Paul G. Buchanan: A Door Cracks Open in the Little Red Dot

[Park88]

This is dedicated to Galantspeedz

 

 

this is a more balance view from a 3rd party

 

 

 

Taking 25 years as the generational baseline, Singapore is in its third generation since gaining political autonomy from the Malay Federation in 1959 (independence came with its expulsion from the Federation in 1965). Led by 87-year old Lee Kwan Yew, the first generation of PAP leaders ruled with tight control until 1990, in an era when Singapore's image as an austere and puritanical authoritarian state was forged. The second generation of hand-picked successors, who began the slow process of political and social liberalization and orchestrated the emergence of the country as a major transportation, logistics and financial hub, is singing its political swan song today. This year's election marks the transition to the third generation of political leadership and not all has gone as planned for the PAP.

 

Voting is mandatory in Singapore. Yet spoiled ballots and non-voters amounted to nearly 10 percent of the 2006 electorate. In other words, the signs of discontent were already present five years ago. This year there has been a resurgence of political opposition led by the Workers Party, the Reform Party and the Singapore Democratic Party. In marked contrast to previous elections, 82 of the 87 parliamentary seats will be contested. Among the ranks of the opposition are defectors from the PAP, former government-sponsored overseas scholars (who usually pay their scholarship debt by returning to assume bureaucratic positions and joining the PAP), former Internal Security Act detainees (the ISA allows for the indefinite detention of suspects without charge and some of the current opposition candidates have spent long periods in confinement) and political exiles.

 

Most of the new candidates are in their mid 20s to mid 40s, thereby representing a coming of age for their generation of free thinkers. In response, the PAP has trotted out the usually ensemble of former bureaucrats and politicized retired military officers, interspersed with a handful of younger neophytes (including one whose qualifications for office apparently are that she is the wife of the Prime Minister's executive assistant and has a penchant for shopping--the latter being Singapore's national pastime). What is most revealing is that the PAP is no longer able to hide its internal divisions, with leading officials, Ministers and even the Minister Mentor (how's that for a title?) Lee Kwan Yew himself openly disagreeing about issues of politics, policy and social construction. Sensing a shift in the public mood, some PAP candidates have withdrawn from the election. All of this underscores something that the Minister Mentor said last year: that the PAP must rejuvenate or stagnate, and that democracy would only come when the PAP proved incapable of responding to public expectations as a result of its stagnation.

The trouble for the PAP is that the elections have come too quickly for a major re-generation of its cadres, which in a talent-thin environment such as Singapore (owing to its population size, as anyone who looks beyond the front benches of the New Zealand parliament will understand), means that the moment of political reckoning has come much sooner than the 25 years Lee Kwan Yew envisioned.

 

Even worse for the PAP, although the government controls all of the mainstream media in Singapore, including the Straits Times and the telecommunications giant MediaCorp, it has been unable to staunch the flow of internet criticism of its personnel and policies, or the grassroots mobilization of support for the opposition. Much concern has been voiced about increasing inefficiencies in public services, the high cost of living, the loss of white collar jobs to foreigners, and the government's astronomical pay scales (the Prime Minister--Lee Kwan Yew's son--is paid S$4.5 million per/year, senior ministers make S$3 million and parliamentary backbenchers start at S$150,000. In fact according to the Economist, Singapore has the second highest ratio of political leader's pay to the country's GDP per person, with the average salary of US$2,183,516).

 

In the face of what looks to be the possibility of losing previously safe seats amid an unprecedented wave of electoral contestation, the PAP has resorted to fear-mongering, focusing on the tired old canards of economic insecurity, Malay sedition, jihadist terrorism, unskilled foreign workers from the sub-continent and mainland China bringing crime and stealing local jobs, and gay rights (homosexuality is illegal in Singapore but as part of the social liberalization process enforcement of sodomy laws has been weak and episodic over the last decade. This has been a major concern of social conservatives, including the very large number of ethnic Chinese Christians found on the island who are a core PAP constituency). Is speaks ominously of hidden agendas and questions why the opposition would seek to take control of government (apparently failing to recognize that the purpose of political parties include competing for the authority to govern or at least influence government policy). Yet the more it raises the specter of Singapore returning to its polyglot swampland brothel and opium den past, the more the PAP is ridiculed for being out of touch with the wants and needs of contemporary Singaporeans.

 

This means that this election and its aftermath will constitute a critical juncture in Singaporean history. It will set the stage for the next critical juncture, which will be the occasion and aftermath of Lee Kwan Yew's death.

 

The notion of critical juncture is important and needs explaining. Using economics-derived path dependency analysis (in which human behavior is "locked in" by past institutional practice the more that practice is routinised over time), critical junctures are historical moments when decisive choices are made within given institutional parameters that set the future course of events (the most common used analogies are the "fork in the road" and

[Celicar]

Some inaccuracies here and there.

 

I don't know. Like he said, Singaporeans are a pragmatic lot, when the silent majority trod out to the polling stations, then we will see if PAP has pushed the right buttons again.

 

ps: Saw in New Paper that even a former and rather old PAP Aljunied MP has been activated and went on walkabouts with Georgie. What's with that?

[Ngck]

Some inaccuracies here and there.

 

I don't know. Like he said, Singaporeans are a pragmatic lot, when the silent majority trod out to the polling stations, then we will see if PAP has pushed the right buttons again.

 

ps: Saw in New Paper that even a former and rather old PAP Aljunied MP has been activated and went on walkabouts with Georgie. What's with that?

 

 

PAP is used everytime walkover and forming government once nomination day is over....

 

this time with so many seats contested, even their resources are stretch thin. thats why these retired ppl have to be activated

[Readonly]

Some inaccuracies here and there.

 

I don't know. Like he said, Singaporeans are a pragmatic lot, when the silent majority trod out to the polling stations, then we will see if PAP has pushed the right buttons again.

 

ps: Saw in New Paper that even a former and rather old PAP Aljunied MP has been activated and went on walkabouts with Georgie. What's with that?

 

maybe desperation or really to show us that we lack talents?