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Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

> Singapore could get oodles of solar from Malaysia but they obviously aren't interested in doing that

To anyone who knows the history of Singapore, it is obvious why (and you quite possibly already know all this, but I'm sure many other people reading this don't). Singapore became independent because the Malaysian government wanted to introduce "affirmative action" laws which discriminated against ethnic minorities, especially ethnic Chinese. Singapore was the only state of Malaysia with an ethnic Chinese majority, and was fundamentally opposed to such laws. The Malaysian federal government's response was to expel Singapore from Malaysia and force it to become an independent country, so that it would be free to impose these laws on the rest of Malaysia without Singapore's opposition. And Singapore has never trusted Malaysia since.

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And has similarly discriminated against Malays in Singapore to this day! The messy knife of history cuts both ways.

Is that really true? Malaysia has official policies to give preference to the ethnic Malay majority in education, government jobs, business licensing, etc. Singapore's formal policies on those matters are, to the best of my knowledge, ethnically and racially neutral. I'm sure ethnic minorities in Singapore suffer from some degree of informal discrimination (as they do in many other countries), but I don't believe they suffer from anything like the active discrimination as an official policy which the Malaysian government imposes.

There is some governmental discrimination, notably in the military (Malays are effectively excluded from sensitive positions) and granting residency/citizenship (reportedly virtually impossible for ethnic Malays from Malaysia or Indonesia). Both are officially denied though, and yes, these are nowhere near as wide-ranging as Malaysia's policies.

https://coconuts.co/singapore/features/ns50-celebrates-50-ye...

If an ethnic Chinese Singaporean marries a Malaysian Malay, the Singaporean government will cite every rule in the book about income requirements and "suitability".

But if we're talking Malaysian Chinese....

People need to stop worshipping Singapore like they are a fantasy land of perfection. They have specific flaws of their own, plus flaws similar to other countries.

I'm not sure if that is anti-Malay so much as pro-Chinese.

An older friend told a story of a colleague he worked with in Vietnam who got married and tried to move back to Singapore. Multiple attempts to let his wife come along were rejected until he amended the paperwork to say she was Chinese ethnicity.

Might be a tall tale, but that's how it was told to me. I don't know the exact years in question though, it might have been a decade or more ago.

There are no stats published, so this is all anecdotal, but it's generally suspected that they operate on some kind of quota basis. The Chinese quota is large (but no longer infinite, esp for mainland Chinese), the Indian/Other quota is small, and the Malay/Muslim quota is nearly zero.

I certainly don't "worship Singapore" as some "fantasy land of perfection".

Personally, I am still angry at Singapore over the execution of Van Tuong Nguyen.

Malaysia at least is working on trying to abolish the death penalty. Singapore doesn't appear interested in that.

Malaysia is definitely ahead of Singapore in the area of political pluralism (although it is too early to say whether Malaysia's recent improvements in this area are going to endure.)

On the other hand, in the specific area of treatment of ethnic minorities, I still believe Singapore is ahead of Malaysia. The Singaporean government does ethnically discriminate in some areas, but to a far lesser extent than the Malaysian government does

Religious freedom is another area in which I'd say Singapore remains ahead of Malaysia: the Singaporean government imposes some restrictions on non-mainstream religious groups (like Jehovah's Witnesses and Unification Church), but it is officially neutral in religious matters; Malaysia's government does not display anywhere near the same neutrality

The rampant racism in the Singapore public schools, the casual everyday racism and micro-aggressions that Singapore minorities face, local Chinese owned company’s using Mandarin as requirement to exclude minorities, lack of representation in ads/commercials/billboards for minorities, the openly racist statement made by politicians that the majority Chinese will not accept a Singapore Indian as a PM... Singapore has actually regressed when it comes to the Racial relations since the Sixties. This close minded xenophobia will in the long run stymie it’s growth and social stability, if not addressed. You can read some of the stories shared by Singapore minorities on their racist experiences on Insta: @minorityvoices. @lepakconversations

High time that William Gibson does another article on Singapore.

Providing a list of problems that Singapore has with ethnic discrimination – and I don't deny all those problems you've listed are real – doesn't actually answer the comparative question of how Malaysia and Singapore compare in this area.

I think the difference is between a country whose official written policies claim to treat minorities fairly and equally, but which often in practice fails to fully live up to those claims (and Singapore is far from being the only country for which that's true); and a country whose official legislated government policy is to discriminate against ethnic minorities. Can you see how the later is worse than former?

To be honest, Malaysia is probably no better and indeed actually much worse than Singapore in most if noy all areas of comparison. Given the choice between living in either of them, my choice would be neither.

But I suspect that most people prefer Singapore even compared to the rest of the world and I personally think they are falling for the trap personally set for them by the Lee family.

Political pluralism and substantive democracy are definitely one area in which Malaysia appears to have been doing better than Singapore recently, although it remains to be seen whether those developments in Malaysia become permanent or whether it goes back to the old system. This year’s political crisis has not been a positive sign in that department, but it is probably too soon to evaluate its ultimate significance.

The great thing is that they can both point to each other as an example of what would happen if the wrong group of people get in power.

While it is true that Malaysia runs an apartheid regime that favours the Malay race (meaning a body of laws that codify preference for civil service jobs, grants, land ownership, certain licenses, language of instruction in school etc etc) as a means to secure the vote of the majority Malays - those philosophical/political differences aren't the reason why Singapore would prefer to purchase solar power from Australia rather than Malaysia.

Electricity generation in Singapore runs on natural gas which are fed from pipelines to fields in Indonesia and Malaysia. LNG ports were developed to create an international supply chain and a solar cable to Australia would be a similar geostrategic/economic strategy of diversification through multiple vendors.

Malaysia has, at any rate, sowed the harvest of their political strategy. The Malay population has crept upwards as a percentage of total population, as Indians and Chinese with any ability have left for Australia and Singapore as popular destinations. This has secured pro-Malay politics as the only way to win an election in Malaysia, but ironically the increased ground means the old monolith pro-Malay party has splintered to fight for control. Today's Malaysia sees several strong pro-Malay parties jostling for power.

Singapore would prefer nobody build a nuclear reactor anywhere near it. Even if a reactor was located 50km away outside of Singapore, any accident could divert shipping lanes away from the Malacca Strait and disrupt air travel that hubs in Singapore. A nuclear reactor strategy for Singapore is like picking pennies before a bulldozer.

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