As a student, LHL excelled academically and had a remarkable military career (shortest time to rise from recruit to second in-command in the army, in around 8 years minus the time taken for his studies).
He was then primed to enter politics in 1984. He seemed to know the ground pretty well. He was given the publicity and here is one of the excerpts of his interview with the media before the 1984 GE (held in Dec 1984). It showed that he knows what he was talking:
Singapore Monitor, 7 October 1984
“but the cost to society of having a person who doesn’t belong here, who is not brought up here and who comes and brings certain problems.
They form a foreign community, who don’t quite fit in. if they start to grow roots, it makes the problem worse. If they don’t grow roots, there’s another set of difficulties.
…
But in the long run, it is not good for Singapore society to have a large number of non-citizens working mostly in jobs which Singaporeans do not want.
…
We may have to pay more. We may have to mechanise some of the jobs. In the end, Singaporeans have to do these jobs.”
Very well said indeed.
LHL was then elected an MP in 1984 at the age of 32. Following his election, he was appointed as Minister of State at the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Defence by his father, LKY, who was the Prime Minister at the time.
After he entered into the politics, here is another great piece of what he said:
Straits Times, 24 August 1984
Speaking to reporters at the end of his tour of Kaki Bukit and Eunos constituencies, the Trade and Industry Minister said the situation was different for manufacturing, where foreign workers are allowed.
“Manufacturing is containable. It’s a factory, you bring in 50 workers, they have a dormitory and are well looked after. When their term is over, they go back.”
But he said employers in areas, such as supermarkets or barbers’ shops, would not retrench their foreign workers, even if their scale of operation came down.
If foreign workers were allowed in the retail and services sectors, they would “scatter throughout our economy”, a situation that would be “very hard to unwind”.
But, in March 1990, the Labour Minister Lee Yock Suan (Desmond Lee’s father) announced that the service sector can have 10% foreign workers.
But where was our LHL? He did not utter a word.
Again in the same year, in November, this was increase to 20%.
And again, he said nothing.
What happened to all his talk about if foreign workers were allowed in the retail and services sectors, they would “scatter throughout our economy”, a situation that would be “very hard to unwind”?
The talk simply vanished. Luckily, we now have the Internet where we can piece together the historical transformation of a person’s mind.
Then in 2001, he appeared to be indifferent to the issue of foreign worker influx into Singapore. In fact, he wants more foreign workers.
It’s like drugs. At first, one will abstain from taking drugs because you know it’s bad for your body in the long run. But after taking it for the first few times, you get addicted to the “high” (i.e, in this case, economic growth) and you start to find the drug (i.e, foreign workers) has become an inseparable part of your life.
Here is an extract taken from his speech in 2001:
TODAY, 8 October 2001
Earlier, during a speech at the Young PAP’s 15th anniversary rally, BG Lee explained why Singapore, in fact, has much to lose if we were to “say no” to foreign workers even during this downturn.
“Foreign workers actually help create more jobs and protect some existing jobs for Singaporeans,” BG Lee said.
But look what’s happening now? It’s so lucrative to import foreign workers that in fact, Singaporeans are being replaced by them, more and more so.
Ask those PMETs who are driving taxis now. Yes, they are considered employed but are they happy?
Ask the 13 Singaporeans who have been replaced by foreigners in Prime Gold International (‘PRC owned company replaces 13 S’poreans with FTs‘).
It appeared to me that LHL degenerated from talking sense to talking nonsense as he ages.
Or perhaps he is having too long an “apprenticeship” until he became an “idiot”?
Maybe, he is better being an “international joker” telling jokes to his international audience (with his signature laughter), like the one he gave in Washington:
“(In) Shanghai, if you want some pork soup, you just turn on the tap.”
The last piece – it seemed that an MP could do better than him (below).
17-03-1993 – Hansard
Mr Goh Chee Wee: Sir, at a time when many of the countries in the world, including the rich developed countries, are facing the severe problem of unemployment, we are in a very fortunate position to worry about an entirely different problem – the problem of labour shortage. Large numbers of foreign workers were allowed into Singapore but the employers are still clamouring for more.
Sir, to be realistic, we need a certain number of foreign workers to augment our indigenous workforce, and to meet short term fluctuations in labour requirements. But I am deeply concerned about the liberal entry of foreign workers, and its consequential social costs and the depressing effect on wages of local workers. If cheap foreign workers are readily available, employers will neglect efforts to upgrade and to make greater and productive use of domestic labour resources, such as attracting those economically inactive persons to take up part-time or full-time employment and training of older workers to take on new jobs. It will also depress the wages of Singaporeans working in the same industry or occupation where foreign workers are employed.
Years ago, the Government policy was to reduce and eventually phase out all foreign workers. As recently as 1982, the Government had declared that it would phase out all foreign workers by 1991. But it realised that this was not possible. The growing economy exerted enormous pressure to relax foreign worker controls. So instead of a reduction, our foreign workforce swelled from 80,000 in 1980 to well over 200,000, or 250,000 today.
Controls were relaxed. Unskilled foreign workers were allowed into many sectors of the economy. The dependency ratio for the construction sector was raised from two foreign workers for every local worker to 5:1. For the manufacturing sector, the dependency level was increased from 35% to 45%. And for the service sector, long considered a sacred cow by the Labour Ministry, foreign workers are now permitted to form up to 20% of the workforce.
One of the more worrying consequences of the liberal import of foreign labour is that it depresses the wages of the Singaporean workforce at the lower end of the income bracket.
(emphasis added)
So, what is going on in LHL’s mind?
Why is he regressing in his thought process?
Whatever it is, I’ve already made up my mind that LHL has essentially been “promoted” into his level of incompetence. It’s time to change the incompetent ship captain.
You go make up yours.
Edmund
*Edmund is a retiree who loves to use the Internet and go to the library to do research on old articles of Singapore