Just in case you haven?t heard, the government has declared the month of November as ?Punctuality Month,? or something to that effect. If we were in Singapore, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his cabinet would probably be directly involved in a nationwide activity to impress upon the people the importance of punctuality in the life of the nation. Here we think that issuing an Executive Order or a Presidential Proclamation will do the trick.
?Filipino time? is no longer a joke?it is a reality, especially in government. A few months ago, I was invited to a government office for consultations on a subject matter of great interest to many of our people. The time of the meeting was set for 2 p.m. Not being too familiar with the office location, I got there just a few minutes before the scheduled hour. When I entered the conference room, it was dimly lighted, with a few people moving around and getting things organized. It looked like the end of a long lunch break. The presiding officer was not yet around and I figured that the secretariat knew she would be late, so there was no urgency for them to be ready anytime soon. I decided to move on.
Punctuality means being on time for an appointment, a meeting or an organized activity. Being punctual connotes respect and consideration for others who have set aside much of their valuable time to accommodate discussions of mutual concerns. The common excuse these days for tardiness is the unpredictable traffic that we experience in Metro Manila. But this is not a valid excuse. It is better to be a bit early than to have to come up with all kinds of lame excuses for being late.
Punctuality also implies promptness?not waiting till the last hour to carry out responsibilities or obligations. The Comelec provided new voters one year to register for the coming elections. There is no valid justification for an extension of the voter registration period.
Punctuality is a form of discipline, and one way of inculcating discipline in a society is leading by example.
In the first volume of his personal memoirs, ?The Singapore Story,? former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew describes how after his Peoples Action Party (PAP) took office in June 1959, he was determined to quickly exploit the post-election popularity of the party. He wrote, ?we mounted a series of well-publicized campaigns to clean the streets of the city, clear the beaches of debris and cut the weeds on unkempt, vacant lands.? It was an exercise copied straight from Communist manuals?an ostentatious mobilization of everyone, including government ministers, to toil with their hands and soil their clothes in order to serve the people. ?We organized drives to enthuse the people and involve them in setting higher standards in civic consciousness, general cleanliness and the preservation of public property. One Sunday, Ong Eng Guan (the former Mayor) would muster government servants to clean up Changi beach. On another, I would take a broom to sweep the city streets with the community leaders.?
Lee and his party mates also set up community centers?big ones in the city, small wooden huts in the rural areas?as places for education and recreation. Each center would have a full-time organizing secretary to administer and attend to the welfare of those around. They organized Works Brigades for unemployed men and women, gave them semi-military uniforms, provided them with simple housing and taught them farming, road-building and other construction work?mainly to put some discipline into them but, most important, to get them off the streets.
Lee said that the most significant program in the early years was to give every child a place in school within a year.
In his second volume, ?From Third World to First,? Lee describes how he brought about bilingualism?Mandarin and English?to the city-state. Earlier there were seven different major Chinese dialects being spoken by the Chinese in Singapore. It would be easier for students to learn English and Mandarin if they were not burdened by other dialects. So he launched a ?Speak Mandarin? campaign for a month every year. He himself stopped making speeches in Hokkien, and ?I used my standing with the people to persuade them to make the switch. During our walks in public parks and gardens, parents would often be talking to their children in dialect until they noticed Choo [his wife] and me, when they would look embarrassed and switch to Mandarin, abashed for not heeding my advice. Without this active promotion of Mandarin, our bilingual policy would have failed for Chinese students.?
With the opening up of China, the attitudes of Singapore Chinese about learning Mandarin changed. Those who knew both English and Mandarin commanded a premium. No one complained about having to speak Mandarin.
Bilingualism in English and Malay, Chinese or Tamil, was difficult for the children. The three mother tongues were completely unrelated to English. Lee explained the need for two languages: ?If we were monolingual in our mother tongues, we would not make a living. Becoming monolingual in English would have been a setback. We would have lost our cultural identity, that quiet confidence about ourselves and our place in the world.?
?In spite of the criticism from many quarters that our people have mastered neither language, it was the best way forward. English as our working language has prevented conflicts arising between our different races, and given us a competitive advantage because it is the international language of business and diplomacy, of science and technology. Without it, we would not have many of the world?s multinationals and over 200 of the world?s top banks in Singapore. Nor would our people have taken so readily to computers and the Internet.?
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Punctuality can take root among our people, but only if our leaders, national as well as local, show the way by example. Singapore could not have made the jump from Third World to First without the discipline and leadership of Lee Kuan Yew. In the words of former French President Jacques Chirac, ?for a country to rise from the threshold of subsistence to one of the highest living standards in the world in 30 years, is no mean achievement.? Our leaders must strive to attain those same standards.
