Yawning Bread has long called for the abolition of these carbuncles [1]. They distort democracy rather than promote it. There are three good reasons why GRCs are against the public interest.

Secondly, GRCs play up the law of large numbers. By aggregating different districts with different socio-economic profiles and voter concerns, they dilute the voting power of specific minority groups (not just ethnic minorities, but all kinds of minorities, e.g. in terms of social class, economic distress, political colouring, age cohorts). These groups may be concentrated in certain areas, but when these areas' votes are pooled together with other areas' votes, they become voiceless.

The third complaint that many have about GRCs is that it enables the PAP to put mediocre people into parliament. The PAP tends to put a heavyweight minister as the leader of a GRC team of candidates. Behind him are neophytes or colourless technocrats. But since voters cannot choose individual candidates, the effect is to shoehorn these otherwise unelectable persons into Parliament.

Provided there is even a contest. As reason no. 1 pointed out, since GRCs by their size present such barriers of entry to opposition parties, most of the time, there's a walk-over by default.

In the most recent general election, held in November 2001, only 4 out of 14 GRCs saw a contest between the PAP and an opposition party. The majority of voters in Singapore did not get any chance to vote.

* * * * *

Of course, the PAP disputes all the 3 reasons above for abolishing GRCs.

But former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, now Minister Mentor, scored an own goal earlier this week when the Straits Times reported him saying that,

Further down the same article,

When he runs again, he hopes to bring in new candidates of ministerial potential, like he did Mr Khaw, who entered Parliament as part of the six-member Tanjong Pagar GRC team in 2001.

'He has established himself in the last four years,' said Mr Lee of Mr Khaw. 'I think he will lead a GRC. He doesn't need me now.' 

-- ibid

So there it is, proof for all the world to see: an admission that the PAP uses GRCs to shuffle faceless neophytes into Parliament hanging on to the coat-tails of better-known ones.

Lee helms the Tanjong Pagar GRC, which sends 6 members to Parliament. In the last general election, there was no contest in this GRC, so all the 6 MPs were "elected" unopposed.

* * * * *

S'pore is an open society despite what Soros says

American billionaire George Soros came to Singapore and commented that we are not an open society. Mr Koh Buck Song echoed his views and said that 'if Singapore is to mature as a democracy, then it is time for every thinking citizen to take up his responsibility to play his part in shaping the kind of open society we all need to believe we deserve to have' ('Think spectrum, not open or closed'; ST, Jan 17).

Both Mr Soros and Mr Koh are entitled to their views. Singapore has evolved into an open society where anybody can do anything and say anything he or she wishes. There is the media for them to express their views, Speakers' Corner for them to say it in person, the Internet to publish them for the world, and blogs to share them with friends. The only requirement this open society asks is that the messenger be responsible for the message.

Some say we cannot hold rallies or demonstrations without police permits. But do we want our society to be like, say, Taiwan or the Philippines where demonstrations are the order of the day, and politicians and celebrities throw mud liberally at each other and anybody else, with some of the media merrily playing the role of cheer leaders?

The Singapore I know is an open society. It may not be the kind of society Mr Soros envisaged, nor the shape which Mr Koh wished, but it is a fair society where rules are applied fairly and equally to all without fear or favour.

Assoc Prof Koo Tsai Kee

-- Straits Times Forum, 24 January 2006.

In the blog Mr Wang bakes good karma, the following strange incidents (all in the last half year) were listed in response to Koo's letter

• Martyn See's film 'Singapore Rebel' banned, and See himself investigated for violating the Films Act [2]
   
• Fridae.com denied permission to hold a gay party
   
• Mr Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan, a democracy activist and a member of NGO Nonviolence International, denied entry into Singapore and deported [3].
   
• 12 anti-riot police officers armed with shields and batons put an end to a tiny demonstration held by 4 peaceful people standing quietly in a row wearing T-shirts [4].
   
• Police banned an anti-death penalty group from using a poster that featured the face of an executed person [5].
   
• Buangkok residents investigated for putting up cardboard cutouts of white elephants in front of the Buangkok MRT station to protest against its non-opening [6].
   
• Blogger-academic Cherian George slammed by the Prime Minister's Office for writing an article about the government's use of "calibrated coercion" to stifle the expression of dissenting opinions.
   
• Singapore is ranked 140th in the world for press freedom [7].
   
• A new play by Benny Lim about the death penalty was banned just 3 days before it was scheduled to open.

This suggests that Koo is either unaware of current affairs or unable to give due significance to such trampling of basic freedoms. He needs to explain how he still claims that Singapore "has evolved into an open society where anybody can do anything and say anything he or she wishes."

Amazingly Koo's curriculum vitae indicates that he has a Masters in Philosophy from University College, London, though most of his other qualifications are in land surveying. He is not just a Member of Parliament, but is currently the Senior Parliamentary Secretary in 2 ministries: the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources.

The Parliament website lists his CV, of which this is a part (screen shot of 29 Jan 2006):

At this point, I can't help but digress a little, for there's something else that is interesting from Koo's published CV. He seemed to have stopped teaching in 1993, when he was last a senior lecturer at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Yet, he was made an Associate Professor in 1999, even as he was on no-pay leave from NTU.

Does this practice by the university somehow suggest title inflation when the holder doesn't seem to be engaged in either teaching or research?

Coming back to the point about basic freedoms, of course, it is far from uncommon for members of parliament or congress in other countries to be ignorant and talk nonsense. Why should Singapore be any different?

To begin with, those in other countries would mostly be freely elected, so they do have a mandate, if you wish to call it that, to talk rot.

But here in Singapore, the PAP keeps bragging about how they bring the best and brightest into government. They say that all these changes they have made to the constitution (including the provision for GRCs) and to salary scales, are to ensure that Singapore gets the best possible people in government. The PAP's legitimacy is at least partly based on the claim of exceptional competence and formidable brainpower, a claim that recalls the traditional Chinese mandarinate culled through academic examinations. Helpfully, it gives the PAP the aura of a Confucianist "right to rule".

By luck, this example of uninformed bluster by Koo is one of those rare occasions when we get a closer look at the quality we actually get with no-pay-leave academic titles, GRCs and the coat-tail candidates they bring in, and not least, repeated walk-overs.

Now, tell me again, what good democratic purpose do GRCs serve?

© Yawning Bread