Lee Hsien Loong was reported by the Indian Zee News two days ago to have said:
“Singaporeans, new arrivals, people who are on permanent residence here, people who are on employment pass here, (are) all participating in one big Singapore family … So that we feel that this is a place which is special, which belongs to all of us and where we all celebrate one another’s festivals and happy events together.”
– Singapore for Singaporeans? –
This comment triggered a furor among many, taking him to task for “selling out Singapore and Singaporeans” and cheapening the S’pore citizenship and prompting a petition to call for his resignation.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Singapore_Prime_Minister_Lee_Resign...
– A Mountain Out of a Molehill? –
At the other end of the spectrum however were some who thought the adverse reaction was overblown and represented a worsening of what they call the “xenophobic climate”.
http://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/24r0qh/the_online_citizen_have_gone_full_retard_never_go/
Within this group, some thought the crux of the issue essentially was that Lee Hsien Loong had made a faux pas and that reading too much into this was making a mountain out of a molehill.
~ A Balanced View ~
A small number adopted a more balanced view.
Stephan Ortmann for instance expresses this eloquently under a thread:
“I think it shows how divided the country is becoming between those worried about losing Singapore’s identity and those who stress pragmatism (as the PAP has in the past).
In fact, it mirrors the PAP’s dysfunctional nation building project which stresses nationalism on the one hand while at the same time promoting cosmopolitanism, both for reasons of economic growth. In fact, the government has always tried to do both to maximize profits but eventually it is a time bomb!”
~ Freudian Slip ~
We think that there is an element of truth in each of the above.
Lee’s statement as the second camp said could have been a faux pas but to us, it is fundamentally a Freudian Slip.
In Freudian theory, a Freudian slip is a manifestation of the unconscious mind as the realm of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories of which people are unaware but nevertheless continues to influence our everyday behavior and speech. Such memories are typically repressed because they are deemed to be unacceptable.
Hence, when Lee Hsien Loong uttered the faux pas that Singapore is a place which “belongs to us all”, could he be expressing his innermost desire that had been kept hidden after GE2011 for political expediency?
But then again, we know that Lee and his lieutenants have never deem it necessary to hold themselves to account to the people, as the passing of the Population White Paper shows. So perhaps at the end of the day, those comments made by him could really be just testament to a “leader” who’s just willfully and woefully out of touch with sentiments on the ground.
The Alternative View
[source]: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Alternative-View/358759327518739