In The News

One of the privileges of a life lived elsewhere is the exposure one experiences to the press of another country, or countries. I suppose it's the key way in which one learns something about a nation beyond what conversations with friends, colleagues, acquaintances and taxi-drivers can open up. Of course, when there are restrictions of one sort or another operating on a nation's press a good deal of care needs to be taken, and a great deal of reading between the lines, in order for you to feel that you are genuinely learning something. A good question is always Why is this article appearing here, on this day? Mind you, this is true of any nation's press, I suppose. There are restrictions, of all sorts, everywhere.

I now feel I have developed a reasonable degree of expertise in understanding what gets into the papers in Singapore, and why. But Malaysian newspapers remain a bit of a mystery in a number of ways, essentially because I'm never in the country long enough to appreciate the nuances of what's going on. I enjoy reading them more than I do the papers here in Singapore simply because of that element of mystery.

I'd like to be back there at the moment to see what they're making of the government's liberalisation of the economy, especially in terms of the removal of the quota on Malay ownership of public-listed companies. It may sound like dry stuff, but there're deep and intense feelings and principles in all this. When we were in the country last month I noticed quite a number of letters and personal columns relating to the issue of using English in schools to teach Maths and Sciences - again, an extraordinarily loaded issue, and one that seems to me to be inherently deeply affecting, with language going, as it does, to the very roots of people's conception of self. The articles I read were very much in favour of the use of English (mind you, they were all in English language newspapers) and it seems to me inevitable that the use of Bahasa Malaysia is going to be steadily eroded by the pressures of modernity. But what's inevitable is not always good or right, whatever those simple yet deeply complex terms mean.

One of the reasons I would have made a lousy politician or administrator is that I just don't know the answers to big (or even little) questions.