Singapore the safest and most peaceful place on earth

A chaotic year went by and many will ‘kee chiu’ if I say Singapore is one of the safest and peaceful countries in the world. We should count our blessings and thank a forward looking, proactive and good planning govt that is all the time worrying about our national security and the preservation of our social fabric. Chee Hean had made two statements yesterday, one after protecting our social fabric from a breakdown of social cohesion that would lead us down the rubbish chute of social unrest and racial strife. And it is a miracle that we could keep our social fabric intact after stuffing the little island with more than 2m of the people highly prone to violence from around the world. The few punching bag incidents are peanuts and tolerable. We can live with that. It must be the successful integration process that the govt has put in place and the good jobs that were given to the foreigners that resulted in this harmony. This is something to be proud of, and a price worth paying for.

The next important statement by Chee Hean is on cyber security. This is an increasing threat to our smart nation where the decision to cross the road or what to eat, or whether the oldies at home are safe, are all wired and computerized. Then there are the transport system, the water and flooding system, the electrical grid, banking and finance, the health records and our power system. With so many systems being wired up, the opportunities for them to be targeted for mischief are plentiful and very real.

And thanks again to the great policies of the govt to import the best foreigners to boost up our IT industry and our cyber security. It is a cat and mouse thing and we need the best cats to catch the most intelligent mice. And if the mice are from foreign sources, we need foreign cats to deal with them. Ah, to set a thief to catch a thief really works. What about local threats? They would route their attacks from overseas and the foreign cats would be well placed to catch them too. Our cyber security and cyber defence are in the best hands, the best foreigners money can buy to guard our security and to protect us.

Singaporeans can sleep well. All the computerized systems will be safe under the watchful eyes of our foreign IT experts. This may be called defence in depth like having gurkhas to guard our installations. Foreign mercenaries can play a big role in our safety and security. So far so good. This is not ownself check ownself. This is depending on foreigners to check ownself and to protect us. The foreigners not only protect us, they also provide good jobs for us and integrated very nicely with our citizens. This is like what they say, have the cake and eat it as well.

Let’s hope our social fabric will remain intact when we hit 6.9m. Let’s hope we would not be dragged into a war by some of our good friends or because of them terrorists would want to teach us a lesson for meddling with their domestic affairs.

This is another good thing to remember for Christmas.