Singapore 2014
Yearbook 2014
Singapore. In January, one of Singapore Airlines’ super-jet planes, an Airbus A380 with 467 passengers aboard, was forced to land in Azerbaijan during a flight from London when the pressure in the cabin suddenly dropped. The landing was odramatic. Singapore population in 2020 is estimated at 5,850,353. The police were granted new temporary powers in the Little India area after the riots in December 2013. The riots were the first in Singapore in 30 years and broke out when an Indian guest worker was killed by a private bus. After the rally, 24 people were indicted.
In March, Singapore became the second country in the world, after the US, to regulate virtual currencies, such as bitcoin. The Economist magazine ranked Singapore as the world’s most expensive city.
In July, the government approved a list of eight items to increase control in Little India and prevent multiple riots, including increased police resources, more surveillance cameras, better lighting and alcohol restrictions in select locations. To mark the rights of gays, 2,000 people gathered at the event Pink Dot, held every year since 2009. Authorities called for calm after a Muslim leader started a protest campaign, which was also supported by a Christian group. Sexual acts between men are prohibited by law, but the issue of gay rights has been intensively debated in recent years.
According to topb2bwebsites, in July, two men sentenced to death for drug paraphernalia were hanged. It was the first execution in Singapore since a moratorium was introduced in 2011 for the purpose of reviewing the law.
In August, new laws were introduced to make it more difficult for foreign nationals to get jobs in the country. The large number of guest workers has previously caused dissatisfaction among the population. Critics warn that the new laws could have an impact on Singapore’s economy. For the ninth consecutive year, Singapore was ranked by the World Bank as the best country in the world to conduct business.
In November, the Danish-owned oil company OW Bunker went bankrupt after suspected fraud was discovered in the Singapore-based subsidiary Dynamic Oil Trading. Singapore introduced visa requirements for travelers from Ebola-afflicted countries in West Africa. Police arrested 135 people in a comprehensive effort against suspected loan sharks.
Population, rights and society
Singapore has repeatedly faced the challenge of managing rapid population growth within a limited territory. To address this problem, in the past decades the government has adopted a policy of controlling and limiting the population expansion, prohibiting families from having more than two children (the so-called ‘ stop at two ‘ policy). In recent years, however, the population growth rate has declined, with fertility rates declining. This has prompted the government to overturn demographic policies, incentivizing families to have more children (with what has been renamed the ‘ go for three ‘ policy).’). This is mainly due to concerns about the possible lack of a workforce capable of sustaining the country’s economic growth in the medium and long term.
Most of the population is ethnic Chinese (about 77%), but there are important Malaysian (14%) and Indian (8%) minorities. This implies, from the religious point of view, the majority presence of the Buddhist faith, with Muslim (about 14%, corresponding to the Malay community), Christian and Hindu minorities. 42% of the local population is made up of foreigners, while about half of the workforce does not have citizenship. Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin Chinese and Tamil. At the educational level, the country, whose system is one of the most efficient in the region, promotes a policy of bilingualism. Almost 80% of the population speaks English.
Singapore, despite a liberal economic system and a political-institutional structure considered not very corrupt (even if in 2014 more than 2000 citizens took to the streets against the lack of transparency in the management of the public pension fund), has a political regime that significantly limits freedom of expression, association and demonstration. Some legal measures effectively prevent opposition movements from exercising political action against the ruling party, as demonstrated by the repeated arrests suffered by the leader of the Singapore Democratic Party, Chee Soon Juan, for example guilty of violating the ban on holding public speeches without authorization. Even the media system appears to be not very free, since the two major networks media, Singapore Press Holding and Media Corporation, are state-owned and leave little room for opposition. Of course, the controls also include the Internet: in May 2013, for example, a ruling by the local authority established the need for a license and a deposit of $ 50,000 for sites that deal with the internal political situation.
The particular population / territory ratio supported decisions in a distinctly ‘conservative’ sense on immigration policies. The preference for workers accepting ever lower wages has led to a large gap between the salaries of the residents of the small city-state. The instability could also be determined by the repercussions of such inequality: for example, the real estate bubble affects only 0.89% of the population, but the figure has grown by 78% since 2008. Three quarters of family debt is also contracted through mortgages and, therefore, are subject to the volatility of the markets referenced by an economy such as Singapore’s.
