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[h=2]Ng Kok Lim rebuts SG Embassy: Singapore is authoritarian[/h]
July 13th, 2013 |
Author: Ng Kok Lim
"It is my job as prime minister in charge of the
government to put a stop to politicking in professional bodies."
Dear Washington Post Editor,
I refer to the 9 July 2013 letter
by Mr Jerome Lee (‘SG Embassy to Washington Post: Singapore is no autocracy‘)
[1].
Singapore is widely regarded as an authoritarian state [2]. Since
authoritarianism is much closer to autocracy than to democracy, the autocracy
label for Singapore is therefore not that unreasonable.
Singapore scored a dismal 5.88 out of 10 in the 2012 Economist Intelligence
Unit’s Democracy Index which puts us in the category of a hybrid regime that
bears the following description: “Elections have substantial irregularities that
often prevent them from being both free and fair”. Mr Lee’s assertion of free
and fair general elections in Singapore is somewhat contradicted by EIU’s
classification of Singapore as a hybrid regime.
One example of Singapore election unfairness is the Group Representative
Scheme (GRC) where multiple constituencies are lumped together and contested as
one. The dubiousness of the GRC rationale has been confirmed when Worker Party’s
female candidate Ms Lee Li Lian beat PAP’s male candidate Dr Koh Poh Koon in the
recent Punggol East by-election, debunking former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s
explanation that GRCs were needed because they could not get single minority
candidates or women elected [3].
No amount of differentiation in democracy all over the world can justify one
that exercises absolute control over the press and the media. What else other
than military juntas and the communists would impose absolute control over the
press and the television media? Reporters Without Borders ranks Singapore 149th
out of 179 nations in press freedom this year. Freedom House classifies the
Singapore press as being not free.
History and tradition are no impediments to democracy. Taiwan and South Korea
were authoritarian in the past but have become much more democratic now. Ethnic
mix too is no impediment to democracy as examples abound of nations with healthy
mix of races that are democratic as well. The table below shows many nations
with comparable ethnic and cultural fractionalisation as Singapore but that have
better Democracy indices than Singapore [4]. Perhaps the country most similar to
Singapore in history, traditions, ethnic and religious mixes is Malaysia; yet
Malaysia ranks and scores better than us in the Democracy
Index.
<tbody>
</tbody>
The table above also shows that better democracy has been achieved in
continents other than the West. Democracy is not a particularly Western ideology
imposed on us but a universal ideal and virtue aspired by people all over the
world hindered only by existing power structures that have vested interests to
subjugate democracy in order to entrench local elites.
Thank you
Ng Kok Lim
[1] Washington Post, Singapore is no autocracy, 9 Jul 2013, Jerome Lee
[2]
• Max Singer, The History of the Future: The Shape of the World to Come Is
Visible Today
Page 64 – Of the more than twenty modern countries today, only one of them,
Singapore, is not yet democratic.
• Fanie Cloete – At Full Speed the Tiger Cubs Stumbled: Lessons from South
East Asia about sustainable public service delivery
The single most glaring negative feature of the Singapore system is probably
the de facto authoritarian or controlling nature of the political system.
• Diane K. Mauzy and R. S. Milne, Singapore Politics Under the People’s
Action Party
However, certain draconian laws, controls on political participation, and
measures limiting civil and political rights and freedom of the press, mean that
Singapore is, to some extent – critics vary on the degree – an authoritarian
state.
• Lily Zubaidah Rahim, Singapore in the Malay World: Building and Breaching
Regional Bridges
Page 118 – While Northeast Asian developmental states of Japan, South Korea
and Taiwan have liberalised their political systems, Singapore has remained an
authoritarian one-party dominant state since independence.
Page 80 – … a Singaporean national identity that is rooted in the culture of
fear, paranoia and insecurity – a culture engendered and exploited by the
authoritarian PAP government.
• Roy C. Nelson, Harnessing Globalization: The Promotion of Nontraditional
Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America
Page 28 – Singapore is an authoritarian regime
Page 216 – Singapore’s authoritarian political context hindered the EDB’s
long-term prospects to attract increasingly knowledge-intensive investment.
• Howard J. Wiarda, Cracks in the Consensus: Debating the Democracy Agenda in
U.S. Foreign Policy, page 30
Some regimes, like that of Prime Minister Lee in Singapore, have maintained
authoritarian controls longer than could be justified by internal or external
threats to stability.
• Michael Hill, Kwen Fee Lian, The Politics of Nation Building and
Citizenship in Singapore, page 10
The culture of political management in Singapore is authoritarian and
interventionist.
• Harold A. Crouch, Domestic Political Structures and Regional Economic
Co-Operation
Only in Singapore is the working class large enough to form a potential base
for a major opposition movement but there it has been subjugated through both
repression and the take-over of the trade union movement by government
officials.
The Singapore government has thus created a situation where its survival does
not depend on its ability to meet particular mass demands. It has combined
limited but effective repression with indirect control of some potential
opposition forces and the undermining and intimidation of others.
• Zhang Yumei, Pacific Asia: The Politics of Development, page 7
Indonesia and Singapore were at best pseudo-democracies dominated
respectively by the military and a Leninist-style political party.
• Christopher Lingle, Singapore’s Authoritarian Capitalism: Asian Values,
Free Market Illusions and Political Dependency
From a perspective gained from his service as a former Senior Fellow at the
National University of Singapore, Dr. Lingle identifies Singapore’s
authoritarian capitalism as combining a selective degree of economic freedom and
private property rights with strong-armed control over political life.
[3] 2006 televised dialogue – Why My Vote Matters – A Dialogue With Minister
Mentor Lee Kuan
Ken Kwek: You have also erected all kinds of barriers of entry for the
opposition.
Sue Ann Chia: And one barrier is the GRC …
LKY: First why do we have GRCs? Because we could not get single minority
candidates or women elected. In the early elections, just being a PAP candidate
got you elected. But after a while the electorate got wise and smart, it says oh
we’ll have a PAP government, I don’t like this. Why an Indian? He can’t speak my
Teochew or Hokkien. I choose Chinese.
Ken Kwek: Mr Lee but that’s not true. I mean in 84 you had people like Abbas
Abu Amin, 88 Abdullah Tarmugi, strong minority candidates have never been
absent
LKY: That was with the PAP in complete control. That generation voted for the
PAP.
…
LKY: You watch the candidates that we are fielding in single wards. Do we
field a minority? Do we field a woman? No. You watch the opposition. Will they
have a woman or a minority challenging a Chinese male? No. Because they know
that on the ground, they cannot win.
…
LKY: These are basic, visceral, emotional biases. I don’t like this MP
because he can’t understand me, he is Malay and I’m not a Malay and the Malay
voters want a Malay MP. It’s a reality.
[4] Ethinc and cultural fractionalisation data taken from the paper “Ethnic
and Cultural Diversity by Country” published in “Journal of Economic Growth” in
2003 and written by James D Fearon, Department of Political Science, Stanford
University
"It is my job as prime minister in charge of the
government to put a stop to politicking in professional bodies."
Dear Washington Post Editor,
I refer to the 9 July 2013 letter
by Mr Jerome Lee (‘SG Embassy to Washington Post: Singapore is no autocracy‘)
[1].
Singapore is widely regarded as an authoritarian state [2]. Since
authoritarianism is much closer to autocracy than to democracy, the autocracy
label for Singapore is therefore not that unreasonable.
Singapore scored a dismal 5.88 out of 10 in the 2012 Economist Intelligence
Unit’s Democracy Index which puts us in the category of a hybrid regime that
bears the following description: “Elections have substantial irregularities that
often prevent them from being both free and fair”. Mr Lee’s assertion of free
and fair general elections in Singapore is somewhat contradicted by EIU’s
classification of Singapore as a hybrid regime.
One example of Singapore election unfairness is the Group Representative
Scheme (GRC) where multiple constituencies are lumped together and contested as
one. The dubiousness of the GRC rationale has been confirmed when Worker Party’s
female candidate Ms Lee Li Lian beat PAP’s male candidate Dr Koh Poh Koon in the
recent Punggol East by-election, debunking former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s
explanation that GRCs were needed because they could not get single minority
candidates or women elected [3].
No amount of differentiation in democracy all over the world can justify one
that exercises absolute control over the press and the media. What else other
than military juntas and the communists would impose absolute control over the
press and the television media? Reporters Without Borders ranks Singapore 149th
out of 179 nations in press freedom this year. Freedom House classifies the
Singapore press as being not free.
History and tradition are no impediments to democracy. Taiwan and South Korea
were authoritarian in the past but have become much more democratic now. Ethnic
mix too is no impediment to democracy as examples abound of nations with healthy
mix of races that are democratic as well. The table below shows many nations
with comparable ethnic and cultural fractionalisation as Singapore but that have
better Democracy indices than Singapore [4]. Perhaps the country most similar to
Singapore in history, traditions, ethnic and religious mixes is Malaysia; yet
Malaysia ranks and scores better than us in the Democracy
Index.
| Country | Democracy Index rank | Democracy Index overall score | Ethnic fractionalisation | Cultural fractionalisation |
| New Zealand | 5 | 9.26 | 0.363 | 0.363 |
| Switzerland | 7 | 9.09 | 0.575 | 0.418 |
| Canada | 8 | 9.08 | 0.596 | 0.499 |
| UK | 16 | 8.21 | 0.324 | 0.184 |
| Mauritius | 18 | 8.17 | 0.632 | 0.448 |
| USA | 21 | 8.11 | 0.491 | 0.271 |
| Belgium | 24 | 8.05 | 0.567 | 0.462 |
| Spain | 25 | 8.02 | 0.502 | 0.263 |
| Botswana | 30 | 7.85 | 0.351 | 0.161 |
| South Africa | 31 | 7.79 | 0.88 | 0.53 |
| Chile | 36 | 7.54 | 0.497 | 0.167 |
| Israel | 37 | 7.53 | 0.526 | 0.246 |
| India | 38 | 7.52 | 0.811 | 0.667 |
| Slovakia | 40 | 7.35 | 0.332 | 0.293 |
| Cyprus | 41 | 7.29 | 0.359 | 0.359 |
| Lithuania | 42 | 7.24 | 0.338 | 0.259 |
| Panama | 46 | 7.08 | 0.507 | 0.168 |
| Latvia | 47 | 7.05 | 0.585 | 0.441 |
| Trinidad & Tobago | 48 | 6.99 | 0.647 | 0.38 |
| Croatia | 50 | 6.93 | 0.375 | 0.185 |
| Mexico | 51 | 6.9 | 0.542 | 0.434 |
| Indonesia | 53 | 6.76 | 0.766 | 0.522 |
| Bulgaria | 54 | 6.72 | 0.299 | 0.25 |
| Thailand | 58 | 6.55 | 0.431 | 0.431 |
| Romania | 59 | 6.54 | 0.3 | 0.265 |
| Peru | 61 | 6.47 | 0.638 | 0.506 |
| Malaysia | 64 | 6.41 | 0.596 | 0.564 |
| Moldova | 67 | 6.32 | 0.51 | 0.401 |
| Papua New Guinea | 67 | 6.32 | 1 | |
| Zambia | 70 | 7.92 | 0.726 | 0.189 |
| Namibia | 72 | 6.24 | 0.724 | 0.589 |
| Macedonia | 73 | 6.16 | 0.535 | 0.432 |
| Senegal | 74 | 6.09 | 0.727 | 0.402 |
| Malawi | 75 | 6.08 | 0.829 | 0.294 |
| Guyana | 76 | 6.05 | 0.62 | 0.46 |
| Ghana | 78 | 6.02 | 0.846 | 0.388 |
| Benin | 79 | 6 | 0.622 | 0.4 |
| Singapore | 81 | 5.88 | 0.388 | 0.388 |
| Guatemala | 81 | 5.88 | 0.493 | 0.493 |
| Tanzania | 81 | 5.88 | 0.953 | 0.564 |
<tbody>
</tbody>
The table above also shows that better democracy has been achieved in
continents other than the West. Democracy is not a particularly Western ideology
imposed on us but a universal ideal and virtue aspired by people all over the
world hindered only by existing power structures that have vested interests to
subjugate democracy in order to entrench local elites.
Thank you
Ng Kok Lim
[1] Washington Post, Singapore is no autocracy, 9 Jul 2013, Jerome Lee
[2]
• Max Singer, The History of the Future: The Shape of the World to Come Is
Visible Today
Page 64 – Of the more than twenty modern countries today, only one of them,
Singapore, is not yet democratic.
• Fanie Cloete – At Full Speed the Tiger Cubs Stumbled: Lessons from South
East Asia about sustainable public service delivery
The single most glaring negative feature of the Singapore system is probably
the de facto authoritarian or controlling nature of the political system.
• Diane K. Mauzy and R. S. Milne, Singapore Politics Under the People’s
Action Party
However, certain draconian laws, controls on political participation, and
measures limiting civil and political rights and freedom of the press, mean that
Singapore is, to some extent – critics vary on the degree – an authoritarian
state.
• Lily Zubaidah Rahim, Singapore in the Malay World: Building and Breaching
Regional Bridges
Page 118 – While Northeast Asian developmental states of Japan, South Korea
and Taiwan have liberalised their political systems, Singapore has remained an
authoritarian one-party dominant state since independence.
Page 80 – … a Singaporean national identity that is rooted in the culture of
fear, paranoia and insecurity – a culture engendered and exploited by the
authoritarian PAP government.
• Roy C. Nelson, Harnessing Globalization: The Promotion of Nontraditional
Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America
Page 28 – Singapore is an authoritarian regime
Page 216 – Singapore’s authoritarian political context hindered the EDB’s
long-term prospects to attract increasingly knowledge-intensive investment.
• Howard J. Wiarda, Cracks in the Consensus: Debating the Democracy Agenda in
U.S. Foreign Policy, page 30
Some regimes, like that of Prime Minister Lee in Singapore, have maintained
authoritarian controls longer than could be justified by internal or external
threats to stability.
• Michael Hill, Kwen Fee Lian, The Politics of Nation Building and
Citizenship in Singapore, page 10
The culture of political management in Singapore is authoritarian and
interventionist.
• Harold A. Crouch, Domestic Political Structures and Regional Economic
Co-Operation
Only in Singapore is the working class large enough to form a potential base
for a major opposition movement but there it has been subjugated through both
repression and the take-over of the trade union movement by government
officials.
The Singapore government has thus created a situation where its survival does
not depend on its ability to meet particular mass demands. It has combined
limited but effective repression with indirect control of some potential
opposition forces and the undermining and intimidation of others.
• Zhang Yumei, Pacific Asia: The Politics of Development, page 7
Indonesia and Singapore were at best pseudo-democracies dominated
respectively by the military and a Leninist-style political party.
• Christopher Lingle, Singapore’s Authoritarian Capitalism: Asian Values,
Free Market Illusions and Political Dependency
From a perspective gained from his service as a former Senior Fellow at the
National University of Singapore, Dr. Lingle identifies Singapore’s
authoritarian capitalism as combining a selective degree of economic freedom and
private property rights with strong-armed control over political life.
[3] 2006 televised dialogue – Why My Vote Matters – A Dialogue With Minister
Mentor Lee Kuan
Ken Kwek: You have also erected all kinds of barriers of entry for the
opposition.
Sue Ann Chia: And one barrier is the GRC …
LKY: First why do we have GRCs? Because we could not get single minority
candidates or women elected. In the early elections, just being a PAP candidate
got you elected. But after a while the electorate got wise and smart, it says oh
we’ll have a PAP government, I don’t like this. Why an Indian? He can’t speak my
Teochew or Hokkien. I choose Chinese.
Ken Kwek: Mr Lee but that’s not true. I mean in 84 you had people like Abbas
Abu Amin, 88 Abdullah Tarmugi, strong minority candidates have never been
absent
LKY: That was with the PAP in complete control. That generation voted for the
PAP.
…
LKY: You watch the candidates that we are fielding in single wards. Do we
field a minority? Do we field a woman? No. You watch the opposition. Will they
have a woman or a minority challenging a Chinese male? No. Because they know
that on the ground, they cannot win.
…
LKY: These are basic, visceral, emotional biases. I don’t like this MP
because he can’t understand me, he is Malay and I’m not a Malay and the Malay
voters want a Malay MP. It’s a reality.
[4] Ethinc and cultural fractionalisation data taken from the paper “Ethnic
and Cultural Diversity by Country” published in “Journal of Economic Growth” in
2003 and written by James D Fearon, Department of Political Science, Stanford
University
