Founders' Memorial - Take a leaf from North Korea

Singapore is setting aside 5 hectares of prime land in the heart of the new downtown city at Gardens by the Bay dedicated to our founding fathers. They deserved to be sited in the choicest part of the island. Somehow I got this uncomfortable feeling that 5 hectares may be too small to honour them. We need something more grandeur. Cost is not an issue. On that, with our good relations with North Korea and Kim Jong Un, I would recommend that Singapore send a team to North Korea to study how they honoured their great dear leaders. The North Koreans are perhaps the best in this area and their expertise is well recognised in Africa with many African states commissioning them to build gigantic statues of their founding fathers as well. This is one of their main exports and major source of foreign income.

Our westernised and heavily American influenced thinking may be satisfied with a library or a warship named after a President. We could do that and also copy from the North Koreans, taking the best from the East and West. The North Koreans are the best.

Here are some comments in the CNA on this historical project.

'The memorial site will include a garden, within which an indoor gallery will be built, the Founders’ Memorial committee said in a press release on Friday (Oct 19)....

The memorial will focus on stories and events in Singapore’s growth as a nation, the committee said, adding that it aims to take visitors on a journey that is “moving and inspiring, educational and reflective”.
"It intends to also capture the context for key milestones in Singapore’s nation-building history, the experiences and dilemmas of our leaders which shaped their values and principles, and how these affected their actions, policy deliberations and decisions," the committee said.'

Now you see why I said cost is not an important factor. It can be turned into a tourist attraction as well and the revenue would be enough to cover for its cost and general upkeep and maintenance, just like the two indoor gardens in the same area. And why bigger space, cause you need to prepare for the crowd, locals and tourists, to bring in tourist dollars. The visitors to North Korea never failed to take photographs of their dear leaders when in North Korea.

Singapore is always very particular about cost and returns and would not simply blow away money unnecessarily. If there were such incidents, they were anomalies and very few in between. Every project must be revenue generating, profit generating, like GIC and Temasek and our world best DBS and POS Banks. See how successful are our tourist sites like Sentosa and Haw Par Villa, capturing the tourists with their creative ideas.

I can imagine the long queues at least for the first few months of its opening to take a look at this new tourist attraction and to honour our founding fathers at the same time.

PS. If I let my imagination go wild I would like to see twelve 50m statues of founding fathers over looking the Padang and floating platform. In that way they could see the NDP every year, the fruit of their labour and sacrifice. A twelve statue monument would rival the statues in Easter Island and could earn the title of the 12th Wonders of the World. This would be money well spent as it would be income generating from tourists all over the world flocking here to see this new wonders. Definitely more fascinating than the Jewel in Changi.