I refer to your post titled "A 21st century revolt". While what you say is true with regards to the Orange revolution in the Ukraine, i think what happened there cannot be duplicated in Singapore at the current time.
Firstly, political awareness in Singapore is only starting to spread through cyberspace. Yes, we do see more and more youths engaging in debate in cyberspace whereby the illusionary facade of anonymity serves as a spur.
We see blogs such as yours- which i must say is a fabulous piece of work and i do hope that you continue penning your thoughts for a while yet to come, flourishing in cyberspace and attracting youths and workers alike to vent their frustrations and speak of their dreams and hopes.
Whilst this is all good, the number of people engaging is a minority, the majority of the country still believes in the trade off of "rights for economic security".
Secondly, i believe that a prerequisite for any revolution at all is economic disparity. It's a theory i have that in every revolution that has happened, be it in the Ukraine or Georgia, economics will play an important part in things.
As of now, although the average worker is feeling the pinch and some undergraduates are ripping the wool over their eyes with regards to the employment situation, it has not yet reached a critical mass. A slowly boiling pot with a tight lid if you will.
As of right now, the majority of workers are content with the situation and still believe that the government is the best party to lead them and that the government knows better than they do. Here inherently is the basis for the support of the government.
Thirdly, the Orange revolution used largely American funds. Suffice to say it's quite prudent to assume that the US has interests in the Ukraine. Why else would they support it with funds? Compare the Ukraine with Singapore. We cannot hope for American funds because we're a valued ally of the US, the government is a staunch supporter and political stability here is a big issue for American corporations. Thus we can remove any delusions of getting American funds.
Fourthly, in all these revolutions there is a strong undercurrent of youth activism and movements such as Otpor (Serbia), Kmara (Georgia) and Pora! (Ukraine) played an extremely important part in the events that followed. In all the cases these movements coordinated protests, arranged for deliveries of food and stroked up the heat.
As we can see, no such movement exists here.
Until such a time when all these conditions are met, there will be no revolution like the Orange revolution.
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P.S I don't think it'd be shown on BBC world but we all know how to get a hold of the documentary if we want to don't we?
Human Rights
no... the US will send their troops in to put down the revolt.... they do have a history of supporting various regimes.....
ReplyDeletebasically, the US government and its corporate backers are not freedom friendly. Not even in the US.
It would prefer tight control over everything so it could just sit down and make money. Freedom is bad because situations in many places are not satisfactory, which may cause eventual instability.
bad freedom! bad!
"It would prefer tight control over everything so it could just sit down and make money. Freedom is bad because situations in many places are not satisfactory, which may cause eventual instability."
ReplyDeleteThere are, I'm afraid to say, many critical flaws in your reasoning.
"Tight control" in no way guarantees that countries can "sit down and make money". If you actually read up on current affairs, you'll realise that the most tightly regulated countries are always those which are badly run, and that are in financial peril.
Failing dictatorships impose tight controls to prevent the people from displacing them from power, even though this may be necessary to save the country from said dictators' mismanagement. Zimbabwe, North Korea and many other tinpot republics are perfect examples of this.
In fact, the most economically prosperous countries in the world are invariably those with the most freedom - the U.S., European Union, Scandinavia, Switzerland, etc.
You have also invoked the old dictators' chestnut: the situation is unstable, freedom will make it worse.
This is a complete leap of logic, and no advocate of tyranny has ever been able to prove how the above statement is true.
Further, this statement is clearly entirely irrelevant in the Singapore context - isn't the government always priding itself on the fact that Singapore is so safe and stable? If that's the case, then going by your own logic, there is more than enough scope for the introduction of more freedom in Singapore, since your supposedly necessary precondition of pre-existing stability already exists.
An earlier article in the Guardian raises similar points about the PR behind the Orange Revolution. I wish I had freeview :(
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1360811,00.html