Unity, good governance key to fighting terror: DPM

SINGAPORE — While the authorities doing their utmost to prepare Singapore for possible terrorist attacks, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratam said that if and when incidents happen here, the country will have to recover quickly, stay united and remain confident in its ability to deal with problems.

Mr Tharman, who is also Coordinating Minister for Economic and Social Policies, was responding to a question on how Singapore is grappling with threats from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) at The Straits Times Global Outlook Forum yesterday.

“We have to be real about this. We have to harden defences on a whole range of facilities and installations. We’ve already been doing it and we will continue to do it,” he said.

“And fundamentally too over the long term, we’ve got to strengthen our Singapore model — of interacting freely, living together in the same neighbourhood, going to the same schools together and constantly deepening that sense of identity, where people first and foremost feel what they share in common as Singaporeans.”

Mr Tharman noted that in western countries such as the European nations, the United Kingdom and United States, the political centre has weakened while the extremists have become stronger.

Sectarian conflicts, immigration complexities, the insecurity of the middle class because of jobs, and long-term pension and healthcare promises have fed into this phenomenon, and dealing with it would require strong political leadership to unite people around what they share in common, he said. LAURA PHILOMIN