The first thought that came to mind was: is the guy on crack? A Mikki Canton wrote in the Miami Herald that “Years ago, Singapore was faced with a huge social crisis. Through years of neglecting the human condition, its citizens had become unkind, self-absorped, disrespectful and discourteous. The Government stepped in and in 1979, launched an all-out National Courtesy Campaign that eventually became the Singapore Kindness Movement.”
The National Courtesy Campaign was launched on 1 June 1979 by Lee Kuan Yew. It began as an initiative by the former Singapore Tourist Promotion Board encouraging Singaporeans to be more polite and friendly to tourists in support of the tourism industry in Singapore. Even then, it was foreigners first, local born second. Lee then decided that it should not be restricted to tourists only, and spearheaded a nation-wide drive. Originally, the campaign was for a month, with July designated as Courtesy Month. The National Courtesy Campaign was officially subsumed under the Singapore Kindness Movement in March 2001. Mission accomplished.
Fast forward to 2009, and we have the real crisis. Almost every evening, an elderly man would complain to the police that his family had locked him out of his house. It turns out the man was suffering from early dementia, and the family was afraid he would leave the stove on and set the house on fire. His family members would lock him out when they went to work, and let him back in when they returned home. “Abuse by caregivers may reflect their inability to deal with the stress and difficulties of care-giving, rather than malice,” Minister of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) Vivian Balakrishnan downplayed the problem in a symposium on family violence. Forcing an old man out on the streets to fend for himself is no malice, or so we are told..
Balakrishnan maintains that the number of abused seniors have remained “small”. So, instead of a National Campaign to encourage Courtesy and Respect for the old folks, they are simply issuing a revised manual to manage family violence cases, with new chapters on what staff at polyclinics, schools and the Community Court should do when they come across a victim. In other words, Read The F**king Manual (RTFM) before bothering the cops.
