In my opinion, I agree that the past and present offer guidance for the future. Lessons learnt from the past, as well as from our everyday lives allow us to prevent such incidents from happening again as well as make us better prepared to tackle similar obstacles faced in the future.
Take for example the case of the The National Kidney Foundation Singapore scandal which happened in July 2005, whereby the Chief Executive Officer T.T Durai and its board of directors misused the funds donated to the NKF for their own benefits. This caused a massive backlash and fallout of donors to the charity, and subsequently resulted in the resignation of Chief Executive Officer T.T Durai and its board of directors. A similar case happened recently whereby th former head of Ren Ci Hospital, Venerable Shi Ming Yi, a Buddhist monk, has been charged with forgery, conspiracy and misuse of funds.
These incidents caused widespread feelings of outrage, anger, and betrayal among the public. Moreover, the scandals raised questions about the level of transparency in other institutions in Singapore. This has led to better awareness on the public’s part as to where funds donated go to and hence the public would be more careful when donating money to charities in the future.
Another example would be the Maria Hertogh riots of 1950, sparked by a court decision to return custody of Maria, then aged 13, to her biological Catholic Dutch mother after she had been raised as a Muslim by her adoptive Malay family. Eighteen people were killed in those riots. In addition, what happened in India in 1947-48, just three years earlier when the British Raj began to be dismantled and people long suppressed found utterance. Singapore's founding generation witnessed Jawaharlal Nehru - a much admired figure in the anti-colonial movement and a forceful advocate of secularism - being stunned by the absolute ferocity of the Hindu-Muslim riots that accompanied the partition of British India. An estimated one million people died.
As stated in the article Secularism - not from theory but bloody history, “And in 1992, the Ministry of Education reminded mission schools of Article 16 (3) of the Singapore Constitution, which states: 'No person shall be required to receive instruction in or take part in any ceremony or act of worship of a religion other than his own.' Students cannot be compelled to attend religious service, mission school principals were told. Why is it necessary to send such strong, unambiguous signals? Because religion is 'a very profound and fundamental tectonic divide', as MM Lee put it once. He did not learn that from Prof Rawls.” This has showed that Singapore has learnt from the past that religion is a very sensitive issue especially for the survival of peace in a multi-racial and multi-religion country in Singapore.
In conclusion, I strongly believe that the past and present offer precious lessons and guidance for us to follow and not to make similar mistakes again.
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