Apolitical - 11/2/2001
Tommorrow I get to vote - for the first time in my life - given that the last time my ward was uncontested and before that I wasn't 21 yet.
In spite of all the mud-slinging the ruling party has done to discredit certain members of the opposition, I maintain that an opposition is important for the future of civil society, not merely as a check and balance but as a necessary tool to stimulate political consciousness amongst a citizenry that has grown unthinking about nationhood and identity.
We often refer to Singapore's physical size in terms of a small red dot on the map, a full-stop at the end of the Malayan Peninsula. But in terms of chronological time, we are equally a small dot on the surface of history. Independant since 1965 - only makes 30 odd years - in terms of empires, we're a footnote. And so how can we even begin to phantom the future and what it brings; how can we be assured that we indeed have a future unless we participate in its unveiling? It's hubris - most obscene and unaware - that believes one manifesto, one ideology, one fount of ideas can preserve a sense of nationhood. That's were an opposition comes in. For discussion, for awareness. A course in Combined Humanities (Social Studies) isn't going to make us aware.
Going to a rally at Yishun the other day, I realised some things ...
Public transport signs of a developed nation - a wish list:
1. People reading on the bus/ mrt - people in Singapore don't read - it's an achievement when they read the Straits Times - but there's so much more - More than the adverts on the train - people have to read ...
2. People waiting for other commuters to GET OFF before BOARDING. This is one thing I'll never figure out - WHY DO SINGAPOREANS RUSH ONTO AN MRT Train WHEN PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO GET OUT? It's (one) plain rude - and the hypocrisy of calling opposition leaders RUDE - (two) illogical: people have to get out before you get in. It's not even a KIASU thing because the train's full already. I suspect it's a herd mentality at the fullest and most irrational expression.
3. People talking softly on their handphones. It still spooks me when I'm on a MRT and people start shouting into their handphones. I still turn around and wonder if they're talking to me. Worse if they're using a hands-free set - then it seems that they are talking to themselves ... a new kind of madness is born.
4. And the great SIN - WHY DON'T KIDS STAND UP FOR OLDER PEOPLE. When I was a kid and didn't want the inconvenience of giving up my seat - I would just stand throughout. I suppose civil society doesn't work in Singapore because we're too shy and afraid to do stuff like that cause we'd be drawing attention to ourselves. I get peeved when school kids don't give up their seats then there are blatantly older people there. Sometimes I feel it's because we haven't been good role models - we aren't nice to kids and so kids can't be bothered in return. And all this is sad.
LKY as a student in London in the late 40s was impressed by the fact that newspapers could be left in vending machines, free for anyone to take, and yet people would pay for them and only take one copy. Here, we don't clear our trays after eating at a fast food restraunt, don't say thank you to the people that serve us, skulk around shopping malls for freebies (taking more than one when we can), sneak into toilets which we have to pay for if we can ...
Just the other day my mum said to buy a flat. Since I've been married that has been the tone of parental advice - "buy a flat". I respond that I am blessed to live under my mother's roof and do not need to buy a flat. "It's an investment. It's the government's gift to married couples". Why do I need a flat? "Don't need to live in it - just buy it and then sell it later and make money ..."
I will not buy a flat - I will not deprive another person of a place to stay just to make money, even if that deprivation is only a place in the queue. I will not queue up just because there's a queue there. I will not own a house and not live in it. I will not commit myself to a financial obligation that ties me down to a regular job for the next 20 years.
"But everybody's doing it."
We have a mindset that desperately wants to get ahead in life - even ahead if it saves us one dollar, or ten cents - a mindset, that more convincing than any kind of social stability or economic progress, tells us we are still third world.
An Obsession - 11/2/2001
Today's Straits Times - in a rare reference to the past, and in a moment of nostalgia quotes SM Lee as likening the 2001 elections to the 1968 one, where the PAP secured 87 % of the vote, where 51 seats were uncontested.
What SM Lee doesn't mention is WHY so many seats were uncontested - but that's ok - it's his perogative as a politician. But the Straits Times as well, omits the reason. The reason: the Barisan Socialis, the party that had broken away from the PAP several years earlier on the issue of Merger (they were right in the end), boycotted the elections. Why did they do so?
I've tried to find stuff to find out - but it's not easily available on the web - but here's a telling anecdote that helps explain things:
On Friday, November 27, 1998, the Straits Times reported that the government of Singapore has lifted all restrictions on Chia Thye Poh. Chia had been first jailed, then his movements and political rights restricted, under the Internal Security Act since 1966, thirty-two years ago. He has never been tried in a court of law.
From 1963-1966, Chia Thye Poh, then a physics lecturer in a university, was a Member of Parliament from the Barisan Socialis Party, which came into being when the more leftist MPs of the ruling People's Action Party split from it. The Barisan had considerable popular following, and those were the days when Singapore had a robust political opposition.
Stan Sesser quoted Chia in his book, The Lands of Charm and Cruelty:
Chia said, "We fought for genuine parliamentary democracy, not rule by one or two ministers. The PAP branded this as toeing the line of the Communist Party of Malaya. After the 1963 elections, three opposition MPs were arrested, and two more in 1966. There were hundreds of arrests over those years, because many people went out to demonstrate. The government used all means to try to suppress the opposition. In October of 1966, the Barisan MPs resigned because of government harassment. Important issues like Singapore's withdrawal from the federation [of Malaysia] were never debated in Parliament, since Parliament had become a rubber stamp."
Three weeks after resigning from Parliament, Chia was arrested under the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention at the discretion of the Minister for Home Affairs. There is no obligation to bring the detainee to trial. Singapore does not permit judicial review of such detentions.
The same section of the book continues,
"I was never charged, never brought to trial, never convicted of anything," Chia told me. Only nineteen years later, in 1985, did the government give its first official explanation for his arrest: the minister of home affairs, in an address to Parliament, accused Chia of having infiltrated the Barisan Socialis to destabilize the government through "Communist united-front activities." Chia told me, "They released no sort of documents. I have never been a member of any Communist Party; I was just performing my duties as an MP. My activities were all legal, peaceful and constitutional. I have never advocated violence, and have never been charged with any offence of violence, let alone convicted."
Chia, unlike most other political detainees in Singapore, resisted all attempts to extract a confession. "They tried very hard to break prisoners, to extract confessions from them, to have them confess on television," Chia said. "They made me pay a very high price for not kowtowing to them. In 1966, they put me in a dark cell and said some people had gone insane under such conditions. Sometimes you could hear people kicking the doors as if they had gone insane. I went from one prison to another and was in solitary confinement several times. Sometimes I was deprived of reading materials for months at a stretch. They said that there's no end to this, that it will go on year after year if I don't confess, that even if I'm made of steel, they have means to break me. I told them that I had nothing to confess, and if the government had evidence it should try me in open court, where I could see the evidence against me and defend myself. There were day-long interrogations in a freezing-cold room. They pressured my family. But I always thought, No matter how long they keep me this way, someday they will have to release me, because I'm innocent and I have support. It's part of the broad struggle for democracy all over the world…
Upon his release, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a statement which said, inter alia, "The Government has always adopted a measured and cautious approach to Chia Thye Poh's case."
As reported by the Straits Times, in 1982, after spending 16 years in prison, he was moved to government halfway houses, though the detention conditions still applied. In May 1989, he was moved to Sentosa Island, and finally in 1992, his detention was relaxed somewhat and he was allowed to live on mainland Singapore. However, he still needed the written approval of the Director of the Internal Security Department before he could make public statements, address public meetings or take part in any political activity. One could imagine that such permission would not have been liberally granted. It appears with the latest announcement that these restrictions have now been lifted.
Chia Thye Poh is now 57 years old. He was 25 when he was detained.
-http://www.geocities.com/yawning_bread/yax-116.htm
Yes we want economic viability, we want to survive in a world that is increasingly dangerous, we want security and stability. But in spite of all these, certain human rights that make it worthwhile being human, that make us human - need to be preserved.
Instead of notes ... an entry - 11/1/2001
the notes are a clear example of how successful the ruling party's domination of the media and ability to de-politicise have been. the ruling party has managed to effectively re-write the hisotry of a nation to cause it to believe that it was its efforts, its talent and its ideas alone that have brought economic success. Nothing can be further from the truth as any absolute claim inherently erases alternatives. For example we like to believe that the ruling party is responsible for the economic development of the country - no doubt the GKS policies played an important role - but it is not the complete story. historical circumstance, geographical fortune, an industrious people etc ... all factors that are beyond any kind of governmental direction, played crucial roles as well further, the achievements of the past cannot replace the developments of the future. the pragmatism of our society may very well prove to be its downfall. what worked for 30 years may not continue to ... and unless we dare to find alternative voices, we will be subsumed. the fear we have is that having an opposition for the sake of an oppostion is erronous - ironically that is how our minds work. We can never fully push ourselves to work out alternatives and ideas unless there's an opposition. The spoon feeding (intellectually) that we are used to, leads to sterility. Unless we are forced to rigourously defend out ideas and policies in full view of public scrutiny, we will never mature our evaluative senses. We will be blind to the use (and abuse) of power and remain - apolitical the media portrayal of CSJ is a media portrayal. He is sadly - a man of ideas and very high ideals. We think of his actions as gangsterish because we are unfamiliar with agresssive debate - we hide things under the carpet. when a man is thumbed down and pushed into a corner the way CSJ is, there will be moments where he slips.
In 1963, just before merger with malaya, a certain political figure allowed the arrest of more than 100 key political figures, as a condition for merger (these figures were either against merger or deemed dangerous by the Malayan government). after merger failed, these individuals were not freed, although there was every perogative to free them, only though these people had once been comrades - even founding members - of the ruling party. Some of these detainees were kept without trial for many many many years (up to 20 over years ...)
that man who benefitted from these arrests and did not do anything in the name of justice or friendship- is still around, still dictating the policies of the nature - and has effectively erased the memory of these other founding fathers of singapore.
The ultimate pragmatist - a "democracy" founded on secret arrests ...
