IN A fragmented and polarised world, Singapore must keep working with like-minded partners for growth, while ensuring harmony at home, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his final interview as the country’s leader.
Speaking with local reporters, he covered the challenges that Singapore faces and how its new leadership must take the country forward.
The two-and-a-half-hour interview came ahead of his May 15 handing-over of the country’s reins to Lawrence Wong, currently the deputy prime minister.
On the world stage, Singapore must continue to be a strong advocate for globalisation, he said. “We have to. We have no choice.”
He noted that other countries are reshoring key industries: bringing overseas operations back home, to be part of their local supply chains.
But in semiconductors, for instance, Singapore already produces chips for the world. It also cannot host the entire supply chain, as it lacks the components and supporting industries.
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“If I make a million chips a month, who is going to use them in Singapore? It does not make sense,” he said.
Singapore thus has to continue to be a proponent of free trade and mutual cooperation. “We have to be out there promoting… (the) willingness to be interdependent, and willingness to develop the networks of trade, investment, trust and finance to work together.”
Even as globalisation is threatened, Singapore must adapt. Large multilateral platforms such as the World Trade Organization have become paralysed – so the Republic must seek smaller platforms, said the prime minister.
For instance, even after the Trans-Pacific Partnership fell apart with the withdrawal of the US, Singapore and the remaining partners formed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership instead.
Singapore has also signed individual digital-economy agreements with Britain and Australia, and a multilateral agreement – the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement – with New Zealand and Chile.
“We have to keep on being active,” said PM Lee. “(These may be) smaller-scale platforms, but to us, these are all the more important.”
Ensuring social cohesion
Staying open includes welcoming foreign talent, he noted. “We need talent to develop new things in Singapore, to stand out in the world. And you can never have enough talent.”
But Singapore must do this “in a controlled way”, and manage the tensions between locals and foreigners.
“That is something which is going to be very difficult to manage, because we do not have a lot of manoeuvring room on the downside.
“You cannot say: ‘I send off all the foreign workers,’ and then tomorrow we will be OK.”
At the policy level, the government is managing both the quality and quantity of foreign workers, with moves such as the raising of the Employment Pass qualifying salaries and the introducing of the Complementarity Assessment Framework.
“We have to see how it works,” he said. “I am sure we will continue refining it, but we have to keep on doing these things and adjusting as we go along.”
On the political front, Singapore must maintain a sense of cohesion and identity, and reduce the risk of friction. This includes ensuring that infrastructure is adequate, encouraging arrivals to respect local norms, and getting Singaporeans to understand the need for foreign workers.
“We have to do our best to generate political space for us, in order to feel our way forward and go as far as politically can be supported.”
A national position
Managing the tension between openness and social cohesion is the most difficult challenge for Singapore’s government, and will be a long-term issue, said PM Lee.
But there are other social challenges as well, from “sensitive issues” to threats from foreign actors.
Some issues, such as repealing 377A – the law criminalising gay sex – or allowing Muslim public healthcare staff to wear the tudung, were “handled over a long period of time”, he noted.
The government had confidence that the community understood and accepted the government’s perspective, and could give it time “to manage the issue without polarising and hardening opinions”.
Meanwhile, social media has brought foreign flashpoints closer to home, he noted.
Israel’s war in Gaza, for instance, has aroused strong feelings, he said. “It is unconscionable… and you feel for it, because first, you are a fellow human being like everybody else. But also there is a religious element to this feeling.
“And I think we have to recognise that, respect that, understand it, and try to get people to work together, so to see what we can do to acknowledge these feelings.”
Singapore’s approach is practical, such as making donations and taking a stand in international forums, he added. “I hope that Singaporeans, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, will understand that and will also understand the need for us to stay together and to look at it as Singapore, as a national position.”
As the world becomes more connected, Singapore has also become increasingly vulnerable to hostile foreign actors. Such black ops are not new, but what is new is that they are “now on our doorstep and in our bedroom because of the Internet”.
The Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act was introduced to deal with foreign hostile influence operations, he noted. Under the law, politically significant persons – such as politicians – have to make more frequent declarations of their connections and sources of funding, if any.
Balancing trade-offs
Another challenge for the government is to strengthen social safety nets while exercising political restraint.
The prime minister noted that unlike other countries with fiscally conservative parties, Singapore does not have a political constituency calling for less welfare and lower taxes. “That is not the People’s Action Party’s (PAP) policy, it is no opposition parties’ policy.”
Thus, in the absence of an external political restraint, the government itself has to judge which safety nets are necessary, and where to draw the line.
“I think the attitude should be, we work hard, we are prudent. If things turn out well, and we have a good year, everybody can enjoy the upside,” he said.
There may be some National Day Rallies or Budgets with “good news”, but this cannot happen “every year for the next 10 years”, he added. To run its policies, the PAP must win on the political front – and it is spending more time on politics than before, he noted.
Political debate has grown more intense, he added. But he warned that if the trend is that citizens want more alternative voices, “you are inevitably going to weaken the government in terms of the energy it has to work on policies that benefit Singaporeans, in terms of its ability to assemble a team which is up to scratch”.
“The results will generate fewer benefits for Singaporeans and at some point, the political system will malfunction.”
He noted that the number of contested seats has grown from “very few” when he entered politics in 1984, to all seats being contested in the last General Election in 2020.
But there is “no safe number” of opposition members that can be elected, he cautioned.
Singapore’s political system is unique, he said. “There is consent, there is mandate and there is restraint and there is sustainable continuity.”
“You leave it, you can never come back.”
He noted that the late founding father Lee Kuan Yew governed in a certain way, and former prime minister Goh Chok Tong did so differently, for a younger generation.
“I have tried to do it my way, different from both Mr Lee and Mr Goh.”
“We will try very hard as (the) PAP to make sure that we continue to win the people’s mandate and to hold the position, in a different way, with a different generation,” he said.
