Sometimes, It's Perfectly Alright To Just Shut Up

Sometimes, in life, nobody's complaining if you keep mum. Really. Within the plush comfort of the Raffles City convention centre, billionaire George Soros held court yesterday to an audience of 1,600 academics, government officials, businessmen and undergrads, enthralling them with his beliefs and vision for a global open society — and declaring that Singapore had yet to score in his book of liberal politics. Having made his wealth by the time he hit 50, Mr Soros is now into encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become "open societies" — open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce, but more importantly, tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behaviour... With Mr Soros's drive to bring about change in China, where he admitted failure, and Myanmar, where efforts continue, the focus inevitably fell on Singapore. Panel member Benjamin Lee, a third-year National University of Singapore student, asked Mr Soros how he rated Singapore as an open global society. Mr Soros was blunt. "Obviously, Singapore does not qualify as open society," he said. But Singapore is prosperous and prosperity and an open society tend to go hand in hand, he said. "I detect a desire of greater openness," he said, adding that he had great respect for the achievements of Singapore's energetic leadership. "But I hope they will be brave enough to take the next step in the development of an open society." Classic response to Soro's remarks, from a Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts spokesman. "If we were not an open society, George Soros would hardly be able to make the comment at an open forum in Singapore, and be reported in the Singapore media." Nuff's said. Literally.