Yawning Bread. May 2006

A post-election scolding from old Lee

    

  

 
Cherian George may have spoken too soon. In his blog, he wrote,

Singaporeans have learnt to dread the PAP post-results press conferences. PAP leaders have earned a reputation for being sore winners. Results that would send other countries’ politicians over the moon are met with black faces. Voters are scolded and lectured for being ungrateful. Veiled threats are issued against segments of the population suspected of denying the PAP the 100% vote that it thinks it is entitled to. When PM Lee appeared on TV, I expected him to honour to this classic PAP tradition. To say that I was pleasantly surprised is an understatement. The PM threw out the old PAP script and did exactly what he should do. He acted Prime Ministerial.

That was the son. As for the father...

In Tuesday's Straits Times (9 May 2006) was an edited excerpt of a speech that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew had delivered on Sunday, the day after the polls. It was supposed to be a victory speech, but if one didn't know what the polling percentages were, one might have thought that the PAP had done disastrously.

It sounded like he was ticking off people for having voted at all for the opposition, particularly the Workers' Party, which he mentioned specifically a number of times. I wonder sometimes whether to Lee, every vote given to a party other than the PAP was an intolerable personal affront; and then, compulsively, he must get up on the soapbox and tell people off.

"Please do not assume that you can change governments. Young people don't understand this," he said.

What on earth should they have understood?

He makes the automatic assumption that if Singapore ever has anything but a PAP government, it will go down the drain. Continuing from the above quote, he said, "I've watched once a government goes bad, the system goes bad, you cannot put it right."

I think he does not realize that many Singaporeans would say that's exactly what's wrong with Singapore now. In a sense, the system has gone bad. With a compliant mainstream media, super-sized group representation constituencies that marginalise minority voices, and a bad habit of resorting to defamation suits at the slightest criticism -- and while we're at it, we might as well mention judges whose terms of office are at the pleasure of the executive -- people feel that this place is in such a grip, they can't see a way to "put it right". Many leave.

 

Further on, he said, "one day you wake up you'll find you've got a dud government and you'll regret it too late."

He seemed to be referring to the prospect that the Workers' Party might one day win a majority island-wide. To him, it appears axiomatic that it would be a disaster. As it is, the 38% won by the Workers' Party in the constituencies where it contested is still quite far from a majority, but it looks like it was enough for Lee to start warning people away from further flirtation with it.

"And the surprise this time is the Workers' Party, with such a history of crazy policies, with David Marshall, with J B Jeyaretnam." Funny how many Singaporeans have a grudging respect and even fondness for both former politicians.

"Low Thia Khiang [1] says: 'Okay, it's a different party.' But is it? Let's see over the next five years."

That's an oblique reference to James Gomez. As you can see from the short discussion on the right, he is being investigated for "criminal intimidation", though based on what has so far been disclosed, it may be unusual to use this law against him. Meanwhile, Lee is not letting up with his attempt to goad Gomez into a defamation suit; it seems that there is no satisfaction until the last nail is hammered into the coffin.

In the same speech, he referred too to his experience of fighting the British colonialists, Chinese communists and Malaysian "ultras". Once again, the recitation of his personal history served to suggest that others were not of the same caliber; without "that kind of spirit", the opposition party politicians ought to be deserving of contempt.

Lee may be badly advised. He used this tactic during the television forum with 10 young Singaporeans just prior to the elections. It was obvious that using the past to claim a right to scold others was a big turn-off to the present generation of Singaporeans; to them he appeared intolerably self-righteous and anachronistic. 

In the Spug forum, AKA Lance wrote on 9 May 2006:

Zzzz...same thing again, I have to agree with the fixation of the past. Like a broken record playing the same thing over and over and over again (sometimes repackaged in different ways).

Perhaps no one has yet told Lee how this habit was received, and how it's not a net gain to be "like a broken record".

* * * * *

"In the end, to win an election in Singapore you must have better men than the government," Lee pointed out. Of course, one hopes this is true, but while such a statement is useful for casting aspersions on the Workers' Party's candidates, I think the way he has put it glosses over the dynamics.

Unless a government has collapsed from a scandal or gross incompetence, opposition parties are rarely catapulted into government overnight. More likely, they claw their way up by winning a greater and greater share of votes with each election. As their momentum increases, they attract more and better people.

Furthermore, when they finally do form the government, there is a sea change in their ability to attract even more people. It is a fact of life that many choose only to hitch their wagons to known winners. If the PAP were not the party of government, how many of their new candidates and soon-to-be new ministers would have joined them?

The PAP, for some reason, doesn't have much by way of natural attraction. It has, for a long time, had to virtually beg people to come on board. It has had to raise compensation levels to unmatched levels to induce them to sign on. This is how it gets to boast of its talent pool.

To suggest therefore that what the Workers' Party can attract today is all that it can attract even if it forms the government is oversimplification.

But a more interesting question might be how much talent the PAP can retain or attract once it is out of power? Then how would Lee's "talent test" pan out?

Yet I'm sure, that's not really what anybody wants. The dream is not for a one-party PAP state with a monopoly of talent to be replaced by a one-party state under another party, also with a monopoly of talent. The dream is for two equally capable parties providing a choice of vision and programs to Singaporeans, capable of alternating in power.

But somehow, reading between the lines of Lee's speech, this vision terrifies him. He keeps talking about dud governments, as if alternative governments can only be that kind. His vision sounds like a monopoly of power forever.

"Here you know that we run a relay race. You carry this torch and you hand it over. The team carries it on."

He is entitled to his opinion, of course, but when he starts scolding people for cherishing a different dream, and the government puts in structural barriers to deny possibilities, then I think we have a problem.

© Yawning Bread 

 

 

 

 

 

The Gomez case so far

James Gomez was detained by the police on Sunday, 7 May 2006, as he was checking in at the airport for a flight to Sweden (to return to his job). The police said they were investigating "a complaint from the Elections Department against Mr James Gomez for alleged offences of criminal intimidation and providing false information".

Penal Code Section 503, titled "criminal intimidation" says, "Whoever threatens another with any injury to his person, reputation or property, or to the person or reputation of any one in whom that person is interested, with intent to cause alarm to that person, or to cause that person to do any act which he is not legally bound to do, or to omit to do any act which that person is legally entitled to do, as the means of avoiding the execution of such threat, commits criminal intimidation."

Lawyers say that this clause is usually used for thuggish threats of physical harm.

In Gomez's case, he reportedly had a heated conversation with Elections Department officials in which he said there'd be "consequences" for misplacing his application for a minority-race certificate. He later conceded that he was mistaken that he had ever submitted that application and apologised for causing distress to the Elections Department officers.

Others have pointed out that many Singaporeans have had run-ins with civil servants, where we've lost our temper. We might even have threatened to report the officials to their superiors. 

Someone recently told me about a friend of his who phoned the Central Provident Fund about a fax that the CPF claimed they never received. He had faxed it twice, he insisted. In the course of the phone conversation, all manner of expletives were used. Later he discovered from the fax machine's memory that the faxes never went through.

 

Footnotes

  1. Low Thia Khiang is the leader of the Workers' Party
    Return to where you left off

Addenda

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