Singapore revisited

Singapore is visited by hundreds of thousands now

By Brian Barron

More than 30 years ago, I recall an old Asia hand grumbling that the Far East wasn't far enough any more.

If the old box wallah was still alive he'd be staggered by life beyond the club's welcoming portal

All these jumbo things, he griped, referring to the advent of the Boeing 747 - they're taking the mystery out of the tropics. Anyone can get here now.

The old timer, encased in long khaki shorts so crisply starched they crackled when he moved, was slumped in the lounge of the Tanglin Club, a colonial watering hole that has continued to thrive.

The beguiling, seedy, ramshackle Singapore of my youth is a memory

If the old box wallah was still alive he'd be staggered by life beyond the club's welcoming portal.

Instead of the smoke-wreathed bar of the York Hotel, where sundowners could be enjoyed with hard-drinking, leathery Australian jockeys from the race course, he'd be confronted by the challenge of an internet café.

Singapore's main artery, Orchard Road, is now an equatorial Oxford Street packed with stores and boutiques.

The old Asia hand's prophecy turned out to be true.

R & R centre

Anyone can indeed get to Singapore and they do in their hundreds of thousands, some on tours, others heading for Australia.

Some old buildings still remain

The beguiling, seedy, ramshackle Singapore of my youth is a memory.

As a young correspondent covering the swansong of Pax Britannica I'd go to briefings at military headquarters when there were still British garrisons East of Suez and the Royal Navy policed the Indian Ocean.

The Americans were losing the war in Indochina but characteristically , Singapore had a piece of the financial action. It served as an R and R centre for combat-weary American conscripts.

Old buildings

Nowadays a few old colonial buildings survive in what was the British administrative complex.

The other day we searched for the shadows of half-forgotten ancestors. Just off Orchard Road we tried to find the family home of my wife's forebears.

In a community underpinned by a Confucian respect for seniority and service, [Lee Kuan Yes is] the man who counts

Her grandfather, the family patriarch, arrived penniless from famine in southern China, built a business empire and a baroque Chinese mansion to house his eight wives and concubines and tribe of children.

The mansion had gone, so too the stable block where he kept his chauffeur and enormous Hispano Suiza limousine. Everything was demolished in recent years so a road could be widened and a block of flats put up.

Lee Kuan Yew

For anyone seeking signs of continuity, the acronym, PAP, says it all. It stands for People's Action Party, the movement of Lee Kuan Yew, the Cambridge-educated leader who outwitted Communists and radicals in the tense transition from British colonial rule.

Lee Kwan Yew: Still a power behind the throne

His Singapore grip has spanned five decades.

Mr Lee is supposedly in quasi-retirement as the government's senior minister. But in a community underpinned by a Confucian respect for seniority and service, he's the man who counts.

An island of immigrants with no natural resources has been turned into an obedient, paternalistic society with high education and living standards.

There have been moments when the larger than life personality and protean skills of Mr Lee have almost proved overwhelming. But his ruthless side, his past willingness to destroy opponents, is best judged against geopolitical realites.

Citizen army

This island of three million, mainly Chinese but with significant minorities of Malays and Indians, has unreliable neighbours.

Malaysia remains ethnically and religiously tense beneath the surface - under a prickly prime minister with autocratic tendencies. And the regional giant, Indonesia, is in a mess and could unravel with grim consequences.

Skyscrapers now dominate the landscape

Singapore's success, based on foresight and pragmatism, makes it an object of envy and resentment.

As a precaution the island has maintained a citizen army for years - though it can't be realistically defended.

Usually Singaporeans amiably accept the PAP government's decisions.

A recent exception was a row over pay rises for government ministers and civil servants, already the world's most pampered.

The argument is high pay discourages corruption and attracts the best and brightest. Despite protests the rises went through.

In Singapore what Lee Kuan Yew decides still goes - just as it did during my watch a generation ago.