that we are looking at our laws and our laws have to change and keep pace with the times. and in a singaporean way we are engaging in a wide set of consultations to try and arrive at some sort of landing. minister, i m listening very carefully to your words. they re very interesting. and if i say to you say, you know, public mood and public opinion matters. i say to you that one of the leading polling agencies, ipsos, in singapore, has found, quote, a steady shift in societal attitudes led by younger adult singaporeans, who are more ready to see the country now properly embrace same sex relationships. so if that s the reality, are you saying to me that we can expect in the near future your government to actually strike off section 3,7,7,a and make it clear to gay men in singapore that they can be open about their sexuality with no fear that anybody is going to regard them as criminal?
health care policies, rational economic policies. we have continued growing, we have managed our economy. so there s been a flight to quality. people look around, they say, which countries are safe? which countries are safe to be physically in? which countries are safe to put your money in? and there has been a flight to quality, there has been a movement to singapore, money as well as people. and i think there is an appreciation that singapore is one of the good places to do business in. sadly, minister k shanmugam, we have to end there, but i do thank you very much indeed forjoining me on hardtalk.
in the us in october 2021? surely, surely you should be holding yourself to a universally high standard. you are a minister who has talked about making sure that compassion is at the centre of thejudicial system in singapore. so it s no good pointing to other countries which may have their own flaws. i m asking you to look at this on its merits. on its merits, this is the point i will make. this is a man who brought in drugs in order to make money. he had the workings of a criminal mind. his own psychiatrist confirmed that he was not intellectually disabled, and. look at the context. we are talking about saving lives. what do i mean? in the 1990s, we were arresting about 6,000 people per year.
move on to the geopolitical situation you find yourselves in in singapore. you ve traditionally tried to maintain very good relations with the great powers in your region. that is, of course, china, but also the united states. that s becoming increasingly difficult as hostility grows between washington and beijing. you re going to have to pick sides. which side will you pick? no, we will not pick sides. i think, you know, for us, it s important that we deal and navigate in the environment. but picking sides is not the right way to go. i mean, the us and china. ..everyone can see the tensions are deep. 0n the side of the us, there is a bipartisan thinking, that consensus that china poses a direct threat. it s as though an us versus them mentality. in china, there is a growing perception that the east is rising, the west is declining, and that the us
two points. first of all, the ipsos survey seems to us a little bit of an outlier in the context of other surveys, internal and public, that we have. at the same time, i did say to you that attitudes are shifting, but i m not quite sure they are shifting as much as what ipsos has said. the second point is i said that we are in deep consultations with stakeholders, including lgbtq+ community, as well as others, and you know, system of cabinet responsibility, what we are going to do can only be announced once a decision is reached. i m in no position to answer that question with finality at this point. last year, the economist magazine, which has some influence, it referred to a rising tide of ugliness with regard to racial discrimination in singapore, which it said is provoking a reckoning over race.