SINGAPOREANS are well-known for a fear of losing out. They strive ceaselessly, sometimes to others' annoyance, to ensure they win.

Yet when Singapore 'lost' Jemaah Islamiah (JI) detainee Mas Selamat Kastari, who is still on the run, it was described as a 'very severe lesson in complacency'.

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew delivered this stinging rebuke last month, declaring it a fallacy to believe that Singapore is infallible.

'It is stupid to believe we are infallible. We are not infallible. One mistake and we've got a big explosive in our midst. So let's not take this lightly,' he said.

His rebuke was directed at the security agencies as the JI leader escaped from their custody at the Whitley Road Detention Centre.

But it applied equally to Singaporeans at large, who may have been lulled by decades of peace into believing that Singapore is a place where things do not go wrong.

The Singapore paradox

THIS then is the Singapore paradox: a pervasive fear of losing (kiasu, in colloquial Hokkien), found side by side with a sense of satisfaction and security that sometimes borders on smugness.

How to square these apparently contradictory traits?

Sociologist Tan Ern Ser makes an attempt: 'Individual kiasuness leads to collective complacency.

'There is a sense that if everyone is kiasu enough and looks after their own turf, everything will be well taken care of.

'You thus have this situation of people not looking out for areas not within their responsibility. Complacency develops.'

Yet as MM Lee declared in an e-mail interview with Insight this week: 'There is no country in the world where nothing goes wrong. Anyone who believes nothing can or will go wrong in Singapore is living in a makebelieve world.'

He has hammered the same point home many times over the years, as prime minister, then senior minister, and finally minister mentor.

Back in 1975, 10 years into Singapore's separation from Malaysia, he warned:

'We have done as well as we could possibly have done in the past 10 years. To do as well as we can in the next five years, let us have no scales on our eyes.'

Those who came in for his rebuke then were young men who preferred to idle at home instead of taking up jobs as bus drivers, and parents who indulged their children.

Fast forward to 2004.

Mr Lee had this to say of port operator PSA Corp after it lost two of its biggest clients - Danish shipping line Maersk and Taiwan's Evergreen Marine - to Malaysia's Port of Tanjung Pelepas:

'The mistake of PSA was it was getting too complacent. We are going to compete and if we can't compete, then we deserve to starve.'

His rebukes spurred a major rethink of Singapore's port policy.

Last year, while speaking to students at the Nanyang Technological University, he cautioned again against

'ignoring the warning signs that things could go wrong'.

'Setbacks could come suddenly,' he warned.

When the setback came early this year in the form of the disappearance of Mas Selamat, complacency was once again deemed the culprit.

Some observers argue that the Mas Selamat incident should be blamed on incompetence rather than just complacency. But since investigations have not been completed, it would be premature to speculate.

Still, the episode raises questions about whether complacency is also prevalent within the Government.

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