Shanmugam was quoted in the media as saying that Singapore needs to maintain the racial balance for the three major ethnic groups because the Malays had made their position known, that they would not want their position as the second largest ethnic group to be changed and become the third or lesser minority. For this, the govt has agreed to keep the three major ethnic groups' percentages as somewhat constant with Chinese at 75%, Malay 15%, Indian 8% and the balance as others. There could some some small changes but not be enough to be significant to this balance.
The Malay community is very concerned with the influx of Chinese and Indians and others but relatively very few inbound Malay stock new citizens. For the moment the Malay community are taking the changing demography cautiously, very tentative and watching how the picture is changing. The govt has promised not to change their status. This has been so according to official govt statistics on the citizenship of Singapore.
Not sure if the balance is still the same if PRs are included in the calculation. In the 2021 statistics in Wikipedia, Singapore's population was 5.54m of which 3.5m were citizens, 0.5m were PRs and 1.5m were non residents. Assuming 15% of 3.5m citizens were Malays, there would be 525,000 Malay citizens.
If 0.5m PRs, assuming none were Malays, or minimal, then the percentage of Malays would be 525,000/4,000,000 = 13% if PRs are included in the computation.
Assuming that 1.48m non residents were not Malays, then the percentage of Malays in the total population, ie citizens, locals and non residents, would be 525,000/5,450,000 = 9.6%.
The govt has kept to its promise that the Malays would be the second largest ethnic group among the citizens. The non residents and PRs aka locals, are not citizens and thus did not affect the Malays as the second largest ethnic group of citizens in the island.
The official demography of Singapore's citizen population thus remains the same since 1965, with very little changes despite the presence of many non Malay non residents and PRs. There may be many foreigners present in public places and trains, many are not citizens, just happened to be here temporary.
PS. The maximum variation could be Indians 14% and Chinese 69%, with Indians gaining at the expense of Chinese but not crossing the 15% mark, to keep the Malays as the second largest ethnic group...theoretically.
Some pr had been here for donkey years..so it better to include them when talking about population demographic.
ReplyDeleteIf Indians go up from 8% to 14%, that's a significant increase & will have significant impact to Singapore.
ReplyDeleteYou need to understand the Indian caste psyche. It is utmost culturally important to them, it DEFINES their civilization. Out SG Indians are mostly descendants of (lower caste) blue collar workers. The newly imported talent CECA are (middle caste) white collar workers.
These middle caste Indians socially wont mix with our SG Indians, they look down on them. To add salt to it, they too wont mix with other Singaporeans, preferring to stick to their ghettos. The caste believe is that higher caste dont have any social dealings with the "dirty" lower caste. Ironically, this ignorance puts Singaporeans in the percieved lower caste category. In the end, that closed off, wall city, Indian expat community will prefer to self isolated from the general Singaporean community.
How will this toxic caste culture influence the future Singapore melting pot community? An isolated community ignoring the majority will create misunderstanding & social tension.
Could it be the Pinoy also added into the Malay % count? From some other source, nowadays Pinoy very hard to get PR or Citizenship don't know whether it's true?
ReplyDeleteDaft Chinese did not mind becoming a minority.
ReplyDeleteLast times my indian mechanic was a PR for 20 years. He did not want to take up sg citizen. He got a farm land the size of 2 km². He divided the land into 20 parts. He build a bungalow on one. The others rented out to farmers. He left Singapore for good. Few years back , he came to Singapore to buy riffles for his bodyguards. There are no reasons for him to be here permanently.
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