English as 2nd language is suffice for interracial communication. Imposing English as first language policy in a country with population 97% Asian and 75% Chinese, if thats not tyranny and discrimination against Asian language and Asian culture, I don't know what is.
Lets get this straight. Even though Lee Kuan Yew encourage people to speak mandarin, his language policies stays. And mandarin usage has keep on dropping. So what does it say? He just pay lip service encourage people to speak mandarin. No policies come up by the PAP govt to boost the usage of mandarin. Which says Lee Kuan Yew is not sincere in encouraging people to speak mandarin.
PAP had benefit from the usage of dialect in the early days. PAP use dialect to reach out to the mass. Even till GE2006, PAP still use dialect to reach out to the people during campaign speech. So it is VERY UNGRATEFUL AND HYPOCRITICAL of the PAP, to try and abandon dialect, even though PAP had been benefit by the language. ITS UNETHICAL FOR THE PAP TO SNUFF THE LIFE OUT OF THE LANGUAGE WHICH HAD SERVE THEM ALL ALONG.
Furthermore, dialect is one of the pillar, foundation of Singapore culture. To abandon dialect, thats trying to knock off the foundation of Singapore culture. Thats unethical, unscrupulous behavior of the PAP.
Its not a zero sum game between dialect and mandarin. But the PAP such as Lee Kuan Yew, try to paint the picture that it is a zero sum game between those two spoken languages. But everywhere in the Chinese populated region (Hong Kong, Taiwan, PRC), mandarin and dialect co-exist together. No problem with that. SO WHY IS IT A PROBLEM WITH LEE KUAN YEW? IT JUST SHOW THAT HE IS SERIOUSLY BIAS AGAINST DIALECT, HE SERIOUSLY DISCRIMINATE AGAINST DIALECT.
The main reason of making English as 1st language I think is due to the fact that it is an international language. Our great Legend Lee Kuan Yew does not want to purely based on the majority population and made that language spoken by the majority as 1st language as it will be unfair to the other racial groups. As you know Singapore is a multi-racial society, our great PAP want every racial group to make friends and live together peacefully with one another. So it was a smart and great move to set English, the international language as 1st language, allowing every racial groups to communicate with one another.
We still have our mother tongue 2nd languages practiced in schools and our great PAP government has always been encouraging us to master both our 1st and 2nd language well. There is no doubt that our great PAP government has always done a great job for us all. We should be proud to have such great government behind us. 3 cheers for our great PAP.