Ex-PM Lee urges Singaporeans to uphold national identity

Singapore, Sep 10 (PTI) Singapore's former prime minister Lee Hsien Loong has urged citizens of the city-state to resist "external forces" and maintain a strong national identity, according to a media report on Wednesday.

During a forum on Tuesday, the senior minister said that Singapore is going to be pulled in very different directions by “powerful external forces”, The Straits Times newspaper quoted him as saying.

He was responding to a question about whether he viewed globalisation or domestic fault lines as the greater challenge to a sense of national identity.

Lee said that while Muslims are naturally much more upset about the war between Israel and Hamas, developments in India or China will have a greater pull on those communities.

“Our job is to resist that and to remember, yes, I am Muslim or I am Chinese or I am Indian, but I am also Singaporean, and I do hold something here, and I belong here, and I should look at the world starting from here,” he said.

Lee was speaking at the Kent Ridge Ministerial Forum, attended by almost 800 students and academics at the National University of Singapore.

Every generation will have its own crisis to overcome, and it is through those challenges that Singapore’s national identity is strengthened, said Lee, who served as Singapore’s third prime minister from August 2004 to May 2024.

Asserting that the Singaporean identity is stronger than before, he said it is now facing superpower rivalry and geopolitical disruptions.

At the same time, the national identity is multi-layered, he added.

“We are one people, but... we are not all identical, and there are fault lines which we have to guard (against),” the report quoted Lee as saying.

Being a Singaporean is not necessarily the most important part of a person’s identity, he said during the wide-ranging dialogue that lasted almost two hours.

He pointed out nuances, saying: “We are also Chinese Singaporean or Malay Singaporean or Indian Singaporean. We are also Christians or Muslims or Buddhists.

“You may also have different political views. You may be pro-government, you may be pro-opposition. You may have different sexual orientations and therefore different circles of friends and different perspectives on the world, so these are all different layers to our identity, which are always there,” he said. PTI GS GRS GRS