Malta and Singapore have been sovereign, independent States within the Commonwealth for 50 years. In Singapore’s case, this occurred after a slightly rocky start when it briefly formed part of newly independent Malaysia in 1963 before irreconcilable differences caused it to break away and establish itself on its own in 1965.
As both Malta and Singapore celebrate five decades of independence, I have found myself mentally comparing the two nations since the historical background and circumstances of their British imperial history had such strong similarities. British sovereignty over Singapore was established in 1824, at roughly the same time that British interest in Malta as a naval base was stirring. Both became in their own way vital naval bases for the British Empire and both on independence had major naval dockyard facilities in place.
But after this, the story of the two states diverges. Stanley Clews describes in an excellent personal memoir Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew’s visit to Malta in 1967. In his autobiography, Lee Kwan Yew says, “I was astounded. The Suez Canal was closed as a result of the Arab-Israeli six-day war… The dockyard was closed with dock workers on full pay playing waterpolo!... I was shaken by their aid dependence, banking on continuing charity from the British… This nurtured a sense of dependency, not a spirit of self-reliance”.
He told Clews personally, who was present at a working breakfast with Lee Kwan Yew during the visit, that when Singapore took over the Admiralty Dockyard he would not sign any agreement which retained workers on its books if there was no work for them. And this indeed is what happened. When he returned to Singapore the Dockyard there was commercialised. All the workers were discharged, except those needed for commercial purposes.
The rise of Singapore since Lee Kwan Yew became its Prime Minister at independence (he is still today at 90 years “Minister-mentor” to the Prime Minister, his son) is one of the great success stories of the past 50 years.
An island city-state that was once an impoverished swamp is now a dynamic hub of the global economy and a technological giant. Singaporeans enjoy higher living standards and better schools and hospitals than Malta, but also, more remarkably, than their former colonial masters in the United Kingdom. And it has been done by a public sector that is proportionately half the size of America’s.
The Singaporean state is not only an efficient nanny state, but also extremely bossy. No country works harder at perfecting the skills of its civil servants, nor follows such a blatantly elitist model. It spots talented youngsters early, luring them with scholarships, then spends a fortune on training. Those who reach the top are richly rewarded. Those who falter along the way are thrown overboard.
Meritocracy – a much abused word in Malta now, as we have seen in the last 18 months – reigns all the way through the system. Teachers need to qualify in the top third of their class (as they do in Finland and South Korea, which also shine brightly in the world education rankings). Testing throughout the education system is ubiquitous.
The present Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Yoong, thinks the west’s mistake has been “to set up all-you-can-eat welfare states. Because everything at the buffet is free, everybody stuffs their face”. Singapore’s approach, by contrast, is for the government to provide people with a good start in life, and then encourage them to fend for themselves. In Malta, and the west more generally, the welfare state is based on social assistance.
Malta for all its faults and governance imperfections is still a proper, thriving democracy
Singapore, by contrast, has a social model, known as the central provident fund. 90 per cent of what a person gets from it is tied to what he has put in, thus rewarding hard work.
There is a small safety net to cover the very poor and the very sick. But people are expected to pay, at least in part, for government services. Singapore rejects universal benefits on the basis that once a subsidy has been given it is hard to withdraw it. Lee says: “In the east we start with self-reliance. In the west today, it is the opposite.”
The west loves to boast about the virtues of democracy and continues to urge other countries – Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan – to embrace it, arguing that “one person, one vote” holds the cure to everything from poverty to terrorism. Singapore, on the other hand, has embraced a different model of government that has challenged two of the west’s most cherished values: universal suffrage and top-down generosity. It argues that it has produced the perfect compromise between democratic accountability and efficiency.
Singapore has had the same government, run by the same family, for 50 years. Its politicians are regularly tested in elections and have to make themselves available to their constituents. But the government knows that it is always going to win the elections.
Singapore – within the legal framework of a parliamentary democracy – has produced what might be termed “the Asian alternative” to western democracy. “We decide what is right”, Lee Kuan Yew once observed in echoes of Big Brother, “never mind what the people say.”
His son argues – as Malta would be the first to attest – that “democracy is a big part of the west’s problem. When you have popular democracy, to win votes you have to give more. And to beat your opponent in the next election, you have to promise to give even more. So it is a never-ending process of auctions – and the cost is the debt being paid for by the next generation”. By allowing people to blame everything on society, rather than accept that they are responsible, western leaders have allowed charity to become an entitlement.
Even Europe’s politicians now recognise that something has to change. Angela Merkel’s favourite statistic is that “The EU accounts for seven per cent of the world’s population, 25 per cent of its GDP and 50 per cent of its social spending”.
Singapore’s income per head is about twice that of Malta’s. Should that worry us? Yes, of course, insofar as it demonstrates how slowly we have advanced economically over the same period compared with Singapore. But should it cause us to seek to follow the same authoritarian-democratic path as Singapore?
The answer must surely be a resounding no. Malta for all its faults and governance imperfections is still a proper, thriving democracy. Democracy remains the best safeguard for fundamental rights and basic liberties. It is the best guarantee of innovation and problem-solving and the best means – if we choose to pursue it – of relieving the burden of the State. The key lies in good governance. Without this Malta would be condemned to stasis or, at worst, decline.
Would I prefer to live in Singapore or Malta? While I would welcome not having to gripe every few weeks about Malta’s lawlessness, the litter in the streets, the poor governance and administration of these islands, its general lacklustre standards in all things, I think that I would find the near police-state atmosphere of Singapore, its soulless and ugly high-rise buildings, its Big Brother inhibitions on representative democracy and basic freedoms – of the press and freedom of speech – too stifling to live with.
Give me Malta, warts and all.