MAY 1 — The US$20 (RM78) bill is getting a new face. US Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew announced that the portrait of Harriet Tubman — the former slave and abolitionist — will be featured on the front of the new US$20.
The Treasury also announced plans for the back of the new US$10 bill to feature an image of the historic march for suffrage that ended on the steps of the Treasury Department and honour other leaders of the suffrage movement — Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul.
So we see the US making a somewhat overdue effort to make their notes more race and gender inclusive. Which got me thinking — if we were to embark on a currency conversion, who should we include in the line-up? Here are my picks for a new line of Singapore dollars:
1. Lee Kuan Yew: An obvious choice, he needs no introduction. He is simply synonymous with the nation so I think he’s a prime candidate for The S$2 (RM5.78) or $1,000 note. Either the highest value or the most ubiquitous note.
2. Of course LKY didn’t fashion our modern nation alone. He was ably assisted by Goh Keng Swee, the first Finance Minister, S. Rajaratnam prominent Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lim Kin San the father of the Housing Development Board, among many, many others. I think any of the above are solid choices for the $50 note.
3. Singapore though didn’t come into being 50 years ago — we had campaigners, educators and legislators active long before our official independence. For example, Lim Boon Keng who was a legislator in colonial Singapore in the 20s campaigned for girls’ education and the banning of opium or Elizabeth Choy celebrated war hero. On the other end of the spectrum there’s also old Stamford Raffles — pirate, scholar, adventurer, administrator — who laid the foundation for all that was to come. But I’m not convinced an erstwhile colonizer should be on our modern money, and Raffles already has a pretty swanky hotel named after him, among other things. So Lim Boon Keng — for $5?
4. Much like the founding fathers, today’s Singapore woman owes a lot to the amazing women who put in place the city’s seminal Women’s Charter. From Tan Cheng Hiong, Shirin Fozdar or Checha Davies it would be empowering to have any of our many pioneering women’s rights activists on our currency.
But we don’t need to limit ourselves to just politicians or activists — we can’t forget the rich web of myth and legend from which our nation draws so much of its identity.
5. Sang Nila Utama could definitely do with a spot — the Srivijayan prince who founded the first kingdom on the island of Singapore even gave our island its name. No one knows what he looked like but I am sure note makers have room for creative license.
6. In the same vein I’m a big fan of the Redhill myth. You know the one where the clever boy saved the people of Singapore from a plague of stabbing swordfish. He planted banana trees by the coast to trap their pointy beaks. The boy became so popular that the king became jealous and had the boy murdered on a hill which grew red with his blood becoming Bukit Merah, or the Redhill which is still part of our landscape today. A good candidate for the 10 Singapore dollar note, it is red after all!
Now I love SGDs as much as the next person and while the designs on the back of the notes depict a pretty collection of scenes, the front is a little repetitive with Tun Yusof Bin Ishak, our first President on the front of every single note. Tun Ishak, a freedom fighting journalist turned administrator, was a man of great accomplishment but should he remain the only one?
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
