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I attended a lecture this afternoon by squillionaire, George Soros, who is known more these days for his philanthropy and political activism (most notably in opposition to George Dubya) than his business acumen as a fund manager and destabiliser of national economies. Speaking on the topic of “A Global Open Society” in a country like Singapore was always going to be a bit of a challenge but in his speech he politely made no reference to the Singaporean version of democracy, preferring instead to concentrate on his criticism of US foreign policy. The discussants were equally as polite, although Dr Suzaina Binte Kadir from NUS did ask the question on many people’s minds by asking Soros whether a concern for an open society was something one only thinks about when one is rich. The response was pretty much as I expected, namely that getting rich requires an open society, just as an open society requires people to be rich. It was a shame that Amartya Sen didn’t get a mention because his Development as Freedom book certainly encourages sophisticated thought on this matter. Kishore Mabhubani is a bright bloke. He gave a good response to a question on what the international community should be doing to promote open society, the UN being the most obvious vehicle. Dr Mabhubani said that there first had to be reform of the UN in order to redefine what is understood by “international community”. An SMU student, Benjamin Lee, the final discussant asked — with the impetuosity of youth — whether Singapore could be classified as an open society. After much embarrassed laughter (but quite loud applause!), Soros said that Singapore could certainly not be considered open so long as libel laws were used as they are to stifle free speech. I remember Christopher Lingle having to do a runner from Singapore after touching on this subject in the IHT in the mid-1990s. It could be, as moderator Tommy Koh pointed out, that Singapore is becoming more open as countries like the US are becoming less open and that it is okay to make comments like this in Singapore now. On the other hand, if you are George Soros I guess you can say what you like!
Filed under: Development | Tagged: Singapore, Soros | 2 Comments »
