please also see

 http://singazen.com/opposition

which is a main page with subpages; please explore

Singapore has a large number of political parties that oppose the governing party (PAP, People's Action Party, in power since 1958). Each party has just a small number of members and attracted a small percentage of votes in the past elections they participated in, but they regularly generate news of the wrong kind, some because of inadvertent or deliberate violation of some law - the former kind quickly exploited by PAP, the latter usually designed to embarrass it - but also because of various intra organization rows.

We have just seen a new one, within an umbrella organization called Singapore Democratic Alliance, whose most important component is Singapore People's Party led by Member of Parliament Chiam See Tong, one of just three in the current legislature (the other two belong to the Workers Party). Chiam has been the titular leader of the alliance, and its CEO was his nominee; however, they two guys have had a falling out, and the alliance council has backed the CEO, making it likely that Chiam and SPP will leave the alliance.

The specific issue of the falling out was negotiation to accept a recently formed party, Reform Party under Kenneth Jeyaratnam, (JBJ's son, see http://sinazen.com/opposition/jbj) as a new member of the alliance; Chiam, given authority to conduct the negotiation by the alliance council, agreed to certain conditions stipulated by the RP side, to which the CEO and alliance council took exception; Chiam then attempted to fire the CEO, but the council decided to back him, and took the authority to negotiate RP's entry away from Chiam.

The current crisis closely parallels one in 1992 within Chiam's old party Singapore Democratic Party (see http://sinazen.com/opposition/sdp). In 1991 SDP scored its greatest election success getting 3 members into parliament, and attracted some other candidates including Chee Soon Juan, a university lecture; however, Chee was shortly afterwards dismissed by NUS and needed a job, and was employed as a part time consultant by Bukit Gombak town council, managed then by the MP for Bukit Gombak Ling How Dong. Chiam disagreed with the decision and tried to overturn it, but eventually the party council decided against him leading him to resign as party leader, and later to go out and form a new party, SPP.

It seems to me that in both crises the opposition figures involved, Chiam in particular despite his experience in politics, displayed an inability to operate democratically and develop concensus. For people who criticise PAP for authoritarianism, this is a rather strange situation.

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I B A

added on 13/7/08

singapore government's treatment of opposition figures came under strong criticism in a report by the International Bar Association, which held its conference here half a year ago.singapore probably spent a lot of money and effort to get IBA to hold its conference here, and usually well treated visitors would go home with good feelings and at least say some polite things about the host; the negative report therefore must be a very disappointing outcome, especially as the authors chose to virtually ignore the 15 page response to the draft report when producing the final version

whereas the law ministry brief justifies the individual items (defamation suits, barring bankrupts from standing for parliament, etc), the IBA report authors saw the final result (CSJ and JBJ excluded from elections). one could say "we used A, B, C to achieve D; there is nothing wrong with each of A, B, C; so there is nothing wrong with D"; this of course assumes that D is a worthwhile objective to start with; if the purpose of the 15 page brief was to persuade the IBA authors to change their views; this did not occur, because the two sides were not looking at the same things; It was a dialog on two different tracks.

I assume the IBA authors also know about the dafamation cases involving foreign news organizations and have taken these into consideration in forming their impressions of singapore.

we have reached the situation when meaningful political opposition is non existent; the civil disobedience acts of Chee Soon Juan might attract some attention, but they do not advance any kind of economic and social policy; Workers' party, despite its success, has almost no political programme to advance either; it basically sees its own survival in parliament as successful "opposition" already

you could say that the government, the voters and the opposition have all got what they wanted: an opposition exists, but there is no meaningful political action from it; the government believes it can monitor and improve itself through self criticism; by preventing meaningful opposition from occurring, all it got is meaningless opposition; the voters simply want an opposition to exist, while the opposition parties simply hang around and believe they are doing a good job; it is win-win-win...

One Party Government 

From Financial Times:---------

Single party rule ‘best for Singapore’
By John Burton in Singapore and Leora Moldofsky in Sydney
Published: June 22 2006 01:50
Last updated: June 22 2006 01:50

Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s prime minister, has criticised Australia and New Zealand’s liberal democratic practices, suggesting that Singapore’s system, under which a single party has ruled since independence, is more efficient.

Mr Lee made the remarks at the end of a nine-day visit to the two countries, which are attracting a growing number of immigrants from the Asian city-state.

Although the democracies of Australia and New Zealand made for “more exciting” politics, the national interest could suffer in a multi-party system, said Mr Lee.

The comments could provoke controversy, particularly as Mr Lee’s visit was meant to improve economic and defence ties in spite of criticism about Singapore’s human rights record.

“Endless debates are seldom about achieving a better grasp of the issue but to score political points,” said Mr Lee about the political systems in Australia and New Zealand.........

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I think he did not get across the basic thinking: singapore is small and has to be run as a single corporate state with a board of directors and 3M shareholders; the talent pool is too small to divide among multiple, competing groups that get to manage the corporation only for one or two elections; being a single monolithic entity allows singapore to have some weight in the international scene, and the ruling "establishment", which includes the elected government, the civil service and the government linked corporations, tries to attract all the leadership talent, based largely on education and ability with little consideration of ideology

in this scheme, elections are not so much for "choosing" the government but more like a periodic examination, to give the government a "mark" indicating people's satisfaction and provide feedback to enable it to do things better during the next term

I consider this a valid proposition, but it has not been clearly explained and debated because a monolithic system is not conducive to such discussions

Political Singlish

One of the very unique terms of Singapore's political lexicon is "OB Markers" - OB being short for "Out of Bound". While the meaning of this is very clear in Singapore, what would a foreign journalist make of this? Is this about soccer? (World Cup Round 1 is going on right now) Is it related to Outward Bound (an organization to promote youth travel to gain experience and exposure)? A brand of whiteboard pen?

To explain using, again, unique Singaporean expressions, OB Markers draw the line where "sensitive" ends and "insensitive" begins; in other words, where you get into trouble. You are allowed to talk about "sensitive" issues, as long as you do not become so "insenstive" that you begin to say things you should not say. How do you know when you have strayed across the OB Markers by talking insenstively about sensitive issues? When someone in power gets upset at you of course. But if you mean before that... It is up to your own judgement not to become insensitive when talking about sensitive matters... If you are unable to judge that, you should not be talking about sensitive matters.

Now foreigners might say "someone gets upset; what's the big deal?" Well, Singapore is a company town, the headquarters of Singapore Inc, and everyone is working for the same employer; so people are anxious about being "insensitive" and would like to see all the OB Markers; unfortunately, people who determine where the markers are might prefer not to lay all their sensitivities out for others to see.

"Civic Society" was once a frequently heard expression; I even vaguely remember people organizing public seminars to discuss how to promote it. Obviously, a civic society exists and consists of many aspects; by doing something to improve a particular aspect, say public facilities for disable people, art museums, or antique car restoration, you have in some way made a contribution to "civic society", but what exactly does "promoting the concept of civic society" mean?

It is first necessary to explain that "civic society" is generally speaking not "sensitive" and does not give rise to the need for "OB Markers". If people are involved in those aspects that interest them, they cease to be apathetic; if they are involved in organizational activities, they get experience in following democratic procedures and public rules of conduct. Hence. promoting "civic society" gives people scope to learn to be good citizens without risking the crossing of OB Markers and upsetting someone with power.

I can cite two incidents to show how naive this idea was. First is the case of National Kidney Foundation. Second is the Singapore Roundtable (Now does anyone still remember it?) The first has already generated a series of lawsuits, including a current criminal case involving its former CEO and Management Board. The second simply disappeared. The first involved large sums of money from the public; its experience shows that ultimately the government has to exercise authority to manage public money. The second thought that there are meaningful things which they can discuss and organize besides power and money, and soon found that nobody, themselves included, was interested.

Since  Hegel and Marx are long dead, people forget that ideas progress through thesis, antithesis and synthesis. You need antithesis to fully understand thesis and to progress through synthesis, whether you are talking about civic society or politics and money. I already forgot which Greek philosopher said "Give me pivot and I shall move the earth"; I say "give me marker and I shall show where theses end and antitheses begin".