What's Up Singapore - "I wish that Lee Kuan Yew could be like Tun Mahathir"

 

I still remember my first day in Singapore long time ago, my colleagues was in wow! But my mind was different, I raised the question, "From all those magnificent buildings and estates, how many actually Singaporean owned?" A Singaporean friend told me that most of those are foreign owned like US, Europeans etc. Out of 4 million Singaporean, there's 1 million of foreigners that actually the biggest force in Singapore economy. Anyway enjoy something most of us didnt know about Singapore ;

 

1. I still remember when I was instructed to go to Singapore and conduct a rescue through stake take overs on one of the biggest maritime company in Singapore. I was informed that this Singaporean company have help our company before and we are returning the favor.

2. I was wondering why we should help the Singaporean company since we all know that Singaporean company are successful and rich especially from oppositions information. And during that moment, Singapore is conducting the biggest scale maritime project which the main objective to increase the Singapore mainland size to 4% from their existing size. And since the company is one of the biggest local maritime company they should have some chunk of it.

3. After the deal was done, I went on board. One of their dredgers to check out their performance. And I was with the SIngaporean GM and chief operator and we have some chit chat. I raised a question "Why you didnt manage to secure some share of the maritime projects that the Singaporean government is doing? You should get it since that you are a local and there's only a few like your company in Singapore?"

4. The GM told me "I wish that Lee Kuan Yew could be like Tun Mahathir, protecting the Malay rights 30% through DEB in Malaysia. In Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew could do the same by protecting the Singaporean Chinese 30% from the Western / Foreigners total capitalisation". He continued "Now you can see for yourself, the Jurong, Tuas etc projects are secured by Europeans and we cant cari makan at all". I remember those words loud and clear until today, it was 8 years ago.

5. Nowadays, we can see a lot of SIngaporean "cari makan" in our country. I could say almost all the maritime engineering companies in Singapore today, either close shop or "cari makan" / surviving in our country.