By TAN SAI SIONG
WHEN Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong mapped out new directions for Singapore's financial services earlier this month, there was something familiar about the boldness of the plans he unfolded.
Even the background against which the policy was announced - amidst the regional currency turmoil - was familiar. Uncertainty is in the air and there is need to race against time.
It is easy to put a finger on the cause of this sense of deja vu. Singapore had shown this same boldness amidst uncertainties when newly independent and time was short. It countered what it lacked in a domestic market and a hinterland by making the world its market.
Foreigners were welcomed to set up factories here to manufacture for export. There were no protective barriers for goods produced by the local boys who had to compete or join the ranks of the employed.
Today, when Singapore is counted among the 10 richest nations in the world, Singaporeans have the luxury to debate whether that was indeed the right move.
On hindsight, some argue that the strategy had robbed the country of the chance to build up a critical mass of entrepreneurs.
However, the point often overlooked is that we may not be here to debate the wisdom of past policies had we gone the way typical of countries newly released from colonial shackles.
Had we booted out whatever foreign investors there might have been on our soil, and kept out new ones with restrictive laws, we would probably have gone from colony to wilderness.
It would be even worse if we had also experimented with import substitution of basic goods like soap, oil or sugar, in the widely mistaken belief that to be self-sufficient is synonymous with being independent.
But we did quite the opposite of most countries which gained their independence after World War II.
And the aptness of policies adopted by Singapore is borne out not only by the prosperity achieved but also by the fact that countries which went into purdah are now all opening up.
Today, we acknowledge that BG Lee's call to Singapore's money men not "to confine themselves to incremental improvements, but to make bold proposals where justified" is reminiscent of what the country did to overcome its post-independence blues.
At the same time, we must acknowledge that the first occasion the island hit the jackpot by going where the herds had feared to tread goes a lot further back than 1965.
The first bold step taken in Singapore's modern history was taken in January 1819 when Stamford Raffles, the founder, arrived here and made it a free port after a series of manoeuvres yielded him the right to start a trading post on the island for the East India Company (EIC).
A free port may sound tame nowadays when every other port offers some form of tax-free incentives and tariffs for incoming goods to be used domestically are minimised.
But it was a giant step some 180 years ago when the English and the Dutch wrestled for control of trade routes between east and west, and monopoly was the name of the trading game.
Raffles' free-port formula to give Singapore a cutting edge against other established ports on the East-West trade route was an instant success.
Immigrants arrived quickly from Sumatra, Malacca and the Rhio Archipelago and even further afield from China and India. His amanuensis, Munshi Abdullah, waxed lyrical about the arrivals.
"Merchants came from different countries, and a brimming tide of goods flowed in ... and all kinds of products were sold cheaply by auction in four or five different places each day."
The port, he added, was crammed full of ketches, sloops, frigates, two-and-a-half masters, schooners and junks (the ships of those days).
Newcomers were attracted by the prospect of free trade and employment under the British flag, free from the taxation, petty regulations and harassment they had suffered when plying their business in Malacca, Rhio and other settlements under Dutch jurisdiction.
Thus Raffles, within four months of his first setting foot on his "ancient city of Singapura", was able to boast to his patrons back home in England that it "bids fair to be the next port to Calcutta".
That was a bold claim, considering that Calcutta was at that time the jewel of the EIC.
The claim became even bolder when he added that "this is by far the most important station in the East - and, as far as naval superiority and commercial interests are concerned, of much higher value than whole continents of territory".
The success Raffles enjoyed with Singapore is even more remarkable considering that he was also racing against time. He had acted virtually ultra vires because his original orders from Calcutta were to keep out of where the Dutch had already gone, to avoid igniting recently resolved conflicts.
Although the Dutch were not in Singapore, they had a treaty with the Sultan of Johor which also covered the island. But Raffles got round that by installing the counter claimant to the Johor throne and persuaded him to lease the island to the EIC.
From then, time was of the essence. He had to make Singapore a success if the Dutch were not to persuade his British masters to yank him out of the new colony.
Raffles won the race. Since those days, Singapore has been in the same quandary, time and again. How to keep ahead of the competition all the time.
Fortunately for Singapore, its latter-day leaders share critical similarities with Raffles. Like his, their plans for the island, "look for a century or two beforehand". Like him, they are determined to overcome the odds and keep the island thriving.
First published in The Straits Times, Nov 14, 1997
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