Roundtable group disbands

For a small band of people, the Roundtable has certainly had an impact. But earlier this week, its members decided to close shop. 

The ‘Today’ newspaper quoted political scientist Ho Khai Leong of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies expressing a common sentiment, “The Roundtable may not have been very high-profile. But in Singapore's civil society, even a small step backwards is significant, because we have so little to begin with.” [Today, 13 April 2004] 

When 10 persons applied to the Registrar of Societies in 1993 to set up a non-partisan political discussion group called the Roundtable, it was a bold move. The government viewed it with such suspicion that they dithered over the application for nearly a year, until lawyer Chandra Mohan Nair threatened the Registrar with a writ of mandamus [source: Chandra Mohan’s own words at the NUSS forum on 29 March 2004] 

Even when the approval came, there was a condition attached: the Roundtable must not hold any activities involving non-members. 

I don’t know whether their original plans included such activities, so it’s hard for me to say if this restriction had any significant impact on their goals. 

However, what we could observe over the years was that much of their energy was invested in writing papers, which our press carried from time to time. They were well thought out and well argued, and quickly earned them respect among thinking Singaporeans. 

Generally, they had a moderate voice even as they took issue with some government policies, but as time passed, I suspect, individuals began to grow in different directions.  

James Gomez was the most prominent critic of the government, and he eventually left the Roundtable to join the Workers’ Party. Three others, Simon Tay, Zulfikli Baharudin and Chandra Mohan were co-opted into Parliament as Nominated MPs. Raymond Lim joined the ruling PAP and is now a junior minister in government. Journalist Cherian George and constitutional lawyer Kevin Tan have remained independent and quite critical of many government policies. 

One can suspect it was increasingly difficult to find enough consensus to carry on writing papers as a group. 

In addition, there were rising expectations among Singaporeans for more political and civil space. Just writing papers, especially couched in gentle language, increasingly failed to match hopes for a more robust political debate. 

As social activist Constance Singham said to ‘Today’, “As a group they have been rather disappointing. When they were formed, hopes were high that they would help create more political discussion in the society.” 

“But they have not been very open and tend to be secretive and a bit elitist. Neither have they been very egalitarian in their selection of members. In many ways they function just like the PAP," she added.  

I don’t think she was aware of the condition that the Registrar of Societies imposed. Like many, she might have expected the Roundtable to organize seminars and talks in order to raise the level of political consciousness and improve the sophistication of political debate here. But this was not possible under the constitution that the Registrar required. 

So, in a sense, the reason given by Roundtable’s President, Harish Pillay, for their disbandment, was correct. He told Today, "We have decided that the vehicle of the Roundtable has fully run its course.".

"The purpose of the Roundtable has been achieved,” he added. “We have helped in some sense to open up the political space and define the modus operandi, although we don't hold any exclusivity in civil society. We have already tried our best to achieve what we set out to do, as far as we were permitted to under our constitution.”  

You would have noted a special reference to what was permitted under their constitution. 

* * * * *

But to the Straits Times, Pillay said rather more. However, I thought those words rang hollow. 

'Our modest objective was simply to carve a space where Singaporeans were free to discuss policy issues without being told to join a political party,' its president, Mr Harish Pillay, said yesterday. 'We wanted Singaporeans to feel they had ownership of the political processes and institutions in their own country through active participation in the political system.'

But at the group's 10th annual general meeting on Sunday, members voted to dissolve the entity because they felt 'the vehicle of the Roundtable has fully run its course'.

'For what we wanted to achieve, we think we have already done what we can. So let's move on to something else,' Mr Pillay said.

Established three years after Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong took over with his brand of consultative politics, 'the Roundtable showed that the system was opening up', he added.

At that time, it took the group almost a year to get registered officially. 'But now, the process has eased up,' he said, referring to the introduction of a fast-track registration scheme in 2002 for some types of groups, allowing them an 'in-principle' legal status within two weeks.

      - Straits Times, 13 April 2004

All of us involved in People Like Us think this fast-track registration scheme is more wool over Singaporeans’ eyes. Once again, efficiency is deliberately being confused with substance. It’s good to be efficient, but those groups who are now getting registered within 2 weeks were never the issue in the first place. They are the stamp-collecting associations, jazz-band fan clubs, and hamster protection leagues. Even before the Roundtable, they were not going to be denied registration, and that today they are waved through represents no substantive advance. 

People Like Us was denied registration in 1997. Seven years later, in 2004, we are denied registration again. We are the test case for fair governance, and so far the government is failing the test miserably. 

This whitewash which the Roundtable seems to have fallen for is very similar to many complaints made about our compliant judiciary. Every time someone points out this defect, the government rolls out some finding from an international business organization or publication pointing to how highly rated Singapore’s judicial system is. Alternatively, they point out how speedy is our judicial process compared to the long waiting lists in other countries. It is a shameless ruse. No one says our judicial system is unfair when it comes to commercial cases. No one says that there is injustice in Singapore arising from justice delayed. It’s the political cases we’re all pointing at and have been pointing at for decades. And in that area, nothing has changed.

A lawyer friend of mine put it succinctly: "Indeed justice is delivered quickly, but of what quality?"

* * * * * 

I will now put on record the one occasion when People Like Us’ orbit grazed the Roundtable’s. Be warned, it’s not a pretty tale. 

I think it was sometime like 1999 or 2000, certainly a while after the first registration attempt by People Like Us, when the Registrar refused even to disclose a reason why he turned our application down. PLU's Russell Heng was in communication with Roundtable’s Cherian George, an old friend from their journalism days. George was already quite familiar with the PLU saga, but Russell prodded him a little and suggested that the highhandedness of the Registrar was the kind of issue that the Roundtable might want to address as part of their mission. 

My understanding from Russell was that George felt this to be so, but he needed to sound out others in his group. 

A few days later, the answer came back. Apparently, one member of the Roundtable said he was completely opposed to the Roundtable taking up this subject because he was a Roman Catholic! He threatened to resign from the Roundtable if others in the group persisted in looking into this matter. [1]

This intemperance was rather curious for a group that wanted to lead intellectually when it came to political awareness. After all, it's not a novel invention to distinguish between agreeing with our aims, and defending our rights of expression and association. These rights are fairly fundamental to a healthy polity. Speaking up for these rights would not have required you to agree with our aims.

Well, it was their group, and they had the right to decide for themselves what their agenda was. But I, for one, knew from that day on, that the Roundtable was never going to amount to much more.

At least, not as a group.  

Individuals have been supportive. I know Kevin Tan, Cherian George, Zuraidah all believe that the Registrar of Societies has been less than correct in his dealings with People Like Us. And I will acknowledge here that Simon Tay was instrumental in eventually getting the Registrar to reveal (in April 2000) his reason for the 1997 rejection. 

So perhaps Harish Pillay was right when he said, they had already done what they could and it was time to move on.

© Yawning Bread 

Footnotes

1. See the article When intellectualising about homosexuality gets too hard, just sell snake oil, for the stance of Singapore's Catholic Church on the matter
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