Date : 25 July 2009
OPENING ADDRESS BY MR LIM SWEE SAY, MINSTER, PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE, MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FOR HOLLANDBUKIT TIMAH GRC, ADVISER TO HOLLAND-BUKIT TIMAH GROs, PA BOARD MEMBER AT THE GRASSROOTS COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMME WORKSHOP 2009 ON SATURDAY, 25 JULY 2009 AT 2.00PM AT THE NANYANG POLYTECHINC AUDITORIUM
PA Deputy Chairman, Minister Lim Boon Heng
Grassroots Advisers, Leaders
Community Partners
1. The short film we just saw is titled “CAN”. It was produced by Linus Jeremiah Koh, a graduate from Temasek Polytechnic. The message is that caring for someone can bring us all closer together. We thank Linus and TP for their support to this workshop.
2. Two weeks ago at the Grassroots Seminar 2009, Deputy Chairman Minister Lim Boon Heng announced the refreshed mission statement of the People’s Association - “To Build and to Bridge Communities in achieving One People, One Singapore”.
3. Indeed, building and bridging communities is a fundamental mission of the PA. It is about bringing together people of different races, languages, religions, ages and socio-economic backgrounds to strengthen our national unity and social cohesion.
4. Some may wonder: Why do we continue to place so much emphasis on bonding and bridging communities at a time when we enjoy racial and religious harmony here in Singapore? Why do we keep talking about the importance of community engagement at a time of peace and unity?
5. The simple answer is – we cannot afford to take any chance in making sure that we are ready to counter any major social downturn that may happen to us if we want to protect our national unity and social cohesion.
6. How best to get this done? We can certainly draw some lessons from the way we counter ‘economic downturn’.
7. We do not wait until we are hit by an economic downturn before we start preparing for the downturn. We start the process when the global economy is still doing well. We keep upgrading our capabilities and restructuring our economy to make sure that Singapore’s economic foundation is always sound and strong. We keep growing our economic capacity, by investing in education for our young, training for our working adults, and upgrading and updating of our economic infrastructure. But most of all, we keep growing our economic capital by building up our national reserve, when our economy is doing well.
8. Because we do all these when our economy is still doing well, so by the time we are hit by any economic downturn, we would already have sufficient economic capital for us to draw upon, unlike many other countries. For example, in this global recession, we in Singapore are able to offer Job Credit to help businesses cut costs to save jobs. We also have the resource to launch SPUR quickly to encourage employers to send excess manpower for training and upgrading. Even though our economy is one of the hardest hit, yet our unemployment rate is still one of the lowest in the world today.
9. In short, we have learnt that the best way to get ready to counter any economic downturn is by building up our economic capital, as much as possible. And the best time to build up our economic capital is when our economy is still doing well, before we are hit, not after.
10. The same applies to social downturn. The economies of the world have their up’s and down’s. Likewise, countries and communities have their up’s and down’s too. We do not have to go too far to look for examples of social downturn because it happened to us right here in Singapore before – racial riots in the 60’s. We also do not have to go too far back in time to look for more examples – there was ethnic conflict in Xinjiang of China a few weeks ago. And just last week, there were hotel bombings in Jakarta of Indonesia.
11. The pain of going through a social downturn is much worse than economic downturn. On 9 July, the Straits Times reported the following quote from a Han Chinese woman - “My neighbours are Uighurs and they treat me like their mother. 40 years in Xinjiang and I have never seen this. First, the Uighurs attacked the Han Chinese. Then the Han Chinese attacked the Uighurs. Please stop, please stop fighting”. Such unfortunate violence reminds us that no one can afford to take national unity, social cohesion and racial harmony for granted.
12 Today, we are certainly the best in the world in our ability to counter an economic downturn by drawing on our economic capital. Likewise, the best way for us to prepare for any major social downturn is by building up our social capital. And the best time to do so is when the society is still peaceful, community is still cohesive.
13. This is why we have worked hard, all these years to build up a healthy reserve in social capital here in Singapore. We are still mindful that no matter how peaceful and cohesive we are today, we must keep doing more. There can never be enough as far as building social capital is concerned. We will never know how severe a social downturn may hit our society, community and nation one day. So it is better to keep building and bonding communities, and keep bridging the communities in our society so that come what may, we will always be strong enough and united enough to respond effectively, and recover quickly from any social downturn that may happen to us here in Singapore.
14. In a way, social capital is like a form of social glue. A higher level of trust and mutual understanding, coupled with a more intensive process of social bonding and bridging, will result in stronger social glue, the stronger the better. To this end, we must bring the leaders and members of the various social communities closer together, and strive to make our social capital as resilient as social “superglue”.
15. Recognising that bonding and bridging communities is a journey with no end, PA initiated the CEP Ready Certification two years ago to encourage and recognize the efforts of the constituencies as we walk the journey of community engagement together as one grassroots cluster. Today, I am happy to announce that all 84 constituencies have attained the CEP Ready Certification. Well done to all 84 constituencies.
16. What is also encouraging is that having attained the first stage of CEP readiness, nine constituencies have moved on to attain the second stage of CEP readiness. These nine constituencies have widened the scope of CEP beyond the grassroots cluster to include the Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circles and the School clusters. These nine constituencies will be awarded the CEP Unity Award today. Well done to these nine recipients and we hope to see more recipients in the coming months.
The Ice Cube
17 A few words on the design of the CEP Unity Award. The four hands symbolize the coming together of our four races as one people. Why then the ice cube? Well, it symbolizes the inner strength of our social bonding. Let me explain. If you press two pieces of ice together, with the right conditions, they will join together to become a block of ice. This is because the surface of ice is constantly vaporising and condensing. Adding pressure actually lowers the melting temperature of ice slightly, allowing the surface of the two ice cubes to melt and then fuse together as one.
18. In the context of CEP, think of our community not as a block of glass, but as a solid block of ice. Under great stress, mistrust may lead to social crack within our community. But as long as we hold on to one another as one multi-racial and multi-religious community, the strength of mutual trust in our community will not allow the social crack to grow bigger to break us up like a block of glass. Instead, our social capital should provide the social glue for us to fuse the cracks and recovers quickly as one people and one Singapore again, no matter how severe the social downturn may be.
19 In conclusion, terrorist attacks may succeed in damaging our buildings and taking away some of our precious lives in our community. However, we must never allow them to succeed in injecting mistrust and hatred in our community and society.
20 As grassroots leaders and activists of Community Engagement, all of you here have an important role to play. Let us keep bonding and bridging our communities. Together, we can keep widening the common space in our community, deepening our level of trust, and growing our social capital. This is so that we can prevent social downturn from happening in Singapore, and that we can recover from it quickly if we have to face it again some day.
21 I wish you a fruitful afternoon. Thank You.
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Pls click here to view the speech on PA's website.