Financial Times

Singapore celebrated its independence day last week and there are several lessons to learn by our leaders, lessons that made this one time Third World nation become a part of the first world, with a per capita GDP of $28,100 being amongst the top quartile of nations in the league table. This achievement is all the more creditable as Singapore at independence recorded around the same per capita GDP as Sri Lanka, now just breaking the $1,000 benchmark.

The Independence Day was a national holiday, with Singapore having only 11 public holidays. A lesson to us in Sri Lanka, where we enjoy 26 public holidays, the highest amongst 165 countries on review.

These holidays are in addition to a five-day week and 45 days of annual leave for public servants. The day was a public holiday in Singapore, but all shopping malls, cinemas, hotels and restaurants functioned as on a normal day, allowing the economic value of the holiday to be fully captured.

Singapore’s Prime Minister said in his Independence Day message that 81,500 new jobs had been created in the first half of the year, the highest number in a decade, with more than half these jobs going to residents. He however urged Singaporeans to continue to adapt to change and remain united even as the country and the world at large become more open and diverse.

He reminded the inevitable reality of “We must accept the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. That means tracking changes affecting the country closely and responding quickly to opportunities and threats. After all, we stand out from our competitors precisely because we react faster and more effectively to new situations.”

He went on to state “This strategy demands a lot from Singaporeans. It means exploring new and risky approaches, instead of clinging to familiar arrangements. It needs the trust and confidence between the people and the government. It also requires us to help those less able to cope with rapid changes”.

The Strait Times Editorial on Independence Day titled “Singapore going forward” stated “Forty is a milestone age, a time for blossoming; an age that provides a vantage point from which to take stock of past achievements. But as Singapore turns forty one today, a different kind of reflection is called for. It is time to look forward. To that end, the path ahead looks clear: Singapore has to aspire to be a global city of distinction.

This nation has prospered because of its remarkable openness towards every facet of economic input, from capital to technology and to so much more. And it is this that will propel the nation forward tomorrow.”

“Singapore’s openness must not be looked up on as an accidental virtue. True, being a small nation there are few choices available at the beginning. But the paucity of options doesn’t mean there weren’t other roads Singapore could have taken. Fortune isn’t fated by geography.

The fact is, Singapore’s open economy was a reasoned choice. And as the country matured, further decisions were called for. Yet at every instance, history has confirmed the wisdom of this country’s early leaders. Nations strongly bound to the global market place prosper. Naturally then, Singapore has constantly sought to build on its connections to the world at large – because otherwise, inertia narrows opportunities and possibilities.”

The editorial ends comparing Singapore’s physical infrastructure, law and order, educational opportunities and more, all tending to be close to the First World Standards and states “What other nation of the same vantage – or even city – can say this?

How this nation has reached this point is a matter of historical record. Maintaining its edge in an always- shifting world depends on embracing that history and the lessons it holds for the future.”

It is indeed sad that our business leaders have in the recent months, in the face of the public having accepted a “Chinthanaya” opposite of what made Singapore a First World Nation, are in a mode of silence and not advocating the openness, global connectivity and also openness in governance with transparency. Have they abandoned their previous commitments to long term visions, core values and the Way Forward?

Can our leaders, as we come closer to our sixtieth birthday, take lessons from Singapore and its leadership action at political, private sector and civil society levels?

Will, as predicted recently at a media briefing by a senior public servant in the monetary management field, our leaders continue to take the path that history will record in their biographies “that our leaders at all levels have led the way for the nation going from the “third world to the underworld”, instead of the path Singaporean leaders took in taking the nation from the third world to the first world.”?