In the third of six national broadcasts on Singapore’s post-coronavirus future yesterday (11 Jun), Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean noted that the pandemic is the first major crisis faced by many of Singapore’s 4th generation PAP new leaders.
“This COVID-19 pandemic is the largest and most complex I have encountered in more than 40 years of public service,” he said.
“The (4G) Ministers have sought advice and tapped the experience and knowledge of their older cabinet colleagues, and consulted widely within and outside the government,” Teo said. “Over the past few months, I have worked very closely with them. We speak daily and exchange views freely.”
Teo’s conclusion is that the 4G leaders have risen to the challenge. “They have stepped up to the task, worked together as a team, and led from the front. This is the way that we collectively ensure resilience and continuity in our leadership team for Singapore,” he said.
Singapore behind Taiwan and New Zealand in tackling COVID-19
Meanwhile, it was reported that Singapore has fallen behind Taiwan and New Zealand in its handling of the pandemic (‘How Taiwan and New Zealand handle COVID-19 outbreak, compared to Singapore‘).
As of yesterday (11 Jun), Taiwan had a total of 443 confirmed COVID-19 cases while New Zealand had 1504. Singapore had a lot more with 39,387 cases (Source: Worldometers).
The Singapore’s approach to dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak was once hailed as the ‘gold standard’ as it imposed stringent travel restrictions and leave “no stone unturned” in tracing every COVID-19 cases.
However, COVID-19 cases in Singapore skyrocketed in April, as a massive wave of infections emerged among its huge migrant workers’ population, forcing the 4G leaders to reluctantly acknowledge the dire situation but they came short of making any public apology (‘One wishes for hindsight, another to rewind the clock, but none wants to face up to reality‘).
Publicly, Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said that while safe distancing measures were taken at the foreign worker dormitories, “if we were to be able to rewind the clock, one could say that these safe distancing measures needed to go much further”. National Development Minister Lawrence Wong said, “Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of the benefit of hindsight.”
Not surprisingly, many netizens were not impressed with the acknowledgements made by Ms Teo and Wong:
Chan mocks Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam for wearing masks
Then, there was the mask issue.
In Feb, Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing told local businessmen at a dialogue that if politicians in Singapore were to wear mask publicly like what Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam did, Singapore’s hospital system “would have broken down”. At the time, Chan and his 4G colleagues were telling Singaporeans not to wear mask if one is well but in Hong Kong, experts have urged all residents to don one when going out.
He even boasted that Singapore government is more far-sighted that Hong Kong’s (‘Will Chan apologise to HK’s leaders for insulting them for wearing masks now that Singapore “u-turns” on mask usage?‘).
But on 3 Apr, in an apparent “U-turn” from the Government’s previous stance on masks, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced that the authorities will “no longer discourage people from wearing masks”.
The main reason for asking Singaporeans not to wear mask if one is well during the early part of the pandemic is due to lack of mask supplies.
Taiwan also faced the same problem since China, the largest mask producer in the world, was in a nationwide lockdown at the time. Instead of discouraging Taiwanese not to wear masks, the Taiwan authorities simply went quietly ahead to set up more face mask production lines themselves to manufacture more masks (‘Taiwan proceeds to produce more masks instead of accusing others of “screwing us over”‘).
Indeed, by end Feb or early Mar, Taiwan had already set up 60 mask production lines in less than a month with 15 firms taking up the manufacturing of masks. They could produce 6 million masks on a daily basis, lifting Taiwan’s total production to 10 million per day.
The Taiwan authorities organized more than 100 managers and technicians from 26 Taiwan machine tool enterprises to assemble the lines in less than 1 month. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen commended the “national team” for reflecting the Taiwanese spirit, saying that “when facing challenges, Taiwanese will set aside competition and work together”. President Tsai did not criticise other country’s leadership. She simply rolled up her sleeves to make things work.
In any case, it was reported yesterday (11 Jun) that there were 422 new COVID-19 cases in Singapore. There were 5 in the community: 1 Singaporean elderly and 4 foreigners working here. The remaining 416 infections were linked to migrant workers living in dormitories. The 4 foreigners were asymptomatic but had been detected due to proactive screening.
More worrying, the number of cases in the community has also increased from an average of one case a day in the week before to an average of four cases a day in the past week.
