By Jerry Burris
Advertiser Editorial Page Editor

SINGAPORE — It is Meet-the-People night here at the Northeast Community Development Council, a dense suburban sprawl of businesses, schools and government high-rises which are home to 700,000 people.

The appointed "mayor" of this particular community, urbane parliamentarian Zainul Abidin Rasheed, sits in a brightly lit community center to hear from his constituents on everything from complaints about parking to troubles with the law. Volunteers sit at computers with local residents, hammering out letters of application or supplication which Zainul will then sign and forward to the relevant authorities.

It's a busy place. Residents shyly shake Zainul's hand as he makes the rounds while a group of youngsters practice their martial arts in an open-air gym across the courtyard. On the fence surrounding the community club, banners announce free classes on "managing emotions" and "managing expectations."

"Sometimes I'm here to after midnight," Zainul says with a weary smile. "I'm not always able to help, but it's important to stay in touch with our constituents. This is how we do it."

More to the point, this is but one of the myriad ways in which Singapore's ruling People's Action Party maintains its hold and disciplined control over this tiny island nation and its 4 million residents (including about a million foreigners).

Singaporeans are achingly and constantly aware of their vulnerability as a prosperous, multi-ethnic enclave in a region alive with economic, social and religious/ethnic tensions.

"We are a small state with no resources other than our people," officials invariably will tell you.

And for all its successes, green and glistening Singapore has suffered a series of shocks recently that test its almost cocky confidence:

• After years of steady economic growth, Singapore finally caught up with the Asian financial crisis. Unemployment rose and economic growth actually went into negative territory in 2001. (It is expected to return to positive numbers this year.)
• Despite an internal security system second to none, Singapore was shocked earlier this year when it learned that 13 men were arrested in a terrorist plot that aimed at attacking or blowing up a variety of U.S. interests in Singapore, including the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy. The 13 are alleged to have ties to the international terrorist network al-Qaida.
• And in the midst of rethinking its economic future, Singapore launched an unusual exercise in national soul-searching, a project named "Remaking Singapore" that asks fundamental questions about Singaporean values and the materialistic culture that has come to define this place.

If experience is any guide, managed Singapore will weather this storm as it has weathered so many others since 1965, when it was "rejected" by Malaysia and became an independent nation.

On the economic front, Singapore is pushing hard to develop a "knowledge economy" where brain power becomes one of its global exports. But this process means opening doors to outside "talent" — a risky move that irritates some of its hard-working residents.

It also means opening Singapore society to new ideas, new forms of expression that are crucial for creativity but threatening to Singapore's long-standing control over public expression and free speech.

Singapore, a tiny island nation of 4 million people with a diversity of religions and cultures, is going through a national introspection in the wake of an economic downturn. Advertiser library photo • 1993

"In remaking Singapore, we need to go beyond economics," Goh said. "The third generation of post-independence Singaporeans has different aspirations and expectations from the founder and second generations."

Clearly, the focus is on concern that this new generation has become too materialistic.

"We all tend to be a little robotic," admits one young Singaporean professional.

The committee, which is made up of younger members of Parliament as well as up-and-coming community leaders, was tasked with looking beyond the local preoccupation with the "Five C's" — career, condominium, club, credit card and car.

In other words, a search for a new definition of Singapore's soul.

"Maybe there's a desperate need to see whether we're going down the right path," says lawyer Chandra Mohan during a roundtable discussion on the Remaking Singapore effort.

Mohan disagrees with the idea that this is a managed attempt to insert some soul into Singapore's hard-working, efficient and obedient population.

"If you said adding a little heart," I'd agree, perhaps," he says.

Eleanor Wong, a professor of law at Singapore National University and one of five nongovernmental members of the Remaking Singapore Committee, says she believes that the process is about more than getting a bit more heart and soul into Singaporean lives.

It also is about opening up what has been a fairly rigid and paternalistic management style, she suggests.

"We are trying to find a new process," says Wong, a former television talk-show host and sometime governmental critic.

"I'll feel I belong when I am permitted to be myself," she says.

Of course, Wong said, all this could be nothing more than a cynical attempt to divert people's attention by making them feel they are part of the process of reinventing the city state.

"Government may be wanting to avoid responsibility for problems," she said.

"Still," she adds, "there's a bit of a test going on. This particular exercise is about extending the circle of safety," to speak out and criticize national policies.

Mohan suggests this organized bout of national introspection will be worthwhile, no matter what the motivation.

"I look at it positively, whatever the intentions are," he said. "I think government really wants to revamp and see where we'll be 10 years from now."

George Yeo, the former minister of state for finance and foreign affairs who now is minister for trade and industry, sees the Remaking Singapore effort as a valuable tool, even if it doesn't immediately transform the materialistic culture.

It will help, he says, because Singaporeans don't always trust each other. They need to talk more.

"No one feels quite comfortable here," he says. The angst issue is with us every day. There's always some sort of tension."

Members of the Chinese majority worry that they are not Chinese enough, minorities worry about being oppressed, some Singaporeans worry about a loss of social control while outsiders (including American critics) "feel we are not liberal enough."

This tension plays out in popular culture, Yeo says, as Singaporeans try to identify who they are and what their place is in the world.

"If you go to local plays," he says, "it's all about 'who am I?' I find it tiring sometimes."

That's where the Remaking Singapore dialogue will be useful, he says.

"Sometimes you learn more about each other, and if we know more, we irritate each other less."

While he didn't say it, Yeo may be hinting at another level to this process.

Singapore, he admits, "has a certain reputation" for quietly managing its problems unobtrusively. "There's a lot of nifty planning and footwork behind the scenes," he says. Much of what happens is the result of "careful timing and careful design."

Could there be some careful design to this latest effort to "get to know each other" that relates to the world Singapore finds itself in since Sept. 11?

A senior Foreign Ministry official notes that Singapore finds itself alone in a sea of rapidly politicizing Islam, from Indonesia across the Strait of Malacca to Malaysia in the north and portions of the Philippines in the south.

"There are 250 million Muslims in Southeast Asia, and the war on terrorism is being seen as a war on Islam, like it or not," the official said.

This produces an "abstract ideology" that focuses on hatred of America as a perceived enemy of Islam, he said.

Singapore cannot count on being immune to this phenomenon. Proof of that was the shocking discovery of the terrorist cell in Singapore.

"These chaps aren't mad at Singapore," said the official, who believes they were happy and doing well here, with several even working for American employers. "They've told us that they're sorry if innocent Singaporeans have to be sacrificed to a larger goal, but they had no choice."

So that is the chilling reality facing Singapore today: An economic challenge to reinvent itself once again; a social challenge to build a more well-rounded citizenry that thinks beyond material success; and a security challenge to survive in a threatening and rapidly changing world.

The bet is that Singapore's ever-thinking, ever-managing leadership will be up to the challenge.

Advertiser editorial page editor Jerry Burris traveled recently to Singapore with the Third Asia-Pacific Journalism Fellowship jointly organized by the East-West Center and the Singapore International Foundation.