PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE

A Philosophy of Government

Some 40 years ago, in the depths of gloom of the last war, the British worked out their Beveridge plan, a welfare state which will care for people from cradle to grave, from womb to tomb. Unfortunately it has not led to a society where all men and women are equal in health and opportunities. Indeed, they are locked in bitter class conflicts.

They, the British, who taught us that excellence should be rewarded and honoured in order that all can benefit from the exceptional talents of the few, have now ended up by punishing the talented few, to satisfy the doctrinal follies of the even fewer.

In May last year, several of my colleagues and I had the privilege of an extensive tour of China, a completely different society in which all men and women have to find satisfaction in hard work, and recognition, not in material rewards, but in public approbation. China may be too austere, too severe a model, for Singaporeans. We have come to expect many of the conveniences of life as essentials. Nevertheless, considering the state of our economic development, our workers should do well to remember that China, which today has the hydrogen bomb, the missiles and the satellites, got there through sheer hard work, often with nothing in hundreds of millions of bare hands than the simplest of agricultural implements, like the shovel and the hoe.

For Singaporeans, it cannot be a simple copying of either China, the Malaysian archipelago, or India, from whence most of our ancestors came. Nor can we be a copy of Britain, which governed Singapore for some 150 years, but as a colony through an appointed governor, not an elected Parliament.

We are different from China, the Malaysian archipelago, India and Britain. We are Singaporeans. We must seek practical solutions, solutions which will work in our context, to our problems which are basically Southeast Asian.

For example, material incentives, strenuously condemned in some communist countries are very necessary for Singapore's continued economic growth. And let us not deceive ourselves. Continued economic growth, however slower it has become compared to what it was before the oil crisis, is most necessary if we are to avoid sliding back to the harsh poverty and degradation of the years during and after the war, until recovery in the late 1950's. Indeed, in 1965, when we found ourselves suddenly out all on our own, without enough land to grow food to feed ourselves, many doubted whether Singapore would survive, even with the protection of British and Commonwealth troops. And in 1968, when the British announced they would withdraw, nearly everyone wrote us off. Even some of our staunchest friends thought that the end was imminent and inevitable.

However, the people of Singapore, now a more tightly-knit society, had the will to succeed, They supported their government in a national effort to solve the apparently unsolvable. Together, people and government put in the hard work. Imaginative policies and tough measures enabled us to rise from the near-despair of the 1960's, to the relative security of today.

We have more than trebled the average earnings of the modal group of workers since 1965; we have in money terms increased our GDP from $2.9 billion in 1965, by five times, to $14.7 billion in 1976. This was achieved by a generation that did not flinch from hardship. We put national solidarity over and above differences of race, language, and culture, And there was that willingness to subordinate the individual interest to national interests to ensure that Singaporeans would not go down,

Our problems are now vastly different, The young, with only faint memories of the anxious moments of the crises and hardships of the last 20 years, crises and hardships their parents and their elders still remember vividly, now take the relative prosperity of Singapore as the norm. This attitude, the high expectations, the desire to seek jobs in comfortable surroundings, the impatience, indeed the intense haste, to succeed financially - they could be sources of weakness.

External economic factors have now become unfavourable. The young may yet get their baptism of the harsh facts of life. In 1965, after Separation, and 1968, when the British forces started to withdraw, external economic factors were favourable. Our friends and allies in the West feared for us. Because the West still had strategic interests in this part of the world, they went out of their way to help us. Today, they themselves are in difficulties. World economic recovery is still sluggish and uncertain. The price of oil is dependent on the Saudis and the Emirates, and will turn on America's determination to resolve the problems of the Arabs and the Israelis,

The programmes and policies which are set out in the addenda spell out what the government proposes to do in the fields of finance and economics, social and medical services, education and defence. They are all based on this inexorable premise, that rewards must be correlated to work, and must correspond to the contribution one makes to the total national well-being. We believe one truth to be self-evident: that more and more pay for less and less work must lead to greater and greater borrowing and eventual bankruptcy.

However difficult the going, and whatever the surprises and setbacks, we can overcome them provided we stay alert and trim. The decisive factors are morale and will. If our people are determined to succeed, then realistic policies can be made to work. To meet unexpected contingencies, we can adjust and adapt our policies.

Man does not live by bread alone. Hence we take immense pride that in the past two decades we have begun the process of forging one people out of disparate groups brought together by the accident of history. Disasters, floods and famines in China, India and the archipelago around us, led to successive waves of migration of different peoples of different races, different religions and different cultures, We have become a more integrated society than we have ever been in the past.

More and more, the differences between us, whether ethnic, linguistic or cultural, are being blurred, as our children go to the same schools, regardless of their parents' wealth or status. We share a common destiny. Each can keep his lifeline to his own culture and value systems through his mother language. However, we are enlarging the common ground we all share. All learn not only their mother tongue, but also the English language in our schools, the first to keep our identity the second to get access to science and technology, and facilitate commerce and the expansion of industry.

We have a more equal and more just society than it has ever been in the past. This has only been achieved because we have eschewed punishing those who have achieved more and earned more, because they have worked harder or shown greater enterprise. But the government is committed to help the most needy. They should never be allowed to become a permanent burden on the rest of the community. They should be helped through better education and health because then they can be better themselves. We have established high standards of education and health. They are a heavy drain on our scant resources. With a more favourable environment, we expect the less successful to have the chance to do better, to improve themselves and to make a greater contribution to their own well-being.

This is the philosophy which underlies all policies of the government However, it is the spirit of the people which can ensure the success of these policies.

LEE KUAN YEW Prime Minister