Singapore -- a model for the world?

By Louis Kraar

MR LEE Kuan Yew is not one to shy away from controversy, whether by expounding on the superiority of Asian values or hounding his critics in court. But lately Singapore's senior minister and the successful system he largely created have been in the spotlight for a different reason: A growing number of leaders would like to emulate them. Tung Chee Hwa, the new Chief Executive of China's Hongkong, has expressed his open admiration for Lee's Singapore; China, too, looks upon the island state as a model. Even one of Asia's former colonial powers, Britain, is seeking to learn from Lee: Prime Minister Tony Blair has dispatched a team to study Singapore's Central Provident Fund, a national retirement and savings scheme.

Lee's model has much to be said for it: Singapore was ranked the world's most competitive economy for the second year in a row in the global Competitiveness Report released in May by the World Economic Forum in Geneva. Singapore also looks set this year to surpass the US in terms of per capita wealth: Each citizen's share of GDP will hit US$30,000.

Yet one aspect of the model that outsiders rarely remark on is the undercurrent of anxiety that keeps this tiny island of three million people striving to improve. "There's always certain anxiety in Singapore that our geographic, economic, and political positions are vulnerable. This anxiety is also a galvanizing force, in some way an obsession,' says George Yeo, the cerebral, Harvard-educated Minister of Information and the Arts. "Our success is the result of anxiety, and the anxiety is never fully assuaged by success. Perhaps most city-states feel that way. It keeps people on the ball."

For example, rather than celebrate its status as the world's most competitive economy, Singapore immediately appointed a panel of government officials and local and international business executives to devise ways to sharpen this nation's edge for the next decade. And though Singapore's primary-school students have just scored among the world's best in science and math, its government is already shaking up the education system to stress greater creativity. Says Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong: "We must get away from the idea that it is only the people at the top who should be thinking and the job of everyone else is to do as told."

That would be quite a change for Singapore, where public discussions and a docile press now stick to an agenda set by a government that frowns on sharp dissent and divisive debate. Insists Goh, who wants Singaporeans to become more innovative: "As a society we must be willing to respect and accept a greater diversity of ideas."

Is all this worrying just a technique to spur better performance? Partly yes, but some of Singapore's anxieties are more concrete. Its economy slowed last year to a mere 7 percent growth, from 8.8 percent in 1995, and electronics, which accounts for half its manufacturing output, is just starting to come out of a slump

And politically, Singapore, where ethnic Chinese are the majority, thrives by cooperating with a pair of large, predominantly Malay Moslem neighbours, Malaysia and Indonesia. Only by containing the ethnic and religious tensions that have long plagued the region can Singapore continue to prosper.

A strong reminder of how important that peace is came earlier this year, when a comment by Lee about neighbouring Malaysia sparked an acrimonious dispute that is only now beginning to fade. Lee apologised twice and withdrew his remarks, while Prime Minister Goh said the Senior Minister was "offside." Even so, Malaysian politicians began calling for a review of agreements that supply Singapore with most of its drinking water. Says a report by Political & Economic Risk Consultancy, a business advisory firm in Hong Kong: The dispute "reopened a quiet discussion among many observers about the extent to which Lee Kuan Yew is becoming a national liability."

Yet Lee, 73, a British-educated lawyer, personifies the endless striving -- and insecurity -- of his city-state. Instead of mellowing with age, he is as sharp-spoken and combative as ever -- his remarks about Malaysia were actually made in an affidavit for a defamation suit against an opposition politician. (Lee and his colleagues won US$5.7 million in damages. The opponent, who lost at the polls, had already fled the country).

Although he turned over the reins to younger successors like Goh seven years ago, Lee retains power of the sort wielded in China by the late Deng Xiaoping.