And Equality For All

To be a citizen of Singapore, it means you submit yourself to the political system of totalistic control. You take on the citizen responsibility of defending Singapore. Of course as a citizen, you will also enjoy subsidies and the hand-outs which the Government doles out during election time. As a PR, you may lose out on some subsidies but then, you are also not liable to be tied down to a totalistic political system and you are not obliged to defend Singapore. You actually enjoy as many subsidies as most citizens. Which is precisely why citizens are feeling short-changed by this foreigner syndrome. The costs of being a citizen outweigh the costs of being a PR.

To finally address this issue, this divide, PM Lee has announced that PRs will no longer enjoy the same breadth of subsidised Government services as citizens. The costs of being a PR will be made higher. So that citizens will feel more privileged, more Singaporean. It sharpens the divide, privileges the citizen by penalising the PRs. Not that citizens will feel any substantial difference, for us, the status quo is maintained. We will pay the same amount, take up the liabilities of citizenship. We are made "better" in the sense that PRs will be made to pay more for refusing the liabilities of citizenship.

That punitive difference meted out to the PRs is very loosely then, the equivalent of the liabilities of citizenship. It is the measure of our circumscribed political rights and for males, our sacrifice of two years conscription and a minimum 13-years reserve military liability.

And it can be safely assumed that the punitive difference will never be qualitatively equivalent to the liabilities of citizenship, particularly Singapore citizenship. This bridging of the divide, through a punitive sharpening against the Other is supposed to make citizens happier? Behind this very political move is a worrying syndrome. That of pleasing a group of people by punishing another group. It is a warped privileging of the citizen. Almost nasty. It is typified Singapore governance.

There is another alternative. It is by sharpening the divide through privileging the citizens more, reducing the liabilities of citizenship. Then, the PRs will see that it is wonderful to be a citizen. And they will want to be a citizen, be part of the system whole-heartedly.

But more privileges for the citizen? It is a political anathema in Singapore, is it not? It smells of welfare. It smells of dissent. it smells of liberalism. It smells of political rights. It smells of freedom. All of which are pandora-ic political lexicons in Singapore. Uttered with sneers in cocktail parties, spoken with embarassed smiles in public forums. Lexicons which are always enclosed by the invisible parentheses when mouthed in Singapore.

So we are left then with one alternative, one vision for Singapore. And that is to fall back on the vaunted Asian values of our society. We make all equally miserable. So that the miserable citizen can look at the miserable PR and feel gratified : "At least he is as miserable as me!" Or : "Hah he is more miserable than me!". And the miserable PR will have to whip out his calculator and measure just how much, how worthy it is, in dollars and sense, to apply for the great Singapore Citizenship.

Quote of the Day --

"All applicants for citizenship must be of good character, have satisfied the residential requirement and have the intention to reside permanently in Singapore. They must also be able to support themselves and their dependents financially.", ICA guidelines for Singapore Citizenship Application

PS : For those who think me the master complainer, the ultimate hypocrite, for those who are impatient, who want action, who want change, I can only say that we have to first, regain the space, even for hypocrisy, to speak; because the space, even for hypocrisy, to speak has been denied us. Which is why we hear the all these signals, even hypocrisy, in the main media without a challenge. Second, with a foothold in this space, we populate it with lexicons, with words, which meanings were lost in the past twenty or thirty so years. Then, it will be the time when a word is uttered, the action follows simply because the meaning is known.