added on 21/11/10

SDP has been actively promoting itself via the web and public meetings, with a level of media skill that looks more lively than those of PAP and other opposition parties; how much impact these would produce on actual votes remains unclear, when voters caste their ballots for specific candidates as well as their party brand; it is also not clear how they will work out who runs where among the various parties in order to avoid splitting the opposition vote share, and how effective a specific candidate in a speciic location would be in linking up with the residents

The Implosion of Singapore Democratic Party

I visited Singapore for the first time in September 1981 for my NUS job interview, in between two important events occurring there: the new airport in Changi was opened just before my arrival, and SDP was formed during my visit, each heralding further progress in its respective domain, economic for one and politcal for the other. Little did I know the very unexpected directions each sphere would take in the next 25 years. In economics there was computerization (the reason for expanding the computer science dept thus giving me a job), property booms and busts, and 1997/sars crises. In politics the idea of opposition not being required.

I came for the interview despite advice from the association of australian academics against moving to NUS, because of a recent campus meeting during which LKY himself announced to the academic staff that they could not register a union. The senior professor who interviewed me and then talked to me in private was concerned enough to specially mention this to me, with the explanation that the government wanted to ensure foreign staff, who cannot join unions, are not discriminated against. Nice try, but unnecessary. Singapore's political system may have its unique features, about which I was quite curious and would study first hand over the next 15 years (please see result, Leninism, Asian Culture and Singapore http://sinazen.com/neoconfucianism )from a middle management level so that I experienced the use of administrative control from both ends, but Singapore was generous towards education and NUS in particular, and the opportunity to build up something from nothing was tempting. After an interlude in which I started a small Computer Science department in Hongkong, I joined NUS in 1983 and was department head from 85 to 93 overseeing its growth (but not its "rise", which must be credited to others in the next period).

During the same intelude, Jeyaratnam was elected into parliament in 1981 on the Worker Party ticket, and shortly after my arrival, Chiam See Tong in 1984 on the SDP ticket. 1984 was also the year in which LKY reached 60, the normal retirement age for civil servants, and when government companies like SIA were moving towards privatization by listing their shares on the stock exchange. People were expectant of change. However, soon Jeyaratnam was expelled parliament because of some technical violation of party laws, his Anson electorate disappeared into the new Group Representative Constituency system, and his repeated attempts to return have all failed in one way and another, involving various transient characters such as Francis Seow, his son Ashley, Tang Liang Hong, etc, whcih I wont discuss here. In the mean time, the Worker Party managed to score some successes without him, which too wont be discussed here.

Chee Soon Juan came into public view in 1991 when he stood for parliament on an SDP ticket. It was cosidered a major coup to be able to recruit a university lecturer/PhD, and that election was the party's high tide winning three seats. Stories went around that one PAP member (a recently recruited cabinet minister) lost because she washed her hands after shaking the hand of a fishmonger during her campaigning, and another (running a major government corporation) lost because he refused to talk to some school bus drivers over parking problems. However, since then SDP went steadily downhill.

I did not like it when I heard Chee say during his campaign "It is ironical that NUS rejected me as student but later hired me as academic staff" - quite aside from whether one should publicly bite the hand that feeds it, the statement lacked logic, since there must be many harvard professors who were unsuccessful freshman applicants; his repeated expressions of fear over losing his job because of opposition politics sounded like artificial tearjerking. After an unsuccessful election, his numerous letters to the newspaper also got annoying. When he was actually dismissed, officially because of using his research grant to send his wife's thesis to Georgia, I thought it unnecessary because his contract was about to end in any case. The story then came about that he tried to taperecord his department head - who happened to be a PAP member of parliament, and who was quite positive towards him in their earlier relationship - hoping to get a statement like "any lecturer that stands for parliament on opposition tickets would probably lost his job", which made me feel even less sympathetic - it reminded me of Spy versus Spy in Mad Magazine. The matter kept the newspapers, as well as the NUS Director of Personnel who wrote the dismissal letter, very busy for a period, extended by his brief hunger strike, then dropped off the radar screen.

The next thing I knew, Chiam See Tong had lost his job as SDP leader and been replaced by Chee Soon Juan. The story went about that the town council under one SDP member of parliament hired Chee as researcher, and Chiam objected. Having expanded SDP just before the 1991 election by accepting some transfers from another party, Chiam found himself outnumbered on the central executive committee, threatened to resign thinking that he was indispensible, and was surprised to find that others did not think so. He had to form a new party to contest the next election in 1997, and managed to build it up to the Singapore Democratic Alliance for the 2006 election during which it was able to field 20 candidates.

Between the event and the 1997 election, Chee's main activities were the production of a report claiming that the government did not subsidize medical services in public hospitals, which was easily refuted, and giving a speech at Williams College as part of the protest to Goh Chok Tong's award of an honorary degree there. He then virtually disappered from the radar screen till the 2001 election, which he and his sister Siok Chin contested in Jurong East as part of the SDP team, after she quit her teaching job to become a full time political activist. That election was notable mainly for his heckling Goh  when both happened to be campaigning in the same neighbourhood, about some loans Singapore supposedly made to Indonesia in 1997. Some lawsuits from the PAP people soon put him into bankrupcy, preventing him from standing as candidate in 2006 though his sister persisted. However, a new round of lawsuits should ensure that she too would soon be out of action. In the mean time, the other SDP people dissociated themselves, so that SDP basically ceased to exist as an organized group.

I have always felt that a group that claims to fight for democracy should first show that it knows how to organize itself democratically, and a group that criticizes the government need to explain what alternative policies and programmes it would implement if it were the government. This is necessary not just as a demonstration of competence, but also allows the other side to have the chance to criticize it in return. While asking for a level playing field is right, that the organs of the state should not be used by the party in control of it to advance party objectives, the other aspect of level playing field is there too, that one side actually has a job to do while the other side only has to talk. Like I advising the students taking my classes, first you need to get the basic concepts right.