Kshore Mahbubani – How to love Singapore

I saw this sticker on the top right hand corner of the ST today. I swear my eyes were not deceiving me. My first thought, goodness, this is deep trouble. I have written a few articles questioning whether Singapore would be in deep trouble. But this has nothing to do with Singapore. It was about Kishore. There are only two possibilities, between the devil and the deep blue sea. Is he growing stupider by the days? Or is he going senile?

Who does not know how to love Singapore if they are being paid by the millions and have all the riches in the world to last a few generations? Actually no need so much lah. Anyone who has the wealth of Kishore and be in his position would make loving Singapore so easy.

Kishore went on to explain how dirty Singapore has become and how Singaporeans can make it clean by loving Singapore. Here he unintentionally disclosed a little of his mental state. He claimed that the dirtiness of Singapore is the fault of Singaporeans. He didn’t even know the real cause. He made a farcical assumption that even a child in school would have told him off. For every two persons here, one is a foreigner. In fact if we include all the new citizens that are here for less than 10 years, it is likely that 60% or more of the people in the island are foreigners. So blaming Singaporeans for dirtying the island is a no good reason. And expecting Singaporeans, now a minority, to clean up the littering of foreigners, and Singapore will be clean is nonsensical.

Kishore went on to talk about happiness, about promoting Singaporeans to be like Lat and how the rich should help the poor Singaporeans. And he indulged in the same crap that if Singaporeans laugh a lot, even living in a pigeon hole they can be. When he quoted the experiment on how animals got unhappy and ate up each other in confined space I thought there is still some sanity in him. But he has proven beyond any doubt that senility is catching up with him. And I told myself, if he keeps on this way, I would write to the ST to publish his articles in the juvenile section.

But on reflection, reading the whole article all over again, he is getting to be like me, so innocent and appearing so naïve in what he wrote. Actually there are deeper messages in what he said other than the little distractions to lower the guards of his readers. His cartoonist part, about the ability to laugh at our ourselves and the names that he quoted, like Mahathir as a good example, and the names of people for people to ridicule, like Tommy Koh, Chan Heng Chee, Ho Kwon Ping and Gerard Ee. Look how clever he ‘eh lar’ the more meaning names to avoid saying the wrong things? This part shows that he is sane after all, and very smart by not suggesting himself to be the cartoonist’s joke.

His most important message in the whole article is in this phrase, ‘If our deeds do no match our words, we do not love Singapore’. He said this in the beginning of the article and to make sure the readers get his message and did not think he is really going nuts, he repeated this again, ‘Many of us say we do so. Here again, the one question is: Do our deeds match our words?’

Think about it, ignore all the rubbish that he spun in so many words. The gist is, ‘Do our deeds match our words?’ This phrase alone said what is bothering him about Singapore. And it is not about his $2 contribution to Sinda every month.  He would not give more or would want to stop contributing.

Kopi level - Green