First of all, I'd like to wish all of you a very happy SG50

I'm really glad to have been a part of the nation's celebration of our Golden Jubilee

Just two weeks ago, I was at NDP

and now here I am, attending my very first National Day Rally

So needless to say, I'm feeling pretty great

And now, more importantly, I'd like to thank you, Sir, Mr Prime Minister

and of all you present, for allowing me this opportunity to do something I wasn't able to do

in the earlier part of this year

when our beloved Mr Lee Kuan Yew passed away

and left all of us quite shocked and bereaved

Like many of you, as a Singaporean

I expressed my grief through the wearing of sombre colours

and in private conversations with family and friends

But as a singer, I felt compelled to pay a tribute to the late Mr Lee through something I do best

which is through a song

So tonight, I stand here not so much to perform for you, which of course would have been a great honour

As to lead you in a song tribute to a man many of us loved and admired

and still love and admire

I have chosen a song that has magically and quite miraculously united all of us

whenever we heard it or sang it together

I've been very blessed to have been given this song to sing at the National Day Parade way back in 1998

I hope that we can all continue to sing this song for many years to come

and that it will always serve to remind us that no matter our differences

We'll always be united by the fact that we call Singapore our home

So, ladies and gentlemen

If you will, please join me in the song "Home"

Thank you

This one is for LKY

Thank you, Ms Kit Chan

And now, ladies and gentlemen

The Prime Minister

My fellow Singaporeans, good evening

First, let us thank Kit Chan again for her beautiful singing

and also for dedicating her song to Mr Lee Kuan Yew

I am very glad I invited her to the Rally

and I am very touched that she offered to sing “Home”

which is a fitting tribute to Mr Lee and a good start for the SG50 National Day Rally

Two weeks ago, on the 9th of August, we celebrated our Golden Jubilee with a parade at the Padang

For everyone who took part at the Padang, at the Floating Platform, around the Bay

watching at home or overseas

that night was something special to remember

It wasn't just a birthday bash

We were celebrating something far greater

First of all, we celebrated our resolve to defend ourselves and to survive over the last 50 years

We started out at independence with only two infantry battalions in a rough neighbourhood

But our pioneers were determined to defend ourselves

we built up the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF)

Within four years, we paraded a few of our units on National Day in 1969

Overhead, we had one Hunter aircraft and one Alouette helicopter flying the Singapore flag

In the mobile column, we had 18 AMX-13 tanks

which were appearing in public for the first time

and Major Goh Lye Choon was a second-in-command

Singaporeans cheered

Everyone understood what it meant

and it wasn't just Singaporeans who took note

Fifty years later, our pioneer servicemen kicked off the SG50 vintage parade

Right marker Colonel Swee Boon Chai, first batch Officer Cadet School (OCS)

Marching with him, Captain Hong Seng Mak, the legendary Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM), Tiger Hong

Ibrahim Bulat, who trained our first national servicemen

John Norfor and K S Rajan, our pioneer pilots

Chan Seck Sung, our first US Ranger-trained commando

Still wearing a red beret

Encik Mohd Saleh, Warrant Officer Class 1, Navy pioneer

who was one of the oldest participants, 77 years young

We had Corporal Philip Ng, a citizen soldier, NSF 4 SIR 1972

NSMan 61 SIR, ten years - 1974 to 1984

now Mindef Reserve, still marching

And many others too, older, greyer

but the spirit remain undaunted

and I am so glad that we have some of them here with us tonight

Thank you very much

Take a bow together

Above us, instead of one Hunter fighter

We had 20 F-16s, flying across the Padang forming the number “50”

A Chinook helicopter flew the flag, escorted by two Apaches

Colonel Goh Lye Choon, now retired

was once again the second-in-command of the mobile column

this time on a Leopard tank

That's him

Behind Lye Choon, 178 vehicles rolled past the City Hall steps

Tanks, artillery, AA missile launchers, special ops vehicles, Hazmat vehicles

and completing the mobile column we had nine vehicles carrying nine families

They were the pioneers who had served in the SAF and the Home Team

and they were on parade with their children who are presently serving

and in two cases, with their grandchildren too

And here we have a family

Grandfather, father and son

The son is Corporal Tajol Isfahan, 22 years old

who joined the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) full-time three months ago

The father is Senior Warrant Officer Mohd Azlan who’s 48 years old

who is an SCDF Marine Command Specialist

and their grandfather Mr Slamat, 78 years old

He joined the Singapore Fire Brigade in 1948, before I was born

I think before most of you were born

He was involved in many major fire and rescue incidents

The Bukit Ho Swee fire in 1961

The Robinson’s Department Store fire in 1972

Hotel New World in 1986

Three generations saluting the nation and we saluted them back

Secondly, on National Day, we celebrated how we had turned vulnerability into strength

We started off with no hinterland and a weak economy

We depended on our entrepot trade, but our neighbours were building their own ports and sought to bypass us

Our workers were unskilled and anxious about their future

but we determined to make the world our hinterland

And the tripartite partners worked together, worked hard to create the best workforce in the world

The Government, the employers and the unions, we worked together

Business Environment Risk Intelligence (BERI) every year ranked us number 1 in the world

And with that workforce, we made PSA and Changi the best in the world

We were a poor third world country

People lived in cramped and squalid slums, no modern sanitation, no utilities

but we built HDB flats to house all of us

and made Singapore a first world metropolis and our beautiful home

Nearly all our water came from Johor

and every now and again when an issue arose with Malaysia

some crazy politicians would threaten to turn off the tap to get us in line

but we did not die of thirst

We cleaned up our rivers, we dammed them up to become reservoirs

We built Marina Barrage and turned Marina Bay into Marina Reservoir

Our whole island became a catchment area

We invented NEWater

and on National Day 2002, we toasted our success

Huat ah!

Thirdly, we celebrated our journey from third world to first as one united people

When we separated from Malaysia, we were not yet one people

Memories of the race riots were fresh and raw

The minorities were uncertain of their place in the new country

They saw what had happened in Malaysia

They wondered, will the new Singapore Government keep its promise of a multi-racial society

But 50 years on, we celebrate as one united people

On National Day, when the siren sounded, we stood and recited the Pledge together

regardless of race, language or religion

We sang Majulah Singapura

What an exhilarating journey these 50 years have been

How did we get here?

I will put it down to three factors

Firstly, we determined to be a multi-racial society

Secondly, we created a culture, a culture of self-reliance and also mutual support

And thirdly, we kept faith between the Government and the people

First of all, multi-racialism

We separated from Malaysia because we believed in this ideal of a multi-racial society

We believed that before race, language and religion, we should first and foremost, be Singaporean

That was the fundamental reason for our foundation as a country

So we came down hard on chauvinists and racial extremists

We built HDB estates where all the different races lived and mingled together

There are no segregated ghettos in Singapore

We made English our working language and gradually all our schools shifted to teaching in English

We created Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs)

so that minorities would always be represented in Parliament

and this way, we encouraged all the communities to come together

and yet gave each community space to maintain their own cultures and their own ways of life

When delicate and awkward issues arose, we dealt with them together

For example, when we discovered the Jemaah Islamiyah group

planning to set off suicide bombs in Singapore after 9/11

We handled it as one people; we did not divide into Muslims and non-Muslims

At the same, we made the effort to bring everybody together

and to ensure that every community could hold his own and not be left behind

So we set up self-help groups, the communities did

starting with the Council for the Development of Singapore Malay/Muslim Community (Mendaki)

later the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA)

then Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC)

and the Association of Muslim Professionals (AMP) and the Eurasian Association

The Government supported them and so we progressed together

Therefore, for SG50, every community in Singapore is celebrating

because every community has progressed with the nation

And each group is celebrating with the other groups because we are one united people

I have attended many SG50 celebrations this year

A Catholic Jubilee Mass at the Indoor Stadium

The SG50 Kita National Day Observance Ceremony here in this campus

led by the Malay/ Muslim organisations but with other groups participating

A Buddhist celebration at the Indoor Stadium

A Protestant prayer event at the National Stadium

A joint concert organised by the Taoist Federation,

the New Creation Church and others at the Star Performing Arts Centre

Here you see one of the items, a Chinese Kungfu group performing with the Silat group

One function

At one dinner, I had sitting around my table representatives of all the world’s major religions

and I posted the picture on Facebook

It showed the Rabbi of Singapore together with the Mufti of Singapore and Mr Gurmit Singh,

a Sikh leader who was then chairing the IRO, the Inter-Religious Organisation

Each had different dietary rules, each was served food that met his religious requirements

but nothing stopped them from having a meal together and being friends together

in fact, they took a selfie together, which I also posted on Facebook

Only in Singapore!

Some people may think that racial and religious harmony is not a problem anymore

and that I am making too much about this

But they would be wrong

Race and religion are always sensitive matters, especially for us

and in some ways, today, more complex and difficult to handle than 20 years ago

because religiosity has gone up

Many societies, people are taking their religion more seriously

Happens in developed countries like US, Britain, Australia, Germany

where you see racial and religious tensions

Happens in Singapore too, not tensions but people taking religion more seriously

and everywhere people exposed and vulnerable to extremist ideologists, like the Jihadist ideology of ISIS

We are a multi-racial and multi-religious society and we are always at risk of deep fault lines opening up

and we must never take our present happy state of affairs for granted

The second factor of our success, after multi-racialism, is our culture of self-reliance and mutual support

We knew right from the start that to strike out and blaze a path on our own

Everyone had to pull their weight and be counted, we could not afford free-riders

and that is why Mr Lee Kuan Yew exhorted us over and over again to become a rugged society

We do not use that term quite so often anymore

but our people must still be robust and tough, be able to take hard knocks, always striving to be better

No one owes us a living and we have to make our own way forward in the world

But a rugged society does not mean every man for himself

We are strong even though we are small because we are strong together

The ethos of our society is quite clear

If you work hard, you should do well and that is good for you and we should cheer you and celebrate it

But at the same time if you do well, we expect you to help others

and everyone has to work together so that we succeed as one Team Singapore

We have got to inculcate this ethos in our young people too

And that is why we encourage our children to play sports to experience losing and winning together

That is why we send them on adventure learning and character education

To OBS, Outward Bound School in Pulau Ubin and also on overseas expeditions