A pao-ka-liao speech

Speech with something about everyone - and for everyone

FROM Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong who pledged to build an 'open, inclusive' society, came a speech last night that was, aptly, all-inclusive in style as well as substance.
Call it a pao ka liao (Hokkien for all-inclusive) speech.

It had something for everyone and aimed to rally all - young, old, rich, poor, Singaporean in Punggol or Portugal, student in Bugis or grandpa in Bedok.

The address was also notable for the way it tried to mend emergent rifts in Singapore's young society.

The National Day Rally speech is the public performance par excellence of the Prime Minister each year.

Mr Lee's address at the University Cultural Centre last night was his second as Prime Minister. In Malay and Mandarin, then English, he displayed an infectious enthusiasm for the future, infused with a surprisingly egalitarian instinct and stamped with his own brand of unscripted humour.

When Mr Lee was sworn in as Prime Minister last year, his guest list included hawkers, taxi-drivers, disabled Singaporeans.

He peopled his speech last night with stories of some 19 ordinary folks who were extraordinary in some way, including retrenched secretary Shirley Lee who saw no shame in taking up a job cleaning toilets, to hockey player Helamatha Arudas, a student from the National Institute of Education, with her 'never say die' attitude.

With these stories, Mr Lee buttressed the point that Singapore isn't just a 'pinnacle' with stars and the elite on top, but a mountain range with multiple peaks for people of different abilities to scale.

Sceptics will say that this grassroots element in his speech is just public relations. After all, a politician is judged not so much for what he says, or how he says it, but for what he does. The test lies in the substance of policies.

So Mr Lee devoted as much of his time yesterday to policy, as to painting a vision of the future.

The vision was carefully crafted to be inclusive, bringing together seemingly divergent groups. The policy announcements were aimed at trying to mend emerging rifts in Singapore society.

So the segment where Mr Lee painted a vivid word-picture on Singapore as a sparkling global city, actually began where it should: in the heartland, with rejuvenated Toa Payoh as the prototype for more estate renewal in Ang Mo Kio, Bedok and Clementi.

For what would be the point of having an exciting city for tourists and high-income 'cosmopolitan' Singaporeans, if the majority of Singaporean 'heartlanders' live in ageing, decaying estates?

He chose to quote or celebrate people whom some Singaporeans would have looked askance at in the past. He mentioned a teacher once expelled as a student for playing truant. He quoted from a foreigner. He mentioned an e-mail by a Singaporean teacher who now has a language school in Portugal but feels no less Singaporean. She might once have been labelled a 'quitter' for leaving Singapore, but was last night a guest at the rally.

In so doing, he displayed a conscious effort to reach out to the groups they represent, including the swelling ranks of foreigners here, and Singaporeans overseas.

Another rift that Mr Lee's policy announcements last night tried to bridge was the growing income gap.

Two recent surveys have shown that incomes for the bottom 20 per cent of households fell in the last few years, while average incomes went up. More troubling is that their children tend to do worse in school.

Many societies live with a widening income gap and say it's an inescapable problem. To its credit, this government doesn't just shrug its shoulders at the problem, but is trying to alleviate it with a ComCare fund and a committee on low-wage workers set up this year.

Taking the bull by the horns, PM Lee announced two new initiatives last night: an effort in the Malay-Muslim community to help families with multiple problems get out of the poverty trap, and a new housing grant to help the lower-income buy Housing Board flats.

These are targeted solutions to an intractable problem.

Of even greater impact than those policies was the promise PM Lee held out to students: that they can excel, whether they are in the academically advanced streams, in the mainstream school system, or in the technical stream.

Singaporeans used to lauding those who get straight As in school, will appreciate how radically egalitarian it was for the Prime Minister to highlight the successes of those from the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), which caters to the less academically inclined.

And how apt it was that he should choose to commission and screen two videos on service standards from Ngee Ann Polytechnic students, not students from one of the 'elite' schools.

Tiny Singapore, an unnatural state, succeeded 'beyond its wildest expectations', as Mr Lee said. No one knows what the next 40 years would hold, but he pledged:

'I can make you this promise: We are one people together. Growth and prosperity in Singapore is for all Singaporeans to share and provided you work hard and you help yourself, we will help you to succeed and we will progress together and we will not leave anybody behind.'

by Chua Mui Hoong
The Straits Times Interactive
23 August 2005