Singaporeans warned about competition
Singaporeans warned about competition
SINGAPORE (AFP): Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew warned Singaporeans in a speech to guard against complacency amid intensifying competition from neighbors Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
The 73-year-old elder statesman, who was prime minister from 1959 to 1990, also told university students that "primeval forces" underneath the city-state's multiracial harmony remained a danger to social unity.
Lee, speaking late Thursday, said "the going will be tougher" now that Singapore had achieved a per-capita gross domestic product of more than US$25, 000, making it Asia's second richest society after Japan.
"Furthermore, policies that we adopted which have made for our success are now followed by our neighbors Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand," said Lee, who led Singapore to independence from the Malaysian federation in 1965.
He singled out Malaysia -- with 20 million people compared to Singapore's three million -- as the city-state's closest economic rival.
"Whether it is in container ports, airports, airlines, telecoms or IT (information technology) services, we will face competition from Malaysia with its new container ports, new airport, new highways and high-speed railway and new high-tech multimedia corridor," Lee said.
"In 10 to 15 years, Thailand and Indonesia will follow in Malaysia's wake and give both Singapore and Malaysia competition," he added.
He said "the best way forward" for Singapore was to invest in "fast growing and stable" ASEAN countries as well as China and India, while maintaining its competitiveness at home through better education and training of its workers.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, which have collectively posted the world's highest economic growth rates for two decades, although some, like Singapore, are currently undergoing a mild slowdown.
Burma, Cambodia and Laos are currently seeking ASEAN membership.
"If we lose that focus, dissipate our energies over fringe issues, we shall go the way of complacent societies who assumed that they had arrived at the stage of self-sustaining growth," Lee said of the need to remain competitive.
"What we have achieved is not enough to see us through the next 30 years."
Lee cautioned Singaporeans against regressing to the racial and religious discord that tore the island in the 1960s. The island's population is 77 percent Chinese, 14 percent Malay and seven percent Indian, with other races making up the rest.
There have been no communal riots since 1969 but "it will be a grave mistake to believe that these dangerous primeval forces, driven by religious and racial feelings, cannot erupt again."
"If we ever forget this, we put our future in peril," Lee said.
Lee, whose People's Action Party (PAP) has kept a firm grip on power since 1959 and faces general elections by April 1997, said Singapore still needs a strong government.
"Weak political leadership that postpones the tackling of major problems, and meets every populist demand in order to win votes for the next election, will cause a slide downhill," he said.