Singapore was, apparently, not too badly affected by the 2008/09 global economic crisis. It has made a good recovery and the local economy is expected to grow between 7% to 9% in 2010. Property prices are rising, reflecting positive market sentiment, glitzy new shoppings malls and casinos are up and running, and we hardly hear of unemployment.
We have never been more prosperous and comfortable as a nation. (I would like to gripe about property prices though — I can’t afford one).
In the midst of this, was the unexpected and senseless fatal stabbing of a teenager in a shopping mall / amusement park (Downtown East). All four suspects — all youths below 25 years of age — have been arrested, though one of the suspects is in intensive care because he hit his head while trying to escape the police. Sadly, it looks like the number of fatalities is not just one — the teenager who was stabbed to death — but five, because murder carries the death penalty in Singapore. Not that I am against capital punishment, but that it is sad that five young lives have been wasted by senseless violence.
Following from this, was news of more youth gang related violence (thankfully non-fatal) in Bukit Panjang, and (in my view) quick and commendable police action leading to an islandwide arrest of 40 suspected gangsters : see news report here.
Perhaps it is time for the nation to pause and reflect — even as the economy surges ahead — whether and who / what we have left behind. A good number of us are enjoying the benefits of growth — we have reasonable paying jobs, a new hi-fi / TV, possibly a new car or home, and the best educational resources are allocated to our smartest kids.
But what about our have nots — the school drop outs, the unstable families, the delinquents — how do they fit into this picture ? Police arrests only put gangsters out of action, temporarily. They may not be as effective at preventing youths from forming gangs to begin with.
What can we do, is enough being done, to make sure that no one is left behind ?
Perhaps this tragedy — what I would term as Singapore’s equivalent of the Columbine Shootings because of its senselessness — has a lesson for us as a nation, and one that is better learnt now (sad as it is), than later when we have inadvertantly allowed the chasm between the haves and have-nots become unbridgeable.
God on the Haves and Have-Nots
‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 9 : 23 - 24)
