“MY BIG Idea No. 3 for Singapore is a simple one: strengthen the Singapore spirit.
Why? If our young men ever go to war to defend Singapore, they will not lay down their lives to defend the physical infrastructure of Singapore. They will do so to save the lives of people who are the strangers they meet in MRT trains or buses. Clearly they feel some kind of spiritual bond with these strangers only because they believe that they are fellow Singaporeans. This is what the Singapore spirit is all about.”
Kishore Mahbubani
- ST Apr 12: “Three stories to strengthen the Singapore spirit”
When I read the above quote I was kind of, what, what is that, who said that? I can’t believe that Kishore said this. I find this quite bizarre really for Kishore to say something like this. And my only excuse for him to say this is that he must be having a glass too many of toddy or Macallen single malt the night before.
Why would Sinkies die to defend foreigners who are here against their wishes and with many cheating Sinkies of their livelihood with fake qualifications and recruited because they were of the same kind, and making Sinkies outcasts in their homeland? What kind of bonding of Singaporean Spirit is Kishore talking about? Does he believe that Sinkies are really that daft or duds?
Kishore, are you ok?
Oh, perhaps he was thinking that Sinkies are angels. Angels are a kind of spirit, unthinking, just doing what God told them to do. So if God said, go and defend the foreigners, the angels, Sinkies in spirit, will go defending and dying for the foreigners who took their seats in the MRT or squeezed them into a sardine can.
Chua Chin Leng AKA RedBean
*The writer blogs at mysingaporenews.blogspot.com/