Thousands of Singaporeans demonstrated on Saturday against a government plan to increase the city-state’s population through immigration, saying the policy will erode national identity and worsen quality of life.
Protesters gathered at Speakers’ Corner at Hong Lim Park at the edge of the city’s financial district in the rain, many dressed in black and carrying signs opposing the plan. Lawmakers from Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) ruling party last week endorsed a white paper that outlined proposals including allowing more foreigners through 2030 to boost the workforce.
The rally increases pressure on the government to slow an influx of immigrants that has been blamed for infrastructure strains, record-high housing and transport costs, and competition for jobs.
Singapore’s population has jumped by more than 1.1 million since mid-2004 to 5.3 million and may reach 6.9 million by 2030, based on the proposal. That has stoked social tensions and public discontent that is weakening support for Lee’s People’s Action Party (PAP).
“A 6.9 million population won’t be good for Singaporeans,” said David Tan, a 48-year-old who owns a garment textile business and attended the protest. “We have 5.3 million people and we can hardly cope. Even if the government can take care of infrastructure, it won’t help much in terms of quality of living.”
Organizers estimated as many as 5,000 people joined the demonstration at the 0.94 hectare park that served as a venue for political rallies in the 1950s and 1960s. They sang patriotic songs and held signs saying “we want to be heard, not herded,” and “waiting for 2016,” when the next general election is due.
The Workers’ Party, the only opposition group with elected members in parliament, said on its Web site the plan to spur economic growth through immigration is not sustainable and the proposal “will further dilute the Singaporean core and weaken our national identity.”
There may be as many as 6 million people in Singapore by 2020, and the government will boost infrastructure to accommodate a further increase in the following decade, according to the white paper published last month.
The government will take in between 15,000 and 25,000 new citizens and grant about 30,000 permanent-resident permits annually, according to the paper titled A Sustainable Population for a Dynamic Singapore.
“The size of the crowd shows people are angry,” said Tan Jee Say (陳如斯), a candidate in Singapore’s 2011 presidential election, who gave a speech at the protest. “It will send a signal to the government and I hope it will react in a sensible way and see that people are concerned.”
Protest organizer Gilbert Goh, who is part of an opposition party, said another demonstration may be held to protest the government’s population plans.
“Five-thousand people here is good testimony that this policy is flawed and unpopular on the ground,” Goh, who runs a non-governmental organization to help unemployed citizens, told reporters on Saturday.
In a city with 3.3 million citizens and 2 million foreigners, complaints about overseas workers depriving locals of jobs and driving up home prices helped opposition parties win record support in the 2011 general election. Lee is under pressure to placate voters without disrupting the entry of talent and labor that helped forge Southeast Asia’s only advanced economy.
Since the 2011 polls, Lee’s party has lost two by-elections. The government “paid a political price” with the infrastructure strains as a result of a bigger population, the prime minister said last month.
In other developments, Lee’s father, Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀), Singapore’s first prime minister, has been discharged from hospital after suffering from a condition linked to a prolonged irregular heartbeat.
The elder Lee, 89, was sent to the Singapore General Hospital after the suspected transient ischemic attack, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.
The office said Lee Kuan Yew is resting at home.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema