Emotional scenes as Singaporeans return from tsunami-hit areas

Although I am in the UK for Christmas I hope that all those who know me in Singapore are alive and well. Of course my thoughts are with those who have lost loved ones or been injured. I am not a man of very strong religious belief but I have been saying prayers for the last few days and so far I have not become aware of any friends being involved in the disaster.

Emotional scenes as Singaporeans return from tsunami-hit areas
By Wong Siew Ying, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : Emotions ran high at Changi Airport on Tuesday as friends and families were reunited with their loved ones who had returned from tsunami strickened areas, while others waited anxiously for injured family members.

Goh Poh Eng, 21, arrived at around 12.30 pm with the help of fellow travellers and airline staff.

Her sister said she had gone to Phuket before Christmas and called home on Monday about the disaster.

She had cuts on her face and body.

Family members said Ms Goh, a third year marketing student from the Nanyang Technological University, was asleep in her hotel room when the tsunami struck.

Besides Ms Goh, another two boys in wheelchairs were also whisked away from the airport.

Many could hardly contain their joy after days of anxiety and worry.

Paul Andriesz, a Singapore permanent resident, said, "The staff came rushing through the hotel saying, Everybody get out, there's water coming. My wife and I, we got separated for about nine hours. She was with two of our children and I was with the nanny and a baby."

Twenty-six-year-old Loh Tse Lynn and her friend lost most of their belongings when their seaside resort was wiped out.

They had stopped by at the Khao Lak beach after a two-week diving expedition, and taken shelter at a restaurant that morning.

Ms Loh said, "The shop owners went out to take a look, then he said, Everyone upstairs, upstairs. So we went upstairs and we saw the water just came down the street and covered the whole street; it was very fast."

Singaporean tourist Mabel Lee said, "The road leading to the hotel was all covered. It was muddy, it was swirling; you had trucks and vans being pulled out from the land in the direction of the sea."

Many divers out at sea also escaped unhurt, thanks to observant dive leaders.

Singaporean Thomas Seah said, "The nearby islands were really flooded, very high; and the dive leaders were saying this is something very strange, something they have not seen for the past four years. The water went up by three to five metres in 20 minutes. So they immediately stopped all the diving activities."

While many Singaporeans are home safe, the fate of others remains unknown.

Another Singaporean, Sherwin Chua, said, "We were in contact with an official from the consulate and he said there were six Singaporeans who cannot be accounted for."

American tourist Eric Li added, "There are a lot of people injured at the Phuket Airport right now, trying to get out. You see them wheeling around in wheelchairs, and lots of bandages and injuries."

One Singaporean family of four back from Sri Lanka also had a narrow escape when they arrived at the hotel five minutes before the killer waves came.

They had witnessed the ordeal from the third floor.

Said Siti Adzmah Abdullah, "She was in a shock, she was crying. She said, Mama, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, mama. We were really very shaken." - CNA

Downgraded to non-invitee for democracy summit

24 December 2004

In June 2000 a group comprising of over 100 governments from democratic countries were invited to Warsaw, Poland to pledge their commitment to democratic principles and to build a Community of Democracies (CD) so as to strengthen democratic values and institutions at home and abroad. The Singapore Government was not invited.

The CD decided to convene biennial ministerial meetings. Parallel to the CD meetings, a nongovernmental (NGO) meeting of leading democracy activists and thinkers from around the world was organized. The second ministerial meeting was organized in Seoul, Korea in November 2002 along with the forum of civil society leaders. Dr Chee Soon Juan was invited to attend the NGO meeting in Seoul but he could not be present because he was in jail for attempting to hold a workers’ rally on May Day of 2002.

For the Seoul meeting Singapore was invited as an Observer (there are three categories: invitee, observer, and non-invitee). The third meeting will take place in February 2005 in Santiago, Chile. The recommendation for this round for Singapore is that it should be downgraded into the non-invitee category again because of the PAP Government’s lack of progress in establishing democracy in the country. Below is the report on Singapore. (For the full report, go to http://www.demcoalition.org/html/home.html)

BACKGROUND

Singapore was upgraded from a Non-invitee at the Warsaw Ministerial Meeting to an Observer at the Seoul Ministerial Meeting.

In the intervening period, since the Seoul Ministerial Meeting, there have been no parliamentary or presidential elections in Singapore. Parliamentary elections were held 4 November 2001, in which the governing People’s Action Party (PAP) secured an overwhelming majority with 90% of the vote.(194) There is no independent elections commission and campaigning is restricted to nine days.

Parliamentary elections are not scheduled to be held again until next year; nonetheless, on 12 August 2004 a transfer of power took place when Lee Hsien Loong, the eldest son of former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who ruled the island nation from 1965 to 1990, was sworn in as Singapore’s new prime minister, replacing Goh Chok Tong.(195)

Presently the PAP holds 82 of the 84 elected single-seat constituencies. Much of the success of the PAP can be attributed to the fact that 55 of the 84 seats were uncontested,(196) thereby automatically giving the PAP the majority in parliament.


to continue reading click here.

Mentor Lee defends media curbs

Reporters, including foreign correspondents, face strict censorship
to preserve Singapore's interests, says Lee

South China Morning Post
Wednesday, December 22, 2004

The city state's founding father has defended its tight regulation of the media and said Singapore could not be subjected to criticism by the international press without a rebuttal from the government.

"We reserve the right to reply," said Lee Kuan Yew - Singapore's "minister mentor" - at a dinner hosted by the Foreign Correspondents Association. Mr Lee scoffed at a recent report by a media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, that equated press freedom in Singapore with restrictions on the media in totalitarian North Korea.

Singapore maintains that journalists contribute to the nation's development and are not necessarily adversarial. "We are not that daft," Mr Lee said. "We know what is in our interests and we intend to preserve our interests."

Mr Lee said international newspapers were freely available, but told one foreign correspondent at the dinner: "You are not going to tell us how to run our country."

Singapore's media faces strict censorship, while home TV satellite units remain off-limits. Arts performances and plays are under watch. Foreign news organisations such as the The Economist magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Far Eastern Economic Review and The Asian Wall Street Journal have paid large fines or had their
circulation restricted through lawsuits brought by ruling-party stalwarts.

Mr Lee also said he does not set policy, but acts as a "kind of data bank" to help the younger generation of leaders.

Dying with grace

Dec 20, 2004

Computer programmer started blog last month on her fight against rare tumour
By Sharon De Castro

THIS is the last entry in computer programmer Grace Chow's blog: 'After a three-year battle against Death, he came to take her. She stopped breathing tonight, without pain, without suffocation or paralysis.'


Facing death bravely: Ms Chow's blog has touched the hearts of many. She died on Dec 6, three years after the tumour was discovered.

It was written by her Dutch husband, database analyst Ton de Vries, to tell those who have been following her online account of what turned out to be her last weeks, that she had died on Dec 6. Ms Chow, who was living in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, was 32 years old.

The end came three years after a rare tumour, called a chordoma, was discovered at the base of her skull. The growth, which measured about 10cm by 7cm, had fractured her skull and two vertebrae. It had made it near impossible for her to speak, as well as difficult to walk and lift her hands.

The former student of CHIJ (Toa Payoh) and Victoria Junior College did not think she would live more than a year when she was told of the growth.

But she did and went on to fulfil her dream of writing a book on love, despair, death and Singapore. The mostly autobiographical effort, A Pain In The Neck, was published in October and is available through www. amazon.com and www.book surge.com for about US$16 (S$26.50).

She started her online diary only last month, to keep in touch with family and friends when speaking became difficult. She managed only 11 entries in Dying Is, at dyingis.blogspot.com

As such records go, it was unusual, as it was about the struggle to confront death. Most blogs focus on romance, parties, and offer crazy confessions and observations of the world.

It touched the hearts of many who read it and comforted others because of the positive attitude towards life and death that it reflected, said her husband.

One anonymous reader wrote in the blog: 'Thank you Grace, for your writings and reminding us to find the strength to go on even when life seems dark.'

Her 39-year-old husband said in an e-mail message to The Straits Times: 'I still get reactions from people who read the blog: a chordoma patient who wants to set up an infosite about chordoma, an editor of Bone Cancer magazine wants to write about Grace, a woman who suffers from depression who finds comfort even in the last weeks of her own life.'

Ms Chow was born in Singapore in 1972, the second of three girls of strict parents. She left for the Netherlands at 25, after she obtained her Master of Arts in Philosophy at the National University of Singapore.

In Rotterdam, she met her husband whom she had known a few years earlier through online newsgroup alt.music.alternative

He said of what drew them to each other: 'More than half of her CDs I also had and almost all the CDs she would want to have I had already. This similar taste for music was not the only thing we shared. Also the taste for film and art, for instance. We were soulmates, as she said in her book.'

In 2001, the keen tennis player and cook collapsed in the shower. A scan revealed the growth, which had been giving her blinding headaches for a year.

She went through a series of operations to remove parts of the tumour to relieve the pressure on her skull. They left her semi- permanently in a neck brace, unable to swallow.

Food had to be pumped directly into her stomach through a tube, which she did herself.

Six days before her death, she wrote in her blog: 'I can still connect my catheter to the feeding pump, I can still walk (v. slowly) to the toilet myself, but my days of cooking/baking are clearly over.

'I will have to be the chef this week, calling the shots in the kitchen, while Ton will have to be the assistant cook, doing the actual cutting and frying.'

Her older sister, Ms Caroline Chow, 37 - who was close to her and flew to Holland to visit just before Grace began on her blog because 'I had this feeling she was slipping away' - described her as 'very brave and very human'.

The Institute of Mental Health's chief of general psychiatry, Dr Adrian Wang, said writing a blog could help the terminally ill 'ventilate their emotions'. This can be healthy, he added. 'Using a blog allowed her to reach a large number of people and there may have been a need to think that people will share and understand what you are going through.'

In her blog's introduction, Ms Chow wrote of her tumour: 'It's growing every day. Very quickly.

'On the other hand, it's changed my life in many positive ways. I found the inspiration to write a book, for which I've received many positive reactions.'

Grace, who by then had become a Dutch national, began writing the 169-page volume in 2002. Nine months and four operations later, it was finished.

Her husband said response to the book has been encouraging. 'At first friends, mainly colleagues, bought it. Many expected it to be a book purely about her illness, so they were very surprised by the contents.'

Among other things, Ms Chow wrote about her reasons for leaving Singapore - she was disheartened by the political climate here reflected in the 1997 General Election. She chose the Netherlands because it appeared to be so different from Singapore.

Senior sociology lecturer Steven McDermott, now working in Singapore and who reviewed her book, said: 'In her book and blog, I always got a sense that there was a very strong and humorous person sharing what is the most personal event in her life. Something I'd be unable to do.'

Read excerpts of Grace Chow's online diary and about the growing popularity of blogs in Digital Life tomorrow.

Singapore hospitals begin HIV testing on pregnant mothers

SINGAPORE (AFP/AP) - Singapore hospitals have begun testing pregnant women for HIV following a directive from the government concerned about the rising number of AIDS cases, the Ministry of Health said Thursday.

"The Ministry of Health had sent out a directive on December 8 to both the public and medical practitioners to start routine testing of pregnant women for the AIDS virus," it said in a brief email statement to AFP.

Testing is not compulsory but is included as part of routine medical check-ups for pregnant women unless they choose to opt out. to read more...

AIDS ignorance high in Singapore: survey

Someone in Singapore has got to be brave, fight back the fear and say the words "Sex, penis and condom", in the same sentence in the local media. For a country where prostitution is as close to legal as you can get, it's hypocritical to cite 'traditional' family orientated values as the reason for not facing reality of a looming AIDS epidemic among the population.

The article below claims that so far the information on HIV and AIDS was targeted at 'niche' groups. If only HIV could somehow be made aware that it should be targeting a 'niche'. Sounds like someone in the ministry of health has been reading some guru, 'vision' based management mumbo jumbo. Doesn't the word 'niche' come from marketing or advertising jargon. The researcher (Vivien Lim) seems to be pointing at the same conclusion but is probably living in Singapore and therefore 'self-censoring', in order to maintain the 'stable society' that Singapore is.

"Any organisation which boasts one Statement of Purpose. one Vision, five Values, six Goals, seven Strategic Priorities and eight Key Performance Indicators without anyclear correlation between them is producing a recipe for total confusion and exasperation." (Francis Wheen, 2004:p.56)

Or in the case of the Ministry of Health, A Mission and Strategic Thrusts. I sense the hand of Spring and SQC, SQA, management mumbo jumbo.

Agence France-Presse
Singapore, December 17

One in three Singaporeans believe they can acquire AIDS through a mosquito bite, according to a survey published Friday that said ignorance of the deadly disease had not improved in five years.

Twenty percent of Singaporeans also believe that HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, can be transmitted via a cough or a sneeze, while 16 percent say scientists "don't know as much as they claim" about the issue.

An associate professor at the National University of Singapore Business School carried out the survey on 100 young adults who had at least a secondary education, with many having a university degree, the Straits Times said.

The associate professor, Vivien Lim, said the findings of the survey were not surprising because campaigns to raise awareness in Singapore had only been targeted at niche groups.

"A nationwide campaign to inform the public about AIDS, in particular about ways to prevent its spread, is an essential first step in the battle against the disease," the Straits Times quoted Lim as saying.

"Unless the battle against AIDS is fought with the same concerted effort as the war against SARS, uncertainty, ambivalence and anxiety about the disease will continue to prevail."

The issue has become a hot topic in Singapore after Senior Minister of State for Health Balaji Sadasivan last month said the city-state was facing an "alarming AIDS epidemic".

The government has said the number of new HIV cases was likely to surpass 300 this year, from just two recorded in 1985, 111 in 1995 and 226 in 2000.

Singapore has recorded a total of 2,332 HIV infections to date, of whom 874 have died, 564 have full-blown AIDS and 894 show no symptoms.

Reminds me of a few previous articles that I have posted on the same issue. Someone in Singapore has got to be brave, fight back the fear and say the word "SEX" in the local media.

Lets Beat AIDS Without Talking About Sex
Condoms and the Fight Against AIDS

Singapore again rejects gay party permit

PlanetOut Network
Wednesday, December 15, 2004 / 06:04 PM

SUMMARY: Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs on Monday rejected an appeal from organizers of a popular circuit party who seek permission to hold a holiday party this year.


Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Monday rejected an appeal from organizers of a popular circuit party who seek permission to hold a holiday party this year.

The appeal followed last week's action by the police, who denied a permit to organizers of the party, known as SnowBall.04, because the event contradicted the "moral values" of the majority of Singapore's population.

The rejections stunned Fridae.com and its subsidiary Jungle Media, which has produced SnowBall parties for the past two years. Fridae.com also produces Nation, an annual summer party that is the most popular LGBT event in Asia.

In a statement, MHA echoed the reasoning of the police for denying the permit.

"The blatant public display involving intimate behavior of people of the same sex exhibited at previous events organized by Jungle Media/Fridae.com would be an affront and unacceptable to the large majority of Singaporeans," the ministry said.

Fridae.com chief executive Stuart Koh decried the actions as "poorly justified."

"Fridae is extremely disappointed with the response we have received, which, in the absence of any illegal act, is a blatant show of discrimination against homosexuals in Singapore," Koh said.

Hong Kong-based Fridae.com, the largest LGBT Web site in Asia, has posted ticket refund information for tourists who may been planning to attend SnowBall.04.

Koh also warned that the government's action will hurt Singapore's reputation.

"The image of Singapore as a progressive nation will be tarnished by such an act of discrimination," he said, "and our aspirations of being a global city where diversity is celebrated will be set back by many years."

just sit tight

just sit tight
By Bernard Wee



Does the rejection of a public entertainment licence to hold Snowball signal a change of public policy toward homosexuality? Fridae's new columnist muses the situation and urges the community to do some housekeeping.


You have to feel sorry for smokers.

Over the years, they have had to endure steady increases in tobacco duties and more restrictions on places that they are permitted to smoke in. Where cars fear to tread, smokers rush in to yellow boxes during break times in army camps. If the government has its way, new laws will shoo smokers from bus stops and outdoor hawker centres, too.

You can almost see the end in sight for smokers: Crushed by high tobacco duties and anti-smoking laws, they retreat into their smoky dens at home and smokehouses that operate under the cover of bathhouses. The term fag hag will take on an entirely new meaning.

Two fags under one flag
By contrast, the real fags in Singapore have had it better.

With the leviathan’s one eye closed for nearly ten years now, fags have snuck out from inside the closet and under the flyover into the mainstream. They don’t just cut your hair or serve you onboard meals these days. They run online portals, sell fashionable clothes on Orchard Road, organise large-scale parties and, according to the government, even work in sensitive agencies.

Or have they?

Just when the hags were heading homo for the holidays, the police rejected Jungle Media’s (Singapore subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Fridae.com) application for a public entertainment licence to hold Snowball.04.

Why it matters
Although Snowball.04 is just a party that anyway not every gay man or woman attends, it is the first such even that the police has rejected after approving a string of seven similar parties. More importantly, like PLU’s repeated rejection by the Registry of Societies and Action for AIDS’ dialogue with the Ministry of Health, licenses for gay circuit parties form part of the bellwether for the government’s public policy toward homosexuality. Hence, should the gay community see Snowball.04’s rejection:

- Within the longer trend of liberalisation of public policy toward homosexuality, in which case this incident appears to be an aberration? or

- Within the more recent context of HIV concerns, in which case this incident appears to portend the end for homosexual liberties?

In order to understand where the trend is headed, we need to understand what has and what has not changed.

What has changed
The last licence that the police granted for a similar event was Nation.04 in August. Barring any new and prejudicial information, it would have been reasonable to expect the police to grant Snowball.04’s license just four months after.

But there was new information. Junior health minister Dr Balaji Sadasivan’s warning about a sharp rise in the number of new AIDS cases among gay men came just a month before the police rejected Snowball.04’s application.

Given the emphasis that the health ministry is putting on containing AIDS – it will offer HIV tests to all expectant mothers, and is considering offering HIV tests to all couples-to-be – it is likely that AIDS has become one of the health ministry’s current priorities, alongside containing healthcare costs. Since there is, rightly or wrongly, a public correlation between homosexuality and AIDS, then the health ministry is likely to scrutinise gay-related events more closely until it figures out what policies to adopt on homosexuality and AIDS.

Unfortunately, there is good reason to believe that the police’s decision received endorsement within the government at a high level, and so no appeal is likely to succeed in this instance. First, the government has already spoken about its gay policy directly – most famously by former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong with Time magazine in August 2003 – and it would have probably have required the support of a relatively senior member of government to break with that. Second, since the police had already established a precedent to grant licenses to similar events, it would probably have required senior approval from the home ministry to depart from precedent. Third, the press statement on this issue on the police website is the only press statement that is explicitly labelled as “approved”; this suggests that public communications had also received extraordinary attention.

Even if the decision had not been endorsed at a high level in the government, government leaders are likely to be unwilling to overturn the police’s decision, as it would set a bad precedent for all manner of social minorities to appeal and protest if they do not get their way in the first instance. In the larger scheme of things, homosexuals are just one among many competing minority interests – including conservative religious groups – that are scrambling for the government’s attention.

What has not changed
For now, the only setback for gay liberties appears to be Snowball.04’s rejection and the public shaming of unsafe gay sexual practices by Dr Balaji just over a month ago. Gay clubs remain open to thriving business and continue to stage gay parties weekend after weekend. Despite the hype surrounding HIV testing for expectant mothers and couples-to-be, none of the health ministry’s anti-AIDS measures so far target homosexuals. Certainly there is the problem of singling out homosexuals for testing, but the government could have taken other actions – such as cracking down on bathhouses – which it has not. The gay community should certainly recall that, despite Lianhe Wanbao’s (a Chinese language tabloid paper in Singapore) five-part expose of gay bathhouses in July, the government did not act against either bathhouses or the Nation.04 party.

Moreover, unlike the cigarette-toting fags who are being legislated and shamed into extinction, there is no longstanding global or even national trend to do the same with homosexuals. In fact, the longer trend for gay liberties still appears positive.

What next?
Obviously, it is too early to reach any conclusion about what Snowball.04’s rejection means for gay liberties in Singapore. But there are some things that the gay community can do in the meantime.

Let us begin by what not to do. Instead of banding together to figure out why this happened and what they can do about it, the gay community has fractured into so many camps: the party-goers and the party-poopers, the scaremongers and the apathetic, and the people who accuse a rival operator of sabotaging the event and the people who defend him. This sort of infighting serves only to splinter the community into even smaller and irrelevant minorities.

What the community needs to do first is some housekeeping. Thrash out your differences frankly and reasonably. Call a spade a spade. The gay community brings social ills as it does benefits; AIDS and sexual carelessness remain significant problems. Accept that there is no shame in trying to make a pink buck. And understand that, at the end of the day, the homosexual cause is a minority one.

That is why, besides making friends among themselves, the gay community needs to make friends outside of itself in order to punch above its weight. This means convincing the relevant folks that back-pedalling on gay liberties will hurt Singapore’s reputation and efforts to develop into the tourist, entertainment, business, services and design hub.

And those who can’t help should just shut up, sit tight and wait.

This article reflects the personal view of the writer and not of Fridae and/or its affiliated partners.

Asia Blog Awards 2004: Voting

The voting has begun...

Important stuff

You can only vote once per day across all the categories. Please choose carefully.
Please look at all the nominees before voting.
Voting closes on December 31st.
Voting is monitored for cheating. IP addresses are recorded.



More about the vote

The introduction and nomination master post can be found here. Thank you to everyone who linked, commented, emailed, offered help and nominated.
There are some categories that still have open slots:
1. Best Diary/Journal
2. Best Political Blog
3. Best Foreign (non-Asian) Blog
4. Best Design
5. Best Essayist
6. Best Thai Blog
7. Best Taiwan Blog
8. Best Central Asia Blog
9. Best Vietnam Blog

I will continue to accept nominations for these categories up until Friday 17th December. Please email them to me at simon-[at]-simonworld-[dot]-mu-[dot]-nu with the blog name and URL, plus which category you are nominating it in.

Some nominations were emailed directly to me. If your blog appears and you don't want it to be in the voting please email me ASAP.

There are a maximum of 10 slots per category. In some categories there were far more nominations than slots. I based finalists on the number of nominations, their content and their direct relevence to the category. I limited blogs to 2 categories at most.

Once the voting has finished I hope to post a copy of all nominations (and other Asian blogs off my rolls) in each category.

I've combined the single Sri Lankan entry under the Bangladesh category into a single Bangladesh/Sri Lanka category.

I've allowed my blog to be entered into the Best Design section. It was nominated and it is rewarding the work of the site designer, not me.

Thanks again to everyone who has participated. Please check out all the finalists - you will find some great blogs out there in Asia.

You can check out the Best Blogs in Asia directory for more Asian blogs.

To Vote:

Weakness of the Singapore model

Trinidad Express
Weakness of the Singapore model
By Kirk Meighoo
Sunday, December 12th 2004

Singapore regularly has been raised as a model for Trinidad and Tobago and many other countries of the world. That island-state's achievements are admittedly formidable, having transformed from a poor, politically and ethnically unstable small island into a prosperous, clean, orderly, technologically advanced, internationally-focused, safe, problem-solving city-state. The autobiography of Singapore's supreme leader, Lee Kuan Yew, is an absorbing, inspiring tale and an international bestseller.

Yet there are critics. I am one of them, even though I do admire much of Singapore's real, tough achievements.

Much criticism of Singapore comes from a human rights perspective. But many of the advocates of the Singapore model do not necessarily share the view that Western, liberal human rights are more important than security, prosperity, longevity, order, and so forth. Posed in this way, it becomes an irresolvable debate over values.

On the other hand, an important critique can be made from the very foundations on which many "Singapore-model" admirers stand, which are its economic strategies and achievements.

We start by asking a simple question: can you name five Singaporean companies? Not even excellent ones, but good, bad, or indifferent ones. For such a universally-praised economy, this is surprisingly difficult.

The Far Eastern Economic Review's list of Singapore's top ten businesses is revealing. Five of them have overriding government interests, including the top business, Singapore Airlines. The other four are ranked numbers three to six. They are the Development Bank of Singapore, Singapore Mass Rapid Transit, Singapore Telecom, and Singapore Press Holdings.

Of the five privately owned businesses, one is a luxury car dealership, which sells Mercedes-Benz (Cycle and Carriage), another is the largest property developer in Singapore (City Developments), and another (Asia Pacific Breweries) sells Heineken and Guinness along with the local brand, Tiger. The general manager of APB is an expat. (Expats form an unusually large core of Singapore's business population.) This hardly sounds like the profile of a global business leader.

Indeed, Singapore is largely a place where foreign business persons set up regional headquarters, and where government firmly leads the local population. Private citizens play secondary, or lesser, roles.

Contrast this with South Korea, for example. Their Samsung, Daewoo, Hyundai, and Kia are major global companies which lead or are major players in their respective fields, globally.

I am heartened in the Trinidad and Tobago case by the instances of companies like SM Jaleel and Angostura/CL World Brands. In a recent study of small states' global competitiveness, the Commonwealth Secretariat has rightly pointed to these companies as the outstanding examples of Trinidad and Tobago's success, not the foreign-dominated energy sector.

Importantly, Singapore's economic strategy has necessary political and social implications. Because it is based on attracting foreign businesses and preparing citizens to work for them, the society demands conformity, not individuality; it demands submission, not creativity; it demands obedience, not questioning. Singapore's
government and society are of necessity authoritarian and paternalistic.

A society which seeks to make its own distinctive mark on the world, on the other hand, needs to be oriented quite differently. It must be bold, distinctive, confident of itself and its own values, excellent in what it does, hardy enough to explore and discover, and it needs to lead.

The Singapore model is that of a colony, or an outpost. It has taken advantage of its island-port status on the edge of a massive continent. Now that China and India are awakening from their centuries-long slumber, Singapore will become less central. No doubt Singapore will retool itself to take advantage of the changing situation. But its plan was never to lead. It has always been hard-headedly realistic.

But the West Indies need not adopt that model. If we were isolated islands the case would be different. But we form a distinctive human culture-zone, which already has a place in the world's imagination, literature, history, and culture, if not yet economically or politically. Frankly, economics and politics are easier bits to establish.

The West Indies has a rich past upon which it can build in the future, one far greater-and more viable-than Trinidad and Tobago alone, or even Jamaica, Barbados, or Demerara, which admittedly have become part of the wider shared human heritage in their individual capacities.

We must undertake the long-term self-transformation from being peripheral colonies to being autonomous centres. It will not be easy, or quick. But it is our destiny which we must fulfil, or perish while trying. Singapore does not have that option, unless it merges back
into Malaysia. It is doomed to be peripheral, an entrepôt.

However, the West Indies has not yet worked up the courage, confidence, and conviction to do so. We prefer to remain as colonies, mimicking and clinging to "the international" as dependents, rather than active partners. The problem is complex.

One of the favourite sayings in this place, which annoys me to no end is "we do not have to re-invent the wheel". On the contrary, we must re-invent the wheel every day. We must invent our own institutions, our own solutions, our own language, our own technology, constantly. If we do not invent and create, that makes us less than full human beings.

In Trinidad, our sickness is that we believe modernity is something one buys from abroad. "Knowledge society" means little more than importing computers and earning foreign-recognised degrees. We have little idea that modernity is produced, a conscious self-transformation in a new context. Asian modernity was not purchased from the West. It has been produced by updating their past. They still even go to the toilet in their traditional way; however, they have developed sanitation technology, convenience, and added comfort to make it truly modern.

In the West Indies, we have still not escaped from clerkdom, thinking that an office job is superior to all others. We do not consider the messy business of how wealth is generated to sustain offices.

We have a simplistic, colonial view of education as job training, assuming that jobs will be provided for us once we have secured certificates. We do not know that as an independent people we need to create our own jobs, not merely fill vacancies of foreign companies.

In our simplistic view of education, we do not take into account that Bill Gates dropped out in his freshman year of university, or that Stephen Spielberg never finished film school. Robert Kiyosaki, in his popular Rich Dad, Poor Dad series of books, contrasts his father who held a PhD but struggled financially all his life, with his friend's father who was poorly educated in the formal system, but was extremely successful in creating wealth and security, instead of being an employee.

Criticising the formal education system in the US, Kiyosaki notes, "The 'A' students end up working for the 'C' students. And the 'B' students end up working for the government."

There are surely complex reasons for this phenomenon, but one is simply that a person in his or her 20s has the time to learn to be independent, take risks, face bankruptcy, shake himself off, and try again. However, if one remains in school during this period, or even longer, not only does one become dependent on the artificial life of school, but one may have debts to pay, and perhaps have a spouse and family obligations. Risk-taking becomes much more prohibitive. You need a job.

The Singapore model, then, is for dependent people who will work for other wealth-creators. We have the opportunity, skills, legacy, and resources, to be more than dependents in the world. Our politics, economy, and society, accordingly, must aim toward the creation of a free, prosperous, independent, viable, and autonomous civilisation in the New World. We must think big.