Dear Editor,
I endorse Mike Singh’s plea for Guyana (and other Caribbean states) to emulate Singapore’s model of development in his letter captioned “We used to be more developed than Singapore” (08.02.29). I have been visiting Singapore regularly since 1988 and am most impressed with the pace of development in the city-state .
I was drawn to Singapore during the late 1980s by my Development Economics Professors (from CUNY Grad School) Edwin Reubens and James McCord both of whom encouraged me to consider Singapore as a model for development for third world countries like Guyana. I wrote several research papers on Singapore’s development with comparisons to Guyana’s. The late Minister of International Trade, Michael Shree Chan and I also had a brief exchange on Singapore in NY after his return from a trip to Singapore for a World Trade Organization meet. He did not pay heed to my argument that Singapore could be a good model for Guyana. Because of a lack of vision, our country languishes today unable to achieve its full potential.
Mike Singh is right that during the 1960s several Caribbean states were way above Singapore in development but Oxford-educated Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) took control of the small former British colony (which was an appendage to Malaysia at one time) and transformed it into one of the wealthiest nations in the world. Singapore is today in the “post-industrialized” stage of development whereas Guyana is struggling to get into developing world status.
Anyone who goes to Singapore ought to be struck by the technological advancement, harmonious state of race relations, social progress, cleanliness, orderliness, and economic development of that city-state. Singapore is virtually crime and drug free. Huge signs welcome you at Immigration and Customs – “Death for possession of drugs, no exception” – as well as on the customs declaration. President Jagdeo was in Singapore less than two years ago to chair the IMF-IBRD summit. I hope he has become motivated to take Guyana down a similar economic path.
There are several parallels between Singapore and Guyana. Singapore experienced many of the problems Guyana experienced in the 1960s – race riots, backwardness, lawlessness, an underdeveloped plantation economy, and a weak state. Singapore was poorer than Guyana in resources, consumption, housing, and per capita income. Singapore was poverty-stricken and without resources. Yet the nation has succeeded in overcoming all of these problems. Today Singapore, known as one of the leading Asian tigers, is a developed nation with a per capita income that rivals Japan, U.S.A and the rich European countries. Singa-poreans like to compare their city with Manhattan because the skyline of Singapore is just like Manhattan’s; skycrapers are going up at a feverish pace and the city is running out of space.
Singapore was able to experience rapid development because of the innovative policies of LKY who opened up the economy to foreign investment. Although a socialist, he had no problems with capitalism and people becoming wealthy. He was smart enough to recognize that you cannot share “socialist” poverty but you can re-distribute wealth after your country becomes wealthy through capitalism.
He sided with the West in the cold war. This brought him tremendous financial assistance from the U.S, Japan and Europe to establish new industries (initially, garment and toys and later drugs and high-tech products). One innovative policy Lee instituted is forced savings among all workers, called the National Providential Fund, which was used for new investments to create jobs leading to zero unemployment, so much so that today Singapore imports millions of construction labourers, engineers and other professionals from Asian countries; Singapore has become a mini-UN of people with even a few Guyanese settled there. I, myself, was offered a job but turned it down.
Unlike in Guyana under the PNC and PPP administrations, there is no room for mediocrity in Singapore’s government or in its bureaucracy. Ministers are very competent in their field; they all have a post-graduate university education from Western universities. In addition, the government has hired the best and the brightest minds to run the country and has paid them the international market salaries so they would not migrate to the lucrative shores of Europe or North America. University lecturers, for example, earn a minimum $50,000 annually. People are hired on merit, not party lines or race, or your ability to be a soup licker.
The fact that people earn the titles to their jobs may partly explain why ethnic tensions in Singapore are not publicly displayed. Unlike successive rulers in Guyana, former Prime Minister Lee (and his two successors including now his son who is the P.M) used the different ethnic groups (Chinese, Malays, Indians, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, among others) as an asset for social and economic development. Every effort was made to eliminate ethnic discrimination; the different ethnic groups are proportionally represented in the police, armed forces, bureaucracy and government with real power not showcase tokenism as in Guyana. The current President is an Indian. Everyone is encouraged to develop and utilize his/her skills to the maximum and to contribute to the growth and prosperity of the nation; today Singaporeans are at peace with one another and ethnic politics has been virtually wiped out.
Singapore also has its problems. Critics point out that the government is authoritarian and there is no room for opposition or dissent and that ethnic Chinese are at the top of the social ladder with Malays in the middle and Indians at the bottom. There are also complaints of abuse of foreign labour. Neverthe-less Singaporeans are willing to trade in certain individual rights and ethnic equality for economic prosperity.
In less than forty years, Singapore has been transformed from a malaria-infested swamp which was very much like Guyana’s hinterlands, into a high-tech industrialized nation. It is the success story of the third world. And no doubt, with some modification and creativity (such as a power sharing formula among the diverse racial groups to nudge them to work together for the betterment of the nation), it can be a model for Guyana to transform itself from its present malaise.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
