Singapore is vulnerable and difficult to govern

Many cities in the world - including cities larger than Singapore - are part of a much larger country.

Singapore is not just a city, it is also a country. It is a city-state with little land and no natural resources. This is why the challenges that we face are much bigger and not to be underestimated.

When we first became independent, our first priority was water. Water is so precious that even waste water is not discarded. The PAP Government has built a superhighway deep underground to collect every drop of waste water. It is made new again to be used again.

We have now got all the technology to produce the water we need. As Minister Chan Chun Sing pointed out in March last year, the technology to purify water, to recycle water and so forth has just converted the dependence on external water supply to one of external energy supply.

“So I've always said that if water has been the challenge for the last 50 years, energy will be our challenge for the next 50 years.” - Min Chan

We face many challenges but water and energy are the key challenges we face because many activities need water and run on energy.

Now, we know we face the challenge of feeding the whole population 100% of the time. We can tap on technology to overcome many conditions to produce food to eat. But technology runs on energy.

Some people speak derisively of the 30-by-30 goal in food resilience. Some call it half-hearted. They want 100% resilience. In land scarce Singapore, where do we find all the land we need to grow vegetables and meat to eat? Each time a secondary forest is earmarked to be cleared for development, there is resistance and 'vote them out'.

What we have in Singapore is a people who want Singapore to preserve every forest (otherwise, vote them out, we've got to save whatever forest that is left), preserve old buildings for memories (why keep tearing down old buildings, we grew up here), be 100% sufficient in food, build more homes for the married and the singles (where's the land), keep HDB prices low when you want to buy one, keep the prices up when you own one, etc

How can the people be satisfied?

What happens if global supply stops shipping food here?

The simple answer is that we will have to eat what we can produce and skip meals. Do you imagine for a moment that an opposition party will have an answer to this dire situation?

Today, with inflation, Singaporeans' complaint is that they have to pay more for food. In other poor countries, people have to skip meals because they have no money to pay for the higher prices.

In this high inflation situation, at least in Singapore, we are receiving financial support from the Government, made possible through prudence.

What can we do to ensure that the possibility that global food supply stop coming to our shore is minimised?

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲.

Build good relations with all countries, stay principled, and in hard times, perhaps good relations will help to keep supplies coming at high prices (and therefore we need money).

The small sum of money the government spends in offering scholarships to some foreign students, for example, is an investment in diplomacy and foreign relations.

While the PAP Government strives to strike a good balance to ensure that good opportunities are created for Singaporeans, the Opposition in Singapore adopts a 'us vs them' mentality. Do you think that such antics foreign countries watch happening here will endear Singapore to the world and keep the food supply coming here during a war?

Election is coming in Malaysia and some days ago, we saw a video of a Malaysian politician talking about how it should be that Singaporeans are flocking to Malaysia to become foreign workers and not Malaysians coming to Singapore to work.

Singaporeans sharing the video watched and laughed - in arrogance.

Why did they laugh? Because they think this will NEVER happen. Such confidence. Where did their confidence come from? From Singapore being a successful country. Did they stop to ask themselves why Singapore is a successful country so that they will not throw away this success foolishly? Because folks, these are probably also the people who think that they can vote for the Opposition and still have a PAP Government.

The PAP Government's singular purpose in wanting to build a Singapore that meets every one of Singaporeans' aspirations, and the PAP's success in shielding the population from the full impact of many crises, has produced a people that is very hard to please and at times, disconnected with the challenges that we face as a small country.

To the one who has not worked hard to accumulate it, a trillion dollars can be a big sum.

But a trillion dollars is not a big sum, my friend. You look at a trillion dollars in peace time and think: wow, so much money.

In a war, you will never have more than enough money. You only worry that you may run out of money. You don't know how long a war will last. Good leaders prepare for the worst case scenarios, not just rainy days.