actively looking for ways to improve infrastructure and making sure the city state is up to date even though the methods it employs when it comes to foreign labour may be questionable. Canada does something similar when it comes to seasonal farm workers. In conclusion it seems as if I may be warming up to Singapore.