OVER the past 10 years, dramatic changes have pushed Singaporeans to a new reality that says they can no longer depend on the government to protect or provide for them.
For many foreigners, this sounds corny but not for the four million highly regulated Singaporeans.
They are now discovering what it is like to live in a high-tech, globalising 21st century, which is steadily cutting loose their tight bond to the government.
In a way, it is bringing them closer to how the rest of the world lives – that governments can't control jobs any more than they can the impact of technology.
For three decades, the City Fathers had installed a highly regulated control system for their citizens on jobs, rising assets and almost every social aspect of their lives from cradle to grave.
With the unpredictable "twin" of a changing economy and technology, this is no longer possible. During the golden era, a job was tantamount to being an unwritten right of being born Singaporean.
Also diminishing is a host of other things such as pay rise, bonus, strong property values – in fact, the promise of a secure predictable life.
More people are, however, telling themselves that there are many things they can't depend on the government to provide for them the way it had worked for the previous generation.
It's not just jobs but life in general. Take this newspaper report warning parents about the dangers of the Internet.
Nearly one in five Singaporean children aged 12 to 17 (according to a varsity research) met a stranger face-to-face after a chat-room encounter, compared to 16% in Nordic countries.
And one in 10 actually believed they were meeting another teenager, not an adult.
Last week came another shocker: Almost two out of three youngsters are visiting pornographic sites.
Senior citizens, too, have their own problems.
More elderly women, illiterate and vulnerable, are conned by smooth- talking "magic stones" and "snake oil" salesmen, most of them from abroad.
Among lonely elderly men in the heartland, the threat comes from another direction. An increasing number is falling prey to younger women from China who offer companionship, gain their trust, then cheat them of their savings.
The chat-sites have their share of such tales. I encountered one during a recent blood test at the Singapore General Hospital.
I saw a weeping 60-plus gentleman being consoled by two nurses and learned that his "China mistress" of eight months had taken S$60,000 of his money and left him.
"He kept saying his life was over and that he had nothing left," one nurse said.
From the young to the very old, Singaporeans are finding this new high-tech world a distinctly less friendlier place where no government laws can protect them.
Last November, a family man was reported to be selling his home after being cheated of S$330,000 in a Nigerian e-mail scam.
At the same time, 32 Singaporeans who paid a company several thousand dollars to help them resell their time-share investments were chasing around to recover their money. Many of them – well-educated professionals – had made two bad decisions.
The first was being pressured into buying time-share programmes without proper study and, second, paying someone they didn't know to help them out of the first.
Tens of thousands of Singaporeans – workers, professionals, parents, and businessmen – are finding it hard to cope with the dangers of this century. Even living without a job is something many are not quite used to.
All this is forcing them to rely on themselves rather than on the government, which is easier said than done.
Having lived under a safety net for so long, many Singaporeans are finding it hard to fend for themselves against some of these modern excesses.
This prompted one Singaporean (who returned after being away for two and a half years) to write: "I visited 63 places in Europe. None of them was like Singapore. Not London, not Paris, not Amsterdam!
"We have lifts that serve every floor of some HDB blocks. Walkways shelter us from our flats to the MRT stations. There are television sets on buses. Bangladeshis clear the plates at hawker centres and many of us have parents to do the cooking and washing up.
"Singaporeans are very lucky and things come to us too easily, without having to work for them.
"People complain when they need to climb a flight of stairs. Life in Singapore is too comfortable."
He urged the government to stop spoon-feeding Singaporeans. "Give us the space to grow up to make our own decisions."
All this will have a political impact in the future.
As a principle, when the people rely on the ruling party it is good for votes – the stronger the reliance the better.
It had, in fact, resulted in a powerful mandate for the People's Action Party in every general election. The PAP explained it as a social contract between the government and voters.
This was how it worked: It was the duty of the government to provide jobs and protection to the citizens, and as long as this was achieved, it was the citizens' duty to vote for it.
Now that it can't promise security in employment, this social pact has to be redefined. The result could be a less certain election future in the longer term.
While once condemning people who leave Singapore as "quitters", it now wants the unemployed to seek work in "hot" economies like China and India.
Wages are being restructured with a higher "flexible" element that will move up or down according to profits – a departure from the past.
Last month, the future Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, said the authorities would further loosen the apron strings on political freedom and stop acting like a full-time nanny.
"If we want a more participatory citizenry, the government will have to cut the apron strings and leave more matters to the private and people sectors," he added.
Sources and Relevant Links:
Singapore Review End to promise of a secure life 07 March 2004
The article "End to promise of a secure life" was first published by The Star, Malaysia, 22 February 2004.
Seah Chiang Nee is a veteran journalist and editor of the information website: littlespeck.com
