Back in 2011 I sometime complained on this platform that everything in Singapore is for sale for the right price. Recently we have publicly discovered how much Keppel is willing to accept as a prostitute.
The Keppel example shows that after we had learnt how to move from third to first world, we do not know how to be stay there on those terms other older first world economies are able to. We prided ourselves on offering first world products and services at third world prices, and we did that by importing cheap labor when local labor became expensive. We have gotten all our values wrong and our corrupt neighbors will help us become like them over time because bribing them is the passport to doing business with them. Keppel has forced us to be public about these things when we are not ready or able to stay first world keeping to first world ethics. Our leaders have failed us and threw away the opportunity to up skill the economy and instead imported cheap FTs (plenty of such in Keppel, Semb Corp etc) to do the businesses which we ought to have moved away because we cannot do that without gutting our moral center. That is the sort behavior which will eventually take us back to third world. Of course when that happen, it would simply be spoken as our neighbors have narrowed the gap with us.
We are in denial of our rot because we have politicians who are small in character and mistook their brains for the size of their character. They will learn that it doesn't work. The Chinese are right to point out that we are losing our sheen.
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