Soros in Singapore (part 2)
To my amazement, AsiaOne (Singapore Press Holdings) ran an AP report today on Soros’ comments about the lack of openness in Singapore society. An article entitled ‘S’pore not an open society, argues George Soros’ also made p. 7 of the ‘Home’ section in the Straits Times (albeit minus the names of opposition MPs who have been bankrupted through law suits). The ST piece also reported that: ‘Responding to Mr Soros’ comments on Singapore, a spokesman for the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts said: “If we are not an open society, George Soros would hardly be able to make the comments at an open forum in Singapore, and be reported in the Singapore media.”
So maybe Tommy Koh is right! A Singaporean friend of mine was not convinced. His comment was “What if you are a Singaporean/Malaysian and you said the same things. What would be the repercussions?” I don’t suppose there will be too many people lining up to test this one, unless the Government were to take steps to actively encourage it of course.
I hate to say that I missed the Soros seminar. BUT… having the impetuosity of youth on my side, as well as the conviction that Singapore is indeed becoming more opened, I’ll stick my foot out here to say that I was planning on being at the seminar, and was in fact AT Raffles City for lunch with my wife, witth every intention of turning up for the seminar until I received an e-mail appointment for a meeting with my Boss.
Knowing the gist of what was to be discussed, I lost all enthusiam to meet Soros, and headed back to the office, only to find out at 4:30pm that the meeting had been cancelled. Why? because my boss and another participant for that meeting were at the Soros seminar!
What a bummer!
The response from Tommy on S’pore being a closed society is very much anticipated, knowing where he comes from. He has also readily defended S’pore in another speech on “Towards a borderless world”.
In this era, the hard power of ecomomic, millitary and political might has diminished with the rise of soft power such as culture, peaceful negotiations. S’pore is, in a way, advancing towards becoming an open society.
Nolonger is it possible to view world economics from the standpoint of ONE nation. The cold war, gulf war and then the Iraq war are major crisis to the world. There is an emerging need for a new global system to replace the dominant power of the U.S which epitomizes democracy and yet ironically has failed its people.
The UN is often too weak to be effective. For it to realize its universal objectives of humanism, peace, security, we need a global effort, an unification of global leaders & humankind to achieve the ideology of a global borderless world…