the next 50 years
What is the Singapore identity? Will we even have a Singapore 50 years from now?
What makes us Singaporean? Is it just a matter of being born in Singapore? Is there a traceable heritage that we all share? Is it the languages we speak? Or are there certain qualities that we all possess? And does it even matter?
The last month has brought all these questions into sharp focus, and the answers are proving difficult to come by. If you asked Singaporeans if there exists a Singaporean identity, most Singaporeans would answer in the affirmative. You might get hit with answers like the language, or perhaps the food. If probed further about what exactly makes us uniquely Singaporean, you might be hard pressed for an answer. You might hear vagueries like kiasu-ness or kiasi-ness, but you won’t come close to getting a definitive answer on identity like the French or Japanese.
But even as we struggle to define it, the Singaporean identity remains profoundly important to the Singaporean experience. The recent language debacle surrounding the release of the film Dear You is not just about Singaporeans wanting to see a film in its original language, its the yearning of a people who are desperate to connect to their roots and their culture. Culture is not everything for a country’s identity, but it is certainly a necessary component. There is a common perception that Singapore’s cultural scene is lacking, that perhaps in our fevour to industrialise and push into the First World we had neglected the development of our soul. When even our then acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth David Neo jokes about not having time to consume culture, something one might presume to be under his purview, you know how little this matters to the ones in charge.
But why does all this matter? It matters because if you want Singapore to flourish, if you want to pass on your heritage and your way of life to your children and beyond, then you have to protect our identity. So again, what is our identity? Maybe we can’t describe it, and we may struggle to define it, but in the immortal words of Justice Potter Stewart, “I know it when I see it”.
Problems on the horizon
A strong Singaporean identity is key to preserving Singapore as a whole. Already, cracks are appearing across society. Even as Prime Minister Lawrence Wong continues to push his “renewed social compact”, new problems are creeping over the horizon. Earlier last month, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) ordered social media platforms to block access to posts which were deemed to be targeting the Indian community in Singapore. Once again, the Singaporean mind was deemed to fragile and feeble to resist the allures of such malicious messaging, and our betters from the People’s Action Party (PAP) had to swoop in to shield us lest we devolve into vile racists.
Two things can be true at the same time. Are there foreign actors who seek to influence Singaporeans for their own nefarious purposes? Most definitely. But where there is smoke there is fire, and these videos are not stirring resentment out of thin air. There is a growing sentiment amongst Singaporeans that having imported foreigners into our society with little care for how these foreigners might integrate or assimilate, our society is now becoming more fragmented and at risk of being overrun by people who neither share our values nor our culture, and in that we risk losing the very thing that makes us Singaporean - our identity. These fears are no doubt exacerbated by the perception (whether true or false) that the PAP has shown little care about these concerns. While it is true that there are some who hide behind the guise of criticizing the Singapore-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), feigning concern about jobs and immigration to spew the most vile racist hate, it does not take away from the fact that there are valid concerns. Further, this clearly is not a race issue, there is just as much concern that foreigners from China (or PRCs as colloquially known by Singaporeans) are not integrating, or even bothering to integrate, into Singapore society. The Singaporean people have made leaps and bounds since the race riots of the 1960s, but still the PAP government will have you believe that race relations are just as fragile as they were when we were a fledging nation. Singapore does not have a racism problem, we have an integration problem.
The PAP already know there is an integration problem. They have repeatedly acknowledged the existence of the problem, but have yet to actually do anything about it. In a speech in February, Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong announced improved measures to help new citizens and Permanent Residents (PRs) through the Singapore Citizenship Journey and the newly introduced PR Journey. The cart has been put so far in front of the horse, it might as well not be hitched to the horse. Shouldn’t these immigrants have integrated, or at least show a penchant for integration, before being granted Singapore citizenship or permanent residency? The PAP will continue to insist that the problem is under control, while Singaporeans’ lived experiences will continue to inform them that the situation is getting worse. Who hasn’t encountered PRCs who either refuse or are unable to interact in English? Or encountered behaviour which would be incompatible with Singaporean culture? As the number of foreigners increase in Singapore, it becomes increasingly easy for them to avoid any integration by forming enclaves within our society. As always with PAP, the problem isn’t that there is a lack of integration, it is that there are people noticing that there is a lack of integration.
It is not racist to insist that immigrants have to conform and integrate into our society. It is true that Singapore is a multi-racial and multi-ethnic country, and the freedom to practice our cultures is what makes this country vibrant, but any and all cultures practiced must be second to and informed by our Singaporean identity. We must be Singaporean first and foremost before anything else if we are to succeed together, or our differences may very well tear us apart. Never let anyone use your own values against you. The PAP have already played the race card before, and to great success. In 1988, the PAP introduced the Group Representative Constituency (GRC) system, under the assertion that Singaporeans would be too racist to practice non-ethnic voting, the PAP sought to ensure that there would be forced minority representation in Parliament. And again in 2016, the PAP introduced the Reserved Elections, asserting that Singaporeans would not vote for a minority candidate, or that somehow certain races would always lose if pitted against other races (which itself is incredibly racist), the PAP introduced elections reserved specifically a race group if that race had not been represented in the presidency for a certain amount of time.
It is far easier to label opponents to GRCs and the Reserved Elections racists than it is to engage them on substantive points. Singaporeans might harbour suspicions that maybe the stated purpose of GRCs is not all that important given that the PAP do not seem too concerned1 about replacing the minority representative. In 2017, when Halimah Yacob vacated her seat to run for President, and again in 2023, when Tharman Shanmugaratnam vacated his seat to run for President, and again in 2026, when Faishal Ibrahim vacated his seat over some text messages. Or maybe Singaporeans might have the perception that the 2017 Reserved Elections were put in place specifically to prevent Dr Tan Cheng Bock from running given that he almost won in 2011. All this is to say that never let anyone use your own values against you. Singaporeans are rightly concerned about fostering a tolerant and diverse society where members of all races can thrive and succeed, but never let this be used as the reason for having to accept and tolerate values of others which are incongruous to the Singaporean identity.
Integration
Given the struggle to even define what the Singaporean identity is, it is perhaps difficult to figure out how best to integrate immigrants into our society. So much so that one might feel inclined to cut the PAP some slack, if they were not the same people who is also importing these foreigners with such reckless abandon. It becomes even harder to sympathise with the PAP when they refuse to even implement the simplest of integration measures. In 2023 then Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong shot down a proposal by the Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh to mandate an English test when assessing a person’s application for citizenship or permanent residency.
Singapore is a multi-racial country, and the business language of Singapore English. While not all Singaporeans can speak English, if you were to pick a language you would guess most Singaporeans could speak, it would be English. English has become our de-facto shared language. As more and more spaces in Singapore eschews the English language from their businesses, be it restaurant menus that are entirely in Mandarin or staff that will not communicate in English, Singapore becomes an ever more hostile place for our minorities. An English language test, and perhaps to go even further, mandating that businesses in Singapore have to at least have their customer facing staff and customer facing interfaces have an English option would actually be the bare minimum in trying to integrate foreigners into our society.
Minister Tong’s objections2 come across as disingenuous. He evokes his 96 year old grandmother who would not be able to pass an English test as a reason why such a test would be unfeasible, neglecting the fact that Singapore has changed so much so it would be unrecognisable to that same grandmother when she had first come to Singapore. This is not only to say times change, and we should also update our perimeters based on how society is today and not whether it would have made Ah Ma very sad 70 years ago, but also that Singaporeans who came a long time ago and those who are born here are different from those who wish to come here today, and should be treated differently.
The common rebuttal to all this is that “Singapore is a nation of immigrants”. This line is often said with a pompous finality, as if the debate has been settled. The implication is of course that because our ancestors were immigrants, we have no moral standing to deny foreigners who wish to immigrate to Singapore today. This rebuttal is only used by the most obtuse of people, those who are incapable of understanding nuance and context. When our ancestors emigrated from their home countries, Singapore was still in her infancy. While our ancestors might have escaped an even more dire situation back home, there was no promise of HDB ownership, or low income taxes and no capital gains taxes, or low crime, or a stable business environment. Our ancestors built these things. The immigrants today may also be fleeing destitute conditions, but they arrive in a Singapore which already has all these comforts. Citizenship is a balance of rights and obligations, whatever rights the state confers upon you has to be earned through your obligations to the state. Singaporeans born here today not only inherit these rights from their ancestors who have fulfilled their obligation by building this country, but also male Singaporeans today are still fulfilling their obligations through their service to this nation. So yes, there is a huge difference between immigrants of the past and immigrants of today.
The flood
With the growing consternation from Singaporeans over integration issues, and the PAP themselves admitting that there is an integration problem, why doesn’t the PAP simply slow down the rate of immigration to either allow for better integration, or until they actually figure out a way to integrate immigrants into the Singapore identity? The problem is that they can’t.
One might speculate over any number of reasons why the PAP insists on not just maintaining, but in many ways stepping up, their immigration policy. The first reason is obvious, and confirmed by the PAP many times, is the falling Total Fertility Rate (TFR). Singapore now boasts one of the lowest TFRs in the world, and immigration is seen as the quick fix. The second (perhaps more speculative) reason is that the PAP needs to continue to prop up the housing market, particularly the resale market for public housing, up.
In a dialogue with the Singapore Press Club last month, PM Wong spoke about the challenges that Singapore was facing with respect to TFR. Finally, after so many years, PM Wong acknowledged that just throwing money at the issue was a failing endeavour, something that was highlighted by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as far back as 2019. The new direction which the PAP is purportedly taking is actually encouraging - PM Wong indicated that they were exploring ways to make Singapore a place where families can flourish. The irony is that the aggressive immigration policies of the Singapore government is the exact kind of policy which discourages families from procreating. There is an increasing feeling amongst Singaporeans that you are being crowded out of your own country as basic necessities like housing become ever more expensive, and that the competition for jobs is becoming ever tougher. It is a vicious cycle - the more the TFR drops, the more foreigners the government feels inclined to import, and the more foreigners are imported, the more the TFR drops.
As our TFR drops, the government faces yet another problem. The Goh Chok Tong era policy of treating public housing as an asset instead of a home is now coming home to roost. Since the PAP made sweeping changes to the resale market in 1989 (including removing the income cap for resale-buyers, allowing PRs to buy resale flats, and allowing HDB owners to buy private property), the price of HDB flats on the resale market have been on a constant upward trajectory. This is by design. Since Goh Chok Tong in the 1990s until now, the PAP has been selling the idea that HDB flats are not only your home, but also your “nest egg” in retirement, an policy recently reiterated by PM Wong. Since most Singaporeans buy housing using money from their Central Providend Fund (CPF) accounts, what would ordinarily be a retirement fund is now “invested” in their homes, and their houses have quite literally become their retirement fund. With a declining TFR, it would be impossible to prop up the resale market indefinitely, and eventually as the supply of old flats outstrips the demand, the prices would inevitably come crashing down. While it would take a lot to topple the PAP dynasty, a housing market crash is presumably one of the ways this could happen. The rush to increase the amount of PRs in Singapore is therefore no surprise. The market needs new buyers, and PRs can only buy from the resale market.
To be clear, nobody is actually asking for a complete halt of immigration, there will always be gaps in our economy that need to be filled. But there is such a thing as too much, and this is merely a call to slow down before we lose something that we may never recover.
The next 50 years
In his 2015 National Day Rally speech, then Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong reads a letter which recounted a conversation involving his late father Lee Kuan Yew. In response to the question, “Will there be a Singapore 50 years from now?” the usually reticent Mr Lee replied with a confident, “Of course there will be… even better!”
Perhaps there will be a Singapore 50 years from now, but would it be one that any of us here now will recognise? Will the demographics of this Singapore in 50 years even be the same as the one today, or will we just be overrun by a different culture from a different country? The fledging Singaporean identity is so young, and so fragile, that it would not take much to overwhelm. Like the Ship of Theseus, with its parts slowly stripped off and replaced, Singapore might still be there, but will it still exist?
There is only one way to stop the rapid import of foreigners into this country, and that is at the ballot box. Can Singaporeans even stomach stopping the rapid influx of foreigners, given that it comes with the cost of their housing values? Housing reform is of course possible, but the web of problems facing Singapore is not so easily untangled. Ironically, whichever party that actually fulfills the promise of housing reform and slowing our immigration numbers will undoubtedly lose the following election if Singaporeans even get a whiff of falling housing prices.
As we head into the future, the current leadership slate of the PAP does little to inspire confidence. The jokes write themselves: we have a Minister for Culture who has no time to partake in culture; a head of the fertility task force who does not have any children; our labour union chief has never held a job outside the government; and who knows when was the last time our Minister for Transport sat in a bus.3
Ultimately Singaporeans have to decide for themselves what kind of country we want to live in. Or we can stand idly by as our culture and identity is slowly eroded, and our chicken rice stores are replaced by mala tang outlets, and our heartlands are overrun by massage parlours. If there is a happy ending to be found, Singaporeans will have to look for it themselves.
Notably, this has all been litigated in Wong Souk Yee v Attorney-General [2019]. The court arrives at the decision that even if the minority member is the member who vacates his/her seat, it is the intention of Parliament that there would be no by-election. Now, as a purely legal matter, this makes sense, the court is there to enforce and interpret the law according to the wishes of Parliament. Courts are not there to introduce their own laws. In any case, even if the courts were to decide that there should be a by-election by dint of the statutes inconsistency with the constitution, the constitution can easily be amended by a PAP government given their perpetual super majority.
I will say that the arguments presented by then Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong in Parliament in support of not having a by-election should the minority member’s seat be vacated is incredibly lacking. DPM Goh’s arguments are two-fold: 1) GRCs are meant to ensure a multi-racial Parliament, not a multi-racial constituency; and 2) if a resignation by the minority member would always trigger a by-election then the minority member would have undue influence over their team and would be able to extract concessions from the other members. Both arguments are horrendous. One could imagine a situation where a party threatens to kick their minority member out of the party if they do not vote with the majority race. This would be the tyranny of the majority race, and the existence of GRCs would have done nothing to prevent it. Or perhaps there exists a minority member would would try to exercise undue influence over his/her constituency members. Such a member clearly does not have the integrity or values to be a Member of Parliament, and one would hope that their team members would have more spine to stand up to them and trigger the by-election if necessary. Arguments about weak willed and easily bullied members hold little sway. In any case, all this is to say the GRC system was poorly thought out and unfit for purpose, and in my view only serves to tighten PAP’s stranglehold on the Singaporean political landscape.
Minister Tong also invokes the Constitution, claiming that it provides that a working knowledge of any of our four national languages fulfils the language criteria as stated by the Constitution. That is not true. The plain reading of Article 127(1)(c) reads that the government may grant naturalization if the person “has an adequate knowledge of the national language”. Read with Article 153A(2), which states the national language is Malay (the other 3 languages are deemed to be “official languages” under Article 153A(1) and not a national language), it would seem that most people would not in fact fulfil the criteria for naturalization under the Constitution. This man is our current Minister for Law.
To be clear, I don’t actually think you need to take public transport to come up with public transport policy, or that you need children to fix the ailing TFR. But the jokes do write themselves.
Creating a national identity through history is part of the project. This is becoming ever more urgent as aspects of Singapore’s multiculturalism come under stress in a more divided, polarized world.