"It’s hard to imagine many Asian destinations that are more different from her homeland. While Transparency International rates Burma’s public sector the world’s fifth most corrupt, Singapore’s is the fifth least corrupt. Singapore has also become a stunning economic success: it has the world’s seventh-highest per-capita gross domestic product, more than sixty-one thousand dollars. Burma’s fourteen hundred dollars per capita, meanwhile, puts it at two hundred and fourth. And then there’s Singapore’s stellar education system, which last year was rated the world’s fifth best. The list included the top forty nations, and Burma didn’t make the cut; in 2011, the government spent just .8 per cent of its gross domestic product on education, the world’s second lowest, after Equatorial Guinea, based on countries’ most recent available information. Singapore’s medical system is also top notch: in 2000, the U.N. said that it was the world’s sixth best, while Burma’s came in at a hundred and ninth. Before departing Singapore, Suu Kyi was asked which of the city-state’s policies or institutions Burma could emulate. She mentioned Singapore’s successful education system, but she stressed that it was “workforce oriented,” and her subsequent musings suggested something else, too: that she feels Singaporeans are materialistic. “I want to learn a lot from the standards that Singapore has been able to achieve, but I wonder whether we don’t—I don’t—want something more for our country,” she said. “What is the purpose of the workforce? What is the purpose of work? What is the purpose of material wealth? Is that the ultimate aim of human beings? Is that what we all want?” She continued, “I want to probe more into the successes of Singapore and to find out what we can achieve beyond that.”"
Posted on: Wed, 09 Oct 2013 10:37:56 +0000
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