May 31, 2006
ASIA ONLINE
KIASU is the term Singaporeans use to describe the unpleasant side of their culture. Acting in a kiasu manner means being greedy, unwilling to share and insensitive to others. Many Singaporeans feel this is a good description of the Government and its approach to power. The winner-take-all attitude is out of step with other nations.
No one can deny that Singapore is an easy place (although not necessarily a good place) to do business, compared with its neighbours.
Singapore scores highly on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index: it is ranked No. 5 of 158 countries. The Global Competitiveness Report ranks Singapore No. 6 of 117 economies.
The Government likes to broadcast these figures. But it doesn't broadcast that it executes more people per head a year than almost anywhere else. Reporters Without Borders has Singapore No. 140 of 167 countries for media freedom.
It is as if Singapore is more a ruthless corporation than a country with a civil society, its people more employees than citizens, and its broadsheet, the Straits Times, more like a staff bulletin than a newspaper. As a Singaporean diplomat once told me, "We don't have journalists in Singapore; only propagandists."
Increasingly, people around the world are beginning to laugh at Singapore; they laugh at its Government's petty and self-serving restrictions on what people can and cannot do. But in Singapore, many people are unaware of this because the Government-controlled media feed them a diet of only good news stories.
Race relations are often used as an excuse for restrictions. But Singapore has one of the most homogeneous race profiles in the world: 77 per cent are Chinese, the rest comprise Malays and Indians. Singapore does not have the racial complexities of many countries.
The Maria Hertogh case is cited as an example of how Singapore is on the edge racially, and used to justify various restrictions. Rioting erupted among Malays after a court allowed a Dutch girl who was raised as a Muslim to be returned to her Catholic parents. This was 56 years ago.
No viable opposition has been allowed to form, and without robust national debate Singaporeans are becoming politically de-skilled. Accordingly, the Government comprises plenty of ministers but few politicians, and there is little elegance to their art. They know only how to clobber: too often alternative viewpoints are responded to with public humiliation, threats, defamation writs and detention. Business should consider these aspects and not just competitiveness when assessing Singapore as a place for investment.
The Singapore Government hates people like me commenting on what it regards as its internal affairs. It hates it because foreigners cannot be controlled. But that does not stop the Singapore Government from intruding in the internal affairs of other countries.
Eddie Teo, Singapore's new high commissioner to Australia, has written letters to The Age critical of my recent columns. This is the first time Mr Teo has lived outside Singapore in 35 years and no doubt he finds a free media refreshing.
In one letter, Mr Teo claimed Singapore's defamation laws follow the English model. He is wrong. The British government does not sue opposition politicians so they are bankrupted and cannot run for parliament. If the British are to be blamed for Singapore's laws, then they can be blamed for Singapore's economic success. It was they who established Singapore as a free-trade port, which has made Singapore rich.
He says Singapore has a good legal system. That is true, but only compared with Indonesia, the Philippines, China and Thailand. Laws that have not had the benefit of open public debate and passage through a robust parliament are not really laws but decrees.
Rule of law becomes rule by law and many things are possible. Execution without a jury trial is one; torture is another.
Geoffrey Robertson, QC, writing last month for the Open Democracy Foundation, describes how torture was used in Singapore in the 1980s. A group of young lawyers, Catholic aid workers and women playwrights were rounded up by Singapore's Internal Security Department and detained without trial because they were suspects in an alleged Marxist conspiracy. They were not terrorists, they were political activists. The worst they seemed to have done was distribute Marxist literature.
They were deprived of sleep, doused with cold water and blasted with refrigerated air. The torture was not physical and left little evidence, which was its point. Instead, it was psychological and left what Robertson terms the Singapore scar. The minister then responsible for the ISD was Lee Hsien Loong. He is now Singapore's Prime Minister.
And who headed the ISD and Defence Ministry's Security and Intelligence Division for much of the 1980s? Eddie Teo, Singapore's high commissioner to Australia, the man who now enjoys our media freedoms, but who has spent much of his career denying Singaporeans similar freedoms. Some might regard that as kiasu.
michaelbackman@yahoo.com
www.michaelbackman.com
5 comments:
Michael Backman was among the people who thought there would be a real opening up; I think he was disappointed that the recent events show that politics remain the same
I really don't think anyone was so nieve to believe that the 2006 GE would create a new atmosphere f political engagement.
The GE is a means of legitimising an undemocratic government. The big issue should be GRC's. Until that mechanism of gerrymnadering is abolished the PAP will rule forever.
There is really only one method of reigning in the disgusting PAP regime. People of Singapore must band together and approach the governments of US and Britain to exert pressure on their companies who continue to invest in such an undemocratic Island.
I am sure that people living in the western world cringe at the system our government tortures, hangs, and starves their people, and oh yes keep tight control on the media, only allowing the publication of the good stories.
If enough international compaanies are taken away from singapore, maybe the government will take another look at the way their are governing.
Money is god here, if overseas tments and paypackets disappear we may see some action.
But at the end of the day isn't it the old system, keep people in the dark and shit on them?
Carry on Mr Backman and write your material, but unfortunately it will hit dead ears and blind eyes here.
Singapore does not carry the tag Hanging Island for nothing.
I was shocked to learn that good old boy scout LHL was in charge of the ISD, when they used torture. Lovely father figure, family man image that is.
The problem with galvanising the people of the UK would be that currently whenever Singapore's system of governance is mentioned everyone laughs. I am sure that LHL is aware of the laughuing behind his back.
And as for influencing business not to invest in Singapore that would be very hard to achieve as corporations here are driven by the very same ethos as those in Singapore that invest in Burma. Money for the majority of people here, is god too.
The only glimmer of light I see, is this technology and possibly galvanising an online media movement. But a media movement that has the support of think-tanks and NGO's based in Singapore. A lot of the online 'political' bloggers need to be encouraged and recognised, not by the Sg government but by Singaporean civil society. Individuals can only achieve so much in a discourse dominated by big players.
The sg government has been doing this, by indirectly allowing schools to organise blogging communities, the Today newspaper encouraging writers to blog, and in turn those writers argue for responsible writing and risk avoidance. It is the age old issue of government controlled 'civic' society versus and poorly malnurished and repressed, 'truely grassroots' bottom-up lead 'civil' society.
The Think Centre, (as an example) regional civil society groups and NGO's need to get there thumb out of their 'proverbial'. Or have they been cowed ito a position of inaction after years of suppression?
I see your point soci. We are fighting a lost cause. The money people do not care about the state of the country, so they are just happy with the profits. I wonder.
Let me tell an interesting story. many years ago I was working for English media TV. We discovered an interesting story of how Harrods, the shop for the posh where selling jeans at three hundred pounds a pair, that works out at abhout$900 sing. The programme editor decided to trace the company of manufacture which turned out to be India. TGhe batch of high prices jeans were dmade by eight year old boys and girls being paid just one pound, $3 sing a week.
We bought two of those little waifs back to the UK and presented them to the Harrods management, who immediately cancelled the jeans order out of shame.
So this shows that pressure can be boughtg to those in rule.
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