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12 - The Future of the Middle Class in Singapore: 2020 and Beyond
- Edited by Terence Chong
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- Book:
- Navigating Differences
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 24 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 29 May 2020, pp 207-230
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Summary
In 1959, 90 per cent of the people had no property stakes in Singapore. Twenty-eight years after we took over control of Singapore, 80 per cent of our households are now home-owning. June 1987 [there were a] total 630,000 [HDB] units, 500,000 or 80 per cent were home-owning and 20 per cent rentals … HDB surveys show that more than 50 per cent of those in rentals can afford and intend to buy 3 and 4-room flats. So when they are resettled, we shall have 94 per cent property-owning households … Sociologists define middle-class in several ways. First by property, second by the perception of one's own position, third, by education and occupation … Our society has become 80 per cent middle-class. Our people have important stakes in Singapore's stability and prosperity.”
Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew Tanjong Pagar National Day Dinner Thursday, 13 August 1987This was the report card on Singapore's socio-economic development issued by the founding Prime Minister (PM) of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew twentyeight years after his People's Action Party (PAP) first won the right to govern Singapore in 1959, when it was still a British colony. Its transformation from post-Second World War squalor where most of the populace continued to struggle with basic survival, to one where the vast majority had homes of their own, where many were armed with better educational qualifications than the generation before them, and a significant proportion of workers in well-paying white-collar administrative and professional jobs, was remarkable.
In the speech above, PM Lee argued that having benefited from a governance system that upheld the rule of law, integrity and active industrial policy that brought such progress, Singaporeans should have no interest in reversing course to embrace an alternative social order—communism— something that had traction on the ground before Independence. Instead, Singapore's full engagement with the global capitalist system after it had lost the Malayan hinterland with the end of merger with Malaysia and the PAP's social and political policies had proven the worth of the PAP's governance system in tangible terms.
Last moments of life: Can telemedicine play a role?
- James A Low, Gillian Beins, Kok Keng Lee, Ethel Koh
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- Journal:
- Palliative & Supportive Care / Volume 11 / Issue 4 / August 2013
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 07 February 2013, pp. 353-355
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Background:
We describe the experience of managing the dying moments of a nursing home patient via telemedicine.
Case presentation:Ms. C was a 92-year-old frail woman with multiple medical problems, living in a nursing home. She spent her final days in the nursing home, choosing not to be transferred to an acute hospital should she turn ill. On the last day of her life, she complained of acute-onset breathlessness and agreed to a teleconsultation with the hospital physicians involved in acute care.
Case management:During the telemedicine consultations (tele-consultation) process, Ms. C's condition deteriorated rapidly as she entered the dying phase of life. She died peacefully soon after, in the presence of the nurse, the pastoral care worker, and the physician who was conducting the tele-consultation session 30 km away. The family was not present at the patient's bedside when she died. They were, however, relieved to know and were appreciative of the fact that a physician had been “present” during the patient's death.
Conclusions:Telemedicine could act as an effective communication tool in end-of-life care, between the patient and carers, up to the last moment of life.
8 - Relationship between State and Civil Society in Singapore: Clarifying the Concepts, Assessing the Ground
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- By Gillian Koh, University of Sheffield, Ooi Giok Ling, National University of Singapore
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- Book:
- Civil Society in Southeast Asia
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 03 November 2017
- Print publication:
- 29 November 2004, pp 167-197
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
There are sections of civil society in Singapore that live a troubled and tenuous existence. Actors in these constituencies see the state as wanting to co-opt or weaken them through a protracted war of attrition. There are other sections of civil society that work quietly and effectively with different levels of encouragement from and co-operation with the state. Even the concept of civil society in Singapore is an intensely contested one as it encapsulates this larger process of contestation and negotiation between the government and civil society actors.
This chapter will provide a brief review of the evolution of state–civil society relations since Singapore's independence in 1965 to the present moment. It will draw on a survey of civil society organizations and examples of interaction between the two sectors for a better understanding of the present relationship and its implications for the nature of governance and political development in the future.
HISTORICAL CONDITIONS: EVOLVING ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN GOVERNANCE
PAP's Ideology of Statism
Singapore has been widely recognized as a successful developmental state where the state has actively planned and directed the country's transformation into one of the most competitive economies in the world. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annual average rate of 8.7 per cent per annum (1990 market prices) and per capita GDP increased from $1,567 to $36,963 from 1965 to 2000, reaching a high of $39,585 in 1994 (current market prices). The average household earned $4,166 a month and the median household $3,040 a month in 2000 (1990 market prices). The average household income grew at an average of 3.1 per cent from 1990 to 2000, and median income at 2.8 per cent for the same decade. More recently, however, the income of the higher-income households has been growing faster than the lower-income ones such that the income disparity has widened. The Gini coefficient moved up from 0.436 in 1990 to 0.481 in 2000.
Singapore is a one-party dominant system, where the People's Action Party (PAP) has formed the government at every general election from 1965 to 2001. Chalmers (1992) has organized the political economy of the PAP's development and governance strategy in its first two and a half decades in power — we shall call it the PAP Ideology of Statism — into three main tenets.