S'pore's new agenda to focus on people

S'pore's new agenda to focus on people

SINGAPORE (AP): The government is at a "major changeover point" and wants to focus its new 21st-century agenda on people, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Sunday.

The city-state's parliament will go into recess this week and re-open in October, giving lawmakers and the government a chance to take stock and plan a new program, Lee said.

"It's a major changeover point for us," he said in remarks carried by the Television Corporation of Singapore news.

The coming new millennium is "a good time to set a new beginning and to identify the major priorities which we have in mind - and I think it will focus one way or another on people," Lee said.

Critics have complained that Singapore's long-ruling People's Action Party government is authoritarian and detached from the country's people.

Voters have repeatedly returned the PAP to power, however, and the party is widely credited for wealthy Singapore's economic success. But tight political controls and defamation suits against opposition politicians have drawn fire.

"A tightly supervised press and civil society, plus a highly litigious attitude towards the opposition and other dissidents, have made it hard for Singaporeans to think of themselves as members of a democratic society," columnist Cherian George wrote in a Straits Times newspaper article on Sunday.

Lee said a look at future policy is timely as the current government, elected in January 1997 for a maximum five-year term, has reached its midway point.

All of the country's ministries have been asked to set out what they want to do in the "next phase" of the government, Lee said.

Singapore's new President S.R. Nathan will deliver a major policy speech when Parliament re-opens in October, the TV report said.

Other Singapore leaders have also recently hinted at a softer, people-oriented approach.

In a national day rally speech last month, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong told hard-working Singaporeans to remember to have fun.

"If Singapore is a dull, boring place, not only will talent not want to come here, but even Singaporeans will begin to feel restless," he said.

Goh noted that Time magazine and London's Financial Times -- which formerly derided the country as staid, strict and dull -- have recently published articles swooning over the place as "funky" and "cool."

The conservative Asian country's schools have been moving away from rote learning, and the government has put more emphasis on developing arts and entertainment.