*sigh*
I'm going to hate myself in the morning for responding.
Very well, here's my five minute rambling impression of singapore history (for what it's worth).
Early days after Singapore's separation from Malaysia, we basically got as much foreign investment in as possible. My impression was that we left because we didn't like the bumiputra system and because Singapore had a large chinese community. I think a lot of the money Singapore made was going back to malaysia.
Infrastructure was pretty poor so a lot of development on that was necessary immediately.
The land acquisition act was introduced to remove
property from the hands of private owners and placed into the hands of the government so that city planning was possible. The act exists to this day and is still being used. This gave the Government a great deal of freedom in their efforts to develop the infrastructure.
The Government used to practice the pension system left over by the Colonial British. This was scrapped and the Compulsory Contribution to the Central Provident Fund was introduced. This was like a compulsory retirement fund managed by the Government. This also gave the government funds to continue it's development. To this day no one is able to say with certainty how the CPF has been spent or on what and the Government resists attempts to audit their accounts.
The Singapore Port became a free port to attract business. It had a natural harbor, was centrally located and was successful. Another advantage was that produce and goods were available here from ships stopping over and usually at cheaper rates (where our original shopper's paradise reputation sprang from).
This also made it easier for foreigners to live here as they still had access to the types of goods they were used to. Many Indian merchant families set up home here (kind of tagged along with the British) and most of the dock workers were chinese immigrants who came to work the docks.
The Indians basically vanished from the scene. Maybe they decided to move out when the British did, maybe they didn't believe Singapore could hack it. Maybe their property was acquired by the Government. I dunno. But you don't hear much about them now.
Singapore was basically a servant country at that point in time. You'll hear a lot about the Colonialist attitude, like singaporeans looking up to the Ang Mo (Red hairs.. ie british). Oh yeah, there was a time when Singapore started kicking expatriates out after they had trasferred some of their manufacturing expertise to the locals. That was when Singaporean started to rise in the local businesses. Didn't last long though, with the advent of the multinational companies and I suppose Corporate secrecy/security or whatever, we saw the reintroduction of expatriates. And they're with us to this day. Can you spell Patents? Ha ha.. my little joke.
The port and stopovers meant business requiring banks, this was controlled by the Government and to this day we don't have that many banks although I think this is set to change so we can become more competitive. We do have a fair number of off-shore banks though. I suspect that the local banks don't have the kind of connections or clout the foreign banks may have so they are, in a sense, being protected.
The local economics entered the manufacturing phase of singapore just in time for foreign businesses to take advantage of our cheaper labor. This phase came to and end some years ago with manufacturing moving out of singapore. The Government is trying to get us into another phase, which they have identified as tourist destination (not helped by all the redevelopment that eradicated a lot of our cultural heritage) Aviation Centre (didn't quite work out), Medical Hub (seems that's going to be thailand), Educational centre (not sure where this is heading but it's looking promising). Offhand I don't remember if there are others.
The Government did face some instability in the early days when the Malays, used to the malaysian bumiputra system tried to demand preferential treatment. This sparked the race riots, the ISA was introduced and kinda put an end to that. The majority of the population was chinese and they wanted to have a better life then they would have if Singapore was under Malaysia. This kinda ties in to the first part about foreign investment.
We also introduced National service, it had 2 side effects, it broke up a lot of the gangs that were running rampant and put them in an environment where their loyalties could be realigned. Also having some family member in the government's grasp, I'm sure, made some families think twice about .. well.. stuff.
To this day our public housing policy has quotas of how many of the different ethnic races may buy homes in each estate, ostensibly to prevent the creation of minority enclaves where... who knows what.. may breed.
Lots of money was spent on schools, librarys, public buildings etc. The majority of the people were happy with what was being done and they were hard working. They saw the landscape changing and progress was the buzzword. That was Singapore's golden era I guess.
Things have changed a bit since then. The population is growing older, the constant pushing back of the retirement age and the impression that the CPF retirement funds may not land in our hands before we die is becoming a grassroot grumble.
Our port is facing competition. Our airport is really good and Singapore is trying to negotiate more travel routes or else it may become just a white elephant.
There have been press about the outflow of talent from Singapore. I believe that emigration is how the population shows their discontent with the country and their belief that other countries would offer them a better future. I don't think I need to say more.
Singapore tried to invest in China, the attempt is now recognized as a disappointing venture, doing what it did best, building infrastructure. I suspect we had plans to build another singapore vision there, funded by this singapore's money. I'm not going to comment on the morality of that, seeing how this singapore's population was not going to benefit directily. I suppose there were plans for some other indirect synergies.
Singapore also tried to set up some now defunct trade triangle scheme. I think burma and Indonesia were involved. I can't remember the details but it was supposed to be the next big thing, way back when.
I kind of agree with Staples that the golden era is over however, I don't think it's the end of Singapore.
Okay, I went all over the place and lot of it was not in chonological order and I'm sure I missed out a lot of stuff and a lot of it was unsubstantiated opinion.
I stopped reading the newspapers about 10 odd years ago when I was becoming an alcoholic so I'm probably one of the more out of touch Singaporeans you're likely to meet. Plus I may have lost a fair bit of brain function.
However, I hope you can use some of this Omar. Maybe when you're reading all those books with all the facts and dates in the right order, my ramblings will help you sort out the information.
Cheers.
: )
