The story of modern Singapore

Norvin Chan

New Asia Republic thanks Norvin Chan for this guest contribution. Norvin blogs at The Secret Political Blog.

Singapore's material achievement is a cover-up.

Singapore's material achievement is a cover-up.

The End of History has not come yet. And Singapore will be remembered as one of the key bits in place that defied the progress of History towards an end-state based upon the democratic ideals of the West.

That a tiny island carelessly situated in South-east Asia will be of much importance to the world is not an exaggeration. For Singapore was never merely a tiny island, but rather from its onset, a living idea running in motion; an idea which will determine the political structures in this world – the idea that good governance can come, or even result from, the lack of democracy.

And as the wave of democracy that gushed through the broken walls of Berlin recedes, Singapore will emerge as the thesis that democracy has become irrelevant in the new age; that people are willing to replace the Social Contract of old with a Faustian Pact which trades freedom, not for protection and magnification of freedoms by the state, but instead in a vulgar barter for governmental efficiency and material wealth.

Democracy Truncated

At this point of time, the paradigm of Singapore being a democracy needs to be put to rest for once and for all. Singapore is by no means a democracy; rather, it has always been a quasi-democracy. This fact can be seen by the myopic argument the government presents; the PAP (People Action Party) has always maintained that Singapore is a democracy, albeit in the very narrow sense that Singaporeans are given a chance to vote, thereby fulfilling the electoral criterion that democracy entails.

But democracy has always meant something more than merely voting once in a while. It bears with it attending elements, as well as other intangibles, all lacking in Singapore. The right of habeas corpus can be bypassed with the Internal Security Act. The fourth estate has been muzzled, and its foreign counterparts gazetted.

Freedom of speech is frozen as the chilling effects spread from an arrest made over Facebook comments; Freedom of assembly dissipates when a lone man can be considered as a “procession” mandating the need for legal approval. The grass-roots movement resides in a barren dust-bowl crying out softly as it is smothered by the shadows of Big Government. The absurdities and tragedies abound.

The government is more akin to an enlightened dictatorship showing off the new toy it acquired, which is unfortunately called, the ballot box. And even the sacrosanct nature of the vote, and its meaningfulness, is in doubt. Short of explicit ballot-stuffing, the government has subtle methods. A candidate-vetting committee has ensured that the current President has served two terms uncontested.

The print and television does not cover opposition proposals adequately, while the online channels which the opposition leverages upon becomes illegal during election season. Restive constituencies are gerrymandered or cease to exist after every election. The PAP introduces pork as a treat to voters in a rare breach of fiscal discipline, and threatens squalid conditions upon opposition constituencies. The list of the significant and the petty goes on, undermining the notion that Singapore is a democracy in every meaningful sense of the word.

The Deal with the Devil

But why has the people allowed for this to happen? The answer is that the giddy speed at which Singapore modernized its economy and achieved first-world living standards have allowed for them to tolerate, or perhaps even forget, the encroachment of their inalienable rights.

Voters have been quiescent in seeing their rights and freedoms stripped, accepting for them in return, economic prosperity and an efficient government. The most obvious barter is seen by workers giving up the right to organize themselves in unions in return for promises of prosperity created by stability as the state manages industrial-worker relations.

This precedent of the 60s set the trend to follow – voters constantly become exhorted to vote for the ruling party, thereby implicitly approving the aggregation of the government, or risk losing all the economic growth that the government has managed to bring about. Therefore, as Singapore spectacularly entered the industrial age, votes for the PAP have too been spectacularly high.

More astute voters also came to understand that one-party rule can be beneficial to the economy, provided that the quality of the decisions made is on par with the speed at which a rubber stamp parliament can craft laws. In the wake of the financial Armageddon, Singapore and China passed their stimulus effortlessly in an impressive demonstration of party discipline while America’s stumbled under the sound and fury of democracy. Citizens came to appreciate the efficiency of enlightened one-party rule and came to regard their own involvement as a hindrance to the economy.

Business also finds confidence in the continued perpetuation of a single party, especially one that is unabashedly pro-business, immigration and trade; Long term investments can be projected in the future without the complications of political change, a luxury that few other countries can offer.

The Singaporean population have factored these in consideration, and coupled with seeing the very real wealth generated in the obvious form of infrastructure, industry, and jobs, sealed the Faustian pact.

The Singapore Effect

What happens in Singapore does not stay in Singapore; the country has been more than happy to export the Singapore Model, playing host to foreign politicians and policymakers eager to discover the secret to efficient government and bureaucracy, or offering education courses to them in the distinguished Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Singapore has a profound impact on its visitors, for no other city has managed to acquire the antiseptic cleanliness of Singapore, near-automaton law and order, the strange feeling that everything in Singapore is organized and neat, and above all, a docile domestic population.

And so, in November 1978, when Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore, what happened was a crucial event that explains much of China today – by December of that same year, Mr. Deng had implemented the economic reforms that transformed parts of China into the free industrial areas that emulate Singapore. The trip has reinforced what Mr. Deng had already learnt from South Korea and Hong Kong – that foreign investment was crucial for rapid industrialization – and confirmed what Mr. Deng suspected – that economic growth can confer upon an absolute party the legitimacy to rule, in lieu of the Social Contract of the West or the ideological fervor of Mao.

Failing to understand this, one can never understand why China has toiled frantically year on year to achieve the figure of 8 percent GDP growth, a number which importance is so etched in the minds of officials that it has acquired a mystical quality in itself, and why local Chinese officials are stressed to the point of lying when they do not meet this official growth target – For the Chinese government has forged the same Faustian pact with its citizens, and even the Devil has to keep his promises.

It is not just the behemoth of China that has gone the way of the Singapore. The entire continent of Africa threatens to do so too. African leaders frequently talk about following the China developmental model, after they become impressed by the massive investments China pours into their countries, the fact that China has done an enviable job of pulling its citizens out of poverty or the universal prestige that China enjoys as an emerging superpower. But in actuality, when Africa talks about following China, they are really following Singapore.

The most prominent bellwether of Africa in chasing after the legitimacy of money is Rwanda, lauded by the UN as the rare success story of the continent. Rwanda’s story sounds pretty much the same as Singapore’s: There is the same paradoxical ruler that has an iron fist on the government but lets the markets function free, genuinely popular amongst his people for bringing about growth and stability but insecure enough to persecute dissidents, repeatedly dredging up past ethnic strife to caution voters about the value of stability brought about by a strong government but painting and promoting the happy future of racial harmony. It is a description that will have easily described Singapore as well.

The replication of Singapore has taken place, for Singapore as I will stress again, represents a hypothesis, an idea, a thesis. And the spread of the idea called Singapore will have deep ramifications upon this world.

The Value of a Soul – the Price of the Pact

Singaporeans have paid the price of the Faustian pact with the soul of society, and a society bereft of its soul is one bereft of its existential purpose. The perverse outcomes of having a population with the material wealth of the first world with none of the attending freedoms can be seen in Singapore.

By accepting the expansion of the state, the populace has allowed the elitist elite to launch grandiose social engineering projects to improve the population to their taste. The effect is of a nation moulded from the top-down with the national character determined by the arbitrations of the government; the tragedy is the creation of an artificial soul in lieu of the one surrendered.

The elite have taken it upon themselves to improve the average Singaporean by the tremendous undertaking of correcting the language of Singaporeans. The de facto lingua franca of Singapore – Singlish, informal English embedded with eclectic elements of vernacular languages and dialects – is considered an enemy of economic progress, a blemish on Singapore’s competitive ability to communicate with the outside world. To combat this enemy, year on year, “Speak Good English” campaigns were introduced and Singlish was effectively outlawed from all official channels and the airwaves.

Television viewers in Singapore are treated to the surreal scene in which a hyper-reality of blue collar workers converse in perfect English while the hustle and bustle of Singlish continues outside. The elites fail to appreciate the beauty of this unique vernacular, the kindred feelings it engenders to those who recognize the shibboleth, and the transcendental value of a language comprehensible to all in a multi-racial society. Instead, the speakers of this language are shamed with exhortations for Standard English and the nation is beseeched to hound and pursue an imaginary enemy. The antics of the elite do not stop at the declaration of war on a beloved language, and another episode highlights the dangers of unlimited power the state possesses.

In the 80s, Singapore was introduced to eugenics when graduate mothers were paired with graduate fathers via state matchmakers, and the mothers were given tax incentives to procreate, in the belief that the resulting offspring will possess higher IQs. Meanwhile the un-educated were encouraged to voluntarily take part in subsidized sterilization programs, a snub to the fundamental right to reproduce, educated or not. The evidence used to justify the policies was selective – a single study that determined that 80% of one’s abilities was due to nature – ignoring the continuing controversy of the nature-nurture debate that continues today. The saga illustrated the perils of entrusting the illuminati with too much power, for even the enlightened can make mistakes.

Just as the Devil tinkers the rules of the games to his favor, the government has too re-drawn the entire landscape that defines the relation between the individual and state to better suit it. In the process of systemic change, the individual too is re-drawn in the process, and the effect is the same as social engineering – that of an artificial soul created.

The Orwellian thesis holds that governments seek to perpetuate their hold on power indefinitely, and Singapore is no exception. What is exceptional instead is how the government has bred purposefully, an apolitical population to ensure its continued domination. The result is a crippled populace never able to attain complete actualization due to this simple fact – they are expected not to stray into the political realm, save during elections or as providers of feedback through governmental channels.

Though absurd, citizens are exhorted to stay out of the very processes which by definition affect their lives. And this was clearly demonstrated when the government told a prominent writer to enter politics for she had “gone beyond the pale” as a normal citizen by publishing critical political commentary. The legacy of that debacle continues today, for it introduced the term “Out-of-Bound Markers” into the public consciousness; invisible amorphous boundaries that separate the political from the apolitical, and designate the issues which can be discussed and those not.

All this frustrates the creative individual who is expected to somehow bifurcate and compartmentalize his life into the political and apolitical aspects, and to passionately pursue and excel at one while disregarding the other. It is an impossible task. The requirement to be uncritical of politics necessarily translated into a requirement to be uncritical about the apolitical. It is therefore un-surprising that despite all its material wealth, Singapore has yet to produce any earth-shaking luminaries in the global field, which is a cost to both society, and the many could-have-beens.

The Epilogue of Faust

The summary of the danger Singapore has evidenced is this – that a government which is qualified to rule for its virtue in generating wealth will subordinate all of society to that very end, sometimes even more than society is willing to. And the little rights that the people are left with gives them little power for retaliation.

This explains why eugenics was introduced at the national level (for fear that the non-existent children of graduate mothers will not enter the workforce), why the nation’s lingua franca is assaulted (to communicate competitively with the outside world), and why the populace is apolitical (to guarantee the political stability businesses love).

The result is the dictatorship of how people should live their lives, whom to marry, what to speak, what not to say, all in the name of economic progress. That is the danger of the Faustian pact. As the new leviathans of the world emerge from their tumultuous seas, the question of whether they choose to follow an island in making a diabolical deal will decide the tides of History.