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.