ABSTRACT
Commentators both within and without Singapore are almost universally in agreement on the fact that the present time in the country’s history is one of the most significant since independence in 1965. Singapore is paradoxical in many ways, not least in the fact that despite defining itself as an NIC, it is in most respects a mature economy co-existing with a very immature society. People also migrate, in alarmingly large numbers, and many Singaporeans have relatives living abroad. Historically Singapore’s movement to independence from Britain was accomplished peacefully. “Pluralism” in Singapore has never meant political pluralism or as a society in which a large range of intermediate institutions exist between government and people and which constitute the apparatus of what is sometimes called “civil society”. In fact Singapore historically has been hodge-podge of many totally different cultures, few of them “high” cultures as is common in many migrant communities.
