Opinion | Surreal life in Singapore, from Covid-19 to ‘circuit breaker’ and migrant workers’ plight

Things are feeling out of place, with local media seeming to bury news of a record number of cases and the enigmatic posts of the prime minister’s wife

There is perhaps no other place on Earth where life is split so acutely and strangely, writes Tan Tarn How

Reading Time:4 minutes

A man wearing a face mask as a preventive measure against the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus walks in Singapore’s Raffles Place financial business district. Photo: AFP

Published: 10:00am, 26 Apr 2020Updated: 11:37am, 27 Apr 2020

Every lockdown looks roughly the same from afar – the images of empty streets, grocery queues, ventilated patients and hazmat-suited health care workers have become familiar to all. But the actual experience of confinement is probably very different depending on which city and country we are in.

Here in Singapore, the increasingly severe lockdown feels strange in many ways, as if we are in a dream: surreal.

First is the term “circuit breaker” used for the lockdown introduced by the Singapore government on April 7. Critics have said this de-emphasised the seriousness of the mounting crisis, or the importance of staying home or socially distancing ourselves. Indeed, netizens busily split hairs about whether a circuit breaker equals a real lockdown – this is not Italy, Spain or Britain!

Singapore extends coronavirus ‘circuit breaker’ measures to June 1

But the debate has become moot, as the circuit-breaker measures have been extended until June 1 and the realisation sinks in that – with over 10,000 cases, though thankfully few deaths – Singapore’s infections per capita are closing in on these places. Some people have confused “circuit breaker” with “short circuit”. And unfortunately, the acronym “CB” is also a common Singlish expletive, taken from a Hokkien/Fujian swear word for female genitalia. A field day for pun lovers ensued as they riffed on the acronym and its other vulgar derivations.

Vehicles travel along a near-deserted road in Singapore during a partial lockdown imposed due to the coronavirus. Photo: Bloomberg

Second is the parallel universe in which the mainstream media appears to operate. There was The Straits Times, the island nation’s biggest newspaper, mystifyingly burying the day’s most important news of a record number of cases deep in its folds, as if trying to protect someone’s reputation.

Then there was Lianhe Zaobao, the largest Chinese-language newspaper, publishing a reader’s racist letter about the supposed culture of migrant workers (who form by far the largest cluster of Covid-19 cases in the country) – and then, in reaction to criticism, insipidly trying to justify the misjudgment.

Most glaring was the media’s avoidance of the elephant in the room: what mistakes – if any, after all it could be just bad luck – led to the explosion of cases?

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